3. The Locked Floor

Wednesday morning arrived with a low grey sky that pressed against the windows like a wet blanket. Mira woke from a restless sleep with the glass shard still in her palm, her fingers cramped around it as though she had been holding it for hours. She uncurled her hand and saw a thin red line where the edge had bitten into her skin—not deep, but enough to sting.

She cleaned the cut in the bathroom sink, watching the pink water swirl down the drain, and told herself that pain was useful. Pain kept you awake. Pain kept you from making sentimental mistakes.

Breakfast was served in the Great Hall as usual, but the atmosphere had shifted. The other girls whispered in clusters, their voices urgent but low. When Mira sat down, Gemma slid into the seat beside her, her face pale beneath her freckles.

"Did you hear?" Gemma murmured, not looking at her. "Joshua. They arrested him last night."

Mira's spoon froze over her porridge. "What?"

"Dr. Cutter made an announcement before dawn. The police came. They found inappropriate photographs on his computer—students, younger students, from the lower school. He's been suspended pending investigation. They're saying it's a criminal matter."

"That's a lie," Mira said, her voice flat. "It's a setup. She said she would discredit him. I heard her."

"I know." Gemma's hand trembled as she reached for her tea. "But what can we do? He's gone. His rooms have been sealed. They're spreading the story so fast that no one will question it. By this evening, everyone will believe he's a monster."

Mira stared at her porridge. The oats had gone cold and gluey. She forced herself to take a bite, chewing mechanically while her mind raced. Joshua had been their only link to the farmhouse, their only source of information about the guards and the layout. Without him, the plan was a blind leap into darkness.

"We still have the map," she said quietly. "We still have the camera. And I remember every detail he told me about the farmhouse."

"You're still going through with it?"

"I don't have a choice. If I stay, they ship me next week. The senator wants me for his winter gala. I don't know what that means, but I know it's not a dance." Mira pushed her bowl aside. "I need to see Joshua. If they're holding him in the police station in town, maybe I can—"

"Don't even think about it." Gemma grabbed her wrist. "They're watching everyone who ever spoke to him. You walk into that station, and they'll have you in the basement before supper. You're not a rescuer, Mira. You're a fugitive waiting to happen."

Mira pulled her hand free. "Then what do you suggest?"

Gemma was silent for a long moment. Then she said, "There's something I haven't told you. About my sister. Her name was Eleanor. She was scholarship student, same as you, from a different country—the Republic of Khenia, before it collapsed. She was here for six months, and then she was gone. But before she disappeared, she gave me a key. She said it was for a safety deposit box in Veridia City. She said if anything happened to her, I should open it."

"And did you?"

"No. I was too scared. I was fourteen. I buried it in the garden behind the greenhouse and I never looked at it again." Gemma's eyes glistened. "But I think it's time. If Eleanor found something—something that made her a target—it might still be there. It might give us more than Joshua's map."

Mira considered this. The greenhouse garden was near the chapel, close to the basement entrance. It was risky, but no riskier than what she already faced.

"Tonight," Mira said. "After curfew. We dig it up. Then we decide whether we still go to the farmhouse."

The morning classes crawled by like wounded animals. In Latin, Mira translated a passage about Icarus and his fall, and she wondered if the wax wings in the story had ever felt as fragile as her own. In Physics, the teacher lectured about inertia—objects in motion staying in motion—and she thought about Gemma's sister, trapped in the system's momentum, swept away by forces she could not resist.

At midday, Dr. Cutter summoned Mira to her office. The headmistress sat behind a vast mahogany desk, her hands folded like a bishop's, and motioned for Mira to sit.

"I heard you gave an excellent tour to the Morgan Foundation representative," Dr. Cutter said, her voice honeyed with fake warmth. "They were very impressed. So impressed, in fact, that they've offered you an accelerated placement in their young leadership programme. It means you could leave Ashworth much sooner than expected—as early as next Monday."

Mira kept her face perfectly still. "That's very generous. What would the programme entail?"

"You would travel to the Foundation's headquarters in the Kingdom of Ardelia for an intensive orientation. From there, you would be assigned to a host family who would mentor you in business and civic leadership. It's a life-changing opportunity, Mira. Girls from your background rarely get such a chance."

A chance to be sold, Mira thought. A chance to become a medical specimen or a senator's plaything.

"I'm honoured," she said. "May I have a few days to think about it? I want to make sure I'm fully prepared."

