24. Camille
Camille
The door opens harder than necessary.
I look up from my laptop as Kaia shoulders it the rest of the way open, Remy directly beside her and Mina is hovering close as though she can hold the situation together through proximity alone.
Jules is between them.
More accurately, they are carrying her.
She is laughing.
That is the first thing I register. Not her lack of coordination or the way her weight hangs unevenly between them. The laughter is loose, unfiltered, and entirely wrong for her current condition.
My spine straightens. “What happened?”
Kaia does not answer immediately. She is focused on getting Jules across the room without allowing her to trip over her own feet. Remy adjusts her grip with practiced efficiency. Mina glances at me, then quickly looks away.
That is not a good sign.
Jules’s head lolls slightly, then lifts when she sees me. Her entire face brightens with immediate, unrestrained delight.
“Wifey,” she says, as though I am the best thing she has seen all day.
Something tightens in my chest. I do not categorize it.
“Absolutely not.” I stand. “What happened?”
“She’s fine,” Kaia says evenly. “Just drank more than she should have.”
“More than she should have,” I repeat. “How much more? ‘More than she should have’ is not a metric.”
Remy shoots me a look. “It’s a normal one.”
“When was her last drink?” I ask.
“Two hours ago,” Kaia says.
“Did she fall?”
“No.”
“Vomiting, visual disturbance, increased confusion?”
“None.”
I step closer as they guide Jules toward the bed. “She is already operating under unstable conditions. Introducing additional variables—“
“Camille,” Kaia interrupts, calm but firm. “She’s okay.”
Jules, apparently uninterested in the conversation about her own condition, reaches for me as they lower her onto the mattress.
“You’re mad,” she informs me, visibly fascinated. “You do this thing…” She gestures vaguely at my face, missing it by several inches. “Where your eyebrows get all, like, murdery.”
“I am not—“ I stop. Reset. “You are intoxicated.”
“Observant,” she says, pleased with herself.
Remy removes her shoes with efficient, unceremonious movements while Mina pulls the blanket over her, gentler and slower.
I watch all of it.
Every motion. Every delay. Every choice that led to this outcome.
“Who authorized this?” I ask.
Remy snorts. “Authorized?”
“Yes,” I say, sharply. “Who determined that allowing her to reach this state was acceptable?”
“No one ‘allowed’ anything,” Remy says. “She made a choice.”
“She made that choice in an environment that should have been controlled,” I counter. “Which means the system failed.”
Kaia exhales quietly. “Not everything is a system failure.”
“That is incorrect.”
Jules makes a disgruntled sound and rolls onto her side. “Stop arguing,” she mumbles. “You’re both wrong.”
Neither of us responds to that.
Mina smooths Jules’s hair away from her face. “She just needed a break. It’s been a lot.”
I look at her. Really look.
The worry remains, along with the fatigue and the remnants of fear that have not fully dissipated.
This was not casual.
It was relief.
Poorly managed relief, but relief nonetheless.
Jules shifts again, sliding her hand across the bed until her fingers catch on my sleeve. Her grip is loose but persistent.
“Stay,” she says, her eyes barely open. “You’re… good for the vibes.”
I go still.
Then I carefully disengage her hand and place it against the blanket. “You need rest.”
“Bossy, Cami,“ she murmurs, but there is no bite in it. No performance. Only softness.
Cami.
No one calls me that.
I do not know what to do with it, particularly when the bond delivers the emotion behind it without filter: affection, warm and immediate, untouched by caution or embarrassment.
It produces two equally unacceptable impulses.
The first is anger. Sharp, protective, and directed at every person who allowed her to drink this much while she is injured, unstable, and still recovering.
The second is to lie down beside her and remain there. Not to speak or touch her. Only to watch her breathe until I am certain nothing else can reach her.
Jules falls quiet, not yet asleep but close.
Kaia steps back once Jules is settled. Remy straightens and crosses her arms loosely as she watches me. Mina lingers beside the bed, adjusting the blanket again despite there being no functional reason to do so.
The silence is uncomfortable.
Mina breaks it first.
“I’m sorry.”
I turn towards her. “For what?”
“The hospital. I…” She glances at Remy before looking back at me. “I thought you hurt her.”
There is no accusation in her voice. Only certainty followed by doubt.
“I did,” I say.
The answer lands heavily. Remy’s expression shifts. Mina blinks.
“That’s not…” Mina stops. “I didn’t mean—“
“I understand what you meant. Your conclusion was reasonable given the available data.”
