Chapter 11: THE WATCHDOG INTERVIEW
The camera light was smaller than I expected.
A single red dot on a black rectangle, steady and unblinking, pointed at my face from across the kitchen table. Marcus Webb sat behind it, a tablet in his lap, his expression professionally neutral in a way that suggested he'd spent years practicing it.
"Whenever you're ready," he said. "We're rolling."
The apartment was cramped with equipment—lights on stands, a microphone boom, cables taped to the floor. The Watchdog had sent a two-person crew: Marcus and a camera operator named Delia who hadn't said ten words since they arrived.
The modesty of the space was intentional. I'd considered doing the interview somewhere more impressive—a coffee shop, a park—but the small apartment told a better story. Regular guy. No money. No backing.
Just a man who'd done something extraordinary and was trying to figure out what came next.
"Let's start simple," Marcus said. "Tell me what happened on 48th Street."
I'd rehearsed this answer, but I made it sound unrehearsed.
"I was working the exterior shoot three blocks away. We heard the explosion. Everyone started running, and I just—" I paused. Let the moment breathe. "I don't know. I saw people on the ground, and I moved. I wasn't thinking about being brave. I wasn't thinking at all. By the time my brain caught up, I was already past the police line."
Marcus nodded. His tablet showed notes I couldn't read.
"You grabbed a prop shield. From the production."
"Yeah." A rueful almost-smile. "I know how that looks. Extras coordinator grabs a fake hero shield and runs toward a real monster. It's absurd. But it was the only thing I had that looked like it might do something, and I needed—" Another pause. "I needed something in my hands. Something between me and him."
"And when he hit you?"
"The shield shattered." I touched my cast unconsciously—the gesture was real, even if the timing was calculated. "The impact was... I don't have words for it. I flew. I hit a food cart. I remember thinking this is how I die and then the adrenaline kicked in and I got back up."
"The footage shows you getting up twice. You got hit twice."
"Yeah."
"Most people wouldn't have gotten up the first time."
I met his eyes. Let the silence stretch.
"I'm not most people." A beat. "Or maybe I am, and most people would surprise themselves if they had to."
[LIVE VIEWERSHIP: 184,000]
[BP GENERATION: +42.7/hr (ACTIVE SURGE)]
The system notification flickered at the edge of my vision. I didn't let my eyes track to it—couldn't afford the tell—but I registered the numbers.
184,000 people watching live. Belief pouring in faster than any moment since the incident itself.
The Reputation Dashboard was doing something new. Breaking down the live feed into sentence-by-sentence engagement metrics. Which phrases generated the most belief. Which moments made people lean forward.
[SENTENCE IMPACT ANALYSIS]
"I wasn't thinking about being brave" — +8 BP (Admiration surge)"I needed something between me and him" — +11 BP (Fear/Curiosity spike)"Most people would surprise themselves" — +6 BP (Identification cluster)
The system was teaching me. Every answer was a data point. Every pause was feedback.
"This is how you build a legend," I thought. "One sentence at a time."
Marcus shifted topics.
"Vought told you not to talk to the press."
"They did."
"And yet here you are."
I let myself smile. Just a little. Just enough to suggest I'd thought about this.
"Vought makes decisions that are good for Vought. I'm making decisions that are good for me." A beat. "And maybe good for the people who want to know what actually happened, instead of what Vought's PR department wants them to think happened."
[SENTENCE IMPACT: +15 BP]
["Vought told me not to talk" — HIGHEST SINGLE-SENTENCE BP GAIN]
The anti-Vought sentiment was real, and it was hungry. Every word that positioned me against the corporate machine fed into that archetype seed. The "anti-Vought hero" believer count was climbing in real time.
Marcus leaned forward slightly. "Are you saying Vought is hiding something?"
"I'm saying they used DMCA strikes to pull the original footage off three platforms." I kept my voice calm. Factual. "I'm saying their response team didn't arrive for almost twenty minutes. I'm saying there were three people on the ground and a man losing his mind to a chemical he didn't understand, and the company that makes superheroes couldn't be bothered to send one."
Silence. The camera captured it all.
"Do you blame Vought?"
"I blame whoever made that man think Compound V would fix his life." I let the anger show—just a flash, just enough to feel real. "And I blame whoever profits from a world where the only people who can help are the people who decide not to."
The interview ran another forty minutes. Questions about my background, my job, my plans. I gave answers that were true and incomplete—the safest kind of lie.
When it was over, Marcus turned off the camera and sat back.
"Off the record," he said. "Are you really just a regular guy?"
I hesitated. One beat too long.
"Yes," I said.
His eyes narrowed. Not suspicious—curious. The same look Jenna had given me on the set, the same look Mrs. Okafor had given me in the hallway.
"They can all tell something's different," I thought. "They just can't figure out what."
"I hope so," Marcus said. "Because if you're not, Vought's going to find out. And they don't like surprises."
[INTERVIEW COMPLETE]
[TOTAL BP GENERATED: +289]
[CURRENT BP: 683 | LS: 95]
[REPUTATION INDEXING — ACTIVE]
The crew packed up. Cables coiled. Lights collapsed. Twenty minutes after the interview ended, the apartment was empty and silent and mine again.
I stood in the kitchen where the camera had been and let the Reputation Dashboard glow in my peripheral vision. The numbers were still climbing—playback viewers, clips being shared, comments generating secondary belief.
[PRESENCE SUB-VALUE: 19]
Presence had nearly doubled during the interview. The system was rewarding performance—rewarding the ability to make people believe.
I thought about the question Marcus had asked off-camera. Are you really just a regular guy?
The honest answer was complicated. I'd been regular once, in another life. Now I was something else—something the system was building one belief at a time.
But "regular" was still the story. And the story was what mattered.
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