You Mocked Me I’m The One You Fear Chapter 02
Round One ended 0-3.
It felt like a slap across the face of every Westbridge student in the arena.
On the giant screen, Kestrel captain Damian Cross leaned toward the livestream camera with an easy, mocking smile.
“So this is Westbridge’s supposedly elite cybersecurity program. I’m not impressed.”
The live chat moved so fast the comments blurred together, but the anger behind them was impossible to miss.
“What is Westbridge doing? Weren’t Vanessa and Ethan supposed to be amazing?”
“Getting humiliated on an international stream is crazy. If I went to Westbridge, I’d turn off the campus Wi-Fi and pretend we didn’t exist.”
Inside the arena, someone shoved a water bottle hard against the floor by his feet. Others simply lowered their heads and started scrolling through the stream instead of watching the scoreboard.
Damian wasn’t finished.
“If this is the best team Westbridge has—”
He spread his hands.
“—then I have no idea how that school built its reputation.”
My fingers itched for the keyboard.
To peel those defenses open.
To make every Kestrel server go completely, utterly quiet.
I stood and took half a step forward.
Then my grandfather’s voice rose in my memory.
“Maya, for most people, offense and defense is a contest. One side strikes, the other answers.”
His frail hand had closed around my wrist.
“You’re different. You’re a hunter. Once you commit, you don’t trade blows. You go for the kill.”
Then, in English, as if he wanted the words burned into me forever:
“The brightest target gets hit first.”
His eyes had carried the desperate plea of a dying man.
“Promise me you won’t do this again unless you absolutely have to.”
His fingers tightened.
“Please, Maya. For me.”
I closed my eyes, then sat back down.
I lowered my head and tapped my phone.
An ambient track a friend had made for me began to play, soft as spring light through a curtain, smooth as water running over stones in a mountain stream.
I let out a slow breath.
By the time I opened my eyes again, I looked like the same mild, absentminded, harmless girl everyone thought they knew.
…
During the break, the Westbridge team room felt heavy enough to suffocate in.
Vanessa sat on the couch with her head down, shoulders trembling faintly. Ethan stood beside her, rubbing her back in slow strokes.
I twisted open a bottle of water and held it out.
“Drink something. Get a minute to breathe.”
Vanessa slapped it out of my hand.
“Happy now, Maya?”
I stared at her. “What?”
“You follow us around every day and watch everyone praise Ethan and me. You’ve been waiting for me to fail, haven’t you?”
I frowned. “Here we go again.”
“Vanessa, every time you lose, you take it out on whoever’s closest to you. Being under pressure doesn’t give you permission to treat people like punching bags—”
Ethan cut me off.
“Maya, Vanessa’s having a bad day. Can you not make this worse?”
Something in me went cold.
“She lost because of technical mistakes,” I said. “That has nothing to do with me. I’m not responsible for absorbing her anger.”
A few teammates glanced between us.
Someone muttered, “Easy to say when you’ve never competed in a real event.”
Another guy snorted. “If she weren’t Ethan’s girlfriend, she wouldn’t even be allowed in the team room.”
A short, humorless laugh escaped me.
“Eight times out of ten, the reason I’m in here is because one of you asked me to bring coffee, dinner, or whatever else you forgot. Funny how I’m not an outsider when you need food delivered.”
I looked around the room.
“If you reacted to attacks as fast as you look for someone else to blame, maybe Round One wouldn’t have ended 0-3.”
“Enough!” Ethan snapped.
He turned on me. “Can you even write code? Do you know how many proxy hops Kestrel used in that last attack? What exactly makes you qualified to stand here and say Vanessa—or this whole team—is bad at security?”
For some reason, that almost made me laugh.
“Ethan, the way you’re defending her right now, anyone watching would think Vanessa was your girlfriend.”
For once, Ethan had nothing to say.
Vanessa’s voice shook. Tears gathered but didn’t quite fall.
“Maya, this competition matters to us. I said a few things. Why can’t you let it go for five minutes? Do you really have to do this right before Round Two?”
She pressed a hand to her chest.
“You have no idea what kind of pressure I’m under. What this whole team is under.”
I raised one finger and slowly shook it.
“You’re right. I don’t.”
I let the silence stretch for half a beat.
“I’ve never lost.”