Carradine's words echoed in Ivy's head.
"It's not a file. It's not a name. It's a plan.
And it's already started."
She stood by herself in the middle of the archive, lit only by the pale light of overheads and the gentle blue light of her computer screen. The air was heavy. Pressurized. As if the whole building was bending forward, straining to watch what she would do next.
Elias was seated at the distant table, reading encrypted messages from Stillpoint's scattered network. Helena was online by secure video call, her voice tense with focus. Talia leaned against the wall, arms crossed, her sharp eyes scanning the room like a bodyguard on alert.
The message was to Ivy alone.
The metadata coordinates resulted in an address in Queens, buried in a series of timestamp logs. A former city data hub, now long abandoned and "re-purposed" by private builders.
Except. No permits for destruction. No photos. No open files.
Just an empty lot.
Just the kind of location Carradine would mark.
The next morning, Ivy and Elias took the subway to the Queens border. They walked four blocks past closed-up bodegas, a junkyard, and a ruined baseball diamond walled with rusty chain link.
The data hub was concealed behind a rotting brick wall.
Outside, it was nothing—a warehouse with boarded windows and a "Condemned" sign worn by rain. But when Ivy drew near, she noticed something strange:
The building buzzed.
Dull, mechanical.
Alive.
It had been rebooted by someone.
Elias wedged the side door open with a crowbar from his backpack.
Within: dim hallways, concrete floors, lines of covered terminals. Dust in clumpy clouds—except near the rear, where boot prints converged upon a reinforced door opening.
They went through.
And found servers still whirring.
Stacks of them.
Cool air whooshed from vents, and red lights throbbed in a slow, steady rhythm.
"This is not a dead system," Elias responded. "It's in disguise."
Ivy moved to the nearest console and inserted her external drive. The screen flared, demanding credentials.
She typed in her old archive login.
It worked.
"What is this facility?" Elias asked.
And then the files showed up.
And Ivy felt her breath catch.
It wasn't just a data hub.
It was a sim lab.
Modeled maps. Movements of populations. Projected gentrification lines. But this time, it was not just tracking history—it was predicting reactions.
Using Stillpoint statistics.
Ivy scanned the interface in awe.
Every map was not theoretical.
They'd been coded on the data she released—emotional responses, social groups, turnout rates, even trust ratings by region.
"They're planning," she gasped. "Using us."
Elias sat beside her shoulder. "This is not a cover-up anymore. This is counter-resistance."
Talia's voice rang out from Ivy's earpiece, listening in from base.
"You're telling me they're using the leaks to design their next playbook?"
Ivy nodded. "They're not scared of exposure anymore. They're engineering immunity to it."
The most damning file was labeled simply:
Phase IV: Social Redirection Initiative
It outlined a public-private partnership between redevelopment firms, urban planning boards, and behavioral economists. Together, they planned to launch a city-wide narrative shift:
Distract through artificial conflict.
Depict whistleblowers as economic stability.
Use housing credits to silence potential testimony.
Blast low-engagement communities with "noise campaigns" to overwhelm organized dissent
Ivy stared at the screen, the letters blurring.
"Phase IV isn't a plan," she stated.
"It's a vaccine," Elias gasped. "Against people like you."
By nightfall, they were in the archive once more.
Ivy paced the room.
Helena and Talia had come in person now, both with stern expressions.
This changes everything," Helena said.
"No," Ivy said. "It confirms everything."
Talia slammed a folder down on the table. "If this comes out in its current form, they'll sensationalize it like some urban myth."
"Then we don't publish it," Ivy said. "We trigger it."
The plan was risky.
They'd break the story—not with a leak, but with a live test.
A reverse simulation.
They'd employ the city's simulators against them—mirror the conditions, then short-circuit the predicted response.
Boggle the system.
Overload the story.
Resist the trend.
They called it "The Human Glitch."
Ivy returned to her rooftop at 3 a.m., alone.
She was at the edge of the city, and she bore the weight of it.
The threat.
And the potential.
They'd expected her.
Expected her to be drained. Split. Trapped in a cycle of response.
But what they didn't expect was that she wouldn't play along.