Page 103 of Stream Heat
Kara
Nothing was ever just a conversation, not in these circles, even a simple coffee runs the risk of detonating your whole life if the wrong person sees you, or if the wrong words get said. That’s why we chose the little Omega-Beta cafe on the south side, a chemical sanctuary from the static of Alpha pheromones, as neutral a ground as you can get.
I was hoping for an easy hour running the numbers on the three platform offers, maybe a little back-and-forth about contracts, possibly even the beginning of building a real friendship. But then Callie glanced up, stirring her drink like she was scraping secrets from the bottom of her mug, and dropped a bomb in my lap.
“You seen the StreamWatch thing dropping tomorrow?” Her voice was too careful; her fingers jittered on the ceramic.
My pulse thudded in my veins. “What thing?”
She winced like she wished she hadn’t brought it up, but plowed ahead anyway. “Investigative piece. They’re running a big exposé on suppressant abuse in content creation. Supposedly they’ve been at it for months, but your situation gave them the angle they needed.”
StreamWatch. If content creation was high school, they were the admin office that could get your records revoked or haul you in for a dress code violation that stuck on your file forever. People lost contracts after their exposés, or found themselves praised as martyrs and cautionary tales. Either way, it never left you untouched.
“What does any of that have to do with me?” I tried not to let my hands shake.
Callie took a steady breath. “They reached out to me for comment. Asked about my story, if I’d ever seen stuff like this before. Kara, they have sources inside Nexus. They know this wasn’t just you and Victoria. They know about at least sixteen other creators who were pushed onto illegal suppressants.”
And just like that, the world pinwheeled under me. “How many did you say?”
“At least sixteen confirmed. Maybe more, if people get brave.” Her tone was steel sliding through velvet. “This isn’t about one abusive handler. This is a system.”
Shit. I gripped my coffee mug tightly, every muscle in my forearm locked tight. “Those people didn’t ask for this. I made noise, and now they’re going to get dragged into it.”
Callie didn’t flinch. “Or,” she said softly, “they’re going to get justice. Because you were willing to go first.”
“It isn’t the same thing. They might not want their medical history splashed all over a headline. People don’t get to decide for themselves, and that isn’t fair.”
“It’s not about outing individuals,” she said, reaching across the table and gently touching my hand, like she could anchor me to sanity. “StreamWatch is only running patterns, not names. But Kara, they want you to go on record about what happened at Nexus. They need context for the scope. They asked me to talk to you, not that talking to you about it was the only reason formeeting today, but I wanted to talk to you about it in person. Omega to Omega.”
I swallowed hard. My first instinct was to say no. This was so much bigger than me, and any step I took would throw other people into the fire. “I can’t,” I said, voice flatter than I meant it to be. “I can’t be responsible for exposing anyone without their say-so.”
“That’s not what this is.” She squeezed my hand, warm and real. “You’d only be talking about your experience. But if you want, tell the reporter your boundaries up front.”
It was a good suggestion. But boundary lines felt like wishful thinking when the story storm was already rolling in. “I need to think,” I managed. “I’m not making this call on a whim.”
“The reporter wants to talk to you before it goes live. Tomorrow morning.”
I nodded absently. That wasn’t much time to decide. The rest of the coffee date vanished in a fog of what-ifs and implications, no matter how hard we tried to circle back to the platform problem.
When I let myself back into the house, the pack was strewn around the living room, all of them pretending to read or scroll, but their postures said they’d already heard or felt something big was coming. I still wasn’t sure how much of my emotions they could sense through just the scenting bonds.
“How was coffee?” Reid asked. He didn’t even bother trying to fake casual.
“Complicated.” I dropped onto the end of the couch, letting my hair fall in front of my face. “StreamWatch is about to run with an exposé about suppressant abuse. They want an interview with me.”
The silence was cold and clean, like the moment after a gunshot.
“How big?” Malik, always the voice of reason even when the facts were knives.
“Sixteen cases confirmed at Nexus. More possible.” My voice sounded thin, even to me. “They want the inside story on how the system worked. How someone like Victoria could get away with it, and for how long.”
“And?” Theo pressed, blunt as always.
“And I don’t want to be the reason other people’s secrets show up on the news feed. I know what it’s like to lose control over your own story.”
“But you didn’t choose it either,” Ash pointed out, soft but unwavering. “Maybe refusing to speak up just lets this keep happening.”
“Or maybe it makes me an accomplice to exposing someone else’s trauma,” I parried.
