Chapter 15 — Fracture with Rhea
Under escalating pressure, trust cracks. Amara, desperate for more proof, accuses Rhea of complicity in signing off on technology that wound up hurting half the town. Rhea, finally, breaks her silence: funding pressure from the Mayor’s office forced her to give consent; threats and NDAs locked her in place.
“I was afraid for my staff,” Rhea confesses. "I buried things. I let fear win."
They part in harsh words—Amara feels betrayed, but the archive Rhea handed over contains an important anomaly: a mention of a kill-switch protocol built into the earliest tower designs.
“Why would they need a kill-switch?” Amara wonders. The answer seems more dangerous than comforting.
She visits Kelechi at his shop. He looks thinner, his hope stretched by fear. “I don’t know what this does to us,” he says, “but I know hiding hasn’t made anything better.”
Amara leaves with the USB hidden in her notebook, determined to solve the kill-switch puzzle.
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