May 5

Courtroom No. 3

11:00 AM

Lily Shield

The courtroom went completely still at the sound of the gunshot, and nobody dared to move a muscle, myself included. Of all the ways I could have imagined this trial would go south, this was well beyond my wildest dreams. My stomach was already twisting and churning with much more anxiety than it had any right to, and trying to keep myself calm was a battle I was already losing. I swallowed to try and keep myself grounded, but nothing worked the way I had intended, and instead, the fear in my core only seemed to well up higher and stronger as the seconds ticked by.

Ms. Venia let out a loose snort once she was sure everyone had been silenced, though I could tell that she knew just as well as we did what the gunshot meant: she was on borrowed time, and it was going to be a matter of time before she was caught and arrested alongside the one she had been collaborating with to get the gun in to begin with. I still couldn't figure out how this had happened for the life of me, but I knew that was probably a moot point by now. There were much more important things for us to deal with for the time being.

"I thought I told you to just go on and convict the girl in the defendant's chair," Ms. Venia muttered. "But you just had to go off on your own and declare that I was the culprit. The only one hurt by that decision was you. If you had just listened to me before and given me the guilty verdict I was searching for, then none of this would have had to happen."

"In other words, you were planning this from the start," Judge Frost said darkly. Ms. Venia nodded. "But tell me, witness... Did you kill Aubray Venia and take her place in order to get into the school that day?"

Ms. Venia nodded. "If you've figured out this much, then you should know that," she bristled. "Yes, I did kill her. She was getting in the way. If I was going to get into the school, then I needed a way inside, and she seemed like the best avenue. The graduation was coming up, and that meant that I was going to have the chance to get in there and take what I was searching for by taking her place. Getting rid of her was the only way."

"Why exactly were you so desperate to get your hands on those files?" Chief Prosecutor Bespoke asked. "That's the reason for all of this, right? You broke into the school to get the files belonging to the defendant, and when the victim tried to refuse, you decided to kill her and hack the files that she had been using on her computer. That was how all of this started."

"From there, you decided to hide with a bunch of kids with hopes that it wouldn't make you seem as suspicious," Prosecutor Cruz said, shaking his head along the way. "Pathetic of you to believe that you would be able to hide behind kids in order to get things done... I would have thought that someone like you would at least have the confidence to own up to their mistakes."

"I had a job to get done, and I wasn't going to let anyone or anything interfere," Ms. Venia told him with a shake of her head. "I had to get those files and then get out of there as soon as possible. That's all there was to it. Everything else was just building up to that purpose. You should have expected as much the instant you began to suspect that I was the culprit."

"Why did you want the files?" Chief Prosecutor Bespoke reiterated. "I want to know exactly why it is you were so desperate to get your hands on something that important. You were willing to break into a school and kill multiple people to take them, so why? What is it that you could have possibly wanted with information about the defendant?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Ms. Venia snorted. "I'm not going to tell you that so easily. Of course I'm not going to do that. It would only get in the way of things that are bound to happen later on." She glanced up to the gallery, seemingly realizing that her time was up. "Speaking of getting in the way, I invite you to try and stop me before I can get away. We all know how this is going to end."

The next few moments were a dizzy haze. A gunshot struck the ground at the center of the courtroom right in front of where the witness stand was, and while the sound was eliciting screams from the rest of the courtroom, Ms. Venia bolted toward the door. I watched her helplessly, wanting to chase her but knowing that I wouldn't be fast enough even if I tried. My legs felt like they had been turned to jelly, refusing to move no matter how much I tried to encourage them. I was ready to crash after all of this was over and maybe hide from the world for another few hours until I could say that I felt better about everything.

I was so caught up in my own terror that I didn't even realize the majority of the scuffle that was taking place up in the gallery. It wasn't until after I heard Judge Frost cry out that I bothered to look up. "Capture that man, bailiffs!" he announced. The shuffling of feet reached my ears, but I couldn't quite determine any details beyond that before I was brought back to my own thoughts and shaking hands.

For another few moments, the gallery was a haze of constant chatter and people who refused to calm down. I couldn't say I was shocked at all though, and I remained as quiet as I could until Judge Frost reached for his gavel and slammed it down, calling for order in the room. Everyone looked to him uncertainly as he cleared his throat. "This was far from being the outcome any of us could have anticipated," he remarked. "But we were able to determine who the culprit was. The bailiffs are out as we speak trying to track Ms. Venia down, but for the time being... I think everyone is ready to get out of this courtroom and see what they can do to calm down."

