Web of Lies

The rain tapped against Mira Dalton’s apartment window like impatient fingers, but inside, all was silent except for the hum of her laptop. It was 2:13 a.m. The screen glowed in the dark, casting her face in pale light as spreadsheet after spreadsheet flickered open. On the surface, everything looked pristine — rows of revenue, columns of quarterly growth, margins tighter than a banker’s smile. Too tight. Too clean.

Helix Analytics had hired her a month ago, straight out of grad school. It was a dream job — six figures, a corner desk, and the chance to work under tech mogul Nathaniel Brand, the CEO who’d made data sexy. But Mira didn’t trust pretty things that came wrapped too perfectly. And the deeper she looked, the more tangled the numbers became.

It started with a biotech firm: OxiGenix. Helix had invested heavily in it, claiming it was a pioneer in gene editing. On paper, the firm was soaring — soaring too fast. Mira had cross-referenced clinical trial data, financial disclosures, even obscure EU patents. What she found didn’t add up. OxiGenix had no FDA approvals, no real product, and barely a functioning lab, yet its valuation had tripled in six months.

She brought the discrepancy to her supervisor, Greg, a man whose smile never reached his eyes.

"Ah, that's just forward revenue modeling," he said, clicking her report closed before she finished speaking. “We use predictive valuation algorithms. You’re still getting used to how we project things here. Let it go.”

She didn’t.

Over the next two weeks, Mira traced a pattern: inflated valuations, fake social media buzz, news articles planted through dummy outlets — all tied to companies Helix had stakes in. They weren’t analyzing markets; they were manipulating them.

One night, after unlocking an encrypted file buried in the company’s shared drive, Mira found the blueprint: "Project Weaver." It wasn’t just fraud — it was architecture. An intricate design to fabricate public perception through AI bots, rigged sentiment algorithms, and shell entities across five countries. The web was vast. And at the center sat Nathaniel Brand.

A chill crawled up Mira’s spine. She printed what she could, uploaded the rest to an external drive, and went home. She couldn’t go to HR — they were complicit. The board? Most of them were benefitting. Her only hope was to go public.

That night, she reached out to Isaac Lerner, an investigative journalist known for peeling back corporate masks. They agreed to meet two days later. Mira barely slept, her mind racing with fear and resolve.

But the morning of their meeting, Mira’s keycard didn’t work.

She was escorted out of the building. “Internal restructuring,” they said. “Performance concerns.” No warnings. No discussions. Just a cold, final smile from Greg.

Later that day, her apartment was broken into. Nothing stolen — except her hard drives. Her laptop, backups, even her notes. All gone. The only copy left was in the encrypted email she’d sent to Isaac.

She waited in the café across from Central Park for nearly an hour before checking her phone again.

Message undeliverable. Address not found.

Isaac Lerner had disappeared.

Paranoia clawed at her. Her phone buzzed — a private number. She didn’t answer. Then again. And again.

Finally, she picked up.

“Ms. Dalton,” a calm male voice said. “You’re playing a very dangerous game. Let it go. Or we’ll help you let go.”

The line went dead.

Her heart thundered as she looked around. The café seemed normal — a mother with a stroller, a pair of teens on their phones, a man in a gray coat sipping coffee — but suddenly, everyone felt like a threat. She grabbed her bag and left.

Over the next few days, Mira moved like a shadow — cheap hotels, prepaid phones, burner emails. She was off-grid, but not safe. Every search engine she used, every forum she visited, “Helix Analytics” returned nothing recent. It was like the story was being erased in real time.

Then came the news.

Nathaniel Brand announced a $10 billion merger with a global pharma titan. His face beamed across every major outlet. He was hailed as a genius, a visionary — the man revolutionizing health data. And Mira? She was a ghost. Unemployed. Alone. Discredited.

But she wasn’t broken.

She traveled to Montreal under a new name. She began compiling the evidence again — slowly, carefully, across secure networks and with new allies. She found underground journalists, data forensics experts, a few brave whistleblowers. The truth hadn’t died. It had just gone quiet.

Mira knew exposing the web would take time. Years, maybe.

But she’d already learned the most important lesson: the truth doesn’t unravel the web. Patience does.

And Mira Dalton had nothing but time.