Venus.EXE
⚠️ Trigger Warning: This story may include references to physical and domestic harm, sexual violence, psychological trauma, moral corruption, and death by poisoning.
Reader discretion is advised.
Chapter One: The Interface
Seattle, WA – Downtown, 2:12 AM
The mouse cursor blinked like a heartbeat on the cluttered computer screen. Maris Vale sat cross-legged on a reclaimed teak bench that looked like it belonged in a meditation studio, not a Seattle tech startup. Her eyes, seemingly wired into two overlapping screens, flickered between a minimalist wireframe for a meditation app and a live Discord social media chat thread where men traded dating hacks like war trophies.
“Maris? That button copy’s still reading like a chloroform ad,” her project manager called from across the room, trying to sound cheeky but managing only condescension.
Maris smiled and said without turning around, “What’s less creepy? ‘Let go of tension’ or ‘Release your stress’?”
She heard him shift awkwardly, letting off an unintentional squeak from his desk chair. “Uh. The second one?”
"I thought so too," she said, already placing the edit into the digital interface. Her fingers moved quickly, calmly, and deliberately on the keyboard, like a pianist scoring a requiem.
Maris had a reputation in the office: quiet, methodical, and stylish in a way that suggested she didn’t shop; instead, she curated. Her desk was stark, except for a single object—a vintage 1970s Polaroid SX-70 camera. Most thought it was ironic. A few suspected it was sentimental. No one dared to ask.
When the lunch crowd trickled out of the office and a quietness descended on the room, she finally looked away from her screen and took a deep breath. With less than a moment to herself, a notification flashed on her computer screen.
Incoming message: Private Profile “TOUCHFIRE90”
She clicked on the notification without hesitation. It contained an attachment, and Maris opened it without reading the caption. The photo was predictable: CrossFit arms, crypto chain, sunglasses indoors. His first message was worse.
“Wanna come over and ride my blockchain?”
She didn’t laugh. She didn’t cringe. She simply archived a screenshot to her computer. A folder opened to the location of the newly saved file. Dozens of other screenshots stared back: direct messages from various social media platforms, mirror selfies, unsolicited anatomy in different stages of arousal - all sorted meticulously by location, username, and kill potential. Some of the screenshots had red checkmarks beside them. Others, like TOUCHFIRE90, were still in evaluation.
Maris opened a new tab on her web browser and started typing in a website address. An application interface - neutral beige tones, welcoming serif font, warm "meet-cute" atmosphere – a new product ready to launch. It was a fake dating profile hosted on a proxy server. A mirror of a real app. Her alias today was Elle. Belle, a curated avatar, is complete with subtle trauma markers designed to attract emotionally manipulative men. She didn’t just trap internet creeps. She filtered them.
Her phone buzzed with an incoming text message. This time it was personal.
GRAMS: Did you receive the freezer bags I sent?
Maris replied: Yes. Perfect size for ribs. Love you.
Maris smiled a little, just a twitch. Her grandmother had dementia now, but some instincts stayed intact. Even in her confusion, she remembered how to pack meat.
The evening approached quickly. The clacking of keyboards had ceased, and the office had emptied. Maris logged out of her computer and slid her teak bench under the desk.
Queen Anne Hill, 6:34 PM
Maris was in her cozy, stylish apartment, sipping Darjeeling from a glass teacup and scrolling through social media apps on her cell phone. Her living space was both timeless and eclectic: a dark, mid-century desk made of real wood, a plush, red velvet fainting couch, wall-mounted art prints of sirens and Medusas in stunning, gilded frames, and a bookcase filled with computer programming books and FBI profiling manuals. And, of course, there was the shrine.
The shrine wasn’t called that, of course. Not out loud. The small room, a walk-in closet once intended for coats, had been transformed into a kind of psychological archive. Everything was temperature-controlled and strategically arranged. Polaroids pinned to the wall by surgical steel tacks, QR codes etched into practice skin by scalpel, various swatches of clothing labeled in Ziplock bags.
Maris opened the closet door just slightly and looked in at the Polaroid photos pinned to the cork wall.
‘UNSOLICITED,’ she thought to herself.
She then spoke out loud, but her voice was soft, more breath than sound, "Beta tested. Permanently offline."
Maris closed the closet door and sat down on the couch, sipping from her tiny teacup and checking her laptop for notifications. Her fingers hovered over the trackpad. Touchfire90 had replied.
“You free tonight? Got a killer bottle of bourbon. Or do I need to make you beg?”
Bingo.
Belltown – Unknown Trendy Bar, 8:47 PM
Maris had left her home to meet Touchfire90 at a trendy bar in Belltown. She wore a cream-colored halter blouse tucked into high-waisted black slacks. Just enough skin to hint, not show. Her lips were slick with a lipstick shade called "Bloodroot." Her eyes were lined sharply, patient, ancient.
“Elle?” a voice rang out from a seat near the bar, full of fake humility and real swagger.
“Only if you’re worth it,” she replied, offering a smile that could have ruined empires.
He drank. He monologued. Crypto, ketamine, and an ex-girlfriend who'd ‘faked’ a trauma for attention. Maris tilted her head like she was listening. She took sips from her drink, but she didn't swallow.
Later, although Maris couldn’t estimate how much later, with Touchfire90 talking the entire time, he invited her up to his apartment. She paused. Calculated.
“Yes,” she said, voice low and confident. “But I don’t do first-date sex.”
“Second date it is,” he smirked.
Perfect.
Maris made her way home, where she immediately wrote in her encrypted computer journal.
TARGET: Confirmed.
Trigger Phrase: “I don’t believe in consent culture.”
Estimated kill: Friday. Post to the blog by Saturday, 10 a.m.
Polaroid plan: Mirror pose, with a sock in his mouth (as per his own leaked Snapchat photo).
Caption: “Beta tested. Permanently offline.”
Maris took a sip from her teacup and picked up a letter opener. Three inches, cold, elegant. Still sharp from its last use. She placed the letter opener on an end table beside her Polaroid camera and smiled at her reflection in the lens—unapologetic, unblinking. The interface was ready.
