429 TO AN EXTENT

THE first thing Astrid did when he woke up was to check his Terminal. It’s because of the news about the Thornleys. Although it’s not really his business, he just wanted to know how this issue would end. Probably because he was worried for Livi.

Really, the one who would be mostly affected by all of this was that kid. Especially if Olivia went ahead with her initial plan of faking her death. What a selfish woman. He understood her need for revenge. If he was in her place, he would also try to get back at the people who made his life miserable.

But he would never do it the way she did. If he had the time she had, he would do it without letting other unrelated people be affected by his revenge plan. In his opinion, Olivia took things too far. Not in her revenge, but in making innocent people suffer from the consequences of her actions.

Like Ellis, for example. If Olivia wanted her name known so it would be easier for her to approach Benjamin Thornley, then there’s no need to have a romantic relationship with Ellis. How could that be related to her revenge? Look, didn’t she just break Ellis heart in the end?

He didn’t even want to start with what Olivia had done to Livi. Just thinking about it made him angry all over again.

He shook his head and calmed himself. Nothing good would come out of him being angry this early in the morning.

After opening [Cyberspace], the first thing he saw on the trending list was the news about the Aegis Army investigating the Thornley family. That was already something expected, so it didn’t surprise him that much.

But the next topic on the trending list made Astrid’s eyes widened.

[Olivia Crane accident, husband and child also included.]

…..

The next topic after that was also related to that.

[Olivia, husband and son, in a vehicular accident?]

No, what was this?

Astrid quickly clicked the first article he saw under the topic to see what was this about.

[Olivia Thornley, who we all know as Olivia Crane, a former actress, was involved in a vehicular accident. Last night, at exactly 8 o’clock in the evening capital time, she and her husband and son were travelling back to their home when the aircraft they’re travelling in was hit by an out-of-control vehicle. The said vehicle had an AI malfunction and hit the unsuspecting aircraft of the family.

[The engine of the aircraft they were travelling in exploded and lost its flight ability. The aircraft was above a mountain range when it happened. It fell and hit a cliff. By the time rescue came, it was all too late. The three had already lost their lives.]

That article was followed by a ton of comments.

[Wow. Is this true? This is not just fake news, right?]

[Major news sites are reporting it. I doubt it’s false.]

[LOL did they receive their karma so quickly?]

[Hey, upstairs, stop talking nonsense. An innocent child was also in that accident. How can you say it’s karma?]

[Right? That poor kid.]

[But don’t you all think this is all too suspicious? They really had an accident on the day that the Aegis Army announced that they will investigate the Thornley family. I smell foul-play.]

[I’m thinking of that as well! If Benjamin Thornley planned to sell his family to the authority, wouldn’t he make a back-up plan so he, his wife, and kid could be saved?]

[That make sense. I mean, they could have faked their death.]

[Hey, stop making conspiracy theories here! Three people died, you know? Are you all really so tactless?]

Astrid stared at those last words with his heart beating wildly inside his chest. No, what? Was this true? How could this be? Livi, that kid, did he really…?

But if it’s not, would people report it like this? And it wasn’t just one article. There were multiple articles talking about it. It’s impossible that all of them were spreading fake news.

No, he needed to calm down. Nothing would be done if he started panicking here. He took a deep breath. When he felt that his heart was no longer beating profusely like earlier, he dialled Ellis’ Terminal number to request a video call.

He waited for the other to answer the call. But even after a few minutes had passed, his call was still not answered. He was about to lose patience when the virtual screen finally changed and Ellis’ face appeared.

“Sister Ellis! Have you seen the news? Was it true? Did they- did they really… I mean—”

He stopped because he really couldn’t say the word ‘die’. It felt like it would make things more real if he did. And he just refused to believe that there could even be a possibility of that.

Ellis seemed to understand his plight because she cut off whatever Astrid was saying. “It’s true to an extent.”

Astrid felt like a bomb just detonated in front of him when he heard Ellis say the word ‘true’. He was about to start to panic when he realized that the other added the words ‘to some extent’. Which meant that it might not be true in some way or another.

“What do you mean by ‘to an extent’?” he asked to make sure.

Ellis became silent for a moment, as if deciding whether to answer Astrid truthfully or not. But at the end, she just sighed and told him the truth.

“They faked their death.”

The first thing Astrid felt when he heard that was relief. But after that wave of relief, confusion came almost as quickly. Then, he remembered that Olivia made a deal with the Aegis Army about them helping her faked her death and to give her a new identity in exchanged for the information she would give them about the Thornleys.

But why did it suddenly involved Olivia’s husband and Livi as well instead of just her?

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