Page 100 of Stream Heat
We had the truth. And each other.
That’s what winning felt like.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Theo
My fingers ached, knuckles burning, but I didn't let up. Not when Victoria's army of bots was in full swing, burying every mention of Kara's name in synchronized shit-slinging. Three hours of this. My desktop was a battlefield: I dissected attack patterns, charted bot behaviors, flagged and traced every fake account, and built a counter-strike that would make Sun Tzu bring me coffee.
"Gotcha, you absolute walnut," I muttered, screenshotting the most obvious offender yet. @AlphaGaming47382, zero followers, born yesterday, spouting the exact anti-Kara talking points as fifty other throwaway accounts. Amateurs.
I fired up streaming software. No cam. Just my voice, and my desktop. Time to cut deep.
"What's up, Ruin Squad?" My tone was sharper than usual, energy wound tight. "It's Theo. Let's have a little digital lit class today: How to spot a coordinated harassment campaign."
I started dragging examples onto the screen. Highlighting the repetition, everything from the same syntax, to the same three typos, and the same thirty-second interval between posts.Once you knew what the algorithm looked for, it had been like neon graffiti on a blank wall.
"See, when someone's desperate to tear someone down and can't do it with facts, it's about volume. Flooding the feed, making it look like the world hates the target. But it's just one sad sack with a botnet and too much time."
Viewer count spiked. Good. If people had understood how the game worked, maybe it would have stopped working so well.
Phone had buzzed. Jace.
How long have you been up?
I checked the clock: 2:47 PM. I started at 6 AM, when I saw the first wave hit Kara.
Long enough to build a beautiful case file, I shot back. Victoria's fingerprints are everywhere.
Take a break. You're going to burn out.
I ignored him. Kept recording. “If you really want to piss off astroturfers, you don’t argue with bots. That’s what they want. Instead, you signal boost the real voices, the ones actually saying something.”
So I did. I reposted every genuine Kara supporter, every Omega creator with their own war story, every brave soul calling out the bots. I had reach. Each repost was a spotlight. Death by a thousand paper cuts.
Another ping. Reid this time.
Everything okay? Haven’t seen you leave your room.
Weaponizing my chaos powers for good. Very okay.
Which was mostly true. Except every hate comment about Kara felt like someone twisting a crowbar into my ribs. And I kept hearing her voice from last night, scared and vulnerable, trusting us to handle it. It made me want to find Victoria Smith and show her what happens when you messed with my pack.
My Omega.
The thought fired off before I could kill it, and I almost trashed the recording out of pure reflex. Kara wasn’t mine. She’s pack, yeah, but that’s it. Comfort during heats, backup in crises, the found-family script.
Except. The way she had looked at me with my hoodie on. The way her smile had lit up when I had made her actually laugh that first stream. The way her longing for us reverberated through me…
Focus, idiot. She needs you sharp, not spiraling.
I pulled up another suspicious account: @ProStreamNews. Six months old, but silent until today. Classic sleeper. Higher effort, same cheap script.
“Here’s a fun one,” I tell the stream, magnifying the profile. “Old account, but notice? Every single post today matches the bots. ‘Victim mentality’. ‘False accusations’. ‘Destroying careers’. All reading the same tired lines.”
And they were. I’d found the playbook an hour ago, sitting wide open on a file-sharing site. Not even a password.
My door cracked open. Ash stepped in, eyes scanning the four screens, the seventeen browser tabs, the fortress of empty energy drink cans. He shakes his head.
