"To part is to die a little."
— Edmond Haraucourt, Rondel of Farewell (1890)
April, D-18, two and a half weeks before the election
The fluorescent lights in the campaign headquarters hummed like dying insects.
Gabriel was alone, sitting before a screen that cast blue light across his hands. The coffee maker had been empty for three hours. Dirty cups were piling up in the small kitchenette sink. Someone had left a half-eaten sandwich on Léa's desk, the bread gone hard, the lettuce brown.
He had asked everyone to go home. Marianne had been the last to leave, at eleven o'clock, with a look that said you should sleep. He had nodded. She had closed the door behind her.
The numbers were worse than what she had shown him.
On the screen, the internal polling dashboard. A red line descending like a thermometer left out in the cold. Nine percent voting intention. Nine. With a two-point margin of error, it could be seven. Seven percent was a joke. That was the score of a candidate who didn't exist.
He scrolled through the data. The curves by region. The age brackets. The socioeconomic categories.
The drop was sharp among rural voters.
He loaded another tab. The press article archive. He lined them up against the polling dates. The pattern appeared like a shadow on an X-ray: every time he spoke about digital sovereignty, the media coverage turned hostile within forty-eight hours. Le Figaro ran headlines about his "inexperience." Les Échos spoke of "unrealistic proposals." Le Point had published a piece titled "Should We Still Call Him a Candidate?", with his photo in black and white, pallid, poorly framed.
He pressed his fingers to his temples. The sleep deprivation weighed behind his eyes.
He straightened up. Took three steps toward the window. Lyon spread out below, the lights of the Part-Dieu, the towers, the Rhône invisible in the dark. He pressed his hand against the cold glass.
Someone knows what I'm going to say before I say it.
The thought had come to him two days earlier, during a metro ride. He had pushed it away. Too paranoid. Too Ghost Parliament. But it kept returning, insistent, like a door banging in the wind.
He went back to his desk. Opened Slack.
The campaign channels were silent. The last messages dated from eight o'clock. Exchanges about the flyer budget, a joke from Bastien about the vending machine coffee, a GIF of a cat falling off a shelf.
He clicked on the deleted users tab.
The system listed three since the start of the campaign. Two were interns who had left after their contracts ended. The third had no visible username. Just an identifier: U-0452.
He clicked on it.
The message history was empty. Deleted.
But there were logs. Timestamps. IP addresses.
Gabriel pulled up the terminal. He was no expert, but he could read logs. He had learned that at Sciences Po, in an elective course on political cybersecurity. The professor had said: Most leaks come from the inside. Not Russian hackers. No mysteries. Just someone who has access.
The timestamps told a story.
19/03 – 14:32 – Message sent to external contact19/03 – 14:37 – Account deleted21/03 – 09:15 – Message sent to external contact21/03 – 09:20 – Account deleted24/03 – 11:44 – Message sent to external contact24/03 – 11:49 – Account deleted
He checked the dates. On March 19th, he had spoken about platform regulation in Dijon. On the 21st, he had given an interview to France Bleu on data protection. On the 24th, he had delivered a speech on digital sovereignty in Clermont-Ferrand.
Each time, the leaks had been sent before he spoke publicly.
He examined the name of the external contact. An email address. j.dupuis@lefigaro.fr
Julie Dupuis. The journalist who had written the three most virulent articles against him.
He sat motionless before the screen. His hands lay flat on the desk. He could feel the vibration of the fluorescent lights through the floor, the hum of the fridge in the kitchenette, the ticking of the wall clock that had been out of sync with the actual time for three days.
He picked up his phone. Dialed Marianne's number.
She answered on the third ring. Her voice was drowsy, slightly hoarse.
— Gabriel? It's past midnight.
— Can you come back to the office?
A silence.
— What's going on?
— I'll show you.
She arrived twenty minutes later, hair disheveled, a coat thrown over pajamas. Her pajamas smelled of sleep and lavender. She took a seat in front of the screen without a word.
Gabriel showed her the logs.
She read them. Once. Twice. Her fingers tightened around the edge of the desk.
— Shit, she said.
— Yes.
— Do you have any idea who?
— The identifier is deleted. But the physical access logs exist. Who came into the office at those times?
Marianne straightened up. She walked around the desk, arms crossed. Her gaze moved from the screen to the window, from the window to the door.
— Me, she said. You. Lucien. Bastien once. Léa twice.
— Léa doesn't have access to the admin accounts.
— No.
— Neither does Bastien.
— No.
They fell silent.
Lucien.
Gabriel said the name in his head before saying it aloud. The word landed like a coin dropping into a well.
— Lucien, he said.
Marianne closed her eyes.
— I know, she said.
— You know what?
— I know that's what you're going to think. I know it's logical. But listen to me before you accuse him.
— I'm not accusing him. I'm looking at the facts.
— The facts say he has access. The facts don't say he did it.
— Marianne.
— I know.
She passed her hand over her face. The sleepless nights had hollowed her features, drawing shadows beneath her eyes.
— There's something you need to know, she said.
Gabriel waited.
— Lucien has been in contact with VIVRE since the start of the campaign. I know. He told me himself. He said it was networking. Discussions about public policy. Nothing compromising.
— And you didn't tell me.
— Because I thought it was true. I thought he was loyal.
— You thought.
