An eerie silence filled the greenhouse. Suddenly, the soft techno was not enough to drown out the agitated whispers – part horrified, part intrigued.
“That’s it, everyone!” Raphael jumped up suddenly, clapping his hands theatrically with a fake smile plastered on his face. “You just witnessed our first holographic disappearance stunt. We’re all students from the city’s theater academy. Looked just real, didn’t it? Thank you for your attention!”
Confusion turned into sighs of relief and mild laughter. People started to clap and cheer before turning their attention back to their own conversations.
Raphael sat back down in his chair with a sigh, his laugh immediately fading. “Holy human,” he muttered, staring at an unseen point in front of him.
“Did that guy just—did we just witness his death?” Joey stuttered, his freckles a stark contrast with his pale face. His eyes scanned us one by one before resting on Zafyra. “Wait a second. You don’t exactly look surprised.”
“Ah, right.” Zafyra sighed, carefully wrapping her arm around my shoulder – as if she feared I might jump and get away from her at the slightest wrong movement, but I wasn’t planning on going anywhere. Not when her presence calmed me like this. “Forgot to mention. When I struck a deal with him, I meant he could choose between the option to talk and potentially get obliterated by the chip in his arm, or refuse and die a certain, much less pleasant death at my hand.”
I shivered slightly. I knew I should probably feel outrage at how casually she dismissed yet another death, but after Sybrand’s smug revelations, I couldn’t find it in me to care.
My head buried in the soft, fungi skin of her neck and my hands clutching her arms like a lifeline seemed the only safe space in a world that was anything but safe. She didn’t take her eyes off me while she started gently stroking my hair – hesitantly.
Her uncertainty melted my heart. Was this the same killer who had taken an innocent woman’s life like it was nothing?
“Oh my,” Raphael muttered, as if this were the only expression that still felt safe to him. He glanced up. “So Somanode is chipping its employees now?”
“Yup.” She nodded – I felt it in the way her throat moved against my head. “They die if they say too much.” Snickering, she lifted her arm to tap the side of her head once. “Luckily, I’ve got it all on tape.”
Joey blinked. “You—what?”
I glanced up to watch Zafyra’s smug expression. “With my built-in microphone, I recorded his whole confession – the idiot. Shame he died already, so he can’t get in trouble with Somanode for it – but now, we can and will end that company.”
Another silence fell as we were left to process the new information. I tightened my grip on Zafyra’s arm, my fingers making soft circles over her skin. She slightly squeezed my shoulder – reassuring me without words.
“Right.” Joey raised his eyebrows at the two of us. I deliberately avoided his questioning stare. “Shit,” he muttered. “This is worse than we thought. I thought we could put an end to their schemes, but this…” He swallowed hard, glancing around the table while deliberately ignoring Raphael’s pleading eyes. “God, this runs deeper than I could ever imagine. How do we even stop a malicious company when people have been voluntarily taking these beans and will most likely continue to do so? They’ve been operating below the surface for years, and our AI laws are a joke.” He snorted loudly, clenching his fists. “What’s the point in building a case when this company is clearly giving the people exactly what they want?”
Raphael opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but stopped.
Elyssa just sat there, as frozen as she had been in the biotech facility. Lucie kept shaking her head, keeping her gaze on the sketch on the beermat in front of her – I only now noticed the impressively detailed dress she’d drawn amid the chaos.
“Maybe the solution is not to take them down – because we can’t,” I said slowly when the idea formed in my head. I lifted my head, causing Zafyra to quietly mutter in protest. “But we have the information we need now, don’t we?”
Questioning and skeptical looks around the table. I flinched slightly. Once again, I was met with a feeling I knew all too well –people around me not taking me seriously. But this time, I was determined not to let it get the best of me.
“Maybe we don’t beat them by taking them to court. Maybe we don’t beat them at all.” I took a slow, unsteady breath. “But what we can do is give people a choice. By building our own simulation… one that shows the truth.”
Chapter 30.
“Are you sure?” Joey’s brushy eyebrows furrowed as he handed me the VR headset. “I know VR can be a lot for you.”
I took a deep breath before nodding. “If it’s only for a few minutes, I’ll be fine. I really want to see what you’re working on.”
With a grin that split his face in half, he jumped up to turn on the smart screen.
I couldn’t deny I was nervous. So much had happened lately, and Joey and I had barely had the time to talk.
Not bringing it up would’ve been the easy thing to do. To ignore that I had fallen for a woman who tried to kill my best friend, the cherry on top after all the lies and secrecy I had put him through lately – but I no longer wanted to be the person who runs when things get difficult. I didn’t want to lose my best friend, and he did not deserve to be pushed aside when he had only been good to me – despite everything.
And so, I had called him. Actually called him, with a racing heart and trembling hands, my usual phone anxiety amplified by uncertainty if he still wanted to talk to me after everything.
And of course, he did, because he was still Joey. When I arrived at his place, he seemed so caught up in his work, I got the feeling he’d forgotten I was coming.
Once the headset finished loading, the world exploded into neon.
I blinked against the saturated color, immediately surrounded by walls of giant pixelated faces – most of them Joey’s, but I spotted Raphael here and there – surrounding AI caricatures that morphed into each other every few seconds. Laughing, winking, sneezing. A giant screen hovered above a red carpet, and a 2D avatar of Joey – wearing a wizard hat for some reason – waved a pixel arm.
