Anna woke before her alarm. Again.
No dreams. No tossing. Just stillness.
She sat up slowly, the early light spilling through the windows in thin, silver lines. The city hadn't found its rhythm yet. It breathed shallow, like it hadn't committed to the day.
But Anna had.
She didn't check her phone right away. Didn't move with urgency.
She just stared at the ceiling and let the quiet settle.
Because something in her had shifted.
And the next move?
It would carry her name.
__
By 8:00 a.m., she was in the war room.
The space was still. Clean. Waiting.
Ben wasn't there. Neither was Leah. She welcomed the solitude like an old rhythm she hadn't danced to in months.
She pulled out her notebook and turned to a clean page. No planning, no bullet points—just three lines in bold strokes at the top:
Phase Three:
When they erase your name,
make them regret forgetting it.
She underlined it once. Firm. Final.
Then tapped out a message to Leah.
Anna:
Get here before Sydney.
Bring the Phase One comp. The original.
Leah:
On my way. 14 mins.
Anna:
We rewrite the room today.
At 9:02 a.m., Leah entered like a mission in motion.
"No caffeine yet. Just spite and receipts," she announced, dropping two folders and a USB drive on the table.
Anna smirked. "How armed are we?"
"Digital: triple-backed. Physical: marked, timestamped, annotated. I even added post-its for emotional damage."
Anna flipped open the folder. Inside were the original decks—the raw, unfiltered bones of the Lux campaign. Her voice. Her structure. The kind of strategy that didn't just pitch—it anchored.
"We're not updating," she said. "We're restoring."
Leah nodded. "Strategic resurrection. Got it."
By noon, Sydney struck.
A soft strike. Elegant.
A polished teaser appeared on VAST's case study portal, anonymously published. Phase One of Lux was referred to as "an agile, team-led breakthrough in adaptive strategy."
No names.
No ownership.
Just a quiet implication.
Anna read it twice. Then a third time.
Then turned to Leah. "Get me a meeting with Lux's Head of Comms."
Leah's jaw clenched. "You sure?"
"I'm done being whispered over."
__
At 1:47 p.m., Anna walked back into VAST, not as an employee, but as an author reclaiming her manuscript.
She wore black, structured, minimal. No makeup. Hair tied.
No defense. Just definition.
At the front desk, she didn't smile. Didn't apologize.
"I have a 2:00 p.m. consultation with the Lux campaign team," she said.
She was handed a badge.
No questions.
People watched as she walked through the open-concept bullpen.
Not with curiosity.
With recognition.
With memory.
Ben wasn't at his desk.
But Sydney was.
She stood by the war room window when Anna entered—poised, spine straight, mouth soft.
The room quieted the way it does before a fight no one wants to admit they're watching.
Anna placed her materials on the table like evidence at a trial.
"I'll be presenting to Lux Comms at 3:00," she said. "I've prepared the original narrative—the one that was ghosted last quarter."
Sydney didn't flinch.
But her smile was tight. Icy.
"You're not on the creative team anymore," she said.
"I never stopped being the architect," Anna replied, voice even.
Ben entered, pausing mid-step as he took in the scene.
Anna didn't look at him. But he spoke.
"She's presenting as part of the strategic handoff," he said. "It was my recommendation."
Sydney's gaze didn't shift. "Convenient."
Anna's lips curled. "No, just overdue."
The presentation was surgical.
Anna didn't embellish. She walked them through the intent, the psychological model, the emotional arc, the segmentation logic. Slide by slide, she peeled back what had been painted over.
Leah handled the visuals, stepping in cleanly with annotated versions. The tension in the room cracked when she slid in a side-by-side comparison: Anna's voice vs. Sydney's sanitized rewrite.
Ben spoke only once.
"This isn't branding. It's authorship," he said. "You erase the hand that builds, the structure falls."
And Sydney…
She didn't smile this time.
She leaned back in her chair, legs crossed, tapping a stylus once against her knee.
"Your approach is compelling," she said, eyes fixed on Anna. "Though I wonder if the client will respond better to the cleaner version. Less personal. More sellable."
Anna didn't blink.
"If the client wanted to be safe, they wouldn't have hired us."
A beat of silence.
Then: "And if they wanted forgettable, they wouldn't have approved my draft first."
Sydney's nostrils flared. Just slightly. Enough.
When the room cleared, there was no consensus.
But there was clarity.
__
Later, alone, Ben leaned against the glass, watching Anna re-pack her bag.
The room was quiet now. Not silent, quiet in the way things are when the storm has passed but the windows still rattle.
"You didn't have to walk in like that," he said, voice low.
Anna didn't look up. "I did."
"You could've sent the deck. Let the work speak."
She zipped the side pocket of her bag, then paused. "The work's been speaking. No one's been listening."
He didn't argue.
Just shifted slightly, shoulder pressed against the glass like he needed the support.
"She never saw it coming," he said.
"She thought I wouldn't show up."
Ben nodded. "She underestimated what a woman with a silenced name will do."
Anna finally looked up.
"You included?"
There it was.
A challenge. Not sharp. Not defensive. Just… bare.
Ben didn't flinch. "I underestimated how much of you I remembered wrong."
That made her pause.
He pushed off the glass, took a few steps toward the table, then stopped.
"You were never the kind of fire they could contain. But I think part of you believed you had to be."
Her throat tightened.
She hadn't expected kindness from him—not now. Not here.
But it wasn't quite kindness, was it?
It was recognition.
And it cut deeper.
"I was afraid," she said. "Not of failing. Of being right—and still getting erased."
His eyes met hers.
"You were right."
She exhaled slowly. "And it still happened."
He took one more step. Not closing the space. Just narrowing it enough to matter.
"I didn't protect you."
She didn't let him off the hook.
"No. You didn't."
They stood in it, raw and not entirely healed.
Then he said something softer than the air between them:
"I'm not asking you to forget. But I want you to know... I remember."
Anna blinked. Hard.
Then slung her bag over her shoulder.
"You don't get points for remembering the fire after you helped pour water on it."
He nodded once. Took it.
Owned it.
Then, almost to himself:
"I should've stood beside you sooner."
She reached for the door.
Paused.
Then, without turning around:
"Then stand there now. But don't expect applause for it."
And she left.