Rain hammered the city like it was trying to drown the truth.
Evelyn stood beneath the crumbling awning of an abandoned print shop, her breath sharp in the cold night air. Her coat was soaked through. Her knuckles were bloodied. The USB drive in her fist felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.
This was it. Everything Reyes had buried. Everything the Circle tried to erase. Photos. Names. Procedures. Lab reports. The Bellwether Protocol. Neural suppression tech. The placement program. Julian. Herself. All of it.
She'd send it all.
She’d been running, hiding, fighting, bleeding for too long. And they kept controlling the story. Not anymore.
Her burner phone buzzed once. Mason. Again. She ignored it.
The city's data dump was just two blocks down — a hub for whistleblowers and hackers, protected by a loose alliance of anti-corporate watchdogs and street-level technomancers. She didn’t need to trust them. She just needed the files to spread.
One truth at a time.
Earlier That Day
Mason slamme
