Chapter 4: The Digital Warpath

Chapter 4: The Digital Warpath

For two glorious nights, silence reigned. It was a profound, healing quiet that Liam absorbed like a man dying of thirst. He came home from work and the hallway was still. He cooked dinner and the only sound was the gentle sizzle in his pan. He sat on his sofa, read a book, and the only vibrations he felt were the turning of the pages. He had forgotten how beautiful the absence of noise could be. His victory with the Dean, while leaving a cold feeling in his gut, had been absolute. He had wielded the system like a scalpel and excised the tumor next door. He slept, deeply and without interruption, and it felt like a resurrection.

On the third evening, a familiar ghost returned.

It started as a low, almost imperceptible thrum, a vibration he felt more in his bones than heard with his ears. He paused, a forkful of pasta halfway to his mouth, and listened. No, you’re just paranoid, he told himself. It’s a car passing by, a washing machine in the basement.

But the thrum didn't fade. It grew, coalescing into the dull, rhythmic punch of a bassline. The same tempo. The same soul-crushing monotony. His blood ran cold. He put his fork down, the clatter loud in the sudden tension of his apartment, and walked to his window.

He looked down at Apartment 4B. The lights were off. The balcony was empty. A wave of relief washed over him, so potent it made him dizzy. It wasn't them.

But the music was getting louder. It was coming from… across the street.

His gaze drifted over the quiet, lockdown-emptied road to the row of stately townhouses opposite his building. One of them, a large house with a peeling facade and a history of student tenants, was lit up like a festival. Lights flashed in the windows, and the dark shapes of people danced against the glass. The source of the sound was unmistakable. It poured from the open windows of the townhouse, a torrent of noise that flooded the street and hammered against his own building.

His victory hadn't been a victory at all. It was a relocation.

He felt a profound, hollow ache in his chest. He had won the battle for Apartment 4B, but the war for his sanity was far from over. All he had done was move the enemy's artillery. Defeated, he sank onto his sofa, the thumping bass a mocking tribute to his own naivety. He had thought a formal warning on their permanent record would be enough. He had underestimated their sheer, unadulterated entitlement.

A moment later, his phone buzzed. It was Alex.

You hearing this? They’ve set up a new HQ.

Liam typed back a single word: Yes.

Come up to mine. 5A. The view is better.

Dragging himself off the sofa, Liam went upstairs. Alex’s door was already ajar. The apartment was a mirror of his own, but the music was clearer, the view unobstructed. Alex stood by the window, his phone held up, recording the scene across the street.

“Welcome to the sequel,” Alex said, his voice tight with a fresh layer of cynical rage. “Noisy Neighbors 2: Electric Boogaloo.”

Liam joined him at the window. The scene was even worse from this vantage point. A steady stream of students was flowing in and out of the frat house, drinks in hand, not a mask in sight. And there, standing on the front steps, bathed in the light from the doorway, was Jessica. She was holding a red solo cup, laughing, her head thrown back in carefree ecstasy. Her tearful performance in the Dean’s office felt like a scene from a different lifetime. She hadn't been punished; she had been inconvenienced. She hadn't learned a lesson; she had learned to be more careful where she threw her parties. She caught the eye of a friend and gestured mockingly toward Liam’s building, a smirk on her face. She was gloating.

The hollow ache in Liam’s chest solidified into something hard and sharp. The cold satisfaction he had felt was gone, replaced by the fire of a deeper, more personal fury. This wasn't just about noise anymore. It was about contempt.

“The Dean’s warning was useless,” Liam said, his voice flat.

“A paper tiger,” Alex agreed, not lowering his phone. “She probably got a call from Daddy the Lawyer five minutes after you left, threatening to sue the university for emotional distress. What’s our next move? Call the cops again so they can tell us to ‘work it out’ with a house of a hundred drunk kids?”

