Chapter 8 - Claire’s Last Video
We found the video hidden behind the audio file.
Claire sat in a motel room.
A newspaper on the bed beside her showed a date from six weeks earlier.
Not thirteen months.
Six weeks.
She had been alive recently.
My hands started shaking.
Claire looked straight into the camera.
“Daniel, Dad is not alive.”
I swore under my breath.
“Of course,” Vanessa whispered. “Another contradiction.”
Claire continued.
“The man you saw in the garage was not Dad. His name is Adrian Voss.”
Hale’s face changed.
I noticed.
“You know him.”
He stared at the screen.
Claire answered for him.
“Marcus knows Adrian because they built the program together.”
I turned slowly toward Hale.
“What program?”
Claire kept talking.
“After Dad’s first stroke, the board became obsessed with continuity. Not business continuity. Human continuity.”
The video showed photographs.
Actors.
Voice specialists.
Medical records.
Deepfake test footage.
Men and women trained to imitate executives during negotiations, phone calls, even video conferences.
Identity substitution.
I felt cold.
Claire had not been impersonated by one person.
Carter Medical had built an entire system designed to make absent people appear present.
Hale whispered, “It was supposed to protect negotiations when executives were hospitalized.”
Vanessa stared at him.
“You created professional impersonators?”
“Not like this.”
Claire continued.
“Adrian Voss turned it into something else. He realized a dead executive could keep signing. A missing shareholder could keep transferring money. A frightened family member could receive a phone call and believe the person they loved was still making choices.”
My mind went to thirteen months of Claire’s emails.
“Were any of them really her?”
The video paused for a second.
Then Claire said, “The first seven were mine.”
My throat tightened.
“The rest were not.”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
Claire leaned toward the camera.
“And Daniel, if you are watching this, do not go to the board. Adrian controls enough votes to destroy you.”
The screen flickered.
“One more thing. The eighty-six million dollars you signed away was never stolen.”
I frowned.
“Then where did it go?”
Claire looked frightened for the first time.
“It paid for people.”
The video ended.
A list appeared on the screen.
Forty-three names.
The first name was mine.
---
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