"It’s a mistake," Mateo said, though he was already moving to the equipment locker, pulling out ballistic gear.
"It’s necessary," Juno said.
But Juno wasn't looking at me. He was looking at his secondary monitor, where a script was running a deep-dive diagnostic on a network anomaly.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Noise," Juno murmured, frowning. "I'm picking up fragments from the intercept again.Meridian Creative."
"The deepfake farm?" Stephen asked, closing his laptop.
"They're moving terabytes of data," Juno said. "Biometric synthesis. Voice mapping. I can't see the output file, just the size of the render. It’s massive."
"Is it a hit piece on me?" I asked.
"The timeline disrupts that theory," Juno noted, tapping his chin. "Deepfakes of this fidelity take weeks to render. You’ve been a target for days. Vance couldn't have spun this up fast enough to counter the interview tomorrow unless he started..."
He trailed off.
"Unless he started before the stadium," Stephen finished.
The silence that followed was heavy. The idea that Vance had a weapon in the chamber that preceded my "accident" with the hot mic was terrifying. It meant the trap was older than we thought.
"We flag it," Juno decided, though I saw the tension tighten the corners of his eyes. "We keep moving. If we stop to chase ghosts, we lose the momentum on the interview."
"Right," I said. "The interview."
We spent the next six hours turning the living room into a studio.
Stephen took the role of Mitchell King. I expected him to be clinical, reading questions off a pad. I didn't expect him to begood.
He sat opposite me, loosening his tie, slouching in his chair with a predatory indolence that perfectly mimicked King’s signature style. He didn't just ask questions; he baited hooks.
"So, Ms. Quill," Stephen drawled, peering over his glasses with a sneer that was uncomfortably accurate. "You claim to speak for the downtrodden masses of the industry. Interesting position for a woman who charges fifteen percent on gross plus VAT. Tell me, is the martyrdom billable?"
I blinked. "That... okay, that was good."
"Don't compliment the enemy," Stephen snapped, staying in character. "Answer the question. Use the aggressive pivot."
"I don't bill for martyrdom, Mitchell," I shot back, finding my rhythm. "I bill for competency. Something your researchers might want to look into."
"Defensive," Stephen-as-King noted, circling something on his pad. "You're angry. The camera hates anger on a Beta female. It reads as hysteria. Try again. Colder."
We went again. And again.
Mateo stood in the corner, playing the role of the hostile studio audience/security threat. Every time I stumbled, he made a sharp, rhythmic noise against the wall, a distraction simulation.
By the third hour, my brain felt like it had been run through a shredder.
"He’s going to bring up your father," Stephen said suddenly.
I froze. "What?"
"The missing years in your CV," Stephen said, dropping the King persona for a second. "Between university and your first firm. You were caring for him during the hospice phase. You didn't work. King will frame it as a gap in competence. He'll ask if you 'cracked' under the pressure of family duty."
"That’s..." I swallowed hard. "That’s low."
"It’s King," Stephen said. "He’ll go for the throat. Pivot."
