I pulled up the article before I'd even sat down, my thumb trembling slightly against the screen. It didn't take long to find, because it was already spreading fast, the particular velocity of a story with built-in drama.
The article itself was brief, corporate and clinical in the way these things always were, citing "strategic realignment" and "a mutual decision to part ways," language so carefully bloodless it might as well have been written by Noah's own PR team. But the comments beneath it told a different story with speculation, screenshots of the earlier morning-show interview where Ava had called herself an underdog, users connecting dots that painted an unflattering picture of a company collapsing and taking its newest hire down with it.
"They're using her," I said slowly, scroll
