The word seemed to carry weight all on its own.
Rhett frowned. "I didn't sign up for - "
"No one does," Morrow interrupted. "Lucidity is not an opt-in state. It is a cognitive condition."
Tessa didn't look at Rhett. She was watching Morrow now, eyes narrowed, attention sharp.
"Lucids," Morrow continued, "exert disproportionate influence over Dream topology. Intent bleeds. Thought accelerates outcome. Prediction models degrade."
Niko scoffed. "So… what. He's dangerous?"
Morrow's expression didn't change. "So the environment becomes unreliable."
That earned a reaction.
"I don't particularly enjoy unreliable sessions, you see." Morrow added. "They ruin standard Royales. They distort payouts. They create edge cases I am required to… clean up."
A pause.
"That said," he went on, "your performance stands. Victories are honored. Winnings will be distributed."
A subtle flicker of data passed through their interfaces. Numbers resolved, larger than Rhett expected. Enough to make Niko swear under his breath.
"Future placements," Morrow said, "will be adjusted."
"Punishment?" Niko asked.
"Accommodation," Morrow replied. "Lucids are not barred from participation. But they are… problematic in mixed environments."
Rhett opened his mouth, then closed it again. There was something about the way Morrow spoke the word Lucids - not reverent or fearful, but more like administrative.
"Get some rest," Morrow said. "Your session is concluded."
They didn't talk much on the walk back.
The Dive clung to them in quieter ways now - the adrenaline had expired, but the residue of having been somewhere the system hadn't meant to let them stay, persisted. Rhett kept replaying fragments he couldn't quite line up. Moments that felt simultaneous instead of sequential. The sense that something had been watching him from the inside.
Niko finally broke the silence once they were inside his apartment.
"Forty-two minutes," he said again, like the number might change if he said it often enough. "I felt like we weren't even there that long."
"Oh we were," Tessa said. She'd already dropped onto the counter, boots hooked around the edge, eyes unfocused. "Maybe just not the same way you were."
Rhett leaned against the wall, arms folded. "So Morrow says I'm a Lucid."
Tessa nodded. "Yeah. Which I didn't anticipate but yeah, a surprising development."
"That's it?" Niko said. "No follow-up? No pamphlet?"
She glanced at him. "You don't get pamphlets for things that aren't supposed to happen."
Rhett felt that settle uncomfortably in his chest.
"Lucids don't break the rules," Tessa continued. "They just stress them. The Dream reacts faster to you. Thought collapses into outcome. That's why it felt… slippery."
"And that's bad," Niko said.
"It's inconvenient," she corrected. "For Hosts. For matchmaking. For prediction."
Rhett looked down at his hands. "I didn't mean to do any of it."
"I know," she said. "It's ok. We'll figure it out. Its not a bad thing, it just means we need to make some adjustments."
Silence stretched.
Eventually, Niko cleared his throat. "Okay. So. You're dangerous in the Dream. Congratulations. That doesn't solve the part where you're about to start living someone else's life."
Tessa's attention snapped back into focus.
"Thorne," she said. "Yeah. That part doesn't pause, unfortunately."
She flicked her wrist, pulling up the schedule she'd already accessed once before. This time, Rhett looked at it more carefully.
It wasn't just meetings. It was density. Blocks of obligation stacked with ruthless efficiency. Little white spaces that felt less like rest and more like margin for error.
"There," Tessa said. "Tomorrow morning there's a mandatory holocall."
Rhett swallowed. "Oh wow, that soon?"
"Corporate time doesn't care about Dive recovery," Niko said. "Or existential breakthroughs."
Tessa tilted her head, studying Rhett now instead of the schedule. "You're not ready."
"I can fake it," he said.
She shook her head. "No. You can perform. That's different."
Niko frowned. "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking," she said slowly, "that if he's going to sit in a room with people who can smell weakness like blood, he can't be running on his old baseline."
Rhett straightened. "You mean the face filter?"