Chapter Two: Alpha Testing
South Lake Union – Apartment Building, 9:02 PM
The second date was never spontaneous. It was scheduled—down to the minute, with contingencies mapped across both digital and physical spaces. Maris had three escape routes, two decoy phones, and one Polaroid photo cartridge locked and loaded.
But to Theo Cross—aka TOUCHFIRE90—it would feel like fate.
They met again outside his high-rise apartment. He wore a blazer over a t-shirt, the universal tech-bro uniform for “I’m rich but casual.” His grin was pre-loaded with expectation.
“You came,” he said.
“You’re lucky I was bored,” Maris replied, gently brushing past him into the elevator.
She wore a black cashmere dress with a plunging neckline and soft leather gloves. No fingerprints. No DNA. Just signals.
“Nice place,” she murmured as he fumbled with the keycard.
"Startup equity gets you something, right?" he laughed. "Technically, this was a bonus after Series C. I built an app that helps people avoid accountability on Venmo."
Maris arched a brow. “How noble.”
He didn’t catch the edge in her voice.
Inside his apartment, it was a boy-prince jungle. Neon LED lighting, a mounted flat screen the size of a coffin lid, and shelves lined with limited edition NFTs inserted into digital frames. A bottle of Japanese whiskey that was already half-empty sat on the kitchen counter. A playlist of lo-fi beats looped in the background like a lullaby for sociopaths.
He gestured to the couch. “Make yourself comfortable.”
“I’ll stand,” she said, brushing her gloves smooth against her arms. “You live here alone?”
“Why? Planning something dangerous?”
The question hung there—half joke, half dare. Maris tilted her head and gave him a look that could freeze lava.
“Always.”
Theo poured a drink, holding it out as an offer to reassert control. “So, what is it you actually do? You said UX, right?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, ignoring the drink, circling the room. “I design experiences. Interfaces. Systems that make people feel comfortable enough to give up what they shouldn’t.”
He laughed. “Damn. You sound like a Bond villain.”
She turned to him, her smile flickering like a match. “Only if Bond sent dick pics.”
That caught him off guard—but not enough.
Theo then moved closer to Maris. “You know,” he said, “you’re hard to read. That’s rare. Most women are... predictable. Just wants, trauma, boundaries—boring shit.”
There it was. She reached up slowly, brushing something from his collar. “That’s funny,” she said, “I find men like you very easy to read. Especially the unsolicited chapters.”
He grinned again, stupidly confident. “So are we doing this or—”
Maris moved fast. Too fast for his brain to register until the hidden object in her hand clicked, releasing a jolt of electricity into Theo’s groin region. It was a sex toy modified into a taser – a very strong one. He screamed a staccato, high-pitched sound before collapsing to his knees as the glass he was holding shattered on the ground. The Taser had a 10-second charge, and she had used it all.
“Shhh,” Maris whispered, dragging him by the jacket collar down the hallway. “This is your legacy now.”
Theo awoke to candlelight. He was tied to the bathtub with a silk rope that once belonged to Maris’ grandmother, repurposed from old debutante costumes. His phone buzzed softly somewhere on the counter. His pants were missing, his wrists bleeding. Maris crouched beside the tub, snapping a photo with her Polaroid camera. The flash lit up the terror in Theo’s eyes like a funeral pyre.
“Please,” he croaked. “What do you want?”
Maris tilted the photo slightly as it developed. “I want you to be still. The last guy flinched, and it ruined the framing."
“Why are you—”
She held up her necklace. A modified surgical scalpel glinted in the bright neon light of the bathroom.
“I’m what comes after the warning label,” she said.
And then she cut. It was a quick, practiced slice across the femoral artery. Not deep enough to kill instantly—she needed time for the blood to mark him, stain the tub, make the final image worth it.
She whispered as he screamed. “Touchfire... offline.”
The Polaroids came next. Posed like his own dick pic, arms spread, mouth open. She stapled the image to his groin with surgical precision.
UNSOLICITED.
Maris carefully positioned the scalpel once more, but not to slice. It was time to make the QR code - etched with care into the soft meat of his thigh. It linked to a post on a now-defunct art blog mirrored through onion-routing protocols. The caption was a haiku.
blockchain fantasy
promises that always leak
now you’re encrypted
She pressed her lips to his forehead.
“This is the last time anyone watches you,” she said.
Maris cleaned up and headed home. She uploaded the content through four proxy servers. No trace, no ties. Another trophy for her archive. She played back the last sound from his phone—a notification chime. It was a custom tone: a wolf whistle. Predictable. Ugly. She looped it as she lay in bed. Over and over and over.
Chapter Three: Beta Termination
South Lake Union, 11:42 AM
Detective Nora Halden hated tech crime. It was messy, half-invisible, and the killers didn’t break a sweat. They didn’t shake. They didn’t even breathe hard anymore. Still, she had a job to do, and it brought her to the eleventh-floor condo of Theo Cross. He was found nude by the housekeeper. Nearly bloodless, in a high-end soaking tub, genitals marked with the Polaroid photograph like a cursed shrine.
Halden’s partner, Reyes, leaned over the body and winced.
“Jesus. Polaroid stapled to the junk. What is wrong with people?”
“Nothing new,” Halden said, snapping on a pair of vinyl gloves. “Just flashier.”
They had been on the scene for less than fifteen minutes. Halden already knew this wasn't random. The placement, the carving, the poetry - it was deliberate. She looked around. No signs of forced entry. No hair, fingerprints, or fluid. Even the whiskey glasses were wiped. It was clean—too clean. A smeared, bloody QR code on the body drew her attention. Reyes was already scanning it with the camera on a burner phone.
“You’re not supposed to—”
“It’s firewalled. Relax.” Reyes said with a sly smile.
A webpage loaded across the phone screen. The domain was dead, a mirror of an old website, but a single image still loaded. It formed a black-and-white Polaroid photo of Theo Cross, posed like a horny Instagram model, with a poem written below it.
“Who the hell does this?” Reyes asked.
Halden stared at the photo. Then the word UNSOLICITED.
