Viral Transmission
Riley
Riley became aware she was waking in stages. Nothing dramatic or immediately destabilising, just a series of small interruptions to what should have been a normal morning.
The first was her phone. It was already vibrating when her awareness surfaced, a persistent, irregular disruption against the surface of her bedside table.
It pulled her further into wakefulness in fragments rather than whole pieces, each pause just long enough to suggest it had stopped before starting again.
She didn’t reach for it. Notifications were rarely urgent. Anything that required immediate attention would escalate.
The second was the silence. Not silence itself, but the absence of the sounds she had been expecting to hear. The stretch of time in which she would usually already be awake reviewing notes, structuring the day ahead passed without her noticing. That registered more than the phone.
The third was Dee.
“Riley.”
Her name was spoken lightly at first, almost absentmindedly, as though Dee had already been awake long enough to assume everyone else should be as well. Riley did not respond.
“Riley.”
Sharper this time, far closer. And then, with far less patience: “Riley, if you don’t wake up right now, I’m going to assume you’ve died and that is going to ruin my entire day.”
Riley opened her eyes slowly. The light filtering through the curtains was too bright for the hour, diffused just enough to make it tolerable but not enough to be ignored. Her focus adjusted gradually, settling on the figure standing at the end of the bed.
Deanna Hayes did not do subtle urgency.
She was already dressed, which in itself was enough to suggest that something was wrong.
Dee operated on a sliding scale of readiness that rarely aligned with early mornings unless absolutely necessary.
Today, however, she was fully put together in tailored trousers, a soft knit jumper, everything sitting exactly where it was meant to without appearing structured. Intentional, but never rigid.
Her hair sat in a loose bob, natural blonde, styled just enough to look effortless. It framed her face cleanly, drawing attention to the kind of features people tended to describe as warm before anything else. Approachable. Reassuring. Useful, Riley supposed, given her profession.
There was nothing sharp about Dee unless she chose it.
Where Riley was analytical, Dee was dynamic. Everything about her: her posture, her expression, even the way she held herself carried a kind of ease that resisted categorisation. Dee attributed it, occasionally, to her weekly yoga class.
Riley did not. The variable had not been present long enough, or consistently enough, to account for it.
Dee never had the time to go to yoga, not in the past few years.
They had known each other for just over eight years, lived together for seven years of that, and the pattern predated any structured attempt at explanation.
It was simply… intrinsic. Her presence filled space without overwhelming it. Her emotions, however, were rarely subtle. At present, they were somewhere between disbelief and poorly contained amusement.
Riley frowned slightly. “What.” It wasn’t a question so much as a request for context. Dee let out a breath that bordered on a laugh, though she clearly hadn’t decided yet whether the situation warranted concern or entertainment.
“You need to look at this,” she said, lifting her phone slightly as though that alone should be sufficient explanation.
Riley pushed herself upright, reaching for her own phone with measured reluctance. The screen lit immediately, and for a brief moment, she simply observed it.
Notifications. An excessive number of them. Messages layered over one another, emails stacked in rapid succession, missed calls sitting just beneath them. The pattern was irregular, unstructured, suggesting external input rather than controlled communication.
Riley’s frown deepened. “This is inefficient,” she said quietly, more to herself than to Dee, as she opened the first message.
It was from a colleague. Saw the segment. Interesting approach.
Riley paused. The phrasing was vague. She opened another.
Are you actually doing this?
Another.
Call me when you can.
Riley’s gaze lingered on the message from her boss for a fraction longer than the others.
That one, at least, was clear. She exhaled slowly, already reaching for the contact before she had fully decided to act.
If the segment prompted a response from her supervisor this quickly, then the deviation had been noted.
She assumed based off the text that she was realistically going to be…
“Don’t.”
Dee’s hand moved faster than Riley expected, closing lightly over her wrist before she could press call. Riley looked up, her expression sharpening slightly. “I need to respond.”
“No,” Dee said, far too certain. “You need to understand what you’re responding to first.”
