Copy & Paste Power in Modern World

Adam looked at the copied phone in his hand for a few more seconds, then opened the call settings.

It did not take long to find what he wanted. The phone already had a call-recording option inside the dialer settings. Adam turned it on for every incoming and outgoing call.

He had already tested this behavior himself on other copied phones. Messages and mails were easy. If the original device received something and the copied version refreshed, Adam could see it. Calls were different. He could see the number and even the changed call screen if the copied phone refreshed at the right time, but he could not hear a live call directly through the copied version.

If Rovan spoke to someone important, Adam would not hear the call while it was happening, but he would hear it afterward if the original phone saved the recording.

"Good," Adam murmured.

After that, he did nothing except wait.

On the other side of the city, Rovan Hale was not calm either.

He was still sitting in his car, but his mind was nowhere near the road anymore. One moment he thought the whole organization story had to be a bluff. The next moment he remembered the photos, the mail, and the rest of the filth that had somehow come out of his own phone.

’How did they get inside my phone without touching it?’ Rovan thought.

He had checked the device twice already. Nothing on the phone looked disturbed. The mails were still there. The gallery was still there. Even the banking trail was still there. And yet the man on the line had spoken as if he had already gone through every dirty thing inside it.

At last Rovan made the choice he had been trying to delay.

He pulled up another number and called it.

The line connected almost at once.

"I told you not to call me unless there was an emergency," the man on the other side snapped. "I already gave you all the money you asked for."

Rovan stayed quiet for a few seconds.

Then he said, "An emergency happened."

The voice on the other side sharpened.

"What kind of emergency?"

The man was George.

He was the owner.

Rovan glanced through the windshield before answering.

"Someone found out about what we did," he said.

There was a short silence.

Then George’s tone changed again, colder this time.

"Wait."

A chair moved. Another voice started saying something in the background. George cut that off and told the others in the room to leave. One by one, the other sounds faded.

Only after that did he speak again.

"Do I have to explain everything to you every single time?" George said. "If someone found out, then remove that person."

Rovan’s jaw tightened.

He had always hated dealing with George. The man talked like he owned every problem in the room and every person inside it. Even now, when Rovan was the one in danger, George still sounded inconvenienced more than worried.

"If it were that easy, I would have done it already," Rovan said. "This doesn’t look like one person. It’s an entire organization."

"What?"

"An underworld organization," Rovan said. "That’s what it looks like."

George almost sounded offended.

"Underworld? What nonsense are you talking about?"

Rovan forced himself to keep going.

"They know about the body. They know about the forest. They know what was inside my phone. They know what I was doing today in the square. This isn’t one random caller."

George did not answer immediately.

"Then what do I do?" Rovan asked.

George’s anger came back at once.

"The first thing you should have done was not call me."

Then he cut the line.

Adam heard the recording less than a minute later.

He had already pasted Rovan’s phone again by then and was watching the screen when the saved file appeared. The call entry came first. The recording marker appeared after that. Adam opened it at once and listened from beginning to end without moving.

When it finished, he stayed silent for a moment.

’George is smarter than Rovan,’ Adam thought.

George had understood one thing immediately. Say less, panic less, and do not leave another man holding your voice for too long. Even his anger had sense under it.

That made Adam think harder.

’Can I manipulate him too?’ Adam thought.

The question stayed in front of him for a while.

His first instinct was to use Gonda. Gonda could put pressure on a man, find things, and make people disappear from places where they should not stay too long. Using him against George was not impossible.

Then Adam threw that thought away.

Gonda was useful, but he was not loyal. At most, he could be used for a task that stayed away from Adam’s main goal. Anything deeper than that would only mean giving another man a chance to look too closely at the real board.

’No. Not Gonda,’ Adam thought.

Then Bruno came to mind, and that idea died even faster.

Bruno was desperate and obedient for now, but only because fear was sitting on his neck from both sides. The moment that balance changed, he would start thinking like Bruno again.

’Not him either,’ Adam thought.

If Adam had someone loyal there, someone like Kenji, then the choice would have been easier. He could have placed that person behind George and slowly tightened the line from a safer distance.

But he did not have that kind of man for this.

Adam let out a long breath and looked down at the phone again.

"Then I may have to call you myself," he said quietly.

The decision was not final yet, but now he knew that calling George himself was the most likely next step.

He put the copied phone away, left the spot he had been using, and started walking again.

This time he did not head for the same telephone booth.

He chose another one much farther away.