7. Jules
Jules
The next afternoon, we’re back in one of the Tower’s rehearsal studios running the full-stage sequence for the ECLIPSE RUN world tour.
Smoke curls low across the floor while spotlights cut through it in clean, cinematic beams. Camera rigs glide along tracks, rehearsing the angles that will eventually feed the arena screens, and crew members weave between taped marks and half-built set pieces.
Controlled chaos.
My favorite kind.
Blaire stands near the production table with a headset around her neck, watching the run sheet while Camille occupies the bank of monitors beside her. Tablet in hand. Posture immaculate. Already studying everything like it’s data waiting to be categorized.
“From the top!” the director calls before anyone has fully reset.
The opening track cues, and everything clicks into place. I roll my shoulders, shake out my hands, and step onto my mark.
Performer mode.
Easy. Natural. Automatic.
“Rolling!” the director shouts.
The music hits, and I move.
Step. Turn. Shift.
For a second, it’s perfect. Better than perfect. Too clean, too sharp, like my body knows what’s coming before the beat reaches me.
I hit the next sequence a fraction early and correct before anyone notices.
Anyone except Mina.
When I glance over between counts, she isn’t just looking at me. She’s studying me with that distant, unsettled focus she gets when she’s trying to See through something.
“You good?” she asks under her breath.
“Always.” I smile like it’s part of the performance.
Because it is. Everything is.
“Again!”
We reset. Positions lock. The music starts. I move.
Then something moves me.
Not enough to stop the sequence or make me fall. Just enough to feel wrong.
My arm cuts through the air faster than I intend, and my body follows a line that isn’t in the choreography. It still looks good.
Probably better.
But then, my movements sharpen. The angles become cleaner, harder, more predatory. I catch my reflection in the dark surface of a glossy camera housing.
My eyes don’t look right.
Not blank. Not gone.
Just not mine.
The music distorts, or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe that’s only happening inside my head. The beat stretches, warps, and something beneath it begins to count.
One.
Two.
Three.
Move.
I move faster, drifting too close to the others. Kaia adjusts mid-step, correcting for me without breaking formation. Remy changes her angle to compensate.
Mina stops. “Jules.”
My head snaps toward her.
The world tilts. Something pushes through my chest, my throat, my mouth.
Say it.
The thought isn’t mine.
Say it.
My lips part. The music is still playing. The cameras are still rolling.
Say it!
Something snaps. Light bursts across my vision, warm and bright and sharp enough to hurt.
Heartglass flashes into Mina’s grip, translucent and merciless beneath the lights. She angles its reflective edge toward me, and the glow cuts straight through the pressure filling my skull.
“Jules!” she shouts, her voice breaking just enough to reach me.
The pressure inside the beat shatters.
My knees slam into the floor. Air rushes back into my lungs like I forgot how to breathe. Everything returns at once.
Sound. Light. People.
Myself.
I blink twice. A metallic bitterness coats my tongue, like static made solid.
Mina is in front of me immediately, Heartglass already gone, one hand firm on my shoulder. Her face is open in that way that always makes my chest ache. Worried.
“Hey,” she says quietly. “I’ve got you.”
I force a crooked smile. “You know, catching me on my knees this early in the day feels a little forward.”
Her worried expression doesn’t soften. “Jules.”
I grab her wrist gently. “Moonbeam, I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.” Her voice trembles, and that wipes the rest of the joke out of me. “I Saw something on you.”
My smile disappears. “What?”
Kaia reaches us next. She doesn’t kneel. She stands close enough to block me from the cameras and most of the crew, broad shoulders cutting off their view.
“Everyone clear,” she orders, voice low but carrying.
Remy steps into place on my other side, scanning the set, the lighting rigs, the speakers, every possible entry point.
“What happened?” someone calls from across the studio.
“Technical issue,” Remy answers, flat enough to discourage questions.
Whispers ripple through the crew anyway. They didn’t see everything, but they saw enough.
I push myself upright, ignoring the slight sway in my balance. Mina stays close, one hand hovering near my arm like she thinks I might drop again.
“What do you mean, ‘on me’?” I ask.
She looks pale. “It wasn’t inside you. Not completely. It was covering you, like it was trying to line itself up with your body.”
A chill moves beneath my skin that has nothing to do with the stage fog.
“You’re sure?”
Mina gives me a wounded look.
Stupid question.
”I believe you,“ I say quickly. “I just… what the fuck?”
Remy’s gaze shifts toward the speakers. “Your movements changed on the count. It was using the music. Or something embedded in it.”
