Chapter 100 Let's move on.
“What apology? That was just a technical misunderstanding. Demanding that a teacher apologize to a student is an unprecedented lack of manners!”
Katherine let out a low, humorless laugh.
“Really? Then let's leave it at that.”
She slowly looked away. As she passed the Central Control Console, her hand slid across the keyboard as if by accident, pressing the Enter key with a sharp click. Without looking back, she walked casually toward the door.
Jessica Mendes took one last mocking look at the room and beckoned Cristiane with a wave. The little girl, still dazed, followed the two with short, quick steps, as if fleeing a nightmare.
The group in the lab sighed with relief for a brief second. But the silence was short-lived.
“Professor... look!” shouted a student, pointing to the nearest monitor.
Horror spread through the room like a virus. All the computers in the lab simultaneously began to display a sequence of data that no one should see.
The first to be exposed was Mr. Curtis. The main screen displayed his complete profile: name, social security number, address, and, just below, a gallery of personal horrors. His browsing history on adult websites, private messages where he flirted with unknown women, and, worst of all, screenshots of conversations where he insulted his own coworkers and students behind their backs.
Embarrassing moments from his childhood to adulthood rolled across the screen. Photos of him in narcissistic and ridiculous poses had been turned into cruel memes that flashed in neon.
“Turn that off! Now!” yelled Mr. Curtis, running desperately to the console. He frantically typed codes, but the system was shielded. Katherine had blocked everything. He was losing control of his life in real time.
But the digital massacre didn't stop there. The screen switched to Claire's profile.
The “perfect girl” was unmasked. Secret chat group conversations were exposed, revealing how she badmouthed Student A to Student B and ridiculed both of them to Student C. The venom she spewed against teachers and the malicious gossip about the most handsome boys in school filled the monitors.
And then, the final blow: grotesquely edited photos in Photoshop.
Claire appeared “hugging” Octavio, the most coveted heir in the school, and ‘kissing’ him passionately in montages as poorly made as they were shameful. “No! That's not true! Stop it!” Claire screamed, covering her face with her hands, tears of humiliation finally falling. She desperately begged Mr. Curtis to do something, but the teacher was too busy trying to hide his own face from the shame that glowed on every screen in the lab. Katherine was already far away, but her trail of destruction had just demolished the empire of lies in that room.
In the lab, the silence was broken only by the rhythmic clicks of screens changing pages. Claire watched, paralyzed and helpless, as her “perfect girl” facade was torn to shreds. The poison she had secretly distilled was now the main spectacle for the curious and shocked gazes of her classmates.
But the digital massacre was democratic.
In no time, the screen switched to Mirela Crispim. Every embarrassing moment, every lie recorded in forums, and every trace of envy left on the internet were exposed like open wounds. And the wave didn't stop there. One by one, all the elite students saw their private lives projected in high definition.
Dark secrets, cruel gossip, betrayals among friends... nothing was hidden.
The lab, once a place of superiority, became a room of involuntary confessions. Heads bowed, the weight of guilt and humiliation crushing each person's pride.
“We all have secrets,” someone finally murmured, their voice trembling. “Let's just... forget what we saw here. Let's move on.”
“Yes, let's forget,” echoed a chorus of desperate voices.
They opted for collective oblivion as a pact of survival.
But who could really forget? The looks they exchanged now were laden with a new distrust. Mutual respect had been replaced by shared contempt.
“Mr. Curtis, haven't you been able to stop this yet?!” Claire shouted, her anxiety bordering on a nervous breakdown. Her lies were the ugliest, her fabrications with Octavio the most ridiculous.
Mr. Curtis was possessed. His once arrogant face was twisted into a mask of fury and disbelief.
“What exactly did that girl do?!” he roared, pounding the keyboard.
A feeling of overwhelming helplessness washed over him. How could a senior teacher, an IT expert, have been so humiliatingly defeated by an eighteen-year-old student? He had been deceived, ridiculed, and exposed. Anger intertwined with frustration, creating a violent desire to confront Katherine, but she was already gone, leaving only chaos in her wake.
“Mr. Curtis, why don't we turn off the power?” suggested one student. “Once the lights go out, everything stops.”
As he spoke, the screen displayed the profile of the last student. When the progress bar reached the end, a message in blood-red letters appeared on each monitor:
“Don't try to shut down or restart. You'll regret it.”
Mr. Curtis felt his blood boil. He interpreted it as the final bluff of a petulant teenager.
“Turn everything off! Now!” he ordered. “Does she really think she can turn the world upside down with a prank?”
Humiliated to the point of losing his mind, he walked over to the power panel himself and pulled the main lever. The screens went black instantly. A collective sigh of relief swept through the room.
“Listen carefully,” Mr. Curtis said, trying to regain what remained of his authority. “No one is to comment on what happened today. Forget it completely!”
The students nodded. Each of them now had a lot to lose if they talked too much.
“Turn the power back on. Let's start the class,” ordered the teacher.
The central console was restarted. The noise of the computer fans rose in pitch. The screens flashed with the system startup logo.
And then, the nightmare began again.
Before any class software could load, the grotesque image of Mr. Curtis' nostrils, at a ridiculous angle, filled every inch of the monitors. The prank video continued exactly where it had left off, running in an endless, unstoppable loop.
Everyone in the room felt on the verge of collective fainting. Katherine hadn't been bluffing.