“They’re not doing it for the body count,” she muttered.
“What then?”
Halden stood, surveying the living room. She bit her lip thoughtfully. “They’re doing this to teach.”
Queen Anne Hill, 2:12 AM
Late that same night, and into the next morning, Maris had already made it halfway through her next digital program build—a chatbot driven by artificial intelligence, designed to match lonely men with highly responsive “women” who always agreed with them. The working title: MirrorLove. The target: beta testers dumb enough to sign waivers without reading them.
Her phone buzzed and gently startled her out of her concentration. It was an instant message.
FROM: LUXVICIOUS98
MSG: You were right about the incel artist guy. Got my refund AND his apology. goddess.
Maris smiled slyly. Another girl in the "Pixie Reaper" network had followed her playbook: record the call, shame the predator, disappear. Most of the girls had never met Maris. They didn't need to. The legend was enough. Still, legends get sloppy when they’re believed too easily.
This brought Maris to her next target, Rafiq Dahl. He was a micro-influencer in the wellness space. Big on “divine masculinity” and tantric coaching. Secretly big on manipulation and digital coercion. Two of Maris’ proxy accounts had already been targeted by him in under a week. He sent crystal emojis in unsolicited sex texts. He quoted Rumi to justify ghosting partners. He once convinced a woman to send nudes by saying they would ‘release her trapped chakra.’
Maris didn’t just want to kill him. She wanted to exorcise him. She had created a new persona: LyraStar27. Her new online identity was a carefully crafted deception: ‘Survivor. Empath. Just trying to reclaim my body and my joy.’ Within thirty minutes of creating her new profile, he’d messaged her.
Rafiq: “I can help you hold space for that pain. You seem spiritually ripe.”
Maris nearly gagged. She contemplated for a few seconds, then she typed back:
LyraStar27: “You really see me. That’s rare.”
She attached a photo. Not of herself—of a long-deleted fitness blogger, distorted slightly by AI filters. Just enough to be familiar. Just enough to bait a narcissist. His reply came with a disturbingly nude video, and just like the others, it was unsolicited.
Maris began preparations for her target that night. Victim folder created. Screenshot archive built. Coordinates mapped. Rafiq lived in the Capitol Hill area, in a small loft apartment above a vegan bookstore and apothecary. His schedule was public—he livestreamed his daily herbal cleanses. She’d meet him after his “Sensual Chakra Integration” class on Thursday, already knowing the line he'd open with.
“I see your pain in your body glowing.”
And she already knew the last words he would hear. Maris repeated the words to herself as she drifted off to sleep.
Seattle - Police Headquarters, 7:16 AM
“Victim fits the profile,” Reyes said. “Public, digital, arrogant. Message board chatter’s already calling it the ‘Dick Pic Killer.’”
“Who’s calling her that?”
“Reddit. And women on TikTok. There’s a whole subthread tracking this thing. They call her Venus-dot-exe.”
Detective Halden groaned loudly, “Jesus.”
“People are rooting for her. One influencer even said she ‘restored the sacredness of female rage.’”
Halden looked at the corkboard, where evidence had been traced out to empty spaces. Two bodies so far. No DNA, no real forensic trail. Just QR codes, poetry, and digital signatures that vanished like steam on a warm night.
“She’s escalating,” Halden said. “She’s got a message. But she’s not gonna stop at three.”
Reyes frowned. “You think there’s a third already picked?”
Halden nodded grimly. “I think she’s already halfway done.”
Chapter Four: Rumi and Blood
Capitol Hill, 6:47 PM
It was a Thursday, and Rafiq Dahl lit sandalwood incense rapidly, as if he were summoning a lesser demon. He wore an unbuttoned linen shirt, prayer beads, and enough patchouli oil to knock out a mid-sized goat. His Instagram live stream was still running in the corner, capturing soft music, moody candles, and the word "ALIGNMENT" projected on a glowing orange salt lamp.
Maris watched quietly from the doorframe. To him, she was LyraStar27 - a wounded bird looking for safe hands to mend her broken wings. He hadn’t even asked her real name.
“Lyra,” Rafiq purred, holding out both palms like she was a haunted child. “You showed up. That means your womb energy trusts me.”
She smiled demurely and stepped inside. “It told me to come. And I always listen when my body speaks.”
His face beamed, missing the sharpness under her voice. The apartment smelled greasy and spoiled like fermented guilt. Every surface held crystals, fertility idols, and books on “sexual alchemy.” A framed photo of Rafiq in Peru showed him barefoot next to a woman he claimed to have “healed.” Her eyes were blacked out with Sharpie. Maris sipped the tea he offered—only after watching him drink his first. Always protocol. No risk.
Rafiq dimmed the lights and gestured to a yoga mat on the floor. “We’ll begin by syncing our breath. I’ll lead. You follow.”
Maris slowly knelt, placed her hands on her thighs, and exhaled. It took every shred of discipline not to gag when he whispered, “You’re glowing.”
She mirrored his rhythm. Breathe in, breathe out. Let the predator think he’s seducing you. In his mind, he was a god. In hers, he was already a corpse. When his eyes finally closed - centered in his own performance - Maris was ready to make her move.
With practiced grace, she reached beneath the neck of her sweater and retrieved her necklace. The modified surgical scalpel hung like a charm, sparkling gently in the soft light. The first slice was silent, across the carotid, fast and deep. Rafiq’s breath caught mid-mantra. His eyes flared wide as he tried to speak, but no sound emerged, only a bubbly, bloody foam. Maris leaned in to whisper in his ear.
“Rumi said: ‘Try not to resist the changes that come your way.’”
Maris pushed Rafiq’s weakened body gently to the floor as his limbs jerked in dying protest.
“You didn’t listen.”
Cleanup began immediately. Maris moved with the precision of a surgeon and swiftness of a wildcat on a hunt, wiping surfaces with gloved hands, unplugging the livestream that had frozen at just the right moment—her silhouette kneeling over his. She posed the now-very-limp body of Rafiq in a lotus pose, with palms open on the knees and head bowed, as if in meditation.