"You can say that again," Prosecutor Lin muttered. She was shaking ever so slightly as well, though she was doing her best to keep herself composed. "The prosecution has no objections to your wish to declare a verdict."

"The defense also has no objections," Mr. Morix told Judge Frost, the words coming out almost desperate. I couldn't blame him at all; he wasn't the only one who wanted to get as far away from this place as possible as soon as he could manage it. Hell, I almost didn't want to set foot in a courtroom ever again.

"In that case, this court hereby finds the defendant, Niamh Wood, not guilty. Court is adjourned!" Judge Frost exclaimed with a slam of his gavel. Just like that, everything was over...

But deep down, I really didn't feel like we had made anywhere near as much progress as we should have.

May 5

Defendant Lobby No. 3

11:20 AM

Lily Shield

Out in the defendant lobby, I gave myself the chance to let out a heavy sigh of relief even though my chest felt like it wanted me dead for all of the anxiety of the last few minutes. It wasn't until after I managed to ease myself into a seated position on the couch out in the lobby that I could even come close to decompressing, and every part of my body was screaming with rage and terror all the while.

"That was... Certainly a trial, huh?" Yuri questioned softly as she looked down at the ground. She sat beside me, rubbing at her head with one hand. "I really wish I had more to say about it, but that... That was an absolute wreck."

"We were able to show that Prosecutor Wood was innocent of the murder though, and I think that means a lot more than we could have ever expected," Mr. Morix frowned. "This case gave us a lot of information, but we don't know what to do with it yet. We're going to put the pieces together with time, I'm sure, but until then, we need to rest. That case was a lot to take in, and I don't want to make things any worse for the rest of you."

I hummed my gratitude at that but said nothing else about it. Prosecutor Wood was more than happy to wander into view at this point, taking away the attention from the rest of the defense team. She was rubbing at her head too, wincing when she moved ever so slightly wrong in a way that triggered her migraine in new, creative ways. "Um... I guess we won the trial then, huh?" she asked softly.

Yuri perked up at that. "You mean you don't remember?" she asked carefully.

Prosecutor Wood shook her head. "No... Not really," she admitted. "I think Nevada took over, but she's trying to keep me from figuring out what really happened in the trial. I don't understand... We've gotten better about sharing our memories so that we're not blocking too much out from each other. I really don't know why she would want to keep something like this a secret from me... Why go this far?"

"I think she might have made the right call," I told Prosecutor Wood, though that did little to assuage her fears. If anything, that only made it worse, and her eyes went wide with terror. "D-Don't worry about it though! Everything is fine. You're right in saying that the trial went well, and nobody thinks you're the culprit anymore. You're officially in the clear, and that means you can go back home like none of this ever happened."

"I wish I could forget all of this happened," Prosecutor Wood muttered with a shake of her head. "But I really don't think it's going to be that easy. Something really bad happened in that trial, didn't it?"

Before any of us had the chance to respond, another quartet of figures entered the defendant lobby. Angelica, Kyle, Jordan, and Nanako were all crowded together when they swarmed toward Prosecutor Wood, and they wrapped her in a tight hug as soon as they were close enough. For one of the first times, I saw Prosecutor Wood invite physical contact, and when I looked a bit closer, I realized that she was shaking. Nevada was trying her best to hide it after all the anxiety she had seen over the course of the last hour, but their body still remembered, and Prosecutor Wood could feel the sting of it too. I did my best to paint a smile on my face at the sight of the five teens, desperate to reassure them that everything was going to be fine, but I already knew it wasn't going to be that simple.

"Are you alright?" Angelica questioned as she pulled away from the embrace. "I know a lot of that... It was terrifying. Do you need anything from us? As long as there's something we can do, we're willing to try."

Prosecutor Wood glanced at her in confusion, clearly trying to figure out how in the world she was meant to tell them that she didn't remember the trial from a few moments before without admitting it outright. I could tell that she hadn't told them anything about Nevada just based on the gleam of doubt in her eyes, but she still tried to mask it as she shook her head. "No... I'm fine," she assured Angelica, but anyone could see just how much she was forcing herself to lie in order to get the words out. "You don't need to worry about me."

