A Code of Silence

Fractions & Unity

The terror from the final post faded into a cold, determined resolve. The silence of my room was shattered by a single, desperate plan: I had to get to Christopher's house. I didn't know what I would say or do, but I knew I couldn't be alone with this anymore.

When I got to his house, the front door was unlocked. I walked in to find Augustus, Christopher, and Emma already there. The air was thick with tension, but it wasn't the silence I had left. It was a buzzing, a nervous energy of people united by a common enemy.

And then Julia walked in.

She was the last person I expected to see. Her eyes, usually so sharp and knowing, were soft and concerned. Augustus was by her side, looking at me with a pained expression. "Something awful happened," he whispered to her, "and she wanted to help."

Julia came straight for me. She didn't say a word. She just wrapped her arms around me and hugged me so tight I thought my bones would break. I hugged her back, and the floodgates opened. I just held on, letting the tears fall. It was so good to see her.

"I have some news," she said, pulling back, her face radiant. "I'm pregnant. I'm going to be a mom."

I stared at her, a wave of shock washing over me. "What?"

"I know," she said, and for the first time in forever, a real, genuine smile broke through the terror on her face. "And I've decided to live with Richard." Julia confirmed with a nod. "He's helping us all make sense of this."

The room was no longer filled with enemies and betrayals. We were all there for the same reason: to find Ethan. To end this nightmare.

Emma and Christopher took over the computer, their fingers flying across the keyboards. They were the hackers, the ones who knew every line of code. "His final post was a complete wipe," Christopher said, his voice a low growl of frustration. "He's gone. No IP address, no metadata. He was right; he erased his ghost perfectly."

"The technology is only half of it," Mr. Brooks said, his voice calm and steady. "To catch a person like this, we have to think like them. We need to build a psychological profile. Augustus, Hazel, you've been the closest to this. You've been his target for a long time. Tell me everything."

Julia went to the kitchen and came back with a plate of cookies and bottles of water. She wasn't an expert, and she wasn't a hacker. She was just a friend, making sure everyone had what they needed to get through this.

We were a team, a very strange, unexpected team. Christopher and Emma were the technical brains, looking for a flaw in his code. Augustus, Mr. Brooks, and I were the psychological team, trying to find a flaw in his mind. Julia was the emotional support, the one person in the room who wasn't broken by all of this. We had all been victims, but we were refusing to be victims any longer. We were going to find him, not for revenge, but for peace.

AFTER SOME TIME

Emma just stared at her screen, her eyes narrowed in concentration. She wasn't looking at the code. She was looking at her own creation. She was looking at The Daily Buzz itself. She knew its every secret, every hidden back door.

"The IP addresses are all anonymous proxies," she finally said, her voice quiet. "He knew exactly what he was doing. He was flawless."

She looked up at Christopher. "But his method wasn't," she said, a flicker of something in her eyes. "He didn't know everything."

She turned back to the screen and started typing furiously, a new sense of purpose in her movements. "I built a feature into The Daily Buzz a year ago, a hidden admin panel that let me track what posts were getting the most views. I designed it to be completely anonymous for the user, but it left a tiny footprint on my end."