The door to the storage room clicked, then swung open.

  Light flooded in from the lab beyond—harsh, fluorescent, blinding. A figure filled the doorframe, features lost to shadow.

  Amelia wanted to, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away.

  The man moved inside, and the doorway released him, pulling his features into focus. He was shorter than the frosted glass had made him seem. Thin and wiry, with a slight middle-aged paunch hanging over his belt. His hair had receded to the sides, graying at the temples and down through his beard. Thick-rimmed glasses sat crooked on his nose, white lab coat loose at the shoulders, a size or two too big for his frame.

  Amelia recognized him immediately. She looked across to Marv.

  "It's him, Ames," he whispered. "Doctor Buzzkill."

  All she could do was nod.

  The man nudged the door shut with his heel, then set the paper bag and cup down with deliberate care. He turned back toward them and folded his arms. The sleeves of his lab coat hung loose around his wrists, giving him the look of an impatient wizard.

  "Well…” The word landed flat and precise, with a long pause after it. "I wasn't aware that the university's admissions process now included breaking and entering."

  Pale green eyes flicked between them, unblinking. He waited.

  Amelia pushed herself to her feet and tugged off her baseball cap, holding it at her midriff with both hands. Her pulse was still high, but the tremors in her arms and legs had almost stopped.

  "You're the man from the photo," she said, gesturing toward the lab. "Out there."

  He adjusted his glasses. "Yes. Indeed I am. I'm Professor Gideon Vale, and this is my lab—which hopefully explains what I'm doing here. Now, perhaps you can do me the same courtesy?"

  Amelia looked down at the floor.

  "My name is Amelia Swanson. And this is my friend, Marv Dumile. We're students at Willowbrook High."

  Nothing.

  "I know we shouldn't be in here, but we're looking for information… about my mother."

  "Your mother? And why on earth would you think you'd find that in my lab?"

  "I'm pretty sure she worked here, Professor Vale."

  "I think you're mistaken." He seemed mildly amused. "I'm the only tenured professor in this department now; I can’t even get budget for a research assistant. My staff is made up entirely of postgraduates. And I'd be very surprised if any of them, even the wilder ones, had a teenage daughter. ”

  “She doesn’t work here anymore. It was a long time ago,"

  Vale grabbed the paper cup from the nearby shelf and took a sip. "Cold. That figures. Another one wasted… I need to start bringing in a flask.”

  He placed the cold coffee back on the shelf and fastened the plastic lid down, though he didn’t need to. Then he seemed to remember the thread he’d been pulling. He turned back to Amelia.

  “Alright, young lady. You say your mother worked here. Well, let’s find out. I've been head of this department for the past sixteen years. If she did, I’ll know her. Whether she was a research fellow or cleaned out the Petri dishes, I never forget a name. So I think it’s time you gave me one. Before my patience runs out.

  Amelia's mouth opened, but nothing came.

  Marv shifted at her shoulder.

  "A name," he repeated.

  "And maybe I won't call security."

  Amelia swallowed.

  Vale reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone. He lifted it to his ear.

  Amelia lifted a hand to stop him.

  "Her name was Lockwood... Evelyn Lockwood.”

  Vale's shoulders twitched. He lowered the phone to his side. Then he went completely still.

  “Please don’t call security, Professor Vale,” Amelia continued, “We’ll leave quietly, and I can pay for any damages. We don’t want any trouble.”

  "Evelyn… Lockwood." Vale said. His voice was slower, quieter. "I need to know where you heard that name. Who sent you here?”

  "Nobody sent me. I told you. She was my mother.”

  Something moved across Vale's face. Amelia couldn't tell what it was. He stepped toward her. Amelia stood firm. She felt Marv tense beside her, shifting on his heels like he was about to step between them. Her hand dropped to her side, fingers spread. Don't. It's ok.

  Vale stopped directly in front of her. She could see the wispy grays in his eyebrows. He tipped his head back, peering down through the lower half of his glasses, like he was examining a specimen under poor light.

  His pupils began to widen.

  "My God. I should have seen it… your eyes… you’ve got Evey's eyes."

  Vale stepped back, palms raised slightly. An apology without words.

  “You really did know her?” The words seemed to catch in the back of Amelia’s throat.

  “I did, yes.” Vale nodded, letting out a short breath. "I worked with Evelyn for a long time. Some of the best years of my life." He paused, gazing up toward the small window at the back of the storage cupboard. "She had a brilliant mind. She could see patterns where the rest of us only saw noise. Connections that seemed impossible to everyone else. She made us all feel like we were fumbling around in the dark."

  He fell quiet for a moment.

  "She never mentioned a daughter, though," he said quietly. "Evelyn liked to keep her personal life separate from her work. I knew she was married, but she didn't talk about—" He stopped. Exhaled. "I'm sorry. What happened to her and Benjamin… it was a terrible thing."

  Amelia’s arms folded tight across her chest, as though the temperature had dropped. "What do you know about it, Professor? Do you have any idea who killed them?"

  "No, I don’t. I know they were murdered. But I don't know why, or by whom."

  "Nobody seems to. I’ve been trying to find out my whole life."

  Vale looked up at her. “A home invasion, a robbery—that's what they called it,”

  “It wasn’t a robbery. That much I do know. I was there. In the room with them, when it happened."

  "You were there? But you must have only been—" He stopped.

  “Four. I was four,” Amelia's voice was steady, but quiet. "Mom hid me in the bedroom closet just before it happened. Dad told me not to move." She paused. "Then they closed the door. I stayed in there for hours." Her grip tightened on the cap. “I heard the shouting. The struggle. A gunshot.“ Her breath caught. “And then nothing."

