Jayden had quit her radio station. The hardest thing was saying goodbye to the mic she’d held since she was 9. She hid out of frame of cameras and never signed any media release forms. She threw away all her webcams. She didn’t ever want her voice or her face to be projected through anything electronic again. Someone might notice that she and a certain supervillain sounded exactly alike.

But she couldn’t resist the speech contest. Her English teacher had recommended her, even though she was the only engineering student in a lecture hall of 400 literature majors. Her competitive streak kicked in. She couldn’t pass up the chance to impress her teacher and show her snobbish “bachelor of fine arts” classmates up.

She spent many a sleepless night composing her speech. It was hardest to find a topic. “My Canadian Roots? Living as an Adult Orphan? Rehabilitate the Radiation Sites? Ugh. no.” She discarded idea after idea, crumpling them up mentally and throwing them into a metaphorical trash can.

It finally came to her as she was lying awake in bed. Across the room, her roommate – her new one, after her old roommate was arrested – was stirring in bed. This girl was the poster child for their watchman-riddled city: universal translator, monthly pass to the teleporter networks, a dresser stand covered in notepads and ariamps and streamers. Everything she said was recorded. Everywhere she went was documented. Everything she did must’ve been perfect, or the sheer amount of surveillance she had on her would’ve turned up something horrible anyways. Jayden thought back to her own life, away from electronics. It suddenly felt liberating. Then she knew.

She knew she had to tell the world about how suffocating their city really was.

She wrote the speech in a frenzy in one night, and when she woke up, it looked about as good as a pile of dog turds. But she was hooked onto the idea, and so she kept pounding away at it day after day until – it was ready.

When she read her speech out loud for the first time, she remembered how much she loved it all: talking to an audience, projecting her voice, being chipper and upbeat and channeling the spirit of every game show host and 1980’s DJ. Gods, she missed this.

“You’re mad and I want no part of it,” her roommate had said, but Jayden noticed the slow decline of electronics from her desk.

Jayden was shocked. All her life, she talked for the sake of talking. She loved writing and she loved her voice. She loved pretending to be more confident than she was because no one would ever see her face. All the speeches were a front; she had rarely cared about her cause. But never before had she realized that her words might actually reach people. She could make a difference.

So she threw caution to the wind and gave her speech in front of hundreds of microphones.

It was the first strike. There was no second strike before that same speech was broadcast from the roof of the Oval Office for the whole city to hear.

Her professors weren’t dumb. They made the connection between her and Announcer Underground as soon as the two lives collided.

“Jayden Mach?”

She had jumped up from her seat in the lecture pews, startled by her name being called on the PA system. She got up and awkwardly picked her way through people, murmuring sorries and pardons. She was weighed down by all her textbooks, and her papers were a mess. Her cell buzzed wildly in her hand; it wasn’t sure whether it was a bird or a lizard because it wanted so badly to escape her hand to find out.

She reached the main office after a few minutes of tense walking. Through the door, she could see watchmen talking to reception. She clasped her her key and fought down the rising urge to throw up. I might be here because I filled out some medical forms wrong, she hoped. Maybe they want to confirm that I have no living relatives. Do I have allergies? Did I put down any allergies? Maybe I won another award. Yeah, it’s probably just that architectural design conference from last month, or the solar-powered bird from physics class.

She took a deep breath. Everything is fine.

Then, the watchmen turned to her. “Jayden Mach?” One of them read from a slip of paper.

She gulped. “Yes, officers?” she said with fake cheeriness. “Is something the problem?”

One led her gently to the dean’s office. She didn’t fight. For all she knew, everything was still fine. She needed to believe everything was still fine.

The dean was sitting at her desk. She gestured to the empty chair in front of her, and Jayden took on seat on the red-and-mahogany armchair.

“Ms. Mach?” The dean began. Jayden nodded and forced a smile. The dean’s hands formed a bridge. Her foot shifted slightly. “Have you ever head of ‘Team Underground?’”

Jayden mirrored the dean’s pose and laid her hands on top of each other on the dean’s desk. “Of course. They’re a criminal team from the underground. They used to be constantly on the news.”

“Are you familiar with their leader, one who proclaims herself ‘Announcer Underground?’”

Jayden continued smiling, but the comment rubbed her the wrong way. “I know of her, though I didn’t know she was the leader. I assumed they were all equally influential.” Her voice came out a little harsher than necessary, and she toned it down.

The dean sighed. “I’m offering you an out, Ms. Mach.”

“An out from what?”

“It would be easier if you confess.”

“Confess to what?” Cold hands of dread wrapped around Jayden’s heart.

The dean pinched the bridge of her nose. “To being Announcer Underground.”