Riley frowned. “I am aware of the segment, Deanna.”
Dee gave her a long and pointed look, deeply unimpressed. “Riley, love,” she said, “this is not about the segment anymore.”
She shifted, turning her phone back toward her and unlocking it with quick, practised movements. There was a brief pause as she navigated, then she held it out again. “Just watch.”
Riley resisted briefly. The action itself didn’t bother her nearly as much as what it implied: there was something she missed.
Then she took the phone. The video was already playing. Not the full segment, an edited clip.
“Alright,” he said. “Then let’s test it.” A pause. “Yes.” Cut.
Riley’s expression didn’t change. “This is incomplete,” she said.
Dee made a quiet sound of disbelief. “That’s not the point.”
“The context has been removed,” Riley continued, handing the phone back. “Whoever the user montgomerysandwich is modified the progression of the discussion, which is necessary to understand the argument.”
“No one cares about the structure of the argument,” Dee said, almost gently.
Riley blinked once. “They should.”
“They don’t think the way you do, Riley.”
Dee turned the phone again, her thumb moving rapidly across the screen with the kind of efficiency that came from familiarity rather than panic.
“Look at the caption,” she said.
Riley did.
“hot trainer gets nerdy doctor to agree to a challenge on live tv ??”
Her brow furrowed slightly. “That is not an accurate representation of—”
“Keep reading.”
Riley’s gaze dropped to the comments. At first, she processed them the same way she processed everything else, quickly, categorically, filtering for relevance.
“The tension???”
“He’s literally obsessed with her”
“No because the way he’s looking at her—”
“She’s trying so hard not to smile I can’t”
“This is enemies to lovers coded and you can’t convince me otherwise”
Riley blinked. Once, then again. Her expression remained composed, but there was the faintest delay now between what she read and how she processed it.
“This is completely factually incorrect,” she said.
Dee laughed, not quietly this time. “Oh, I knew you were going to say that.”
“There is no basis for these interpretations.”
“Riley,” Dee said, shifting so she was facing her fully now, “you argued with a very attractive man on live television for ten minutes straight while he looked at you like that.”
Riley’s focus narrowed. “Like what.”
Dee stared at her. Then, without a word, she took the phone back and replayed the clip, this time not watching Riley. Watching him.
“Watch his face,” she said.
Riley did. She observed the same things she had noted before. Attention, engagement, smug cockiness. No visible signs of anything she would define as unusual.
“He is engaged in the discussion,” she said.
Dee dropped her head back slightly, laughing again. “Engaged. That’s what you think is happening.”
“That is what is observable.”
“Okay,” Dee said, still smiling, though her tone shifted slightly, less amused now, more certain. “Then let me explain the part you’re missing.”
She tapped again, pulling up a profile.
Declan Montgomery. The name almost gave her hives after the events of that idiotic morning show. But she knew that if Dee was showing this to her, there had to be more information worth looking at beyond what she knew. She processed the rest of the screen.
Metrics surfaced first. Followers, 5.6 million. Irrelevant.
Engagement ratios. Potentially relevant.
Dee, however, was already continuing.
“He’s not just some random fitness guy,” she said. “He’s—” she gestured vaguely at the screen, “—this. Declan has millions of followers. His brother is the Tyler Montgomery.”
Riley looked at her, furrowing her brows. “Who?”
Dee looked at her incredulously, then sighed. “Why am I not surprised? Tyler Montgomery is the Centre-halfback for the Redbacks, Ri. He’s literally the name for AFL in Australia. It’s like being the Lewis Hamilton for Formula One.”
“Am I meant to know who that is?”
“Oh good lord, you need help. Anyway, my point is,” Dee took a breath, “that Declan has reach. The Montgomery’s are a household name. He has brand deals, programs, fame. People don’t just watch him, Riley. They follow everything he does.”
Riley’s gaze flicked back to the screen.
“He doesn’t argue with people,” Dee added. “Not like that, especially not publicly. And definitely not for ten minutes straight.” She released a breath before muttering, “and not with someone he’s looking at like that.”
