Chapter 1 My coworker, Mia, walked up to me, cradling her slightly rounded belly. "Chloe, could you let me crash at your place near the office for a few months?" she asked, her voice soft and pleading. "Commuting across the city every day while pregnant is just too much. I can barely hold on. I promise I’ll move out the second the baby is born." I was just about to nod when a line of glowing text suddenly materialized in the air right in front of my eyes. [Don't nod.] The next second, a dense stream of floating text drifted across my vision like a holographic live chat. [The fetus in her belly lost its heartbeat three days ago.] [The baby belongs to your boyfriend, Julian.] [Tonight, Mia will collapse in your apartment. She’ll cry and tell everyone that you found out the truth, went crazy with jealousy, and pushed her.] [At that exact same time, your home network will leak the bottom-line pricing of our company's sealed bid.] [You will be suspended, dragged across social media, sued by the company, and condemned by everyone as a corporate traitor who killed a pregnant woman’s baby.] I stared at those words, the blood in my veins turning to ice, inch by inch. Mia was still waiting for my answer. I looked at her slightly bulging stomach. Then, I calmly closed my laptop. "I'm sorry," I said flatly. "I don't lend out my personal home." The conference room fell dead silent for a few seconds. Mia’s eyes instantly welled up with tears. "Did I put you in a tough spot? I'm so sorry, I just wanted to be closer to the office so it’d be easier to handle late-night revisions." The product manager sitting next to me muttered, "Chloe, your place is usually empty anyway." Another coworker chimed in: "It's just for a few months. Mia is working so hard while pregnant. Cut her some slack." David Sterling, our VP, sat at the head of the table and tapped his knuckles against the wood. "Chloe, the project is at a critical stage. Supporting your teammates isn't a bad thing." I looked right at him. "Mr. Sterling, if this involves an employee using my private residence, do we need to file a formal housing accommodation request with HR and Compliance?" David frowned. "There's no need to make it that complicated." "Then it’s even less appropriate," I said, capping my pen. "My home is my private property, not a corporate project resource. If Mia needs to rent a place, the company can apply for a temporary housing stipend according to our HR policies. I’d be happy to sign off on the approval." Mia bit her lip, a tear perfectly catching on her eyelashes. "But it's so hard to find a short-term lease right now, and anything near the office is incredibly expensive. Chloe, we’ve grinded on this project together for so long... I thought we were friends." The moment that sentence hung in the air, the atmosphere in the room turned suffocating. I didn't take the emotional bait. "Even friends need boundaries." Someone whispered under their breath, "That's so cold-blooded." "She's probably just paranoid Mia is going to steal her credit." "Being pregnant isn't a crime. Does she really need to be this defensive?" The floating text drifted across my vision again. [She’s holding your feet to the fire.] [Don't explain. The more you defend yourself, the guiltier you look.] [Julian will call you in ten minutes.] Less than ten minutes after the meeting adjourned, my phone buzzed. "Hey, Chloe. I heard you turned Mia down today?" I stood in the emergency stairwell, staring at the gray sky through the window. "Word travels fast." Julian chuckled softly. "You know how it is. A lot of people from our two companies went to college together; the group chats are talking. Don't be mad, I'm just worried people are going to misunderstand you." "And?" "She's pregnant. There’s no need to ruin your working relationship over this. It's just a temporary stay. You can have her sign a liability waiver if you're worried." The holographic text drifted by coldly. [Look how considerate he sounds.] [He even remembers your backup smart-lock passcode.] [He sent photos of your living room to Mia last week.] My grip on the phone tightened. "Julian, do you know Mia?" A brief pause on the other end. "I've heard the name. We aren't close." I let out a soft laugh. "Not close, huh." "Of course not. Chloe, are you just exhausted lately? Don't overthink things." I hung up. No accusations. The floating text was right. Tearing off the mask now would only warn them to change their tactics. I walked back to my desk and messaged Harper, our in-house