Chapter 10: Public Setup

POV: Alessia Rowan

"He thinks he can burn a warehouse and pin it on me?" I asked, my fingers adjusting the brim of my plain black baseball cap. "He really thinks a cheap television show is going to save him."

Corbin stood by the passenger door of his unbranded tactical vehicle, watching me pull my dark jacket zip up to my chin. The orange light from the distant fire was reflected in his eyes.

"The news vans are already lined up across the perimeter of the Oakridge Distribution Hub," Corbin said, his tone tight and focused. "If you go down there on foot, you're stepping straight into a live broadcast. Gideon has three separate television crews filming him right now."

"That's exactly why I'm going," I said, stepping past him toward the tree line near the main road. "He built a stage. The least I can do is give him a real ending."

"Alessia, wait," Corbin said, reaching out to hand me a small black electronic drive with a glowing blue indicator light. "This is a direct bypass drive. If you plug this into the secondary video port on the main satellite truck, it overrides the live broadcast feed immediately. You won't need to ask permission from any news director."

I took the small drive from his palm, feeling its smooth surface under my thumb. "Thank you, Commander."

"I'll be watching from the outer road," Corbin said softly. "If Aegis security moves in to shut the feed down, I'll draw their focus away."

I nodded once, turned on my heel, and slipped through the darkness toward the glowing perimeter of the burning distribution hub.

The air near the Oakridge complex smelled thick with smoke and burning rubber. Bright yellow police tape stretched across the main entrance road, blocking the growing crowd of curious onlookers and shouting residents. Fire engines sat with their red and blue roof lights flashing against the dark sky, while firefighters pulled thick water hoses across the wet asphalt.

Right outside the main gate, parked in a semi-circle under bright portable studio lights, stood four large news broadcast vans.

In the center of the lights, standing right in front of three live camera lenses, was Gideon.

He wasn't wearing his suit jacket anymore. His white shirt sleeves were rolled up, his hair was messily combed over his forehead, and his face was streaked with grey soot. He held a microphone close to his mouth, his shoulders shaking as he put on a show of deep, heartbroken grief.

Beside him stood my younger sister, Nessa. She wore a simple white sweater, clutching a crumpled tissue in her hand, wiping away invisible tears every time a camera pointed in her direction.

"Please, everyone... listen to me!" Gideon cried out into the microphones, his voice cracking with emotional drama. "This warehouse was holding essential medical supplies for our city! Penicillin, fever medicine, emergency bandage kits for St. Jude Hospital!"

A female reporter holding a microphone stepped closer to him. "Mr. Foster! You claimed earlier that this facility was targeted intentionally! Who would commit such a terrible act during a health crisis?"

Gideon covered his face with his hand for three long seconds, letting out a loud, shuddering breath. When he lowered his hand, he looked straight into the central camera lens with wide, tear-filled eyes.

"It breaks my heart to say this," Gideon sobbed, his voice echoing over the portable speaker system. "It truly breaks my soul. The person responsible for this tragedy is my wife... my estranged wife, Alessia Rowan!"

The crowd of citizens behind the police tape let out a collective gasp. Cameras zoomed in close on Gideon’s face.

"Alessia Rowan?" the reporter asked, her eyes widening. "The primary heir to the Rowan Trust?"

"Yes!" Gideon yelled, pointing a trembling finger toward the burning building behind him. "Alessia has been suffering from severe emotional instability ever since her mother passed away! She became obsessed with hoarding supplies! This morning, she locked me out of our family bank accounts, stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from our estate trust, and ordered restricted medical shipments under fake names!"

Nessa stepped forward, burying her face into Gideon's shoulder while crying loudly for the cameras. "It's true! My sister has lost her mind! Gideon tried to stop her! He tried to manage the money peacefully, but she threatened us! She said if she couldn't keep the supplies for herself, no one in Blackridge City would have them!"

"She set fire to this warehouse out of pure, bitter spite!" Gideon shouted, his voice rising in dramatic fury. "She wanted to destroy the medicine so the rest of the city would suffer! I am begging the police, I am begging the state health task force—find Alessia Rowan! Lock her up before she destroys more lives!"

I stood near the back of the central broadcast van, hidden in the shadows behind a tall light stand.

Watching the two of them put on their pathetic, desperate performance felt completely unreal. In my past life, I would have been hiding in a corner, crying, wondering how my own family could lie about me so easily. I would have let them destroy my reputation while I swallowed my pain in silence.

Now, I just felt a cold, sharp satisfaction. They were digging their own graves on live television, and they didn't even know it.

"Are you seeing this performance?" a news technician muttered near the back of the main broadcast truck, holding a headset against his ear. "This is absolute gold. Ratings are through the roof across the entire state."

"Keep the live link open," the satellite engineer inside the truck replied. "The director wants three more minutes of the husband weeping."

I stepped out of the shadow silently, moving up behind the open rear door of the main satellite broadcast van.

The technician was leaning over a side console, staring at three small video monitors. Without making a sound, I reached around his shoulder, pressed the tip of my utility knife lightly against his ribs under his coat, and leaned close to his ear.

"Don't scream, don't move your hands, and don't touch your headset," I whispered softly.

The technician went stiff as a board, his eyes going wide with pure panic. "Whoa... lady! Take the equipment! Don't hurt me!"