"No," she said. "That's just optics."
She pushed off the counter and began pacing, already assembling the idea as she spoke.
"I mean upgrading you, specifically. Nervous system first. Signal clarity. Reaction time. If your body's lagging, your face will betray it no matter what I overlay. If we boost your efficiency floor, everything else stabilizes."
Niko blinked. "You can do that?"
"I can get the parts," she replied. "And I can install them. I can call in favors."
Rhett hesitated. "So then, this isn't cosmetic."
"No," she said. "It's commitment."
He met her eyes. "Do it."
That earned a pause. Tessa studied him for a long moment, then nodded once. "Okay."
The next few hours unfolded in quiet precision. Deliveries came in staggered intervals - compact hardware, clean packaging, no branding. Tessa worked with practiced confidence, hands steady, movements economical. This wasn't improvisation., rather muscle memory. Rhett sat where she told him to sit. Breathed when she told him to breathe.
The first augment lit his nervous system like a rethreaded circuit - signals snapping into sharper alignment, latency evaporating. The second smoothed his metabolic curve, energy no longer spiking and crashing but settling into a steady, controlled output. By the third, the ambient hum of his own body felt… quieter. More organized.
"You're not stronger yet," Tessa said, watching the readouts. "Just cleaner."
Rhett exhaled. "I feel… calm. Like I'm literally better put together…"
"That's what efficiency feels like," she replied. "Panic wastes energy."
Niko hovered for a while, then eventually shook his head. "I'm calling it," he said. "If I stay up watching this, I'm not sleeping at all."
He disappeared into the other room, door sliding shut behind him.
Tessa finished the last calibration and leaned back, eyes flicking between Rhett and the diagnostics.
"You'll heal faster," she said. "React cleaner. Think clearer. It won't make you smarter. Just less… noisy."
"That might be enough," Rhett said.
She powered the system down before meeting his gaze. "Sleep," she said. "Let your body learn what it can do now."
Sleep came deeper than he expected. Unbroken. When he woke, the city light had shifted, morning creeping through the window in pale bands. Tessa was already up, leaning against the counter with a cup in her hand.
"Filter's ready," she said. "Just for the call."
Rhett nodded and stood, feeling the difference immediately. His movements were smoother. His breath steady. The holocall timer ticked down.
Niko emerged, bleary-eyed but alert. "You ready?"
Rhett looked at the reflection as the filter engaged - Thorne's face settling over his own like a borrowed certainty.
"No," he said honestly. Then the call connected.
Rhett saw his own interface first. The man looking back at him carried himself with the kind of ease that came from never needing to explain why he was in the room. His face held no apology, no anticipation. Just presence. Five more feeds snapped into place, each framed deliberately. No one was hiding behind avatars or static backdrops. If Thorne was expected to show his face, so were they.
Calder Irix, in the upper-left frame, broke first. He sat forward, forearms resting on a polished surface just out of view, posture suggesting momentum rather than patience. His suit was understated in a way that advertised cost.
"Let's not waste time," Calder said. "We're here because this decision keeps getting delayed."
Rhett met his eyes and gave a small nod, inviting him to continue without committing to anything.
To Calder's right, Maribel Qiao, a woman with tightly bound hair and a neutral backdrop, adjusted her glasses. Her expression was unreadable, her voice precise.
"The review concerns Sector E-9," Maribel said. "Advertising withdrawal has crossed the threshold we outlined last quarter. Crime indicators are trending beyond tolerance. Our security partners are asking whether continued coverage is still viable."
A third participant, Jonah Halvorsen, leaned back in his chair, hands loosely folded, watching Rhett instead of the conversation. He looked younger than the others, relaxed in a way that felt studied.
"And they're asking that," Jonah added, "because the longer we wait, the mess gets harder to contain."
Rhett said nothing yet. He let the cadence establish itself, the rhythm of practiced urgency. He watched their faces while they spoke - who looked at whom, who avoided eye contact, who seemed eager to move things forward.
