The Charter Assembly tried to rotate the Interface role on a Tuesday, because Tuesdays were the least dramatic day of the week.
That was the reasoning, anyway. Mara could see it in the way Daria had framed the agenda—soft words, calm sequencing, a careful avoidance of anything that sounded like authority.
"Rotation is not replacement," Daria had said at the start, standing in the arts studio with a clipboard that looked too official to belong in the room. "It's not a vote of confidence or a vote of no confidence. It's a protection measure."
Mara sat in the circle like everyone else, knees drawn slightly inward, hands resting on her thighs so she wouldn't fidget. She had dressed plainly—dark sweater, jeans, hair tied back—because she'd learned that visibility did not begin with cameras. It began with the smallest cues people used to decide who mattered.
The room was fuller than usual.
Not because rotation was exciting, but because the word had traveled: Mara might step down.
People came to witness it the way people came to witness a weather system shifting direction, as if attention could influence the outcome.
Mara hated that.
Across the circle, the neat-jacket man—Victor's type, though not Victor—sat with a notebook open and pen poised. He had arrived two meetings ago and already acted as if documentation were his natural habitat.
Beside him, the tattooed man from the vote leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching the room like he expected betrayal to arrive as a casual remark.
Ms. Kline sat near the window again, posture straight, hands folded. She looked tired in a way Mara recognized: not fatigue of sleep, but fatigue of being brave.
Daria cleared her throat.
"We agreed to ninety days," Daria said, looking directly at Mara. "We also agreed to define rotation procedures before the role becomes a permanent gravity well."
Gravity well.
Daria had been reading physics metaphors lately, as if borrowed language could help them describe forces they were pretending not to create.
Mara nodded once, acknowledging the truth without endorsing the comfort of it.
Daria continued. "We have three proposed rotation models."
She held up a sheet of paper, then immediately looked guilty for holding up a sheet like a teacher.
"Model one: weekly rotation among a pool of volunteers. Model two: incident-based rotation—Interface changes after any major external engagement. Model three: split interface—two people share the role, one internal, one external."
A murmur moved around the circle.
Split interface sounded sensible. It also sounded like the beginning of departments.
Mara watched faces as they reacted.
Some looked relieved—more hands to carry load.
Some looked alarmed—more structure, more seams.
The tattooed man snorted. "Model four: no interface. We stop playing their game."
Daria's lips tightened. "That's not on the table today."
"Why not?" he challenged. "Because you already decided what we are?"
Mara felt heat rise, slow and controlled. She kept her voice even.
"No," she said. "Because people are being stopped, and the role exists to keep them from being hurt. You don't get to call that a game."
The tattooed man held her gaze, then looked away first.
Victor's type scribbled something, as if the exchange needed to be archived for later advantage.
Mara remembered the bulletin—the way her name had been used, the phrase as acknowledged by. The city had already begun turning her into a citation. If they rotated her out, would the city let her go? Or would they simply keep using her name as if she were still there?
Daria asked for volunteers.
"Who would be willing," she said carefully, "to serve as Interface for the next rotation period?"
The room didn't go silent, exactly.
It became politely still. The way a room became when everyone looked down at their hands so they didn't have to be the first one to refuse.
Mara had seen this before in other contexts: committees, panels, volunteer drives. The difference was that this room prided itself on honesty, and yet even here, honesty stumbled when it threatened comfort.
Ms. Kline raised her hand halfway, then lowered it.
A young man near the back lifted his hand, then stopped as if remembering something.
Daria waited.
The neat-jacket man raised his hand confidently.
"I can do it," he said. "I have experience with official communication. I understand institutional language."
Mara felt her stomach tighten.
Institutional language was not a skill. It was a contagion. It got into you and changed what you thought was possible.
Daria nodded cautiously. "Thank you. Anyone else?"
The tattooed man laughed once, sharp. "Of course he can."
The neat-jacket man turned, bristling. "Do you have a problem with competence?"
"I have a problem with ambition," the tattooed man replied.
Mara watched the exchange like watching two weather fronts meet.
This was the hidden fracture. Not ideology. Temperament.
Some people wanted protection.
Some people wanted purity.
Some people wanted control and called it competence.
Daria looked around again. "Anyone else?"
A woman in a gray hoodie spoke softly. "I could… maybe… but I'm on a work probation. If my name gets connected to this, I'm done."
A man with callused hands shook his head without speaking, as if he'd already run the risk calculation.
Someone else whispered, "I have kids."
The words fell into the room like small stones.
Kids. Job. Probation. Mortgage. Immigration paperwork. A sick parent. A landlord who watched the news too closely.
Mara felt something cold move through her.
They weren't refusing because they didn't care.
They were refusing because they cared and had limits.
And the committee had built a world where limits could be punished.
Daria wrote down the neat-jacket man's name.