The Polaroid camera flashed brightly, illuminating the blood pooled on Rafiq’s skin for just a second. UNSOLICITED – the photo was captioned and stapled once again to the groin; this time joined with a dried lotus flower Rafiq had kept in a glass bowl of pink salt. The QR code etched with care on his thigh led to a new blog post - temporarily resurrected through darknet relays.
The title: “Chakra Cleared.”
And, of course, the poem followed:
divine masculinity
made sacred by your silence
Rumi disapproves
Seattle - Downtown, 9:03 PM
Halden’s headache started behind her eyes and drilled backward through her skull. Another call, another murder. It was the second body in as many weeks. The same Polaroid photograph, the same symbol, and the same lack of evidence. She sat across from a junior cyber forensics analyst who looked like he hadn’t slept since Y2K.
“We tracked the QR link to a masked server in Romania,” he said, eyes red from screen glow. “No logs, no trace, no exit node. Whoever this is, they know exactly how to disappear.”
Halden flipped through printouts of the two known blog posts. Poetry, pose, public execution.
“This is messaging,” she muttered. “Not just murder. She’s editing these men - cutting out their bullshit, leaving only... art.”
“Performance murder,” the tech said. “It’s like Banksy meets Jack the Ripper.”
Halden grunted, trying to suppress a laugh.
“Any pattern relating to the victims?” the tech asked.
“They were all publicly accused of digital harassment. They had large online followings. They were arrogant enough to think they were invincible.”
“You think she’s choosing them based on online behavior?”
“I think,” Halden said, standing up, “she’s picking them the way a UX designer picks user pain points - where the system breaks.”
The tech whistled. “You sound like you admire her.”
“I don’t,” Halden snapped, and then changed to a softer tone, “But I understand her.”
Queen Anne Hill, 11:14 PM
Maris sat cross-legged in her darkened apartment, the only light coming from a laptop screen, illuminating her face. She sat, watching the ripples of gossip spread across the social media platforms. Online chatter bloomed fast, igniting like a wildfire. Her proxy servers picked up on burner Discord channels, feminist TikTok offshoots, and encrypted Instagram direct messages. Venus.exe was now more than a rumor - she was a movement. A fan edit showed a silhouette of a woman holding a letter opener like a katana, lined with a caption: UNSOLICITED MEANS UNFORGIVEN.
The myth had outgrown her. But legends were slippery and dangerous. They didn't listen to commands. They didn't care about the original code. Maris leaned back and stared through the open closet door at the wall in her shrine. The enormous corkboard web of usernames, chat logs, Polaroid photos, and at the center of it, her next target.
Chapter Five: Cat and Cursor
Seattle PD - Digital Crimes Unit, 9:03 AM
Detective Halden stared intently at the computer screen as if it owed her an apology.
"She's not just erasing her steps—she's writing new ones over the old ones,” muttered Elías Park, the forensics lead. “VPN chains, burner hardware, ghostware. Every trace we’ve followed leads to a dead link or a recursive loop.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning this isn't some crypto-bro playing hide and seek in the dark web, detective. This is someone with design logic. Front-end fluency. She understands digital desire—and how to subvert it.”
Halden folded her arms, eyes narrowing. “She’s not hacking,” she said. “She’s engineering experiences.”
Park blinked. “You sound impressed.”
“No,” Halden muttered. “I sound like I’m losing.”
Queen Anne Hill, 7:14 PM
Maris Vale stared out her window, watching the sun disappear behind the glittering hillsides below, coffee mug in one hand, phone with a cracked screen in the other. Her social media inboxes buzzed with notifications of a fresh batch of digital rot: three unsolicited videos, one AI-generated nude of a woman who didn’t know she’d been scraped, and a DM from a blue-check influencer who offered “energy exchange” in return for silence. They never learn, she thought.
She had already chosen her next mark: Rowan Crest, the face of a "mental health tech" startup that used women's trauma as data points. He had built a reputation on empathy and understanding, but his direct messages told a different story. Manipulative, narcissistic, dangerous. He was clever, though. No filters, no location tags, burner phones, and NDA-bound flings. To catch him, she'd have to break her own rule: make the first move.
Capitol Hill - Rooftop Launch Party, 11:38 PM
Maris met him in the open. Canned rosé, curated playlists, rented string lights. Tech people who talked like algorithms - buzzwords with Bluetooth smiles. No one noticed the woman dressed in black, sitting quietly at the bar, waiting and watching. Maris moved swiftly like a rumor. A whisper in heels. Rowan spotted her. Of course he did.
“Jesus,” he said, tilting his head. “You look like someone who’s either about to ruin my life or make it worth living.”
She smiled. “Why not both?”
They shared two fruity mixed drinks and a joke about co-regulation. He mentioned his discovery of psychedelic mushroom microdosing. She nodded and raised an eyebrow like she cared. He leaned closer, like she was an equation he thought he could solve.
“Ever heard of liminal seduction?” he whispered.
Maris raised a brow slyly and grinned. “Is that the part where you pretend I’m the dangerous one?”
He blinked - laughing, slightly off balance. She could see the shift. His hunger flickered, his edge dulled. He thought he’d won.
“You should come by the studio,” he said, already planning the brag. “We’ve got a Virtual Reality prototype that maps your memories. Feels like time travel.”
She touched his wrist. “I’d love to see how you remember me.”
The news didn’t even mention Rowan Crest. No social media rumors, no funeral, no obituary, nothing.
Seattle – Detective Halden’s apartment, 1:04 AM
Halden’s crime board had grown exponentially. Three victims so far, with three very different digital footprints - except for one anomaly. All of the men followed a single dead Instagram account: @Venus.exe. The account was a mystery: it had no posts, no comments, no bio, and no profile picture. However, the handle name continued to appear in the metadata of various art blogs and image shares. Watermarks, hidden tags, QR codes. Almost as if it wanted to be found, but no one had been looking.
“Breadcrumbs,” Halden murmured to herself.
She picked up her cell phone and typed in the name. The account pinged in the search results, then disappeared. Her phone buzzed with a notification of a text message from an unknown number.
“Detective. You see me. But can you follow?”
