Elias watched the exchange with cold detachment. He tapped his earpiece again. "Chloe. The passenger just confirmed he was in direct contact with Julian Vance regarding the seat swap. I want a full trace on Julian's internal system activity for the past 24 hours. Don't look at his public logs; dig into the legacy archives. Find out how he accessed the protocol."
"Copy that, Elias," Chloe replied, the sound of furious typing echoing through the line. "I'm running a deep dive on his admin token now."
Elias turned back to Maya, offering a reassuring nod. "You're doing great, Miss Lin. Just hang tight."
Maya took a deep breath, clutching the TSA receipt in her hand. The adrenaline that had fueled her initial defiance was fading, replaced by a deep, hollow exhaustion. She just wanted to go to Seattle. She wanted to present her project. Instead, she was the center of a corporate warzone.
Chapter 8: The Threat from Above
Julian Vance was sweating. It wasn't a metaphorical sweat; physical beads of perspiration were forming on his forehead, catching the morning light streaming through his office windows. He had tried to scrub the legacy system, but Elias Thorne was too fast. Thorne had locked the database architecture at the terminal level, freezing Julian out of the very system he had manipulated.
Julian paced the length of his office, his mind racing. He needed a distraction. Something loud, chaotic, and messy enough to drown out the internal investigation before Thorne could connect the authorization token back to him. He couldn't attack Thorne directly; the investigator was untouchable. He had to attack the source of the problem. He had to attack David Lin.
He grabbed his desk phone and punched in the extension for the crisis PR team. The call was answered instantly by a junior associate named Marcus.
"Marcus, drop whatever you're doing," Julian ordered, his voice sharp and commanding. "I need a leak to the press. Right now."
"A leak, sir? Regarding what?"
"Flight 808 out of JFK," Julian rapidly explained, spinning a web of half-truths and calculated lies. "I need you to anonymously drop a tip to the major aviation blogs, commuter watchdog sites, and high-traffic social news feeds like Reddit and X. Exploit current outrage algorithms by seeding emotive keywords—'corporate entitlement', 'flight grounded', 'executive corruption'. Use coordinated engagement bots to artificially boost early upvotes and retweets, triggering automated trending algorithms to push the story to mainstream news feeds within thirty minutes. Frame it that David Lin, our Head of Safety Operations, just ordered a commercial flight grounded, delaying hundreds of passengers, simply because his spoiled teenage daughter wanted a window seat."
Marcus hesitated, clutching his phone in the PR bull-pen down on the twelfth floor. "Sir, you want us to leak a story attacking one of our own senior VP's? And releasing details about a minor's travel... that's highly irregular and potentially a severe violation of federal privacy guidelines."
"I don't care about the guidelines!" Julian yelled, losing his composure and slamming his fist on his desk. "Do it! Redact her face from any photos, but put the itinerary out there. Let the internet tear them apart. Once the public outrage shifts to Lin and his daughter, the board of directors will panic. They'll force Lin to drop the internal investigation to save his own job and the company's reputation. We make him the villain."
"Understood, Mr. Vance," Marcus replied nervously, swallows hard. "I'll draft the copy and push it to our anonymous burner accounts immediately."
"Make it go viral, Marcus," Julian hissed before hanging up.
Within twenty minutes, the machinery of outrage was in full motion. The first tweet went live on a popular, sensationalist travel blog. It featured a heavily edited, blurry photo of Maya standing in the aisle of Flight 808, accompanied by a screenshot of her digital itinerary.
The headline was designed to incite maximum fury: Zenith Safety Chief Grounds Flight So Daughter Can Have Window Seat. Hundreds Delayed.
But in their haste to execute Julian's desperate order, the PR team made a fatal, unforgivable error. They blurred Maya's face in the photo, but they failed to properly redact the destination details on the leaked itinerary screenshot.
Maya's flight details, her hotel reservation at the Grand Seattle Hyatt, and her registered attendance at the National Youth Tech Summit were now public knowledge. The internet had her exact location, and a manufactured reason to hate her for it. The digital mob was waking up, and they knew exactly where to find her.
Chapter 8: The Threat from Above
Julian Vance was sweating. It wasn't a metaphorical sweat; physical beads of perspiration were forming on his forehead, catching the morning light streaming through his office windows. He had tried to scrub the legacy system, but Elias Thorne was too fast. Thorne had locked the database architecture at the terminal level, freezing Julian out of the very system he had manipulated.
Julian paced the length of his office, his mind racing. He needed a distraction. Something loud, chaotic, and messy enough to drown out the internal investigation before Thorne could connect the authorization token back to him. He couldn't attack Thorne directly; the investigator was untouchable. He had to attack the source of the problem. He had to attack David Lin.
He grabbed his desk phone and punched in the extension for the crisis PR team. The call was answered instantly by a junior associate named Marcus.
"Marcus, drop whatever you're doing," Julian ordered, his voice sharp and commanding. "I need a leak to the press. Right now."
"A leak, sir? Regarding what?"
"Flight 808 out of JFK," Julian rapidly explained, spinning a web of half-truths and calculated lies. "I need you to anonymously drop a tip to the major aviation blogs, commuter watchdog sites, and high-traffic social news feeds like Reddit and X. Exploit current outrage algorithms by seeding emotive keywords—'corporate entitlement', 'flight grounded', 'executive corruption'. Use coordinated engagement bots to artificially boost early upvotes and retweets, triggering automated trending algorithms to push the story to mainstream news feeds within thirty minutes. Frame it that David Lin, our Head of Safety Operations, just ordered a commercial flight grounded, delaying hundreds of passengers, simply because his spoiled teenage daughter wanted a window seat."
"Flight 808 out of JFK," Julian rapidly explained, spinning a web of half-truths and calculated lies. "I need you to anonymously drop a tip to the major aviation blogs and commuter watchdog sites. Spin the narrative. Frame it that David Lin, our Head of Safety Operations, just ordered a commercial flight grounded, delaying hundreds of passengers, simply because his spoiled teenage daughter wanted a window seat."
Marcus hesitated. "Sir, you want us to leak a story attacking one of our own senior VP's? And releasing details about a minor's travel... that's highly irregular and potentially a violation of our privacy guidelines."
"I don't care about the guidelines!" Julian yelled, losing his composure. "Do it! Redact her face from any photos, but put the itinerary out there. Let the internet tear them apart. Once the public outrage shifts to Lin and his daughter, the board of directors will panic. They'll force Lin to drop the internal investigation to save his own job and the company's reputation. We make him the villain."