Chapter 13 - The Mask SlipsThe person behind the encrypted emails was none other than Arthur Sterling Jr., the wealthy corporate tycoon and chairman of the Meridian Foundation’s ethics committee—and a close personal friend of the Whitmore family.
For years, Arthur had operated as the untouchable puppet master of the district's elite circles, pulling strings behind closed doors to ensure that wealth and power remained concentrated among the privileged few. He had used Eleanor Whitmore as a convenient pawn, feeding her paranoid fears about her son's future while quietly orchestrating the grade manipulation from above.
When Maya’s forensic trace hit the public domains, Arthur’s corporate empire began to crumble overnight. Major sponsors pulled their funding within hours. Stock prices for his holding company plummeted by 34% before the closing bell on Wall Street.
Arthur attempted to call an emergency press conference at his downtown headquarters to deny the allegations, stepping up to the podium before a sea of flashing camera lights and aggressive reporters shouting overlapping questions.
"These leaked documents are malicious fabrications generated by disgruntled students using advanced AI tools!" Arthur shouted into the microphone, his face flushed with panicked fury. "The Meridian Foundation has always operated with absolute integrity!"
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Before he could utter another syllable, the massive overhead projector screen behind him—which was supposed to display his defense presentation—suddenly flickered. The corporate slides vanished.
In their place, a live-streamed terminal window popped up, displaying Maya Chen’s avatar and a continuous scroll of cryptographic hashes, time-stamped server logs, and audio transcripts of Arthur speaking directly with Eleanor Whitmore on the night before the incident.
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