Chapter 162: S9E2: The First Sabotage Sounds Like Help
The Rideau Centre on a weekday morning was a cathedral of controlled chaos. Sunlight streamed through the vast glass roof, painting geometric shadows on the polished floors. The air hummed with the low murmur of shoppers, the ping of registers, the distant chime of an elevator. It felt mundanely safe, which made it the perfect arena.
Xia and Antoinette stood near a potted fiddle-leaf fig, looking utterly ordinary amidst the flow. The six candidates gathered around them, a loose and wary half-circle.
“This is a test of coordinated navigation and clear communication,” Antoinette announced, her voice cutting cleanly through the mall’s white noise. She held up six sealed, identical business envelopes. “You will work in assigned pairs. Inside are two maps of the downtown core, with a specific route marked for each partner. Your routes are different but interlocking. You must communicate by text only—no calls, no photos of the maps—to guide each other to a series of numbered exits. At each exit, you will find a small, discreet marker. Retrieve it. Return here together, with both sets of markers, within forty minutes. The task is simple. The execution requires trust.”
Francis’s eyebrows shot up. “Text only? So we have to describe turns and landmarks. No visual aids. That’s a deliberate friction.”
“Friction reveals texture,” Xia said simply. She began distributing the envelopes. “Pairs are as follows: Sterling with Kiara. Francis with Aria. Eric with Melody.”
A beat of silence. Sterling nudged Kiara with his elbow, a forced grin on his face. “Easy peasy. I know how you think, Kiki. You point, I charge. Classic.”
Kiara didn’t smile back. Her eyes were on the envelope. “Just follow the instructions, Sterling. No improvisation.”
Eric accepted his envelope, his gaze sliding to Melody with open curiosity. “Partners. Should be fun.”
Melody took hers, her expression unreadably pleasant. “As long as your idea of fun doesn’t involve setting anything on fire.”
Francis and Aria exchanged a small, polite nod—the respectful acknowledgement of two tacticians sizing up a new board.
“Begin,” Antoinette said.
The pairs split, tearing open their envelopes. Sterling and Kiara stepped aside near a closed shawarma stand. Each pulled out a folded map and a single sheet of written instructions.
“Okay,” Kiara said, smoothing her map on the metal shutter. “I start at the Rideau Street doors, head west past the food court, then I need to find exit marker ‘Beta’ near the external walkway to the Mackenzie King Bridge. You’re starting at the other end. You need to find ‘Alpha’ by the bus terminal downstairs. I’ll guide you.”
Sterling squinted at his map. “Yeah, got it. Simple. Stairs are… here. I text you when I’m moving.”
For the first five minutes, it was functional. Sterling’s texts were terse: At stairwell. Left or right? Kiara’s replies were precise: Right. Then immediate left. Look for green wall.
Then Sterling’s phone buzzed with a new message, not from Kiara. It was from an unknown number.
From: Unknown
Subject: Route Advisory
Message: Per your partner’s request, your pace is to be moderated. Detour added: proceed to service corridor C-12 (between pharmacy and optician) for a 2-minute holding pattern. Reason cited: behavioral control stabilization.
Sterling stopped walking. He read it twice. Heat climbed his neck. Behavioral control. Kiara’s words, exactly the kind of clinical, judgy crap she’d use. She thought he couldn’t handle a straight line.
Meanwhile, Kiara, standing at a junction near the glass walkway overlooking the Rideau Canal, received her own message from an unknown sender.
From: Unknown
Subject: Partner Directive
Message: Partner has requested autonomous segment. Proceed to your next checkpoint without coordination for 5 minutes. Cited reason: works more efficiently without direct supervision. Acknowledged.
Her jaw tightened. Of course. He was chafing already. Works better without supervision. He was so allergic to anyone lining him up, even her. Even now, with a hundred million dollars shimmering in the distance. Her fingers trembled with a sudden, cold anger as she typed a terse message to Sterling: Why did you request a solo segment?
Sterling’s reply was almost instantaneous, a blistering voice message he sent instead of text, his voice crackling through her phone speaker, loud enough for passing shoppers to turn their heads: “Me? You’re the one who told them to put me in a damn timeout room! ‘Behavioral control’? Really, Kiara? I’m not your dog!”
Kiara’s composure snapped. She hit call. He answered with a raging, “What?”
“I never said that! You’re the one who asked to work alone! ‘No supervision,’ Sterling? After everything, you still can’t just follow a simple plan with me?”
Their voices rose, clashing in the bright, open atrium. Sterling, near the service corridors, was gesturing wildly at his phone. Kiara, by the scenic walkway, had her free hand clenched in a white-knuckled fist.
“You’ve always thought I’m a loose cannon you need to reign in! Admit it! This is just you, trying to manage me like you always do!”
“And you’re proving my point right now! You’re blowing up over a text! You haven’t even asked if it’s real!”
