Mara brought the rumors in her briefing format.
Clinical, documented, sourced. Not as gossip, not as a social concern — as intelligence, which was the only way I could receive it without the secondary reactions distorting my assessment. She had understood this about me for some time and had prepared accordingly.
"The rumors originated from three separate distribution points," she said. "All three are traceable — not directly to the source, but to a network that uses a specific distribution architecture. The same architecture that handled the summit attack's communication pre-positioning." She set the sourcing document in front of me. "This is not organic rumor. This is manufactured."
I looked at the document. Three distribution points, each with a slightly different version of the same
