It wasn’t conspiracy. It was math. She’d gone house to house for eight months—estates, terrace rows, converted bedsits, shipping container “flats” behind petrol stations. She’d knocked on doors, listened carefully, taken counts where no one else was looking. The census missed them. The local councils looked the other way. Some didn’t speak English, some wouldn’t open the door unless she pretended to be delivering leaflets. But the numbers added up. She logged every street, every postcode. And when she extrapolated from her samples—dozens of neighborhoods, hundreds of homes—the result was impossible to ignore.

By her estimates, there were two, maybe three times as many foreign nationals living in England as the official figures showed. It wasn’t about race. It wasn’t about politics. It was about infrastructure, planning, accountability. If the real numbers were hidden, then everything built on those numbers—budgets, schools, housing, healthcare—was a lie. But none of the editors she pitched wanted to hear it. “Too hot right now.” “Bad optics.” One even warned her, quietly, that just submitting a draft like this could land her on a list.

Now she was driving back through North London in the wet dark, the rejection still raw. She hadn't eaten all day. Her jaw ached from grinding her teeth.

Her eyes flicked toward her phone in the passenger seat, still open to the last email. She barely registered the road ahead. That’s when she saw the shape.

A person, too close, crossing.

She slammed the brakes.

A dull thump against the front bumper, a harder crack as they hit the tarmac. Her chest hit the seatbelt. The car jolted to a stop.

For a moment, nothing.

Then she saw them lying there—an outline on the wet asphalt, curled, still breathing.

“Shit,” she whispered, voice shaking, and opened the door.