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Just one room, one image, and the precise sound trust made when it got too close to the edge and held.

Chapter thirty

Samantha

Sandra was waiting in the communications room when I got back.

Not pacing. Sandra did not pace. She stood beside my desk with one hand on the back of the chair and the other wrapped around a paper coffee cup she had almost certainly forgotten to drink. The monitors were still glowing blue. Frame 187 was gone from the main screen.

My laptop felt heavier in my hand anyway.

She looked at my face once and said, “How bad?”

I set the laptop on the desk. “Contained.”

Sandra nodded slowly, like she was translating that from emotional language into operational language and filing it under still salvageable.

“That’s not the same as good,” she said.

“No.”

She let that sit.

Then she set the coffee down.

“Okay,” she said. “Then we fix the part we can fix.”

She rounded the desk and tapped the keyboard awake.

“Show me where it lives.”

I opened the Hold folder.

Frame 187 stared back at both of us in the dim room. Evan on the bench. Tired and unguarded and exactly as dangerous as he had been twenty minutes ago.

Sandra exhaled once through her nose.

“God.”

“Yeah.”

“I hate that it’s good.”

“I know.”

“No,” she said, eyes still on the screen. “I really hate that it’s good.”

She straightened. “All right. Walk me through where it traveled.”

So I did.

The private Hold folder. The mirrored drive. The intern pulling alternates for the sponsor deck. The mockup getting assembled. Walsh seeing it before the review queue got cleaned.

Saying it out loud made it sound exactly as stupid as it was.

Sandra listened without interrupting. When I finished, she nodded once.

“Okay,” she said again. “That’s good.”