You Mocked Me I’m The One You Fear Chapter 04
The moment Round Two began, Kestrel turned the pressure up another level.
They weren’t probing anymore.
They were tearing into Westbridge.
Sweat beaded across Ethan’s forehead as he led the offense, but Kestrel’s defense seemed to see him coming before he moved. He changed proxy routes again and again. Every one of them was identified.
On defense, Vanessa scrambled to patch breach after breach, lips pressed into a bloodless line.
Voices overlapped through the team comms.
“Port-scan frequency is spiking!”
“They’re escalating privileges. They’re at the admin backend!”
“Backup node is down! We lost the middle segment!”
Someone in the audience covered her mouth.
“It’s only been five minutes.”
“What is Westbridge doing? They can’t even hit back.”
“This isn’t a match. It’s a demolition.”
An alarm exploded through the arena. Red warning lights strobed above the stage.
The main screen flickered.
When it came back, the room seemed to stop breathing.
WESTBRIDGE CORE SWITCH: CONTROL LOST.
WESTBRIDGE FIREWALL POLICY ARCHITECTURE.
WESTBRIDGE TEAM PRACTICE LOGS.
Vanessa went rigid in her chair, all the color draining from her face.
Ethan clenched his jaw and slammed a fist against the edge of the desk.
The teammates who had mocked me earlier looked sick.
“We’re done,” one whispered. “We’re actually done.”
The arena broke into overlapping shouts.
“Did they just punch through the campus network?”
“Is that even part of the competition?”
“It’s legal if it stays inside the competition environment. Westbridge could expose Kestrel’s material too if they were good enough.”
“So basically, they’re just getting outclassed.”
Damian Cross sat at Kestrel’s main console, grinning toward the cameras.
“What is your network made of, cardboard?”
He looked toward Ethan and Vanessa.
“Westbridge’s famous security duo. That’s it?”
Then he raised a hand.
“We’ll stop pushing for five minutes. Find somebody who can actually fight back. This is getting boring.”
Vanessa whipped around and stared at me, eyes red.
“This is your fault!”
Anger burned across her face.
“You dumped him right before Round Two. Of course he’s distracted. Look what that did to the team.”
The others exchanged glances. It was as if she’d handed them a life raft.
“She’s right. We still had a shot before the break.”
“You couldn’t wait until after the match to make a scene?”
Someone turned to Ethan.
“Tell us. Did the breakup mess with your focus?”
Ethan looked away. His throat worked.
“It… affected me. Yeah.”
One sentence.
That was all it took to put me on the opposite side of the room from everyone else.
The live chat caught fire.
“Who’s the girl? She dumped him during the competition? What is wrong with her?”
“Heard she sucks at tech too. Jealous, maybe?”
The arena broke into noise.
Someone in the front rows shouted at me, “Seriously? You picked now to break up with him?”
Another voice shot back immediately, “They got destroyed and you’re blaming his ex? Come on.”
Boos mixed with arguments. Some people waved toward the exit. Others simply held up their phones and kept recording.
“Just leave the team alone!”
“Let them finish the match!”
I stood by the entrance while hundreds of eyes seemed to press into my skin.
Then one comment began appearing over and over on the livestream until it was pinned near the top.
“If G—the one who wrote HIDE-AND-SEEK—were still around, Kestrel wouldn’t be talking this big.”