Page 95 of Martyr

“This person knows you all. Well.” The hacker, for lack of a better thing to call them, had to. “They were able to coach Iris on all the right ways to draw Yejun’s attention, and knew to target him instead of you. But the only one who could gain from this plot being successful would be Lake’s uncle.”

“Hendrix has been trying to dismiss Lake ever since, but if he was a part of this scheme, he hasn’t shown his hand yet. We agree he’s the most likely candidate since he’d be the one to takethe throne if Lake didn’t, but so far, all he’s done is complain to the Order and try to block us with petty votes and stupid tasks.”

“Like finding the hacker who supposedly tried breaking into the Club House?” Nix pursed his lips. “Did he catch you, or did you want to be caught?”

West flashed him a toothy grin. “You’re so smart, babe. It’s super sexy.”

“I’m still not sleeping with you tonight.”

“A promise is a promise,” he agreed. “But, yeah. Once we figured out the plan to destroy us, we quickly moved into defensive mode and damage control. First, we needed to get everyone's attention away from the Emperor’s death. So, we staged an attempted break-in at the club. Then, we had Yejun loudly complain about how none of us had the time to deal with the Emperor’s passing, preparing for Lake’s ascension, and this. He told anyone who would listen he hoped the Order got to the bottom of it as soon as possible.”

“Thus planting the seed in Hendrix’s mind to saddle you all with the task.” Nix thought that was either genius or super risky. How had they known Hendrix would take the bait? Maybe it was simple because they were used to his antics. “With everyone thinking you were busy searching for this hacker, they wouldn’t be paying as much attention to you or what you were really doing.”

“Looking for Iris’s boss,” West said. “Unfortunately, the part about not having any leads was true. We read through her chat logs and found the one between her and Serendipity. A lot of it had been deleted, and even I couldn’t recover the missing files.”

“So you suspected Rase.”

“Yejun still had Iris locked up at that point and he confronted her about it. It took a while, but eventually he got her to slip up and confirm Rase was at least somehow involved.I hacked into his laptop in his dorm room and found a file with the poison’s composition on it. Iris had told June she always received the poison in the science wing, left for her in one of the lockers.”

“Whose locker?”

“It was unassigned,” West explained. “But, I set up a camera and guess who we caught opening it?”

“Rase.”

“That seemed like enough evidence.”

Nix sensed there was more to it than that, otherwise he wouldn’t have been brought into this. “Rase wasn’t the one you were after though, was he.”

“No.” West knocked his head back against the wall and glared up at the ceiling. “He was set up. The Serendipity account opened to his thumbprint, but he handed over his multi-slate with no fight, showing me the app on his device. It logged him into an account with the username Spike. He was only a Pawn. Used the app purely for hooking up.”

“How do you know that was his real account and not the other one?”

“I looked into when they were created,” West told him. “Spike’s account had been open for over two years. Serendipity’s account had been created earlier last year, and the first ping was located just outside the Club House. At the same time, Rase was in his third lecture class of the day. I checked the logs and he’s signed in. Someone copied his thumbprint and used that to create a fake account. As for the locker, he’d received a note telling him something of his was left there. Not sensing any danger, he’d gone to check. He still had the note since it was hand written.”

“Do you have it?”

“Lake does. We’ve collected all of the evidence and kept it in a safe location.”

That way they would be able to prove this person was against them from the beginning and responsible for everything. Smart.

“I’ve been searching for Rase in the off chance there’s more he hadn’t told us, since you’ve brought him up. But it seems unlikely. Since this now involves your cousin, do you know anything else that could be useful?”

Nix considered and then shook his head. “I was certain Rase was the King Branwen was talking about. I just know she fell for someone and was betrayed by him. She didn’t leave me his name or description in the letter, nothing. All I have is they used to meet in the library sometimes. If not for that, I would say maybe she was tricked into thinking it was Rase too. But…” She must have seen the hacker’s true face and known it wasn’t him. “She let you guys torture an innocent man.”

“Oh,” West snorted, “that’s not why Yejun blinded him.”

Nix’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“Yeah, no. It was pretty easy to rule Rase out as a suspect, but he was pretty shaken up by the fact he’d been targeted and handed to us, so he was going to finish up the year and then transfer elsewhere. You’re only allowed to use the Enigma app if you’re a student at Foxglove. The genius got the bright idea to use up his remaining time hooking up with as many people through the app as possible.”

“Okay…?” Nix wasn’t seeing the problem.

“I’ll give you two guesses why his name was Spike.” West wagged his brow.

Nix sneered. “Don’t tell me he drugged people.”

“Several, but the one that mattered happened to be dating Juri at the time. Juri might have waved away his rights as a Demon, but Yejun and I still take that seriously. He’s a Legacy, after all. You mess with one of us, you mess with us all. Afterwhat had already happened, knowing there was someone out to get us…An example had to be made.”

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