The peculiar thing about Monday mornings, Priya Mehta reflected as she adjusted her ring light, was how they revealed the truth about people. Some emerged fresh-faced and eager, others bore the unmistakable marks of weekend excess, and a few – like herself – approached them with the methodical precision of a Swiss watchmaker.
She clicked the NeuralSync meeting link at precisely 8:59 AM Pacific Time, her home office in San Francisco's Mission District bathed in the gentle morning light that marketing photographers would kill for. The familiar chime announced her arrival to the virtual conference room.
"Ah, Priya, punctual as always," Marcus Chen's voice preceded his video by a fraction of a second. The CEO's backdrop showed his London flat – exposed brick, a tasteful abstract painting, and through the window, what appeared to be an appropriately grey British morning. "How was your weekend?"
"Productive," Priya replied, noting the slight pixelation around Marcus's hairline. Poor connection, perhaps. "I've finished the wireframes for the new dashboard."
One by one, the others joined. Elena Volkov from Stockholm, her blonde hair pulled back in that severe bun that had become her signature. James Okonkwo from Lagos, apologizing for the construction noise outside his window. Dmitri Petrov from Dubai, complaining about the heat despite his air-conditioned office. Yuki Tanaka from Tokyo, sipping what she claimed was her third coffee of the evening. And finally, Carlos Rodriguez from São Paulo, wearing sunglasses because, he explained with a sheepish grin, the afternoon sun was hitting his monitor directly.
It was James who made the first mistake.
"The birds are particularly loud this morning," he said, muting himself quickly.
Priya's fingers hesitated over her keyboard. She'd heard it too – a distinctive crow's caw. But crows in Lagos? She filed the observation away in that part of her mind she'd inherited from her grandmother, a woman who could spot a incorrectly placed sari pleat from across a crowded Mumbai wedding hall.
The meeting proceeded with its usual rhythm. Quarterly targets, user acquisition metrics, the perpetual debate about their B2B pivot. Elena screen-shared a complex spreadsheet that made Priya's eyes glaze over deliberately – she'd learned long ago that appearing too interested in finances invited additional work.
Then Marcus sneezed.
"Bless you," came the chorus, but Priya noticed something else. In that brief moment when Marcus had turned away from the camera, she'd seen it – a flash of green wallpaper with a distinctive art deco pattern. The same pattern she'd glimpsed for a split second when Carlos had adjusted his laptop twenty minutes earlier.
Her pulse quickened, but her expression remained neutral. The skill of maintaining a poker face during video calls was perhaps the most valuable thing she'd learned during the pandemic years.
"Yuki, how's the server migration going?" Marcus asked.
Yuki unmuted herself, and there it was again – that same crow. Priya knew Tokyo had its own crow problem, but the call was identical in pitch and duration to the one from James's "Lagos" location.
"On schedule," Yuki replied, her evening Tokyo backdrop showing city lights twinkling through her window. "Though we've had some issues with the—"
A door slammed. The sound was crystal clear through Yuki's microphone, but more importantly, Priya heard an echo of it – muffled but unmistakable – through James's audio, even though he was muted.
The meeting continued for another forty minutes. Priya contributed when called upon, her responses automatic while her mind raced through possibilities. She screenshot Elena's financial presentation, not for the numbers but for the reflection in her reading glasses – a glimpse of what looked like industrial windows, certainly not the residential Swedish apartment Elena claimed to inhabit.
When the meeting ended with Marcus's characteristic "Let's circle back on Thursday," Priya remained in the call for a moment, pretending to wrestle with technical difficulties while the others logged off one by one. She noticed they all left within seconds of each other, unusual for a team supposedly scattered across six time zones.
Her fingers flew across her keyboard, pulling up social media profiles, LinkedIn updates, Instagram stories. Elena's last posted photo from Stockholm was three weeks old. James hadn't updated his Lagos location tag in a month. Carlos's São Paulo conference attendance – the one he'd enthusiastically discussed last Monday – showed no record of his registration.
