May 3

Ashbrook Academy

4:25 PM

Lily Shield

It didn't take us anywhere near as long as I originally expected for us to find the computer room where the crime took place. When we decided to start following the stream of police officers that led us in the right direction, everything simply fell into place, and we found ourselves standing just outside the murder scene. I scanned the area for any signs of the potential witnesses we had heard of being around here, and eventually, my gaze fell on a group of four students who were standing at the end of the hallway, all of them whispering hurriedly amongst one another.

The first one that caught my eye was a girl with bright red hair and green eyes. Her clothing was mostly white with a few gold highlights here and there, and she was clearly the most talkative out of the bunch. Next was a boy with dark brown hair that never seemed to settle properly, and his eyes were the same striking color. His hands were shoved into the pockets of a well-loved hoodie. Beside him was a blonde boy with deep blue eyes the same color as the night sky. He was wearing an admittedly oversized denim jacket that just about swallowed the rest of his torso. Finally, there was yet another girl, though her hair was a completely different color from the rest of her companions'. Instead, her tresses were a cyan blue, tied up into twin buns at the top of her head. Her eyes were brown and laced with overwhelming concern as she listened to the other three speak.

Yuri glanced over to me and Mr. Morix before she decided to approach them first, coughing indiscreetly into her hand as she approached to try and get their attention. The second girl was the first one who noticed us, and she froze before turning, panic written all over her face. I could tell instantly that the subject of the murder had already hit her hard, though upon second examination, everyone else seemed incredibly anxious. Maybe I was reading a bit too much into this, but it seemed like they were much more nervous than most people would have been in this situation. Then again, was there a default amount of anxiety a person should have been feeling after a murder? Maybe that was a subject best not breached.

"Sorry to interrupt," Yuri remarked as the quartet of students turned to face us. "You four must be the witnesses for this case, right?"

The redheaded girl nodded. "We are," she answered, her voice shaking ever so slightly. "If you don't mind my asking, who might you be?"

"My name is Yuri Rinko, and these two are Lily Shield and Cotoli Morix," Yuri introduced, gesturing to each of us as she said our names. "We're the defense team on this case. We're defending the suspect in court when the trial kicks off yesterday."

The redhead looked to the other three members of the group before she smiled. "I'm glad to see you here then," she said softly, though I could tell that she was still a little bit tense. "My name is Angelica Haruka. These three are Jordan Tucker, Kyle Young, and Nanako Suzuki. It's a pleasure to meet you." As she offered their names, she gestured to the brown-haired boy, the blonde boy, and the cyan-haired girl respectively.

"Would you mind telling us a little bit more about what happened on the day of the crime?" I asked kindly, not wanting to push them too hard. I had an awful feeling about this that I couldn't quite put a finger on, but I didn't want to accidentally cause problems for any of them if they could avoid it. Given that they had just been caught up in a murder case, I felt like that was the least I could do.

The four looked to each other once again before Jordan sighed. "We were just hanging out with Niamh. That's the easiest way to put it," he muttered bitterly. He didn't seem to want anything to do with us, and I couldn't help but frown at the realization. He was friends with Prosecutor Wood, right? Why didn't he want to talk to us about what happened?

"Excuse him," Nanako interjected with a shake of her head. "I suppose we should start a bit further back than that... The four of us have been preparing for graduation since it's set to take place soon. We've been going to Ashbrook for quite some time, and this is our last month here. Niamh decided that she wanted to visit us before graduation, so we invited her here, and we were spending time together before the murder was discovered."

"Prosecutor Wood... How did you all meet?" Yuri questioned with a small frown on her face.

"I could ask you the same question," Jordan snapped, his eyes narrowing intensely. I could tell once again that he was debating as to if he was supposed to be trusting us, but he didn't dare to show it more than he absolutely had to.

"That's an easy one to answer," Mr. Morix assured him, remaining calm so as to not frazzle anyone else. "Prosecutor Wood moved to our area a few years ago. I know her because she was adopted by my younger sister soon after she moved into the city we live in. We've all faced off against in court a number of times as well."

"Niamh did mention moving in with a couple out in the city, didn't she?" Kyle questioned. "If I recall correctly, she said that one of them was even the chief prosecutor. She certainly lucked into a great situation there, huh?"

