Charlotte's broadcast was a poison seed. In the Council chamber, Rex's optimism finally shattered into open anxiety. "She's offering stability! A return to what worked! People are scared, they're tired of the 'beautiful struggle'—they'll listen to her!"
"They will listen to their empty stomachs and dark homes first," Regina stated, her facts a cold anchor. "Our priority remains tangible results: distribution, retrofits, calories. The 'silence' she offers is a phantom."
"It's a promise," Roxana corrected, leaning against the wall. Her analysis was chillingly clear. "And promises are more filling than facts when you're hungry. She's not selling water. She's selling a memory of a time when the world made sense. That's a powerful product."
Sage felt the danger, but saw a different angle. "She's not just hiding. She's separating. She's creating a pocket of the old world. If she succeeds… it proves the old mechanics can be re-established. It proves the Song is a choice, not a necessity. That's the real threat."
Lysander nodded, his decisiveness focusing outward for the first time in weeks. "We must contain her experiment. Not with soldiers. With a better argument. We must show that the Song can provide not just beauty, but superior safety and abundance."
"How?" Valentine asked, her voice still carrying the weight of her failure, but engaged.
"We take the healing on the road," Sage said, the idea forming. "Not just the Siphoning Chime. The real thing. We find a place poisoned by the old world, a wasteland even worse than her bunker. And we heal it. Live. We broadcast that."
It was a gamble of monumental scale. But answering a scream of fear with a louder scream of progress was what the Syndicate would have done. They had to answer it with a demonstration of grace.