“What’s Apex?” Poe asked.
“Manosphere circle jerk,” Remy said, loading the blender for the second time in the last hour.
I looked at him in surprise. How did he know about this shit?
He shrugged. “I’ve done some online digging. Todd has been a keynote speaker at Apex in the past. He’s not slated to speakthis year, but he’s a fixture at their debates. It’s where he gets a lot of his content, all curated of course. He doesn’t repost videos where he gets his ass handed to him by a woman who’s a hundred times smarter.”
I shook my head, trying to make sense of it. “How can a bot farm challenge him to a debate?”
“The bot farm will create character profiles,” Bailey explained. “One of them can goad Todd into a debate at Apex.”
“A feminist,” Maeve said. “One who sounds like she knows her shit.”
“Red meat for his core followers,” Poe said.
Bailey nodded. “That makes sense. So we create a feminist profile to taunt him, challenge him to a debate, plus a bunch of bros who say they can’t wait to watch him own her at Apex.”
I understood why she rolled her eyes. The posturing was so fucking juvenile, so fuckingembarrassing. How were assholes like Todd not embarrassed every minute of every day for needing this shit?
“He’s not on the list of attendees at Apex this year,” Remy said, looking at his phone. “And it’s next month.”
“Can he get on the schedule this late?” Poe asked.
“He’s Ethan Todd,” Remy said. “They’ll let him come if he wants to come, especially if there’s a dustup online. One sec.”
Poe shook his head as Remy started the blender.
I rubbed at my jaw, trying to see it: the fake women calling Todd a pussy and challenging him to a debate, the fake bros cheering him on, telling him they couldn’t wait to see him demolish her at Apex.
It could work.
Remy turned off the blender and started pouring his smoothie into his glass.
“Fucking finally,” I grumbled. “So how do we get our fake feminist on the debate schedule at Apex?”
It was the one piece of the puzzle I couldn’t figure out.
“That part doesn’t actually matter,” Maeve said. “It’ll be a wet dream for him if she doesn’t show.”
“So Ethan shows up at the debate, the woman won’t be there since she doesn’t exist, and Todd crows that she was too afraid to face him because she knew her arguments were weak,” Remy said.
Poe nodded. “And then we know where to find Todd.”
Everybody stopped talking, and I knew they were doing what I was doing: walking through it in my mind, seeing it all, looking for holes in the plan.
“What if he doesn’t take the bait?” I finally asked.
Maeve’s jaw hardened. “He will. He won’t be able to help himself.”
I hated that she knew Todd as well as she did, that she’d had to stew in his toxic bullshit for so long. I promised myself that when it was all over, I’d spend the rest of my life making hers beautiful and bright.
Yeah, the rest of her fucking life. If she’d let me.
But first, I was going to wipe Ethan Todd from the face of the earth.
And I was going to burn everything and everyone who’d ever helped him.
29
