[WP] In a school for assassins and mercenaries, you're a beloved lunch lady. You ruefully realize that you're the only person nearly everyone trusts. Then you get framed for placing hemlock in an administrator's meal. The school board rushes to fire you, throwing the academy into turmoil.
*****
The heat was mounting, and it was just 9 pm. Amanda and I walked behind Nina as we made our way to her office. One day was all it took to turn Spyder upside down. Well, the fact remained that Eunice's death occurred two days before – part of the build-up – and perhaps several other events which we were yet to discover.
We couldn’t tell for certain how much had been done even before the attempted poisoning, because there were quite a lot of departments that Amanda had not checked out in a while.
“Do you think we can trust her?” Amanda asked in what was a little above a whisper.
“I don’t think I can trust anyone at the moment. My intuition says she isn’t a problem, but then I can’t know for sure since she just joined. It helps that I can read her very well, or at least I seem to be able to do that, but her motivations for working with us don’t sound too pleasant.”
“You can just keep me around you, in that case,” Nina spoke up, turning slightly. “It would be better knowing that your potential enemy is right within view rather than somewhere in the shadows, isn’t it?”
Amanda spoke up. “It’s hard to fault your logic, and that’s just so convenient. A little too convenient, if you ask me. But I’ll take your advice, and one-up you. I’m considering you on our site, or at least on probation. But any funny moves-“
“Bang-Bang got it,” she said as we reached the office and walked in, shutting the doors behind us. The students were forced into their dorms and locked in, while the administrative board and other staff were patrolling the school.
“The surveillance cameras all over the school have a live feed that relays all the information to my screen here,” she said, turning on the large television screen in her office. “If we check this and see the culprit, from here on out it’s a search and destroy mission. Find them and eliminate them. Shoot first, ask questions later. Got it?”
“Them?” Nina asked.
“Maria’s hunch. We think that a student and a teacher, maybe more numbers of either or both groups, are working together to do this.”
She smirked. “Well, that’s interesting. It’s interesting to see that you both have worked this all out, but what’s more interesting is the idea of that team-up. Now that I look at it, it does seem to offer some of the much-needed flexibility and intel that would have been needed to carry out the last two operations.
As we turned on the screen only the jagged lines across the fifteen surveillance feed greeted our eyes, accompanied by the sound of static. No matter how many times we tried rewinding the playback or turned the screen on and off, nothing came on, except the feeds from three days ago which were saved into the memory stick.
For the past 48 hours, the surveillance cameras had not relayed a second of video to Amanda’s office.
“Damn it, the only way this could have happened is if the wires were cut somewhere at the junction box where all of the wires assembled before feeding into this office. I made a mistake not checking the cameras for the past two days, even though I was busy. Now we’re neck-deep into this sh!t and we’ve stuck without a lead again…”
She stopped talking and placed her right hand on her chin, softly biting her nails before she dashed back to her computer. “Heh, I knew I wasn’t a fool to drop that thing there, after all!”
Nina looked at me quizzically and I shrugged as we both turned to Amanda. “What do you mean? What did you drop, and where?” I asked.
“It was a gift from one of my old comrades during my spy days. A speed cam with thermal and optical sensors. When a large heat source is detected, as, in the case of a human, the optical sensor is triggered and wait for it to come within optimum proximity before taking six shots, all facing the cardinal points and their relations. There are six 108MP lenses on the camera to this effect, so it gives this panoramic 360-degree view that’s ultra-clear. I placed it secretly right in the hallway right in front of my door.”
Nina smiled. “Now that’s cutting edge. You think it grabbed any pictures?”
“We’re about to find out,” she said as we scrolled to the pictures taken earlier that afternoon. There was me, approaching with the cart, and then leaving shortly…”
“Your story checks out, Maria.”
“Tch,” I hissed. “Of course it does!”
Then after that, Inosuke approached as well.
“That’s interesting.”
Then six students, one after the other, two amongst whom were in the set which was soon to graduate, passed by very close to the cart. “Damn, I wish this thing could video stuff!”
Amanda nodded. “Yeah, but I know those six. Two among them are the top-tier finalist students too. That’s quite interesting – the rest are sophomores. Any of them are capable of these acts though.”
“But we’ve only got pictures of one instructor, and that one’s dead-“
There was one more picture within that time frame, and just a few seconds before I returned to the cart. The picture of Nina Alcott walking by with what seemed to be a small metal canister in her hands.
And at that very moment, the lights went off again,
*****
To Be Continued.
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