Chapter 6 - The Live Audience
The room fell into an absolute, suffocating silence, save for the faint hum of the laptop fan and the rapid, rhythmic clicking of the chat box scrolling through thousands of messages per second.
Vance stood frozen in a half-crouch, his left hand hovering near the floor, his face drained of all color until he looked like a wax figure in his dark waistcoat.
"Mrs. Ward," he said, his voice dropping an octave, losing its smooth, corporate cadence entirely. "You are holding an antique shotgun on a live global broadcast. Do you have any idea what federal agencies are watching this stream right now?"
"I hope all of them are," I said.
I shifted my position slightly, pain flaring across my ribs like a torch, but I didn't let the barrel drop an inch. The weight of the gun was heavy, my arms trembling from the exertion, but my sight remained locked on the center of his chest.
"Read the chat, Mr. Vance," I said. "Tell me what account eight-four-zero is saying."
Vance’s eyes flicked to the laptop screen for a fraction of a second, then returned to the dark iron circle of the barrel.
"They think it's a performance," he whispered through gritted teeth. "They think it's an immersive roleplay extension of the protocol."
"Then let's inform them," I said. "On the sideboard, beside your laptop, there is a red leather folder. Open it."
"Mrs. Ward—"
"Open it!" I barked, my voice echoing through the high-ceilinged living room.
Vance slowly straightened up, raising his hands to shoulder height as he stepped toward the sideboard. He reached out with one finger and flipped open the red folder I had taken from Chloe’s bedroom desk while he was setting up the tripods.
Inside were the receipts: the bank statements showing the monthly transfers from Aethelgard to Chloe’s account, the wire confirmations for the sports bar debt purchase, and the hand-written ledger where Chloe had tracked my daily lithium doses under the title Sedation Protocol - Subject A.
"Read the entry for Tuesday, November 8th," I commanded.
Vance swallowed hard, his throat making a dry clicking sound. He looked down at Chloe’s neat, rounded handwriting—the handwriting I had helped her practice on blue-lined primary paper thirty years ago.
"Read it aloud," I said. "To the eighty-four thousand people who paid five hundred dollars to watch me heal."
Vance’s voice was barely a croak. " 'Subject showed high resistance during afternoon waist measurement. Increased lithium dose to fifteen milligrams in morning tea. Mark applied pressure to lower left abdominal wall using apparatus. Subject lost consciousness for four minutes. Discoloration optimal.' "
The chat window on the laptop stopped scrolling for three full seconds—a sudden, eerie pause as thousands of viewers across the country read the transcript being captured by the camera aimed directly at the red folder.
Then the window exploded.
User_771: Jesus Christ. This is real. Somatic_Real: She's being poisoned. Mod_4: SHUT DOWN THE SERVER. SHUT IT DOWN NOW. User_884: CALL THE POLICE. Minnesota! Elmhurst Lane! Truth_Seeker: I took a screenshot. I have the bank routing number.
"You see, Mr. Vance?" I said, my thumb resting firmly on the shotgun's hammer. "The internet is very fast at math when you give them the right figures."
From the street outside, the distant, rising wail of sirens broke through the frosty morning air—not one siren, but three, four, five, their frequencies intersecting as they rushed down Elmhurst Lane from the highway.
Vance heard them. His shoulders sagged, the sharp, arrogant posture he had maintained since entering my home collapsing into the slouch of a small man who had run out of exit strategies.
"They aren't coming for me, Vance," I said quietly, lowering the rifle just three inches so it was aimed at his knee. "They already know where I am. They're coming for the man with the Delaware address and the portfolio full of forged loans."
The laptop screen suddenly went black as the remote administrator in Saint Kitts finally severed the server connection, leaving a single line of grey text in the center of the display:
BROADCAST TERMINATED BY HOST.
Vance looked at the black screen, then at the window where the red and blue lights were already flashing against the lace curtains.
"You ruined them," Vance whispered, his voice cold, hollow. "You ruined your son. You ruined your daughter. They'll never get out of prison now."
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I looked at Arthur’s hunting rifle, then at the empty spot by the front door where my husband’s stick used to stand.
"My children were already gone, Mr. Vance," I said as the front porch steps creaked under the weight of arriving officers. "You just bought the shell they left behind."