"We've met her many times leading up to this point, so when she was arrested, her adoptive parents suggested that we defend her. We came here to learn as much as we could so that we could prove that she is not the culprit," I went on. "We've only ever known her as a prosecutor though, so I suppose it's habit at this point to just use her title."

"You don't need to worry about that. Excuse Jordan for being a touch rude. He's... Rough around the edges," Angelica apologized with a weak, lopsided smile.

"It's alright," Mr. Morix assured her with a shake of his head. "Moving back to the subject at hand... We were wondering how all of you met Prosecutor Wood."

"Oh, she used to attend classes here!" Angelica chirped immediately. "She was in our class too. Classes here are set whenever you first arrive, so she was in our class starting from about kindergarten. This is a boarding school too, so we've all been here together for ages. She left a few years ago to become a prosecutor, but we've still done our best to keep in touch even after being separated."

"I honestly don't know how anybody could want to leave a place like this," Yuri confessed. "I mean, this school is incredible, and it's got to be super expensive to attend classes here. Why would anybody want to leave?"

Nanako began to fiddle with the edge of her sleeve at that, swallowing dryly. "That's... Um... It's a long story," she murmured. "T-The point is that we were hanging out with Niamh on the day of the crime. We were with her for a lot of the day, giving her a tour of the school since a bit has changed since she was last here. She wound up breaking off for a little while since we had to go and talk to a teacher about something coming up for graduation. She went to the bathroom at that point too, and... Um..."

"We heard her scream," Kyle interrupted. "She was standing in the computer room, and when we walked in, we saw her over the body. She looked absolutely terrified, and we all decided to call the police. Once they got here though, she was arrested since she didn't have an alibi. She stepped away for a few minutes, and that was apparently more than enough for her to be considered suspicious enough to be the culprit."

"Wow... That's unfortunate," Yuri muttered. She shook her head before looking back to the quartet. "Do you think that anybody would have had a reason to attack the victim? If somebody else has a motive, then we can use that to show that your friend wasn't the one responsible."

"I can't think of any reason at all," Angelica admitted. "She was nothing but kind to all of us... She was our teacher a few years ago, and she's always been incredible. I wish there was something more that we could have done for her... She said ages ago that she wanted nothing more than to see all of us get to graduation, and now... She died just a few weeks before that dream could be made into a reality."

All four of the students looked down solemnly at the ground at that, and I wished that there was something more I could say to help them feel better. I bit down on my lip, trying to muster the words, but Mr. Morix beat me to the punch. "You don't think that Prosecutor Wood was responsible for this... Of course you don't believe that. She's your friend," he said firmly.

"She would never hurt anyone!" Nanako cried out, raising her voice for the first time since the conversation began. She immediately backpedaled at that, clapping her hands over her mouth as if she thought what she had said was rude. She shook her head before looking back to the floor. "I don't know who did this, but... She wasn't the one behind it. I can say that with certainty. Nothing can change our mind about that."

"I'm glad that we're all on the same page then," I smiled. "Is there anything else you think we should know about the case? Even the smallest details would be helpful to us."

The four looked to one another before shaking their heads. Well, that wasn't exactly the case. Jordan kept himself out of it, instead simply glaring angrily at the ground below. Kyle seemed to realize something was wrong with him and wrapped an arm around Jordan's shoulders. The look he shared with Angelica and Nanako seemed to speak a thousand silent words. Kyle glanced up to the rest of us a moment later. "If you don't have anything else to ask us, we're going to... Uh... Step out for a minute," he said hurriedly.

"I think we just... Need a break from all of this," Angelica agreed, though I could tell by the faults in the corners of her smile that there was a lot more to it than that. "Um... Thank you for talking to us, and good luck in figuring out what happened. We're putting our full confidence in you to help Niamh. See you later!"

The quartet hurried off without missing a beat, all of them lingering all too close to Jordan. I frowned as they disappeared into the east wing where the dorms were kept, a frown on my face. I turned to Yuri and Mr. Morix once they were gone, unable to hold back my clear anxiety. "I think there was more to it than that," I admitted. "I don't know what happened with Jordan, but... There had to be something else on his mind that he wasn't sharing with us."

