Chapter 50: When the World Finds Out

Liam and Yae had enjoyed a perfect evening together, filled with laughter, sibling banter, and homemade meatloaf. However, none of that could have prepared him for what awaited him the next morning.

Liam wasn’t much of a social media person. He preferred staying off the internet, away from the noise and chaos of online life. Yaela, however, was completely opposite, which is why she came running toward him the next morning just as he was getting ready for work.

“Liam, you have to see this!” she said breathlessly, shoving her phone directly in front of his face. On the screen was a video featuring a female news reporter. Above her head, a bold headline read: LIAM GARRY: THE USOV AGENT WHO FOUGHT SERAFINA TO A STANDSTILL.

“What?!” Liam stared at the screen in complete shock.

“There’s more,” Yaela said, her voice a mixture of excitement and concern. She scrolled down to another post on Twitter. This time, the headline underneath a different video read: NEW VISOR SOON TO JOIN THE RANKED BOARD?

“What is all this?!” Liam looked even more confused and alarmed. Yaela kept scrolling, and with each swipe, the situation became worse. News headlines turned into trending hashtags like #TheRumorsAreTrue and #WhoIsLiamGarry.

Scattered throughout the posts were various photos of him, though most were blurry, and taken from the side as he walked alongside other agents. These were the kind of pictures people always tried to snap whenever agents showed up to deal with the monsters that regularly emerged from dimensional breaches.

On any normal day, this wouldn’t have mattered much. In an era where everyone had a phone and was constantly trying to capture content for the internet, agents getting photographed was just part of the job.

However, there had been rumors about his fight with Serafina that had made small waves in the news before, but they had stayed relatively quiet because no one truly knew who the agent was, but, now that people had managed to put a face to the story, everything exploded.

Liam stood there, completely speechless, trying to process what he was seeing, but Yaela had another question that snapped him back to reality. “There’s something I don’t understand,” she said, looking puzzled. “Why do they call you Liam Garry and not Liam Velmont?”

Liam’s attention, which had been scattered across all the unwanted social media attention, suddenly focused sharply on his sister’s question. He took a deep breath. “Yeah, about that,” he said carefully. “I go by Garry at USOV, not Velmont.”

“Why?” Yaela asked, clearly confused by this revelation. “It started as an unintentional lie,” Liam admitted, running his hand through his hair. “And then I just… couldn’t stop it.”

“But—” Yaela wanted to say something more.

“Yaela,” Liam interrupted quickly, “right now, that doesn’t matter. What matters is figuring out how to get out of all this media attention.”

Yaela was about to argue with him for cutting her off, but she realized the seriousness of the situation and decided to focus on the bigger problem. “How do you think these rumors spread in the first place?” she asked.

“To be fair, there were other agents around during these encounters,” Liam said thoughtfully.

Just then, another notification buzzed on Yaela’s phone. She glanced down and her eyes widened. “No way,” she said in disbelief. It was a notification from her favorite Michigan vlog influencer, who had just started a live stream on Instagram with the hashtag #UncoveringLiam as the topic.

“This can’t be happening,” Yaela muttered as she watched the viewer count climb rapidly. Within seconds, over 5,500 people were watching the stream.

Liam rushed over to look at the phone again, and on the live stream, the influencer had invited a guest, splitting the screen between two people. “Welcome to my live stream!” the influencer said enthusiastically to her the guest and her audience. “You told me you have some interesting information for us.”

“Yes, I do,” the mystery guest replied. “I have a friend who works with the White Hunters faction. He told me yesterday that the faction president of the Weeping Dragons got beaten to a pulp by this USOV agent..”

Liam immediately pulled his face away from the phone, his heart racing. He was completely overwhelmed by the possible consequences of all this attention, especially as his quiet, peaceful life was disappearing before his eyes.

Then suddenly he had another worry—this spotlight may inevitably lead to people digging deeper into his background, and when they discover that the second part of his name is Velmont, that could create serious problems.

While the name Velmont might mean nothing to the regular people on the internet, and on TV, it could mean everything to a family head who might just be watching; and if what the Chief Director had been telling him about the family heads were true, then his problems had just multiplied exponentially.

Feeling overwhelmed, Liam walked downstairs and collapsed onto one of the living room sofas, trying to think through his options. Yaela followed him down, closing the Instagram app, though by the time she closed it, the influencer’s live stream had reached 17,300 viewers.

She sat down next to her contemplating brother and said gently, “We can’t really do anything about it, you know. This kind of attention is normal for high tier Visors in the state.”

“I don’t want any of it, Yae,” Liam said, expressing his deep discomfort with the situation. Even though Yaela was right—that this was just how social media worked, and people created content for clicks, Liam couldn’t shake his unease about the whole situation. He sighed heavily and stood up. “I have to go to work now anyway.”

Liam was just about to walk out the door when Yaela called after him. “Hold on!” she said, already heading up the stairs.

“What?” Liam asked, stopping in his tracks. “Just hold on,” she repeated, disappearing upstairs. Less than two minutes later, she returned with a baseball cap and placed it firmly on Liam’s head.

“To keep a lower profile, you need to keep your head down,” she said, adjusting the cap. “And stop flying around the neighborhood, you’ll only draw more attention to yourself.” She was trying to help in her own little way and what she said made perfect sense.

Liam left the house with his head lowered, trying making it difficult for anyone to see and recognize his face. He started by jogging slowly away from their street, but his pace gradually increased as he ran. Once he was certain he was far enough from his immediate neighborhood, lightning streaks began generating across his body, and in an instant, he vanished in a flash of electric energy.

A few minutes later, he arrived near USOV headquarters, landing several meters away from the building. What he saw made his heart sink as faction scouts, reporters and journalists were clustered everywhere around the facility.

Thankfully, they weren’t allowed through the main gates, but they formed an intimidating crowd nonetheless. Liam sighed, realizing that the only way past them was to fly over their heads, though this would probably create even more buzz, but at this point, it was between that option or having to deal with all of at the gates.

With a sonic boom that echoed through the area, Liam flew directly over the crowd of reporters and journalists, heading straight into the facility where the media couldn’t follow him. Once inside the premises, he walked quickly through the entrance and headed immediately toward the Director’s office, knowing he needed answers and guidance about how to handle this rapidly escalating situation.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep