Page 4 of Martyr

“She did something to it.”

“The first time, we had no way of knowing. The security team was alerted early on there was a breach, and West took care of it personally. But he couldn’t figure out how they’d gotten in. The second we caught her in Yejun’s room trying to plant another device, on yet another painting that was set to enter theClub House, it was clear. We had irrefutable evidence, Nix. No matter what you want to believe, she wasn’t innocent and this wasn’t a misunderstanding.”

“Why weren’t charges brought against her?” Nix would have heard about that if there had been. She hadn’t just messed with the Demons. She’d messed with Essential. That was treason.

“You mean why wasn’t she ripped apart like the other people who wronged us?” Lake asked. “You have Yejun to thank for that. I don’t know what else she was feeding him, but your cousin really had him wrapped around her finger. He should have reported her to the Order. Instead, he covered it up and merely had her expelled. She was blocked on everything and warned if she ever returned to this side of the planet, we’d kill her and go after her family for good measure.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I didn’t know she was dead, Nix. That’s the truth.”

Oddly enough, he’d never even questioned that part. Not after the way Lake had reacted.

“She said he was a King,” Nix stated, wanting to lay it all out there now that they seemed to be on the same page for once. Wanted to do it before things reverted back to the way they’d been, and Lake returned to throwing his weight around. “I know I’m not misremembering. She told me the guy she was seeing was a King. They’d met on the app.”

Lake considered it and then, “So, you don’t think that was a part of it at all?”

“No.” He crossed his arms. “Why were you all so certain it was?”

“She asked Yejun to give her Favors,” he said. “Enough for her to make it into the King tier. Why else would she have wanted that if not so she could help the hacker gain access to the program? She couldn’t hack it, sure, but once she had access tothe King chat, she could easily hand her device over to the man who could.”

It just wasn’t sitting right with Nix. Something still wasn’t adding up about that explanation.

According to their logic, the hacker hadn’t wanted to expose themselves by joining the Enigma app and fucking around to become a King. But if Branwen was to be believed, that was how she and this person had met in the first place.

“Kings can interact with all of the lower tiers on the app,” Nix pointed out. “She didn’t need to be one herself in order to talk to this guy. You were listed under the King tier, yet you were off planet, so I’m guessing that meant you didn’t really frequent the app.”

“I did not,” Lake confirmed.

“What about West?”

“He just uses it now and again to hook up randomly. What are you getting at, Songbird?”

“You’re not all friends. Making the King tier doesn’t mean you all get together and hold secret meetings.”

“The Kings don’t really interact with each other at all,” he admitted. “Unless we proposition each other, which some people have done in the past.”

“Has any other King ever propositioned Yejun?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him that yourself.” Lake sighed. “I’m still not following. Where are you going with this?”

“This person approached my cousin after she’d already developed some sort of relationship with Yejun,” Nix hypothesized.

Lake frowned.

“Think about it. The hacker didn’t care about getting into the Enigma app, he cared about infiltrating Essential. If that was all he wanted, why would he need Branwen? The app and theclub are two separate things, and you’ve got proof that he tried to hack into Essential, not Enigma.”

Because the only idiot here who’d tried that had been Nix, but neither of them bothered to mention it now.

“You weren’t around, which meant the only way in was through West or Yejun. My cousin made for an easy target once she’d drawn Yejun’s attention after meeting him in art class. The reason the hacker told her to ask for Favors? Favors bring you closer together.”

That’s what happened with him. Nix had developed a fucked up attachment to Maestro shortly after their very first encounter.

“I was easily enthralled by you because I didn’t know any better,” Nix added, a bit excited now that things seemed to be making sense finally. “But if Branwen was instructed to do this with Yejun, she would have been warned ahead of time. The two of them got close, didn’t they? That’s because she wanted him to trust her. She used the Favors to form a tighter bond with him and gain his trust so she could get close enough to plant the devices and—”

“The blood has soaked through your collar.”

“What?” Nix blinked and pursed his lips, momentarily unsure what Lake was talking about.

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