Ace reemerged alongside Vector far more intact than anyone anticipated. In fact, he seemed more together than he’d left, no longer shaking. The existing six inhabitants turned to them in expectant silence. Ace released a long breath. “Okay,” he started. His voice had steadied. “Someone screwed into security. Let’s see what exactly they did...” He half-shoved Yuki out of the single chair and claimed it himself, taking her spot on the computer. With a few clicks, a monitor displayed a timeline-thing of camera footage, all appearing the same. “No visual change all night,” he mused, mostly to himself. “Frozen or looped. Does this thing have sound?” Ace clicked again. “That’s a no. Well, yes, the camera does, just not the monitor. The recording has audio. So it’s the latter. Then, where does the loop start?”

No one dared to interrupt him. It was a rather jarring flip from his demeanor not even two minutes ago. But it was a degree closer to his typical demeanor, which was a positive development, Verse decided.

Ace pulled up another timeline-thing, this one displaying the audio itself. It appeared as a mostly flat bar with the occasional blip spread throughout. “They looped a clip with an obnoxiously loud click in the middle,” he said, huffing. “Probably the air conditioning. A sloppy job, frankly. Culprit’s familiar with the system, but not necessarily the taken method. Seems they just copy-pasted.” He copied a chunk of audio around the blip; the timeline highlighted every repeated instance of the chunk. “23,” Ace announced. “23:19. Start of the loop.”

There was a prolonged pause. Rust cleared her throat. “Cool,” she finally said. “Dude was offed overnight. What’s that tell us?”

“Well,” Ace admitted, “not much. I need to go to my room.”

Verse blinked. “For what?”

“For my forensics kit.”

“You have a forensics kit?” Yuki questioned, which was likely a thought shared by everyone else.

“Institute moment,” Luca shrugged.

“Forget the kit,” Mali interjected. “What do you need? I’ll try to find it.”

Ace sighed. “Just charisol. Solid, not liquid. And a light adhesive. Like tape. And a brush. And paper. And a thermometer. And a protractor.”

“How are we supposed to get into the room? The hall is shut down with security,” Verse said hesitantly.

“Distraction?” Vector suggested quietly. A reasonable idea, although there were reasonably no volunteers. She sighed at the same volume. “Fine. I’ll be the distraction. We’re all getting arrested at the end of the day, anyway.” Somewhat solemnly, she dragged herself out of the room and started down the hall, blocked by a pack of officers. The remaining students watched silently from the doorway. “Oh, no,” Vector said loudly and unenthusiastically, stopping to wave her arms around. “So many guards. Certainly I’ll be caught trespassing here, in a restricted crime scene, when I am supposed to be in custody, no less. Curses.”

They finally noticed her. “What? That’s one of the 2-B students!” one officer exclaimed incredulously. “Where are the other kids? Search party, move out!”

The officer pack converged on Vector. It was a noble sacrifice, Verse thought. A second wave of uniforms emerged from room 2-B. They split off down each hall; one half stormed straight past the highly-occupied surveillance room with surprisingly-misplaced conviction. The first pack dragged Vector away, leaving the classroom entirely uninhabited.

“Now that’s a level of incompetence even I didn’t expect,” Yuki muttered, wide-eyed.

Ace huffed and, with a hint of conceit, added, “And this is why the Institute is called for investigations.”

Mali quietly slipped back to the storage room. Down to six. After a careful pause, Spade guided the opposite way towards room 2-B. Then Verse remembered just what, exactly, was awaiting them, and a nauseating wave of heavy dread sunk straight to their stomach. They hesitated by the door, drawing a sharp breath of air. It failed to bring viable comfort. But their classmates entered, and so Verse went in. The same violating, metallic smell smacked their senses unforgivingly, flooding their throat and lungs with a bitter burn. It left the air oversaturated, thick and hot and impossible to cut. Verse swallowed as though it might stave off the impending nausea. It collided down nonetheless.

Rust froze at the door, staring with wide blue eyes; the most distinct emotion she’d displayed to that point. “Holy shit,” she gasped, her voice thin. Verse suddenly wished she was not there.

“We are not touching anything,” Ace asserted firmly. “Just looking around.”

Where did they even begin? Looking around the room only revealed more details Verse didn’t want to linger on. Overwhelming static had grown to the point that it obscured part of the image. Verse kept their gaze fixed on the tile floor. Still stained with blood. But a more manageable view. Papers were scattered haphazardly, fallen off the front desk. Verse allowed their eyes to briefly graze the desk; on it was a letter. Curiosity overpowered apprehension. They hesitantly approached the desk and forced themself to focus on the letter. It was in a handwriting they could not immediately identify; no one else claimed recognition. “Sithius Moff,” Verse read aloud. Words came with surprising difficulty. “Sunday night. You know what this is about.”

“He was here willingly,” Luca said.

Yuki interjected, “This doesn’t look like... like self-defense or anything. I mean, someone attacked him. Was he lured, you think?”

Ace knelt on the floor behind the desk, studying the bloodied figure that Verse was trying desperately to ignore. “Bled out quickly from the abdominal aorta. Smaller incised wounds on one arm. Obvious stain on the wall. But the blood starts lower than its presumable source. Victim had stopped bleeding when he was suspended. Already dead. A mark on the wall, another on the desk. There was a fight. Imprint in blood at the edge of the desk. Assailant leaned back against it. Here—fingers. Gripped the side of the desk.”

