Chapter 22
Ellie's POV
The dorm door burst open and Megan strode in, tossing her designer bag onto her bed.
"Ladies, I come bearing gossip," she announced, flopping onto her mattress. "Lucas and Samantha were spotted making out by the fountain. Again." She rolled her eyes dramatically. "I swear they're putting on a show."
I shrugged, feigning indifference. "Good for them."
Megan studied my face. "You're seriously not bothered?"
"Why would I be?" I kept my expression neutral. "Lucas and I haven't been friends for months."
Lily and Megan exchanged glances, clearly not buying my nonchalance.
"Anyway," I said, eager to change the subject, "we were just talking about the candelabra incident."
"Right, your mysterious falling object." Megan sat up straighter. "Any leads?"
"Not yet," I sighed. "But I'm sure it wasn't an accident."
Back in our dorm room after lunch, Lily and I sat hunched over her laptop, staring at hundreds of hours of security footage.
"This is insane," Lily groaned, rubbing her eyes. "We got into the system, but there's just too much to go through. And the camera in the Comprehensive Building was under maintenance that day, so we can only check the pathway cameras."
I nodded, feeling the weight of exhaustion. "Even knowing the day, we don't know the exact time."
My phone buzzed with a text from Jackson: Any progress with the investigation? Ever since our lunch together, Jackson and I had fallen into an easy rapport, talking about everything and anything.
I quickly typed back: We've got access to security footage, but there's too much to search through efficiently.
His response came moments later: Not a computer expert, but have an idea. Since you know it's the silver candelabra, could you select an image of it and have the system only extract footage containing that object? Like those crime shows on TV.
I stared at the message, feeling a spark of hope. "Lily," I said, showing her the text, "Jackson has an idea."
Lily read it, then her eyes widened. "Wait!" She jumped up and rummaged through her backpack, pulling out a thick textbook. "I remember seeing something about this in my Computer Vision class!"
She flipped to the back chapters, scanning quickly. "This is material we're supposed to cover next month, but I skimmed ahead when I was bored."
I leaned in, looking at the dense text and diagrams. "Is this really possible?"
"Yes!" Lily's voice rose with excitement. "It's called object recognition and tracking algorithms. We can upload an image of the candelabra, and the system will automatically filter all video segments containing that object."
I quickly texted Jackson a thank-you message, then watched as Lily began implementing the process according to her textbook.
While waiting for the program to run, I found myself staring out the window, thoughts drifting back to high school.
After Lucas had crushed my family's heirloom pendant under his heel for Samantha, we'd completely severed ties. Every night I'd cry silently into my pillow, careful not to wake my parents. The feeling of betrayal, of losing my closest friend, had been so intense that my wolf nature had nearly broken free.
Eventually, I'd collapsed from emotional exhaustion and ended up in the hospital.
And what had Lucas been doing then? Busy consoling Samantha over some party invitation rejection. He hadn't even known I was hospitalized.
"What are you thinking about?" Lily's voice pulled me back to reality.
I offered a small smile. "Just remembering high school stuff. I cried myself sick over Lucas's betrayal back then. Literally ended up in the hospital. Seems like such a waste of tears now."
Suddenly, the computer beeped, indicating the program had finished.
"It worked!" Lily exclaimed, straightening up. "The system has extracted all footage containing the silver candelabra, reducing hundreds of hours down to just one hour."
We huddled around the screen, fast-forwarding through the filtered clips.
"Wait, stop here," I pointed at the screen. "That's Samantha, a week before I got hurt. She was careful, waited a week before making her move."
The footage clearly showed Samantha removing the silver candelabra from the drama department's prop storage, carefully handling it with gloves.
"And look at this one," Lily clicked to another timestamp. "This is the evening after you were injured. She's returning it."
The second video showed Samantha sneaking back to the prop room, quickly placing the candelabra back, and glancing around to ensure no one saw her.
"That's pretty damning evidence," Megan said, her voice hardening. "She deliberately took it, waited for the right moment, and then returned it to cover her tracks."
I sat back, a mix of emotions washing over me. Part of me had hoped I was wrong, that it had been an accident. But the evidence was clear.
"So what are you going to do about it?" Lily asked, looking up from her laptop.
I took a deep breath, feeling a surge of determination that surprised even me. "I'm going to report her."
"Report Samantha? To who?" Megan looked up from her fashion magazine, suddenly interested.
"Campus Security. The Student Affairs Office. Whoever handles cases of students deliberately trying to harm other students." My voice came out stronger than I expected. "That candelabra could have killed me if it had hit my head instead of my shoulder."
Lily bit her lip nervously. "Do you really think they'll believe you? I mean, our evidence wasn't exactly obtained through proper channels. I'm worried..."
"It depends on how you frame it," I replied with a slight smile. "We didn't 'hack' into the school's security system—we just applied what we've learned in class to discover a vulnerability in the campus security protocols."