Late January in New York felt like the whole city had been plunged into a freezer and left there.
The sky over Brooklyn was a constant dull gray. The wind tunneling between buildings bit through coats. Sidewalks glittered with treacherous patches of black ice.
Olivia’s world shrank.
From her apartment to the office, from city hall to South Side, from press benches to coffee shops. The TerraNova story turned from headline-grabbing drama into a slower, denser grind.
Coverage moved from *Will the grid crash?* to *How exactly will the PAO Act be implemented?*
She wrote about oversight board nominations. About smaller startups trying to interpret the new API commitments. About a pilot program in Queens where an open-source group tested a competing transit model.
The adrenaline spikes shrank. The ethical tightrope remained.
The disclosure note—*The reporter and Mr. Morrison were in a relationship ten years ago*—sat like a tiny brand under her byline on every new piece.
It was accurate.
It also made her want to crawl out of her own skin.
Messages trickled in.
Some supportive. *Thanks for being transparent. Love your work.*
Some gross. *So did he “optimize your load balancing” too?*
Those went straight to the blocked list.
Jake texted less.
Partly because they were both slammed.
Partly, she suspected, because they were both trying not to hand anyone more screenshots.
When he did, it was often about… nothing.
> (Random) > Our South Side air quality sensor caught a spike last night. You smell that weird fire?
> My uncle burned chicken, she replied. > The entire block suffered.
> Tragedy, he wrote.
> Also, good. Sensor works.
Sometimes, he sent articles—other cities wrestling with their own smart grid dilemmas. Amsterdam. Seoul. Mexico City.
She read them all.
Sometimes, she tempted herself with his name in her notifications and let it sit, unanswered, for hours.
Not out of malice.
Out of self-preservation.
On a bitter Wednesday, she trudged up the steps of her building, fingers numb despite her gloves, to find an envelope taped to her door.
Her name. No return address. A familiar sloppy scrawl on the front.
She ripped it open inside.
A photocopied clipping from a tabloid.
A grainy photo of her and Jake from years ago, in college this time—him in a hoodie, her in an oversized jacket, sitting on a campus bench, heads bent together over a laptop.
Someone had circled their bodies in red.
Underneath, in block letters: *VULTURE*.
No note.
She stared at it for a long second.
Then tore it in half and dropped it in the trash.
Her heart hammered.
She checked the door. The hallway. The peephole.
Nothing.
No one.
She took a breath.
Texted Raj.
> FYI, someone left a fun little fan mail on my door, she wrote. > Tabloid clipping. “VULTURE” written across it. No signature.
> That’s… not ideal, he replied. > U ok?
> Fine, she lied. > Just another day in parasocial hell.
She debated telling Laura.
Told herself it was nothing.
A fluke.
She did not tell Jake.
***
Two days later, at 11:37 p.m., her phone rang with his name.
She hesitated, then answered.
“You ever sleep?” she asked.
“I could ask you the same,” he said. “You sound like you’re on your third cup of coffee.”
“Second,” she said. “I’m cutting back. My therapist says my blood is 70% caffeine.”
He snorted.
Silence hummed for a beat.
“I didn’t want to text this,” he said. “Felt… wrong.”
Alarm prickled under her skin.
“What,” she said.
“We had… an incident,” he said. “I thought you should hear it from me before someone leaks it to you or spins it into something else.”
Her stomach dropped.
“What kind of incident?” she asked sharply.
“Cyber,” he said. “Someone tried to hit our non-critical servers. Customer support. Marketing. They didn’t get far. But they tried. From what our team can see so far, it was… amateur, but… angry.”
“Angry how,” she said.
“Message left in the logs,” he said. “’NO GODS, NO GRIDS. DOWN WITH MORRISON.’ That kind of thing.”
Her spine went cold.
“Shit,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re locking down. No production systems touched. No actual damage. But it’s… a sign.”
A sign that the fight over public code had moved from hearings and op-eds into the shadows of the network.
“You reporting it?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “To the city. To our partners. To federal agencies. And… to you.”
“You know I have to write about this,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I’m not asking you not to. Just… maybe…” He exhaled. “Maybe keep the performative cruelty out of it?”
Her hackles rose.
“I don’t write cruelty for fun,” she said.
“I know,” he said quickly. “Bad phrasing. I just… between the tabloid garbage and ethics notes and now this… I’m… tired, Liv.”
The crack in his voice surprised her.
He rarely admitted fatigue. Not even when he hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours debugging something.
“How bad is it *really*?” she asked, softer.
