Wraithlight

The Broken Camera

"Say that again."

Caspian doesn't. He just watches me, letting the words sit there between us — you're just the next one they know about — like he's waiting to see if I'll fall apart or ask the right question.

"There were others," I say slowly. "Before Odalys."

"I don't know how many. I know there was at least one."

"Who?"

"I don't know that either. Not yet." He stands, done sitting still, done letting me catch up at my own pace. "But I know where to start looking."

"Where?"

"The library." He nods back the way we came, toward the building we just left an hour ago. "That camera by the returns desk. The one that's been 'broken' since October."

"It has been broken. Mrs. Alvarez complains about it constantly, says the school won't fix it."

"Does the school know it's broken, or does the school just believe it's broken because somebody told them it was?"

That stops me. I hadn't thought about it that way hadn't thought about it at all, honestly, beyond mild annoyance every time I have to write incident reports by hand because there's no footage to check.

"You think somebody disabled it on purpose."

"I think it's worth finding out." He's already walking, and I fall into step beside him before I decide to, my legs moving faster than my brain agrees to. "You still have a key to that side door?"

"I have a library card. Not the same thing."

"Close enough. You work there. Nobody questions you being in the building."

"It's Saturday. I'm not scheduled."

"Then we go in through the front, and you tell Mrs. Alvarez you forgot something."

Mrs. Alvarez barely looks up from the returns cart when I walk in, Caspian trailing a few steps behind like he belongs there, which he absolutely doesn't.

"Forgot my jacket," I say, not slowing down enough to give her time to actually process the sentence.

"Third shelf, lost and found," she says, already back to sorting.

We don't go to the lost and found. We head straight for the returns desk, where a small black camera sits mounted above the counter, angled down at exactly the spot where the overflow bin sits.

"That's it," I say quietly.

Caspian pulls a chair over without asking permission, stepping up to get a closer look at the camera housing. "No dust on the lens cover."

"So?"

"So if this thing's been broken since October, why isn't there dust on it? Everything else back here's covered." He points at the shelf beside it, thick with the kind of grime that collects when nobody bothers cleaning behind a desk. "Somebody's been maintaining this. Cleaning it. Keeping it looking untouched."

"Maybe Mrs. Alvarez wipes it down."

"Ask her."

I don't want to, because some part of me already knows what she's going to say, but I walk back to the front desk anyway.

"Hey quick question. Does anyone clean the camera back by returns? The broken one?"

Mrs. Alvarez frowns, thinking. "No, why would we? It's been dead for months. IT's supposed to send someone but you know how the district is about budgets."

"When exactly did it stop working?"

She has to think about that one too. "October, I want to say. Maybe early November. Why?"

"Just curious," I say, and I'm already walking away before she can ask why curious.

Back at the returns desk, Caspian's found something. He's got the small side panel of the camera housing popped open, wires visible, and he's frowning at whatever's inside.

"What is that?"

"Somebody rerouted the power," he says. "This isn't a broken camera. This is a camera that's been disconnected on purpose, recently enough that the wiring hasn't corroded at all."

"How recently?"

"I can't tell exactly. But this isn't months old work." He closes the panel back up, careful, like he doesn't want anyone to know it was ever opened. "There's a maintenance sticker in here. Little date stamp from whoever last serviced the wiring."

"What's the date?"

He pulls his phone out, snaps a photo of the sticker before answering, like he wants proof before he says it out loud.

"Same week," he says.

"Same week as what?"

"Same week that book got checked out for the last time. The one you found the drive in." He looks up at me, and something in his face has gone very still. "Somebody disabled this camera the exact same week Odalys hid that drive in the bin."

The words land slow, then all at once.

"That's not a coincidence," I say.

"No," he agrees. "It's not."

"So whoever did this they knew. They knew she was going to hide something here."

"Or they were watching her closely enough to catch her doing it, and disabled the camera afterward to erase proof it ever happened." He's already closing the panel fully, standing up straight, eyes moving toward the front of the library like he's checking who's around us. "Either way, that means somebody's been one step ahead of her this whole time."

I feel my throat go tight, the same cold drop from the bus stop settling back into my chest.

"One step ahead of her," I repeat. "And now one step ahead of us."

Caspian doesn't answer that. He's staring past me, toward the front desk, where Mrs. Alvarez has stopped sorting returns completely and is watching the two of us with an expression I can't read at all.