Kaia looks at me. “Did you hear anything?”
“A count.” The metallic taste is still clinging to my tongue. “And a thought. It wanted me to say something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t get that far.”
Blaire crosses the stage toward us, abandoning the production table. Camille remains behind at the monitors, rewinding something on the nearest screen with short, precise movements.
“What happened?” Blaire asks.
“Mina saw something attached to Jules,” Kaia says before I can answer. “It was trying to influence her movement and speech.”
Blaire’s attention snaps to Mina. “Attached how?”
“Over her. Not fully inside.” Mina looks at me again. “It was trying to get through.”
For once, Blaire has no immediate response.
I roll my shoulders, trying to shake off the lingering wrongness. It stays, along with the static on my tongue.
“That was not my best run,” I say, because silence is starting to feel dangerous.
No one laughs.
Fair.
Mina’s hand closes around my forearm. “We need to stop the rehearsal.”
I look at her face and resist the reflex to turn this into another joke. She’s genuinely frightened, and I love her too much to make it worse.
“We’re stopping,” Blaire says immediately. Her voice is calm, but there’s no room in it for debate. She looks toward the production table, and tells them, “No one resets. Hold everything.”
I glance past the girls and find Camille exactly where she was before, near the monitors with her tablet in one hand. She isn’t watching me now. She’s studying the footage, isolating frames, building whatever cold little model she uses to make reality behave.
Not worried. Not shaken.
Just calculating.
Great. Fantastic. Love that for me.
Blaire leaves us and crosses back toward her. They speak briefly, too quietly for me to hear. Camille watches the playback once more, then lifts her head.
“Shut down the set,” she says.
The director hesitates. “We still have three sequences scheduled.”
“They’re canceled. Clear nonessential personnel and secure the footage. We’ll reconvene once the Council completes its initial assessment and adjustments are made.”
Her voice doesn’t waver.
“There will be a meeting,” she adds.
I straighten. “Great. Let’s do that, because I have several questions and at least one formal complaint about being puppeted during the second chorus.”
Her gaze shifts to me, brief and flat. “This will be a closed meeting.”
I blink. “Wait, what?”
“Senior staff only.”
“No. That’s not how this works. I was literally just…” I gesture toward the set, the cameras, myself. “The problem.”
“Which is why the incident needs to be assessed without further interference.”
“Yeah. With me in the room.”
“No.”
The word lands cleanly. No hesitation. No explanation.
Just no.
I step forward, almost laughing when I say, “Excuse me?”
Kaia catches my arm, light but firm. “Jules.”
“No, I’m sorry.” I keep my eyes on Camille. “You don’t get to decide that without even asking me what happened.”
“We already have your account.”
“You have thirty seconds of it.”
“That is enough for an initial assessment. We also have footage, witness statements, system diagnostics, and Mina’s preliminary observation.”
“None of which are me.”
“This is not a discussion,” Camille says, as if I’m a child.
Which is ridiculous, because she is literally five or six years older than me, tops.
“This is about me!” I snap.
“This is about containment.”
That word hits harder than it should.
A short and sharp laugh escapes me. “Right. Because that’s reassuring.”
I look at Blaire. “Blaire.”
Her jaw tightens. For one hopeful second, I think she’s going to tell Camille where she can file her closed meeting.
Instead, she steps closer to me. “The first meeting stays Council and senior staff.”
The betrayal must show on my face, because her expression softens ever so slightly.
“But you will be debriefed properly,” she continues. “By me. And no action concerning you will be authorized until then. I mean that.”
Camille turns toward Blaire. “The Council may require—“
Blaire cuts her off. “As I said.”
A beat passes.
Camille doesn’t argue, but she turns back to the monitors and starts discussing access restrictions and footage recovery, ending the conversation before it ever truly becomes one.
Heat rises beneath my skin and something tight, restless, and furious lodges in my chest. Kaia’s hand remains on my arm. Remy watches Camille like she’s filing this away for later, and Mina stands close enough that our shoulders nearly touch.
And Camille isn’t even looking at me anymore. Like I’m not part of this. Like I don’t need to be.
Welcome to the dollhouse, where they wind you up, put you onstage, and discuss the malfunction without inviting the doll.
And Camille? She might be gorgeous in a severe, emotionally unavailable way, but she’s also a massive corporate problem.
Two can play at that game.
I can be a problem too. A charming one. A persistent one. The kind she can’t stop watching no matter how hard she tries. I’ll flirt until she likes me, get under all that polished control, and then make her regret ever deciding I didn’t belong in the room.