Chapter 4 Gage
FOUR
GAGE
She stayed at Tasha’s last night.
And yeah, I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
Because I’ve seen what happens to people who don’t have somewhere safe to go. The streets are full of them. Forums are full of them. Ghost stories in the making.
River Quinn doesn’t get to be one of those stories.
Not on my watch.
This morning, I’m running on three hours of sleep, a cup of the worst gas station coffee known to mankind, and a metric ton of adrenaline.
I sit in my usual chair across the aisle from her empty desk at NovaPlay Studios, pretending to debug something while my real screen is split between work logs, two dark net forums, and the backend of our internal server.
Knight’s on comms from his apartment, Ozzy is monitoring a Cathedral chat crawler from his rooftop (because he claims “airflow improves accuracy”), and Arrow’s in the back room of our place, fingers flying across his keyboard like we’re running black ops instead of vigilante recon.
Render’s… probably taking photos of pigeons and hacking street cams again. Kid’s weird, but effective.
Poe’s … who even knows what Poe is doing.
I’ve even brought on my little sister, Lark, to help. She’s combing the Cathedral forums, looking for any new threads about River.
“Anything from the honeypot?” I ask through the mic clipped to my collar.
Arrow’s voice crackles through my AirPod. “Yeah. Pinged at 3:12 a.m. Someone poked around the test server using her name as a key.”
I grip my mouse a little tighter.
“Credentials?” I ask.
Ozzy chimes in. “Not standard. It was an internal tool—NVisionAudit.”
My stomach drops. That’s our tool. NovaPlay’s proprietary QA log system. Meant for debugging in-game crashes, but with admin access, you can use it to see anything tied to a user account. Chat logs. Logins. Dev sandbox footage. Internal notes.
I minimize the browser and pull up the audit log.
There it is.
Psalm88.zip
Created by AdminMask, downloaded by Ghost88, two hours after River went dark.
“Open it,” I say.
Arrow already has it decrypting. “Password was biscuitbug. Sound familiar?”
I smile, bitter. “It’s what she named her stubbornest bug fix last year.”
He’s targeting her with things only someone on the inside would know.
The zip file opens. Inside:
Chat transcripts.
IP pings.
A stream of messages between Cathedral users referring to River by code name—“the Whale.”
“Jesus,” Ozzy mutters. “They’re hunting her like it’s a game.”
Knight’s voice cuts in, cold and sharp. “Look at this one: ‘I watched her fix Biscuit. She thinks no one saw her cry in the bathroom. She’s wrong.’”
My blood turns to ice.
Arrow says nothing. He doesn’t need to. I’m already pulling the list of employees who accessed NVisionAudit in the last month.
Seventeen users.
Only four with full admin privileges.
Only two who have access to QA tools and have been with NovaPlay longer than three years.
I freeze when I see the name.
Mason Reid
The same smug bastard who used to date River back when I first started with the company. The one she doesn’t talk about. The one who likes to whisper shit about her in the break room when he thinks no one’s listening.
Mother fucker doesn’t know, I’m always listening.
“Mason’s dirty,” I say. “We’ve got him on the log download and a matching Cathedral handle—Scripture88.”
Arrow’s already tracing the IP. “Running full packet capture now. We need to confirm he’s still active. If he is, we’ll nail him.”
“I want to go after him now.”
“Not yet,” Knight says. “He may be a pawn. If we move too early, we spook the real admin.”
Ozzy hums. “The real admin being Regent.”
The Cathedral ringleader. The guy none of us have been able to ID. Whoever he is, he’s got layers of encryption, an ego the size of a small country, and apparently, a twisted obsession with River.
“This Psalm88 file?” Render finally chimes in. “It’s curated. It’s not just logs—it’s commentary. He’s watching her. He’s cataloging reactions. He’s building a psychological profile.”
I grip my keyboard hard enough to crack plastic.
“He wants to break her,” I say.
“No,” Arrow says. “He wants to make her snap. He wants to turn her into a meme. Something the rest of the trolls can laugh at. That’s what Cathedral does. They turn pain into content.”
Not River.
She’s too brilliant. Too stubborn. Too herself to be fed to a mob like that.
I turn toward her empty desk again. The mug she used yesterday is still there. No lipstick stain—she doesn’t wear any—but the handle’s still turned left like always.
“You gonna tell her it’s you?” Ozzy asks.
I don’t answer right away. Because I don’t know.
“I’ll tell her when it’s over,” I say finally. “When she’s safe.”
“You sure that’s not just you being a coward?” Render asks, softly.
Maybe.
But for now, she thinks Mask is just some faceless digital ghost who swoops in when things get too dangerous. That’s safer. It keeps her guarded. Keeps her careful.
If she knew it was me—the guy who steals her coffee and makes dumb puns in meetings—she might let her guard down.
And I can’t risk that. Not when the walls are closing in.
“Flag Mason. Watch all outbound data packets from his terminal. I want full log access. No pings without my say so.”
Arrow sighs. “Copy that.”
“And someone ping Legal,” I add. “Let’s see if we can get his contract reviewed without raising alarms.”
“You’re gonna play it clean?” Knight says.
I smirk. “For now.”
But if he so much as looks at River again?
I’ll show him what it means to cry.