"The bailiffs had better catch that woman," Jordan muttered bitterly. "I don't know what in the world she was doing at the school, but I somehow doubt it was something more than just trying to get her hands on the files."

"I don't know either," Nanako admitted softly. "But I sort of suspected this was where it was going to end up. Ever since I saw her on the witness stand yesterday... No, ever since we first spoke to her, it felt like this was inevitable. Something about the way she carried herself just made it clear to me that this was how it was going to end."

"I wish I could say that I don't feel the same way, but I think you're right," Kyle sighed with a shake of his head. "At least she's gone. They're going to do everything they can to catch her, and when they do, we're going to be fine. We can leave all of this in the past and pretend like nothing happened. Just... Fine. It's all going to be okay. You just need to trust me on this." Nobody said a word in response to that, but I knew they didn't necessarily have to. They didn't think they could trust their instincts here either, and Kyle was just trying his best to cheer everyone up in a situation where nobody felt like there was any cheer to be found.

"It's all going to be okay," Yuri smiled, though I could see easily that she was painting on a facade for the sake of satisfying them too. "The bailiffs are going to track her down along with the man she was working with. After that, we're going to be fine. They'll go off to jail, and we'll be able to forget most of this ever happened. Doesn't that just sound great?"

"I don't think we'll be able to truly forget it though," Angelica sighed. "Ms. Thompson... She was alive before all of this, and now, she's gone. We're never going to be able to get her back because there were some selfish people out there who decided that she needed to die. I just don't understand it. What information could possibly be worth the life of another person?"

"I wish I could tell you," Mr. Morix murmured, but something about his gaze told me there was a lot more on his mind than he was willing to admit. If I had to guess, he was thinking about Oracle. That was certainly a secret a bunch of people were willing to kill for, and we had seen the consequences of that firsthand on a number of occasions.

"We're going to be fine though," Angelica said, forcing a smile on her face to try and seem more upbeat and positive than she actually felt. "Niamh is back with us, and we can forget about this trial now."

"And we can forget about six years ago too," Jordan muttered crossly. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm looking forward to never having to think about that again." His fingers clenched into an angry fist, and I couldn't help wishing there was something I could do to help him. I knew that was likely a vain train of thought, but the urge swelled up from within me regardless. He and the others had gone through more than enough, and the least I could offer was to do something to mitigate all of that suffering and constant fear of the past.

The room fell silent for a few heavy beats before a knock came at the wood just beside the door. I glanced up to see Chief Prosecutor Bespoke walking inside with Prosecutor Lin and Prosecutor Cruz at his sides. All three of them were tense and quiet, but I couldn't quite figure out why that was until after I saw a certain purple-haired bailiff just behind them.

"Hey, KJ," Yuri greeted as she smiled over to him. Her grin immediately faded away when she noticed just how dark his expression was, and she took a step closer with a frown. "What's going on?"

"They got away," KJ muttered. "Both of them. We couldn't even get close to that man before he was already gone, and the woman... She clearly wasn't Aubray Venia, and a bit of research has shown as much. Her boyfriend hasn't seen her in at least two weeks, and it seems that she went missing and was killed soon afterward. The woman who replaced and imitated her is gone though, but we have no idea what it could be about."

"I see," I murmured with a frown. I already felt awful about the case as a whole, but this only made things worse. I glance over to the rest of the lawyers, wondering what their thoughts on the matter were. If the two of them had managed to get away, then...

"They're still out there, and we're going to need to keep an eye out for them," Chief Prosecutor Bespoke said firmly. "For the time being, we're just going to be careful. We have a team of officers out there searching for the two to bring them to justice, but that's pretty difficult as long as we know so little about them. We don't know either one of their real names."

"I may have an idea, but I don't think you're going to like it," Mr. Morix cut in, and everyone glanced over to him cautiously. "It's about what we've seen with... A certain group of assassins as of late."

Prosecutor Wood went tense at that, and she shook her head before starting toward the door. "No... I don't want to hear about it," she confessed. "I want to try and celebrate this victory as long as it's here. We're done with the trial, and I'm no longer in the detention center. I think we should concentrate on that instead of thinking about theories like that. I mean no disrespect, Mr. Morix, but..."

"We know, darling," Prosecutor Lin assured her. She put one hand on her adoptive daughter's shoulder, and she looked up to Mr. Morix with a smile that was hiding everything. "We're going to head back home then. I think Niamh could use a break from everything that's happened today." She looked down to the quartet of Ashbrook students before smiling pleasantly to them. "Maybe you could all come back with us if you wanted. I'm sure Niamh would be happy to show you where she's been ever since leaving the school, and you all seem like nice kids. I would love to have you as guests."

