Jay’s words from earlier floated through my mind.
He’d called me a hero.
A hero wouldn’t do this to an innocent person.
No.
A hero would do whatever it took to save Sebastian from this evil shit his father was doing to him… even if it meant humiliating themselves in front of thousands of people.
My body was moving before my mind could catch up, and I turned to face the crowd, painting a big, fake smile on my face.
I held up my hand, showing the audience the NeuroManipulator, and took a step away from Sebastian’s chair as I addressed them.
“Here’s to creating Neurovance history!” I cheered, making sure to project my voice into the tiny microphone clipped to my shirt.
The crowd went wild, and as I moved to step back into position, I intentionally crushed my heel into my shoe lace that perpetually came undone.
The audience gasped as I tripped and tumbled backward. I waved my arms wildly as I pretended to try to catch my fall.
Instead, I allowed the manipulator to slip out of my fingers, and I watched as it sailed through the air in a perfect arc, before shattering into hundreds of tiny, useless pieces.
Time seemed to stop.
The world held its breath for one long, pregnant moment…
Then—chaos.
The crowd waslosingtheir minds.
People were screaming in horror and fury.
‘Fire him!’
‘Fucking Murphquake!’
‘What a fucking idiot!’
‘Loser!’
‘Dumbass!’
Normally, I would be quivering in horror in a situation like this… and I had been inmanysituations like this… though, never in front of thousands of people and four international news stations.
But no, I wasn’t scared anymore. I didn’t feel ashamed.
I felt fucking relieved.
Seb’s memories were safe… for now.
I just had to figure out what to do next.
Something that sounded a lot like a siren began to blare, and NOVA’s voice cut through the angry screams of the audience.
‘Violation of zero-tolerance bullying policy detected. Several incidents of the use of the term ‘Murphquake’ have been detected in the Cortex.’
I frowned, wondering why NOVA was making such a big deal about it when I remembered Jay telling her to alert him on that first day if anyone ever called me names.
The odd desire to laugh bubbled up in my chest as I tried to push myself up off the ground. I was sure when he asked her to tell him, he hadn’t been imaginingthis.There was no way either of us could have predicted there would one day be a feral mob of Neurovance employees chanting that shitty nickname at me because I’d intentionally shattered millions of dollars’ worth of Neurovance’s IP.
