Chapter 8 - Papercuts
Monday arrived like a tide Anna hadn't consented to.
No drama. No sirens.
Just everything… slightly off.
A design folder went missing from the shared drive.
A Slack thread she initiated last week was buried under sudden "revisions."
Her name wasn't mentioned in the campaign alignment update that listed creative leads—despite the entire skeleton being hers.
Small things.
Deliberate things.
The kind of paper cuts meant not to kill—but to weaken.
And she felt them.
Not like stings.
Like truths.
By 9:00 a.m., Anna was in the corner room she now called hers—half by accident, half by survival. It wasn't glamorous. Not like the glass box she'd once held in VAST, the one with skyline views and curated succulents. This one had no windows, a flickering lamp, and a desk that wobbled if you leaned on the left side.
But it was hers.
And that made it dangerous.
Leah sat across from her, coffee balanced on one knee, chewing her lip like it was a stress ball.
"They pulled me into a 'casual brainstorm' this morning," Leah said, flipping her iPad around. "Just... vibes and warmups, supposedly."
Anna didn't look up. "Whose idea?"
"Jules said it came from upstairs. 'To foster creative realignment.'" She air-quoted with one hand. "Sounded like an intervention disguised as improv."
Anna clicked her pen once. Twice. "Did they ask about the Lux pitch?"
"Not directly," Leah said. "But they asked me what kind of story I thought resonated most with mid-tier women in crowded brand spaces."
Anna blinked. Her mouth stayed still, but her eyes flared. "They're testing Sydney's counter-narrative."
"Feels like it."
Anna leaned back. Her chair creaked slightly, the sound sharp against the silence.
This was it.
The smear phase.
But quieter. Subtler. As if to say: We're not pushing you out. You're just stepping aside.
Except she wasn't.
By 10:00 a.m., her phone pinged with a Slack alert.
Leah peeked. "You gonna check it?"
Anna glanced at the screen.
Sydney had just dropped a new brainstorm doc into the shared VAST folder:
"Reframing Resonance – Emotional Hooks for the Post-Authenticity Era."
Anna read the title twice.
The language was familiar. Too familiar.
She'd used that phrase—"post-authenticity"—in her early notes six weeks ago. It wasn't published. It wasn't quoted. It had been said aloud, once, in a late meeting with just Ben, Leah, and Sydney present.
Anna's expression didn't change.
But the room's temperature might have dropped two degrees.
"She's starting to say it was her idea," Leah said.
"She's setting the table," Anna replied. "She won't serve anything until the lighting's flattering enough."
At 11:42, Leah forwarded Anna a slide posted to the company-wide campaign board.
It featured the Lux campaign's Phase One insights: her strategy, her voice, presented with no authorship. No credits. No callouts. No watermark. Just a polished copy with the agency's logo at the bottom.
Her work.
Their ownership.
Leah's tone was soft. "They didn't even rewrite it."
"Why would they?" Anna said. "They don't need to make it better. They just need to make it… theirs."
She stared at the screen a second longer.
Not out of shock.
But study.
Because if they were willing to erase her name this blatantly, then Sydney's next move wouldn't be subtle. It would be precise. Framed in legitimacy. Hidden behind "collaboration."
__
That afternoon, Ben dropped by.
No knock. No folder.
Just him.
He stood at the threshold of her open office, holding a printout like a peace offering.
"Your slide's gone again," he said. "Version history shows a rollback."
Anna stood. "Who did it?"
He shrugged. "No log. Someone scrubbed it manually."
Anna turned to Leah. "Do we still have our backup with timestamps?"
Leah nodded. "Offline. Hard copy and drive. It's watermarked and time-stamped. I double-copied it last week."
Ben watched them, calm, unreadable.
"Someone's getting bolder," he said.
Anna stepped toward the board. "No. Someone's getting sloppy."
The team review later that day was sterile.
Ben led the deck walkthrough with surgical clarity. No charm. No flourish. Just facts. And every time someone tried to redirect the narrative, nudge credit elsewhere, he anchored it back to the original language.
Anna watched him do it three times.
He never looked at her.
Never winked.
Just kept the ship steady while the water rose.
And when Sydney asked a "clarifying" question about whether emotion-first marketing was scalable across cultures, Anna didn't flinch.
"Emotion isn't bound by geography," she said. "Only by permission."
The room shifted slightly.
Not loudly.
But enough to feel it.
The copy team made eye contact.
The junior strategist scribbled something down like it was a quote.
Even Jules paused, then nodded.
Sydney smiled. But her eyes narrowed just enough to reveal the tension behind her lip gloss.
__
By 6:30, the building had emptied.
Leah packed up and stood at the door of Anna's office.
"You good if I dip?" she asked.
Anna nodded. "Get sleep. You've earned tomorrow's brainpower."
Leah hesitated. "Don't let her box you out."
Anna didn't look up. "She's not that organized."
Few minutes later, Ben returned.
Jacket folded over his arm. Tie undone. Hair slightly rumpled in the way that made him look both younger and heavier with the day.
He hovered near the doorway.
"You're still here."
"I'm always still here," she replied, not unkindly.
"Leah gone?"
Anna nodded. "Twenty minutes ago. I told her to rest. She's carrying more than her weight."
"She's sharp."
"She's necessary."
Ben stepped inside.
"Do you remember when they dropped your name from the award credit line?"
Anna's spine straightened.
"Which time?"
"The worst one. You were the lead. I stayed silent."
"You always did."
He didn't argue. No excuse.
Then: "I read your notebook once."
Anna blinked.
"What?"
"By accident. You left it on the table."
She said nothing.
"There was a line. You wrote: 'They keep asking me to speak softer. I keep rewriting the volume.'"
A long beat passed.
She looked away.
"That wasn't about you."
"I know."
"But it is now."
Ben didn't smile.
But something in his voice softened. "I'm not asking to be forgiven."
"Good," she said. "Because I'm not offering it."
He nodded once. Like that's exactly what he expected.
And turned to leave.
But at the door, he paused. "I am asking to be better."
Anna didn't sit.
Instead, she moved to the whiteboard, where the skeleton of the Lux campaign still lived.
Three phases. Four touchpoints. Eight deliverables.
All still hers. Even if the signatures had been forged.
She stared for a long moment.
Then picked up a marker.
Crossed out the tagline.
Wrote something new.
No slogans.
No flare.
Just the truth.
"Your memory belongs to you."
She stepped back.
And smiled.
Not the kind you give to a room.
The kind you keep to yourself.