"What's your name?" she asked him.
He smiled slightly. "Evan."
Of course it was Evan.
A name that sounded neutral, friendly, safe.
Mara watched him and saw a problem her body recognized before her mind fully shaped it:
Evan wanted the role.
People who wanted the role were the ones you should fear.
Not because they were evil.
Because they had a reason.
Daria flipped to the next page. "We should define constraints for the Interface role, regardless of who holds it. Mara drafted an initial list."
Mara felt every eye turn toward her.
She hated that, too—the way even a "draft" from her became an anchor.
Daria read the constraints aloud, then added a proposed clause:
"No Interface may enter a closed-door meeting alone."
Mara's mouth went dry.
That clause existed because of Room 2B.
Because of the way politeness had turned into managed visibility.
Daria continued. "We also propose that any request from OCC must be posted publicly within forty-eight hours, and any response posted within seventy-two."
Evan raised his hand. "That could compromise negotiations."
Mara's gaze snapped to him. "What negotiations?"
Evan smiled, patient. "Coordination. Cooperation. If we post everything, we lose flexibility."
Flexibility. Another trap word.
Flexibility for whom?
Mara kept her voice controlled. "If we don't post, we lose accountability."
Evan shrugged. "Accountability is good, but so is influence. We need to be pragmatic."
The tattooed man muttered, "There it is."
Mara could feel the room shifting. Not into agreement. Into polarization.
Pragmatic people wanted effectiveness and didn't mind blurred ethics.
Principled people wanted purity and didn't mind outcomes.
Mara wanted neither.
She wanted survival without capture.
Daria tried to mediate. "Let's not frame this as pragmatic versus pure."
Evan leaned forward slightly. "Then what is it?"
Mara answered before Daria could.
"It's about whether we become legible in their terms," Mara said. "Or whether we stay legible in ours."
Evan tilted his head. "That's a slogan."
Mara stared at him. "It's a boundary."
The conversation spiraled anyway.
Someone proposed that Evan serve as external Interface while Mara remained internal Interface.
Someone else argued that two Interfaces doubled exposure.
A young woman suggested using a rotating anonymous relay system—no single person's name, only an encrypted channel.
Evan dismissed it as "unworkable."
The tattooed man called it "cowardly," then immediately apologized to the woman who had suggested it when he saw her flinch.
Ms. Kline spoke again, voice steady. "We're pretending this is a normal volunteer role."
Everyone looked at her.
She continued. "It isn't. It's a risk magnet."
Silence.
"And the question," Ms. Kline said, "is not who is brave enough. It's who is disposable enough that the city will let them burn."
Mara felt her throat tighten.
She remembered the message: I got stopped today.
The room was full of people who would never be in a bulletin, never be in a report. People who could be pressured quietly, fired quietly, evicted quietly.
And now they were being asked to volunteer as a target to protect everyone else.
That wasn't solidarity.
That was sacrifice disguised as process.
Daria's hands trembled slightly on the clipboard. "Okay," she said. "Let's take a breath."
Mara knew what was happening.
Rotation was failing not because they lacked models.
It was failing because the role itself had changed the room. It had introduced a new axis of vulnerability. It had made the Assembly's anti-hierarchy principle collide with the reality that the outside world required contact points.
You could refuse titles inside the room.
You couldn't refuse the city outside.
Daria attempted a vote.
"Option one," she said, voice tight, "Evan serves as Interface for the next period. Option two, Mara continues until the ninety-day mark. Option three, split interface."
Evan's eyes gleamed in a way he probably thought looked like dedication.
The tattooed man stared at the floor, jaw clenched.
Mara felt the room's fatigue gather like a storm.
People wanted relief.
Relief meant giving the weight to someone else.
Someone else meant Mara, because she was already carrying it and their lives had not fallen apart yet.
Daria passed out paper ballots. Again. The Assembly's version of anonymity, protection.
Mara held her ballot and didn't mark it immediately.
She could vote for Evan and step away.
But stepping away didn't erase her name from bulletins. It didn't erase the fact that OCC already knew who to call. It didn't erase the fact that Jonah Reed had her initial in his inbox.
She could vote for herself to continue, which was absurd, but absurd things happened when you tried to avoid power.
She could vote for split interface, which sounded like compromise and felt like bureaucracy being born.
Mara checked Option two.
Mara continues.
Not because she wanted it.
Because she could not see a safer alternative that did not risk turning someone else into a casualty.
She dropped the ballot in the box like dropping a stone into water.
The tally was quick.
Daria unfolded the final slip, then looked up.
"Option one: Evan, fourteen," she said.
"Option three: split, nineteen."
"Option two: Mara continues, thirty-two."
The room exhaled, not with joy, but with something like relief.
Relief was dangerous. It made people believe the problem had been solved when all they had done was delay a different kind of harm.