legal counsel. “Are you free tonight? I need you to help me with a formal evidence preservation.” She replied instantly. “What happened?” I glanced across the room at Mia, who was currently wiping away tears with her head bowed. “Someone wants to borrow my apartment.” “And take my life while they’re at it.” Chapter 2 After work, I went straight to my apartment on Willow Street. Behind the front door, there was a very faint pencil mark on the frame. Next to it, in crooked handwriting, it read: “Chloe, age 20. Even when you grow up, remember to come home.” It was the last height measurement my dad took of me before he passed away. I stood at the door looking at it for a long time. Then, I got to work. By the time Harper arrived with a certified notary, I had turned on the lights in every single room. Living room, bedroom, office, kitchen, balcony, bathroom. Every corner was recorded on continuous video. The locks, window latches, the router, my desktop, the bookshelves, the tamper-evident seals on the drawers—all clearly documented. Harper gave me a hard look. "Who exactly are you defending against?" "A pregnant woman." She froze. "You can't joke about things like that." "I know. That's why I'm only leaving hard evidence." In front of the notary, I changed the admin password to my smart lock and wiped all temporary access codes. Julian's guest PIN was permanently deleted. System prompt: Access removed successfully. I took a screenshot and uploaded it to a secure cloud drive. Next, I factory-reset my old router and had Marcus, the head of our IT Security team, remote in. When Marcus heard my request, he was silent for a long time. "Are you absolutely sure you want to scrub the real bid proposal from all your personal devices?" "Positive." "Then what are we leaving on your home computer?" "A fake one." "How fake?" "Fake enough to look identical to the real one, but rigged so that every single action taken on it leaves a digital footprint." Marcus chuckled. "You got it." At 1:00 AM, Julian texted me. "Still working? I ordered some hot milk for you. I had it left at the front reception desk." Right after, Mia sent a message to the main project group chat. "It’s my fault today. I put Chloe in a tough spot. Please don't blame her. I'll come in early tomorrow, and even though I live far away, I promise I won't delay the project timeline." The chat immediately flooded with sympathy. "You're already working so hard!" "Don't cry, Mia. Your health comes first." "Some people get a little bit of authority and forget how hard life is for the rest of us." I didn't reply. The text floated into my vision. [Do not touch the manila envelope at the reception desk.] [There is a USB drive inside. If you plug it into your computer, it will install remote-access malware.] I checked my phone. The receptionist had just texted me. "Hey Chloe, someone dropped off some late-night snacks for you, along with a document folder. They said it was project materials." I replied: "Don't open it. Leave it right under the security camera. I'll have IT Security pick it up tomorrow." The next morning, Marcus came to my office holding a static-proof bag. "You're psychic," he said. "The USB drive had a trojan horse disguised as a PDF reader plugin. If you had plugged it in, they could have remotely pulled files from your hard drive." I stared at the black flash drive. "Can you trace the source?" "Wiped clean of fingerprints, but I can trace the casing batch number. Also, the delivery guy wore a mask, but the lobby camera caught a clear shot of his side profile." Harper stood next to us, her expression darkening. "Chloe, from this second on, do not handle any physical documents by yourself." I nodded. "I also need to file a formal conflict of interest report with Compliance." "About what?" "My boyfriend, Julian. He is the lead project manager for the company competing against us for this bid." Harper swore under her breath. "Why are you just saying this now?" I lowered my voice. "Because I only realized today that he might be more than just my boyfriend." Chapter 3 The night before the sealed bid was due, David suddenly ordered me to visit a client site on the East Side. "The client has a clarification memo that needs to be signed by the lead PM in person. It’ll take thirty minutes round trip." I looked at the email chain. Julian was also in the client communication loop. The floating text frantically updated. [Luring the tiger out of the mountain.] [They are going to enter your apartment.] [Do not go alone. Take