The first number fell seven minutes after I cut the feed.
Not reach.
Reach kept rising because outrage traveled almost as well as desire.
Retention fell.
People arrived, watched the last public frame, saw nothing more available, and left angry enough to keep talking but not hungry enough to keep watching.
Aperture noticed before I finished rewrapping my hand.
So did Sterling.
By nightfall, the response room had become a map of consequences.
Silas did not summon me.
That would have been easier to resent.
He left the projection open on the main display and waited beside it with a glass of water, two tablets, and the expression of a man refusing to call a trap by a kinder name.
"Show me," I said.
He gave me the water first.
I drank because my body wanted it.
Then hated that he h