Then the fourth voice entered.
"Containment is a generous word."
The speaker, Elara Vestin, hadn't moved since the call began. Dark suit, severe lines, eyes sharp enough to cut glass. Her gaze didn't drift. It fixed on Rhett with open appraisal.
"E-9 isn't destabilizing," Elara continued. "It's being stripped. Advertising didn't pull out organically. It was encouraged. Security pressure didn't spike by accident. Someone wanted the sector to look like this."
The room tightened.
Calder smiled, thin and humorless. "Careful," he said. "That's a serious allegation."
"So is pretending this is a surprise," Elara replied. "We've all seen the internal traffic. Asset transfers. Quiet data leaks. The same patterns we see every time someone wants to buy cheap after a collapse."
Rhett felt the temperature change. This wasn't a disagreement. This was a setup. He leaned forward slightly, just enough to signal engagement.
"How long," he asked, "has this version of the data been circulating?"
Elara's eyes flicked to him, assessing. "Longer than this meeting."
Jonah laughed softly. "You're implying bad faith."
"I'm implying incentive," Elara said. "There's a difference."
Rhett turned his attention back to Calder. "Well, you're pushing for reallocation by end of the cycle."
"Yes," Calder said, without hesitation.
"And you're saying that if that happens," Rhett continued, "E-9 loses coverage, ad markets finish their withdrawal, and the sector collapses into what, private control within the quarter?"
Calder shrugged. "That's one possible interpretation."
"It's the most profitable one," Elara said flatly.
Silence followed. Not the polite kind. The kind that forced people to choose whether to escalate or retreat. Rhett stayed quiet, he was mapping now. Tracking who wanted speed, who wanted cover, who wanted blood.
Maribel spoke again, carefully. "We're not here to litigate intent. We're here to determine whether continued delay exposes us to liability."
"Liability to whom?" Rhett asked.
She hesitated. Not long but, long enough.
"To shareholders. To partners. To -"
"To the people who live there," Rhett said, evenly. "Or are they not on the list anymore?"
Jonah leaned forward at last. "Oh please. This isn't a moral forum."
"No," Rhett said. "It's a risk assessment. Those usually work better when all the risks are acknowledged."
Elara smiled for the first time. It wasn't friendly.
"Then let's acknowledge one more," she said. "If this stalls again, someone will make sure the delay is blamed on you."
The words were calm. Precise. Not a threat, rather a promise.
Rhett felt the pressure settle fully now. This wasn't about E-9. It never had been. It was about whether Thorne still controlled the pace - or whether someone else could force his hand. He looked at each of them in turn, committing their faces to memory.
"Are we voting today?" he asked.
Maribel shook her head. "No. This isn't a vote kind of meeting."
"Then we're not here to decide anything," Rhett said. "We're here to see who blinks first."
No one contradicted him - and for the first time since the call began, it was clear that at least one person in the room wanted him to blink badly enough to bleed. Calder shifted in his seat, then steadied himself, as if reminding his body what authority was supposed to feel like.
"This is spiraling," he said. "We're here to decide whether maintaining coverage in E-9 is still viable. Not to trade insinuations."
Rhett nodded, slow and thoughtful. He wasn't looking at Calder anymore. He was looking at the others, watching who reacted to the word viable.
"That's been said twice now," Rhett said. "Viable."
Calder frowned. "Because that's the question."
"Is it?" Rhett asked. "Or is the question whether it's profitable."
Jonah let out a short breath through his nose. "Profitability isn't a dirty word."
"No," Rhett said. "But it's also not the same thing."
Calder leaned forward. "Crime in E-9 is already escalating. We're seeing coordinated movement. That's not speculation, it's active destabilization."
Rhett looked at him again. "Earlier, you said the spike followed the ad pullback."
"Yes."
"And just now," Rhett continued, "you said the movement is already coordinated."
Calder hesitated. Just a fraction.
"So?" he said.
