17. COVER-UP
alistair
The human mind is fundamentally a system of predictable inputs and expected outputs. When a vehicle traveling at approximately forty-five miles per hour collides with a concrete barrier, the kinetic energy transferred to the biological structure obeys standard physical laws.
Asphalt vs. skin.
Velocity vs. mass.
The variables are clinical. Easily calculated.
What remains entirely irrational, however, is the sequence of events that led Ariella Keinston to that specific stretch of dark tarmac. Now, she’s sedated, her breathing shallow beneath the rhythmic hiss of the ventilator inside my private medical suite.
My jaw tightens as I adjust my cuffs, smoothing the pristine linen with practiced precision.
On the stainless steel tray beside her gurney lay her personal effects: a torn crop-top with matching skirt, a set of keys, her iPhone, and a bag.
The device has an advanced prototype, custom-encrypted with a localized architecture that screams CynoTech Group—the multi-billion-dollar tech conglomerate weaponized by her cousin Adrian and her older brother Asher.
I pick up her phone. Surprisingly, it has a Kurome case too.
The screen is immaculate, protected by a reinforced sapphire crystal layer that has survived the impact entirely unscratched.
Let’s see what secrets you’ve been archiving, little kitty.
To any standard intelligence agency or digital forensic unit, a CynoTech security matrix is an impassable wall. It employs a dynamic, rotating algorithmic cipher tied directly to the biometric signature and localized hardware frequencies of the user.
But to me, a security wall is merely an equation waiting to be balanced. Every code has a frequency response, every architecture has a phase variance.
I connect the device to my primary analytical terminal via a high-speed fiber-optic interface. The screen immediately flares red, warning banners flashing across the console:
CRITICAL ALERT: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED. CYNOTECH SECURE-LINK PROTOCOL INITIATED.
Predictable. My fingers fly across the keyboard with clinical rhythm.
I don’t attempt to force the front door of her encryption. That would trigger a localized kill-switch, erasing the device’s solid-state storage and instantly alerting the CynoTech main servers in Sydney.
Instead, I exploit a minor, elegant vulnerability in the device’s hardware baseband—a microscopic latency gap in how the processor handles incoming frequency changes during a cell-tower handoff.
I mirror her device’s network state, simulating a continuous, localized loop that convinces her phone it’s still safely within her Oxford apartment’s private Wi-Fi network.
With that, the red warning banners flicker, stabilize, and then dissolve into a cold, soothing blue.
ACCESS GRANTED. DECRYPTING USER STORAGE...
I bypass her call logs and standard applications, navigating directly into her local media directories.
When the data unpacks itself onto my monitors, a small, dark grin breaks across my face—wide, unrestrained, and entirely dangerous.
It’s a museum of me.
Folder after folder, meticulously organized with an engineering student’s precision. Blurry screenshots from my YouTube livestreams where I explained circuit analysis, Fourier equations, and whatnot.
High-resolution photographs taken from the shadows of the Oxford campus—some showing me walking toward the faculty lounge, others capturing the exact angle of my jaw when I nod at some individual to greet with a smile.
There are even copies of archived corporate public filings, papers I signed under my public identity, and tracking data mapping the exact perimeter of my estate.
She hasn’t just been watching me—she has been cataloging me. Dismantling my public facade with the obsessive hunger of a hunter who refused to wait to be chased.
My eyes drift from the screens to her pale face. “You really are a magnificent little psycho, aren’t you?” I murmur while my thumb traces the edge of her phone’s casing.
She’s a girl who spent two years observing my lectures through a digital screen, operating behind the careful anonymity of the username @phasevariance.
A girl who chose to turn her obsession into a physical pursuit, tracking my vehicle on a motorcycle while wearing black leather, entirely unaware that she was dancing along the perimeter of an empire far more lethal than her family’s corporate hierarchy.
The most interesting fact is that I notice at least a few comments on each of my videos or posts under the said username. That should’ve been the first sign of her growing obsession.
But admiration is a luxury that time doesn’t accommodate. The real problem wasn’t what Ariella hid on her phone, but the digital silence she left behind.
An undergraduate student belonging to the Keinston family doesn’t simply vanish from the face of the earth for five weeks without causing a geopolitical tremor.
Her father, a man hell-bent on keeping his daughter isolated beneath his thumb, would already be looking.
