Story code: ST-001084
Part 4: The Virality of Treason
Chloe wiped frantically at her eyes, but her hands were equally slick with Maya’s blood. The friction only ground the thick, metallic heat deeper into her pores, stinging her corneas and matting her eyelashes together. Through the red-tinted, hazy blur of her vision, she saw Jessica backing slowly out of the kitchen. The camera lens in the neighbor’s hand never dipped.
“She just attacked me!” Chloe yelled, her voice cracking as she tasted the copper tang of Maya’s blood on her own lips. “You saw that! She’s delirious!”
Jessica didn’t answer. Her thumb was moving rapidly across her screen. A bright red ‘LIVE’ icon pulsed in the top corner of her display.
*They’re streaming it.*
“Stop recording,” Chloe demanded. She tried to stand, but her blood-soaked socks slipped uselessly on the linoleum, sending her crashing hard back down to her knees in the center of the crimson pool.
The guy from down the hall-Chloe didn’t even know his name-held his phone horizontally, panning slowly from the horrific mess around Maya, to the perfectly centered blister pack, and finally up to Chloe’s blood-painted face.
“I didn’t do anything,” Chloe pleaded, aiming her words desperately at the unblinking lenses rather than the people behind them. “She took banned medication. Mifepristone. I have it all documented. I’m reporting it to the state.”
She reached into her back pocket, her slick fingers leaving dark, tacky prints on her jeans, and pulled out her own phone. She needed them to know she was the informant, not a criminal. She was the one who was supposed to be protected by the law.
“Look,” Chloe said, holding her phone up with a trembling hand, trying to unlock it. The facial recognition failed against the mask of gore. She wiped the screen against her sweater, smearing red across the glass, and punched in her passcode. She opened her photo app, navigated to the ‘Recently Deleted’ folder, and tapped the ten-minute video. She hit *Recover*. It was back. The flawless, time-stamped proof of Maya’s crime. The ten thousand dollars was secure.
But Jessica’s phone chimed. Then Marcus’s. A cascade of notification pings echoed from the hallway as the neighbors who hadn’t even stepped inside started receiving the live link on their feeds.
“Bro, she was just standing over her,” Marcus whispered into his phone, narrating the scene to an invisible audience. “The girl was bleeding out and she just had the wrappers laid out like a shrine.”
“Shut up!” Chloe screamed. “You don’t understand the law!”
The wail of sirens finally cut through the tense air of the apartment, growing rapidly louder as they approached the building.
Jessica tapped her screen again, her voice hushed but perfectly clear. “Guys, if you’re just joining, my roommate’s roommate is literally covered in blood. I think she let her die for the bounty.”
Chloe froze. The word *bounty* hung in the air. Jessica wasn’t just calling her an attacker; she was calling her something much worse in the eyes of the internet. A vulture. A snitch who stood over a dying woman with a stopwatch to collect a paycheck.
The heavy thud of boots pounded up the stairwell. Two paramedics shoved their way past the crowd at the door, lugging heavy orange trauma bags. A pair of uniformed police officers followed immediately behind them, their hands instinctively dropping to their belts at the sight of the blood.
“Back up! Everyone out of the way!” the first paramedic shouted, sliding to his knees beside Maya.
Chloe tried to scramble backward to give them room, but an officer’s hand clamped down hard on her shoulder, pinning her in place.
“Don’t move,” the officer ordered, his voice devoid of any warmth. He stared at the blood coating Chloe’s face, her sweater, her hands.
“I’m the one who yelled for help,” Chloe stammered, though the lie tasted like ash. “I have the evidence. The pills. For the state tip line. It’s right there.” She pointed to the empty blister pack.
The officer barely glanced at the foil. He was looking at the small army of neighbors standing in the hallway, all of their phones angled directly at Chloe.
“Officer,” Jessica called out, keeping her phone perfectly steady. “She didn’t call right away. We heard everything. She just stood there.”
“That’s a lie!” Chloe shrieked.
“We have over twelve thousand people watching this right now,” Jessica said, her voice shaking with the thrill of viral righteousness. “The clip is already on Twitter. Everyone knows what you did.”
The paramedic looked up from Maya’s pale throat. “We’ve got a weak pulse. We need to move her, now.”
They hoisted Maya onto a portable stretcher. As they rolled her out of the kitchen, the crowd of neighbors parted, their cameras following the bloody trail for only a second before snapping violently back to frame Chloe.
The officer pulled Chloe to her feet, his grip unyielding. He didn’t read her rights. He didn’t arrest her. He just steered her roughly out of the kitchen, treating her like a hazardous biohazard, and shoved her into a chair in the living room to wait for the detectives.
Chloe sat in the center of her apartment, the blood on her face drying into a stiff, suffocating mask that pulled painfully at her skin. She looked down at her phone, still clutched tightly in her hand. The screen glowed with the recovered video file. It was all the proof she needed. The state bureaucracy would process it. They would cut her the check.
But as her phone suddenly began to vibrate with a relentless, deafening barrage of unknown numbers, text messages, and social media mentions, Chloe realized the horrific math of her victory. Ten thousand dollars wouldn’t cover the cost of a security detail. It wouldn’t stop the doxing, the death threats, or the eternal digital record of her sitting in Maya’s blood. The state would pay her, but the internet would ensure she never spent a single dime of it in peace.