The film set hummed like a small city.
Cables snaked across the floor. Lights adjusted by instinct. Conversations overlapped in half-finished sentences that no one expected to resolve.
Chaos, organized just enough to function.
Perfect.
---
Aria stepped onto the soundstage in costume, face already familiar to half the crew and invisible to the other half.
"Morning," someone said, not looking up.
She nodded, smiling automatically.
No one tracked smiles on sets like this. They tracked deadlines.
---
Noah's voice murmured through her earpiece, low and buried under ambient noise. "You're inside six overlapping data zones."
"Good," Aria said. "That means no one owns the whole picture."
---
Production systems synced continuously.
Camera feeds.
Audio monitors.
Access badges.
Each one logged data to a different vendor.
"No central authority," Noah said. "Just like the old system."
"Which means," Aria replied, "it's vulnerable in the same way."
---
She moved through the set casually.
Paused by the craft table.
Listened near wardrobe.
Watched how people flowed when the director raised his voice.
Information lived in habits, not files.
---
A junior assistant brushed past her, murmuring into a headset.
"Lock down Stage B—external audit window moved up."
Aria's steps didn't slow.
She filed it away.
---
The system saw her as present, not active.
Public. Predictable. Safe.
No flags triggered.
---
Between takes, Aria checked her phone.
No missed calls.
No alerts.
They weren't watching here.
They didn't need to.
Film sets generated so much noise they masked intent naturally.
She took her mark as the director called action.
The cameras rolled.
And under the lights, surrounded by fiction, Aria began gathering something real.
Cover had never been easier.