Legal. Turn on your GPS location tracking.] I turned to Harper. "Come with me." David looked annoyed. "Why are you bringing Legal? The client is going to think we don't trust them." Harper flashed her corporate badge. "During a sealed-bid period, any offline confirmation requires Compliance presence. Company policy." David didn't argue further. On the drive to the East Side, I turned on continuous audio recording and shared my live location with Marcus. When we arrived at the client’s building, the receptionist told us the project lead had just left. When I called the client's assistant, they gave a vague excuse: "Ah, maybe the time got mixed up." Harper and I locked eyes. We instantly turned around and sped back. Halfway back to my apartment, my phone rang. It was Gary, my building manager. His voice was trembling. "Chloe! You need to get back here right now! Something terrible happened at your place!" My blood ran cold. "Who is in my apartment?" "A pregnant woman! She said she was your coworker. She collapsed in your living room, there's blood on the floor... the ambulance is already here!" Harper grabbed my hand tightly. "Don't panic. Say nothing else." I stared at the streetlights blurring past the window. The floating text was dense. [She’s starting her performance.] [Photos are already being leaked in the group chat.] [The company’s security system is about to trip.] Right on cue, the project group chat exploded. Someone posted a photo. My living room. Mia was lying on the hardwood floor, her face deathly pale, clutching her stomach. There was blood on the hem of her dress. The caption read: "Emergency at Chloe's place! I think Mia is having a miscarriage!" Immediately after, a critical IT Security alert popped up on my phone. WARNING: Suspected exfiltration of core corporate data. Source IP: Unit 6, Willow Street. Residential network of Chloe. The group chat descended into chaos. "Her home network?! Are you kidding me?" "Why is Mia at her house?" "She rejected her yesterday and today she almost dies there? That's too much of a coincidence." "The bid leaked from her house?! Wait, isn't her boyfriend the PM for the rival company?" My fingertips were freezing. Julian called. I answered. "Chloe, where are you?! Mia said you guys got into a massive fight and she fell!" "What else did she say?" I asked flatly. A slight pause. "She said you found out about the baby." "What baby?" "Chloe..." He lowered his voice, playing the peacemaker. "Now is not the time to point fingers. Just come back, show some remorse. I'll help you find a good defense lawyer." I actually laughed. "You? Help me?" "I'm doing this for your own good." "Then wait for me at the scene." I hung up. Ten minutes later, I sprinted up to the sixth floor. The hallway was packed with people. Paramedics were wheeling a stretcher out. Mia was on it, her forehead slick with sweat. When she saw me, tears immediately rolled down her face. "Chloe, I just wanted to live closer to work so we could finish the project," she sobbed. "Even if you found out the baby was Julian's, you didn't have to do this to me!" Her voice wasn't loud. But it was loud enough for everyone in the hallway to hear perfectly. Chapter 4 The hallway erupted into a frenzy of whispers. "The baby is Julian's?" "Isn't Julian Chloe's boyfriend?" "So she caught the mistress and pushed her? Caused a miscarriage?" "Wait, they aren't even married yet! That's so vicious, taking it out on a pregnant woman..." The paramedics pushed the stretcher toward the elevator. Mia gripped the side rails, crying so hard she was practically hyperventilating. "I never wanted to steal anything from you! I was already planning to leave him! Why couldn't you just spare my child?!" I looked at her. Incredible. She twisted "borrowing an apartment," "infidelity," and "miscarriage" into one seamless narrative. My refusal to let her move in was painted as bitter jealousy. Her illegal break-in was painted as me inviting her over. And a fetus she had lost days ago was painted as a murder at my hands. David and a few other coworkers rushed out of the stairwell. David’s face was livid. "Chloe, what the hell is going on?!" I didn't answer him. Instead, I looked at Gary, the building manager. "Who opened my door?" Gary stammered nervously. "She... she had an authorization letter from you! And screenshots of your texts! She said you agreed to let her move in tonight!" "She's pregnant, and she said her stomach was cramping really badly. We didn't want a medical emergency on