Attached to the message was an image. A Polaroid photograph. This time, it wasn't a picture of a victim. It was of Halden herself, walking out of the morgue two days ago.
In that exact moment, Maris watched the message sent from an air-gapped laptop running on encrypted firmware she had built from scratch. The thrill coiled in her chest like a sleeping snake. Detective Halden was close, intelligent, but predictable. Just like the others, until they weren’t.
Maris shut her laptop and leaned back into her soft, plush couch, her eyes tracing the paper-thin cracks in her apartment ceiling. The space around her was temple-clean, in front of her, a whiteboard with three columns:
"Before. During. After."
Only one target remained. The most dangerous, the most careful, the most aware. This one wouldn't die in a pose. This one needed an entire performance.
Chapter Six: Pattern Recognition
Seattle PD – Behavioral Analysis Room, 7:44 AM
It was Saturday morning, and Detective Halden was working overtime, leaning over a corkboard that had started to look more like an art exhibit than a crime scene map. Every victim was marked not just with a name and date, but with the caption from Venus.exe’s latest post.
Beta tested. Permanently offline.
Chakra cleared.
Now you see me.
No typos, no code, no digital trace. Always a Polaroid photograph, always a pose - violently poetic, cruelly intimate. It was as if each death were part of an exhibition curated for the guilty. Halden exhaled slowly; her cold cup of coffee remained untouched next to stacks of files.
“These aren’t rage killings,” she murmured to herself. “They’re stories. She's not just killing men—she's rewriting what they represent.”
The room’s silence deepened for just a moment. Elías Park entered, bleary-eyed, holding a stack of documents with red tags sticking out.
“Got something. Took a deep scrape of all connected IP pings near the second kill. A low-level anomaly pinged the 3rd Street mesh network—VPN wrapped around an encrypted node, but the user interface was… familiar.”
"Familiar, how?"
Park flipped open the screen of his laptop, which was buried under a stack of files. “The mouse trail. How she moves, clicks, lingers. I ran the pattern against a public GitHub repository of UI/UX contributors.”
He tapped the screen with the tip of his finger. A user profile popped up. Maris Vale: Seattle-based UX designer. Specializes in behavioral mapping. Last major contract: VisionNest Tech, contract terminated three years ago.
“She designed interfaces meant to keep people online longer,” he said, quietly. “She didn’t just study behavior—she weaponized it.”
Halden froze, staring at the user profile on the computer screen, reading it several times. “Bring me everything. Her work, her clients, her aliases, her digital fingerprints.”
Park looked up. “You think she’s Venus.exe?”
Halden stared at the crime board, where a blown-up photo of the stapled Polaroid read, UNSOLICITED.
“I think Venus has a real name now.”
Queen Anne Hill, 6:29 AM
Inside Maris’ apartment, that same morning, Maris Vale poured water over her AeroPress coffee maker, letting the hiss of steam fill the space. She moved like a dancer in slow motion—graceful, efficient, unreadable. Her whiteboard had been updated overnight.
Written in cursive under the “After” column, one name now glared in red marker: Detective Nora Halden
Not a target. Not a victim. A question mark.
Maris sat at her desk calmly and reviewed the security footage from a hidden camera in Halden’s precinct hallway. The detective’s posture, the jaw set in frustration, the way she clicked her pen three or four times before saying anything - all of it mattered. You learned who someone was by watching how they handled uncertainty, and Halden was getting close.
Seattle PD – Interrogation Room, 10:22 AM
Detective Halden watched a taped deposition from a whistleblower tied to VisionNest Tech. The gaunt, twitchy, and deeply uncomfortable man placed his hands on the edge of the table in front of him and leaned into the microphone.
"She was brilliant…but she started building ghost personas. She was testing click behavior with fake profiles. Said she wanted to see what kind of man would fall for the same woman three times in three different apps."
“What was her end goal?”
“She said, ‘To prove that objectification is a loop. And I can cut it.’”
The tape stopped, as Halden’s jaw clenched. Maris wasn’t killing randomly. She was working on a thesis and nearing its conclusion.
Fremont District – Underground Exhibition - 9:15 PM
The invitation had arrived digitally. A ghost-coded link embedded in a meme, only visible if downloaded and inverted in Photoshop. Maris arrived dressed like a shadow, with sharp angles, a matte-black full-length coat, and a black leather camera bag across her shoulder.
The gallery was titled UNSUBMITTED. On display were large television screens looping anonymous, cropped images of men’s faces—caught mid-smirk, mid-leer, mid-text. No names, just avatars and final digital footprints—thousands of them. One gallery wall displayed Polaroids pinned like dead butterflies in shadowboxes. Maris hadn’t curated this; others had done so. There were whispers now, forums, TikTok videos, and Discord channels. Women trading notes, building lists, speculating whether Venus.exe was a person or a movement. Some believed she wasn’t a real person, but rather a composite of women, just like them.
Maris stared at her own reflection in an installation made of broken mirrors. That’s the point, she thought. You couldn’t arrest a ghost. You couldn’t cancel a computer virus once it rewrote the code.
She thought back to when it all started, fifteen years earlier. Maris was seventeen, living in Austin, TX, and hunched in a corner of her high school library, a computer coding book in her hand. Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket again. Another message, another picture. This one was worse, edited with a cartoon filter and captioned: ‘Bambi.exe likes it blurry.’ She didn’t cry. She didn’t tell anyone. She saved the file, then tracked down every single girl who had ever received something similar from him. There were dozens.
That night, she learned how to build a botnet capable of flooding a user’s computer, social media accounts, and email with malware. Two days later, the man’s college applications were flooded with testimonials and screenshots. His girlfriend had left him, his scholarship had been revoked, and he still had no idea who was responsible. Maris remembered something deeper than revenge; she had taken back the feeling of control.