That caught all of them off guard, and Jordan's eyes went wide as could be with shock. Angelica was quick to answer before he could let his surprise make him trip up in responding. "That would be great!" she cried out. "We haven't seen much of Niamh's life after she left the school, but I hope she's happy."

"Oh, she is," Chief Prosecutor Bespoke assured her. "Sora makes the best cookies, and you have no idea just how excited Niamh can get about them." Prosecutor Wood went tense at that, but she was still smiling from the offer her mother had provided. I could only assume that Chief Prosecutor Bespoke was trying to cover for Nevada in case she came up at any point given how easy to see her enthusiasm for sweets was. Prosecutor Wood seemed grateful for it, albeit in a silent way she refused to express openly.

Prosecutor Lin and Chief Prosecutor Bespoke were quick to lead the group of teens out of the room, leaving just our defense team with KJ and Prosecutor Cruz. The white-haired man crossed his arms as he leaned against the wall, his expression cross and bitter. "I know exactly where you were trying to go with all of that," he said. "That's why the kid wanted to get out of here. You think the Emsthorpe assassins have something to do with it."

Mr. Morix nodded. "We don't know much about them, but they seem to have some connection to her. It wouldn't surprise me if this false imitation of Aubray Venia was there to infiltrate the school and gather information about her... Especially given that these assassins have already targeted Prosecutor Wood once," he said.

"Of course," Prosecutor Cruz snorted. "Of course they would do something like that. Those bastards are always doing something to raise hell and destroy everything we've been working toward. It's a real pain in the ass."

"And it's starting to seem like the Emsthorpe crimes are getting worse," I murmured. "This is the third time they've come up... It seems like we've found all three of the sisters of the family."

"What about the man we saw then?" Yuri questioned. "He certainly wasn't a woman. In fact, he seemed a little bit familiar, but that could just be me."

"It wasn't just you," Prosecutor Cruz said as he crossed his arms. "If I had to wager a guess, I would say that the man we saw in there was the leader of the operation... Augustus Emsthorpe."

The name sent a shiver up my spine, and I bit down on my lip to try and keep myself openly composed. I knew a thing or two about Augustus Emsthorpe even though I wish I could have forgotten about him. He had sent someone to infiltrate the agency for the sake of tearing us apart, and it almost worked. He had been the start of a terrible string of incidents two years ago, and just thinking about him made me angry and nauseous.

"I hope they can find him soon," Yuri said. "I don't want to think about what might happen if he's just allowed to roam freely. Given everything he's done up to this point, I..." She swallowed nervously before shaking her head. "Nope. Not thinking about it. Everything is going to be fine. It just has to be."

"We can only hope," Prosecutor Cruz muttered. He looked back toward the door that Prosecutor Wood and her affiliated company had left through, shaking his head along the way. "I just hope we have a way to keep her out of trouble. I don't want to see a kid die because of those bastards. They've done more than enough harm, and I've had enough of it. I don't care what beef they have with the rest of her family; she's a child."

I nodded my agreement, but just like with Yuri, I didn't want to entertain the idea of something bad happening to Prosecutor Wood either. Instead, I simply looked over to Mr. Morix and Yuri. "Why don't we go out and celebrate our victory?" I suggested. "We've gone through quite a bit to reach this not guilty verdict, and I feel like we at least deserve ice cream for not dying."

"I hate that the bar of our cases is so low at this point that we need to celebrate not dying," Yuri sighed. "I feel like that should be a pretty terrifying indicator of what our lives are like, but I guess that's a discussion for another time. I'm not going to turn down ice cream."

"You two can join us if you'd like," Mr. Morix told KJ and Prosecutor Cruz. "We'd be happy to have the extra company."

"We can go and tell the others to come and join us too!" Yuri cried out. "I'd love to get Deirdre to come with us and hear all about what happened." I knew what she was getting at, and she wasn't exactly being subtle. She wanted Prosecutor Cruz to come because of the promise of seeing Deirdre, and if they were together around the rest of the group, maybe they would finally admit that they're dating despite being so cagey about it up to this point.