“From a systems perspective?” he said. “Minor. Our people are good. We caught it fast. From a… human perspective? It’s a reminder that people don’t just see TerraNova as code. They see it as me. As a person whose head you can put on a sign.”
She pictured the protest placards. The chants.
“Occupational hazard,” she said.
“Of being a billionaire, yeah,” he said. “I know. I’m not asking for pity. But when it spills over onto you—”
“I got a weird note on my door this week,” she blurted, surprising herself.
He went very quiet.
“What kind of note,” he said, voice low.
“Tabloid clipping,” she said. “Old photo. ‘VULTURE’ written over it. No signature.”
“You didn’t tell me,” he said.
“It was probably nothing,” she said. “Some bored neighbor. A kid.”
“Or someone who knows where you live and doesn’t like that you’re cutting into their worldview,” he said tightly.
“Welcome to the internet,” she said. “I’ve gotten worse in my email.”
“You shouldn’t have to on your *door,*” he said. “Jesus, Liv.”
“Don’t make this about me,” she said quickly. “Your team just stopped a hack. That’s more important than my anonymous hater.”
“They’re both important,” he said. “Because they’re both about the same thing. People turning complicated systems into villains and saints. You. Me. The grid. I don’t know how to… diffuse that.”
“You can’t,” she said. “You just… manage the fallout.”
He let out a breath.
“Fault tolerance,” he said.
“What?” she asked.
“In systems design,” he said. “You build for failure. Assume things will break. You put in redundancies, not because you think you’re perfect, but because you know you’re not.”
“You think we can do that for… public opinion?” she asked. “For… us?”
He was quiet for a second.
“I think we can try,” he said. “By being boring. Consistent. Honest, even when it sucks.”
“Boring,” she repeated. “You?”
He laughed, a small sound.
“I aspire,” he said.
She lay back on her couch, staring at the ceiling crack that no one had fixed yet. It had stopped looking like New Jersey and started looking like a fault line.
“Jake,” she said.
“Yeah?” he said.
“If this gets worse,” she said. “If ethics decides I have to step away… I want you to know that won’t be because of something you did. It’ll be because the world is… stupid.”
He laughed, surprised.
“I’ll quote you on that,” he said. “’The world is stupid.’—award-winning journalist Olivia Martinez.”
“Put it on a mug,” she said.
They were quiet for a moment.
Then, impulsively, she said, “Come with me somewhere.”
He made a small, startled sound. “Now?”
“Tomorrow,” she said quickly. “Saturday. Noon. No cameras. No panels. No Manny’s.”
Suspicion and curiosity tangled in his voice. “Where?”
“Just…” She hesitated. “Text me your shoe size.”
“Excuse me?” he said.
“Shoe size,” she repeated. “Trust me.”
“I do,” he said.
There was a warmth in the words that made her chest tight.
“Ten and a half,” he added.
“Figures,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”
She hung up before she could talk herself out of it.
***
The next day, the sky was a brittle blue, the kind that made cold air feel sharper.
Olivia waited on the corner of 7th and Carroll, a blue plastic bag in one hand, her scarf pulled up over her chin.
Jake walked up two minutes after noon, hands stuffed in his coat pockets, breath fogging.
“This better not be a surprise press ambush,” he said. “Carla will murder me and then resurrect me just to murder me again.”
“No ambush,” she said. “Though I can’t promise no witnesses.”
He glanced down at the bag.
“Do I want to know?” he asked.
She pulled out a pair of old, scuffed ice skates.
“Welcome to the rink,” she said, nodding toward the entrance to the small, crowded outdoor ice arena in the park.
He stared.
“You want to put me on thin ice?” he said. “Very on-the-nose, Liv.”
“It’s either that or literal fire,” she said. “Figured this was less likely to land us in jail.”
“You think I can skate,” he said.
“I think you grew up navigating black ice on South Side sidewalks,” she said. “You’ll manage.”
He eyed the kids zooming around on the ice, some more gracefully than others.
“Bold of you to assume I’m not secretly a 90-year-old man wearing high-tech orthotics under my boots,” he said.
“If you fall, I’ll write a very sympathetic piece about how the city failed to salt the rink,” she said.
He laughed, shaking his head.
“Are those for me?” he asked, nodding at the skates.
“Yes,” she said. “Borrowed from my cousin’s ex. He has big clown feet too.”
“You’re very romantic,” he said. “Inviting me to wear another man’s shoes in public.”
Heat flickered under her scarf.