Chapter Seven: The Vulnerability Test
South Lake Union – Tech Mixer Afterparty, 10:12 PM
Maris hadn’t intended to attend the tech mixer, and certainly not the afterparty, but she found herself walking through the door and straight to the bar. It was a calculated breach of routine. A deliberate deviation from her pattern, to see if someone noticed. She rarely attended public events anymore, but this one was crawling with the exact kind of digital peacocks she loathed – start-up founders, crypto-bros, fail-sons with egos stacked taller than the Space Needle. She watched the party from the bar. Not drinking, just analyzing.
One of the partygoers, the vice president of a loud, app-based company, was doing a half-stand-up about AI girlfriends and how “emotionally available women are a user experience glitch.”
Maris listened for a moment, then tilted her head slightly. The man had no subtlety, no shame; he was a walking prompt. But she didn’t move, not yet. Instead, her gaze shifted to someone else across the room, a woman with a shaved head and a camera strapped over her shoulder. The mysterious woman was quiet, angular, and familiar. She had been watching the same men with the same grim focus. Maris and the woman locked eyes. For a split second, it felt like looking into a broken mirror. The woman offered a dry smile, then disappeared into the crowd.
Queen Anne Hill – Maris’ Apartment, 1:37 AM
The whiteboard was erased and remained blank tonight. Instead of writing a new list, Maris sat at her desk, flicking through Polaroid photographs. These were not her trophies - these were different. These were hers. Photos of her face in various personas. Blonde wig, brown wig, green contacts, blue contacts, freckles, no freckles, thick lipstick, no makeup, smiling, crying, laughing, grimacing. All of these looks were masks; none of these personas were real, except for one.
She pulled a photo from the stack, a scene from her old apartment in Austin. Eighteen, raw-faced, exhausted, but true. A girl no one had ever truly loved. A girl who had survived the humiliation of personal, intimate images going viral on the internet without consent. A girl whose only weapon had become the need to control.
She pressed the Polaroid photo between her palm and the desk and whispered, “You didn’t deserve any of it.”
Then she slid the photo face down into a paper shredder under the desk.
Seattle – Detective Halden’s Office, 7:03 AM
Halden hadn’t slept a wink. Her eyes were red-rimmed and ringed with dark circles, her fingers sore from scrolling through hundreds of web pages on her cell phone. The blog had resurfaced - “Now You See Me.” It had been mirrored onto a Tor node to reroute web traffic. No one knew how, but Detective Halden knew. The blog was back online because Venus wanted it to be there. Each post was dated, tagged, and assigned a code. The latest blog entry, posted just after midnight, resonated in her soul.
Title: "The One I Didn't Kill"
She reminded me of myself—only she hadn’t turned sharp. Not yet.
I saw the shape of her anger, still forming.
And for once, I wondered what would happen if I didn’t cut it down.
What if I left her whole? What if she left me undone?
Halden leaned back in her chair, spine stiff with realization. “She's spiraling,” she muttered. “She’s... evolving.”
Park leaned into the doorway. “We traced the mirror site through a burner phone in Ballard. No DNA, no prints, but... this was left behind.”
He handed her a plastic evidence bag that contained a Polaroid photo. Not the image of a victim, but of Maris as a young teen, with red, puffy eyes and pale, tear-stained cheeks. A caption scrawled beneath it: “The Prototype.”
Halden exhaled sharply. “She’s telling me where to look next.”
Queen Anne Hill – Rooftop Garden, 8:35 PM
Maris waited under a silver sky, where the skyline shimmered like corrupted code. The woman from the tech party had tracked her here. She knew because she was also tracking her.
“You took the long way,” Maris said, without turning to face her.
“I wanted to be sure,” the woman replied. “You’re not just a myth.”
Maris sat down on a nearby bench. “Neither are you.”
The woman sat next to Maris. They continued to sit for what seemed like hours. Nothing romantic, not at odds, just quiet. The woman eventually lit a cigarette and began to speak.
“They call you a killer. I think you’re just a warning shot that learned how to aim.”
Maris smiled sadly. “What’s your name?”
"Del, short for Delphine. Photographer, activist dropout, survivor, unfortunately."
Maris nodded. “Unfortunately.”
Del took a long drag from her cigarette and slowly blew out the smoke. “Ever wish someone had stopped you before the first one?”
Maris’ eyes sharpened. “Every day.”
There was a silence that felt more surgical than serene. After a few moments, Del asked, “Would you stop... for me?”
The question didn’t land gently. It cracked something. Maris’ fingers flexed, and she straightened her posture on the wooden bench.
“No,” she said. “But I might pause.”
Del’s brow furrowed, intrigued. “That’s a start.”
Seattle PD - Surveillance Monitoring Room
Halden reviewed some CCTV footage from earlier that week, taken near Maris Vale's home. Fast-forwarded, paused, rewound. There was movement on a rooftop. Two silhouettes, one unmistakably Maris. The other, unknown, but possibly relevant.
“Park!” Halden called over her shoulder. “Run facial recognition. I want that woman identified by morning.”
She leaned in, focusing her eyes on the camera footage. Halden continued to watch the two women, sitting like statues at the edge of the city. Something had changed; the killer had connected, which meant she could be broken.
Chapter Eight: Zero Day
South Lake Union – CoWork Hive Office, 9:21 AM
Maris Vale wasn’t feeling like herself today. Not Juniper - the bold blonde. Not Eliza - the bookish brunette. Not Elle.Belle, LyraStar, or Venus.exe. She was just Maris, in grayscale, jeans, a hoodie, and glasses with clear frames. Her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail. She was camouflaged as the kind of quiet, nerdy tech girl everyone overlooks.
The building's elevator chimed. Maris didn’t flinch. She had rented the office under the name Veronica Moss, complete with social media trails and business cards for a UX consulting startup called “Visual Grammar.” Fake, but functional, a shell for her digital wormholes. Today, those wormholes pulsed with a threatening aura.
The mirrored blog site, Now You See Me, had been scrapped and archived. Someone had posted location coordinates hidden in the metadata. Not hers, but a reply, a challenge, a breach. Maris tapped her fingers rapidly on the keyboard, accessing her nested scripts. Log files blinked like Morse code across three computer monitors. Someone had replicated her patterns, her symbols, even the poetic phrasing.
“UNSOLICITED: 2.0 is coming.”
