Adrienne's POV
The cup hit the floor. Not an accident. I put it there deliberately — the kind of thing you did when you needed the sound without wanting to explain why.
The Timeless numbers were what they were. The broadcast quality manipulation had reduced them — noticeably, on close inspection. But the crowd in the venue had experienced the performance live, and their reaction had already seeded the algorithm before my team could flatten it.
Cody was watching me from across the room with the expression of a man waiting to see which way a weather system would move.
"We didn't lose," he tried.
"I want to win," I said. "Not draw."
He scrambled for a narrative angle. Contrast framing. Adrienne isn't a professional — she achieved this anyway. I let him run with it.
There's another way,
