Chapter 11 - The Digital Shrapnel
The screech of the police van’s tires faded into the wet, echoing silence of the Blackwood courtyard. I stood paralyzed under the cold drizzle, the metal USB flash drive burning against my palm like a glowing coal.
"Mr. Miller? Are you alright? We need to get you and your daughter to the hospital for evaluation," Detective Vance called out, jogging over with a medical kit in hand.
"Vance... stop your transport vans," I choked out, my voice barely carrying over the wind. "Julian sent something. A broadcast."
Vance stopped in his tracks, his brow furrowing. "What are you talking about?"
Before I could answer, my cell phone began to vibrate violently in my wet jacket pocket. It didn't stop at one notification; it hummed continuously in a manic, unbroken rhythm. I pulled it out. The screen was a chaotic waterfall of red alert banners: breaking news notifications from national syndicates, urgent emails from my bank, and dozens of missed calls from unknown numbers.
I unlocked the screen with a trembling thumb and tapped the topmost notification from a major national news network.
BREAKING: LOCAL EXEC FALSIFIES ACCIDENT RECORDS; MASSIVE COVER-UP EXPOSED ACROSS STATE LINES.
Below the headline was a high-resolution, unedited video file. It wasn't shot by Julian’s hidden cameras; it was pulled from an old dashcam and local traffic telemetry archives dating back three years—the exact night of the hit-and-run I had spent half a decade trying to erase from my memory.
The screen clearly displayed my face in the driver's seat, my eyes glazed with alcohol, slamming into a pedestrian crossing outside a suburban diner, followed by Elena frantically helping me drag the small body into the trunk of our sedan.
May you like
The ground seemed to drop out from beneath my feet.
"David?" Vance stepped closer, reading the headline over my shoulder, his expression instantly hardening from professional concern to absolute disgust. "What is this?"