But it was Marcus's profile that made her blood run cold. His last genuine post was twenty-five days ago. Everything since then had been corporate updates, likely scheduled in advance or posted by an assistant.
Priya picked up her phone and dialed her friend Anaya, who worked at the San Francisco Chronicle.
"I need a favor," she said without preamble. "Can you check if there were any fatal car accidents in the Bay Area about three weeks ago? British citizen, mid-forties..."
The pause was brief. "Marcus Chen. Single-vehicle accident on Highway 101. But Priya, that story was killed. Someone paid good money to keep it quiet."
The room seemed to tilt. Priya gripped the edge of her desk, her mind recalibrating everything she thought she knew about her job, her colleagues, her company.
"Send me everything you have," she said.
Over the next three days, Priya became a digital detective. She attended every optional meeting, every casual virtual coffee break, every team-building exercise that she'd previously avoided. She recorded everything, screenshot every suspicious moment, documented every inconsistency.
The pattern emerged like a photograph in developing solution. The same background sounds at different times. The identical quality of light despite disparate supposed locations. The way certain team members never appeared on camera simultaneously during break-out sessions.
But it was Thursday's meeting that provided the smoking gun.
Dmitri was presenting from "Dubai" when a fire truck's siren wailed past. Priya knew that sound – it was distinctly American, different from the two-tone European sirens or the varied Middle Eastern emergency vehicles. More damning still, she heard the same siren, faint but unmistakable, through Elena's "Stockholm" audio.
After the meeting, Priya did something she'd never done before – she messaged James directly.
"I know you're not in Lagos," she typed.
The typing indicator appeared and disappeared several times. Finally: "I don't know what you mean."
"The construction noise you mentioned doesn't exist. I checked the Lagos municipal records. No permits for construction within three blocks of your supposed address. Also, you and Yuki have the same crow outside your windows. The exact same crow, James."
Silence for five minutes. Then: "Can we talk? Off the record?"
They connected via an encrypted app James provided. His face appeared without the Lagos backdrop, revealing a stark, industrial room with exposed pipes and peeling paint.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this," he said immediately, his Nigerian accent more pronounced in his distress. "It was just meant to be temporary, a way to keep the company afloat while we secured funding."
"Where are you really?"
"Oakland. We all are. An abandoned office building off International Boulevard. Elena found it – said we could save on office costs, divert the location stipends to keep the company running."
"And Marcus?"
James's face crumbled. "The accident was real. But Elena... she said we couldn't let the investors know. The funding would dry up. Everyone would lose their jobs. She had this software, some deepfake program from a Russian contact. We've been using recordings of Marcus, combining them with AI to make it seem like he's still running meetings."
Priya's grandmother had once told her that in every crime, there was one person whose conscience would betray them. She'd found hers.
"James, this is fraud. Wire fraud, probably. Securities fraud, definitely. You could go to prison."
"I know." His voice was barely a whisper. "But Elena has everything documented to look like we were all equal participants. Emails from our accounts, digital signatures on documents we never saw. If I try to leave or expose this, she'll make it look like I was the ringleader."
"What about the others?"
"Dmitri and Carlos are terrified. Yuki... I think she's Elena's partner in this. They've been moving money through shell companies, using our development work to hide the transactions."
Priya stood and paced her apartment, thinking with the clarity that came from years of solving complex user experience problems. This was just another system to debug, another flow to optimize.
"Monday's meeting," she said finally. "Can you guarantee everyone will be there?"
"It's our weekly all-hands. Everyone has to attend."
"Good. I need you to do exactly as I say."
The weekend passed in a blur of preparation. Priya contacted Anaya again, this time with a bigger story. She reached out to a former classmate now working in the FBI's cybercrime division. She documented everything, created backups of her backups, and prepared for what would either be the bravest or stupidest thing she'd ever done.
Monday morning arrived gray and foggy, Karl the Fog wrapping San Francisco in his damp embrace. Priya logged into the meeting at exactly 8:59 AM, her setup different this time. She'd positioned additional screens, invisible to her camera, displaying everything she'd discovered.