our hands, so we called a locksmith..." I held out my hand. "Give me the authorization letter." Gary handed me a printed sheet of paper. It had my signature at the bottom. A very good forgery. Attached was a printed screenshot of a text exchange. "Mia, babe, you can crash at my place tonight. I'll tell property management to give you the keys." The profile picture was mine. But the tone wasn't. I never call my coworkers "babe." Someone in the group chat then posted a screenshot of Mia’s banking app. A transfer of $500. Memo: Willow Street Rent Deposit. I calmly opened my own banking app. That money had indeed been transferred to my account last night. But I had refunded it exactly one minute later. My refund memo read: Did not agree to rent, lend, or grant access to my property. I took a screenshot and dropped it into the company group chat. The chat went dead silent for a second. Then someone typed: "You could have just changed your mind." "Yeah, Mia was already inside your apartment. It's not like she picked the lock herself." "A baby just died! Can we focus on saving her first? You're obsessing over legal loopholes, you're terrifying." Julian ran up the stairs from the lobby, looking more disheveled and frantic than anyone else. "Chloe, please stop triggering her!" I looked at him. "She said the baby is yours." His Adam's apple bobbed. "Talking about this right now is pointless." "Whether it's pointless or not isn't up to you." He took a step closer, dropping his voice to a whisper. "Calm down. The company system flagged the leak from your IP address, and Mia was injured inside your home." "The best thing you can do right now is cooperate. Don't blow this up into a bigger scandal." I stared at his familiar face. For the past year, I thought he was gentle, restrained, and respectful. Now I knew those traits were just tools. [Do not argue.] [Do not beg them to believe you.] [Follow procedure.] I pulled out my phone, went to the company-wide chat, and typed exactly two sentences: "I am calling the police. I formally request the sealing of my residence and the corporate servers." Then, I dialed 911. "I need to report a crime." "Someone has illegally trespassed into my home using forged authorization documents, in an attempt to frame me for a crime." "Simultaneously, my company's sealed-bid project is currently the victim of corporate espionage. I am requesting immediate crime scene protection and digital forensics." Chapter 5 The police arrived quickly. The lead officer was a woman named Officer Bennett. As soon as she got off the elevator, she cleared the area. The coworkers taking photos by the door were escorted down to the lobby. Property management, the locksmith, myself, Harper, Julian, and David were separated to give statements. Mia was already at the hospital, and an officer was dispatched to meet her there to collect her statement and medical evidence. I stood in the hallway, refusing to step foot inside my apartment. "Why aren't you going in?" Officer Bennett asked. "I don't want to contaminate the crime scene." She gave me an assessing look. "You're very familiar with protocol." "I manage major tech projects. I know what maintaining an original state means." Harper systematically AirDropped the notary video from the night before, the smart-lock access logs, the refunded deposit screenshot, and the conflict-of-interest email to the police. David’s face grew uglier by the minute. "Chloe, if you thought there was a risk, why didn't you warn the company in advance?" I turned to him. "I filed a formal report with Compliance this morning regarding my relationship status and a compromised USB drive delivery. I CC’d you on the email." He choked. "I was in back-to-back meetings." "You not reading it doesn't mean I didn't report it." Julian spoke up, his voice heavy. "Chloe, did you suspect me from the very beginning?" I looked back at him. "What do you want me to say?" A flash of cold calculation crossed his eyes, quickly masked by deep concern. "I just feel terrible for Mia. She lost a child tonight." Officer Bennett looked up from her notepad. "The state of the fetus will be determined by the hospital's medical report. Do not jump to conclusions." Julian went silent. The crime scene investigators began sweeping the apartment. There was blood on the living room floor, but the spread was minimal. The coffee table had been deliberately pushed askew, and the corner of the rug was flipped up—staged to look like a physical struggle. But my living room security camera