Her brother Asher, the ruthless Chief Operating Officer of CynoTech, who manages their family’s darker, more violent underworld assets, would be preparing to tear England apart to locate her.
And her cousin Adrian, a man whose analytical intelligence mirrors my own clinical detachment, would already be tracking her last known GPS coordinates.
If they somehow discover she’s within a Triarch Dominion facility, the resulting collateral would disrupt decades of calculated research. So many unknown variables—amidst them, Triarch Dominion eliminating her is the most unnecessary one.
I flex my hand, a cold surge of possessive irritation simmering beneath my calm exterior. Only I get to decide what becomes of Ariella Keinston. Nobody else.
To keep her here, to ensure she remained quiet, contained, and entirely safe from both her family’s interference and the Dominion’s clinical curiosity, I have to execute a flawless deception. I have to manage the Keinstons without letting them realize they are being handled.
I open her primary messaging interface, accessing her secure communications link with her brother to find a text from him already waiting for her to answer.
Asher: Where the fuck are you, Ari? Dad is breathing down my neck. You missed the check-in.
I take a slow breath, adjusting my reading glasses as I study her previous text strings to analyze her syntax, her punctuation habits, and emotional inflections.
She uses casual formatting, distinct sentence fragments, and subtle displays of defensive sarcasm whenever her family pushes too hard.
Then I began fabricating her digital ghost.
Me: Relax. I told you I’m taking a research sabbatical for my advanced electronics modules.
Me: The Oxford labs are locked down for a high-security semiconductor project. No outside communications allowed inside the cleanrooms.
I watch the status indicator on the terminal. Three minutes later, the reply incoming from Sydney flashes on screen. Asher is directly calling her.
Shit. I don’t have any voice modulators ready at the moment.
So I cut the call.
Me: Asher no. Not now, please.
He texts immediately.
Asher: Dad is threatening to send a private transport to drag your ass back to Sydney.
Asher: Btw Adrian tried to ping your device’s primary MAC address and got a localized routing error.
Asher: What the fuck is going on, Ariella?
A muscle in my jaw clenches.
Adrian’s already probing the network. He’s too smart to be fooled by simple text messages. If he detects even a single millisecond of latency variation in the server routing, he’d realize the message isn’t originating from England.
I immediately initiate a bypass command to hijack a low-level corporate server owned by Cynotech’s European distribution branch in London and force her phone’s signal to route through their internal authorized gateway.
To Adrian’s systems, hopefully, it’d look like her device is interacting perfectly with their own corporate infrastructure.
Me: Tell Dad if he sends a car, I’ll legally change my last name and leak the blueprints for the CynoTech patents to the open-source forums.
Me: I’m an adult now so get the fuck off. I’ll be busy for at least five weeks.
Me: Five weeks this will continue like this. So stop tracking me, Asher. I mean it.
I add a sharp edge of entitlement that perfectly mirrors her performance whenever she feels crowded by her brothers.
Another long, heavy silence stretches across the digital wire.
Finally, the screen updates.
Asher: You’re a fucking pain in my ass, Ari. Fine. Five weeks only!
Asher: But you answer to EVERY TEXT or I’m flying to England myself.
Me: Deal.
Afterwards, I close the connection, severing the link before Adrian’s diagnostic routines could execute a deeper packet inspection.
I let out a slow, controlled breath, removing my glasses and tossing them onto the scattered, encrypted documents on my desk.
The immediate external variable has been neutralized. Her family would hopefully believe she’s simply throwing an academic tantrum, isolating herself within Oxford’s high-security laboratories.
As for her attendance records, I’d personally take care of them. I’ll protect her academic standing while she remains completely unconscious beneath my roof.
I walk back to the edge of the gurney, looking down at the girl who has single-handedly introduced chaos into my perfectly calculated existence.
My fingers reach out and rest against the delicate, warm curve of her neck. Beneath my palm, the rapid, erratic flutter of her pulse beat against my skin—a frantic wave that betrays her body’s internal awareness of my proximity, even through the deep sedation.
She wanted to play the hunter. She wanted to uncover the demon dressed in academic charm.
“Five weeks, Ariella,” I whisper, my thumb brushes lightly against her lower lip, smoothing away the tiny trace of dried blood.
Five weeks to reconstruct your world. To make sure that when your eyes finally open, you find everything so entirely perfect... that you’ll never realize you’re inside the cage.