"Hand it over, Sloane."
Cole extended his open palm toward my clenched fist.
I shoved the cracked press badge back under my collar, feeling the hard plastic press against my skin. "The raw audio belongs to me. Unless a judge hands me a court order, neither you nor Victor gets access to it."
Cole dropped his hand, his jaw tightening. "If you film my therapy sessions, you blur the medication labels."
"I agreed to blur your personal identification data," I said, adjusting the heavy camera rig on my shoulder. "I will not delete the medical intervention itself. We have a twenty-four-hour filming clause. If you walk out of treatment, you can explain your refusal to the network."
He glared at me, then spun toward the lockers.
His right knee buckled instantly.
His heavy palm slammed against the wooden bench, the sharp crack echoing in the empty locker room. He caught his weight just before hitting the floor, his knuckles turning white from the strain.
I did not reach out to help him. I kept the lens steady, framing his hunched shoulders.
"Naomi," I said into my headset microphone. "Timecode zero-four-nineteen. Make sure that segment goes straight to the remote master server."
Ten minutes later, we relocated to the private therapy room.
Cole lay flat on his back on the padded table. His training shorts were rolled up high, exposing the sharp line of his hip bone. The deep muscle stimulator hummed in the quiet room. I stepped close, angling the lens directly over his right thigh. I needed a clear shot of the wired electrodes, the fresh needle marks, and the violent muscle twitches rippling under his skin.
I glanced at the digital monitor beside the table. The dial flashed eighty-two. It sat eighteen percent higher than the team's documented safety limit.
Fourteen months ago, we stood in his dark kitchen. I had filmed a blue bottle marked with a twelve and thirty unauthorized opioid pills. Cole had pressed his forehead into my shoulder, his voice ragged, begging me to let him play just one more game before I reported the violation.
My hands trembled. The viewfinder shook for four consecutive frames.
"Why is the lens shaking?" Cole asked, his eyes cutting toward me.
I adjusted the focus ring, pushing the zoom closer to his bruised skin. "Because your muscle is sending out an alarm, Cole. Not because I still want to touch you."
His gaze dropped to my left hand on the lens barrel. He remembered how that hand used to brace his knee while I counted his rehab repetitions in our kitchen.
"Four shaking frames," he said. "That is all Victor needs to cut this into a jealous-ex segment."
"Then give him four hundred steady ones he cannot misuse."
Cole looked toward the ceiling. "You always thought evidence could save people."
"Evidence gives people choices." I corrected the horizon line until the image stopped trembling. "You took mine away."
The stimulator chirped. A warning icon flashed beside the intensity reading, then vanished when Cole reached across his body and cleared it.
"Do that again," I said.
"Do what?"
"Erase a warning while I am filming."
His hand stopped above the controls. The silence between us was not romantic. It was an admission with no signature.
I panned the camera away from his leg and caught a white clipboard wedged between two metal equipment cabinets.
The top sheet was a printed medical evaluation form. I zoomed in on the bottom section. Priya, the former head physical therapist, had written a clear recommendation: Cease all contact training for 72 hours.
Thick black ink slashed through her signature.
I framed the page number and the timestamp, hitting the capture button.
A white towel sailed through the air and landed directly over the clipboard. Cole dropped his arm back to the table. He didn't say a word to deny what I had just filmed.
The door swung open. Victor stepped in, his polished shoes silent on the rubber mat.
"Kill the camera," Victor ordered, pointing at the rig. "The team owns all medical material. Delete that last take."
Naomi's voice buzzed in my earpiece. "The contract allows hiding the diagnosis, Sloane. It does not allow erasing staff tampering. Keep rolling."
"I am not deleting anything," I said to Victor, keeping the red recording light on. "The contract is clear."
Victor scowled, checking his silver wristwatch. "I have a press conference. We will discuss your boundaries later." He turned and exited the room, letting the heavy door click shut behind him.
I lowered the camera slightly, looking directly at Cole. "Why did Priya leave the team?"
Cole shifted his gaze to the ceiling tiles. "She didn't understand how to win."
The flat, rehearsed tone gave him away. It was a team-approved script, not his own words. He refused to meet my eyes, confirming the lie without speaking it.
The room remained empty, leaving just the two of us and the humming electrical machine.
"I exported forty-seven pages of records from your logged-in tablet," I said, breaking the silence. "I know taking them was a legal gray area. But I will not let you stand on national television and call the actual drugs I found forgeries."
"You only asked for a seventy-two-hour medical pause," Cole replied, his voice dropping low. "That was your condition."
"I wanted you to heal."
"Then why aren't you surprised?" Cole asked. He sat up slowly, peeling a sticky electrode off his thigh. "Victor had your medical portal access logs. He had the tablet data. Why do you think he never actually filed the lawsuit against you over the last six months?"
My fingers tightened around the camera handle. For half a year, I thought Victor was simply waiting for the right moment to ruin me completely. Now, the unfiled lawsuit felt less like a suspended blade and more like a quiet, negotiated trade.
Cole reached over and hit the power switch on the therapy machine.
The machine whirred down. The red light died.
"Did you really think Victor kept you out of court because he has a soft heart?" Cole asked.
My thumb hovered over the record button, frozen in place.