Rhett didn't press immediately. He let the moment sit, let the room feel the shape of it.
"Coordination doesn't happen overnight," Rhett said. "Especially not at that scale. Which means either this has been building longer than you implied… or someone knew it was coming."
Maribel's eyes flicked toward Calder. Quick. Unintentional.
Calder's voice sharpened. "You're reaching."
"Maybe," Rhett said. "Help me out, then. When did you first see signs of coordination?"
Calder opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Jonah straightened in his chair, interest sharpening into focus. "That's a fair question."
Calder exhaled. "Within the last cycle."
"That's vague," Rhett said. "You've been very specific up until now."
Elara tilted her head slightly, watching Calder with open curiosity now.
"If it helps," she said lightly, "I'd also like to know. Coordination implies planning. Planning implies lead time."
Calder's jaw tightened.
"We're not doing this," he said. "The data -"
"- the data you summarized," Rhett said, interrupting gently. "We haven't seen it. We've only heard your version."
That landed harder than anything he'd said so far.
Calder's smile returned, brittle. "You're questioning my credibility."
"I'm questioning the sequence," Rhett replied. "Those are different things."
Jonah leaned forward. "Let's say it has been building longer," he said. "What difference does that make?"
Rhett turned to him. "It means this isn't an emergency. It's an opportunity."
No one spoke for a beat.
Rhett continued, carefully now. "If the situation were truly sudden, the response would be containment. Short-term reinforcement. Visibility. Stabilization."
He looked back at Calder.
"But what you're proposing skips all of that and goes straight to withdrawal."
Maribel cleared her throat. "Withdrawal reduces exposure."
"It also creates vacancies," Rhett said. "Vacancies get filled."
Elara smiled again, wider this time. "By competitors."
"By anyone," Rhett corrected. "Including groups that don't care about brand damage."
Calder snapped, "You're romanticizing this."
Rhett shook his head. "I'm stripping it down."
He paused, then added, almost conversationally, "You also said earlier that responsibility would 'diffuse' if we didn't act today."
Calder stiffened.
"That's not diffusion," Rhett said. "That's pre-assignment."
The room went very still.
Maribel spoke carefully. "Explain."
Rhett didn't rush. "If responsibility diffuses naturally, no one needs to say it out loud. The fact that you did suggests someone's already decided where the blame should land."
He let his eyes move from face to face.
"And that means this isn't about E-9 at all," he said. "It's about who gets left holding it."
Jonah Halvorsen laughed once, sharp. "You're accusing him of setting you up."
"I'm saying," Rhett replied, "that someone wants this decision made today so it can't be revisited tomorrow."
Elara folded her hands. "And if it isn't made?"
Rhett met her gaze. "Then whoever's been pushing for speed has to explain why."
Calder's composure cracked. Not loudly. Not fully. But enough.
"This is absurd," he said. "We're talking about lives."
"Yes," Rhett said. "We are."
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't soften it either.
"And if we rush this," he continued, "more of them will be lost. Not because we waited too long - but because someone wanted to move first."
No one interrupted him. The room had shifted. The negotiation line was clear now, this wasn't about whether E-9 could be saved. It was about whether Calder could force Thorne to take the fall.
Calder leaned forward, palms flattening against the surface in front of him.
"Enough," he said. The polish was gone now. Not replaced by anger, but by certainty. "We can circle this all morning if you want, but people are already paying for the delay."
Rhett didn't interrupt. He watched Calder's eyes, the way they held the room, the way they didn't look to anyone else for reinforcement.
"Food convoys stopped running three days ago," Calder continued. "Security checkpoints are being hit nightly. Clinics are rationing power. We're past the point where this is theoretical."
Maribel Qiao shifted. Just slightly. Not disagreement. Discomfort. Calder noticed it and pressed harder.
"You want to talk about responsibility?" he said, eyes locked on Rhett. "Fine. Every hour we keep pretending this sector can be stabilized, more people starve. More people die. And every one of those deaths sits on the hands of whoever refuses to make the call."