Francis and Aria, crossing the upper level, paused. Francis smirked, a slight, knowing twitch of his lips. “The strongest bond presents the largest fracture point,” he murmured to Aria.
Aria didn’t respond. She simply took a careful, deliberate step back, positioning herself behind a support column, her eyes tracking the conflict below with the detached focus of a spectator at a tennis match.
Eric, who was supposed to be heading towards the lower-level exits with Melody, had stopped entirely. He leaned on a railing, a wide, entertained smile on his face. He watched Sterling’s frantic pacing, Kiara’s rigid fury, as if it were the best live theatre he’d seen in years.
Melody stood beside him, not smiling. Her usual bright, flirtatious energy was gone, replaced by a still, watchful silence. Her gaze flicked from the cousins to the other pairs, to the oblivious mall crowd, then finally to where Xia and Antoinette stood, observing. Her expression was flat. Closed.
Sterling was shouting now, moving towards the glass walkway, pointing a finger at Kiara who was striding to meet him. “You falsified a police report for me! But you don’t trust me to walk through a mall!”
“That was to protect you from consequences! This is about succeeding at a task! You see everything as an attack!”
Antoinette moved. She cut through the space between them, placing herself directly in their converging paths. She didn’t shout. Her voice was a whip-crack of authority that sliced through their fury. “Enough. Stop.”
Both cousins halted, chests heaving, years of tangled love and resentment laid bare under the fluorescent lights.
“You are broadcasting your instability to everyone here,” Antoinette said, her words low and precise. “Is that your strategy?”
Sterling looked away, shame flooding his anger. Kiara closed her eyes, drawing a sharp breath.
Xia had approached. She held her portable data panel. “The original instruction logs have been pulled,” she stated, her tone devoid of judgment. “The messages you received did not originate from the test parameters. They were injected into your communication stream after distribution.”
Silence.
Sterling blinked. Kiara’s eyes opened, the anger cooling into something harder, more sickening. They looked at each other, not with reconciliation, but with a dawning, horrible understanding.
They had been played.
Francis’s smirk faded into thoughtful calculation. Aria emerged from behind the column, her face once again a pleasant mask. Eric’s smile became a thoughtful, appreciative curl—whoever did that, he liked their style. Melody finally moved, walking slowly to join the regrouping cluster, her hands in her pockets.
“No one admits to sending the messages,” Xia observed, not asking a question. “The task continues. You have thirty-two minutes remaining.”
She and Antoinette stepped back.
The six candidates stood in the aftermath. The mall’s cheerful noise felt like a mockery. Sterling wouldn’t meet Kiara’s eye. Kiara’s posture was rigid, a fortress rebuilt in seconds. The simple trust of blood and history now had a hairline fracture, and someone had just driven a wedge into it with surgical precision.
The navigation task resumed. Texts were sent, markers were collected, routes were completed. It was functional.
But the lesson had been learned, deeper than any debrief could convey. The impostor’s goal wasn’t just to sow chaos. It was to target the fundamental bonds, to twist care into control, and loyalty into resentment. You didn’t need to destroy the group. You just had to teach them to suspect the very thing that held them together.
Love, it turned out, was the most exploitable vulnerability of all.
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National Arts Centre, Ottawa, Canada — at 1 Elgin Street, near Confederation Square, the Rideau Canal, and Parliament Hill.
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National Arts Centre, Ottawa, Canada — at 1 Elgin Street, near Confederation Square, the Rideau Canal, and Parliament Hill.
The private rehearsal room they’d been directed to was a cocoon of muted sound and shadow. Outside, the granite and glass of Elgin Street glowed under the afternoon sun, but in here the lights were low, the only illumination pooling on a grand piano in the corner and the four chairs arranged in its orbit. The air smelled of rosin, old wood, and quiet tension.
Xia stood by the piano, running a finger along its closed lid. “Public spaces invite spectacle,” she said, her voice barely disturbing the stillness. “Private ones invite confession.”
“Or better lies,” Antoinette added from where she leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. She watched as Aria Baker and Melody Gill entered. They moved differently now, without an audience. Aria’s hostess warmth had cooled to a polished, observant calm. Melody’s bubbly energy was gone, replaced by a watchful, almost weary alertness.
They took their seats without a word.
“The test at the Rideau Centre,” Xia began, turning to face them. “You witnessed the sabotage of the primary bond. What did you observe?”
Aria folded her hands in her lap, a picture of composed analysis. “They were pushed exactly where family hurts most. The impostor constructed a narrative where Kiara’s protectiveness read as condescending control, and Sterling’s loyalty read as chaotic rebellion.” She paused, her gaze distant. “The precision implies the saboteur either possesses deep personal knowledge of their history, or made an exceptionally careful guess about universal sibling tensions.”