"I don't want your equipment," I said. "I'm just making an update to your live broadcast."

I reached past his neck with my right hand, located the secondary video input slot on the satellite hub, and pushed Corbin's black electronic drive firmly into the port.

The blue indicator light on the drive flashed three times, turned solid red, and a bright green line of code swept across the engineer's central monitor.

OVERRIDE COMPLETE: BROADCAST STREAM INTERCEPTED.

Across all four news vans, the main satellite screens flickered for half a second before resetting.

Out in the bright studio lights, Gideon was still speaking passionately into the reporter's microphone.

"Alessia Rowan is a danger to society!" Gideon yelled into the camera, squeezing Nessa's hand tightly. "She stole four hundred thousand dollars from her late mother's trust fund to hoard private wealth! Look at these bank records in my phone! Look at—"

Before Gideon could finish his sentence, the giant digital news screen mounted on the side of the main broadcast truck suddenly cut away from his face.

The loud audio from the portable speakers cut off his microphone completely, replacing his voice with a clear, high-definition video recording accompanied by sharp, crisp audio.

The video on the big screen showed a brightly lit private bank teller office.

Visible in the center of the recording was Gideon himself, sitting across from a bank officer three days ago, wearing a sharp black suit.

Gideon's recorded voice boomed through the high-powered news speakers, ringing out across the entire street:

"Yes, I want the full three hundred thousand dollar insurance payout for the Oakridge Distribution Hub transferred immediately," the recorded Gideon said on the screen, smiling warmly as he handed a form to the teller. "Place it directly into my private offshore account in the Cayman Islands. Do not send a notice to my wife, Alessia Rowan."

The street went completely dead silent.

The firefighters stopped pulling their hoses. The reporters lowered their microphones. The crowd of onlookers behind the police tape stared up at the giant screen with their mouths hanging wide open.

Gideon froze mid-sentence, his arm still raised in the air, his face turning as white as a sheet of paper.

"What... what is that?" Gideon stammered, his eyes darting frantically toward the big screen above him. "What is playing on that screen?!"

The video on the screen switched automatically to a second document—a scanned, official bank audit report bearing the red seal of the State Financial Crimes Board.

The female reporter lowered her camera, pulled up her live tablet, and read the bold text flashing across the official broadcast feed out loud over her open microphone:

"Notice of Asset Recovery... Account ending in 4092... Authorized by Gideon Foster... Three hundred thousand dollars transferred from warehouse insurance fire funds to personal offshore account... Date of transfer: June 9th... three days before the fire occurred!"

The reporter snapped her head toward Gideon, her eyes sharp with absolute shock.

"Mr. Foster!" the reporter yelled, shoving her microphone right into his pale, trembling face. "Did you take out a three-hundred-thousand-dollar insurance payout on this medical warehouse three days ago before it burned down tonight?!"

"No! No! That's a lie!" Gideon shrieked, backing away from the cameras, his hands shaking so violently he dropped his phone onto the wet asphalt. "That video is fake! It's a digital edit! Alessia did this! She hacked the news feed!"

Nessa backed away from Gideon instantly, her fake tears vanishing as she stared at him in utter horror. "Gideon... what is she talking about? You said the insurance money was in my boutique account!"

"Shut up, Nessa!" Gideon screamed, turning on her in pure, unhinged panic. "Shut your mouth!"

The crowd behind the police tape burst into angry shouts and boos. People began pointing at Gideon, pulling out their phones to record his pathetic breakdown.

"He burned the warehouse himself for the insurance money!" someone in the crowd yelled.

"He framed his own wife!" another person shouted.

Two uniformed police officers who were standing near the fire engine immediately unholstered their handcuffs and began walking quickly toward Gideon, their faces dark and strict.

"Mr. Gideon Foster!" the lead officer shouted over the noise. "Stay right where you are! Put your hands on your head!"

"Get away from me!" Gideon yelled, stumbling backward over his own feet, tripping and falling hard into the dirty puddle on the road. "It wasn't me! It was Alessia! She's making you look at fake papers!"

I stepped out from behind the broadcast truck, pulling my cap down low as I walked past the shouting crowd.

I looked back one last time at Gideon groveling in the muddy water, his hands being pinned behind his back by the police officers while news cameras captured every second of his humiliation on live television.

His face was covered in wet mud and tears, his career ruined, his reputation destroyed, and his freedom gone before the market even opened.

I pulled out my phone, typed a single message into the screen, and sent it directly to Gideon's personal number while he was being handcuffed:

Your allowance is officially over.

I turned my back on the chaos, walking away into the cool dark night toward Corbin's waiting vehicle.

As I reached the passenger door of the tactical truck, my phone vibrated in my palm with a sharp, unexpected alert tone.

I looked down at the display.

It wasn't a text from Gideon, and it wasn't a bank alert.

It was an encrypted emergency broadcast coming directly from the central server at St. Jude Hospital—thirty miles away.

The message was short, printed in bold red letters across a black background:

CONTAINMENT FAILURE: PATIENT ZERO HAS BROKEN FREE FROM LEVEL 4 QUARANTINE. AIRBORNE MUTATION CONFIRMED.

I stared at the glowing red screen, my breath catching in my chest as the cold wind swept through the trees.

The virus had mutated. The apocalypse wasn't ninety days away anymore.

It was starting tonight.