Story code: ST-000120
Part 3: Hot Mic
The drive to our recording studio was a suffocating blur of adrenaline and sun-baked asphalt. I barely registered running a red light, my eyes locked on the road ahead while my digitally bricked phone sat like a heavy, useless stone on the Tacoma’s passenger seat. I skidded into the empty alleyway behind the industrial park, killing the engine before the truck even fully stopped. I sprinted up the metal fire escape stairs to the back entrance of our rented commercial space. My hands shook violently as I jammed my physical key into the deadbolt. The lock turned with a heavy clack. The digital wipe hadn’t reached the physical tumblers yet.
I pushed the heavy door open, stepping into the cool, air-conditioned hum of the Forward March headquarters. The neon logo we had commissioned for our backdrop glowed a blood-red against the acoustic foam panels. In the center of the room, the main broadcasting rig was an impenetrable fortress of glowing monitors, actively rendering the hyper-realistic AI deepfake of Brody that had just announced my tragic death to the world. I hammered my palm against the main keyboard, but it was useless-locked behind an encrypted biometric firewall.
I spun around, scanning the shadows of the room. Across the studio, sitting on the battered wooden desk we used for our first hundred episodes, was Brody’s secondary mixing laptop. The lid was closed, its charging cable snaking down to the wall. I practically dove across the room, prying the screen open. The display flared to life instantly. He hadn’t signed out of his administrative profile.
I expected to find backend podcast analytics or offshore bank transfers. Instead, the active browser window was logged into a secure federal portal for third-party VA claims adjusters.
My stomach dropped into a bottomless void as I stared at the employee dashboard in the top right corner. *Welcome, Evaluator Brody Vance.*
My fingers trembled as I dragged the cursor over to the open queue. Right at the top of the screen was my own name. My severe nerve damage claim-the one I had been fighting for eight agonizing months-was open. The status was marked in bold red text: *Denied – Fast-Tracked*. Brody was the invisible, bureaucratic ghost who had been stonewalling my medical care.
I clicked the adjacent browser tab, my vision tunneling. It was an email thread between Brody and Dr. Aris. The subject line read: *Seed Round Approval – Forward March Wellness App.* I skimmed the text, feeling the blood drain completely from my face. Dr. Aris was offering a $500,000 seed investment for a solo wellness app, but the signature was contingent on Brody proving his “ruthless administrative efficiency” in the regional network.
Brody had leveraged his side-contract as a VA evaluator to demonstrate a flawless, one-hundred-percent case-closure metric. My complex, time-consuming medical claim had been sitting in his queue, dragging his monthly numbers down. To secure the half-million-dollar check, he had simply denied my trauma to clear his desk.
The heavy crunch of tires on gravel outside snapped me away from the screen. Brody’s black Suburban had just pulled into the alley.
I had less than thirty seconds. I minimized the browser and opened the legacy broadcasting software on the backup laptop-a backdoor program we had hardcoded years ago to stream live from field events when the main servers failed. It bypassed the encrypted rig entirely. I tapped the manual override button. The tiny camera lens embedded in the bezel of the laptop flashed a bright, steady green.
In the corner of the display, the viewer count from the hijacked main stream began porting over instantly: ten thousand, thirty thousand, fifty thousand concurrent viewers, all waiting for more news about my supposed death. I angled the screen slightly away from the door, leaving the green light obscured by a stack of papers, while keeping the lens perfectly framed on the center of the room.
The studio door swung open. Brody stepped in, loosening his expensive black quarter-zip, his face flushed with arrogant triumph. He froze the second he saw me standing by the secondary desk, the crumpled VA denial letter gripped in my fist.
“I thought clinic security threw you out to the curb,” Brody said, his voice instantly dropping its polished, manufactured warmth. He didn’t sound panicked. He just sounded profoundly annoyed.
“You evaluated my claim,” I said, my voice eerily calm in the dead space of the soundproofed room. “You’re the independent contractor who denied my nerve damage.”
Brody sighed loudly, walking casually toward the main broadcasting rig. He didn’t even look at the backup laptop. “Don’t take it personally, Jax. It was just sitting in my queue, tanking my thirty-day closure rate. I had to practice extreme ownership.”
“Tanking your rate?” I asked, stepping to the side to ensure his audio was picking up crystal clear. “You forged federal medical documents and locked me out of my own company to impress Dr. Aris?”
“I secured five hundred grand for the new wellness app!” Brody snapped, spinning on his heel to face me. “Aris needed to see my case-closure metrics were flawless before he signed the seed check. You were a liability, Jax. Your trauma, your complaints, your endless medical bureaucracy-it was dragging the brand down. The app needs a clean, optimized sole founder. Not a crippled partner who can’t even get his own VA claims approved.”
“So you wiped my entire digital life? You announced my suicide?”
“The audience loves a martyr,” Brody scoffed, waving a hand dismissively at the ceiling. “The AI deepfake generated a massive memorial spike in our engagement metrics. By tomorrow, I’ll pivot that grief into a presale for the new app. You’re digitally dead, Jax. You have no money, no platform, and no proof. It’s just you and me in a soundproof room.”
I didn’t yell. I didn’t lunge at him. I simply took a half-step to the left, gesturing toward the backup laptop glowing on the wooden desk.
“Actually,” I said, watching his eyes slowly follow my hand. “It’s you, me, and fifty thousand of our closest friends.”
Brody’s gaze locked onto the glowing green camera light. His eyes darted to the screen, where the live chat feed was currently exploding in a waterfall of furious, real-time text, capturing every single word he had just confessed. The smug, polished mask of the untouchable wellness guru melted off his face, leaving behind nothing but pale, suffocating terror as his mouth opened and closed without a sound.