Wraithlight

Episode One

My hands are still shaking when I get to my room, so I drop the flash drive twice before it clicks into my laptop.

Nine files. No names, just numbers 01 through 09. No folder title. Whoever made these didn't want a search engine finding them by accident.

I sit on the edge of my bed, laptop balanced on my knees, and stare at file one like it might do something on its own if I wait long enough.

It doesn't.

"Okay," I say, to nobody. "Okay."

I click it.

Three seconds of static. Then breathing close to the mic, too close, the kind of breathing you do when you're trying to sound calm and failing.

"Testing. One, two—"

I know that voice.

I sit up straighter, headphones pressed hard against my ears like that'll make me hear it wrong, make it belong to someone else. It doesn't work. I've heard this voice in hallways, in assemblies, once just once three feet away from me at a locker, asking if I had a pencil.

Odalys.

"Okay. If this works, if anyone ever actually hears this—" A laugh, short, humorless. "This is going to sound insane. I know how it sounds. I've rewritten this intro like six times trying to make it sound less insane and it just doesn't. So. Whatever. Here it is."

Paper shuffles. She's reading from something, or pretending to, the way people do on the radio when they want to sound official instead of scared.

"Ashcombe Prep has a golden circle. You know who I mean if you go here. You've watched them walk through the halls like the rules don't apply, because for them, they don't. I used to think that was just how things worked. Rich kids, connected families, that's life."

"Then I found out how far it actually goes."

I pause it.

My room is dead quiet except for the hum of my laptop fan, and I realize I've been holding my breath since the word insane. I look at the door closed, obviously, my aunt's not even home yet and I still feel like someone's standing behind me.

I press play again.

"I'm not going to name anyone yet. Not in this one. I need you to trust me first, and I know that's rich, coming from someone you've probably never actually talked to. But if you're hearing episode one, it means episode two exists, and three, and however many it takes to say everything I need to say before—"

Silence. Not dead air — deliberate. Like she stopped herself.

"Before I run out of time to say it safely."

The file ends there. Four minutes, twelve seconds. I sit with my headphones still on, the empty static ringing in my ears louder than her voice did.

I don't move for a full minute.

Then I click file two.

Episode two is shorter. Odalys sounds steadier, like she practiced this one more, but there's an edge under it that wasn't in the first something closer to the surface.

"Somebody went through my locker today," she says, no introduction this time. "Didn't take anything. That's the part that got me. They didn't want anything I had. They wanted me to know they could get to it."

"So from now on, this stays off my phone. Off anything that syncs, anything that backs up somewhere I don't control. If you're hearing this, it's because I found a way to get it to you directly, which means I don't trust anything else anymore."

I think about the book. Water-stained, untouched for three years, tucked into a bin nobody checks except on Tuesdays and Thursdays when my shift falls.

She picked that book on purpose.

She picked it knowing exactly who worked the desk those days.

My stomach drops somewhere I can't name, and I almost close the laptop right there almost. But I don't, because now I need to know, the way you need to know the end of something even when every part of you says don't.

I click through three, four, five. Each one a little more specific, a little more afraid, dropping details without ever landing on a name money moved somewhere it shouldn't have gone, a teacher who looked the other way, a favor called in that cost someone else everything. Six and seven blur together, my eyes tired, the room gone fully dark outside my window without me noticing when the sun went down.

By eight, I'm on file nine.

The last one.

"Okay," Odalys says, and her voice is different now lower, faster, like she's recording this somewhere she's not supposed to be, somewhere she needs to finish fast. "This is it. This is everything. I have proof now. Real proof, not just not just guessing anymore."

"I know who's been going through my stuff. I know why. And I know that if I post this the normal way, it disappears before anyone important sees it, because that's what happens to everything that gets close to them."

"So I'm doing this instead. If you're hearing this, it's because something happened to the person I trusted to hide it, or because I hid it myself somewhere I thought was safe enough to wait."

A long breath. The kind people take right before they say something they've been avoiding.

"There's a tenth file. I haven't recorded it yet, because I want to be sure completely sure before I say the last name out loud. That one's going to matter more than all nine of these combined."

"If you're listening to this and there's no tenth file anywhere—"

Her voice catches. Just once. Just enough that I hear it, even through a laptop speaker, even through however many months have passed since she said it.

"—and if you're listening to this, it means something happened to me before I could—"

The file ends.

Not fades. Not wraps up. Just stops, mid-word, the way a phone call cuts out when the signal dies.

I sit there, headphones still on, staring at a screen that's gone completely silent, and realize I'm holding the exact thing someone out there already tried to steal once.