“That doesn’t make it right.” Some of the tension leaves her shoulders. “I froze. I didn’t know what was happening, and she…” Her voice tightens. “She was hurt. I thought you were part of that.”
“I was,” I say more quietly.
Remy studies me. “You didn’t throw her into the stage equipment.”
“No. I approved the conditions that made that outcome possible.”
Silence follows.
Kaia’s attention sharpens. “That’s not how this works.”
“It is exactly how this works.”
Because I can see it now. Not the isolated incidents or anomalies I have spent months categorizing and suppressing, but the pattern beneath them. Emotional output increases, engagement spikes, and instability follows. Every successful campaign aligns with increased exposure.
This is not failure.
It is design.
Kaia’s gaze narrows. “What exactly are you saying?”
“That the attacks are not merely taking advantage of your performances,” I say. “The performances may be creating the conditions they require.”
Remy’s posture sharpens. “You think the engagement spikes are feeding them.”
“I think Eon knows the connection exists and continues pushing for higher output regardless.”
Mina looks between us, confusion giving way to alarm. “But that would mean they’re knowingly putting us at risk.”
“Yes.”
Mina shakes her head. “The Council would never—“
“The Council knows more than they are disclosing.”
That lands differently.
Remy becomes more alert. Kaia goes still. Mina frowns.
“What are you saying?” Kaia asks.
“I am saying the available data indicates repeated exposure events across multiple groups, delayed intervention, and incomplete reporting.” I pause. “This is not new.”
Mina’s brows draw together. “We would have been told.”
“Would you?”
She hesitates.
That is answer enough.
“There is another problem,” I say. “The contracts do not shut down simply because a performance is interrupted. Once a scheduled show begins, the resonance channel remains open until the allotted window ends or the Council closes it manually. Interrupting the performance does not automatically terminate the connection.”
Kaia frowns. “What contracts? What resonance channel?”
“The agreements you signed with Eon are not only legal documents. They were attached to a second implementation layer.” I turn the laptop towards them and expand the hidden Council permissions.
“That layer is magical. It contains permissions that did not appear in the documents you reviewed. When you perform, the contracts link your power to the audience’s emotional response.
That link creates a channel through which the generated energy can be accessed. ”
“Accessed by who?” Remy asks.
“That remains unclear.”
Her expression hardens. “And the channel stays open even if we stop performing?”
“Yes. Technical failures, attacks, even medical emergencies are treated as temporary interruptions rather than the end of a performance.”
Kaia looks towards Jules. “So when she collapsed…”
“The channel stayed open,” I say. “She was injured, unconscious, and still connected to whatever had been drawing energy from the crowd.”
Mina goes pale.
“The shadow,” she whispers.
I turn towards her. “What shadow?”
She looks at Kaia and Remy before answering. “At Harbor’s Edge, I Saw something behind the demon. Something larger. It was far away, but it felt like it was watching through it.”
“The mysterious demonic fan,” Remy says.
Mina glances at Jules. “That’s what she called it.”
My attention sharpens. “You saw it again?”
“Not exactly.” Mina folds her arms around herself. “It followed us back to the Tower. I Saw it there once, at the edge of everything. After that, it disappeared.”
“But you believe it is still present.”
“I can feel it sometimes,” she says quietly. “Far away. Like it’s standing just outside the range of Heartglass. It’s been there even while we’ve traveled. Vegas. Seattle. London… Now here.”
Across continents.
Across every performance window.
The scale of the pattern shifts in my mind, expanding beyond Eon’s internal systems and the individual attacks I have been tracking. This is not a contained operational failure. Whatever is reaching through the contracts has been following them around the world.
BENEFICIARY CLASS: PATR—
The truncated beneficiary code returns to me… PATR—
The classification could mean something else. Partner attribution. Patronage designation. Any number of internal labels designed to appear harmless in isolation.
But the possibility settles into the model with uncomfortable precision.
The Mouthpieces may not be independent attackers.
They may be access points to something far bigger.
Mina looks at me. “Could it be connected?”
“Possibly,” I say.
It is the only answer I can give with certainty.
It is also the moment I understand that this is larger than anything I can dismantle alone.
Remy exhales slowly. “That’s not great.”
“That is an understatement.”
“Can you shut them down?” Kaia asks. “The internal layer of the contracts?”
I glance at my laptop, where the contract architecture remains open beneath several layers of restricted permissions. “I may be able to find a way to override them.”
It is not yet a guarantee.