Chapter 19: No Swelling, Again

The recording did not stop.

*I want to go back,* Brett's voice said from thirty feet of wall. *Kels, there's a man in there.*

*If you stop, you go to prison,* Kelsey said. *Your mother finds out everything. Drive.*

*I can't feel my hands.*

*Drive, Bretty, or I swear to God I'll tell them it was you.*

The audio crackled, and the picture shook, and for a while there was only the engine.

Then Kelsey's own voice, low and satisfied, close to the phone.

*I'm going to keep this. Just in case.*

The screen went black.

For a long moment nobody in the atrium made a sound.

Then every phone in the room lit up at once.

Kelsey stood in the second row with the tablet against her chest.

"It's fake," she said. "It's AI. They can make anyone say anything now."

"Is that your voice?" a man shouted.

"It's an edit!"

"It's your voice," a woman said. "We all heard it."

Kelsey turned in a circle and found nothing but faces.

I watched her search for the angle, and I watched her not find one.

Brett stepped out from behind the table.

His father reached for his arm, and he shook it off.

He walked to the front of the platform and stood under the black screen with his hands hanging at his sides.

"Mom's telling the truth," Brett said.

His voice shook so hard the microphone picked up every breath.

"I was drunk, and I hit a car on Route 9, and I saw the fire in the mirror. I didn't stop."

He turned and looked down at Jonas.

"I left you there," he said. "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't matter. I left you."

Jonas stood motionless, with his hand on my back.

I could feel the tension in his fingers.

"Brett," his father whispered. "Stop talking. We'll get a lawyer."

"No."

Brett's eyes found mine over the heads of the crowd.

"Jillian, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about the card."

I said nothing.

I had nothing left to say to him.

"You're all idiots!" Kelsey screamed.

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