was pointed directly at the entryway and the living space. "Why didn't the camera catch anything?" Officer Bennett asked. Gary wiped his forehead. "Ms. Mia said a pregnant woman needs privacy to move in, so she unplugged the living room camera." I sneered. "She wasn't even living there yet. What privacy?" Harper added, "In the notary video from last night, the camera was fully functional. The cloud logs show the device went offline today at exactly 2:00 PM." The floating text drifted by slowly. [The telecom box.] [A micro-router is taped behind the fiber modem.] I pointed to the wall. "Officer Bennett, could you have your team check the telecom box by the door?" Julian’s head snapped toward me. It was a micro-expression, incredibly fast. But I caught it. An officer opened the white metal panel. Tucked behind the modem was a black device the size of a thumb drive. It had a cellular IoT SIM card slotted into it, and its indicator light was blinking rapidly. Marcus, who had just rushed over with the Apex Tech security team, took one look and swore out loud. "A 4G bypass router. It can spoof a local network exit node and act as a remote forwarding proxy." David turned deathly pale. "So... the leaked file didn't actually come from Chloe's computer?" Marcus didn't answer immediately. He hooked up his forensic tablet to the network. A few minutes later, he looked up at me. "Chloe, the file that was exfiltrated is the honeypot document you had me plant last night." Dead silence fell over the hallway. "Digital watermark ID?" I asked. "Y-07." "Receiving endpoint?" Marcus glanced at Officer Bennett. She nodded. "State the facts." Marcus’s voice turned ice-cold. "First hop was an offshore cloud server. Second hop routed directly into the corporate subnet of Vanguard Solutions." For the first time all night, Julian looked completely drained of blood. Chapter 6 Officer Bennett ordered her team to bag the black router. Julian recovered his composure remarkably fast. "A ping to the Vanguard subnet doesn't prove I was involved. There are thousands of network proxies out there; someone could easily be framing me." I nodded. "You're absolutely right." He gave me a weird look, clearly not expecting me to agree with him. "Which is why," I continued, "we also need to find out exactly who installed that device." The police pulled the hallway security footage. At 2:06 PM, a man in a gray jacket and baseball cap came up to the sixth floor. He was carrying a toolkit and lingered outside my door for exactly four minutes. His face was obscured by the cap. But as he turned to leave, his sleeve slipped, revealing a company lanyard. Blue and white. The corporate colors of Vanguard Solutions. "You can buy lanyards like that anywhere online," Julian said stiffly. Officer Bennett ignored him, turning back to Gary. "Who exactly called the locksmith?" Gary was sweating profusely now. "Ms. Mia called us! She said Chloe gave her authorization to move in but she forgot her keys, and she was having severe stomach cramps! We were terrified of a medical emergency, so we..." "Who gave you the authorization letter?" "Ms. Mia emailed a PDF copy." The police checked Gary's phone. The sender’s email address was a spoofed version of my personal email. It was off by a single letter. Harper let out a cold laugh. "Very detail-oriented." I turned to Officer Bennett. "Can you request a search of Mia’s personal handbag? She might be carrying her original medical records." Julian immediately interjected. "She is in the ER fighting for her life, and you're worried about digging through her purse?!" I stared at him. "Why are you so nervous?" "I just think you lack basic human empathy." Before I could respond, Harper stepped squarely in front of me. "Mr. Julian, empathy does not supersede evidence. Since Mia is claiming she suffered a miscarriage due to an altercation in Chloe's apartment tonight, her original prenatal records are critical forensic evidence." Officer Bennett radioed her colleague at the hospital. Half an hour later, the call came back. Inside Mia’s purse, they found a torn-up medical report. When the pieces were taped back together, the doctor’s diagnosis was crystal clear. Three days ago. Intrauterine fetal demise. Recommendation: Immediate hospitalization for surgical removal. The hallway was so quiet you could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights. David’s lips parted in shock. "Wait... you mean... the baby didn't die tonight?"
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