[Narrator: Unknow] [Intro] The anniversary of the Chosen One. Flags above the avenues. Cameras above the flags. Drones above the cameras. The city celebrated. The city watched. [Verse 1] Lucas appeared on every screen. Not a king. Not a president. Something newer. Something harder to define. Children carried his image. Commentators repeated old predictions. The crowd applauded on cue. Across the city, Marek walked alone. [Verse 2] Geoffrey followed from a distance. Not with his feet. With drones. Small silent machines moving from rooftop to rooftop. Eleusis had drones too. Different models. Different operators. Same destination. Same man. [Pre-Chorus] The algorithms knew his route. Every street. Every turn. Every expected delay. Then an old woman fell. Marek stopped. The predictions broke. For seven minutes, nobody knew where he was. [Chorus] Thousands of eyes. Millions of data points. One ordinary man. And still they kept losing him. [Verse 3] A transport grid failure spread across the district. Traffic paused. Signals recalibrated. Hundreds of surveillance units drifted into emergency patterns. For four minutes, the city disappeared behind static. Geoffrey lost him. Eleusis lost him. Then Marek reappeared. Walking. As if nothing had happened. [Verse 4] The ceremony had already begun. Carole. Gyu-Young. Aymeric. Richard. Solène. Jane. Jo. Solana. Gabriel. Elise. Helena. The cameras loved the room. The world watched. Lucas stood at the center. The Chosen One. [Bridge] Then something unexpected happened. Not in the hall. On the screens. A technician opened a file. Then another. Then another. Fragments. Years of fragments. Audio. Images. Private moments. Volunteer recordings. V1. V2. V3. Some authorized. Some not. [Breakdown] Aymeric stopped speaking. The room became still. Jane looked at the screens. Richard looked at Lucas. Carole looked at Aymeric. Geoffrey looked at Marek. Solana looked at the faces. Helena stopped smiling. A silence large enough to hear ambition breathing. [Verse 5] Marek looked at the screens. Then at the audience. Then at the cameras. He understood before anyone explained it. The city had been watching. For a very long time. [Final Chorus] Not a criminal. Not a celebrity. Not a ruler. Just a man whose life had quietly become public property. The cameras waited. The room waited. The world waited. [Outro] For the first time that day, Marek stepped toward a microphone. No speech. No anger. No performance. Only six words. "I never agreed to this." Silence. Then one more sentence. "I refuse." The broadcast continued. The ceremony did not.
