Page 45 of Make Them Cry
“Occupational hazard.”
She sprinkles in the flaws. The post reads like River at midnight, not River at war. We push it live on the mirror. Sopranette bites exactly four minutes later, showing up in DMs with a string of keyboard courage.
SOPRANETTE:Prove it’s you.
River doesn’t ask me what to say. She doesn’t look to me for confirmation. She just…knows.
RIVER (BAIT):Prove you’re not boring.
He takes the hook, wide open.
SOPRANETTE:Link?
She glances up. I nod. Render’s single-use lure is ready. She sends it.
Now we wait.
Arrow’s voice crackles over the encrypted channel. “Tracer armed.”
Knight: “Outer ring clear. No cross-traffic on their end yet.”
Ozzy: “I have a twenty that says he’s on hotel Wi-Fi.”
“Twenty says coworking space,” I mutter, eyes on the packet captures spooling like rain.
On River’s screen, the status badge flips:download started.
“Come on,” she whispers, leaning in, hair slipping loose from her knot. “Come on, you little troll.”
Traffic spikes. A soft port opens—just a sliver—and our hook slides through. We catch a device signature, then a MAC, thenthe invisible thread that ties Sopranette’s bravado to something with a street address.
Ozzy crows. “Got him! Hello,No-Sleep CoLab, floor three, downtown. And look at that—guest network, but he authenticated to print.”
“Name?” Knight asks.
“Working,” Arrow says, coaxing the printer spool like a snake charmer.
River’s knee bumps mine under the table. She doesn’t move away. Neither do I.
The name pops onto the shared console.
Kyle M. Anders.Twenty-three. Lives in his mother’s basement in the suburbs. Commutes in to “network.” Five posts on a failed startup blog. Thirty-two on Cathedral. He runs a mean account and a small life.
“Let’s say hi,” I tell Arrow.
River’s eyes are bright, a little wild. “What do we do?”
“We introduce Kyle to natural consequences.” I send Render a link. “Make me a collage.”
Ten minutes later, Kyle’s manager at No-Sleep CoLab receives an anonymous packet: Kyle’s Cathedral posts, thread IDs, the messages he sent under a handle logged in fromtheirWi-Fi. Alongside it, a compilation of his nastiest comments about “making her scream.” A nudge to their code of conduct. And a suggestion they might not want him using company printers for harassment.
Addendum: a pre-written apology he can send, if he chooses to be a person today.
By lunch, Kyle is suspended. By afternoon, Kyle is very sorry. The apology lands in River’s burner with the punctuation of a dog who peed on the rug and knows it.
She reads it. She does not smile.
But somethingeasesin her shoulders.
