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Chapter 17 - The World Tries to Contain Her

Andrea Johnson stopped being a person the moment borders started tracking her name.

Interpol briefings. Quiet warnings. Diplomatic language hiding panic.

DO NOT ENGAGE.

DO NOT PROVOKE.

OBSERVE ONLY.

She moved anyway.

Trains. Back roads. Cheap hotels where the curtains never fully closed. Every country treated her the same: like weather you couldn't arrest.

Fans waited outside stations.

Enemies watched from alleys.

Andrea ignored them all.

She had one rule now.

No witnesses who mattered.

TOM — THE FALL

Tom Kaulitz lost everything slowly.

That was the cruelty of it.

First the tours. Then the sponsors. Then the silence — the kind that replaces applause.

People didn't accuse him directly.

They suggested.

"He must've known."

"You don't love a Cobra Kai survivor by accident."

"Maybe he helped hide her."

Bill defended him publicly once.

Never again.

Georg stopped answering calls.

Gustav left Berlin entirely.

Tom drank alone and replayed the same moment over and over:

Andrea standing in his doorway.

Calm.

Merciful.

That mercy ruined him.

SAM — THE TRUTH

Sam LaRusso sat across from Chozen in a dim Atlanta dojo.

"She's not coming back," Sam said. "And she shouldn't."

Daniel closed his eyes.

"We failed her," Amanda whispered.

Sam shook her head.

"No," she said quietly. "We survived her."

That was worse.

Sam began dreaming of Andrea — not violent, not angry.

Watching.

TORY — THE GAME

Tory didn't chase Andrea.

She followed the echo.

Fan forums. Dark corners of the internet. Anonymous tips that always arrived five minutes too late.

She left signs.

A knife carved into a hostel table.

A Cobra Kai symbol scratched into a train window.

A single sentence spray-painted in Prague:

YOU LEFT ME WITH THE BODIES.

Andrea saw it.

Didn't react.

That scared Tory more than rage ever had.

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