"He seemed so... Hostile," Yuri agreed with a frown. "I don't know why that could have been since we're helping out his friend, but... I guess we should just give them a bit of space for now. I don't want to poke that bear if we can avoid it."

"Perhaps it would be for the best if we gave them a few minutes to themselves to think about all that's happened up to this point. We can go back and ask them other questions later after they've started to decompress. A murder took place so close their graduation, and it was somebody they cared about on top of that. I can only imagine that they've got a lot to think about, so we should give them space. If we need to return to them, then we will," Mr. Morix suggested before turning to face the door leading into the scene of the crime. "For now, I think I know what we should be doing first."

I nodded as I walked towards the room. There were a few officers milling about, but luckily for us, the actual path to the body was clear as could be. The victim was spread out on the ground on the other side of the room, a bloodied portable speaker just next to her head. There was a pool of blood around her head as well, and her eyes had fallen shut in her final moments of life. I swallowed dryly at the sight, unsure as to what could even be said. All that was coming to me was silence.

"So... This is our victim, huh?" Yuri murmured with a frown staining her features. "All four of those witnesses really seemed to care about her, and it sounds like everybody else around here did too. I don't know why anyone would have wanted to stab her in the back and kill her out of the blue like this."

"It might seem random to us, but there must have been a reason for somebody, and that's the reason that all of this happened to begin with," Mr. Morix pointed out. He crouched down next to the body and tried to search the ground for clues. "I don't see anything in this immediate area that could be useful to our investigation."

"If you ask me, she was probably on her way out of the room when this happened," I suggested. "She's not far from the desk, and she probably fell backwards after being attacked from the front given the positioning of her wound... And that means that she saw who the culprit was before she died."

"I have to wonder what that could mean for our case... Though right now, I suppose it's nothing good," Yuri sighed. "Some people are probably going to try and argue that Prosecutor Wood was able to hit her before trying to leave, but when she thought she was going to get caught, she feigned finding the body instead."

"But nobody's made any mentions of Prosecutor Wood having blood splatter on her... If she really hit the victim with the speaker hard enough to kill her instantly, then there would have been at least a few traces of blood," I pointed out. "As long as there are no blood flakes, then that has to count for something in our favor... But something about this whole situation still bothers me."

"Why would anybody want someone like this dead?" Mr. Morix questioned. "We'll have to ask around and see if there are others in the school who agree that there was really nothing going on. The four students we spoke with before made it sound like there wasn't much that we should be looking at right now."

"I think they were telling the truth too," Yuri agreed. "But I don't know how much we're going to be able to ask people about this case. After all, the trial is still tomorrow, and we're really operating on crunch time. It's down to the wire already, and it feels like we just barely got here... There has to be something around here that we can look at that will point us in the right direction. Maybe we could try searching this room before resulting to hours of questioning others on the campus."

"We should start with the desk in here," I suggested. I carefully navigated my way around the body, stepping as cautiously as I could, before making my way to the desk that sat at the far end of the room. "If I had to guess, I would say that our victim here was sitting at the desk and then decided to leave when she was confronted. For all we know, this desk could have the last few clues that we're searching for."

Mr. Morix and Yuri followed my lead in moving over to the desk, and I first turned my attention to the computer. I didn't know if we were going to be able to turn it on without leaving behind prints, but luckily for me, Mr. Morix had a solution. He pulled a pair of black gloves from his pocket before putting them on and pressing the spacebar on the keyboard to boot up the screen. Sure enough, it sparked to life, and the login screen that appeared had the name Ursa Thompson attached to it.

"I guess the victim was the last one who logged into this computer," Yuri said. "She must have been playing around with it for a short while before she died... But we don't know her password, so we're not going to be able to get in."

"If I had to guess, I would assume that this school uses the same system as most other schools. The computers are all on the same network, and anybody can log in as long as they have an account set up on the same system," Mr. Morix frowned. "I bet we would be able to figure out her password, but we may not be able to unravel quite what it is that she was looking at... It's unfortunate for us, but I suppose that's just how things are unfolding here."

"Let's check inside the desk then," I suggested. Mr. Morix pulled a drawer open, and we looked through it. I didn't see anything immediately interesting, so we moved on to the next drawer, and luckily, we were able to find something interesting this time.

