Chapter 5
The Watermark Nobody Sees
Aria embedded invisible timing marks in every Verity demonstration.
The viral video carried two sequences: one from her ethics demo, another assigned to a City Hall rehearsal. It proved compositing across protected sessions but did not identify the renderer.
Lila joined the analysis under written limits. Her old clip contained the same City Hall sequence, created before Verity officially held any municipal footage.
"So the city archive leaked first," Jonah said.
"Or Verity had access before procurement approval," Aria replied.
Omar confirmed Halcyon Civic maintained the rehearsal archive as a pilot subcontractor. Gavin's company had built its bid around data it was not supposed to possess.
Lila offered her original upload receipt but withheld the private source. Aria accepted the boundary. The receipt alone connected Petra's render service to Halcyon's payment account.
Jonah watched Aria document what the evidence could not prove. "Most people on camera overclaim."
"Most cameras reward it."
Their attention held for one quiet second before Mei's phone broke it.
City Hall had scheduled the final contract vote for tomorrow.
The watermark assigned to its sealed demo archive was already circulating in a third unreleased clip.