After my boyfriend’s sister, Chloe, was sexually assaulted and committed suicide, everyone accused me of protecting the monster who did it. His mother collapsed on my doorstep, sobbing and begging for answers, but I shut the door in her face. The internet doxxed me. Angry mobs poisoned my only companion, my cat Casper. Ten years later, as I lay on my deathbed, my ex-boyfriend, Lucas, returned. He was now a tech billionaire, powerful and ruthless. The first thing he did upon returning to the city was drag me onto the Memory Judgement Platform—a futuristic trial reserved only for death row criminals. "Elena, you absolute monster! You protected a rapist! Chloe and I were blind to ever call you a friend!" "Chloe has been dead for ten years, and you let her attacker run free for a decade!" "Today, I’m going to use my memory extractor to show the entire world exactly who you’ve been protecting!" But when the face of the attacker finally appeared on the giant screen, Lucas’s face went dead white.
Lucas made a massive public spectacle out of my trial. The plaza in front of his Silicon Valley headquarters was packed to the brim with media and angry crowds. Reporters set up their cameras, broadcasting the live feed to every major social media platform. My organs were failing. Kept alive only by IV drips and heavy medication, I was dragged onto the platform like a convicted criminal. Chloe’s grandfather, Arthur, lunged forward, grabbing my collar and screaming in my face: "Elena! Why did you protect him?!" "You piece of trash! Why aren't you the one who's dead?!" He choked me so hard I could barely breathe. My vision started to go black. The crowd instantly erupted into a frenzy: "Look at this heartless bitch! Her best friend gets assaulted, she knows who did it, and she stays silent!" "When Chloe drowned herself in the ocean, her poor mother collapsed at Elena's door. She begged, she screamed, she banged her fists until her knuckles bled, and this monster never opened the door!" "She even let her cat scratch an old man who came to ask for justice! She is pure evil!" The overwhelming tide of insults washed over me. Lucas stood to the side, his brow furrowed, his face masked with deep, icy resentment. In this world, Chloe’s family hated me to my very bones. But out of everyone, the person who hated me most was him. Ten years ago, Chloe, Lucas, and I were inseparable. We were best friends, and Lucas was the love of my life. But after Chloe was assaulted at the Cole family estate and subsequently took her own life, my relationship with Lucas shattered into pieces. All because Chloe’s suicide note mentioned that I had seen the attacker. Overnight, I became the accomplice. And the truth was... I did protect the killer. Lucas walked up to me. His face was cold, his voice devoid of any warmth: "Elena, I'm giving you one last chance." "Confess now. Tell the police who it was. It’s not too late..." "Once this memory extractor starts, the high-frequency neural pulses will make you feel like every bone in your body is being crushed inch by inch. You won't have a chance to beg for mercy then!" My face turned pale. I struggled against my restraints and screamed: "Lucas, stop! You can't do this!" "You cannot extract my memories!" Lucas grabbed my wrists, his eyes flashing with hatred. "Scared now?" "You don't get a choice!" "I am getting justice for Chloe!" I wept, begging him through my tears: "Lucas, listen to me! My memories cannot be made public! You will regret this!" Lucas let out a harsh, mocking laugh, leaning in close, his eyes bloodshot. "Regret?" "The only thing I regret is ever loving you!" Two beefy security guards immediately pinned me down onto the steel chair. Cold metal cuffs locked around my wrists and ankles. Ignoring my violent struggles, they forced my head back and clamped the heavy, freezing helmet onto my skull. In an instant, thousands of micro-needles pierced my scalp, drilling directly into my nervous system. I screamed as my body went into violent spasms. It felt like my very soul was being ripped apart.