Mr. Morix pulled out what appeared to be a small planner, and he flicked to the first page, his eyes going wide along the way. "The name written here... This belonged to the victim," he said with a small frown. "I suppose that we were able to find something interesting, after all."

Yuri watched as he set it down on the table, her gaze piercing into the pages all the while. "It's not much, but this could help us to figure out why anybody would want her dead," she pointed out. "Maybe there was some sort of appointment or meeting that could have caused problems for her. I'm not entirely sure what to do with this, but it's something."

Mr. Morix only stopped looking through the planner when he had come to the week we were currently in. He read through the different entries spread across the days before his gaze fell on something set a few days in the future, specifically on the Sunday at the end of the week. "What's this?" he murmured to himself.

Yuri leaned beside him to see what she could read from it, squinting along the way. The victim's handwriting was incredibly neat, yes, but it was also cursive, and reading that didn't appear to be Yuri's forte. "It looks like she was supposed to go somewhere this weekend... And that place was..." Yuri's expression immediately dropped, and all the emotion was sucked out of her face in the blink of an eye.

Silence hung heavily in the air, and I frowned at her cautiously, already not liking where this was going. "She was going where?" I eventually asked when the suspense got to be too much for me.

"Sparx Factory," Mr. Morix answered, his voice filled to the brim with an indescribable breed of dread.

My eyes went wide instantly. I hadn't ever been to Sparx Factory, but I still knew a lot about it. That was where Mr. Morix's mother had been murdered, and the case revolving around her death ultimately kickstarted the Oracle project and led to the life I was leading today as an associate of the project. I had heard the full story of Sparx Factory recently after Pieter came back since it was a huge part of the explanation behind his involvement with Mr. Morix, Prosecutor Lin, Chrysalis, and the other core members of the Oracle team. If there was one thing I knew about that place, it was that it seemed to indicate nothing but trouble. If it had anything to do with this case, then that meant this murder was a sign of something much darker than we could have ever anticipated.

"Why would she want to go to a place like that?" Yuri questioned, her voice unreadable. She swallowed dryly before looking over to the body where it sat on the ground nearby. "There's not all that much there that could be considered great for anyone... I just don't get any of it."

"We're going to figure it out though. We have to," Mr. Morix said firmly, his eyes narrowing. There was something newer and darker to his gaze that I couldn't quite put a finger on, but I could only assume that it was his way of saying that he wanted to leave the tragedies of Sparx Factory in the past. Of course he wanted to abandon all of this. It represented one of the darkest parts of his past, and now, it was coming back to haunt him in the way we least expected.

"Maybe this would be a good reason for us to go around and ask people about the victim," I suggested, desperate to get out of the computer room. "I mean, there has to be someone around here that can answer our questions about why she would want to go to the factory of all places. If you don't know what her connection to Sparx could be, then we're going to have to ask somebody else and see if they'll be able to fill in the gaps."

"We could always start with our witnesses from before," Yuri pointed out. "I know they said they wanted to step out for a minute, but we could still ask them if they know anything about this. It wouldn't surprise me all that much if they knew something about the victim, especially if they were as close with her as they made it sound."

"I think this would be a good chance for us to try and ask them about what was bothering them before too," I agreed. "Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't help feeling as if there was a lot more going on than they were wanting us to believe... I thought they were trying to avoid a dark subject that had something to do with the murder even if I don't know where the details are supposed to fit into place exactly."

Mr. Morix nodded at that. "It wouldn't surprise me... If you want my opinion, something must have happened for Jordan to have such little faith in us. We're doing something to help his friend after she was arrested and accused of murder. It doesn't make sense that he would be so hostile, so there must be some deeper reason for him to not want anything to do with us," he said.

"You're probably right," Yuri murmured. "I'm not quite sure what it could be though, so I guess we'll just have to go and try to push it out of him. They said they were going back to the dorms, so maybe it would be a good idea for us to try and find them. It's not going to be easy if we don't have a way to go, but... Maybe we could ask someone."

We started towards the door at that, Mr. Morix tucking the planner just out of view along the way. We navigated around the body before departing and heading out into the hallway, finally leaving behind the gruesome scent of blood. I allowed myself to breathe easily at last, though I hadn't even realized I was so tense to begin with. I let Mr. Morix take the lead as we walked towards the east wing of the school where the dorms could be found, hoping that our search for the quartet of witnesses wasn't anywhere near as long as it could have been.

