"That's convenient."
A girl from high school during my last foster placement flashes through my mind —Megan, something. Quiet, kept to herself. Then someone photoshopped her face onto porn stills and spread them around school. She stopped coming to class after two weeks. Just... disappeared from the school entirely. Never found out what happened to her.
This asshat might not have pulled the trigger, but he loaded the gun and handed it over. That's enough.
"That's survival," he snaps. "Some of us don't have the luxury of moral high ground when rent is due."
The bitterness in his voice surprises me. According to Tyler, this guy is Caleb Huntingtonthe Third. How hard up for cash could he possibly be?
"Here," he says, opening a folder labeled simply 'Face Swap Job.' "These are all the source images they provided, and these are the composites I created."
Leaning in close, examining the files despite wanting to find fault with everything about this guy. The work is actually impressive. Clean, precise, with attention to detail that most amateurs would miss. Shadows match perfectly, lighting is consistent, and pixel density is uniform.
Would be easier to stay angry if his work was sloppy. But it's not. It's really not.
"You're good," I say.
He shrugs, but I catch the slight straightening of his posture. "It's just technical skill. I like working with images in my spare time."
"Your technical skill nearly destroyed my friend's relationship. And you're not doing this full-time?"
His glare could freeze nitrogen. "I'm pre-law, you dick. This pays my bills." He turns his back on me and goes back to work.
Ok… he’s not here to make friends.
"Can you export all of this with the metadata intact? We'll need timestamps, edit history, everything."
"Already on it." His fingers fly across the keyboard, navigating his own cloud storage with practiced efficiency. The export settings load quickly; he's done this before.
Watching him work. Maybe he's not a complete pretentious asshole. He might be morally flexible, but he knows what he's doing. And he seems genuinely committed to helping now, which is... something, I guess.
"Why did you agree to help?" The question slips out unexpectedly.
He pauses, hands hovering over the keyboard. "Because what they did was wrong. I didn't realize how wrong until I saw how upset Tyler was." He glances at me. "I'm not a complete asshole, despite what you clearly think."
"Just partially an asshole, then?"
The corner of his mouth twitches. "At least sixty percent, according to my last performance review."
Right. No smiling.This isn't some buddy-buddy moment; it's cleaning up a disaster he had a hand in making.
Tyler and Drew return as Caleb wraps up putting together the proof. He walks them through each image, explaining the manipulations in detail. His technical knowledge is solid, his explanations clear and concise.
Fuck me, he's good. Would be easier to stay annoyed if he weren't also unfairly attractive while being competent. Right. Focus on the evidence, not on how his hands move when he's explaining something.
"So all of these can be verified as fakes?" Drew asks, looking at the side-by-side comparisons on my screen.
"Definitely," Caleb confirms. "The originals have distinct digital signatures. Any forensic analysis would show these were composites."
"Good," Tyler says. "Now I just need to find Ethan and show him."
"All files are exported to a secure folder. I sent the link to your phone. Password-protected, but shareable. The evidence is solid."
As Tyler and Drew discuss next steps, Caleb begins gathering his things. He seems ready to bolt now that his part is done.
"Hold on," I say, stopping him with a hand on his arm. He tenses at the contact, and I quickly pull back, not wanting to make the guy physically uncomfortable. I'm not acomplete asshole. "We need your statement too. For the formal complaint."
"I already told them what happened," he says louder than almost everything he has said so far.