Rhett felt the pressure settle, heavy and deliberate. This wasn't argument anymore. This was a conscience trap.
"You're framing withdrawal as mercy," Rhett said quietly.
"I'm framing it as reality," Calder snapped. "You don't fix a collapsing structure by standing under it."
Jonah glanced between them, expression unreadable now. He wasn't enjoying this anymore. He was calculating.
"And if we pull out," Rhett asked, "what happens to the people still inside?"
Calder didn't hesitate. "Private interests move in. Faster than we can. It won't be clean, but it will be decisive."
Elara smiled faintly. "Decisive for whom?"
"For the market," Calder said. "For stability."
"That's not the same thing," she replied.
Calder rounded on her. "You want to talk ideals, take it somewhere else. I'm talking about numbers."
Rhett leaned forward slightly, just enough to be seen.
"You're asking me to make this decision," he said.
"Yes," Calder replied. Immediate. Clear.
"And you're comfortable with that?" Rhett asked. "With this landing on me."
Calder held his gaze. "You're in this position because you understand the stakes."
That answer mattered. Rhett filed it away.
"You keep saying we," Rhett said. "But you're speaking alone."
Calder's eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I'm trying to understand whether this urgency is shared," Rhett said, "or whether it's coming from you."
Maribel inhaled, slow. Jonah looked away. Elara didn't move at all.
Calder laughed, sharp and humorless. "You think there's some shadow hand pushing me?"
"I think," Rhett said carefully, "that if this were unanimous, you wouldn't need to push so hard."
Calder slammed his palm down once. Final.
"Drop the sector," he said. "Today. Make it clean. Make it decisive. Stop pretending delay is anything but cowardice."
The word hung there, naked. Rhett didn't respond immediately. He let the room absorb what Calder had just done.
An order.
Not a suggestion. Not a vote.
He looked to the others now. Not to ask for permission, but to read them.
Maribel's mouth was tight, eyes flicking through implications she didn't like. She hadn't endorsed Calder, but she hadn't stopped him either.
Jonah was still, expression guarded. Waiting to see who broke.
Elara met Rhett's gaze and gave the smallest possible nod.
Recognition.
Rhett turned back to Calder. "You're very sure this ends the suffering," he said.
"It ends our involvement," Calder replied. "That's all we can control."
Rhett nodded slowly. That was the tell. Not we'll help. Not we'll mitigate. Not we'll stay involved.
Just we'll be gone.
"And if this blows back," Rhett said, "if the fallout isn't contained, if it turns into something bigger -"
"- then it won't be our problem," Calder said. "Because we acted when we had the chance."
Rhett leaned back in his chair. Now he understood.
Calder wasn't acting alone - but he was the spear tip. The others weren't pushing him forward. They were letting him run.
And if it worked, they'd benefit.
If it failed -
Rhett exhaled quietly.
He would carry it.
Rhett didn't answer Calder right away. He felt the weight of the room pressing inward, the expectation that this was the moment-drop the sector, end the debate, move on. He could feel how close Calder was to forcing it, how eager at least one other person was for him to stumble.
Instead, Rhett looked down briefly, as if considering something mundane.
"Indulge me," he said at last.
Calder frowned. "With what?"
"Bring up the sector map."
The request cut sideways through the tension.
Maribel hesitated. "We don't need a visual-"
"I do," Rhett said. Firmly enough that it didn't sound like a suggestion.
Calder watched him for a long moment, then gave a short nod. "Fine."
A gesture off-screen. A pause.
The holocall interface shifted.
The grid collapsed inward, reconfiguring to make space as a three-dimensional schematic bloomed between them. Sector E-9 unfolded in layered detail: transit arteries, power grids, ad corridors, security zones rendered in clean corporate lines.
It looked orderly. Manageable.
Rhett leaned forward.
"Zoom," he said.
The image tightened.
Blocks resolved into neighborhoods. Neighborhoods into streets. Streets into structures.