It wasn’t homage, it was a warning. Someone was mimicking her. Or worse, trying to provoke her into exposure. Her breath paused as her stomach sank.
“Zero day,” she whispered. “Someone just launched a kill code... with my face on it.”
Seattle PD – Evidence Processing Lab, 9:38 AM
Detective Halden leaned over a table strewn with QR-coded artifacts and victim dossiers. The Polaroid photograph of teenage Maris lay beneath a fresh sheet of paper, a blurry rooftop surveillance still with two women in profile. The facial recognition search had returned.
Delphine Reade
Age: 32
Freelance photographer
Arrested twice at feminist protests
Trauma counselor for survivors of internet crimes
“Perfect candidate for recruitment,” Park said, with his arms crossed. “She’s already in the ideology.”
“Or manipulation,” Halden muttered. “Maris doesn’t just kill—she curates belief. And Del’s the kind of woman who might believe in her mission.”
“Do you think she’s building a team?”
“No.” Halden stared down at the images. “She’s building an exit strategy. Someone to carry the virus after she’s gone.”
Belltown - Delphine’s Apartment, 10:15 AM
The small studio loft was dim, save for a backlit wall of photo negatives and pinned notes on print-outs of bodies, captions, and coded URLs. Delphine wasn't home, and Maris stood alone, scanning the collage. She hadn’t told Del she was coming; it was part test, part trespass.
Her eyes froze on a newspaper headline clipped and circled in red ink, “VENUS.EXE: Urban Legend or Vigilante Killer?” Next to it, a handwritten question on a neon sticky note, “Myth or Manifesto?”
Maris exhaled sharply. She knew she had underestimated Del. A sudden sound echoed through the loft, heeled shoes on concrete. Maris didn’t move.
“You knew I’d come here,” she said.
Delphine stood quietly next to Maris, calm and unreadable. “You left digital breadcrumbs. I just followed the scent.”
Maris stared at her, unblinking. “Why are you cataloging my work?”
“I’m not.” Del reached into her jacket and took a Polaroid photo from her pocket. “I’m finishing it.”
She held the photo outstretched in her hand. Maris looked with disbelief, then did a double-take. It was a photo of her snapped from across the rooftop during their last conversation. It was captioned: “Not a weapon. A mirror.”
Maris blinked. This was not a fan. This was someone who saw her, someone who knew her, and that scared her more than anything.
Belltown – Police Mobile Intercept Van 10:27 AM
A red light blinked rapidly on a computer screen. Halden leaned in toward the console.
“She’s there,” said Park. “We bugged Reade’s apartment last night. She took the bait.”
Through concealed microphones, Detective Halden heard it all. Maris’ voice - smooth, tired, human. Del’s voice was calm and measured, curious, almost admiring. Maris’ next words made Halden hold her breath.
“I don’t want to kill again. But I don’t know who I am if I stop.”
Del, without hesitation, replied, “Then let’s find out together.”
Halden slapped the screen and turned off the microphone. “They’re not just talking.”
“They’re colliding,” Park muttered. “Like stars.”
Halden said coldly, standing up, “More like weapons, and we can’t afford a second Venus. Prepare the warrant. We move tonight.”
Belltown - Delphine’s Apartment – Rooftop, 12:00 AM
Rain dripped like a rhythmic drum from the rooftop ledge onto the concrete below. Maris stood at the edge, holding the cold railing and her Polaroid camera in her arms like a prized relic. Del was standing behind her, arms crossed.
“Why did you bring me here?” Maris asked.
“Because this is the place I stopped being a victim,” Del said. “It’s where I almost jumped. Where I almost gave the bastards the satisfaction.”
Maris replied with a gentle smile, “But you didn’t.”
“No. And neither will you.”
Maris turned, and their eyes met, one scarred by exposure, the other armored by vengeance. In the street below, the hum of the city nightlife was rising, and so was the sound of approaching sirens. Maris heard it in the distance. Del did too, and neither moved.
Chapter Nine: Execution Protocol
Belltown - Delphine’s Apartment – Rooftop, 12:07 AM
The sirens grew closer. Maris’ eyes swept the shadows beyond the alley behind the apartment building. Remote-controlled surveillance drones - two of them - buzzed like mosquitoes, their red lights dancing across the rooftop edge.
“They’re here for me,” Maris said.
Delphine didn’t flinch. “I know.”
“You called them?”
“I didn’t have to. You knew they’d come.” She stepped closer. “You wanted it to end here.”
Maris turned the Polaroid camera over in her hands, fingers trembling ever so slightly. It once felt like a talisman, now useless, emptied of its power. A legend from a past life. She slid the camera into her jacket pocket and exhaled slowly through her nose, her measured breaths calm and in control.
“They’ll shoot on sight,” she said. “The detectives won’t risk letting me talk.”
Del nodded slowly. “Then don’t give them the chance.”
“I’m not dying on this roof, I’m not giving them my life,” Maris snapped.
“Good. Then give them something else.”
Belltown – Police Mobile Intercept Van 12:15 AM
"Target acquired," said one of the drone operators. "Thermal imaging confirmed - two heat signatures; one stationary, one pacing."
“Rooftop, west quadrant,” Park added. “SWAT is greenlit. Snipers are locking coordinates.”
Halden pulled on her flak vest, eyes locked on the live video surveillance feed.
“Not yet,” she said.
Park raised an eyebrow. “She’s cornered. This is clean. Minimal fallout.”
Halden’s jaw clenched. “It’s not fallout I’m worried about - it’s about her followers. If we martyr her, we light a fuse, and then Venus.exe becomes the virus she always wanted to be.”
Park snorted, “You think she still has believers?”
“Believers, coders, copycats. Doesn’t take many to turn one symbol into a cause.”
Halden pointed at the video screen. “She doesn't die tonight, she breaks. Publicly, on camera. I want the world to see her bleed human.”
A bullhorn crackled and buzzed with feedback.
“MARIS VALE. THIS IS DETECTIVE HALDEN. STAY WHERE YOU ARE. DROP ANY WEAPONS. RAISE YOUR HANDS.”
