Chapter 14: The Deposition Room
The fluorescent lights of the federal district office hummed with a sterile, relentless vibration that seemed to echo inside my skull. Outside the high, barred windows, the grey morning mist clung to the downtown concrete, blurring the outlines of the city where Damian Sterling had reigned like an untouchable king for over a decade. Now, the king was sitting three chairs down from me in a regulation plastic-and-steel interrogation room, wearing a crumpled grey suit that lacked its customary pristine edge, his hands cuffed loosely to a bolted table loop.
"You're making a catastrophic career error, Victoria," Damian said, his voice dropping into that familiar, chillingly smooth baritone that had once commanded boardrooms across the hemisphere. He didn't look at me; his cold, calculating gaze remained fixed on the brushed-metal surface of the table. "Every lawyer in this district knows that fixing a corporate leak doesn't mean you become the leak. You'll lose your license before the ink dries on your indictment."
I didn't flinch. I smoothed the lapel of my black tailored suit—the same suit I had worn the night I ran down the executive corridor—and opened my leather portfolio. Inside lay the physical backup drives, notarized affidavits, and the unredacted chain-of-custody logs proving every illegal surveillance protocol Damian had installed in the smart-house grid.
"My license was tied to an institution built on blackmail and human collateral, Damian," I said, my voice steady, quiet, and entirely devoid of the trembling hesitation I had felt weeks ago. "I'm returning it voluntarily."
Special Agent Miller of the Federal Bureau of Investigation slid a thick manila folder across the table, stopping it right in front of Damian. The cover page displayed the cryptographic hash values of the NDI data broadcasted the previous afternoon.
"Mr. Sterling, you're formally remanded without bail pending a federal grand jury indictment on charges of wiretapping, extortion, and interstate trafficking of proprietary whistleblower data," Miller said, snapping open a chrome pen. "You have legal counsel en route, but before they arrive, we're reviewing the primary hallway security footage recovered from your auxiliary servers. Victoria Vance has already given her formal deposition."
Damian finally turned his head, his dark eyes narrowing into twin slits of pure venom. He stared at me with an intensity that could have cracked glass, searching for the obedient corporate fixer who had once buried compliance reports with a stroke of a pen. He found nothing. No fear, no subservience, and no hesitation.
"You think this stops with me?" Damian whispered, leaning forward until the chain on his handcuffs rattled against the steel loop. "The board is already spinning a replacement narrative. The algorithms are decentralized. You haven't destroyed the system, Victoria; you've just cleared out the executive suite for someone hungrier."
"Maybe," I replied, standing up and closing my leather portfolio with a definitive snap that echoed sharply in the small room. "But today, the cameras are turned off, and the people you locked in the dark finally have a voice."
Agent Miller nodded respectfully as I gathered my papers. "Thank you for your cooperation, Counselor. We'll need you available for the preliminary hearings next month."
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"I'll be ready," I said.
I turned away from the table, walking past the heavy soundproof door and out into the federal corridor. As the heavy steel clicked shut behind me, isolating Damian Sterling in the very kind of box he had engineered for everyone else, a deep, long-awaited breath filled my lungs. The sterile hum of the building no longer sounded like a trap; it sounded like the quiet beginning of a world where privacy wasn't a luxury item owned by the highest bidder.