Prosecutor Cruz nodded after a few beats of quiet contemplation. It seemed that Yuri's gambit had worked. "I don't know how long I'll be able to stay since my mom's going to raise all sorts of hell when she hears about how that trial ended, but I'll come for as long as I can," he replied.

"I'd be happy to come too," KJ smiled. "I hope getting some celebratory food is a bit more peaceful than the trial has been though. I don't think I can take any more excitement like that."

I nodded my agreement. I was ready for a break too, and for the time being, this was a fine way to take a bit of weight off my shoulders. Things had been a disaster over the course of the last few days, and I was happy to get it out of my head in favor of other matters.

After all, we had no idea when the truth was going to come slamming right back into us all over again, and I didn't want to be caught in the crossfire until I at least had some time to think it through.

May 9

Morix Law Offices

11:00 AM

Yuri Rinko

A few days had passed since Prosecutor Wood's trial, and everything had been relatively calm since then. I mean, it wasn't hard to be calmer than a trial where the culprit had a third party shoot at people as she made her escape, but the break was still nice. All of us had taken to lounging around the agency since then as we waited for the next case to come and take all of our attention in a new direction, and I was happy to have some time to just breathe. Hell, as long as the Emsthorpe family was going to be involved, I didn't know if I wanted to take on another case ever again.

The common area of the agency was swarming with activity today. Deirdre was dutifully filling out paperwork while Mr. Morix was flipping through the file our most recent case had spawned. Lily was leaning on Sky, and he was pretending to not be flustered as Felicity flicked through channels on the television. The room was primarily quiet aside from the dipping of sound as the channels switched, not that I minded. It was nice background noise, so who was I to complain?

Deirdre suddenly looked up from her work, and she glanced to Felicity with a sudden hardness to her gaze. "Go back two channels," she instructed.

Felicity's expression quirked with confusion before she followed Deirdre's instructions, and we were met with a redheaded woman sitting behind a news stand as she read a disturbing report off a piece of paper. I recognized the reporter from a few past instances of her popping up on the news. Her name was Ayano something, but I didn't bother to remember her surname when she started talking.

"A recent report has told us that a have recently made their escape from the local prison," the reporter explained. "She had been convicted of murder over the course of the last few months, and her escape comes hot on the heels of another recent incident in the courthouse with an outside party helping the killer to escape."

Everyone perked up at that, and Deirdre frowned as she glanced over to Mr. Morix. "What do you want to bet that I know exactly who they're talking about?" she questioned, and Mr. Morix frowned, clearly not wanting to rise to the false wager because he already knew that she was going to be right.

"Raelynn Clayton was recently responsible for a murder in the local park, and some have suspected her to be involved with an infamous group of underground killers. There's no evidence to back up the connection as of now, it seems, but people are still concerned about her actions," the reporter went on. "The police are on the prowl for her now and are hoping to have her back in the prison as soon as possible. More on this breaking story will come as it develops."

The noise of the television seemed to fall into the background from there, and Felicity sighed as she put down the remote and dragged her hands dramatically down her face. "Damn it... I guess we've got a bit more on our plates than we thought," she muttered.

"If that's not proof of our false Aubray Venia being involved with the Emsthorpe family, I don't know what is," Lily muttered. "Just a few days after she managed to get away from the police, the other suspected criminal was able to escape from prison. I'm willing to bet that the two of them are with their family."

"And they're probably with Varin Balanite too," Sky pointed out, finally managing to push through his embarrassment at Lily's recent actions to speak. "Damn it... I have no idea what we're supposed to do about all of it."

"Right now, we just need to be careful and look out for ourselves," Mr. Morix announced. "As long as the Emsthorpe family remains at large, we're going to take precautionary steps to make sure they don't target us next. Until further notice, I'm going to have Chrysalis put the Oracle project on hold. We can't do anything if somebody gets killed, and that's just going to paint a giant target on our backs."

The room fell silent at that, and I felt my stomach churn. It had been five years since the Oracle project first started, and in all that time, there had never been an official hiatus. The mere idea was terrifying even though we all knew that it was the best course of action.

Things were really getting serious now, and I had no idea what we were suppoised to do about any of it. So much for us getting a break after that last case. As long as the Emsthorpe ring was intent on causing more problems, we were going to have to step up and try to fix things for the better.

If only we could do that without putting our lives at risk in the process.

THE ACADEMIC TURNABOUT

END

AND SO ENDS CASE THREE WOOHOO

-Digital