The library was quiet that period. Only a handful of students were scattered at the distant tables, heads down, but there was a charge in the air.
Lyra felt it as soon as she pushed through the heavy doors. It was in the way the librarian, Ms. Keen, suddenly became very busy in the periodicals section, her back firmly turned. It was in the unnatural cluster of bodies near the reference computers.....Jax, Mara, Chloe, and two others. They weren't typing. They were just standing there.
She almost turned around. Every instinct, the Nyx-instinct, screamed abort, this is an ambush point. But the Lyra-instinct, the one that had to live here, argued: Leaving is surrender. It confirms the threat.
So she walked to her usual carrel in the back. She slid her backpack off. The routine. The shield.
She heard the click first. The distinct sound of a projector powering on. A low whir, then a bright, square light bloomed on the white wall opposite the carrels. A few of the other students looked up, confused.
"For today's presentation," Jax's voice rang out, clear and parodying a lecturer's tone. He was standing by the librarian's desk, a small clicker in his hand. He smiled at the room. "A case study in resilience. Or, you know, whatever."
Mara giggled, a sharp, expectant sound.
Lyra's fingers went numb on the zipper of her bag. She didn't look. She stared at the empty carrel desk, at the graffiti someone had carved into the wood: was here.
The first image clicked onto the wall.
It was a photo of her mother. Not a current one. An older one, from a society page years ago, when her smile was bright and didn't look like it hurt. Someone had photoshopped it. They'd given her cartoonish, spiraling eyes and a dribble of neon green coming from her mouth. The word "MELTDOWN" was scrawled across the bottom in a chaotic, dripping font.
A cold, hard lump formed in Lyra's throat. She swallowed. It didn't move.
"Exhibit A," Jax narrated, pacing slowly. "The foundational trauma. Note the instability. The… leakage of sanity."
Click.
Another image. This one was a blurry, long-lens shot of her own apartment building. A yellow circle was drawn around her window. The text read: "WHERE THE QUIET ONES CRY."
Her face felt hot. The heat was a betrayal. Her body was reacting, broadcasting the hit even as her mind tried to build a wall. Do not engage. It is just data. It is just noise.
Click.
A meme. A popular cartoon character looking deranged. They'd superimposed her taped glasses onto its face. The caption: "MY VISION IS FRACTURED (MY FAMILY IS TOO) LOL."
A snort came from Chloe's direction. One of the other kids at a distant table shifted uncomfortably, gathered their books, and left. The door sighed shut behind them.
Jax kept going. Each click was a precise, surgical cut. A Photoshopped image of her father's old office building with a "FORGOTTEN" sign. A graph that was pure nonsense, titled "Finley Family Stability: A Downward Trend." They'd even found a yearbook photo from middle school, her face awkward and hopeful, and drawn a single, dramatic tear down her cheek.
"And through it all," Jax said, his voice dropping to a mock-somber level, "our subject remains… quiet. Observing. Calculating. Because what's left when everything is taken away? Just the math. The cold, hard math of getting through the day."
He clicked off the projector. The sudden darkness left purple ghosts on the wall. The room was utterly silent. Ms. Keen was gone from the periodicals section.
Jax walked over to her carrel. He leaned down, placing his hands on the edge of her desk, bringing his face level with hers. She could smell his detergent. She could see the tiny, perfect pores on his nose. His eyes were bright with a terrible, intelligent glee.
"The thing is, Finley," he said, so only she could hear. "You're not mysterious. You're a blueprint. Every cracked piece, every silent moment… it's all just a diagram. And diagrams are easy to read. Easy to… replicate."
He pushed back from the desk, the legs squealing against the floor. He looked at his group, a conductor satisfied with the performance. "Class dismissed."
They filed out, a loose, triumphant cluster. The library doors swung closed.
Silence.
Lyra sat. She didn't move. Her breath was coming too shallow, but she forced it to slow. In. Out. The purple ghosts on the wall faded. The hum of the lights returned.
It was just data. It was a hostile data dump. A targeted psy-op. She listed the terms in her head, trying to coat the event in analytical plastic.
But the coating was thin. It kept cracking.
The humiliation wasn't in the cheap Photoshop, the stupid memes. It was in the planning. The theatricality. They'd used a projector. They'd prepared slides. They'd researched old photos. This wasn't a spur-of-the-moment cruelty. It was a campaign. A blueprint, just like he'd said.
They had seen her not as a person, but as a project. A problem set to be solved and then publicly defaced. And they'd done it in the one place that was supposed to be safe.
The numbness in her fingers spread up her arms. She looked down at her history textbook, open to a chapter on the French Revolution. The public spectacle of downfall, it said.
After a long time, she moved. She packed her bag with slow, precise movements. She stood. Her legs held.
She walked out of the library. The hallway was bustling with students changing classes. Noise washed over her, a meaningless wave. She saw Mara whisper to a girl from the soccer team, nodding back toward the library doors. The signal was spreading.
Lyra walked to her locker. She spun the combination. The metal door felt cold and real and opened it.
Inside, tucked between her chemistry book and the inner wall, was a single, folded piece of paper. It hadn't been there before lunch.
She didn't want to touch it. But not touching it was another kind of loss.
She pulled it out. Unfolded it.
It was a printed copy of one of the slides. The meme with her glasses on the cartoon character. At the bottom, in neat, handwritten script that wasn't Jax's, was a new note.
"We have the original files. There's more. A lot more. Want to see?"
It wasn't a question. It was a threat of continuation. A promise that the blueprint was deeper, and they were just getting started.
She refolded the paper. She didn't crumple it. She placed it carefully in the very back of her locker, behind her raincoat. Then she closed the door, heard the click of the lock.
The rest of the day passed in a high-resolution blur. Teachers' voices seemed to come from far away. The tape on her glasses sawed at her skin. Every laugh in the hallway felt directed, every glance felt like a follow-up scan.
She walked home. The sky was the color of dirty chalk. The cold air didn't feel clean; it felt used.
When she let herself into the apartment, the silence was a different kind of exposure. It echoed with the phantom click of that projector. She stood in the middle of the living room, bag at her feet.
Her mother wouldn't be home for another two hours.
Slowly, she walked to the kitchen. She made a peanut butter sandwich. She stood at the counter and ate it. It tasted like glue and dust.
She washed the plate. Dried it. Put it away.
Then she walked to the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror. The girl with the taped glasses, the too-plain face, the eyes that were trying so hard to be empty. The blueprint.
She took the glasses off. The world softened, mercifully obscuring the sharp, hateful edges of everything. She ran her finger over the silver tape. A temporary fix for a permanent break.
Graham's order: Fix the glasses. Something simple. Concrete.
But the crack was in the blueprint. And she didn't know how to fix something someone else was still actively drawing.