Maris chuckled softly. “That’s the voice I dreamed about. And not in a good way.”
Del stood behind her. “You said you don’t know who you are without the mission.”
“I don’t.”
“Then let me offer you an alternative.”
Maris turned to face Delphine, skeptical with her arms crossed.
“I have a burner laptop in my studio. You can ghost yourself in under ten minutes. I’ve traced a few exit nodes through Iceland. We can go now, we can vanish.”
“You’d help me disappear?”
“No,” Del said. “I’ll help you choose. Disappear, or broadcast a truth they can’t spin.”
Maris blinked. “A confession?”
Del nodded. “Your face. Your voice. No masks. Tell them why. Show them what built you.”
Maris looked over her shoulder at the red and blue lights flashing from the street. “You think they’ll let me speak?”
“No,” Del said. “But the internet will.”
A few moments later, Delphine’s laptop booted up to a static-filled livestream video. Anonymous hosting, fully encrypted, zero trace. A single dim light hung overhead. Maris stood before it, pale and unadorned, stripped of persona. She clicked a red RECORD button on the computer screen.
“My name is Maris Vale. Some of you know me as Venus.exe. Others call me things like the Pixie Reaper and the Queen of Queen Anne. Tonight, I am none of those.”
Maris inhaled deeply before continuing.
“I have killed forty-nine men. They weren’t just digital threats, they were real, and yes - they were monsters. But they were also fathers, brothers, sons. I need you to understand why I did what I did. I need you to know what it means to feel erased.”
She stared into the webcam lens as if it were a mirror. “I wasn’t born a killer. I was born ignored.”
Belltown – Police Mobile Intercept Van 12:31 AM
Detective Halden stood motionless, watching the broadcast flood every screen, every phone, every video feed. Reddit forum threads were exploding. Twitter clones were practically catching fire. Hashtags flooded social media posts.
#VenusTestimony
#UNSOLICITED
#ConsentIsCode
The internet was eating itself alive.
“She hijacked our channel?” Park said.
“No,” Halden whispered. “She became the signal.” She turned away, exhausted and defeated. “Shut it down.”
“We can’t,” one of the techs muttered. “It’s been mirrored. Thousands of times already.”
Halden took a deep breath, then picked up her phone. “It’s out of our hands. I’m calling the U.S. Marshals. She’s global now.”
Inside Delphine’s apartment, Maris sat on the floor, drained. Eyes blank. Her hands shook, not from fear, but the void that comes after confession. Delphine knelt beside her and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.
“You did it,” she said.
“I did something,” Maris muttered.
From the alley, the flashing lights receded. Silence. Del reached into her coat pocket and handed Maris another Polaroid, the last photo. It was the rooftop, empty, no silhouettes, no faces. Just space, freedom, a question mark.
“Where do we go?” Maris asked.
Del smiled. “Anywhere you want, as long as it’s off the grid.”
Chapter Ten: Aftermath.exe
Iceland – Location, One Year Later
The cold made Maris feel real. Her warm breath fogged the cracked windowpane of the remote cabin she now called home. Iceland was distant, foreign, but peaceful - as if the noise of who she was had been swallowed by snow and ice. Del was out, gathering supplies. Maris was left alone with the flicker of an old CRT computer monitor and a heartbeat that still sometimes echoed with the sound of sirens.
She hadn't killed since Seattle. She hadn’t needed to. The world had done something curious in her absence. It had adapted.
First, there was an Excerpt from The Atlantic – “Digital Consent and the Venus Effect,” March 2026 Edition.
"...Following the leak of Maris Vale's final transmission, legislation on digital consent swept through seven countries. In the U.S., the Unsolicited Media Accountability Act (UMAA) was passed within months, criminalizing the non-consensual sharing of explicit media. Feminist think tanks dubbed it 'The Venus Effect.'
The term now describes the reactive cultural shift toward accountability in digital spaces — but critics argue it romanticizes violence. Others claim Venus.exe never existed at all.”
A social media post followed:
Darknet Forum: R/VenomVerse
User: _HexMuse94
Posted 2 days ago.
"I found a blog. Buried in code. One post. Timestamped 11:59 p.m. last Friday. Just a line of text under an old Polaroid of the Seattle skyline.
‘You learned how to look. Did you learn how to listen?’
“Tagged: #50.”
Maris stood in front of a cracked, dusty mirror. No makeup, no mask, just her. The real her. Her fingers hovered over the camera shutter on an old Polaroid camera. Not to capture a victim, but to remember herself, and the person she had become. The camera shutter clicked and whirred as the photo appeared. She pinned it to the wall above a desk. Beneath the photo, she scribbled in pencil, "Alive. Not absolved."
Del returned to the cabin, a gust of cold, icy wind behind her. “Mail came,” she said, dropping a package on the table. “No return address.”
Maris opened the package with cautious delight. Inside, Maris found a hand-stitched envelope. When she opened it, a small metal token fell out and spun gently on the desk. On the side, Maris was surprised to see a QR code engraved on titanium. She took out her phone and scanned the code. It redirected to a secure message:
“They started a chapter in Berlin. The message is spreading. We only amplify, not erase. - V.”
Maris stared. “I didn’t send this,” she whispered.
Del crossed her arms. “So, who did?”
They sat in silence; the only sound was a log crackling in the fireplace. And in that stillness, something stirred in their minds - not fear, not guilt, but the dense gravity of legacy.
Unknown Location, Years Later
A young, teenage girl scrolls through an old, hidden archive of photos she found on a thumb drive. Each one is a face - some smirking, some terrified, some caught mid-smile. The final image is of a petite woman in a dark hooded sweatshirt, her eyes like wildfire behind glass. The girl taps her finger on the computer screen.
“I want to be her.”
Her friend, reclined on a nearby couch, smirks. “Careful,” she says. “She didn’t get out clean.”
The young girl shrugs. “She got heard. That’s cleaner than most.”
She sees a video among the photos and clicks PLAY. The final monologue begins again, like a prayer passed down in secret code. Somewhere, in the circuitry of the internet’s underbelly, Venus.exe runs.
END
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