The glass doors of Nearlight sighed open and chaos pushed back.
Chants rolled off the marble like waves. Cardboard signs kissed the stanchions - SHOP SMALL, NOT AT ALL; FACES, NOT NUMBERS; FIX ASTERIA - while a news anchor's voice bled from the mounted screens above reception.
"Mr. Sterling," the anchor said, smiling with her teeth, "are you apologizing?"
On screen, Noah Sterling did not blink. "I am clarifying," he said. "Nearlight does not make moral judgments. We score risk."
The chyron under him read: FACELESS ALGORITHM, FACELESS CEO.
Ava Chen tightened her grip on her tote until the strap stopped biting and showed the guard her temporary badge.
"Ma'am, employees only," the guard said, spreading a palm the size of a dinner plate.
"I'm the fire extinguisher," Ava said. "Let me in before the building burns through your shoes."
"Cute," said a woman in a navy sheath, sliding into the exchange like a scalpel. Comms lanyard, headset tucked neat. "Name."
"Ava Chen. Verve Crisis Partners."
"Sofia Anton," the woman replied. "You're late."
"It's eight-oh-six," Ava said. "I'm early for eight-fifteen. I just brought the riot with me."
Sofia's mouth cut a line that might have been a laugh on any other day. "Badge her," she told security.
They were nearly through when the revolving door sighed again and the air changed the way it does when a room's center of gravity steps inside.
Noah Sterling did not look like his interviews. On television he was all angles and contempt. In person he was quieter - the kind of still that made other people tidy their edges. Black suit, no tie, a matte lapel pin that refused to catch light.
He glanced over Ava, then past her to Sofia, then to the guard. "Who is this?" His voice was low, even.
"Ava Chen," Sofia said. "Verve."
"Catering?" he said.
Ava smiled without warmth. "Only if you want crow."
The guard coughed. Sofia's eyes flicked - appraisal adjusted.
Noah's gaze touched Ava's face and slid, like a hand on glass. "You are the junior," he said.
"I am the person who stops you from saying 'clarifying' when the world wants 'sorry'." She tipped her chin at the screens where Past Noah was busy salting the day. "From now until I say otherwise, you do not speak unscripted into any microphone bigger than a pencil."
His eyebrow ticked. "And if I disagree?"
"Then you'll do it after I leave a resignation email in your drafts addressed to your board chair," Ava said. "Your call."
Sofia made a soft sound that was either approval or warning. "We have the conference room on sixteen," she said. "Reporters are clustering outside."
"Two minutes," Ava said. "I need your social passwords, the crisis tree, and a human being who can pull down autoposts from anything with our name on it."
"I will get Legal," Sofia said, already moving. "Security, clear a path."
A camera flash went off beyond the glass. A chant rose - People, not profit - and something hard tapped the door like a coin.
Noah gestured toward the elevators. "Walk with me."
Metal detectors blinked. Marble turned to brushed steel. Ava kept pace half a step ahead, not enough to look like she was leading, exactly - enough to make it impossible to ignore.
"Why did you call the interview 'clarifying'?" she asked, eyes on the numbers ticking above the doors.
"Because it was clarifying," he said. "Apologizing for a correct model is dishonest."
"The public thinks the model is wrong," she said. "Right now, truth is a poor substitute for empathy."
"Empathy does not improve an ROC curve," he said.
"That is why you hired a mouth."
The elevator pinged open. Stainless walls threw their reflections back in thin, warped bands. A maintenance worker edged to a corner. Ava slid in; Noah followed; Sofia peeled off to marshal the route upstairs. The doors began to close.
"Wait," Noah said.
They stuttered and reopened on a man in a slate suit - tall, elegant, smiling with the top row of his teeth.
"Morning, Noah," he said. "And… guest."
"Mr. Hale," the guard said, deferential. CFO. Marcus Hale.
Noah's focus flicked from Marcus's cuff to his hands to the floor, then to the space just over his left shoulder. He did not look at his face.
"Marcus," he said flatly.
Ava stepped forward, blocking a camera phone angling for a shot through the gap. "This car is full," she said. "Use the next."
Marcus's eyes slid over her as if she were a smudge on glass. "And you are?"
"The difference between a downgrade and a delay," Ava said. "We'll see you upstairs."
The smile thinned for half a second. He stepped back with the minor grace of a man who collects grudges like cuff links.
