Tara hadn't let go of the flash drive since they escaped.
It was small, almost fragile in her palm, but it felt heavier than anything she'd ever carried. Inside it, she hoped, were files — names, documents, transactions — proof that would destroy everything Vale and his people had worked to keep buried.
They didn't go home.
Aaron took them to an old safehouse — a rundown apartment two blocks away from an abandoned train depot. His older brother had used it once, years ago, when things had gone bad in his own life. The electricity still worked. The locks were strong. And most importantly, no one knew about it.
Jessie arrived twenty minutes later, out of breath and still wired from triggering the fire alarm.
"You both look like you were chased by ghosts," she said, stepping over broken glass near the entrance.
"We were," Aaron said. "Armed ones."
They didn't joke much after that.
Tara plugged the drive into a burner laptop. The screen glowed blue for a moment, and then—
A folder tree unfolded.
Files. Hundreds. Labeled with numbers, names, dates.
"Start with the oldest," Aaron said, kneeling beside her. "We need to know how far back this goes."
Tara clicked a file labeled: Subject_A—Jan03—Confidential.
A document opened. Not just names.
Experiments. Trials. Medical observations.
Jessie paled. "What the hell…"
"They weren't just silencing students," Tara murmured. "They were using them."
Drug tests. Psychological manipulation. Recruitment. Surveillance. And when someone got too unstable — a quiet disappearance. A body ruled as suicide or overdose. Parents were paid off. Records deleted.
Aaron's jaw locked. "This is worse than we thought."
Tara kept digging.
In another folder, she found financial logs. The university had been funding the firm under the pretense of security — but a percentage of the budget was funneled into "private testing."
Jessie scrolled quickly. "There's video footage. Interviews. Look at this one."
A grainy black-and-white clip loaded.
A girl. Nineteen. Pale, shaking. A voice off-screen asked her a series of cold, calculated questions. Her answers were clipped, confused. And then—
The clip glitched.
She screamed.
Tara yanked the power cord.
The room was silent.
Aaron stood. "We leak this."
Jessie's voice was quiet. "Not to the police. They'll bury it."
"No," Tara said, staring at the screen. "We go public. All of it. Every file. We spread it wide — news outlets, forums, student groups. Burn them all down at once."
Aaron stepped close. "You're sure?"
She looked up at him. "They destroyed lives. They nearly killed us. If we're going to risk everything, it's for this."
The next two days were spent organizing.
Jessie created a shadow server to host the documents anonymously. She reached out to a journalist she trusted — a former investigative student who now freelanced for independent exposés. He didn't ask many questions. He just said, Send it all.
Tara and Aaron wrote a statement — one that laid out the truth with no names redacted, no guilt softened. By the time they finished, the sky outside had turned red with sunset.
Aaron stood behind her as she typed the final line.
"This is not just a scandal. It is a system of silence. And we are breaking it."
"Post it," he said.
Tara hesitated for half a breath.
Then clicked.
The leak exploded within hours.
By midnight, the university had issued a vague statement.
By morning, it was trending across every major platform.
Within 48 hours, two top university officials had resigned. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Charles Vale — who had vanished.
Protesters lined the campus gates. Reporters camped outside buildings. Former victims began coming forward, slowly, some anonymous, some brave enough to show their faces.
Tara watched it unfold with a numb awe. She wasn't a detective. She wasn't even trained. But she had cracked something that real detectives had ignored for years.
Jessie cried when the first survivor's story hit the news.
Aaron just pulled Tara close and held her for a long time.
But it wasn't over.
Three nights after the leak, while walking home from the press briefing they'd been reluctantly pulled into, Tara felt it.
A presence.
She stopped under a streetlight.
Aaron paused too. "You feel that?"
Behind them, Vale stepped out of the shadows.
No gun.
No mask.
Just rage.
"You think this is over?" he said, voice low.
Tara stood tall. "It is for you."
He smirked. "You think exposing me changes anything? There are more like me. Higher. Untouchable."
Aaron stepped in front of her. "We'll expose them too."
Vale took a step back.
Then another.
He melted into the dark, vanishing like smoke in wind.
They never saw him again.
But Tara knew he was right about one thing — this wasn't the end.
It was the beginning of something larger. Deeper.
But for now — for the girls who never came home, for Maya, for Professor Langston who had vanished a day after their visit — it was a victory.
One carved through fear, silence, and blood.