Page 96 of Martyr

“Wait,” he held up a hand. “Juri was dating someone? Someone who got raped by Rase?”

“My guess is that someone was going to cheat on Juri anyway, since he was using the app, but basically. He was definitely drugged and taken against his will. It messed him up pretty bad and he and his family were all set to sue the university and demand the app be shut down.”

Which West and the others obviously couldn’t allow.

Shit.

“Who,” Nix almost didn’t want to know, “who was Juri dating?”

“You know his brother actually,” West shrugged. “You roomed with him for a bit in the beginning of the semester.”

“Grady?!” He covered his mouth but the name had already burst past his lips loudly.

“Yeah, his younger brother was one of the victims. Grady’s family fought hard, but eventually, they took the money my father offered them and decided not to press charges against Foxglove. The story got buried. Juri found out and came to Yejun begging for help. Since June had anger to burn, and had experienced being drugged himself, even though it wasn’t in the same way, he agreed.”

That’s why Grady hated the Demons. For Juri, the fact that they’d punished Rase was something, but for Grady, having his family silenced must feel like an injustice. Which, he wasn’t wrong about. No wonder he was so mad about Nix selling himself to them because, in his mind, his parents had done the same thing when they’d been bought off and traded their son's pain for coin.

“Iris was set loose shortly after and we never saw or heard from her again. Lake arrived back on planet, and we cameup with the hacker story. All of that to say, we’ve got nothing. Someone who knows us to some degree wants to destroy us, and they’re not above roping in innocent people to help keep their identity hidden. I’ve tried everything. I searched through all of Iris’s devices and all of Rase’s just in case. The formula for the poison was definitely planted there since it appeared while he was out of his room.”

“There’s more than one person,” Nix interrupted, and when West gave him a questioning look, said, “Think about it. Whoever tried to frame Rase was sloppy. You easily figured out it was a frame job. But the person who manipulated Iris? The one who brainwashed her so deeply she was even willing to keep up the lie that they’d never met in the face of being tortured? That person is smart. They would never make a mistake like forgetting timestamps are a thing.”

West blinked at him. “You’re…right. Fuck me. You’re totally right!”

“We’re not after one person,” Nix stated. “We’re after two.”

“If only that helped us track down either of them. That doesn’t change the fact we’ve got a dead end. The hacker hasn’t approached you. Or, if they have, they don’t trust you enough to give themselves away. We’re running out of time. Honestly, I act confident in front of the others because telling them I’m stuck won’t do anyone any good, but…”

“You’re stuck.”

“Yeah.”

Nix felt like his head was about to explode, but if they stopped now, all he’d get out of this night was an information dump. He neededsomething. Some kind of breakthrough to make what he’d experienced downstairs worth it. Some new plan—

“Wait,” he shifted closer to West, “I have an idea. If this hacker won’t come to me, maybe this mystery accomplice will. We already know he’s sloppy, right? Let’s use that.”

West cocked his head. “How?”

“We spread the rumor around campus that we’ve found out who the hacker is.” Anyone who listened to any sort of gossip about Essential knew what Lake and them had been tasked with. “We’re closing in on them and we’ll have their name by the end of the week or whatever. Some specific time limit to give this person space to freak out and make a mistake.”

He nodded his head, excitement growing right along with Nix’s. “If there is a second person involved, they have to be a student. Only a student would have access to Rase’s dorm room, that locker, and be able to move about unnoticed.”

“Exactly. No one would suspect a classmate moving through the halls because he’d be where he belonged. Wouldn’t stand out.”

“There are hundreds of students,” West said. “And that’s just currently. What if the person we’re after graduated last year?”

“It’s a possibility, but we have to operate under the assumption that they didn’t. This is our only lead.”

“So,” he chuckled, “we’re desperate.”

“Aren’t we?”

West licked his lips. “Yeah, we are. If this doesn’t work, we’ll come up with something else. For now, let’s give this a try.”

“It can’t hurt,” Nix said. “But um…” he glanced away, “can we maybe wait until tomorrow to talk to Lake and Yejun about this? I don’t think I can see them right now.”

“Of course.”

“Really?”

---