The smaller room smelled like fresh paint, the kind of detail nobody but Franz ever bothered to register in these spaces. Three chairs faced a half-circle of reporters, close enough that he could see which ones had already decided what they were going to write before he opened his mouth.
Noah Hart existed for rooms like this one. Franz had built him carefully, over years, a version of himself with the rough edges sanded down to something that photographed well and answered questions without handing over anything for free. The two of them weren't strangers. They just weren't the same person, and Franz had learned exactly how much of himself he could hand over to the version that did press before something in him started to cost too much.
