Chapter 6
The silence that followed Bob's comment stretched for exactly three heartbeats before Mario broke it.
"MARIO KNEW IT!" he shouted, pointing dramatically at them. "Mario saw you two making googly eyes at each other for MONTHS!"
"You did not," Luigi protested weakly, but his eyes were darting between SMG3 and SMG4 with a mixture of surprise and something that looked almost like relief.
"Actually," Meggy said, crossing her arms but smiling slightly, "I had my suspicions too. You two have been... different lately. Less murder-y, more..." She gestured vaguely at their joined hands. "That."
SMG4 felt his face burning, but SMG3's grip on his hand tightened, anchoring him. "Can we focus on the actual problem here?" SMG3 said, his voice sharp but not unkind. "Someone is framing Four, and we need to figure out who."
"Right," Meggy said, snapping back into professional mode. "The trace. Three, can you dig deeper? If the data was routed through Four's office, there has to be a secondary trail."
SMG3 nodded, reluctantly releasing SMG4's hand to return to the laptop. SMG4 immediately felt the loss of that contact, but he moved to stand behind SMG3, close enough that their shoulders brushed. A silent statement: we're in this together now.
"Here," SMG3 muttered, his fingers flying across the keyboard. "The data packet has a timestamp embedded in the metadata. It shows the file was accessed at 2:43 AM, but..." He paused, his eyes narrowing. "But Four's keycard wasn't used to enter the building until 2:15 AM the next day. For our morning meeting."
"So someone else accessed his office," Tari said softly. "Someone with override credentials."
"Or someone who knows how to bypass the security system," SMG3 added, pulling up another window. "The access logs show... wait." His voice dropped, tension coiling through his shoulders. "There's a ghost login. Someone used an admin override to mask their entry."
"Who has admin access?" Luigi asked nervously.
Meggy's expression darkened. "Only four people. Me, SMG4, SMG3, and..." She hesitated. "And Boopkins. He's the IT administrator."
"Boopkins?" SMG4 said incredulously. "No way. He wouldn't—"
"I'm not saying he did it," Meggy interrupted. "But someone could have stolen his credentials. Or..." She trailed off, her jaw tightening.
"Or he's not as innocent as he seems," SMG3 finished grimly.
The room fell silent again, but this time it was heavy with suspicion and unease.
"We need to talk to him," SMG4 said finally. "But carefully. If he's involved, we can't tip him off."
"Agreed," Meggy said. "But first, we need to secure the rest of the footage. If they took six months of backups, they might come back for more."
As the group began to disperse to handle their assigned tasks, SMG3 caught SMG4's wrist, pulling him aside into the hallway. The others pretended not to notice, though SMG4 caught Tari's knowing smile as she passed.
"Hey," SMG3 said quietly once they were alone. His bravado from earlier had faded, leaving behind something raw and uncertain. "Are you okay? With... all of this?"
SMG4 studied him—the way his eyes wouldn't quite meet his, the tension in his jaw, the vulnerability he was trying so hard to hide. "Are you asking if I regret telling them?"
"Maybe." SMG3's voice was barely above a whisper. "I know we didn't plan it. I know it complicates everything. But when they were looking at you like you were guilty, like you were the enemy, I just—I couldn't let them think that. Even if it meant..."
"Exposing us," SMG4 finished. He reached up, gently tilting SMG3's chin until their eyes met. "I don't regret it. I was terrified, yeah. But I don't regret it."
"You're not worried about what this means? For us? For the crew?" SMG3's hands found SMG4's waist, a gesture that was becoming familiar, grounding. "What if they start treating us differently? What if they don't trust us to work together anymore?"
"Then we prove them wrong," SMG4 said firmly. "We solve this case. We show them that we're stronger together than we ever were apart." He paused, his own fears bubbling to the surface. "But I am scared, Three. I'm scared that this is too good to be real. That we're going to wake up and realize we made a mistake, that the rivalry was easier than... whatever this is."
"It's not easier," SMG3 said, pulling him closer. "But it's real. And I'm not going anywhere. Even when you're being an insufferable perfectionist."
"Even when you're being a dramatic arsonist?"
"Especially then."
They stood there for a moment, foreheads pressed together, breathing in sync. The world outside this hallway was chaos and suspicion and danger, but here, in this small pocket of space, they were solid. They were real.
"We should get back," SMG4 said reluctantly.
"Yeah." But SMG3 didn't move, his fingers tracing idle patterns on SMG4's hip. "Four?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For not running. For not pretending this didn't happen."
SMG4 kissed him, soft and brief but full of promise. "Never."
They returned to the investigation room to find the atmosphere had shifted. Meggy was on the phone, her expression grave, while Tari was frantically typing on her laptop.
"What happened?" SMG4 asked immediately.
Meggy lowered the phone. "Boopkins didn't show up for his shift today. His apartment is empty. His car is gone."
"He ran," SMG3 said flatly.
"Or he was taken," Tari added, her voice shaking slightly. "I just checked his bank records—he gave me emergency access last year when he locked himself out of his account. There's a deposit from three days ago. Fifty thousand dollars. From an offshore account."
The room went cold.
"He was paid off," SMG4 said, disbelief and anger warring in his chest. "Boopkins sold us out."
"But why?" Luigi asked. "What would anyone want with our footage?"
SMG3 and SMG4 exchanged a look, the same realization hitting them simultaneously.
"It's not about the footage," SMG3 said slowly. "It's about what's in the footage. Something we filmed that someone doesn't want released."
"Or something we didn't realize we captured," SMG4 added, his mind racing. "Background details. Faces. Locations."
"We need to review everything we shot in the past six months," Meggy said, already moving toward the archive room. "Every frame. Every scene."
As the crew mobilized, SMG4 felt SMG3's hand brush against his—a brief, steadying touch.
They were in this together now. No more secrets. No more hiding.
But as SMG4 followed the others down the hallway, a chill ran down his spine.
Because if Boopkins had been paid off, that meant someone with serious resources was behind this. Someone who knew their operation inside and out.
And if they were willing to pay fifty thousand dollars for footage, what else were they willing to do to keep their secrets buried?
The answer, SMG4 suspected, was something far more dangerous than a simple theft.
And they were about to walk straight into it.
ns216.73.216.141da2
and then Add to home screen.