2: 2
2
It scared me, and I shot up out of my seat.
At this hour my mother would already be asleep in her room.
I went downstairs and called out, testing it. "Mom?"
No answer.
I pushed her door open. The room was empty. Had she really gone out?
Panic crept in, and I was already changing my clothes to head for the club.
Just then the front door swung open. My mother was back.
"Mom?"
I looked at her standing there, then at the video on my phone.
In the video, a man had his arm around my mother, steering her toward a private room.
The exact same face as hers.
And here she was, just home from her night jog, still in her workout clothes.
"What are you staring at? The girl's gone dazed."
"Mom," I asked, "did you go to a bar or a club tonight?"
Her brows drew together. "What would I be doing at a place like that?"
"It's just, you never go out at this hour."
She rubbed her stomach. "I ate too much at dinner, felt bloated, so I went to walk it off."
"Came straight back to sleep. What's this about? Why are you asking?"
Meeting her puzzled look, I quickly shook my head. "It's nothing."
Back in my room I watched it a few more times before it clicked. The video was AI-generated.
Only then did I feel how wrong this was.
Alice had once traveled with my mother, so she had photos of my mother's face on her phone.
She'd used those photos to AI-splice a video like this. But to what end?
No matter how I turned it over, the unease wouldn't settle.
So I reached out to a friend in the computer science department, someone genuinely good, and asked if he could hack the club's security system.
I wanted to see what had happened in there.
He laughed. "Easy. But you're buying me dinner."
"Deal."
Before long a stretch of security footage landed on my phone.
I spotted Alice at once.
Hemmed in by a group of men, she was being pawed at.
The punk, Henry Simmons, had her pulled onto his lap, coaxing her to get a room.
Sensing the danger, Alice thought fast and told him, "I've got a friend who's even prettier. Just don't touch me, and I'll call her over for you all to play with."
Henry took a drag on his cigarette and grinned. "Then get her over here right now."
So she messaged me twice, telling me to come to the club and keep her company. I didn't reply.
So she AI-spliced the video on the spot.
"Best friend, your mom's here too. A man just took her into a hotel room. Get over here and see for yourself!"
Reading that, my palms went damp with cold sweat.
So this was how vicious her heart really was.
I switched off my phone, pulled the covers over my head, and slept well, not waking until daylight.
When I opened my phone the next morning, the messages had nearly blown it up.
Dozens of messages from Alice I hadn't gotten around to reading.
The first thing that popped up was a trending headline.
"Arts Applicant Tricked Into Club by Punk, Abused Until She Hemorrhaged, Rushed to Hospital in the Night"
The girl on the cover was pixelated, but I knew at a glance it was Alice.
Word was the police had already arrived.
And netizens had dug up the hospital's address.
I went to see for myself. I'd just reached the hospital entrance
when I saw Alice's mother in a rage, screaming at her.
"Look at you, dressed like a little tramp. You dare tell me you weren't at that club luring men in?"
"You worked so hard to place second in the arts exam. All you had to do was sit home and wait for your acceptance letter. But no, you had to run around and mess with people!"
"If you weren't out being loose and shameless, how would you end up in a hospital in the middle of the night?"
Alice just huddled under the covers and cried.
Then her eyes slid over to me, her chest heaving.
"Rowena Fox!"
"Why didn't you pick up last night?"
Her voice was raw as she screamed at me. "I sent you all those messages. Why wouldn't you answer…"
I let her claw at me and blinked, all innocence.
"Alice, my phone was off while I slept last night. Why are you taking it out on me like this?"
Her eyes darted away.
"It's all because of you! You tricked me into going to the club, and that's why this happened to me!"
"And then look at you, I went, while you stayed home and slept."
Listening to Alice flip it around and sling her filth onto me, I nearly laughed from anger.
"Alice, you're the one who agreed to a date with that punk boyfriend of yours. What does any of that have to do with me?"
Her mother's head snapped up.
"What do you mean? She went on her own?"
Alice's shoulders shook. "No, Mom… it was Rowena Fox!"
"She asked me out dancing yesterday, that's the only reason I went to the bar. Otherwise, why would I ever go out in the middle of the night?"
Seeing my face darken, Alice dropped her voice into my ear.
"Help a friend out, back me up and fool my mom with me, or she's going to scream me to death."
I gave a cold laugh. It was the same in my last life. No matter what she got herself into, she'd trot out one excuse and dump the filth on me to dodge her mother's scolding.
But this time, I had no interest in playing along.
I was about to speak when a teacher from school suddenly called.
"The National Film Academy saw the trending story too, and they've sent someone specifically to investigate."
"They're calling it a matter of personal conduct."
"They want to seriously reconsider her admission eligibility before deciding whether to issue the acceptance letter."
