Helix was using performers like Edda to gather biometric data from audiences, feeding it into their predictive behavior algorithms. These algorithms didn't just analyze patterns – they shaped them, subtly manipulating entire communities through targeted environmental controls: light, sound, air quality, even the microscopic haptic feedback in public surfaces. Edda discovered they were essentially choreographing the movements and emotions of millions without their knowledge or consent.
When she threatened to expose them, Helix retaliated. Her parents' restaurant mysteriously burned down in a "system malfunction." The insurance claim was denied. Three months later, both her parents died in what appeared to be a routine medical procedure gone wrong. Edda herself barely survived an "accident" when her apartment's environmental systems went haywire.
She disappeared that night. The old Edda Hayes ceased to exist.

She didn’t die — she vanished.
In the weeks after the attack on her apartment, whispers spread. Friends, classmates, even coworkers at Helix asked where she'd gone. But there were no answers. Edda had stepped off the grid, severed every digital tether, every trace. 
What came back wasn’t who she had been — it was Edda Hayes, honed by loss, steeled by betrayal, and burning with resolve. She never changed her name. It wasn’t about vanishing. It was about owning the name they tried to erase.
Gone was the student, the daughter, the dreamer. In her place stood a warrior for the renegades — the growing underground resistance made up of hackers, outcasts, artists, and defectors who refused to let Helix script their lives. Her mask, cat-like and uncanny, became her signature. Not sleek and corporate, but strange, playful, defiant — a stark contrast to the synthetic uniformity of the world above. She modified it herself and it became her second skin. It made them underestimate her.
She still danced — but now her performances were acts of war. Infiltrations choreographed with grace, subversions that felt like rituals. She moved through Helix’s systems with the same elegance she once brought to a stage. Environmental controls turned against their masters. Entire buildings blacked out mid-meeting. Executives choked on filtered air turned toxic. Surveillance feeds looped nothing but empty corridors.
She didn’t just fight Helix — she rewrote the narrative.
Now, when something collapses — a drone fleet grounded, a data vault emptied, a politician exposed — people don't ask who did it.
They say: Edda Hayes is back.
And this time, she’s not dancing for applause.