Chapter 195

# CHAPTER 195 ## RIVER The messages kept coming. Three weeks after Marcus's visit, my tablet had become a constant stream of requests, questions, testimonials from people who'd read Chen's report or heard about my case through the medical networks. Each one a small weight, a tiny pull on my attention, a reminder that being proof meant being public. *"My partner is in cascade. Can you tell me what to expect?"* *"I'm considering the procedure but I'm scared. How bad was the recovery really?"* *"My doctor says I'm not a candidate for integration. Can you look at my scans?"* That last one made me pause. The framework helped me recognize the impulse—to help, to fix, to be the answer everyone seemed to think I was. But it also helped me recognize the boundary. I wasn't a doctor. I was proof. There was a difference. "You're doing it again," Kael said from across the common room. They'd been watching me scroll through messages for the past twenty minutes, their own work abandoned in favor of o