Dr. Cutter's smile tightened a fraction. "Of course. But opportunities like this don't wait. I'll need your answer by Friday morning." She leaned forward. "And Mira—I would strongly advise you to accept. The scholarship is not guaranteed beyond this term, and the world outside Ashworth can be... unkind to young women without connections."

The threat hung in the air like smoke. Mira nodded, rose, and walked out of the office with measured steps. Only when she was safely around the corner did she allow herself to breathe.

Friday. The deadline had moved from "shipping" to "forced acceptance." She had less than forty-eight hours.

That afternoon, she found Gemma in the library, hunched over a textbook on constitutional law. They exchanged a look that said everything—the plan was still on, but the window was shrinking.

At ten p.m., the clock tower chimed and the corridor lights dimmed to a dim amber glow. Mira waited until the night patrol had passed, then slipped out of her room and crept down the back staircase. Gemma was waiting by the greenhouse, a small trowel in her hand, her silhouette barely visible against the moonlit glass.

The greenhouse was overgrown with ivy and dead rose bushes, the glass panes clouded with years of grime. Gemma led her to a corner where a stone bench had crumbled into rubble. She knelt and began to dig at the base of a cracked flowerpot, her fingers working the trowel into the compacted earth.

"Here," she whispered. "It's still here."

Her fingers closed around a small metal object—a brass key, tarnished but intact. She brushed off the soil and held it up to the moonlight.

"Eleanor said the box is in the Veridia Central Bank. She said the contents would prove everything." Gemma's voice cracked. "But I never had the courage to go. I was afraid they'd watch me, and then I'd be next."

Mira took the key, turning it over in her palm. It was heavy, old-fashioned, with a number engraved on the side: 774.

"Then we go tomorrow," Mira said. "Before the shipment. We take the tunnel at dawn, catch the first train to the city, retrieve the box, and come back before supper. No one will know we were gone."

"Impossible. The first train leaves at six-thirty. We'd have to leave school at five. The tunnel is almost a mile long—"

"Then we start earlier. We leave at four-thirty. We run." Mira pocketed the key. "Gemma, this is our only chance. If Eleanor had proof, it could be the evidence we need to expose Morgan Holdings without ever stepping foot in that farmhouse. It could save Lina and everyone else."

Gemma hesitated, then nodded. "Four-thirty. I'll meet you at the laundry building. Don't be late."

They parted in the shadows, each returning to their room with their heart beating too loud. Mira lay in bed, the key cold against her thigh, and she tried to imagine what Eleanor had hidden. Financial records? Photographs? A list of names? Whatever it was, it had cost Eleanor her freedom—and possibly her life.

She closed her eyes, but sleep would not come. At two in the morning, she heard a faint scraping sound outside her door—like nails on wood. She slid out of bed and pressed her ear to the door. The scraping stopped, replaced by a soft exhale, and then footsteps retreating down the corridor.

She opened the door a crack. There was nothing there, but on the floor lay a folded piece of paper. She snatched it inside and unfolded it by the moonlight.

The note was typed, no signature: "Trust no one. The tunnel is watched. The key is a trap. — J."

Joshua. He had managed to get a message out, despite his arrest. But the warning came too late—or did it? Mira stared at the words, her mind spinning. If the tunnel was watched, their escape plan was compromised. But if she followed the note's advice and abandoned Gemma, she would be alone and back to square one.

She had to trust someone. The question was who.

At three, she crept to Gemma's room and slid the note under the door. Three minutes later, Gemma appeared in the corridor, her eyes wide.

"What does this mean? Who sent it?"

"Joshua. I think he's trying to warn us." Mira lowered her voice. "But it could also be a test—or a bluff. They might have forced him to write it to make us cancel the plan."

"Or it could be real. And if the tunnel is watched, we walk into an ambush." Gemma's hands were shaking. "What do we do?"

Mira thought for a long moment. The answer came to her like a blade through fog.

"We don't take the tunnel," she said. "We take the front gate."

"Are you mad? The gate has guards, cameras, an electrified perimeter—"

"At dawn, the delivery trucks come for the kitchen supplies. They open the gate at five-thirty. If we hide in the back of one of those trucks, we can roll right out without anyone seeing us." Mira's voice was steady. "The drivers are from an outside company. They won't check the cargo."

Gemma stared at her. "That's insane. What if they find us? What if the truck goes to the farmhouse instead of the city?"

"Then we adapt." Mira gripped Gemma's arm. "What's the alternative? Stay here and wait to be shipped like cattle? I'd rather die in the back of a truck than live another day in this place."

