The city was loud that morning.
Helicopters above. Sirens in the distance. Reporters surrounding library gates. Protesters now accompanied by supporters. Some calling for Ivy's arrest. Others with duct tape over their mouths, bearing paper signs, "She Heard Us."
But Ivy wasn't among them.
She wasn't in the archive.
She was in the safe house Carradine had vacated—or what was left of it.
A charred apartment. Top level. No elevator. Door hanging at the hinges on splintered wood. Kitchen floor waterlogged. Not from the flood—but from fire-suppression devices that had been activated at some point during the break-in. The smell of wet ash and burnt wires filled the air.
Elias stayed in the corner, speechless. Gloves on, camera brought out, taking photos of what he could. But even he was more subdued than usual.
Because this apartment wasn't merely smashed up.
It had been washed.
Files? Gone. Drives? Erased. Paper? Reduced to black charcoal.
That was the entire remainder of a shattered photo frame beneath a broken table.
Ivy hunched and scooped it up gently.
The photo was hazy, burned around the edges, but she was there.
Maybe fourteen. On the steps of the old Lower East Side rec center. Carradine in the background, mid-gesture, addressing a group of kids. Ivy was not laughing. She looked uncertain. Like she didn't belong. Like she had no idea how to.
She sat on the edge of the couch and glared at it.
Elias walked over and knelt down beside her.
"You remember that day?"
She nodded. "It was the first time anyone ever asked me what I thought. Not what I could file. Not what I could sweep. Just… what I saw."
"What did you say to him?"
"I told him the building had four cracks in the front wall. That they'd spread by spring."
"Was it true?"
"Yeah."
She placed the photo on the table.
"I still see that girl sometimes," she whispered.
Elias sat silently. Then: "I think she became someone great."
They returned to the archive that afternoon.
The lock had been cut again.
The door was slightly ajar.
Inside: quiet.
But something was… wrong.
Ivy moved slowly, fingers grazing the wall.
Then she saw it.
On the whiteboard where she'd written "Truth lives here"—
Someone had wiped it clean.
And written something new:
"You're not the story."
The message didn't rattle her.
Not this time.
She sat at her desk, pulled out the dusty old binder of testimony, and began sorting. Not looking. Not hiding.
Preparing.
If they were going to erase her, she'd leave evidence in every hand she'd ever touched.
That night, she walked back through her old neighborhood. Behind the corner store where she used to purchase her stale granola bars. Behind the church where she found Carradine's journal. Behind the alley where she first had been followed.
She passed by the vacant lot where the community center once stood.
Fenced nowadays. Grass has grown tall. Spray paint wrapping around the boards like vines.
She stood there for a considerable amount of time.
Not crying.
Not angry.
Just silent.
Like she was expecting someone to arrive.
But the only person who showed up.
Was herself.
The younger one. The quiet one. The one who thought it was safer to be forgotten than to be known.
And for the first time in her life, Ivy turned back—not to hide that one, but to grasp her hand.
To forgive her.
To tell her they made it.
The city had never stopped curving.
It was cracking now.
And in the cracks, light was seeping through.
Elias called at midnight.
"They hacked Jordan Rhys's contact," he said. "The man who helped decrypt the drive." Erased. Vanished."
Ivy didn't blink.
Instead, she queried, "Do we have the capabilities to do this?"
"Yes," he answered. "But it means using everything. Names. Faces. Places. No more anonymous data. No more cover."
She nodded.
"Then do it."
He paused. "Are you sure?"
"I'm not the story," she said. "But maybe I'm the one who can keep it going."