Chapter 2: The Ghost in the Machine
The screen displayed a timestamp: June 14, 2006. It was the night of the "Tragedy at Sea." The public had been told that Vance’s brother, Arthur, had perished in a boating accident that consolidated Vance’s grip on the committee. But the screen showed Arthur, younger and terrified, being coerced onto a private transport by the very security firm Vance currently utilized.
Vance lunged for Clara, his hand reaching for her arm, but she sidestepped him with a grace that left him stumbling. "Don't," she whispered, her voice amplified by the ballroom’s sound system, which she had successfully hijacked. "Every step you take toward me, the database sends another 50 gigabytes of these files to every major news outlet in the country. The upload is already at 80%."
The guests were no longer just witnesses; they were trapped in a panopticon of truth. The senator’s allies, men who had built their wealth on the back of Vance’s "tragedy," began to quietly edge toward the exits. But the doors had already been overridden. The digital lock-out was total. They were in the safest building in the city, which had just become the most inescapable prison.