“Shut up,” she said. “We’re here to be… normal. Or as close as we get.”
He sobered slightly at that.
“Normal,” he said. “I don’t remember what that feels like.”
“Then we’ll figure it out,” she said. “On ice.”
They laced up on a bench, fingers cold and clumsy.
His hands, she noticed, were nicked along the knuckles. From what—hardware? Boxes? The random indignities of physical life?
“You should moisturize,” she said before she could stop herself.
He glanced up. “You offering?”
Her cheeks burned.
“In a metaphorical sense,” she said.
They stepped gingerly onto the rink.
It was chaos.
Kids careened. Couples clung to each other. Teenagers with earbuds in zipped like they were auditioning for some kind of urban X Games.
Jake’s first step slid.
His arms flailed.
She grabbed his sleeve on instinct.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “This is… less like walking than I remember.”
“You *remember?*” she said. “You’ve done this?”
“Once,” he said. “We brought my brother here for his eighth birthday. I lasted ten minutes before I ate it in front of the hot dog stand.”
“Tragic,” she said. “Try not to relive the trauma.”
They shuffled along the rail at first.
He adjusted quickly. His natural balance—graceful even in a server room—reasserted itself on the slippery surface.
Soon they were moving at a slow glide.
Wind kissed her cheeks, bright and sharp.
Laughter echoed—kids, adults, the occasional surprised yelp.
For ten minutes, they didn’t talk about code. Or hearings. Or ethics.
They just… moved.
At one point, a little girl with pigtails barreled past, nearly taking Jake’s legs out.
He caught her elbow, steadying her, grinning.
“Careful,” he said. “These are bad conditions for a lawsuit.”
She giggled and shot off.
Olivia’s heart did something she refused to name.
“What,” he said, catching her look.
“Nothing,” she said. “You’re just… surprisingly good with not breaking children.”
He bumped her shoulder lightly with his.
“You say that like you expected me to shove her into the wall,” he said.
“You do have a history of knocking people’s lives off course,” she said.
He winced, then smiled ruefully.
“Fair,” he said.
They circled once more.
On the far side of the rink, away from the densest cluster of kids, she slowed.
“Okay,” she said. “Interview time.”
He groaned. “You brought me here to interrogate me on skates?”
“Not for print,” she said. “For me.”
He looked at her seriously now.
“Shoot,” he said.
“Where do you see yourself in ten years,” she asked.
He snorted. “That’s your big question? Did my mom put you up to this?”
“Answer it,” she said.
He was quiet for a long moment.
“Alive,” he said finally. “Preferably.”
She raised a brow.
“You’re such a comedian,” she said.
He sighed.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That used to be so clear. ‘Running TerraNova. Scaling to every city. Being the guy people call when their grid breaks.’ Now…”
“Now?” she prompted.
“Now I’m not sure I *should* be in charge in ten years,” he said. “Of all of it. Maybe I should have… phased myself out by then. Hired someone who sleeps more. Cares less… personally.”
Her chest knotted.
“You think caring is a liability,” she said.
“In my job?” he said. “Sometimes. Caring makes you cling. To control. To outcomes. That’s not… always healthy when you’re dealing with systems this big.”
“And in… other jobs?” she asked carefully.
He looked at her.
“In… personal jobs?” he said. “I think caring is… sort of the point.”
Warmth flared low.
“Smooth,” she said.
He laughed.
“Okay, my turn,” he said. “Where do *you* see yourself in ten years?”
She considered.
“Hopefully not living in a fifth-floor walk-up with a homicidal radiator,” she said.
He smiled.
“And?” he prodded.
“And…” She hesitated. “Writing. Still. Maybe… a book.”
His eyes lit.
“You’d write a killer book,” he said. “On… this? Cities? Code?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe on… something else. Something smaller. More… human.”
“You’re already writing about people,” he said. “You just dress them up in infrastructure.”
“You’re a person dressed up in code,” she said.
“That’s… disturbingly accurate,” he said.
They glided in silence for a few seconds, the scrape of blades and distant shouts filling the air.
“Do you ever wish we’d… met later?” he asked suddenly. “When we weren’t… kids.”
Her heart tripped.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “And no.”
He looked at her, openly curious.
“Okay, journalist,” he said. “Elaborate.”
“Yes, because… we might have avoided some stupid,” she said. “We might have known how to… talk. To balance.”
“And no?” he asked.
“No,” she said, “because… I like who I am now. And a lot of that is because of… how we broke. The things I had to learn to survive that. If we’d just… drifted, or fizzled, or stayed together out of inertia… I might not have pushed this hard.”
