LOGINMaia's pov“All stations are live. We are broadcasting.”The words echoed straight through the room.I lift my head slowly. Every screen along the wall flickers, then steadies. Faces appear confused, tense, scared. Some are framed by city apartments, some by offices, some by places I don’t recognize at all. Thousands of eyes. Then more. The counter climbs too fast to track.Kael swears softly beside me.“Who did that?” he asks.“I did,” Eli says, voice tight but steady. “You told me to run the data. I ran everything.”I don’t look at him. I’m watching the screens. Watching the city see itself for the first time.A woman on one feed presses her hand to her mouth. A man on another stands abruptly, knocking over a chair. Someone starts crying. Someone else starts shouting, the sound cutting out as the system tries and fails to moderate it.“What are they seeing?” Kael asks.I finally answer. “The truth.”My throat is dry. My hands feel strange, like they don’t belong to me anymore.Names
Maia's pov“Maia, don’t move.”I stop because of the way Kael says my name, low and sharp, like he’s already too late.“What is it?” I ask.He doesn’t answer right away. His hand slides into mine, not gentle, not reassuring. Protective. Like he’s bracing for impact.“Look up,” he says.I do.The screen that wasn’t there a second ago drops down from the ceiling, massive and unavoidable, filling the chamber with light. Not red. Not warning colors. White. Clean. Neutral.Broadcast white.Eli swears behind us. “That’s not internal.”My stomach sinks. “That means it’s public.”The city’s symbol flickers once, then disappears. Replaced by a live feed. Streets. Homes. Transit hubs. Faces turning upward, confused, startled, afraid. Millions of people watching at the same time.Kael tightens his grip. “Maia, someone just hijacked every channel.”“I know,” I say.Because I feel it. The way the system shifts, not resisting, not panicking. Yielding. Letting it happen.A woman appears on the scree
Maia's povEvery screen in the city turns white at the same time. Apartments, transit hubs, wrist displays, old wall panels people forgot still worked. There is no countdown and no announcement. One moment the city is loud and fractured, the next it is focused on a single point.I did not plan it like this. I did not cue a system or issue a command. The city simply opens its throat and hands me the voice.Kael feels it before I do. His hand tightens around mine, firm and grounding, not asking permission. He looks at the nearest wall display, then at me, and something shifts in his expression. He knows what this means. He also knows there is no pulling it back.“Maia,” he says. Just my name. Nothing else.I breathe in. The air tastes like dust and ozone. The room we are standing in is stripped bare from the fighting earlier. Exposed conduits run along the walls. The lights flicker but stay on. The city wants this seen.Eli is pacing near the door, running a hand through his hair, eyes
Maia's povThe broadcast goes live by accident.No speech or any button pressed with intent. Just a system rerouting itself after I rewired too much, too fast. A fail-safe looking for an authority that no longer exists and landing on me instead.Every screen in the city lights up at once.Homes, trains, streets and implants people forgot they were wearing.I feel it before I see it, the sudden weight of attention, millions of eyes snapping open at the same time. Kael’s hand tightens around mine.“What did you do?” he asks.My throat is dry. “I don’t know.”And then my face is everywhere.Not a polished image. Not corrected. Just me as I am the blood at my hairline, eyes too bright, breathing too fast.For half a second, no one speaks.Then the noise hits.Voices, shouting, crying, laughter, anger pouring through open channels that were never meant to be shared. People realizing they are not alone in what they remember. Or what they’ve lost.The city fractures in real time.Someone sc
Maia's povThe broadcast goes live by accident.That’s what it will be called later. An error. A cascade failure. A glitch no one could have predicted.But I feel it the moment it happens.The city exhales, and suddenly I am everywhere.Every screen lights at once. Transit walls. Wrist slates. Storefront glass. Living room projectors. A million private spaces breached in the same breath.My face stares back at me from a cracked monitor across the chamber.I don’t recognize myself at first.Not because I look different, but because I look unedited. No careful removal of the parts that scared people.I look alive.“Oh,” someone whispers behind me.Kael.I turn. He’s already watching the screens, jaw tight, eyes locked on my image like it might reach out and pull him apart.“This wasn’t planned,” he says.“I know.”The city doesn’t wait for permission.My voice fills the air, layered over itself, carried through open channels that never should have existed.“People of the city,” I hear m
Maia's povJonas Hale finishes speaking. I don’t give him the courtesy of silence.“No,” I say.The word lands clean. Final. No room to negotiate inside it.The city reacts before he does. A low surge ripples through the chamber, not violent, not protective alert like something large has lifted its head.Jonas exhales through his nose. “That was fast.”“You expected hesitation,” I say. “You miscalculated.”He studies me the way engineers look at a structure that held when it shouldn’t have. “You don’t understand the scope of what you’re refusing.”“I understand perfectly,” I reply. “You want a face for your control. You want guilt to wear my name.”“That’s reductionist.”“It’s accurate.”The room tightens, architecture responding to authority conflict. Jonas notices. His smile thins.“You’re overextending,” he says. “The Continuum won’t tolerate—”“I already taught it to,” I cut in.That finally lands.Jonas’s posture changes. The first real crack.“You didn’t teach it defiance,” he s







