Artemisia High

13 | Revelations

Cinder opened one of her desk drawers and looked for an appropriately-sized screwdriver for the task at hand. As she looked at each one and compared them to the screw she was working with, commotion served as her background noise.

Adri, Pearl, and Iko were in the back arguing about who knows what. That was all they seemed to do the past few days.

Eventually, Cinder heard a final yell and a door slam. Then, Iko walked into her room.

"Ugh!" Iko said as she flopped onto Cinder's bed and huffed in frustration.

Cinder sighed. "What happened this time?"

"Adri won't let me go to the hospital with her and Pearl! And you know what? Pearl started acting all dramatic and fake crying. Boo-hoo. She never cared about Peony until now."

"Iko..."

"Don't tell me to calm down, Cinder! How can I when Peony is dying and I won't even see her take her last breath?"

"Stop it, Iko! Just stop!"

Iko was silent. Rarely did she see Cinder this angry. In fact, Cinder was the only one who hadn't gone crazy ever since Peony was admitted to the hospital.

"Peony is my sister, too. And she's not dying."

"I'm sorry, Cinder. I didn't mean–"

"Just go, please."

Iko complied. She left the room in silence.

Cinder sighed and returned to her work. Just because Kai couldn't uphold his end of the deal because of Peony's cancer didn't mean Cinder wouldn't uphold hers. After all, he couldn't help what had happened; no one could. Helping him would at least make him feel better.

Cinder opened up Nainsi and started examining her wiring. At the same time, she heard some noise in the background as Iko left for the dance. She might have said goodbye; Cinder didn't hear her.

Most of Nainsi's wiring seemed in tact, and Cinder didn't find any malware on Nainsi's memory card. Still, Nainsi wouldn't turn on.

Cinder pulled out a magnifying glass and took a closer look at the inside. Then, she saw something. There was a tiny chip lodged in between two panels next to where the chip should've gone. It must've moved at some point...or it wasn't supposed to go there at all.

Carefully, Cinder removed the chip and put it into a chip reader. Slowly but surely, the information loaded up.

At first, Cinder was puzzled. Everything she saw on there looked identical to what she found on the main memory card. But then she looked around more and found hidden files—video files.

She clicked on the files and played a video. She heard Torin and Rikan discussing something, though the audio wasn't very clear. The video barely showed anything other than a part of a door in the corner. At some point, the camera swiveled around to show a new set of feet. Then, Kai's face came into view.

Cinder exited out of the video and started looking at the other files. Suddenly, she found something new. It was some sort of code establishing a server with other devices, and it led to...