"Good morning, everyone," Marcus's deepfake began, but Priya interrupted.
"Actually, Marcus can't join us this morning," she said pleasantly. "Considering he's been dead for twenty-seven days."
The silence was absolute. Elena recovered first, her laugh cold and controlled.
"Priya, what an odd joke. Marcus, tell her—"
"The algorithm can't respond to unexpected inputs," Priya continued. "It needs pre-programmed responses. Watch." She held up a piece of paper with a complex mathematical equation. "Marcus, what's the solution to this?"
The deepfake Marcus continued to smile pleasantly, waiting for a trigger phrase that would never come.
"I've notified the authorities," Priya said. "They're probably arriving at your Oakland location right about now. The building at 4847 International Boulevard, to be specific."
Through James's audio – he'd forgotten to mute – she heard the distant sound of sirens. Real ones this time.
Elena's composure finally cracked. "You have no proof. Everything was done through the proper channels. The board approved—"
"The board you've been impersonating using similar deepfake technology? I have the real board members on a separate call right now. They're very interested in the $3.2 million that's been transferred to accounts in Cyprus and the Cayman Islands."
Yuki's video cut out. Carlos followed. Dmitri remained, frozen, his face a mask of terror. But James stayed on, and in his background, Priya could see the office door opening, uniformed officers entering.
"It's over, Elena," Priya said. "The only question now is whether you cooperate."
Elena's laugh was bitter. "You think you're clever, don't you? The observant little designer who noticed what others missed. Very Agatha Christie of you."
"My grandmother would have solved it faster," Priya replied. "She would have noticed the wallpaper on day one."
The last thing Priya saw before Elena's video cut out was the reflection in her glasses – FBI agents in tactical gear, moving through the abandoned office like ghosts materializing from the digital ether.
James remained on the call, even as officers placed him in handcuffs. "Thank you," he mouthed to the camera.
Priya nodded and ended the meeting. Her phone was already ringing – Anaya, the FBI, the real board of directors, journalists who'd gotten wind of the story. But she ignored them all for a moment, looking out at the San Francisco morning.
Her grandmother had been right about another thing: the truth, like cream in chai, always rose to the surface. You just had to know how to look for it.
Three months later, Priya sat in a different home office, this one in a Victorian flat in Pacific Heights with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. The scandal had made headlines worldwide – "The Zoom Conspiracy," one paper had called it. Elena was awaiting trial, Yuki had fled to a non-extradition country, and the others had taken plea deals. James, who'd cooperated fully with authorities, received community service and had started a nonprofit teaching coding to underprivileged youth in Oakland.
NeuralSync had dissolved, but Priya had landed on her feet. Her new position as Head of Security Design at a major tech firm came with a mandate to prevent exactly the kind of fraud she'd uncovered. Her first initiative? A comprehensive verification system for remote meetings, something she'd dubbed "Project Reality Check."
Her computer chimed with a meeting reminder. Another Monday morning, another virtual gathering. But now, as she logged in, she found herself studying each participant with the careful attention of a detective examining suspects in a drawing room.
Because if the pandemic years had taught the world anything, it was that the most elaborate deceptions could hide behind the simplest facades. A fake background, a borrowed accent, a deepfaked face – the digital age had given everyone the tools to craft their own mystery.
The only question was whether anyone was paying close enough attention to solve it.
As her new team assembled in their virtual conference room, Priya noticed one of the junior developers had a painting in his background that looked suspiciously like a Monet original. She made a mental note to investigate later. After all, once you'd learned to see the patterns, you couldn't stop looking for them.
It's what her grandmother would have done. It's what Miss Marple would have done in the age of Silicon Valley and virtual meetings.
And as the meeting began with the usual round of "Can you hear me?" and "Let me share my screen," Priya smiled to herself. The methods might have changed, but human nature – with all its capacity for deception and discovery – remained remarkably, comfortingly, suspiciously the same.