Melody leaned back in her chair, the wooden legs creaking softly. She studied the acoustic panels on the ceiling. “The first move in a game like this isn’t to destroy trust outright. It’s to streamline suspicion. You make everyone agree too quickly on who looks guilty.” A faint, wry smile touched her lips. “It’s easier to blame a fire on the known arsonist than to look for a faulty wire.”
“You mean Eric,” Antoinette stated, her eyes sharp on Melody.
“Eric is useful,” Melody agreed, meeting her gaze directly. “Suspicion already fits him like a custom jacket. He enjoys the notoriety. If the group coalesces around him as the obvious culprit, they stop looking anywhere else. The real impostor gets to work undisturbed.”
Xia noted the shift in Aria’s posture. It was infinitesimal—a slight tightening of the tendons in her neck, a breath held a half-second too long.
“And the method?” Xia prompted, her tone mild. “The injection of false commands into a private text stream. That requires technical access, or social engineering.”
“Or an understanding of systems,” Melody said, her voice dropping. “Delivery routes. Timings. Back doors. Who among us has a job that’s all about navigating the unseen infrastructure of a city? Knowing which door is never locked, which camera is just for show, which delivery log can be fudged?”
Aria’s expression remained a perfect, placid mask. But her fingers, resting on her knees, tightened until the knuckles blanched white against her skin.
Francis Menton. The man who supplied bars and private events, who knew the city’s logistical veins better than any cab driver.
“An interesting theory,” Xia said, her mercury-flecked eyes moving slowly between the two women. She saw not collaboration, but a silent, wary orbit. Aria offered clinical, structural insight. Melody offered street-level cunning. They were answering around each other, their words forming a protective perimeter that kept the focus on Sterling, Kiara, Eric, and now Francis.
They were not pointing fingers at each other. They were carefully constructing a common ground that excluded themselves.
“Is there anything else?” Antoinette asked, her voice cutting through the quiet.
“No,” Aria said smoothly, rising. “It was a calculated, ugly piece of work. It will have a lasting effect.”
Melody stood as well, brushing nonexistent lint from her jeans. “The damage is already in the soil. Now we just wait to see what grows.”
The two women left silently, one after the other, their footsteps absorbed by the carpeted hall.
Xia did not move from the piano. The space where they had sat seemed to vibrate with unspoken collusion.
“They did not accuse,” Xia observed, her voice a low murmur meant only for Antoinette. “They analyzed. They redirected.”
Antoinette nodded, pushing off from the doorframe. “They fed us logical next steps. Eric the obvious villain. Francis the technical mastermind. They gave us a path to follow.”
“A path that leads away from them.” Xia finally turned, her face inscrutable in the dim light. The data streams and probabilities from the hotel room felt sterile and foolish now. This was the living truth: two sharp minds, presenting a unified front of helpful deduction while quietly bricking up any avenue that might lead back to their own doorsteps.
By the end, watching them speak in that cool, complimentary rhythm, Xia was no longer sure whether Aria and Melody were helping the investigation.
Or quietly, expertly, making sure it never got too close to them.
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ByWard Market Square, Ottawa, Canada — around York Street and ByWard Market Square, near the market stalls, restaurants, and pedestrian areas.
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ByWard Market Square was a sensory collision as dusk began to soften the edges of the buildings.
Grilled meat smoke from a Lebanese vendor twisted into the chill air, tangling with the sweet, frozen drip of maple taffy from a stall down the cobblestone lane. Strings of Edison bulbs glowed warmly over patios that bustled with early dinner crowds, their laughter and clinking glasses forming a jarring soundtrack to the quiet confrontation happening in the shadow of a closed flower stall.
Xia stood with her back to a brick wall, hands deep in her coat pockets, her breath a brief plume. Antoinette was a step ahead, a barrier between the two men facing each other. Francis looked polished and annoyingly reasonable in a dark peacoat, while Sterling vibrated like a plucked cable in his scuffed motorcycle jacket.
“Let’s review the altered parameters from the mall,” Antoinette began, her voice low but clear under the market hum. “The false messages required foreknowledge of the test structure and the personal dynamics of the pair.”
“Or just good guesses,” Francis said with a shrug that wasn’t casual at all. “But foreknowledge implies access.” He reached into an inner pocket, retrieving not a phone, but a single, crisply folded sheet of thermal paper. “My morning delivery run for La Bottega included the Rideau Centre’s receiving bay. Signed for at 10:47 AM.”
He extended the receipt to Antoinette. She didn’t take it, just let her eyes scan the printed lines. Sterling stared at the paper like it was a live scorpion.
“The corridor where the test materials were staged for logistic loading is adjacent to that bay,” Francis continued, his tone smooth, almost apologetic. “Security logs for non-staff are sporadic, but a physical paper trail isn't. The time stamp places me—and my truck—there at the precise window when someone could have pre-planted those sabotage commands into the system, or at least seen enough to know how to later.”
