POV: Nova
My school photo was everywhere.
The one from two years ago where my hair was pulled back too tight and I was squinting slightly because the photographer had put the light directly in my eyes and I had not wanted to complain. I had always hated that photo. It made me look uncertain. Like I was not sure I was supposed to be there.
I supposed my father had picked it for a reason.
The headline on the first feed read: POWERLESS GIRL MISSING AFTER CONTACT WITH KNOWN CRIMINAL OPERATION. The second one was softer and somehow worse: A FATHER'S PLEA: WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER? The third one did not bother with a question. It just said: NOVA REYES, 20, LAST SEEN ENTERING DEAD ZONE TERRITORY.
I sat on my bed with Mira's tablet and I read all of them.
My father's interview was three minutes long. I watched it twice. He sat in what looked like a neighbor's living room not ours, which meant he had chosen the setting for how it looked, which meant someone had helped him choose it and he was wearing his good shirt and his eyes were wet and he talked about his daughter with the gentle worry of a man who had done nothing wrong.
"She got confused," he said to the interviewer. "She got mixed up with people who take advantage of young girls who do not know better. I just want her home safe."
Not one word about the debt.
Not one word about the collectors.
Not one word about the envelope.
Just a worried father and a missing girl and a story that had no room in it for what had actually happened.
I put the tablet face-down on the bed.
Then I picked it up again because I was apparently committed to doing this to myself.
The comments were the worst part. Not the strangers the strangers said predictable things, the kind of things people say when they have a face and a headline and fifteen seconds of attention to spend. The strangers did not matter.
It was the people I knew.
Mrs. Calloway from the fourth floor, who used to give Reo cookies and ask about his schoolwork. She had shared the story with the comment: Always worried about that girl. Father did his best with a difficult situation.
A boy from my year at school, someone I had eaten lunch near for two years: Not surprised honestly. She always seemed like she was looking for trouble.
A woman from the community center where I had volunteered three summers running, helping with the Powerless youth program: Prayers for the family. These girls need better guidance.
I had helped that woman stack chairs every Saturday for a year.
I read every comment. I do not know why. It was the same impulse that makes you press on a bruise not because it feels good but because some part of you needs to know exactly how bad it is. Needs to have the full picture. Cannot stand not knowing.
The full picture was this: the people who had known me my whole life had a story now, and the story fit neatly into things they had already half-believed, and it was easier to share than to question.
I was the difficult girl. The one who got mixed up. The one who should have known better.
My father was the sad man who had done his best.
I put the tablet face-down again and kept it there this time.
The room felt very small. I thought about going to find Zane not for comfort, I told myself, but because there were practical things to discuss about the story and what it meant for the compound's security. That was a real concern. That was a legitimate reason to go find him.
I stayed on the bed.
I was very tired. Not the physical kind, though that was there too. The kind that comes from spending years building something a reputation, a self, a way of being seen and watching it get knocked over in three minutes of footage by a man in his good shirt.
The door opened quietly.
I looked up.
Sera came in without knocking, which I did not mind. She had started doing that yesterday and I had not stopped her, which I supposed meant I had decided it was all right. She was carrying two cups of something hot tea, from the smell and she crossed the room and sat down next to me on the bed and held one out.
I took it.
She did not ask if I was okay. Did not say it would be fine. Did not tell me to stop reading the comments, which she could clearly tell I had been doing from the tablet face-down on the bed like a guilty thing.
She just sat next to me. Close enough that our shoulders touched.
We stayed like that for a long time.
"My mother sold me," Sera said eventually. Quiet and flat, the way you say a thing you have already processed past the sharp part. "Not to debt collectors. To a cousin who needed a house worker. I was fifteen. My mother told everyone I had gone to stay with family for a better opportunity." She paused. "For two years people from our neighborhood sent her messages saying how nice it was that I had a better life."
I did not say anything. I just listened.
"They were not bad people," she said. "They just believed what was easier to believe." She looked at her cup. "It hurt more than the cousin's house did, honestly. The cousin was a stranger. They were people who knew me."
I understood that completely.
I picked up the tablet. I turned it face-up and looked at the screen one more time and then I put it down permanently and pushed it to the end of the bed.
"Okay," I said. Mostly to myself.
Sera nodded like she understood what okay meant in this context, which was not fine and not over it but done looking at it for now. Done pressing on the bruise.
We drank our tea.
There was a knock at the door fast, sharp, Mira's knock. I had already learned her knock.
"Come in," I said.
She opened the door and her face was doing the focused-stillness thing, the thing that meant her brain was already running ahead of the conversation.
"There is a second story," she said. "Being published in the next hour. Different outlet this one is tied to Calder Voss's political office." She paused. "Nova. It has photos of you inside this compound."
I stood up.
"That is not possible," I said. "We have been locked down since "
"I know," Mira said. "The photos exist anyway." Another pause. The kind that meant the next part was the worst part. "They are timestamped from this morning. Someone inside this building took them this morning and had them out within hours."
The cup in my hand was warm.
I set it down very carefully on the nightstand.
Because the thing I was feeling right now needed both hands free.
Someone inside the compound.
Someone who had been here while I was here.
Someone who had watched me read those comments and drink that tea and had been taking photos and sending them out while I was doing it.
I looked at Mira.
"Find them," I said.
My voice came out very quiet.
Very steady.
Very done.