You Mocked Me I’m The One You Fear Chapter 10
A third record appeared.
This time, it was a payment to an outside account beside filenames matching another school’s competition test environment.
A wave of noise hit the room.
The livestream went wild.
“Wait—they had another team’s environment in advance?”
“So how much of last year’s ‘original work’ was actually theirs?”
“Bro stole his own teammate’s code and sold it?”
“Yeah, that’s career-ending.”
A fourth audit record appeared.
Code from another teammate’s private repository had been resubmitted after the author information was removed.
“Healthy team culture over there.
Somebody get a flowchart. This is insane.”
Kestrel’s side of the stage went rigid.
Then one competitor stood and pointed at Damian.
Another shouted back.
A third ripped off his credentials and slapped them onto the table.
“When did you sell my code?”
“This is not the time!”
“I knew those payments didn’t make sense!”
Questions and accusations crashed into each other until the team area became chaos.
Competition security and event staff rushed in and began sealing devices for review.
People in the stands held up their phones, recording everything.
“Kestrel’s going home to a full rebuild.”
Someone laughed.
“I would pay money to see their coach and compliance office right now.”
Another person shook his head.
“Maya doesn’t pull punches, but this is a lot more effective than trash talk.”
Someone else called out over the noise.
“She beat them on the scoreboard and wrecked their credibility.”
Kestrel was still arguing as staff separated people and collected equipment.
I stopped watching.
Some teams can lose a match and recover.
Others fall apart the moment trust breaks from the inside.
By the next morning, Westbridge’s campus forums were full of my name.
MAYA QUINN.
WESTBRIDGE COMEBACK AGAINST KESTREL.
G ACCOUNT REACTIVATED.
DAMIAN CROSS PUBLIC APOLOGY.
I barely made it out of my dorm before a group of students stopped me.
“Maya! Can we get a picture?”
“Maya, I’m a freshman in engineering. Can I get your autograph?”
I had to laugh.
“Sure. One at a time. Pictures are fine too, but I have ten minutes before class.”
Ten minutes of photos and signatures later, I finally managed to squeeze into the engineering building.
Half the room kept looking at me during lecture.
I had never understood the phrase painfully self-conscious quite so literally.
The second class ended, a graduate student holding a laptop caught up with me outside.
“Maya, I’m writing a paper on memory corruption defenses. Could I ask you a couple questions?”
I recognized him from the computer science department.
“Sure. Walk with me.”
We hadn’t made it far before people started gathering around us.
At one point, I noticed someone nearby had actually opened a recording app.
I stared at them.
They slowly lowered the phone.
That evening, even the RA in my dorm leaned against the doorway and gave me a thumbs-up.
“Maya, the whole building watched that match yesterday. Nice work.”