Chapter 5 5

Two minutes remained.

Carmen's donation bar held at ninety-four percent, but the margin was shrinking. Not fast enough to threaten her victory, but fast enough to humiliate. Fast enough to prove that whatever this Izzy was, she wasn't nothing.

Carmen watched the A.C. icon with the intensity of a drowning woman watching a lifeboat. He hadn't spoken. Hadn't donated. Hadn't moved from her viewer list to the challenger's. But he was watching. She could feel it, the weight of that attention, the calculation happening behind those gray eyes she remembered too well.

She made her decision in the space between heartbeats.

"I'm honestly in awe." She pitched her voice for vulnerable sincerity, the tone that had earned her three cosmetic contracts and a Netflix deal. "Izzy, your voice is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard on this platform. I feel almost guilty winning, knowing what you can do."

The chat filled with reassurances-no, Carmen, you deserve it, don't be so hard on yourself.

Carmen pressed her advantage. "A.C., are you there?" She used the nickname deliberately, intimate and public, the way he'd hated in the last life. "You've always appreciated real artistry. Don't you think Izzy deserves more recognition?"

In his penthouse, Ambrose's lip curled.

His perfect memory supplied three years of Carmen's micro-expressions, the particular tension around her eyes when she was performing, the slight elevation of her left eyebrow when she was lying. She was lying now. Scared, desperate, throwing someone else into the path of what she feared.

He almost admired the strategy. Almost.

"Go help her," Carmen continued, hands clasped in theatrical pleading. "For me? As a favor?"

Isabelle laughed.

The sound carried, even through the digital compression, even across the split-screen divide. She was laughing at Carmen, at the performance, at the transparent desperation of a woman who thought she was manipulating a situation she didn't understand.

"Nyx." Isabelle's subvocalization was barely a thought. "Is she-"

"Affirmative. Subject Carmen Dominguez exhibits micro-expressions and vocal stress patterns inconsistent with her known history. Cross-referencing with seventeen other world lines reveals a 97% probability of a temporal displacement event. Recommend direct observation for confirmation."

Isabelle's laughter softened into something more dangerous. A reincarnator. Playing games with a predator, thinking she was the clever one. The irony was delicious.

She let her avatar bow its head, a gesture of humble gratitude that contradicted everything in her voice. "Thank you, Carmen. That's so generous."

Ambrose's finger hovered over the close button.

He'd seen enough. The vulgarity of the platform, the desperation of the performers, the waste of his attention. He would have Arthur freeze Carmen's accounts by morning, remind her who owned the infrastructure of her success.

Then his hyperthymesia triggered.

Unbidden, uncontrolled, his brain replayed the audio waveform from five minutes prior. The aria. The specific frequency. The way it had-just for a moment-created silence in the noise.

His hand stopped.

He closed his eyes and focused, trying to recreate the sensation. The memory was perfect, mathematically precise, every harmonic accounted for. But the effect was gone. He couldn't feel it, couldn't touch it, couldn't make it real again.

His eyes opened, bloodshot and burning.

He moved the cursor from Carmen's stream to the challenger's. Clicked. The screen shifted, the cheap pink avatar filling his vision, the donation bar showing some pathetic percentage, the chat screaming with hatred and confusion.

He didn't see any of it.

He was listening for the voice. The specific frequency. The thing that had made his skull stop screaming.

Carmen saw the notification before she felt the relief.

A.C. has left the stream.

Her heart soared. Then sank. Then soared again, because the next notification came immediately: A.C. has joined Izzy_the_Inflatable's stream.

And then the gold: A.C. has gifted the galaxy fleet!

The explosion of light and sound dwarfed Cordelia's earlier generosity. Nine thousand dollars. A declaration of interest, of intent, of transfer.

Carmen smiled for real, the first time in hours.

She had no idea what she'd just done.