The silence after Camille said it was deafening.
"He's with me."
The words echoed. Bounced off the studio lights. Hung in the air like a challenge no one was quite sure how to answer.
And in the tension that followed, another tension loomed beneath it—older, colder, institutional.
Discrimination based on rank had always been an unspoken rule in studios like this. Who got the greenroom with real coffee. Who got mic'd first. Who got to sit center stage. But after the Masked Syndicate trial, things had begun to shift. Slowly, but not quietly. Mr. Leviathan—my mask, my words—had stood before a global audience and declared, "Can an event truly be called a lie, if you are perceiving it before your very eyes?" It had resonated. The world had changed, or at least, it was trying to.
But here? In this room? The old rules still lingered like smoke.
