You Mocked Me I’m The One You Fear Chapter 09
COMPETITION AUDIT MODULE: ANOMALOUS FILES DETECTED.
MULTIPLE SCRIPTS MATCH REGISTERED SAMPLES.
EXTERNAL PAYMENT RECORDS: CORRELATION IN PROGRESS.
Every face on the Kestrel side changed at once.
Damian spun toward me.
“Maya, what did you do?”
I leaned back in my chair and tilted my head.
“Nothing dramatic. I just handed the audit system the files you brought into the competition environment yourselves.”
I glanced at the screen.
“It’s stubborn. When timestamps don’t match commit history, it keeps digging.”
“You’re framing us!”
“Then let the organizers investigate.”
Damian’s eyes went red with fury.
Behind him, the warning messages expanded into a full chain of evidence.
“Captain! They found the original commit for last year’s exploit.”
Another competitor swore.
“There are payment records to a third-party broker too. Competition security is already coming over.”
Damian didn’t move.
Twice, he opened his mouth.
Twice, he closed it again.
His jaw was clenched so hard it looked painful.
Finally, his shoulders dropped.
“I’m sorry.”
I lifted an eyebrow.
“Couldn’t hear you.”
His entire body trembled.
A teammate reached for him. Damian shoved the hand away.
He lowered his head, closed his eyes, and said it louder.
“I’m sorry.”
I said nothing.
He drew in a breath, turned toward the cameras, and forced the words out one by one.
“On behalf of Kestrel… I apologize to the Westbridge Cyber Team.”
His voice tightened.
“I apologize for the way I spoke about Westbridge and its competitors. We lost this match.”
He swallowed.
“I’m sorry.”
The livestream erupted.
“He actually apologized.”
“He had a lot more to say five minutes ago.”
“Good. Now we’re clear.”
The comments kept coming.
“So loud when he was winning. Real quiet now.”
“I’m replaying this match ten times.”
“Westbridge wins and Kestrel apologizes. Worth it.”
“Maya flipped the entire match by herself.”
Applause and whistles continued long enough that the host had to wait for the room to settle before speaking again.
I watched Damian finish his apology.
His face had gone gray, but the look he gave me was poisonous.
I watched him turn away.
“Damian. Stop.”
He turned back with a scowl.
“What now? I apologized.”
“I heard you,” I said lightly. “But the match isn’t the only problem.”
He went still.
So did the arena.
“If all you did today was lose, you could walk out of here and come back next year.”
His face darkened.
“But if that championship reputation was built on purchased exploits, stolen work, and advance access to other teams’ test environments… that’s different.”
I pressed a key.
The screen changed.
The first file opened.
Kestrel’s internal Discord logs.
One conversation showed Damian discussing the purchase of an unreleased exploit with a third-party broker.
All the color drained from his face.
The second file followed.
Git commit history.
A tool Damian had publicly claimed to have written the previous year showed a different Kestrel member as its original author.
That teammate shot to his feet and stared at Damian.
“You told me you were only taking that code for internal testing.”