Chapter 1 - The Monster in the Screen
I couldn't stay hidden in the dust any longer. The sound of my daughter's shattered sobs tore through my chest like a jagged knife. I slid out from under the bed, the floorboards groaning slightly beneath my weight.
Chloe gasped, scrambling backward against the headboard, her eyes wide with sheer terror. She instinctively hid her phone behind her back.
"Dad? What... what are you doing here?" she stammered, her face pale and streaked with tears.
"I came home, Chloe," I said, keeping my voice as soft and steady as I could, though my hands were trembling with rage at whoever had done this to her. I sat on the edge of the mattress. "I heard everything. Who is destroying you, sweetheart? Talk to me."
For a long moment, she just cried, shaking her head. "You can't help, Dad. They'll ruin you too."
"Try me," I said, my voice hardening into a vow.
Slowly, with trembling fingers, she brought her phone out and handed it to me. I looked at the screen. It was a private group chat. The messages were vile, threatening, and relentless. But it was the video attached that made my blood run cold. It was a heavily edited, deeply convincing deepfake video of Chloe doing something illegal and humiliating—crafted with terrifying precision.
May you like
"It's Trent Vance and his friends," Chloe whispered, her voice hollow. "They said if I don't write all their final term papers and give them five hundred dollars a week, they're sending it to the whole school. And to your boss."
Trent Vance. The son of the town's Chief of Police.