Her eyes settled on him. They were wet but she wasn't crying. She held her arms tight against herself as if she were cold.
— I was wrong, she said.
Gabriel said nothing. He felt the anger rising in his chest — not a hot anger, not an explosive anger, but something colder, denser, a stone sinking in his stomach.
— Tomorrow morning, he said, I'm firing him.
— Gabriel.
— No. No discussion. He's done.
— He'll talk. He'll say things.
— He'll say what? That he sold my speeches to a journalist? That he sabotaged my campaign from the inside?
— He'll say you're paranoid. That you see conspiracies everywhere. That you fired your campaign director because you can't handle disagreement.
— I don't care.
— You can't afford that. Your approval is already at nine percent. If on top of that you dismiss your campaign director in a media storm...
— Marianne.
She stopped.
— I'm firing him tomorrow morning, he repeated. Are you with me or against me?
She held his gaze for a long time. The fluorescent lights hummed. The fridge started up with a click.
— I'm with you, she said. But I think you're making a mistake.
— Maybe. But it's my mistake.
The following morning, Lucien arrived at eight thirty, coffee in hand, looking relaxed.
Gabriel was waiting for him in the glass-walled office at the back of the open-plan space. Marianne was seated beside him, hands folded on the table.
Lucien came in. He saw their faces. He set his coffee on the desk.
— Sit down, said Gabriel.
Lucien settled into the chair. He crossed his legs. He seemed calm. Too calm.
— I know, said Gabriel.
— You know what?
— The leaks. The logs. Julie Dupuis. All of it.
Lucien didn't answer right away. He looked at his hands, then at the ceiling, then at the window. There was something in his expression. Not fear. Not shame. A kind of weariness, as if someone had asked him to repeat an explanation he had already given a hundred times.
— You're right, he said.
Marianne drew a sharp breath.
— It was me, Lucien continued. From the beginning. From the first speech in Villeurbanne.
— Why? asked Gabriel.
Lucien shrugged. A nearly imperceptible gesture.
— Because I believe in it.
— You believe in what?
— In what they're doing. VIVRE. The system. All of it. I don't agree with you, Gabriel. I never did. I thought you were an interesting candidate, but you've become... something else. Someone who wants to destroy what works.
— What works? Cognitive profiles? Mass surveillance? Filing away dissidents?
— Stability, said Lucien. Social peace. Can't you see that's what keeps us from civil war? That's what lets people live without fear?
— Without fear? Gabriel repeated. You call this without fear?
— Yes. Because that's reality. People want to be taken care of. They don't want freedom, they want security. You never understood that.
Gabriel stiffened. He pressed both hands flat on the desk, fingers spread.
— Clear out your desk, he said. Take your things. I don't want to see you again.
Lucien rose from the chair. He straightened his tie, a mechanical gesture, almost elegant.
— You don't understand what you're up against, Gabriel. This isn't a question of winning or losing. It's a question of whether the game still exists.
— Get out.
Lucien walked toward the door. He stopped on the threshold, hand on the handle.
— The game, he said, no longer exists. You're playing chess alone on an empty board. All the pieces are already on the other side. You can't see it yet, but you will.
The door swung open. He disappeared into the corridor.
The door closed behind him with a sharp click.
Gabriel remained standing, hands still flat on the desk. His gaze swept across the empty chair, still warm, the coffee Lucien hadn't drunk.
Marianne said nothing.
The sounds of the open-plan office came through the glass. Murmurs. Keyboards. A phone ringing somewhere. Normal life carrying on.
He stayed alone in the glass-walled office for an hour.
He went through the files Lucien had left on the shared server. Spreadsheets. Schedules. Meeting notes. Nothing important. Nothing incriminating. Lucien had been careful. He had covered his tracks, except for the logs Gabriel had found.
He knew I'd find them eventually, Gabriel thought. He left a trace on purpose.
Why?
The question circled in his head like a trapped fly.
So I'd know it was him. So I'd understand that the system is everywhere.
He left his chair. Went through the office door. Crossed the empty open-plan space. The other staff hadn't arrived yet. The fluorescent light was harsh, white, unsparing.
He went to the meeting room at the end of the corridor. The room was small, windowless, with a Formica table and four plastic chairs. He dropped into a chair. He propped his elbows on the table. He lowered his head.
Lucien's words echoed.
The game no longer exists.
All the pieces are already on the other side.
You can't see it yet, but you will.
He pulled the flip phone from his pocket.
He didn't remember picking it up. He didn't remember putting it in his pocket that morning. But there it was, in his hand, the screen cracked, the rubber keys worn smooth with time.
He turned it over. The weight was reassuring. Solid. Real.
His mind drifted toward the machine. To the red button. To the nine seconds.
He saw Lucien's face again. The game no longer exists.
Maybe it was true. Maybe the game had been rigged from the start. Maybe elections, campaigns, speeches — all of it was just a facade, a cardboard set behind which the real machine kept turning, indifferent, powerful, invincible.
But if there was no game, then there were no rules either.
And if there were no rules, then everything was permitted.
His eyes fell on the phone.
He kept it in his hand. The plastic warmed against his palm. The weight of the decision he had not yet made pressed at his fingertips. The line he had not yet crossed was waiting for him.
The fluorescent lights hummed.
Time passed.
Outside, Lyon was waking beneath a grey sky.