Even as I screamed in agony, the crowd below and the live comments on TikTok and YouTube were ruthless. They kept throwing insults, celebrating my pain. "Evil ex-best friend! Accomplice! Go to hell, bitch!" On the massive screen above, my memories began to play in reverse. The first memory appeared. The screen showed the third day after Chloe's death. I was at the absolute center of a massive cyberbullying storm. Thousands of people online were demanding I name the killer. They doxxed my home address, sent me death threats, and spammed my phone with terrifying calls. My personal information was leaked everywhere. I was fired from my job. The sheer malice of the internet crushed me. I was blacklisted from society, unable to find any work. I fled my apartment, desperately trying to escape the endless harassment in real life and online. The screen showed a montage of my eviction notices. I had nowhere to go. With no options left, I took my cat, Casper, and fled to a sketchy, cheap, run-down neighborhood on the edge of the city. But the internet mob still found me. Right in front of my eyes, they poisoned Casper, the only living being I had left. I held Casper’s stiff, cold body in my arms, crying until my voice was completely gone. That year, with my grandmother already dead, I was only twenty-two years old and completely alone. Lucas stared at my tear-stained face on the screen, letting out a cold sneer. "Elena, you brought this on yourself. Don't act like a victim." "If you hadn't protected the rapist, none of this would have happened. You think you deserve sympathy?" "You are the last person on earth who gets to feel victimized! You chose to protect a criminal, this is your karma!" The crowd chimed in: "How shameless! Is she really trying to make us feel sorry for her?" "Using pathetic memories to gain sympathy? Joke of the century! An accomplice is just as guilty as the rapist. Burn in hell!" "How does she have the nerve to play the victim? Chloe's family was destroyed! Her daughter died, her mother collapsed, everyone suffered more than her!" Right then, a girl's clear, bright laughter echoed from the screen. "Chloe! Slow down!" A young, innocent Chloe appeared on the giant screen. She was running toward me on a beautiful, sunny beach, her face glowing with a bright smile. "Catch!" She tossed a beach ball toward me. "My sweet girl!" Arthur, her grandfather, sobbed, throwing himself toward the screen. Looking at Chloe's radiant smile on the screen, the old man, who had aged decades in the last ten years, broke down completely. Since Chloe's suicide, he had gone to the police station every single day, asking: *Have you caught him yet?* And every single time, the detectives could only shake their heads in pity. The security cameras at the estate had conveniently glitched that night. The party had been crowded with guests. Nobody knew who had followed Chloe out to the backyard. And the only person who knew the truth was me. On screen, after playing on the beach, I stopped in front of a quiet little chapel by the sea, silently making a wish: *Dear God, please keep my friends safe and happy. Let our friendship and love last forever...* Seeing my prayers on screen, Lucas couldn't contain his rage any longer. "Elena, you hypocritical liar! You ungrateful snake!" He stormed over, pointing a finger at me, his voice trembling with anger: "How dare you bring up our past! Are you trying to disgust me?" "For ten years, you haven't said a single word of truth. Do you really think you're worthy of being our friend, of being my lover?" And then, the screen showed a scene of me secretly throwing away a bracelet Chloe had gifted me. The crowd went wild: "Unbelievable! She threw away her friend's gift behind her back!"
"Lucas and Chloe treated her so well, and look how she treated them! She’s just a selfish, cold-blooded bystander!" Lucas knew I had disliked the style of that bracelet. But he didn't explain that to the crowd. He just stood there, letting them mock me: "She probably never expected Lucas to return as a billionaire to settle the score!" "Keep going, Mr. Cole! We can't wait to see the face of the monster she's protecting!" Prompted by the crowd's anger, the memory on the screen shifted again. Lucas’s desperate, heart-wrenching scream echoed through the speakers: "Chloe! No! Don't leave me!" It was the day Chloe's body was pulled from the ocean. It was a cold, rainy day. Lucas and I fell to our knees beside her body. He clenched his fists so hard his nails drew blood, his entire body shaking. Her body was bloated and freezing cold. She looked nothing like the beautiful, laughing girl I knew. On screen, I walked back to my empty apartment like a ghost, curling up in a corner and sobbing hysterically. "Ahhh!" I beat my chest on screen, the pain of losing my best friend ripping me apart. On the trial platform, I kept my eyes closed as tears streamed down my face. On screen, my broken voice cried out: "Chloe! Why did you do it? Why did you leave me?" My tears wouldn't stop, my digital self completely drowned in endless grief. Seeing my genuine heartbreak on screen, the crowd fell into a hushed confusion. "What's going on?" "She looks genuinely devastated... How could she..." Arthur, Chloe's grandfather, suddenly screamed in fury: "Crocodile tears!" With tears streaming down his face, his hand shook violently as he pointed at me: "My daughter, Eleanor, collapsed at her door! Her voice went hoarse from begging, she banged on that door with everything she had, and this girl didn't even flinch!" "She even let her cat attack us! Does a person like that deserve to be Chloe's friend?!" The crowd's anger flared up once again. Lucas’s face turned pale, then red with anger. He rushed over, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me violently, his eyes bloodshot and filled with rage: "Elena, look! Look at the tragedy your silence caused!" "Your parents died early, and your grandmother passed away. Chloe and I pitied you, we loved you like family, and this is how you repay us?!" He raised his hand and slapped me hard across the face. "Are you still trying to get sympathy?!" "You destroyed Chloe! Do you think these memories will make me soft?" His chest heaved violently, his eyes red and brimming with tears. His voice was cracked with grief. "Chloe is dead!" "But the one who truly killed her was you! You, Elena!" He shook me, his eyes filled with a hatred that wanted to tear me to pieces. To him, Chloe's death was a devastating tsunami that had wiped out his world, leaving nothing but a cold, wet, permanent emptiness. Suddenly, Lucas stood up straight and wiped his face with the back of his hand. In an instant, his grief was replaced by absolute, chilling coldness. "Elena, let me tell you something. I will not stop until I find the killer!" "And once I find him, I will drag both of you straight to hell!" He turned to the technician, his face grim. "Increase the extraction depth." He had no patience left for my "act." The technician hesitated, then stepped forward to adjust the controls. The red needle on the monitor spiked. The micro-needles in the helmet drove even deeper into my skull.
