PULSE CITY had an audience.
It just didn’t have one that stayed.
I pulled the last ninety days onto the larger screen between us.
Camila leaned closer. "Seven hundred thousand followers?"
"Seven hundred eighty-three thousand."
She looked at me.
"You know correcting that makes you annoying, right?"
"I’ve been told."
I switched from total reach to returning viewers.
Her expression changed.
"Oh."
Exactly.
PULSE could still produce spikes. Restaurant openings, concerts, recognizable names. Individual posts performed.
Then the viewers disappeared again.
I opened the content library while Camila clicked through a few of the stronger clips. Different faces. Different formats. Almost nothing connecting one post to the next.
"Who is she?" Camila asked, pausing on a young woman outside a restaurant.
"One of their regular contributors."
She watched another few seconds.
"I’ve seen five videos and didn’t know they had regular contributors."
I looked at her.
Camila caught it immediately.
"Don’t."
I couldn’t help the look I gave her. "You found it."
She replayed the clip.
"I know."
No introduction. No recurring segment. Nothing that gave viewers a reason to remember the woman once the video ended.
I glanced at the retention graph.
"They built a city guide."
Camila looked back at the channel.
"Not an audience."
There it was.
The numbers had shown me where to look.
Camila had understood the people inside them.
For once, neither of us had gotten there alone.
She reached for the staff list Reeves had sent us.
"Fine. You build the numbers out properly. I’ll talk to the content team."
The old split.
Just dressed better.
"I need to hear them too."
Camila looked over. "Why?"
"Because the data tells me what’s happening. It doesn’t tell me why they’re doing it."
She considered that for a moment.
"And I need the numbers before I start asking questions."
"Yes."
Camila tapped one finger against the desk.
"So you want in on the meetings."
"If I’m supposed to tell you what the numbers mean, yes."
She studied me before nodding.
"Fine. But don’t make me regret it."
While Camila sorted the content team into people she wanted to speak to first, I lowered my phone beneath the desk.
This time, I didn’t wait for the System to offer me something.
I went looking.
PLAYER — CAMILA REYES
Player Lv.1XP: 75 / 100
STANDARD QUESTS
Sends Available: 2 / 2
GENERATE OPTIONS
I selected it.
Three choices appeared.
TAKE THE LEAD
Take control of an uncertain situation and establish a direction others willingly follow.
REWARD
+25 XP+20 Presence Progress
HIDDEN
SECRETARY Role XP +1
Camila would’ve liked that one.
It rewarded exactly what she already believed she was good at.
The second option was broader.
FIND THE EDGE
Identify an overlooked advantage available to you and turn it into a measurable result.
REWARD
+30 XP+20 Perception Progress
HIDDEN
SECRETARY Role XP +1
Useful.
Easy to justify.
Then I opened the third.
USE YOUR ASSETS
Identify another person’s strongest contribution to your current objective and build your next move around it.
Their contribution must materially shape the result.
REWARD
+35 XP+15 Perception Progress
HIDDEN
SECRETARY Role XP +2
I read it again.
The first rewarded Camila for taking control.
The second rewarded her for finding an advantage.
The third rewarded her for recognizing one.
My eyes moved to Camila. She was still working through the staff list, already reorganizing it around the problem we’d found.
For the last week, she’d treated my work like something she could collect whenever she needed it. The Quest wasn’t asking her to stop using what I was good at.
It was asking her to understand it first.
That might help her.
I knew it would help me.
I selected the third option.
SEND QUEST?
USE YOUR ASSETS
[YES]
I pressed it.
Camila’s phone vibrated.
Her hand moved toward it immediately, then stopped halfway.
She stared at the phone for a second, visibly annoyed with herself, before picking it up much more casually.
I looked back at my monitor before she caught me watching.
"Huh."
I glanced over.
Camila read the Quest once, then again.
Her eyes lifted from the screen and landed on me.
Not suspiciously.
Evaluatingly.
I had to stop myself from smiling.
Of course.
She’d found her asset.
Camila looked back down and tapped the screen.
QUEST ACCEPTED
USE YOUR ASSETS
She placed the phone beside her laptop, then closed the email she’d been drafting.
"All right."
Her chair rolled closer to mine.
"Forget the content team for a minute."
She pointed at the retention graph.
"Show me exactly what you saw."
I looked at her.
Ten minutes ago, she’d wanted my analysis after I finished it.
Now she wanted to understand it before deciding what came next.
I checked the hidden panel.
SECRETARY — Lv.1
Role XP: 4 / 100Alignment: 0%
Nothing had changed yet.
She still thought she was using me.
The difference was that now she had to listen first.
Camila thought the Quest had told her to use me better.
Maybe it had.
I turned the monitor toward her.
"Start here."