Chapter 2 - THE SECURITY OFFICE DISCOVERYInside the school’s basement security hub, dust motes danced in the flickering fluorescent light cast by bank monitors.
Officer Marcus Vance—no relation to the teacher, though sharing the same cold surname—rubbed his tired eyes. For the past twenty minutes, Camera 4 in the third-floor east wing had been displaying a flat, dead black screen. In a school as old and underfunded as St. Jude High, technical glitches were routine. Cables frayed, mice chewed through wiring, and feeds dropped out daily.
Just as Marcus reached for his coffee mug to take a sip, a sharp, electronic chime chimed across the console.
BEEP.
Monitor 4 didn't just flicker; it detonated back into sharp, high-definition color.
Marcus choked on his coffee, slamming the mug down so hard dark liquid sloshed across the metal desk. His eyes bulged as the live feed flooded his retinas. There was Leo, curled forward on his knees, looking like a ghost of a child. There was Ms. Clara Vance, towering over him with a heavy wooden ruler raised high in a striking posture. And right beside the wall, a brave Latina student named Sofia stood with her hand triumphantly hovering near a freshly plugged outlet.
"What in God's name..." Marcus whispered, his hand instantly darting to his radio headset.
He didn't hesitate. Years of police work before taking the campus security job taught him to trust his gut when something screamed abuse.
"Unit Two, Unit Three, all available personnel to the third-floor east wing, Room 304. We have an active physical assault on a student by a faculty member. Move, move, move!"
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Marcus didn't just stop at the radio. With trembling fingers, he hit the master archive button, saving the live stream directly to an external encrypted flash drive. He knew how powerful teachers' unions and administrative cover-ups could be at St. Jude. If he didn't secure the digital proof right this second, it would mysteriously vanish into the digital ether by sunset.
As he watched the monitor, Marcus saw Clara Vance drop the ruler. But she didn't look remorseful. Her lips moved, shaping words that made Marcus’s blood run cold. She wasn't surrendering—she was pivoting to attack.
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