Chapter 4

My words landed like a bombshell. Everyone stared at me with utter disbelief.

Damien's expression shifted from rage to bewilderment, and then to sheer terror.

"W-What did you just say?" he stammered.

"I said that the broadcast was my doing," I stated with a smile. "It was just a recording I played by connecting this satellite phone to Costgo's PA system."

I held up the satellite phone, waving it in the air. "The audio was just some sound effects from a horror game I downloaded online a few days ago. As for that woman's blood-curdling scream, I faked it with a voice changer."

A dead silence hung over the crowd. It was so quiet that one could hear a pin drop. Everyone stood completely still, as though frozen by a spell.

Helena's lips trembled. She looked at me as if I were some kind of monster. Meanwhile, Damien's face first turned red, then purple, then white.

He pointed at me, his finger shaking like a leaf. "Why… W-Why would you do something like this?"

"For fun, of course," I replied, an expression of feigned innocence on my face. "Don't you think it's hilarious watching a whole group of people scramble and soil themselves over a couple of sound effects?"

"You lunatic!" Damien finally snapped, roaring, "Why would you lie to us?"

"Lie to you?" I dropped the smile, my gaze turning cold. "Who's really lying here?

"Who told everyone the Costgo membership could ward off aliens? Who lured everyone here just because he was desperate for control and effectively cut off any chance of survival?

"And who coerced my own girlfriend into drugging me, all just so he could get rid of someone he couldn't stand?"

Damien's face grew a shade paler with every sentence I shot back at him.

The crowd around us began to whisper, their expressions shifting as they looked at Damien. They weren't complete fools, after all. They'd simply been blinded by their own fear.

And now, I'd simply exposed the truth.

"I'm simply giving you a taste of your own medicine," I said with a casual shrug. "You love playing king, don't you, Damien? I was just adding a little pizzazz to make your little game more fun and challenging."

Damien panicked completely. He put on a brave front and shouted, "Don't listen to him! He's just trying to drive a wedge between us! He wants us all dead!

"Think about it! If it weren't for me, you'd all be just like those people at Trader Poe's by now!"

That remark struck a chord with the group.

The broadcast might have been a fake, but the danger outside was still very real.

A middle-aged man stepped forward and asked hesitantly, "So… have the aliens actually arrived or not?"

Everyone turned their eyes toward me. However, I simply offered them a smile and said nothing in reply. I then turned away and stepped into the cold storage room before pulling the door shut behind me.

I let them stew in their own shock, fear, and speculation on the other side of that door. They could damn well figure out the answer to that question themselves.

It only took a tiny bit of provocation to shake their trust in Damien, and I'd already planted that seed of doubt in their minds.

Now, all I had to do was patiently wait for it to sprout.