Liam watched the raw footage on Alex’s screen. The shaky camera, the distorted sound, the sheer number of people flouting every single rule the rest of the country was sacrificing to uphold. Alex was just documenting his own frustration, but Liam saw something else. He saw evidence. He saw a story. More than that, he saw a weapon, far more powerful than a carefully worded email to an academic.

A new idea began to form in the cold, methodical part of his brain—the part that had been awakened and honed by this conflict. He had tried to use the system from the inside. Now, it was time to turn the court of public opinion against them.

“Keep filming,” Liam said, his eyes fixed on the screen. “Get everything. The number of people. The lack of masks. Zoom in on Jessica if you can.”

Alex lowered the phone, looking at him. “Why? What are you thinking?”

“You said it yourself, the police and the university won’t help us,” Liam explained, the plan crystallizing as he spoke. “They’re insulated. Their parents, their social status, it protects them. But that protection only works in the shadows. We’re going to drag them into the light.”

He looked from the phone screen to Alex’s face, his expression grim. “We’re going to make them famous.”

For the next hour, they worked. Alex, the tech-savvy creative, captured crisp, damning footage. Liam, the strategist, directed him, pointing out the most flagrant violations, the most arrogant displays. When they had enough, they retreated to Alex’s living room.

“Send me the files,” Liam commanded, pulling out his laptop. “The best clips.”

Alex airdropped the videos, and Liam went to work. He wasn't a video editor, but his mind was sharp. He didn’t need fancy cuts or transitions. He just needed a narrative. He stitched together three clips: the crowd outside the house, a clear shot of Jessica laughing with the bouncer from their own building, and a final pan across the unmasked faces inside.

Then he opened his web browser and navigated to Reddit. Not to a local Ghent page, but to the main forum for the entire country: r/belgium. It was a cauldron of pandemic fatigue, political frustration, and simmering public anger. It was the perfect place to light a fire.

He created a new, anonymous account. For the title of the post, he didn't hold back. He typed out the words that would frame the entire narrative, the hook designed to grab a nation’s worth of scrolling eyeballs.

“While my partner works 16-hour shifts in a COVID ward, this is the party happening across the street every night. Ghent University students. Police won’t do anything.”

It was a slight fabrication—he wasn’t a doctor, and his partner didn’t exist—but it was the kind of emotional truth that resonated. He was a frontline worker. That part was real. The story was real.

In the body of the post, he attached the video and wrote a short, factual description. He mentioned the lockdown, the illegal bar they had previously run in his building, the call to the police, the complete lack of consequences. He presented their case not as a personal grievance, but as a symptom of a larger disease: the entitled arrogance of those who believed the rules didn't apply to them.

He hovered his mouse over the ‘Post’ button. This was a point of no return. The email to the Dean was a targeted strike. This was carpet bombing. The consequences were unpredictable, and potentially enormous. He looked at Alex, who gave him a sharp, determined nod.

Liam clicked.

For a moment, nothing happened. Their post sat on the “new” queue with zero points. Then, a single upvote appeared. Then another. A comment popped up: “On-ge-loof-lijk. The arrogance.” (Un-be-lievable.)

Then, the explosion began. The score started jumping. 5. 17. 48. The refresh button could barely keep up. 120. 350. 700. Comments poured in, a torrent of righteous fury from strangers across the country. People shared their own stories of sacrifice, of missed funerals and cancelled weddings. They raged against the students, the university, the police. The post rocketed to the top of the subreddit, then to the front page of the entire site for Belgian users. It had gone viral.

Liam and Alex stared at the screen, a mixture of awe and terror on their faces. They had unleashed something far bigger than they had anticipated.

Then, a new private message popped into their anonymous inbox. The username was verified.

“Hello. My name is Pieter De Smet. I’m a journalist with VRT NWS. We are very interested in your story. Are you available for a phone call?”

Liam read the message out loud. The hum of the party across the street seemed to fade into the background, replaced by the pounding of his own heart. The digital warpath had just led them to the national news.