He swallowed.
“You think I made you,” he said.
“I think you broke me,” she corrected. “And I made myself out of the pieces.”
Pain flickered in his eyes.
“And now?” he asked, voice rougher. “Do you… think I could… help put some of those pieces somewhere less jagged?”
Heat flared under her scarf.
“Always with the metaphors,” she muttered.
He smiled, a little sad.
They circled again, a little closer now.
His glove brushed her hand.
She didn’t pull away.
“Olivia,” he said quietly. “What do you… want? From me. If anything.”
The question hit like cold air in her lungs.
She could lie. Say *nothing.* Say *quotes.* Say *distance.*
Instead, she found herself saying, “I don’t know yet. That’s… the problem.”
His thumb ghosted over the back of her hand, through the glove.
“Can I make a… selfish suggestion?” he asked.
“You always do,” she said.
“Let’s… give it time,” he said. “Let the bill pass. Let the discourse move on a bit. Let you finish the formal series. Then… if you still don’t know… we revisit. Off the record. Away from panels and hearings. Just… us.”
Her chest squeezed.
He was offering… patience.
Something he’d had very little of at twenty.
“Like… a moratorium,” she said. “On… decisions.”
“A grace period,” he said. “For both of us. So you’re not choosing between a story and… me… in the middle of a crisis.”
Her throat tightened at the way he said *me*.
“And in the meantime?” she asked. “What are we?”
He smiled, crooked.
“Complicated.”
She snorted.
“Story of our lives,” she said.
He tightened his fingers briefly around hers as they slid past a clump of kids.
“Liv,” he said.
She looked up.
He was closer than she’d realized.
His eyes, dark in the winter light, held hers.
“You’re cold,” he said.
“You’re observant,” she said.
“Can I…?” he started.
“Jake,” she said, warning and invitation braided together.
He leaned in.
The world narrowed.
The noise of the rink dimmed. The sharp air warmed around the edges.
His mouth brushed hers, tentative at first.
Heat snapped down her spine.
She kissed him back.
Slow. Careful. Like a test of the ice underneath them.
His hand came up, fingers skimming her jaw, thumb warm against her cheek.
For a moment, everything else dropped away.
No ethics notes. No hearings. No tabloid clippings.
Just the taste of his breath and the familiar, impossible rightness of his mouth on hers.
A shout cut through the air.
They jolted apart just in time to avoid a teenager careening into their space.
“Sorry!” the kid yelled, not sorry at all.
They laughed, a little breathless.
Her lips tingled.
Jake’s eyes were wide, pupils blown.
“Okay,” he said. “That was… not very ‘grace period’ of me.”
Her heart hammered.
“It was… data gathering,” she said, voice a little hoarse.
He blinked. “Data gathering,” he repeated.
“Yeah,” she said. “We, uh… needed to know if there’s still… anything… physically.”
He huffed a shaky laugh.
“And…?” he asked.
She swallowed.
“Preliminary results indicate… yes,” she said.
His smile was slow, almost disbelieving.
“Good to know,” he said.
They skated in silence for another lap, shoulders brushing occasionally.
On the bench, unlacing their skates, he didn’t reach for her hand.
Outside the rink, under the pale winter sun, he looked at her.
“Grace period?” he asked again, more serious now.
She nodded.
“Grace period,” she said. “Until the bill passes. Until the series… turns into something else.”
He blew out a breath.
“Okay,” he said. “Then… can I walk you to the subway like a gentleman from a simpler time?”
“You’re about ten years too late for simpler times,” she said. “But sure.”
They walked.
At the station, he hesitated.
“Olivia,” he said.
“Yeah?” she said.
“If… if this goes the way I… hope,” he said carefully, “I want to do it right. No half-truths. No… hiding. So… consider this my formal notice.”
“Of?” she asked, heart in her throat.
“Intent,” he said quietly. “To try. When the time is right. If you still… want me to.”
Her eyes stung.
“You’re ridiculous,” she said. “And… annoying. And… infuriating.”
A small smile. “And…?”
“And,” she said, “I hear you.”
She stepped down into the subway.
Didn’t look back until the train pulled away.
On the platform, leaning against a pillar, a teenager scrolled through his phone, oblivious.
On her screen, the city’s alerts blinked.
Air quality. Heat complaints. Minor delays.
The grid hummed.
Her heart hummed with it.
Fault tolerance, she thought.
Build for failure.
But also for the possibility that, sometimes, against all odds, things held.