Page 37 of Make Them Cry
Knight laughs. “You’re a dork.”
Render salutes him. “Thank you.”
We wait.
The worst part of this work isn’t the violence. It’s the silence before it.
I can still smell River’s shampoo in the air—lavender and that warm something that makes my chest go tight. It’s probably my imagination, but I still smell it all the same. She’s on the other side of the wall, lying on the bed we made, unaware that a roomful of idiots who swore to protect her are trying to turn the internet inside out.
My phone buzzes with a single unread message from our masked thread.
RIVER:Practiced the stance. Thumbs outside. Don’t laugh.
I don’t reply. If I start, I won’t stop.
Instead, I stare at the Cathedral site and think about the way she looked up at me—at Mask—yesterday when I corrected her grip. Like she was cataloging my voice for later.
The modulator worked. Mostly.
I still heard myself under it.
I think she did too.
“Movement,” Ozzy says, breaking the quiet. “We’ve got a rat on Cathedral. New session. User string matches his pattern.”
Regent. I lean forward, every nerve ending standing at attention.
Arrow adopts my position, leaning forward as well. “Hold… hold… he’s reading the thread.”
Render nods. “Scrolling behavior’s hungry.”
Knight says, “Come on, take the bite.”
We watch his cursor hover overDM for link. He clicks into messages. Types. Deletes. Types again.
“Come on,” I whisper. “Do it.”
He doesn’t.
Arrow shifts in his chair. “He backed out.”
Ozzy says, “Chicken.”
Render exhales, long and deep. “He’s seen enough flame to know when the pan’s hot.”
Regent drops. The session goes idle.
My jaw aches from how hard I’m clenching. He’s slippery. Or someone warned him.
“Reset the cheese,” Arrow says, calm. “Make it stinkier.”
Render edits the thread title to:NEW: Uncut Interview. Private link. 10 min window.
We wait again.
A minute. Five. Twelve.
Then—