Sterling’s laugh was a short, harsh bark. “So you’re saying you saw something? Or you’re providing your own incredibly convenient alibi?”
“I’m providing data,” Francis corrected, his eyes cold. “The data shows I was present. It also, by cross-reference, shows who else might have been in that logistical nexus without a legitimate reason.” He paused, letting the market noise fill the space. “Your cousin’s map route kept her in the retail wings. But you, Sterling. Your assigned starting point was the lower-level service door near the bus terminal. A two-minute deviation from that point puts you at the mouth of corridor C-12.”
“I never went near it!” Sterling took a sharp step forward. Antoinette shifted her weight, a subtle block. “My map was clear. Out the door, left to the bus bay marker. That’s it.”
“Of course,” Francis said, his lips a thin line. “But the receipt proves the access was there, at that time, for someone. And your phone’s location data, if anyone cared to subpoena it, would show exactly where you pinged during that window. Wouldn’t it?”
The color drained from Sterling’s face, replaced by a flush of rage. He wasn’t thinking about subpoenas. He was thinking about Kiara’s furious, betrayed eyes in the mall. “You lying, transactional piece of— You’re building a frame job. Selling lies by the pound to make yourself look clean!”
“Numbers don’t lie,” Francis stated, his patience clearly a thin veneer. “Only people do.”
As if on cue, Antoinette’s phone buzzed in her hand. She glanced down, her expression hardening. She turned the screen toward them.
It was a grainy, dark photo, taken from an angle suggesting a security camera or a phone held low. The image was blurry, the lighting poor, but the subject was unmistakable: Sterling’s profile, his distinctive jacket, standing before a heavy service door with a faded ‘C-12’ stenciled on the concrete beside it.
Sterling’s breath left him in a rush. “That’s not… When is that from? That’s not this morning!”
“It’s timestamped in the metadata,” Antoinette said, her voice tight. “11:02 AM.”
For a moment, even the festive market sounds seemed to mute. The evidence was concatenating, each piece logical and damning. Access. Opportunity. A visual record. Antoinette’s gaze on Sterling shifted from neutral assessment to something colder, a prosecutor’s weighing glance. She had seen the explosion between him and Kiara. She knew his capacity for impulsive, destructive loyalty. Sabotaging his own test to frame a rival, or to manipulate his cousin’s perception, fit a twisted internal logic.
Sterling saw that shift in her eyes. “It’s fake,” he choked out, his voice raw. “I was outside fixing a snapped hinge on a delivery crate for the Greek place by the bridge. The driver was there, Andreas. He paid me sixty cash. I never went inside after the test started!”
Francis sighed, a theatrical sound of disappointment. “A cash job. How perfectly unverifiable.”
“Check the security feed from the actual door!” Sterling insisted, turning to Xia, who had remained silent, her mercury-flecked eyes moving between the phone, the receipt, and Sterling’s desperate face.
“We will,” Xia said, her first words cutting the tension like a wire. Her voice was a calm, unsettling contrast. “But this photo was not pulled from mall security. It was sent anonymously to us. A curated piece of evidence, offered freely.”
She took the phone from Antoinette’s hand, her scrutiny intensifying. She zoomed in on the grainy image, not on Sterling’s figure, but on the dark, reflective glass of the door’s narrow window. A faint, warped reflection of the opposite wall was visible, and on it, the blurred shape of a lit sign.
She then looked at Francis’s delivery receipt, her finger tracing the printed time. “10:47 AM,” she murmured.
Her eyes lifted, meeting the gloom of the early evening now fully settled over the market. The patio lights were brighter, the shadows longer. She looked back at the reflection in the photo’s glass.
“The receipt is for late morning,” she said, her words deliberate. “But this reflection shows the anti-slip matting and the safety sign for the evening cleaning crew, which is only deployed after 5 PM. The light angle is all wrong for 11 AM.”
A profound silence settled over their little group. The sizzle from the grill, the distant busker’s guitar, it all faded into a muffled haze.
Francis’s smug certainty fractured. He blinked, his mind visibly racing to recalibrate.
Sterling stood frozen, the relief on his face so acute it looked like pain.
“Someone did not just sabotage a test,” Xia concluded, handing the phone back to Antoinette with a finality that was more terrifying than any accusation. “Someone constructed a narrative. They needed a credible source for access—a delivery receipt. And they needed a visual anchor—a fabricated photo. Two separate pieces, designed to corroborate each other.”
Her gaze swept over both men, but rested on Sterling, who looked more like a man who’d just dodged a sniper’s bullet than any kind of villain.
“The impostor isn’t just playing the game,” she said. “They are engineering the board. And their first move was not to cause chaos.” She let the truth hang, cold and precise, in the smoky air. “It was to remove you from it.”