The doors tried again. Closed.
Noah hit sixteen.
"Catering?" he said, not looking at her.
Ava set her tote down and braced a palm against the rail as the car rose. "Verve Crisis Partners. Ava Chen. Remember the name."
"I will not," he said, matter-of-fact.
She blinked.
"I do not remember faces," he added, as if noting the weather. "Names are no better unless I anchor them."
Ava let silence sit for one beat. Then she pulled a red marker from her tote and pressed it into his hand. "Anchor this," she said. "Every time you see this color, you listen to me first and talk second. Congratulations. You have a rule."
He looked at the marker like a small, strange bird had landed on his palm.
The elevator slid to a stop. A cymbal crash of shutters sounded beyond the doors.
"Ready?" Ava said.
He closed his hand around the red. "Lead," he said.
The doors opened and the noise hit them.
Cameras popped like summer gnats. Microphones pushed into the seam of the elevator as if they could pry the doors wider. Voices climbed over one another.
"Mr. Sterling, do you regret calling people 'risk factors' - "
"Is Nearlight profiling small businesses - "
"Are you stepping down before the IPO - "
Ava raised her hand, the red marker between two fingers like a small flag. "One at a time," she said without shouting. The calm didn't fit the noise, so people listened. "We will address questions after we make sure no one gets trampled in a hallway. Back up two steps. Make a lane."
"And you are - ?"
"The person keeping your equipment intact," she said pleasantly. "Two steps. Now."
It worked. Not because she shouted authority, but because she wore it. The front row eased back. Ava angled her body in front of Noah so every camera saw him, but no microphone scraped his chin.
"Mr. Sterling, do you apologize?" a woman with a green press card asked, faster than the rest.
Ava smiled at her. "What you will hear from Nearlight today is accountability before adjectives. We are pausing automated outputs, reviewing edge-case flags, and speaking with impacted sellers directly." She pointed with the pen tip toward the end of the hall. "If you need a clean audio feed, Comms is setting one up in Glass Sixteen. Follow the arrows. You'll get a hold statement in twenty."
A cameraman muttered, "Glass Sixteen?" and was already turning, as if someone had promised him power and chairs.
"Are you saying the model is wrong?" someone called.
"I am saying we do not let a model make moral choices in a vacuum," Ava said, moving. "If it hurts the wrong people, we fix context and consequences."
Beside her, Noah took a tight breath - like he had weighed a line and put it in his pocket.
"Lane stays open," Ava said, and kept them moving. Under her breath to Noah - "Left, then straight to the glass room. No side comments."
"Was that apologizing?" he asked softly, lips barely moving.
"That was building the table before we serve the dish," she said. "You get the entrée in twenty."
A reporter with an aggressive tie hopped into their path. "Mr. Sterling, your algorithm shut down a cancer charity's store - "
"Source?" Ava said without slowing.
"Twitter."
"Then your charity deserves better sourcing," she said. "Bring the invoice trail. We will call them ourselves."
"Name?" he pushed.
"Write 'Ava Chen told me to bring receipts.' Spelling A - V - A."
Sofia waited by a glass door, headset bright against her hair. "Room is prepped," she said. "Livestream port in ten."
"Hold the livestream until you hear the phrase 'we are ready to be measured'," Ava said. "Anything earlier dies on my desk."
"Copy," Sofia said.
Ava pushed the door, then glanced at Noah. "After you."
He touched his lapel where the red marker sat like a flag. It wasn't a gesture for cameras. It looked like a new joint learning to bend.
The conference room was built from light - transparency as a dare. One wall was the city. One was their reflections. On the table, water bottles stood in an odd number, which looked like a coincidence and was not. Someone here thought about how things read. Good.
"There he is," said a smooth voice already inside. "And Ms. Chen, I presume."
Marcus Hale leaned at the far end of the table, hands loose in his pockets, the smile of a man who never sweats. His eyes touched Ava the way a cloth touches dust.
"We need admin access to Nearlight socials, pre-approved phone numbers for seller outreach, and the crisis tree," Ava said, setting her tote down on the chair with the best sightline to the door. "Now. Also an immediate freeze on all scheduled posts across platforms."
"Legal will not like that," Marcus said with gentle regret. "We have obligations to investors. Messaging must be consistent with filings."
"Legal likes fewer class actions more," Ava said. "Freeze the posts."
