While David sat with his arms folded, his mind quietly assembling a strategy piece by piece, the way a chess player maps three moves ahead, Nelson's thoughts drifted somewhere far cruder.
To the deepfake video.
That officer, Bill, had forced him to delete every copy from every device he owned. Had stood in his office and home, watching him scrub the files from his phone, his laptop, his backup drive, and his cloud storage. Had waited until the last thumbnail disappeared from the last folder before leaving with a warning that sat on Nelson's skin like a bruise for weeks.
But David had a copy on his phone, it seems.
The file sat in David's device like a loaded weapon tucked inside a drawer, waiting.
David did not care about the video. He had watched it once, shrugged it off, and told Nelson it was clearly fabricated. According to David, that was not really Cixi. The face was hers, but the body was not.