Calder's voice came again, already impatient. "You're stalling."
"Maybe," Rhett said. "Or maybe I want to know what we're actually talking about."
The map sharpened. And there it was.
The Canary sat almost dead center in the sector, its footprint modest compared to the surrounding commercial towers, but unmistakable once you knew what to look for. A social node. A pressure valve. The kind of place that didn't show up in revenue charts but kept people alive anyway.
Rhett felt his chest tighten.
A few blocks east: a narrow residential cluster, old construction, low-margin housing that had somehow survived three redevelopment passes. One structure faintly unremarkable unless you knew the address.
His brother's place. Rhett didn't react outwardly. He couldn't freeze or flinch. But something inside him went very still.
"You see," Calder said, mistaking silence for concession, "the core infrastructure is already compromised. Pulling support now prevents further bleed."
Rhett's eyes tracked the map slowly, deliberately. He wasn't looking at the crime heat overlays Calder wanted him to see. He was looking at proximity. Distance. Collateral paths.
"And this," Rhett said, gesturing subtly, "what happens to it?"
Calder glanced at the map. "That's a tertiary commercial node."
Elara's eyes flicked sideways. Just once.
"Tertiary nodes collapse first," Calder continued. "No security priority. No ad retention."
"And this one?" Rhett asked, shifting the focus slightly.
Calder sighed. "Residential. Low yield."
Rhett nodded. He let the words sit there, exactly as spoken.
"You're asking me to pull out of a sector," he said, "that contains a major civilian congregation point, legacy housing, and multiple informal support hubs."
Calder's patience snapped. "You're making it personal."
"No," Rhett replied. "I'm making it precise."
Maribel spoke carefully now. "Those locations aren't designated assets."
"That's my point," Rhett said.
Jonah leaned forward, eyes fixed on the map. "If you don't drop the sector," he said, "the losses spread outward."
Rhett looked up at him. "And if I do?"
The man hesitated. Not long. Long enough.
Calder jumped in. "Then it stops. Clean cut. Faster stabilization."
"Stabilization for whom?" Rhett asked.
"For the system," Calder said. "For everyone else."
Rhett stared at the Canary on the map. At the streets he knew. The places that had names, not codes.
"Everyone else," he repeated.
Elara spoke again, voice level. "You wanted clarity. This is it."
Rhett exhaled slowly.
He understood now what Calder had meant by diffusion. By responsibility ending.
This wasn't just a decision. It was a disappearance.
He looked back up at the room.
"You're asking me," he said, "to sign off on turning this into someone else's war."
No one denied it.
The silence that followed wasn't strategic this time. It was waiting. Rhett kept his eyes on the map. He didn't look at the people in the room yet. He didn't look at Calder. He didn't look at the cutthroat woman who had been smiling like she'd already counted the bodies.
Instead, he traced the sector boundaries with his gaze, letting the shape of it settle into him.
"Just to be clear," Rhett said, voice even, almost procedural. "When we pull funding from this sector, that creates a financial vacancy."
Calder nodded. "Correct."
"No infrastructure support," Rhett continued. "No security contracts. No ad backing. Nothing unless a new private interest steps in."
"That's how it works," Calder said, impatience creeping back in. "Any new vendor would have to acquire the sector through the records administration portal."
"And that acquisition," Rhett said, "would require full purchase."
Calder exhaled. "To the tune of several million Gold Dyns, yes. Minimum."
Rhett nodded once, and glanced sideways.
Just a flicker of movement - his eyes finding Tessa at the edge of the frame. The look lasted less than a second. Anyone else would have missed it. She didn't. Her posture shifted. Barely. Enough. Rhett turned back to the room.
"Then I accept," he said.
Calder blinked. "You -"
"We'll pull funding," Rhett said, before Calder could finish. "Effective immediately."
Maribel stiffened. Jonah sat back, expression sharpening into something like disbelief.
Calder didn't hide his satisfaction.
