Meridian (Ariana/You)

Chapter 30

Ariana's apartment was dimly lit. There were far too many candles for my taste, but overall, it looked very cozy.

She immediately kicked off her shoes and plopped herself down on the couch with a groan. I followed, sitting beside her.

"So, how do you want to do this?" I asked.

She grabbed her iPad from the coffee table. "Honestly? I'm not sure. I've had things leaked before, but this is personal."

I thought for a second. "Where do you keep all your album information before it's sent out? Like drafts, artwork, files?"

"The label's Dropbox," she said, looking up at me.

Perfect. I was familiar with Dropbox from work...it's how the front office team at the Meridian shared documents and tracked standards and protocols.

"Those have activity logs," I said. "You can see who modified what, and when."

Ariana perked up, immediately scrolling and typing.

"Wait..." she muttered. "You were right." She turned the iPad toward me.

A list of activity logs filled the screen. Each line had a time stamp, each edit labeled with a username. It was a mess if you didn't know what you were looking at, but I could track the pattern easily.

"There," I pointed. "That's the album folder, right?"

She nodded quickly.

"Someone copied the album cover, then deleted it a few minutes later. Probably sent it out, then wiped it to cover their tracks."

Our eyes dropped to the "modified-by" field.

sb.admin1

Ariana's voice stayed calm, but the fire in it was unmistakable. "That's definitely Scooter."

She scrolled down.

Another name popped up.

I blinked. "Is that-?"

"Pete's PR contact," she said flatly. "I told Scooter I didn't want anything sent to them. But there it is. He got early access to the master file." She let the iPad fall into her lap. I saw her hands trembling slightly.

"They were in on it, both of them."

I reached for her hand with an idea in my mind. "Then we shatter their plans."

Her eyes sharpened. That spark returned. "What do you have in mind?"

I leaned back, arms crossed. "Okay, hear me out... what if we make the original leak mean nothing? Completely disarm it. Confuse the narrative until no one knows what's real."

"You mean distract from it?"

"No. I mean drown it in chaos. What if we leak more album covers? All different with different ridiculous track 14 names. Make the original leak look like just one of a dozen fake versions."

She blinked. "You want to gaslight the internet?"

"I want to confuse it so hard that Scooter's leak turns into a meme thread."

Her grin spread slowly as I heard the excitement come alive in her voice again. "Oh my god, that's actually genius."

She jumped up and darted to the other side of the apartment and came back rushing in with a laptop. "I can help tweak them. And I'm really good at Canva."

I laughed at her giddiness. "I'm going to pretend you didn't say that like a threat."

Twenty minutes later, we were sitting on the floor surrounded by snack wrappers and Ariana's half-eaten bag of sour cream and onion chips. The desktop folder on her screen was already labeled "Chaos Campaign."