Dawn broke slowly, cautious and gray, as if the sky itself feared what it might reveal.
Mia crouched in the burned-out classroom of the ruined schoolhouse, cradling her phone like it was a lifeline. The cracked screen glowed faintly in the dim light. Despite everything—fire, flight, blood the files were intact. Photos of the server core. Footage of Halvorsen overseeing the shipment. Snippets of recorded conversations pulled from surveillance nodes. Proof.
Cold, hard proof.
And yet…
"What if it's not enough?" Emily asked. Her voice was hoarse from smoke and lack of sleep.
"It has to be," Mia said.
But even she wasn't sure anymore.
Marla sat nearby, cross-legged on a broken desk, watching the emergency frequency on her battered radio. "The mayor's still alive. Limping, bruised, but alive. They're painting Alex as a terrorist. The explosion was spun as a failed assassination attempt."
Mia's hands curled into fists. "Of course they are."
"They've deployed riot patrols across the town. Curfew in effect. Social media lockdown. They're calling it 'protective restructuring.'"
"They're building a cage," Emily said quietly. "And telling people it's a fence to keep them safe."
Mia stood, pacing the cracked linoleum.
They couldn't let Alex's death become just another footnote. Another manipulated narrative buried beneath public fear. They had one more shot. One more broadcast.
This time, it had to be unignorable.
"I'm uploading the files," Mia said. "Not to one platform. To all of them. We'll hijack private group chats, encrypted streams, pirate signals, shortwave radio. Everything."
Emily raised an eyebrow. "You know that'll trigger a full townwide lockdown."
Mia nodded. "Then we'll make sure it locks down after the truth spreads."
She looked at Marla. "Can you get me into the community server bank?"
Marla hesitated. "Maybe. The old water treatment facility is still hooked to the original civic data grid. It was phased out years ago, but the backbone's intact."
"Then we go in tonight."
Emily stepped closer. "And what happens after we press send?"
Mia didn't answer right away.
She didn't know.
That night, the sky turned a stormy shade of copper as the curfew fell over the town like a second skin. Drones buzzed overhead. Patrols prowled the streets in armored vans. Loudspeakers blared messages of "unity and calm."
Mia, Emily, and Marla moved like ghosts through the back alleys, dressed in black, their devices wrapped in thermal-damp cloth to avoid heat sensors. The town had become a machine wheels of fear grinding under Halvorsen's design.
But machines had weak points.
They reached the water treatment facility by 10:17 p.m. The chain-link fence surrounding it was rusted and forgotten. They climbed over, breath held tight, hearts pounding.
Inside, dust blanketed every surface. A single emergency bulb glowed red above the server room. The air smelled of mildew and stale coolant.
Marla booted the control panel while Emily rerouted the backup generator.
Mia stood by the central console, phone in hand, signal blinking.
"Everything we've gathered," she said. "It goes live in sixty seconds."
"No turning back," Emily said.
"There never was."
Mia uploaded the file.
Every platform. Every format. Every node.
A rolling wave of data images, voice clips, spreadsheets, maps cascaded outward from the server, infecting private messages, hijacking scrolling feeds, slipping into smart TVs, car radios, even digital billboards.
Halvorsen's own surveillance systems were forced to display their deepest secrets.
The town saw itself reflected and recoiled.
And for a moment, just a moment, it worked.
Phones buzzed. Lights flickered. Screens froze, then screamed.
A grandmother in Eastview watched as her councilman son's bank records exposed kickbacks from shell companies.
A high school teacher discovered her name on a watchlist of "intellectual disruptors."
A retired technician realized he'd been listed as a potential whistleblower—and had been denied medical coverage because of it.
Truth. Raw and merciless.
The silence that followed was louder than any siren.
And then came the reply.
It started as static.
Then the emergency frequency snapped into clarity.
Halvorsen's voice, calm and measured.
"This is Mayor Silas Halvorsen, addressing the citizens of our town. I ask that you not believe everything you see. Information is a weapon—and tonight, you've been attacked."
Mia's stomach twisted.
"You've been shown files taken out of context, edited footage, and doctored transcripts. This is terrorism disguised as heroism. Panic masquerading as truth. These people Mia Lane, Emily Connors, Marla Hayes have declared war on our community."
Emily stared at the speaker in horror.
"He named us."
Marla pulled the cable from the wall, severing the signal. "He's turning the town against us."
Outside, the air filled with the sound of drones, closer now.
Spotlights danced across the facility walls.
"They traced us," Mia said. "We have five minutes, tops."
They grabbed their gear and ran, slipping through the rear service exit, vanishing into the night like hunted animals.
Back in the forest, under cover of darkness, they took refuge in the husk of an old chapel, burned years ago in a lightning strike. Rain dripped through the broken roof. Mia sat against a stone pillar, shivering with exhaustion.
"We did it," Emily said quietly. "Even if they twist it… people saw it. They felt it."
Marla pulled out a hidden radio and tuned to a shortwave signal. "People are talking. Neighbors. Workers. Kids. They're scared. But they're questioning. That's the crack."
Mia didn't reply.
Her phone buzzed.
A message.
No name. Just the number.
"We need to talk. 2AM. You know where."
Mia's blood turned cold.
Halvorsen.
"I have to go," she said.
"No," Emily said instantly. "You're not walking into a trap."
"He wouldn't send that if he didn't think he could use me. And if he does, I want to hear what leverage he thinks he has."
Marla shook her head. "It's too risky."
"So is everything we've done."
Mia stood.
"I go. Alone. I'll leave the files with you. If I don't return by dawn, finish it. Go wider. National. Blow the whole thing open."
Emily stood too. "You go, I go."
"No."
"Then we go."
The meeting point was the old train tunnel north of the industrial zone—abandoned and overgrown. Mia arrived alone, just as the clouds split and rain poured down in earnest.
Halvorsen was already there, coat dry, standing beneath a metal overhang like a man untouched by storms.
"Mia," he greeted. "You've done a great deal of damage."
"You haven't seen anything yet."
"I think I've seen enough."
He stepped forward, something small in his hand.
A USB.
"This is your next move, isn't it?" he said. "The wider net. Going federal. You think this ends with a headline."
He offered the drive.
Mia didn't take it.
"Why are you giving me anything?"
"Because you're not the only one who's tired." He smiled. "Look inside. Go on."
She plugged it into her backup phone and scanned the files.
Names.
Allies.
Children.
Photos of Emily at age eleven. Her school records. Her foster home reports. Surveillance going back a decade.
And Mia's own childhood medical file flagged, redacted, approved for special tracking.
She looked up, horror dawning.
"You built this longer than we imagined."
"I inherited it," Halvorsen said. "And I perfected it."
"Why show me this?"
"To remind you. You can burn down every warehouse. Hijack every screen. But I've already rewritten the story. Before you even knew there was one."
He leaned close.
"You were made part of it."