“Hey, Caroline, Jason, thank you for coming at such short notice.” Aimee looked back at those who came to their table and smiled at them.

“No, thank YOU for taking this much time to help us. Really really appreciate it.” Caroline shook her head and said: “So, you said you guys found something important, what do you have?”

“Two things actually. Both very telling, one of which is quite disturbing, and the other is a good lead on helping you defend your innocence in the upcoming hearing.” Thomas sat down and slid Jason and Caroline Aimee’s notes: “Which one do you wanna know about first?”

“Well, Caroline’s a sucker for gore and danger, so disturbing news first.” Jason pointed at Caroline and said with a pranking smile: “Though, I am very eager to know about your lead. I don’t have much, but I still don’t want the academy to have my last few coins.”

“So the disturbing thing first. Please bear in mind that it is just a theory of ours after piecing some information and gossip together, so please don’t tell anyone else yet.” Thomas said, then he proceeded to tell Caroline and Jason about the theory they had regarding the academy’s bylaws on hearings, forceful forfeiture of personal effects under certain circumstances, protocols of investigation into potential hazards and dangers to public welfare on the campus, and finally, the gossip Thomas heard from other students, about them finding their personal effects stored in semi-public spaces being searched through without their knowledge or consent.

“God, this - are we involved in some kind of conspiracy in the academy here?” Caroline scratched her head and ruffled her hair: “Okay, how do we deal with this? I think we’ll need Ms. Wong’s help.”

“I trust that she is already helping us with that.” Jason said while scratching his jaw: “She did refer Professor Kapur to us, those toxicology reports could help a lot. But I doubt she could help us any more than that. She’s no longer a member of the academy - not a student, nor a faculty.”

“Yeah, but she still has a lot of influence here, I - I was thinking, if we told her about this, she’d probably be able to do more, right?” Caroline sighed and started speaking with a higher and higher voice: “My, fucking, god, I was hoping Boss could help us - but he’s injured and apparently couldn’t come to the phone, so I don’t think he would be able to help us. If things are already this big, it’s difficult to fight it on our own.”

“Don’t, just don’t do this to yourself.” Aimee grabbed Caroline’s hand in an attempt to calm Caroline: “We can fight this as well - we WILL, I mean we WILL actually get help. But we have our own fight, okay?”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Yeah, yeah, I understand.” Caroline sniffled a bit and wiped her eyes: “Yeah, sorry, sorry - it’s just been a really stressful couple of days.”

“I understand.” Aimee said with a smile: “And we will fight it with you, okay?”

“Thank you.” Caroline took a deep breath and looked at Aimee in her eyes: “Thank you.”

“And I’ll fight it with you, don’t you forget.” Jason patted Caroline on the shoulder.

“Yeah you better.” Caroline chuckled and rolled her eyes: “Or else I’ll show Laura Jensen your internet search history.”

“Geez, there’s no need to play dirty there.” Jason also chuckled, then he looked Aimee and Thomas in their eyes: “So, what’s this lead that you mentioned? Give us the good news.”

“Hot spots of potential toxic material exposure. And very promising hotspots.” Thomas said: “Now, I’m no lawyer, Aimee here is probably better at it than me but she’s no lawyer either. But if we could find some evidence or even promising leads on some of those cases of exposure, and cross check these hot spots with your schedules and your areas of activities, we would have more evidence to prove your innocence to that bullshit hearing committee.”

“But it was meant to be a setup, wouldn’t they try to plant something?” Jason asked.

“Surely they will.” Aimee said: “Which means, we need to be proactive and play offense. One thing we can do is to conduct our own investigation and find out who is responsible for the spread of the toxic material and contaminants.”

“Yeah, but how long has the academy been doing it?” Caroline asked: “I would think it’s gonna be at least equally difficult for us to find anything out.”

“But we don’t have to find out about everything.” Thomas said: “We just need to get close enough.”

“They’re searching for the ‘codex’, or the key to something, and consider the fact that we only quite recently got the silver box. I would say they didn’t have that much time to plan the setup, and since their last attempt was to sneak up on us when they thought we’re alone instead of going with other approaches, I would say they didn’t have that much institutional power - yet.”

“Very clever.” Aimee nodded at Jason in approval: “Which means, though they were individuals with connections to the academy administration and have the ability to pull some strings, they still didn’t have all the academy’s power behind them.”

“Which means they will still need to be sneaky.” Caroline flipped through Aimee’s notes: “We prepare both ways, like a complicated and organized hunt - we look into things, and show them that we’re looking. This would flush them out and force their hands. And when we’re ready, we could have traps for them. Sounds like a good plan, where should we start?”

“We’re already at the first hot spot.” Aimee said: “According to the public book and document renting records, at least eight faculty members that showed symptoms of exposure had been to this library before they showed symptoms. And four of them had very similar public schedules - they were either doing research in their labs or attending administrative meetings in the faculty meeting places. ”

“Okay, then where should we start?” Caroline stood up and was ready to act: “Should we just look around in the library? That sounded a little weird.”

“Actually I was thinking about just asking the librarian first.” Aimee tilted her head at the direction of the front desk: “I bet she would be able to help us find out about some of the faculty members.”

“Okay. Good.” Thomas said: “I was thinking the same thing.”

“Good then.” Aimee looked at Thomas in the eyes: “You do it.”

“What? Why?”