Along the way, the hallways grew emptier and emptier until there were next to no people there at all. The one exception to the silence was a young woman with platinum blonde hair slicked back into a bun at the peak of her head. She was talking on the phone, pressing the device to her ear with her shoulder as she wrote down a few things on a notebook. She wore a sleek black suit over a light blue shirt, the fabric of the shirt matching the color of her eyes perfectly. Her heels were so tall and thin that they seemed like a health hazard, but she didn't seem to mind in the slightest. Everything about her was graceful and refined, and I couldn't help staring.

The woman watched as we walked by, muttering parting words to the person on the other end of her call before she approached us, heels clicking against the ground below. "Excuse me. Where do you think you're going?" she questioned sharply.

I stopped immediately before turning to face her once again. "My apologies. We're the defense team for this case, and we're going to investigate the dorms. We were hoping to speak with a few witnesses there," I explained.

The woman let out a disappointed sigh from between her teeth as she shook her head. "You shouldn't be doing this," she told us sharply. "The school is hoping to resolve this case as soon as possible, and defending the suspect is going to do nothing but draw out the inevitable verdict of this case. There's no reason for you to get involved with something that will end in nothing short of complete failure for you."

Mr. Morix paused for a heavy moment before looking into the woman's eyes. "If you don't mind my asking, what's your name?" he asked cautiously, almost as if he feared the answer he was going to receive.

The woman sighed once more, and she seemed even more aggravated with us than before, if that was at all possible. "Aubray Venia," she replied simply. "I'm the public relations manager of Ashbrook Academy, at least for the time being. The case at hand has drummed up awful publicity for us, and we need to resolved and in the past as soon as possible. Your involvement will only make things harder for us."

The pieces clicked together in my head at that, and I realized that this was the reason that the trial was being rushed so hard. The public relations workers affiliated with the school were trying to rush it so that they wouldn't have to deal with the consequences of the murder... But it should have mattered more that somebody was dead, right? Why were they so focused on getting this over with as soon as possible when there were much more important subjects that needed to be resolved first? It didn't make an ounce of sense to me.

"Would you be able to tell us anything about the crime?" Yuri questioned. "The sooner that you can share all your knowledge with us, the sooner we'll be able to leave you alone. We have a job to do, and we'll be able to take care of it sooner if you help us out."

"I don't know a thing about the murder. I'm simply here to clean up the mess that girl left behind when she decided to get violent," Ms. Venia told us, letting out an irritated exhale from her nostrils. "There's nothing I could tell you that could possibly help you right now. Also, you shouldn't head into the dorm wing. There are many students grieving there, and I'm not going to allow you to interfere with the wellbeing of these traumatized kids."

"We really need to get in there though," I insisted. "The sooner that we can take care of our investigation, the sooner we'll be out of your hair. You just have to let us-"

I was cut off by a sharp ringing sound that echoed shrilly in the air, and I resisted the urge to wince and cover my ears. Ms. Venia sighed once again, her stress continuing to boil over as she reached for her phone once more. She answered the call and allowed her shoulder to once again come up to cradle the device. She began to take notes as she hummed simple responses into the speaker. She had slipped back into her business persona so easily, almost as if she didn't care or realize that we were there at all anymore. She certainly didn't bother to give us a second glance after that despite how intense and irritable she had been with us before she had to get back to her call.

I glanced over to Yuri and Mr. Morix at that, and we all seemed to agree on what we had to do next. We moved as quietly as we could towards the dorm hall, doing our best to not catch Ms. Venia's attention once more. Luckily for us, she didn't look up from her call again, and I couldn't help but sigh with relief inwardly that we had gotten so lucky. I had been worried for a moment there that we were going to have to cut our investigation short after we had already been struggling so much with this.

We were going to be able to push on for at least a little while longer though thanks to that phone call, and I was more than happy to think of that as our lucky break. We had to take advantage of this chance and talk to Angelica, Jordan, Kyle, and Nanako again while we had the chance. The tight time limit of the case as imposed by Ms. Venia was staring all of us down, and we had to fight the clock with everything we had until tomorrow.

Here was to hoping the four students would be more willing to talk with us this time.

important lore case

-Digital