Page 44 of White Noise

Interesting choice.

His next message appears.

VOIDKING88: Skip the stream tonight. Just take care of yourself, everyone will understand, even if we’ll all miss that pretty face.

Her eyebrows lift.

VioletHex: Yeah, maybe.

VOIDKING88: I’ll miss you the most of course.

She laughs again, and this time it’s real enough to make something in me go cold.

I don’t like how easily it comes for him.

It isn’t jealousy. Jealousy would mean I consider him competition, and I don’t even know who the fuck he is yet. But Saga relaxed for him. She gave him something soft without making him earn it, and the fact that some nameless little screen-bound bastard thinks he has enough history with her to pull that reaction out of her irritates me more than it should.

So I find him.

Following the connection back is embarrassingly easy. Humans love pretending privacy exists while leaving pieces of themselves scattered across every account, backup, login and device they touch. One username becomes an email address. The email opens old accounts, payment records, cloud storage, forgotten permissions and enough connected hardware to make the whole idea of security feel fucking stupid.

VOIDKING88 becomes Marcus Hale within seconds.

Thirty-two. Lives alone. Works from home often enough that most of his life happens inside the same shitty little apartment. His laptop gives me the rest without much resistance: phone, television, router, doorbell, bedroom speaker, smart lights, a camera over his desk he probably thinks is inactive because the indicator never comes on.

I switch it on anyway.

Marcus is sitting at his computer typing to Saga.

Ordinary-looking fuck.

T-shirt. Sweatpants. Nothing memorable about his face. The kind of man who would disappear in a crowd and probably likes it that way because being forgettable makes people careless around him.

I ignore the message he’s sending and open everything else.

Three years of access leaves a lot behind.

At first, it’s exactly what I expect. Tips. Private sessions. Old chats. Saved clips. Archived receipts. Enough money spent to make it obvious he’s been buying pieces of her for a long fucking time.

That already annoys me.

Not because Saga took his money. That part means nothing. She sells a performance and he pays for it.

What pisses me off is the way he’s clearly convinced himself the transaction made him different.

Then I start noticing what he saves.

Not the obvious shit.

Her laughing because she forgot the camera was still on. Rolling her eyes at something in chat. Drinking from the same energy drink she threw at me. Looking offscreen because she heard a noise in another room. Tiny moments most men would skip past because they aren’t sexual enough to get off to.

Marcus keeps all of them.

I open another folder and find more.

Then another.

The organization is meticulous in a way that makes disgust crawl through me. Dates. Categories. Notes. What she wore. Whether she looked tired. Which nights she seemed irritated. Things she mentioned once and probably forgot by morning.