Evan's smile faltered, but only briefly. He recovered too fast.
"So," he said, pleasant, "we keep Mara. Fine. But we still need an operational committee to support her."
Operational committee.
Two words that made Mara's spine go cold.
Daria blinked. "Support doesn't require a committee."
Evan spread his hands. "Then what do you call a group coordinating tasks, managing messaging, handling external relations?"
Mara looked around.
People were tired. People were scared. People wanted structure because structure felt like an answer, even when it was just a shape.
The tattooed man spoke quietly. "We didn't come here to build a smaller version of them."
Evan's smile sharpened. "Then we'll lose."
The room stiffened.
Mara felt the sentence hit like a slap.
Then we'll lose.
The first truly corrosive sentence in any movement was always that one. Because it reframed everything: not as care, not as safety, not as dignity, but as victory versus defeat.
Once you accepted that frame, you started justifying things you would have condemned yesterday.
Mara stood slowly.
The room quieted because the room had learned that when Mara stood, decisions happened. That knowledge made her feel sick.
"We are not here to win," Mara said.
Evan frowned. "That's naive."
Mara looked directly at him. "No. It's honest."
She took a breath.
"We are here to prevent a city from being reduced to one kind of order," Mara said. "If you want to win, join the committee. They're very good at winning."
A few people murmured approval, but it was muted. Approval didn't solve the fact that Evan's logic would keep returning. It would return in different mouths, wearing different faces, every time exhaustion demanded shortcuts.
Daria set down the clipboard as if it had become heavier.
"So rotation fails," Daria said, voice brittle. "We tried. We failed."
Mara shook her head. "No."
Daria looked up, confused.
"We didn't fail at rotation," Mara said. "We discovered what the role does."
She glanced at the constraints on the wall—translate, do not decide, no names, document requests.
"The Interface role creates gravity," Mara said. "Not because we want it. Because the city wants a handle."
Evan scoffed softly. "So what? You just accept it?"
Mara's eyes narrowed. "No. We name it."
She pointed at the box of ballots still on the table.
"Anonymity kept us honest," she said. "Now we have to keep ourselves honest when anonymity isn't possible."
She looked around the circle.
"I will continue," Mara said. "But we build an interface shield."
Daria's brow furrowed. "Meaning?"
Mara spoke carefully, because the wrong word would become a template.
"Meaning," she said, "no single person negotiates alone. No single person holds information alone. Not a committee. A relay. A distributed witness."
A few heads nodded slowly.
Evan opened his mouth, but Mara cut him off with a raised hand.
"And if the city wants an appointment," Mara added, "they get one. But we decide what gets carried into that room and what stays out."
She paused.
"And we stop pretending that politeness means safety."
The meeting ended late, with people stacking chairs in tired silence.
Evan lingered by the door, waiting until Mara was alone enough to approach without witnesses.
"You're afraid of competence," he said quietly.
Mara didn't look up from the chair she was folding. "I'm afraid of capture."
Evan's tone softened, as if he believed softness was persuasion. "This city is choosing. If you don't choose too, you'll be written out."
Mara stacked the chair and finally met his eyes.
"I've already been written into a bulletin without permission," she said. "I'm not interested in giving them more ink."
Evan's smile slipped. For a second, something colder showed.
"Good luck," he said.
Mara watched him leave, then turned back to the empty room.
Daria approached quietly. "He's going to cause problems."
"Yes," Mara said.
"Why keep him around?" Daria asked.
Mara exhaled. "Because if we push him out, he becomes a story. And stories travel faster than truth."
Daria nodded reluctantly.
Mara looked at the circle of scuffed wooden floor where chairs had been. She could still see the shape of people in her mind, the way they leaned, the way they avoided eye contact when asked to volunteer.
Rotation had failed.
Not because they lacked courage.
Because courage was not a renewable resource, and the committee had designed a world where participation consumed it faster than it could be replenished.
Mara picked up her phone on the way out.
There was a new email in her inbox.
OCC – Agenda for Meeting (Room 2B).
Attached: a single-page document.
Mara opened it.
The agenda was short, almost elegant.
1. Communication Norms
2. Safety Coordination Parameters
3. Charter Registry Expansion Discussion
4. Public Confidence Alignment
Mara stared at item three.
Registry expansion.
There it was, plain as a knife on a table.
They hadn't invited her to coordinate.
They had invited her to be used as a lever to make the Assembly more legible, more listable, more controllable.
She felt the familiar cold settle into her chest—not fear, not surprise, but the steady understanding that this would not stop.
Rotation failed, and in failing, it revealed the truth:
The Assembly could refuse hierarchy inside its walls.
But outside those walls, the city would keep searching for a single name to hold responsible.
And until the Assembly found a way to distribute that responsibility without dissolving into chaos—
Mara would remain the handle.
Whether she wanted to be or not.