Chapter 9 — Unmasking
The morning began with silence.
Jane's phone, usually vibrating itself off the nightstand with alerts from The Shadows, lay still. No pings. No DMs. No news notifications.
Something was wrong.
She sat up in bed, the stale air of her apartment thick with unease. When she finally unlocked her phone, the silence shattered.
Her face stared back at her.
Not from her lock screen, but from the internet.
A trending headline blazed across Twitter:
"WHO IS JANE LEE? The Face Behind the Shadows."
Her real name.
Her photo from an old college article.
Her city, her neighborhood—blurred, but recognizable to anyone nearby.
Her stomach turned to ice.
---
The article was slick, professional, too precise to be an accident.
It painted her as a bitter failed writer, "lashing out" at the industry that had rejected her. It mentioned her past jobs, her rejections, even her unpaid debts. A narrative carefully stitched together to make her look unstable, dangerous, delusional.
And woven between the words, like landmines, were her secrets: her pen names, her past novels, every failed attempt she'd tried to bury.
They'd gutted her identity and pinned it to the wall for the world to mock.
She scrolled further, bile rising in her throat. Comments already flooded in:
"Figures. Another wannabe author with a vendetta."
"She's not a hero, she's a thief."
"Lol, I live near her, I should drop by."
Jane dropped the phone like it had burned her.
---
Marta stormed in twenty minutes later, her jaw clenched tight.
"They outed you," she said flatly.
Jane's hands trembled. "They know where I live. They put my face out there, Marta. I'm done. It's over."
"No," Marta said sharply, grabbing Jane's shoulders. "Listen to me. This is their strongest move, and they just played it. They wanted to cut off the head of the movement. But they don't understand something."
Jane blinked through tears. "What?"
"You're not the head. You're the heart. And a heart doesn't stop beating just because it's been seen."
---
But the attack had already rippled through The Shadows.
In the chatroom, panic was spreading like wildfire.
InkGhost92: "They doxxed her! They'll come for all of us next."
DreamFractured: "We can't fight a corporation if they can unmask us like that."
FallenMuse: "Stay strong, Jane. We're with you."
Jane typed slowly, her hands shaking:
GlassKingdomJane: "I'm exposed now. If you want to walk away, I understand. Protect yourselves."
The replies came instantly.
PenAndAsh: "No. If they can silence you, they can silence anyone. That's why we can't walk away."
FallenMuse: "We're in the dark, but together, we're fire. Let them see your face. They'll never see all of ours."
Jane's chest ached. For every frightened voice, ten more rallied. They weren't abandoning her. If anything, her unmasking had cemented her place as their symbol.
---
But being a symbol didn't stop the fear.
That evening, she caught movement outside her window—a shadow lingering too long at the corner of the street. She froze, barely breathing, until the figure moved on. But she couldn't shake the feeling: they weren't just watching her online anymore.
Marta reinforced her door with a steel bar, her hands steady even as Jane's shook.
"This is the cost," Marta said softly. "They want to scare you into silence. But fear is their weapon. Ours is truth."
Jane whispered back, "What if truth isn't enough?"
Marta looked at her like she'd asked the wrong question entirely.
"Then we hit harder."
---
The next day, The Shadows held their first council. Not in person—never in person—but on an encrypted call with dozens of voices, distorted but alive.
Jane listened as anger boiled into purpose.
"They outed her. We can't let that stand."
"They erased our accounts. They think we'll scatter."
"They think we're weak because we're writers. Let's show them we're not."
For the first time, Jane didn't feel like she was drowning in voices. She felt like she was standing at the center of something vast, something furious.
When they asked her to speak, she hesitated. Then, with a breath that burned her lungs, she said:
"They showed my face to the world. Fine. Let them. But if they think this ends with me, they're wrong. They wanted to kill The Shadows by exposing me. All they've done is prove we exist. And now, we're going to prove we're unstoppable."
The call erupted in applause, distorted but fierce.
---
Later, when the adrenaline faded, Jane sat in the dark, staring at her reflection in the black screen of her laptop.
Her own face—no longer hidden.
The world knew her name now. The corporation knew where she lived.
She was terrified. Every nerve screamed to run, to disappear, to bury herself so deep no one could ever find her again.
But another voice, deeper, stronger, whispered:
They've unmasked you. But the mask wasn't your shield. The mask was theirs. And you just ripped it away.
For the first time, Jane wasn't just a ghost in the wires.
She was a flame in the open.
And flames spread.