For a long moment, Gemma said nothing. Then she nodded, slow and decisive. "Fine. The delivery trucks are at the east gate. I've seen them—three vans, white, with a catering logo on the side. We'll climb in when they're loading the crates."

They spent the next hour refining the plan: which truck to target, how to slip past the loading crew, what to do if they were discovered. At four-fifteen, they moved to the east courtyard, keeping to the shadows. The delivery vans were parked in a neat row, their doors open, crates of vegetables and dry goods being loaded by two tired men in green aprons.

Mira and Gemma waited until the men turned their backs to push a heavy pallet. Then they darted across the courtyard and slipped into the back of the middle van, squeezing behind a stack of flour sacks. The van's interior smelled of onions and diesel. They pulled a canvas tarp over themselves and held their breath.

The loading continued for another twenty minutes. Then the doors slammed shut, and the van lurched forward. Through a small gap in the tarp, Mira watched the east gate swing open, the guard waving the driver through without a second glance.

They were out.

The van rumbled along winding country roads for forty minutes before stopping at a distribution depot. The driver got out, walked away for a smoke, and Mira and Gemma slipped out the back, crouching low, and ran for the nearby railway station.

They caught the six-thirty train to Veridia City, their blazers covered in flour dust, their hearts still pounding. Mira had never been to a city so vast—towers of glass and steel, crowded streets, a river of cars and buses and bicycles. They found the Veridia Central Bank on a boulevard lined with gilded lampposts and marble facades.

Gemma presented the key to a stern-faced teller, who examined it and disappeared into a vault. She returned with a black metal box, about the size of a shoebox, and handed it over without a word.

They took the box to a public bench in a nearby park. Gemma's hands were trembling so badly that Mira had to open the lock herself.

Inside, they found a stack of documents: bank statements from Morgan Holdings, transfer records for scholarship "placements," and a set of photographs showing Dr. Cutter and Senator John Hamm shaking hands in front of a private jet. But at the bottom, wrapped in a silk cloth, was a small recording device—a micro-cassette.

Mira inserted the cassette into her portable player, the one she had bought with her last coins. The audio was scratchy but clear: Eleanor's voice, young and terrified.

"This is Eleanor Grant, scholarship student at Ashworth Academy. I'm recording this because I don't think I'll survive the week. I know about the basement. I know about the medical checks. I've seen the files. The headmistress is working with Morgan Holdings and a senator to sell girls to wealthy clients. I have all the proof. If you're hearing this, I'm already gone. Please—tell the police. Tell anyone. Don't let them do this to anyone else."

The recording ended with a click. Then a second voice, muffled, in the background: "Is that everything? Good. The buyer will be pleased."

Mira and Gemma sat in silence, the cassette player warm in Mira's hands. They had proof. They had names, photographs, financial records, and a dying girl's testimony.

But the sun was already climbing high, and they had to get back to Ashworth before anyone noticed they were gone.

They took the afternoon train, hiding the box in Gemma's satchel. The return route was easier—they slipped through the delivery gate just as the afternoon shipment arrived, blending in with the warehouse crew.

Back in her room, Mira hid the evidence under the loose floorboard beside her notebook. She lay on her bed, her body exhausted but her mind racing. She had more proof than she had ever dreamed of. But the shipment was still Friday—tomorrow. And the senator, the headmistress, and Morgan Holdings were still in power.

She pulled out Joshua's note again: The key is a trap.

But the box had contained truth, not poison. Unless the trap was not the box itself—unless the trap was the belief that the box would be enough.

She looked at the floorboard, at the hidden treasure, and she felt a cold certainty crawl down her spine: someone had planted that box for Eleanor to find. Someone had wanted the evidence to surface. But who—and why?

And why had Joshua tried to stop her from getting it?

She did not have an answer. But she knew one thing: the farmhouse was still there, and Lina was still waiting.

And tomorrow, she would have to choose—go to the police with the evidence, or go to the farmhouse with the shard.

She closed her eyes, and in the darkness, she heard the clock tower strike eleven. The night patrol passed her door, and this time, they stopped.

A key turned in the lock.

The door swung open, and Dr. Cutter stood in the frame, flanked by two guards.

"Good evening, Mira," the headmistress said softly. "I think it's time we had a proper conversation about your future."

Behind her, the guards stepped forward, and Mira felt the glass shard in her pocket—too small, too dull, too late.

The floorboard creaked, and she knew that Dr. Cutter had heard it.

The trap had snapped shut.

And it was not Joshua who had set it.