Page 123 of Falling Into Gravity

Malik cut him off. “You tryna sell survival.”

“No, not sell—optimize.”

He smirked without humor. “You ever been scared to walk to school, Todd?”

“…No.”

“You ever needed an app to tell you which way not to go just ‘cause a nigga got shot yesterday on your corner?”

Todd blinked, silent.

Hunter leaned in again, trying to smooth it over. “Malik, we want to amplify what you’ve done. The raw brilliance is there. We just think with the right polish, it could go from neighborhood tool to national solution.”

“I ain’t build this to be cute,” Malik said. “I built it to save lives. You polish the soul outta it, all you got left is code and capitalism.”

He stood up, Zaire followed.

“Let me save y’all some time,” he said. “I ain’t sellin’ my soul.”

“Malik—”

“I built this for us, cuh.” Crescent came out like a proud lingo. “From Crescent. For Crescent. For every hood like mine. Plugged In ain’t gon’ turn into some sterilized, corporate-speak mess y’all slap a fake logo on and pitch to VCs. That ain’t the play, cuh,” he sneered.

They all went quiet.

“You got somethin’ powerful,” Brady still had to try. He saw the money.

“Iamsomethin’ powerful,” Malik corrected. “And y’all just missed out.”

“You’re walking away from a million-dollar offer, man,” Brady said, baffled.

“I’m walkin’ away from white folks tryna make my community digestible,” Malik said, calm and mean. “From niggas gettin’ priced out of the one tool that ever made them feel seen.”

He turned and walked out that glass fishbowl without lookin’ back. Into the world that birthed him.

Not scaled, Not pivoted…just real.

Zaire was on his heels, moving fast.

“Malik,” he called, catching the stairwell door before it slammed. “Cuh, can we talk about this?”

Malik didn’t even stop. “Nah.”

“Malik—”

“I said nah, Z.” He stopped two flights down and turned. “What you wanna talk about? Huh? How you served me up like I was some charity case for them tech niggas to pick apart?”

Zaire threw up his hands. “Damn, it wasn’t even like that. You wildin’.”

“I’m wildin’? Nigga, you out! You don’t live this shit no more. The fuck you care about me or what my pockets got?”

That hit. Zaire’s face shifted, but he held it.

“You think I don’t care?” he asked. “Nigga, I set this upbecauseI care. You think I ain’t proud of what you built? I seen you puttin’ in hours, coding from scratch, pullin’ strings with nothing but Wi-Fi and weed money.”

Malik paced a step, breathing hard. “Then why bring me to them? Why set me up like I was hungry? Like I was ready to trade in what I built ‘cause they offered a shiny-ass backend and some buzzwords?”

“They was offering help?—”

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