"Ahhhhh!" I let out a blood-curdling scream. A massive surge of electricity shocked my brain, and white light exploded behind my eyelids. My body convulsed violently, my hands and feet straining against the steel cuffs. Blood began to trickle down from my hairline, dripping onto the cold metal chair. The images on the screen started flickering erratically. One second it was a college lecture hall, the next it was a shopping mall, then a road trip. They were all happy memories of the three of us—Lucas, Chloe, and me. But there was absolutely nothing from the night of the assault. The crowd grew restless, and the live chats were spamming questions: "Where is the memory of the night she was assaulted?" "I thought she saw the attacker?" Lucas frowned and turned to the technician, his voice deep and threatening: "What's happening?" "Why can't you find the memory of the assault?!" The technician wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, stammering: "Mr. Cole... she... she seems to be fighting the system..." "She is actively blocking that specific memory from being extracted!" "What? Fighting the system?" Lucas was shocked. He glared at me with dark, menacing eyes. He slammed his hand on the control desk, roaring: "Elena! Even now, you are still protecting him?!" "Who could possibly be worth your life? He is a rapist!" Ten years ago, Lucas had asked me the exact same thing, screaming in my face. When Chloe's suicide note was made public, I became public enemy number one. It took less than twenty-four hours for Lucas to go from believing in my innocence, to doubting me, to utterly hating me. He was the only one who knew where I was hiding with Casper. The night Casper was poisoned, Lucas had broken the window of my hideout in a fit of rage, and the flying glass had sliced my forehead open. Blood had instantly blurred my vision. He had looked at me with pure disgust: "Elena, we were together for three years. Chloe loved you like a sister. What did we mean to you?" "For a rapist, you threw away the people who loved you most!" That night, I was almost beaten to death by an angry mob. Eleanor, Lucas's mother, had dragged her raging son away. Two days later, the Cole family moved abroad, never to return. Now, Lucas stared at me with eyes colder than ice. He waved his hand dismissively, his voice sharp and final: "Force the extraction deeper! I don't care what it takes!" The technician hesitated. "But, Mr. Cole, her body is extremely weak, and her mind is fighting back hard. If we force it..." "She might not survive the shock!" Lucas let out a cold, mocking laugh. "Not survive?" "I spent years and poured all my resources into developing this technology just to find the truth!" "I don't give a damn if she lives or dies!" "A piece of trash like her deserves to die anyway!" With those words, the terrified technician cranked up the dial. The machine let out a high-pitched, deafening whine. The needles drove deep into my brain. "Ahhhhh!" My agonizing scream shattered the quiet of the plaza. Blood began to pour from my nose, ears, and the corners of my eyes. It felt like my chest was on fire, my body twitching uncontrollably in the chair. The technician’s hands were shaking violently. "Mr. Cole... should we stop?" "She's... she's going into shock!" Lucas stared at the screen, his expression dark and unreadable. "Keep going," he whispered, his voice completely devoid of emotion.
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "NovelMaster" app ? search for "448274", and watch the full series ✨! #NovelMaster