Live After Death

[SFX: Server fan. Notification chime; Phone notification]

NARRATOR: At nine fourteen, auditor Simon Grey was found dead in a locked server laboratory. At nine twenty, he appeared live before two hundred shareholders and accused journalist Ana Veil of killing him.

DEV MALIK: Freeze the stream. Nobody deletes comments, captions, or buffering logs.

LEO KANE: The broadcast is authenticated by Simon's retinal key.

RHEA SONG: Retinal keys authenticate devices. They do not prove a living eye is watching.

ANA VEIL: Simon asked me to expose Kane Systems. Now his face is framing me.

[SFX: Electronic lock. Digital evidence camera shutter]

NARRATOR: The laboratory door logged Simon entering alone. No window opened. His cause of death was a blow from a cooling manifold. On his wrist, an analog watch stopped at eight fifty-two. Every network clock said nine fourteen.

UNIT SEVEN: Integrity notice. Local time source differs by twenty-two minutes.

DEV MALIK: Which clock is wrong?

UNIT SEVEN: Question cannot be answered from trusted data.

NARRATOR: Dev trusted that answer more than the video.