The next morning brought a heavy gray sky and a sense of urgency that clung to my skin like humidity. I barely noticed the passing students on the way to school—faces blurred into a silent rush of motion as my thoughts circled around the folder still hidden under my bed.
That file… those recordings… they had confirmed what I'd only begun to suspect: James Bennett—no, Thomas Brant—wasn't just a fraud. He was a manipulator, a researcher of people. And I had been his case study.
At lunch, Henry and I found a quiet corner in the library behind the old philosophy shelves. Ethan joined us soon after, his calm presence grounding the tension that simmered between me and Henry.
"We found something," Henry said quietly.
Ethan raised an eyebrow. "How serious?"
We told him everything—about the metal box, the fake ID, the profiles, the recordings. Ethan listened in silence, his eyes sharp, absorbing every detail.
When we finished, he didn't speak right away. Then finally, he said, "He's building a model."
"What?" I asked.
"A behavioral model," Ethan said. "All those notes, those evaluations—they weren't just about you. He was building a framework. Testing variables. Predicting outcomes."
"You think this is part of some bigger… system?"
"Yes. And if he's still operating under a false name, it means he hasn't stopped."
Henry cursed under his breath. "So what, we just hand this over to the school? To the police?"
"They'll ask where we got it," Ethan said. "And more importantly—they may not believe us."
We sat in silence. The truth was a heavy thing. We had it—but how do you use truth like this without getting burned?
"I want to understand why," I said. "Why me? Why us? There has to be a reason he chose certain students."
Ethan nodded slowly. "Then we start digging. Quietly. We find out who else was on that list."
"And what happened to them," Henry added.
The next few days passed like a slow spiral into the past.
I started by discreetly searching school records, using library archives and digital yearbooks. Some of the names from the file matched students who had attended years before us—students who had dropped out, transferred, or suddenly disappeared from club rosters with no explanation.
One girl, Lianne H., had been in the top of her class before suddenly leaving mid-semester. No reason was listed. Another, Carter L., had been a rising track star until a disciplinary report appeared, vague and riddled with missing pages.
Patterns began to emerge. They all had high potential. They were all deeply involved in school life. And they all had sudden, inexplicable collapses.
It was chilling.
One afternoon, I stayed late at the library, scrolling through an old student forum that hadn't been touched in years. Buried deep in a forgotten thread was a single post from a user called Vigilance7:
"If you're reading this, you're probably already too close. He doesn't pick randomly. He studies you. Waits until you're open. Then tests you. And if you break, he disappears. He's done it before. He'll do it again. Don't trust what you see."
I stared at the post for a long time, the cursor blinking like a heartbeat.
Henry and I printed copies of everything—photos, documents, the post, transcriptions of the recordings—and stored them in a second binder. Ethan suggested keeping three identical backups, each hidden in a separate location. It felt dramatic, but we all sensed what was coming.
We weren't just three students anymore. We were investigators. Witnesses. Survivors.
By Friday, the atmosphere around me had shifted. I still laughed in class, answered when called on, joined the others at lunch. But beneath the surface, every hallway became a puzzle. Every teacher, every counselor, every admin—I looked at them with new eyes.
Because now I knew someone had built a system within our school—a system of influence, of tests and observation—and for all we knew, it was still operating.
The last period of the day, I found myself staring out the window as the teacher droned on about business models and organizational structures. My mind drifted back to that folder, those notes about me.
"Behavioral deviation detected."
I had deviated, all right. I had slipped from their model. Broken their perfect plan.
And now, I wasn't just recovering.
I was watching them back.