Chapter 11 - The Live Stream of Shadows
Arthur lunged for his primary mouse, grabbing the control wheel and forcing the browser window to the front.
The live stream was titled: THE TRUTH ABOUT LILY-ROSE (RAW UNEDITED FEED).
The video was not a pre-recorded edit. It was a direct, uncompressed feed from Camera Four—the high-definition dome camera mounted in the corner of the ground-floor studio.
On the screen, the studio was dark, lit only by the faint green glow of the exit signs and the power indicators on the LED panels. In the center of the frame, sitting at the round birthday table under the stained white tablecloth, was Lily-Rose.
She was wearing her pink floral dress—the dress that had been ruined with orange juice hours earlier. The wet stain was still dark and damp against her chest, sticking to her skin. She was sitting in her wheelchair, but her feet were not strapped to the footrests.
She was rocking back and forth softly, her small body moving in a slow, hypnotic rhythm.
In her right hand, she held a small, black object—a high-gain wireless USB transceiver that had been pulled from the underside of the server rack in the basement.
Arthur stared at the screen, his mind refusing to process what his eyes were seeing.
"She..." Eleanor whispered from behind him, her voice barely a breath. "How did she get out of her room? The door was locked from the outside..."
"The ventilation duct," Arthur said, his voice completely dead of emotion. "The acoustic baffles in her ceiling. They're made of soft foam. A child weighing thirty-two pounds could slide through the return vent into the floor space above the server room in four minutes."
On the screen, Lily-Rose stopped rocking. She looked up from the table, her blue eyes staring directly into the high-definition lens of Camera Four.
She didn't cry. She didn't smile. She reached out with her small hand and picked up a microphone that was sitting on the table—the high-end wireless lavalier mic Arthur used for his professional field recordings.
She brought the microphone close to her pale lips.
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The audio feed piped directly through the high-fidelity monitors in Arthur’s basement, filling the room with the clear, uncompressed sound of her voice.
"Hello," Lily-Rose said softly to two million people sitting in their dark bedrooms around the world. "My name is Lily-Rose. I can walk."
