Page 50 of Cruel Riches

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I figured you probably didn’t want to be seen with me.”

“Girl, get some self-esteem,” she said, rolling her eyes. “The only reason we didn’t chase after you earlier was because we knew you’d probably need some time to process this shit, and we also wanted to help. We figured the best way to do that was to prove that the video is total bullshit.”

I nodded slowly as tears sprang to my eyes again. This time, they were happy tears. For the first time in what felt like forever, I felt accepted and loved by people outside of my family. “What did you find?” I asked.

Laurel put her iPad down in front of me and brought up the video. “Ever heard of a deepfake?”

I nodded. “I think so.”

“To make one, you show a computer a whole bunch of photos of a person, and it generates a face based on that to lay over the original face in the video. The voice can be changed, too, to sound exactly like the person you’re trying to frame.” She tilted her head to one side. “You probably remember seeing the Obama one a few years ago. It looks and sounds exactly like him, but it’s not.”

“Yeah, I remember that.”

“If you’re good with the tech—or know someone else who is—you can make it look and sound like someone has said and done anything you want, even if they never did. People use it to make fake celebrity sex tapes all the time.”

“That’s what happened to you. Someone took a real porno and put your face over the original girl’s face. They made the moans sound a lot like your voice, too,” Ruby added. “We knew that as soon as we saw it. We just needed to find a way to prove it.”

Laurel nodded. “As good as the tech is, it’s not perfect. There’s usually a few signs somewhere. You just have to look really hard.”

“We went to my dorm and watched this video over and over, frame by frame, until we spotted stuff,” Ruby said.

I winced. “Sorry. I can’t imagine how weird that must’ve felt.”

She smiled. “It was kinda strange, but we were mostly focused on the job.”

Laurel clicked on her tablet screen so that the video skipped forward to 5:27. “Watch this very carefully,” she said before pressing play for a few seconds.

My brows knitted. “I don’t get it.”

“Let me slow it down so it plays frame by frame,” she said, clicking a few more buttons. “You know how the girl in the video is wearing diamond stud earrings?”

“Honestly, I didn’t notice until you pointed it out.”

“Well, watch now,” she said, pointing to a spot on the screen. “There. See it?”

I leaned forward. “Her right earring disappeared.”

Ruby nodded triumphantly. “Yup. There are five frames in there where the earring vanishes. It’s clearly someone else’s ear in those shots.”

“There’s more,” Laurel added, skipping forward to the ten-minute mark. “In this part, the camera focuses on the girl from the front again, and she’s leaning on her forearms. For a second, when it zooms in to capture her moaning, you can see her left wrist when she tilts it slightly to one side to keep her balance.”

I squinted. “Is that a tattoo?”

“Yes. Just a little one, but still, it’s totally visible in those few frames. You don’t have a tattoo there, do you?”

“No.”

“This is proof that someone manufactured this video to target you,” Ruby said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Once we go to the Dean and explain everything, this whole thing will be over. The administration will be forced to send out an explanation for the email, and everyone will know it was just a fake video.”

Relief cascaded through me, and I slumped back in the chair, letting my tight muscles relax for the first time in hours.

“Do you know who might’ve done it?” Laurel asked, eyes anxiously wide.

I swallowed hard. Of course I knew who made the deepfake tape. I couldn’t admit it, though.

“No.” I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

“It’s probably just some random asshole who’s seen you around Blackthorne before,” Ruby said. “He probably hates women and wants to hurt them, and you were just the first on the list of people he’s decided to target.”

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