Victim. Assailant. Stock words. His unexpected calm had come from an instilled Institute routine. Verse was suddenly reminded that Ace had literally been trained as a detective.

“Fingerprints?” Spade questioned.

“No. But faint lines. They were wearing gloves,” Ace determined. Then he paused. “It’s hot in here,” he suddenly noted.

“Definitely toastier than usual,”  Yuki agreed. “The air conditioning is turned off.”

Ace hissed quietly. “The temperature would have changed significantly since the victim’s death, then. Convenient for the culprit. And a smart move.”

At that moment, Mali hurriedly burst inside, carrying an infrared thermometer. “They’re searching. We need to leave,” he said flatly. “Got your thermometer. Couldn’t find the other items.”

“Oh, it’s useless now.”

“Seriously?” Mali opened his mouth to argue further, but gave up after the first word. “We could check the library records. Get us out of the building, at least,” he suggested defeatedly.

Ace stood up. Without further prompting, he left the room. Mali shrugged and followed him out, and so did Verse. They swallowed a heavy breath of the untainted hallway air and realized just how desperate they’d been for an excuse to leave the room. The group took a side door outside and sped downstairs to the exterior ground. Guards had yet to assemble outside the building; the courtyard was inhabited only by loafing students skipping classes. A steady stream floated in and out of the central tower that housed the main library. They could presumably march in without any question.

The theory was tested and prevailed.

Verse did not actually visit the main library often; despite its purpose, it was always a little too loud to study in comfortably. They would have liked to spend more time there, though, as they found it a rather impressive space. The library’s ground floor was a massive chamber complete with towering walls of books in a vast array of subjects and volumes. Far more popular among the students than the (frankly underrated) book selection were the sprawling rows of computers. But, on the occasion Verse found themself in the library, it was always for a book. Thus they’d frequently noticed the one strange bookshelf pushed against the wall to nearly cover a door—the mysterious locked basement of academy legend. Perhaps it connected to some tunnel network. Or, perhaps, it was just a basement. At the center of it all was a large cube of flashy technology that Verse never quite figured out the function of.

Ace claimed one of few vacant computers and immediately began clicking. Yuki sat at the computer beside him. “I’ll look up the date. The six-thirteen thing,” Yuki said. When Ace didn’t respond, she prompted, “Uh. What are you doing?”

“Door logs.”

“Door logs?”

“The door we left from didn’t click when it closed,” Ace said without looking up. “Lock was broken. That seemed weird to me. Any student or teacher would have access to a working code, so... no need to break it. Here. Seems someone did try to get in legitimately last night. Entered the same code five times.”

“Five times?” Yuki echoed again.

“They thought it should work, for some reason. Let’s look it up... Yeah, it was a working code a long time ago. Decommissioned in,” he suddenly paused, then aggressively tapped at the keyboard. “322. Hold on.”

Yuki sighed. “All I’m getting on the school calendar is ‘National Dried Apricot Day’ and some ‘Freestyle Rap State Finals,’ so I’m open to suggestions.”

“What if it’s a fraction?” Ace suggested.

To which Spade shot, “Ace, what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Six-thirteen,” Ace explained. “Six out of thirteen.”

“Thirteen what?” Rust asked. “Victims?”

“Quiet. I’m thinking,” Ace snapped.

“Professor Moff isn’t a sixth victim, though, right? Unless...” Yuki mused. “You think he’s part of a cult? Maybe it’s the Archivists!”

“Shut up!” Ace shouted, standing up. “I can think of one explanation that would add up.” He let out a heavy breath. “Omerta Blume.”

Luca flinched in recognition at the name. “Ace, that—”

“Omerta Blume is a known crimogen on Kaminari Station,” Ace continued, ignoring her. “He graduated from Starforce in 322 as a student of Sithius Moff. Used to be known as a legitimate businessman with Legion backing, until he turned from the Legion to found a private company. The Archivists released evidence, relayed to them by an anonymous thirteen of Blume’s former colleagues, that he’d laundered money to rig local elections as a political machine. Blume went into hiding. But since then, he’s been publicly tied to the deaths of three Legion employees.”

“It was the Archivists,” Yuki whispered to herself.

Verse cautiously said, “If that’s ‘one-to-three’ and ‘six,’ then, who are the other two? Victims ‘four’ and ‘five’?”

Ace paused. Finally, quietly, he said, “Colt and Lyra of Alerion.”

“Your parents,” Spade muttered.

Ace took a sharp breath. “Let’s get this out of the way: Yes, they were Legion employees,” he admitted, and the very words looked to bring him almost physical pain. “And I know my father had... business ties to Blume.”

“We conveniently catch the same man who killed your parents,” Mali said. “Are you sure you’re not projecting here? Not that I suspect you, but that’s quite the coincidence.”

Ace stopped, taken aback and clearly not anticipating the accusation. Yuki interjected before he could respond. “Is it, though?” she challenged, tapping at her own computer; she’d pulled up the academy’s existing file on Omerta Blume. “One of the three supposed victims was an academy secretary until—well, until she died. So Blume had a hot relationship with the school already. And if his parents really were prolific figures, it’s not absurd that—”

“Stop there.”

They turned around. Four officers were waiting with guns ready. The remainder of the library had cleared out around them, watching. Verse raised their arms. Their classmates did the same. Rust hesitated for a brief moment, staring at Verse, before surrendering. None tested the guards; none argued or resisted as they were escorted away, their research left abandoned. It was a rather abrupt, uncomfortable, and unsatisfying conclusion to the investigation.