Cold blue light filled the freshly minted office of VIM.
Vincenzo sat back in his chair, his hoodie pulled up. Midnight passed unnoticed. The building was quiet in the way only powerful places ever were.
Tonight was a deep dive into a digital fossil record. On the screen, a teenage Chase Wright leaned against a podium, his voice sharp with a specific brand of righteous indignation. “Why are we paying for Xbox Live? We already pay for the internet! It’s like renting a fork at a restaurant!” Vincenzo laughed. “You absolute idiot savant,” he murmured fondly to the monitor.
The comment section from a decade ago was still there. Users praised his ‘lawyer vibe.’ Vincenzo scrubbed the video back, watching the mannerisms— animated hands, instinctive pauses, the way Chase rode the room’s energy without even trying. Chase wasn’t performing for a camera; he was communicating. That was the raw material Vincenzo needed.
“He’s going to burn out,” Vincenzo said quietly, leaning back and folding his hands behind his head. “The same way he always does. He does the right thing in rooms full of people who already cashed out their souls, and he calls it character.”
He switched to another new tab. A dated local AnimeVerse video loaded, featuring overexposed lighting and shaky handheld footage. And then, there she was. Amelia Winters. A high-schooler, her hair brighter, laughing into a camera she didn’t know was recording. She was dressed in a white-and-blue costume, carrying a gold key prop, her joy unguarded and utterly unoptimized.
Vincenzo froze the frame. “Oh,” he said softly. “Well… there it is.” “He hit play again. She moved with a presence that didn’t need a director. Chase had the timing, and Amelia had the warmth. Together, they weren’t just a brand—they were a vortex.
He opened a notepad and typed carefully: N: Leverage SilverTongue. Authentic friction. A: Restore creative spark. Shared vulnerability reads as truth. He snapped his lighter open, the small golden flame reflecting in Amelia’s frozen smile. Chase didn’t need saving; he just needed a reason to stop walking away from the light.
“I’m giving you your life back,” Vincenzo whispered to the dark. “Both of you.”
The office of Michael & Cole was eerily quiet. Gunther’s office was already cleared, the nameplate gone and the glass walls Windex-clean. It wasn’t just a firing; it was a scrubbing.
Chase sat at his desk, the termination email still open. The official reason was “Gross Misconduct,” but the subtext was buried in the files Gunther had been flagged for. Stiles & Springer. The St. Yves development. Gunther had been accessing restricted zoning archives, claiming it sat on “Tartarian infrastructure” which didn’t appear on modern blueprints. He’d talked about “forbidden frequencies” in the foundation that weren’t dormant.
In the world of Michael & Cole, “delusion” was just corporate shorthand for a truth that cost too much money. Gunther hadn’t lost his mind; he’d switched sides because he saw something that terrified him more than the partners did. And now he was gone, erased by a firm that prioritized El Viento capital over the sanity of its employees. Chase locked his computer, feeling a desperate need to be anywhere else.
Amelia collapsed her umbrella outside Summers Brew, shaking the drops onto the mat as she stepped inside. She wasn’t sure why she was here, other than a vague desire to understand Chase’s world. He came here to escape; she wanted to see what “safe” looked like to him.
Tabitha was behind the counter, her shoulders tightening as she saw Amelia approach. It was a defensive hiss Amelia recognized from the clinic—a warning born of fear, not malice. “Morning,” Amelia said. “Could I get a latte?”
Tabitha narrowed her eyes as she clicked a pen and attacked the cup with surgical precision. She slid it across the counter. SMILES TOO MUCH.
Amelia read it and let out a genuine, surprised laugh. “At least it’s accurate.”
Tabitha blinked. “Milk preference?”
“Whole is fine.” Amelia leaned on the counter, watching the girl work with a jagged, frantic intensity. “Do you always write judgments on the cups?”
“Personal policy,” Tabitha said, the grinder roaring to life. “I file what I see.”
Amelia’s gaze drifted to a battered notebook on the counter, its spine frayed and corners bitten by time. Tabitha saw the look and slid her arm over the book. “It’s just… homework. Creepy fiction. You wouldn’t like it.”
“You might be surprised what I like,” Amelia said softly. She saw the intelligence burning behind the eyeliner, the energy of a mind that saw too much and didn’t know where to put it. “Animals don’t talk, so we watch patterns. Posture. What they want to hide. You do the same thing with people. You see through the masks.”
Tabitha stared at her. “I used to write too,” Amelia offered. “Stories about bees and ants being the best of friends. People who didn’t say what they felt out loud, so I made them say it in secret.”
The bell jingled, and the sound of rattling wheels cut through the quiet. Snakes shuffled in with his mop cart. “Wright’s not here,” Tabitha said automatically.
“Didn’t come for Wright,” Snakes muttered. “I have him locked in the firm’s restroom with a series of clues leading to a puzzle holding the key to the door.”
Across town, Chase stood in a marble-tiled restroom, staring at a sticky note attached to the mirror: To escape the chamber of water flow, one must discover where to go. Below it sat a cardboard box wrapped in layers of duct tape.
“Snakes!” Chase shouted at the ceiling vent. “I swear to God, if this is another crayon incident, I’m replacing your Pine-Sol with Scope!”
He didn’t bother solving the riddle. He jammed his thumb under the taped flap, ripped the cardboard in half with a grunt, and shook it until a brass key clattered into the sink. “I’m billing the firm for emotional distress!” he yelled at the locked door. “And I’m stealing your mop!”
Back at the café, Snakes jabbed his mop at the air. “Man is oblivious. And charming. Like candy corn—a lethal combination.” He slapped a torn scrap of the El Viento flyer onto the counter, the logo circled three times in red. “Ants move where the sugar spills,” he said, his eyes flicking to Amelia.
“Our lawyer friend thinks the sugar is a gift. He doesn’t see the hook.” Snakes began shuffling backward, his cart squeaking. “Especially a trap door that welcomes you when all the other exits are blocked.”
Amelia looked at the scrap of paper, a chill settling in her chest. “Is he always like that?”
“That’s his bit,” Tabitha said, tucking the paper into her notebook. “But sometimes he’s the kind of weird that turns out right six weeks later.”
Amelia finished her drink, but the warning stayed cold in her mind. She thought about trap doors and hooks, and how Chase, for all his cleverness, sometimes mistook a cage for a safety net.