Chapter 63
Sixty-Three
Gina
Garth had linked his laptop to the large screen he’d wheeled in.
Wyre, Kapoor, Jacob and Briggs all sat around the table with Gina sitting the closest to Garth.
She knew her eyes were red but so were everyone else’s.
Everyone loved O’Connor. If he was with them now, there would be cakes in the middle of the table.
He’d be munching on an iced finger or a giant cookie he’d quickly bought from a petrol station.
Whatever the hour, either him or Mrs O had made sure they had sugar to keep them going.
It was hitting them all equally as hard but there was more to come and they had to do their jobs – for Harry.
After a bit of clicking and shifting through screens, Garth turned around to face everyone. ‘Operation Big Picture has revealed itself.’ He opened up a screen that showed himself as his fake person dancing embarrassingly around a room in a sexy way, with leather pants on.
Garth pointed at the screen. ‘This is the “embarrassing” video of fake me that I left in the computer, the one I let OpenMeSmiler into. Approximately fifteen minutes ago, I received an alert saying, “from watcher to watched. Now the world will see who you really are.” When I entered again to check it out… actually, let me show you.’ He navigated along the dark path, through some confusing whirls until he reached a door marked Tavern.
A few more weird screens later, he reached an end.
‘Now you can see, there are thousands of thumbnails that instantly start playing when you’re in.
The videos are of people in their rooms, doing personal things.
They are the watchers, the ones who have loyally been following OpenMeSmiler.
The tables have turned on them. They’ve been exposed.
The videos have been posted on all social media sites, on loads of forums. They’re garnering masses of clicks which are going up exponentially as we speak.
They’re being shared, commented on and more than likely downloaded.
Edwin Hammond set out to make them pay and this is all a part of his big plan. This is Operation Big Picture.’
Gina cast her eyes over some of the videos that kept automatically playing on a loop.
She spotted Brian in one of them and looked away.
Then there was Spencer alone in his office; Abel in his bedsit on his bed; Jackson sitting on the edge of his bed.
Around them – hundreds of others in the same predicament.
Garth clicked another link showing the live feeds of the watchers in their homes, their faces showing varying expressions of horror. Mouths opened. They hit their keyboards. They threw blankets over their screens and the man with the popcorn spat a mouthful out. Some ran out of the room.
Back to the previous screen. A big message filled the page.
I won’t stop until I destroy you all – Freaks!!!
Gina leaned back. There was nothing she could do to stop thousands of people’s personal videos going live. Whatever they did it would be too late. All they could do was watch it all unfold and trust that Garth was there to pick up the pieces after.
‘Shit,’ Jacob said as he looked away.
Gina took a deep breath as Garth reduced the screen. He stepped in front of it. ‘This is huge. I guess our perp did what he aimed to do and nothing we can do will reverse all this.’
Nothing they could do. Sitting around being flabbergasted was now pointless.
‘I need to get to the hospital.’ A part of her didn’t care about all the sickos that had been watching the humiliation and suffering of others.
She couldn’t shift her disappointment in Brian, who hadn’t seemed like a bad kid.
She realised, like OpenMeSmiler or Edwin, she too was disappointed in the world.
All she could think about right now was lovely, innocent, Harry O’Connor and she wanted to be close to him.
When he woke up, she was going to be there.