"Good," he said, already moving. "I'll initiate the request."
A new interface slid into Rhett's field of view. Clean. Official. The kind of window that ended arguments.
SECTOR E-9 — FUNDING WITHDRAWALCONFIRMATION REQUIRED
Rhett didn't hesitate. He accepted. The map responded instantly.
Sector E-9 dimmed, its overlays collapsing into a muted gray. Support lines vanished. Security nodes blinked out one by one.
A held breath passed through the room.
And then -
Green.
The sector lit back up.
Infrastructure lines reappeared. Security coverage snapped into place. Ad corridors re-established themselves, brighter than before. The room erupted in overlapping voices.
"What -"
"That's not -"
"Did it revert?"
Calder frowned, leaning closer to his display. "Hold on. That's a system glitch. It takes time for -"
"No," Rhett said.
The word cut cleanly through the noise.
Calder looked up. "What?"
Rhett's gaze stayed on the map. On the Canary. On the streets that still had names.
"No glitch," he said. "The lapse was real."
Elara's smile vanished.
Calder stared at his interface, scrolling rapidly now. "That's impossible. The sector record -"
"- updated," Rhett finished. "About ten seconds ago. I just bought the sector."
Calder's face drained of color.
Maribel's eyes widened. "You can't just -"
"I can," Rhett said.
Silence.
Stunned.
Calder's mouth opened. Closed. "That's… that's not how this works."
Rhett tilted his head slightly. "You explained exactly how it works."
Jonah laughed once, breathless. "Holy -"
"You said the vacancy would be filled by whoever moved first," Rhett continued. "I moved."
Elara leaned back slowly, reassessing him entirely now.
"Under whose authority?" Calder demanded.
Rhett met his eyes.
"Mine."
The word didn't echo. It didn't need to.
"You wanted the sector dropped," Rhett said. "It is. You wanted private control. You have it."
He gestured subtly to the map.
"Just not yours."
No one spoke.
Calder sat frozen, realization dawning in stages—what this meant, what it cost, how badly he'd misread the man across from him.
Rhett felt the weight settle fully now. He hadn't avoided the decision. He'd absorbed it.
The silence stretched longer this time.
No one rushed to fill it. There was nothing left to posture with. Calder was the first to recover enough to speak, though "recover" was generous. His eyes moved between the restored overlays on the map, then back to Rhett, as if expecting the image to contradict itself.
"You don't have unilateral authority to -" Calder began.
"I do," Rhett said, evenly. "You confirmed the mechanism. You confirmed the cost. You confirmed the vacancy."
Maribel leaned closer to her display, fingers moving just out of view. She wasn't arguing. She was verifying.
Her expression tightened.
"It's registered," she said quietly. "Clean acquisition. No shell. No proxy."
Jonah let out a low breath, somewhere between disbelief and admiration. "You didn't even insulate it."
Rhett shook his head. "There was no reason to."
Elara studied him openly now, no longer bothering to hide it. Whatever calculation she'd been running before had been discarded. This was a new problem.
"You realize what you've just done," she said.
"Yes," Rhett replied. And he meant it.
Calder finally found his footing again - not composure, but anger sharpened into something colder.
"You've turned a systemic decision into a personal liability," he said. "Every failure in that sector is now yours."
Rhett met his gaze. "It already was."
That landed harder than Calder expected. It showed.
"This won't end here," Calder said.
"No," Rhett agreed. "It won't."
Maribel straightened, voice clipped now. "We'll need revised disclosures. Public-facing statements. You've altered the risk profile."
"Draft them," Rhett said. "I'll review."
Jonah man shook his head slowly, a grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. "You just made yourself very interesting."
Rhett didn't respond to that.
Elara spoke last. "You've protected the sector," she said. "For now. But you've also painted a target on it. On yourself."
Rhett inclined his head, acknowledging the truth without conceding anything.
"I'm aware."
Another pause.