"You are junior," Marcus said. "We will take instructions from Ms. Anton."
"Ms. Anton just gave you a lane through a mob and an off-record room in fifteen minutes," Ava said, not looking at him yet, writing as she spoke. "She will be busy doing ten things you will notice later. I am doing the ones you will notice now."
Sofia's eyebrow lifted - a small, genuine approval.
"Noah," Marcus said, smooth, "we should discuss materiality offline. Perhaps without - "
"With," Noah said.
The smile on Marcus's mouth twitched. "Pardon?"
Noah set his phone on the table, screen down, and sat. "With Ms. Chen," he repeated. "Proceed."
He did not look at Marcus's face. He watched his hands, the line of the lapel, the table edge. Ava noticed the noticing and adjusted her angle so his gaze found her if it searched. Red marker. Rule.
"Good," Ava said, calm. "Then we start simple. Holding statement, three lines. One - we acknowledge harm. Two - we are pausing automation and reviewing flags with affected sellers. Three - we will publish criteria and redress steps by end of day. No adjectives."
"No admission of fault," Marcus said. "Absolutely not."
"Accountability is not confession," Ava said. "Stonewalling is guilt on camera."
A dull thud vibrated up through the glass like a giant had kicked the lobby wall. The chant below dipped into a collective breath that sounded like wind.
Sofia turned toward the window. "Something hit downstairs," she said into her headset. "Security?"
Ava set the marker down and, finally, met Marcus's eyes. Pleasant. "Admin access?"
He held her look for a full beat, then smiled too wide and spoke into his phone. "IT, suspend external privileges until I approve."
Ava laughed softly. Not nice. "You just put a tourniquet on your own throat."
The door clicked. An intern with a tray stumbled in, bottles clinking. Marcus used the movement to pivot toward the exit.
"We will reconvene when Legal joins," he said. "Do not worry, Ms. Chen. We appreciate the… energy."
He wanted to leave. Ava took half a step into his path. Not enough to make it a fight. Enough to make him stop.
"Here is your on-record," she said, voice even. "We can tell the street we heard them, or they will decide we did not and throw louder. Every minute you stall because you want cleaner minutes for a board deck is a minute someone uploads a clip titled 'Nearlight Ignores Us'. Choose."
The smile held for one more heartbeat. Then it lost a millimeter.
"Noah?"
Noah's fingers found the red at his lapel. "Give her what she asked for," he said.
Marcus's voice stayed courteous. His eyes did not. "Of course."
"Thank you," Ava said, and meant only the leverage.
Her phone buzzed on the table. Once, then again. A text banner flashed - EVICTION NOTICE POSTED - and the sender's name hit like a fist: Mom.
A screenshot bloomed under it. Legalese. A red underline that read: Account flagged by Asteria partner - payment risk - notice to quit.
Ava's skin went cold and then learned to be skin again. She turned the phone face-down with a fingertip. Her mouth remembered how to move.
"Sofia, line up three impacted sellers we can call on speaker in twenty," she said. "We start with a bookstore, a charity, and a hardware shop."
At hardware, something cramped in her palm where the marker had pressed. Not now. Table first. Fire later.
"On it," Sofia said.
Another thud rolled up from below. A crack spidered across the far pane of the lobby's video feed and then held.
Ava looked at Noah. His focus had slipped to the city beyond the glass - the shoulder of a building, the seam of sky. She saw him reach for the rule, not the view. His thumb touched the red.
"What do you want me to do?" he said, quiet.
"Sit where the cameras can see your hands," she said. "Listen. When I point, you will say only this - 'We heard you. We are fixing it. Come measure us in a week.' If anyone asks about the IPO, say 'We are focused on customers first' and stop."
He nodded once, a clipped acceptance that looked like surrender if you did not know the difference.
Across the hall, Sofia's team started laying out mic flags and a splitter. Footfalls thinned in the corridor. The air felt like a held breath.
Ava picked up the marker again. The plastic was warm. Her phone hummed under her palm like a small, frightened animal.
Later, she would have to look. Call. Choose.
Not now.
Noah watched her choose not to flinch and seemed to understand exactly one thing about her - that she would keep the table from catching fire even if her hands burned.
He straightened his cuffs, squared to the door, and spoke as if they were already at a podium.
"You are speaking for me in ten."
The building shuddered - once, hard - as another object struck the lobby glass.
Ava capped the red.
"Good," she said.