“Daniel is lying!” Vivian shrieked suddenly, her voice cracking into an ugly, desperate pitch. She abandoned her theatrical grief entirely, pointing a trembling finger directly at me. “She manipulated him! She poisoned his mind against his own flesh and blood while he was under heavy medication following the crash! It’s a deepfake! Everyone knows you can fake a voice with software nowadays! It’s all a lie!”
Noah didn’t flinch. He looked down at the screen, his thumb hovering over the interface, completely immune to his grandmother’s hysterical defense.
“It’s not a deepfake, Grandma,” Noah said, his eight-year-old voice carrying an eerie, adult composure. “Dad showed me how to check the metadata on his phone last month when we backed up his photos. The audio file has his digital certificate and voice signature embedded directly from his secure workspace.”
Silence descended on the chapel—a heavy, suffocating stillness where the only sound was the low hum of the ceiling fans overhead.