Riley’s attention shifted again. Back to the clip, to the comments, then to Dee.
“This is why it has spread,” she said, the conclusion forming cleanly. “His existing platform, combined with sustained viewer interest, has amplified the segment beyond its intended reach.”
Dee pointed at her. “Yes. Exactly.”
“And the continued engagement,” Riley added, glancing briefly back at the comments, “suggests that the appeal is not informational.”
Dee hesitated. “… Yes,” she said, slower this time.
Riley nodded once, the logic settling. “Which means the misrepresentation will have a significantly wider impact than anticipated.”
Dee’s expression shifted something between disbelief and reluctant acceptance. “… Yeah,” she said. “I mean, yes. That too. Wouldn’t call it the core message of my speech, but I respect the commitment.”
Riley set her phone down again, more deliberately this time.
“I was asked to go on there to translate research on cognitive psychology,” she said.
“To present it in a way that was accessible without compromising its integrity.” Her tone remained even, but there was something tighter beneath it now. “I did not do that.”
Dee tilted her head slightly. “No, you didn’t.”
Riley exhaled slowly. “I corrected repeatedly. I allowed the discussion to become unstructured. I—” She stopped. Because the conclusion was already clear. “I undermined the purpose of the segment.”
There it was, ordered into something manageable. Dee held her gaze, her expression refining into consideration rather than disagreement. Then she reached out, picked up Riley’s phone, and held it out again.
“Or” she said, “you just got more people in a completely different community talking about your work in twelve hours than you probably would have in the next twelve months.”
Riley didn’t take the phone. “That is not the kind of attention that leads to credible research engagement.”
“Isn’t it?”
Riley hesitated very briefly. Dee leaned forward slightly, her tone softening. She sounded no less certain, just more deliberate now.
“You’ve been trying to figure out what your work actually applies to,” she said. “Not exclusively in theory. In actual practice, Ri. You wanted to run an experiment.”
Riley didn’t respond, Dee knew her more than she seemed to know herself.
“You’ve been building frameworks,” Dee continued, “but you haven’t had a clean way to test them outside controlled environments.”
Riley’s focus shifted, just slightly.
“That,” Dee said, gesturing toward the phone, “is not controlled. It’s messy, inconsistent, and none of it is ideal—”
“Which compromises validity,” Riley said automatically.
“Or,” Dee cut in, “it gives you exactly what you’ve been missing.”
Riley stilled. Dee held her gaze now.
“Real behaviour,” she said. “Real adherence, real training drop-offs. Real people making decisions without perfect conditions. And Declan has the popularity to back your research purely through media attention and being a personal trainer, you wouldn’t require any funding.”
Riley’s attention moved back to the screen. The video, the comments, to the entire scale of it. “You didn’t ruin anything,” Dee said. “If anything, you just found your sample.”
Riley didn’t respond immediately, because the framework had already shifted.
“I think Declan would be happy to turn this into something long-term, too.”
Riley’s focus stalled. “Based on what evidence?” she asked.
Dee gave her a look. “Based on the fact that people like Declan don’t let this kind of attention sit there unused. If he’s getting media attention this large from a video he didn’t even post, he’s going to want to use this momentum to get money himself.”
Riley’s gaze returned to the screen. Declan Montgomery.
He was an asshole, but he had the platform and influence to push her from a theoretical cognitive psychologist to a groundbreaking scientific name.
The framework began assembling again, faster this time, less conjectural.
The variables were uncontrolled, she knew that.
The data would be inconsistent in comparison to her theory.
But the behaviour? Observable at scale. Her gaze remained on the screen.
“This would require parameters,” she said. “Defined conditions. Measurable outcomes. Him to behave professionally,” she added, glancing toward Dee briefly. “Which, based on current evidence, does not appear to be a skillset he possesses.”
Dee smiled slightly. “Then I guess it’s a good thing you like negotiating those.”
Riley did not respond, because the conclusion was no longer forming in isolation. It was already in motion.