Chapter 8: Showtime

The basement was no longer a headquarters; it was a tomb. The air was stale and recycled, the only light coming from the monitors that cast long, dancing shadows on the concrete walls. For a week, they had lived in this bunker, fueled by caffeine and cold fury, poring over the contents of the folder labeled EVIDENCE. The files were a litany of sins, a digital monument to the corruption that had poisoned their town for years. The initial shock had worn off, replaced by a grim, methodical sense of purpose.

On one of Leo’s screens, a local news channel was running a puff piece. The camera panned across the manicured lawns of the Oakwood Country Club, where white tents were being erected. The chipper voice of a reporter narrated the scene.

“Preparations are in full swing for what is sure to be a glittering evening at the 28th Annual Founder’s Day Gala,” she chirped. “The highlight of the night, of course, will be the presentation of the coveted ‘Man of the Year’ award to our town’s greatest benefactor, philanthropist and business leader, Marcus Davenport.”

Jenna stared at the screen, her face a mask of stone. The word ‘philanthropist’ seemed to hang in the air, a grotesque lie. “He’s not just accepting an award,” she said, her voice devoid of all emotion. “He’s taking a victory lap on the grave of my future. On the backs of every person he’s blackmailed and threatened.”

She turned away from the screen and looked at the others. Her eyes, usually so bright and analytical, were like chips of flint. “We have the truth. It’s sitting right here in this folder. But it’s useless if it stays in the dark. We need to turn on the floodlights.”

“And that gala is the biggest floodlight in town,” Sarah added, scrolling through the event’s webpage on her laptop. “The entire local elite will be there. The mayor, the chief of police, the university board. Every person Marcus Davenport owns, all in one room. And it’s being live-streamed.”

“So, what’s the plan?” Mike asked, his voice betraying the nervous energy that had been thrumming through him for days. “We can’t just email the evidence to the news. The Davenports would kill the story in an hour. Their lawyers would bury us.”

“Exactly,” Jenna said, walking to the whiteboard. She erased the old diagrams of their digital heist and drew a simple layout of a stage and a large screen. “We’re not going to be whistleblowers. We are going to be show-runners. We’re going to hijack their tribute to themselves and replace it with our own.”

All eyes turned to Leo. He was staring at his monitor, a complex network diagram of the Oakwood Country Club displayed on it. He looked exhausted, the dark circles under his eyes deeper than ever, but his focus was absolute.

“It’s possible,” he said, not looking up. “Barely. The gala’s A/V system is managed by a third-party event company. Their network is firewalled from the club’s main servers, which is smart. But for the live-stream and presenter access, they have a dedicated wireless node. It’s their weak point.”

He finally looked at them, his expression grim. “But we have a problem. A big one. The ghost hunter.” He didn’t need to explain who he meant. The memory of their near-capture was a fresh wound. “After our little dance in their cloud server, Davenport’s security is on the highest possible alert. That A/V network will be monitored. The moment I try to breach it, he’ll know. It’ll be a race again, but this time he’ll be waiting for me. I’ll need a distraction. And I’ll need more time than a remote hack can give me.”

A tense silence filled the room. The plan seemed to hang on an impossible knife’s edge.

“I can get you inside,” Sarah said quietly.

The three of them stared at her.

“My parents are on the gala committee,” she explained, pulling up a seating chart for the event. She pointed to a table near the back, by the tech booths. “Table 14. Chen. I’m my dad’s plus-one. I can get close to the A/V booth. I can see their setup, what hardware they’re using.”

“Sarah, that’s too dangerous,” Leo said immediately. “If you get caught…”

“It’s more dangerous if you try to do this blind,” she countered, her voice firm. “I won’t touch anything. I’ll just be a rich girl who’s ‘lost’ and happens to see their Wi-Fi password taped to a monitor. Or I can get a look at their physical ports. I can give you a direct line of attack.” She looked at Jenna. “You said it yourself. This is a black-ops mission now. You need a soldier on the ground.”

Jenna studied Sarah for a long moment, then gave a single, decisive nod. “Okay. Mike, you’re on comms and surveillance. You’ll monitor the live stream for a delay, and you’ll have police and emergency scanners running. If anything goes sideways, you are the early warning. Sarah, you are our eyes and ears. Get us the intel. Leo… you need to build the bomb.”

For the next four days, the basement became a production studio from hell. Leo wasn’t just a hacker; he was an editor. Guided by Jenna’s cold, directorial vision, he began to assemble their weapon. He took the audio from a saved voicemail where Marcus threatened a business owner. He laid it over a scanned copy of the man’s eviction notice. He took the grainy blackmail photo of Councilman Hines and timed its appearance to coincide with the date stamp on the approved zoning variance.

He built the sequence to a crescendo, saving the worst for last. He took the university’s triumphant social media post announcing Dave Davenport as the recipient of the Ashton Scholarship and made it the backdrop for the final, damning email chain between Marcus and Dr. Finch. The words ‘I suggest you find a way to tie your hands differently’ would appear on screen just as the on-stage presenter was likely lauding Marcus’s commitment to education. It was a ninety-second video designed for one purpose: total annihilation.

While Leo built the video, he also built their escape route. It was a worm program, a digital self-destruct sequence. The moment the video finished playing, the worm would activate, wiping the A/V system’s logs, frying the network card on the playback machine, and erasing every trace of their infiltration from every server it had touched. They would be ghosts once more.

The night of the gala arrived. The air in the basement was thick with an almost unbearable tension. Mike was at his station, multiple audio feeds hissing in his headphones. Leo sat before his main terminal, the screen showing only a single, waiting command prompt. Sarah had left an hour ago, transformed from a member of their crew into a vision of elegance in a dark blue evening gown, a tiny, nearly invisible communications bud in her ear.

On the main screen, the live stream was on. They watched the town’s elite mingle, champagne glasses in hand, oblivious. They saw Dave, preening in a tailored suit beside his father. Then they saw Marcus Davenport, smiling, shaking hands, the very picture of civic virtue.

“I’m in,” Sarah’s voice crackled in their ears, a tiny, disembodied whisper. “By the tech booth. They’re running a live feed from a single MacBook Pro. And Leo… you magnificent bastard… they have an open USB-C port.”

A physical access point. It was better than they could have hoped. The plan had just changed.

“Sarah,” Leo said, his voice calm despite his hammering heart. “In your clutch. The silver lipstick.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“It’s not lipstick. It’s a USB drive with a wireless injector script. Plug it in. It will create a new, hidden network that only I can see. It will give me a direct, untraceable tunnel into that machine. He won’t even know I’m there until it’s too late.”

There was a pause, and they could hear the faint sound of music and chatter over Sarah’s comm. “Okay,” she whispered. “I need a distraction.”

On screen, the Master of Ceremonies was walking to the podium. “Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats! Our program is about to begin!”

Jenna leaned forward, her eyes locked on the live feed. She watched as Marcus Davenport was escorted to the seat of honor at the front of the stage. The tribute video, a glowing piece of propaganda, was about to play.

Her voice was a low, steady command in their ears. “Mike, trigger the fire alarm at the West entrance. Sarah, you have sixty seconds. Leo… get ready to fly.”

Leo’s fingers poised over the keyboard. He looked at the screen, at the smirking, untouchable face of Marcus Davenport. The rounding error.

He typed the final command line, his finger hovering over the Enter key.

INITIATE_PROTOCOL: SHOWTIME

It was time to burn the whole thing to the ground.