“She didn’t give a reason why,” Nix said. “But she was clear someone here hurt her badly enough it drove her to it.”
“Someone?” Juri rubbed at his face. “Shit.”
“Now you’re saying that the only person she hung out with was Yejun, and there’s this whole thing about her using a fake name…” Nix swore and popped open the can, chugging half the contents in one gulp. “I don’t know what’s going on and it’s driving me nuts.”
“She could have had other friends,” Juri corrected. “I just never saw her with anyone. Would you like me to ask around for you? I know a couple of people in the history department. Maybe they’ll know something more.”
Nix nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
“You aren’t going to like hearing this,” Juri said then, “but I have to say it. Yejun is the one who got her expelled. I don’t know why, but if the gossip is true, he was the one who went straight to the dean and demanded she be removed.”
And the dean would have to listen to someone like Yejun.
“They aren’t good people, Nix. Right now, they might seem like it to you because they want you to think that. You’ve caught their attention, and they’re manipulators raised in the art of business and politics. They know the right way to approach someone, the right things to say to them to get them to let their guard down.”
“This sounds like it’s coming from experience,” Nix pointed out.
“If I tell you a secret, will you promise to keep it to yourself?” Juri nervously glanced toward the pathway.
Nix nodded. “I just told you about my cousin.”
“I’m technically a Legacy,” he said. “My older brother was a Demon when he came here five years ago. He hated the whole experience and ended up leaving the club instead of moving up in rank after graduation. My parents and I haven’t heard from him since he graduated early last year, aside from a text he sent me on my birthday.”
“What made it so bad for him?” Nix asked. “Aren’t the Demons in charge?”
“Legacies are considered Demons and allowed to live at the Roost,” Juri confirmed, “but there’s still a hierarchy. In the beginning, it was just my brother, Joel, and Breck Bardin—he’s Lake’s cousin. The second year was when Lake and the others enrolled as freshmen, though, and that’s when things went downhill. He wouldn’t ever give me details, but those guys are straight-up monsters. I’m a junior and at first he tried to convince my parents to send me somewhere else. I eventually got him to drop it by agreeing to wave my Legacy rights.”
“You can do that?”
“It’s practically unheard of, but yeah. I’m probably the only one in all of history who ever has, but I did. And I don’t regret it. Seeing the way he was forced to act on campus whenever those guys were around…Watching the toll it was taking on him…Joel was always a kind person, but you can’t just bring kindness to the table against bullies like Yejun and West.”
Had they done that to Branwen? Worn her down until she was a shell of the person she’d been?
“If they deemed someone unworthy, they’d turn the entire school against that person,” Juri said. “If my brother tried refusing to participate, they’d scold him publicly. One time, West even made my brother cry. They have this way of uncovering weakness and exploiting it.”
If Yejun’s list of events was to be believed, it was Branwen who’d approached him though. She’d been the one who lied about her intentions, spying on him and delivering messages to whoever the hell this hacker accomplice was.
Why would she do that? She was many things, but vigilante wasn’t one of them.
What did he really know about her? The deeper he got, the more he realized the answer was… nothing.
“Your brother,” he said. “He’s no longer around, but do you happen to know where he is?” Was there a chance that the hacker was Joel? Branwen was in the same grade as Yejun and the others, which meant she would have witnessed all of this. Could she have formed a friendship with Joel and cooked up this scheme with him?
It all sounded ridiculous. Like some bad detective tv show.
“He’s not on planet,” Juri replied. “He got a job on Drax and left almost immediately after graduation. He hasn’t been back since. Why? If you’re thinking he was friends with your cousin, I doubt the two knew each other.”
“What was his major?” Nix shrugged when that earned him another frown. “Humor me.”
“Sports therapy. He spent most of his time with the swim team and in the medical sciences buildings.”
That explained why Juri had been so upset when talking about Rase. The student Yejun stabbed in the eye must have been friends with his brother.
“What about computers? Programing? He any good?”
“No,” Juri shook his head, confusion growing. “I mean, he had an Enigma account, like practically everyone else on campus. But he didn’t really do anything with computers. That’s never been an interest of his.”
So, most likely not the hacker.