There was nothing left to extract. No leverage remaining to pull. Calder's play had failed, not because it was exposed, but because it had been outpaced.
"We'll reconvene," the Maribel said. "When the implications are clearer."
Rhett nodded. "Looking forward to it."
One by one, the windows winked out.
Calder lingered half a second longer than the others, eyes hard.
"You think this makes you untouchable," he said.
"No," Rhett replied. "But it does make me visible."
Calder disconnected.
The holocall collapsed, the apartment rushing back in around them -too small now, too quiet.
Rhett stayed where he was, staring at the empty space where the map had been.
Niko was the first to move.
"What the fuck," he said softly.
Tessa hadn't spoken yet. She stepped fully into view now, eyes on Rhett, searching his face—not for doubt, but for confirmation that he understood what he'd just done.
"I don't understand how you did that so fast," he said. "I didn't even see you move."
Rhett leaned back in the chair, eyes still on the blank space where the map had been.
"Because I didn't," he said.
Niko frowned. "Then how -"
"All it took was a glance," Rhett continued. "I looked at Tessa. That was it."
Tessa didn't react immediately. She watched Niko process that, watched his eyebrows knit together.
"A glance," Niko repeated. "You're telling me you communicated all of that with a look?"
Rhett shook his head. "Not really."
He finally turned away from the empty space and looked at them both.
"The glance wasn't me telling her what to do," he said. "It was me trusting that she'd already figured it out."
Niko stared at him. "That's… not better."
Rhett exhaled quietly. "Calder explained the mechanism out loud. He explained the vacancy, the cost, the portal. Tessa already has access to Thorne's accounts. She didn't need instructions. She just needed to realize that I was willing to go there."
He paused, then added, "The look was just me removing doubt."
Tessa huffed softly at that.
"That's a generous way to put it," she said.
They both looked at her.
"At first, I thought I was projecting," she admitted. "You glanced at me and my first thought was, no way. That would've been insane. Burning that much capital in the middle of a hostile call, no insulation, no deniability?"
She shook her head slightly, remembering it.
"I almost dismissed it. Told myself you were just checking whether I was still with you."
Rhett's mouth twitched. "I was."
"Yeah," she said. "That's what made it worse."
She pushed off the counter and paced once, hands flexing as she spoke.
"Because the more I replayed it, the more it clicked. You weren't cornered anymore. You were… measuring. And Calder had just handed you the rules like they were immutable."
She stopped and looked at Rhett now, really looked at him.
"And the only way out that didn't leave blood on the floor was to step forward instead of back."
Niko swallowed. "So you just… went for it."
"I hesitated," Tessa said. "About half a second. Long enough to think, this can't be what he means."
She smiled faintly.
"And then I realized that if it wasn't, you wouldn't have looked at me that way."
Rhett nodded once. "By the time Calder sent the withdrawal request, she was already moving."
"Everything was prepped," Tessa said. "The second the sector went dark, I pushed the transfer. Clean. No tricks. No delay."
Niko let out a breath he'd apparently been holding. "You two are terrifying."
Tessa glanced at him. "Only when it matters."
Silence settled again, but this time it was different. Quieter. Heavier. Like the moment after something irreversible finally locks into place.
Rhett closed his eyes for a second.
"I didn't do it to win," he said. "I did it because I wasn't willing to pretend the decision didn't belong to me. I wasn't being Thorne at that point. I was being myself."
He opened his eyes and looked at them.
"They were ready to turn that place into an abstraction. A number they could step over. I couldn't."
Tessa nodded slowly. Niko didn't argue.
Outside, the city continued as it always had - unaware that a line had just been redrawn, that ownership had changed hands, that a system had been forced to acknowledge a person instead of a process.
Rhett stood.
"Whatever happens next," he said, "it's on me."
Tessa's expression softened into recognition.
"Yeah," she said. "It is."
And for the first time since he'd stepped into another man's life, Rhett didn't feel like he was borrowing time.
He felt like he'd claimed it.