The Green Room felt like it was shrinking.
The air was thick with the smell of liniment and the mechanical hum of the air conditioner. Isa stood by the door, her thumb hovering over her phone, watching the "Bloodless" ticker crawl along the bottom of the news feed.
'THE GREAT DECEPTION' — BEACON HUB EXCLUSIVE
"They're calling it 'The Great Deception,'" she said, her voice strained. "The Beacon Hub just posted a side-by-side of your DNA markers versus Elena's. They're framing it as a marketing scam — that you used the 'Sibling Bond' to sell a story of protective masculinity."
The Fighter stood up slowly. His hand wraps trailed on the floor like white bandages. His face was a mask of pure, jagged confusion.
"What deception?" he barked, his voice bouncing off the concrete walls. "She is my sister. We ate at the same table. We hid under the same porch during the sirens in Detroit. I pulled her out of that house, Isa."
He said it like a verdict.
"How is that a lie?"
One of the junior PR assistants started to speak.
"Technically—"
Isa silenced him with a look.
"To the world, 'sister' means DNA, Champ," she said, slipping into her 'sweet agent' tone, though her eyes stayed hard. "Whoever is behind this is taking a beautiful fact — that you chose each other — and dressing it up like a conspiracy. They're making it sound like you hired a sister. Like it was a casting decision."
Elena was leaning against the far wall, arms crossed tight over her chest. She looked sick.
"It's not a 'fact,' Isa. It's our life."
Her voice was quiet, but there was something sharp underneath it.
"Why is everyone acting like they just found a body in the basement? We never hid it. We just never thought we had to explain it."
She paused.
"Who explains their family?"
"In the age of Delaney Schulz," Isa said, "everyone explains everything."
She tapped her tablet and pulled up a crisis map, spreading it across the screen like a war table.
"Here is the problem. The 'Bloodless' tag is catchy. It implies you're cold. It implies you're a fake. If we don't move tonight, the sponsors won't care about the heart of the story — they'll see a breach of contract based on a false persona."
She looked at both of them.
"We need to release a statement. Not a defense. A manifesto."
"A manifesto." The Fighter let out a short, humorless sound and wiped the blood from his lip. "I'm a boxer, Isa. Not a politician."
"Tonight, you're both."
He didn't argue. She pressed on.
"We don't say 'we aren't related.' We say: Blood doesn't make a King. Loyalty does. We make whoever ran that broadcast look like a cold-hearted eugenicist for even raising the question. We make the world feel ashamed for caring more about a DNA test than a decade of shared trauma."
The Fighter looked at Elena. Just looked at her. For a second, the System felt like it was winning; he could feel the weight of millions of eyes pressing through the walls, all of them suddenly seeing his sister like she was a stranger in a story they thought they knew.
"She's my blood," he said finally. "I don't care what the paper says. I bled for her. She bled for me. That's the only blood that matters."
✻ ✻ ✻
Something shifted in the room.
Isa stepped closer. She lowered her voice.
"Listen to me," she whispered, her voice returning to that low, soothing hum. "The broadcast was hijacked. That's our legal shield. We are filing a formal grievance with the Commission. We're going to frame this as a targeted character assassination by a rogue journalist."
"It wasn't just a journalist, Isa."
The Fighter's voice was so thin it barely carried. He wasn't looking at anyone.
"It was Leo. He was... he was looking at me while he said it. Like he was seeing through me."
"Leo was compromised," Isa said firmly, grabbing his bandaged hands. "He was a puppet. Everyone saw Milo shaking him. We play the victim card, because you are the victim. But we have to move fast. The sponsors are already hovering over the 'moral turpitude' clauses in your contracts."
Elena pushed off the wall.
"Sponsors?"
The word came out like something she wanted to spit.
"My brother just had his entire childhood turned into a horror movie for entertainment, and you're worried about the energy drink contract?"
Isa looked at her with a pained, practical sympathy.
"Elena, if the energy drink pulls out, the gym closes. If the gym closes, the legal team disappears. If the legal team disappears, whoever did this wins. This is how the world works now. It's not about the truth; it's about who can afford to keep their version of it alive the longest."
Elena stared at her. The Fighter said nothing. He was still looking at the floor, somewhere between exhausted and hollow, like a man waiting for a verdict he already knew.
Isa nodded once, already typing.
"That. Exactly that."
She didn't look up.
"Write that down," she told her assistants. "We're going live on Instagram in ten minutes. No lights, no makeup. Just the two of you, in this shitty room."
She finally looked at him.
"We're going to show them that a 'construct' can't bleed like this."
✻ ✻ ✻
The lie was never in their blood. The lie was in the people who needed proof.
> Chapter complete. The manifesto awaits. Continue to next chapter? [Y/N]