  "Oh my," Vale said quietly. "I'm so sorry.”

  Marv shifted beside her, gaze on the floor.

  "The police found Dad on the landing," she continued. "He'd gone out to face the intruder—to protect me and Mom. She was in the bedroom, by the bed. Just a few feet away from the closet door." Her voice cracked. "I didn't see them afterwards. The police took me away, they made sure I didn't."

  “I can’t imagine what that must have been like… what it must have done to you. I had no idea."

  “Well, now you do."

  Vale nodded slowly. "It's no wonder you want answers, Amelia."

  "That's all I want. Answers… and the truth."

  Vale glanced around the supply room, then motioned toward the door. "Come with me. We can talk more through here."

  He turned, lab coat trailing behind him. Amelia glanced at Marv, then followed.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  The lab was cooler, and much lighter, than the storage room. The walk-in freezer still hummed softly in the corner. Marv pulled the Gulls beanie from his head, his hair springing free instantly, as if it had never been contained. He stuffed the hat in the back pocket of his jeans, half of out hanging out. Vale leaned against a metal counter, hands bracing his weight on the edge.

  "In the weeks before Evey's death, I knew something was wrong. She was working on a new project—wouldn't tell me what. Said she'd explain it to me when she could." He paused. "I should have tried harder. If I'd pushed her, asked more questions… maybe things would have played out differently."

  Amelia shifted her weight. "Don't blame yourself, Professor. My mom had a stubborn streak. If she wasn't ready to share something, nothing you could have said would've changed her mind."

  “Stubborn?” Vale let out a breath. "That she was. Evey was one of the most headstrong people I've ever met. It was remarkable really. When she latched on to a problem, she wouldn't stop until she'd solved it, even when I told her it was impossible."

  He looked at Amelia, then Marv, then back.

  "But those final weeks weren't just stubbornness. She became withdrawn. Quiet. Secretive. Evelyn was never one for small talk, but when she was really excited by something—a new discovery, or a breakthrough—you couldn't shut her up.” He smiled faintly. It faded. "This time, she barely said a word. Kept her office door closed, which she’d never done before.”

  "Did she give you any details about it?" Amelia asked. "Anything at all?"

  Vale nodded slowly. "She called it transformative. Said it could change everything. But she never explained what that meant—just that she'd tell me when the time was right." His voice dropped. "She never got the chance."

  Silence.

  Marv cleared his throat. "Do you know what else she was working on around that time, Professor Vale?"

  "Officially, she was employed by the Unity Council. They funded her tenure at the university. She split her time between their work and ours." Vale paused. "The Council had her assigned to several projects. Environmental and energy research, mostly. White papers and the like. Her work for the Council funded what she really loved: the climate research we were doing here." He gestured vaguely around the lab. "We were deep into it back then. Tracking changes, trying to predict patterns. The sea was rising, and the climate was changing faster than anyone expected." His voice dropped. "But none of us saw Hurricane Leda coming."

  Amelia's gaze drifted to the map on the wall, the red line cutting across the coast, photographs of the damage pinned all around it.

  "Leda caught everyone by surprise.” Vale shook his head. "Even those of us who were looking at the data. It just came out of nowhere. We still don't know how. It's a blessing, I suppose, that Evey didn't live to see it. She would have been devastated that we missed it."

  "Nobody could’ve seen it coming, Professor,” Marv said. “That's kind of the point, right? Leda was a once-in-a-lifetime weather anomaly. You can't predict what the data doesn't show you."

  Vale held Marv's gaze for a moment. Then he looked away.

  "The secret project," Amelia said. "The one she wouldn't tell you about—there must have been records. Paperwork, notes, something. Did you find anything, after—"

  Vale's expression darkened. "That's what didn't sit right with me. How fast the Unity Council showed up after what happened."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Less than twenty-four hours later, a group of lawyers arrived unannounced, waving contracts around. They claimed there was an intellectual property clause—rights to everything Evelyn had done for the Council." He shook his head. "I didn't know anything about it. I tried to stop them. Called the Dean. Called campus security. But there was nothing they could do. The lawyers had their own security detail with them. A big guy seemed to be in charge." He paused. "I seem to remember he had some kind of mechanical arm."

  Amelia looked at Marv. "Orion Blackwell."

  Marv nodded. Vale looked between them, confused.

  "He's the Council's head of security, Professor," Marv said. "You did right to stay out of his way."

  Vale's jaw tightened. "His team ransacked everything. Every drawer, every surface. The whole lab. I told them that Evey kept all her work in her office, but they didn't listen. They took everything. Years of research. We basically had to start again."

  Amelia's hands tightened on the peak of her cap. "So whatever my mom was working on—"

  Vale nodded. "The Unity Council has it now."

  "Why do you think they wanted it so badly?"

  Vale shook his head. "That's the question, isn't it? Whatever it was, it had to be significant. Transformative, like Evey said." He paused. "But here's the thing that niggles at me, even after all these years… I haven't seen it. I've followed the news, the scientific journals, all the Council's announcements. Nothing that would fit has ever surfaced. Not in over a decade."

  "So —" Marv started.

  "So, whatever it was, it hasn't been made public. At least, not that I've seen."

  Marv frowned. "That means they either canned it—decided it was too hard or too expensive—or—"

  "Or what?" Amelia asked.

  "Or they didn’t.” Vale's voice dropped to almost a whisper. “And, to be honest, I'm not sure which possibility is worse."

  Amelia wrapped a hand around her closed fist. “Then we need to find out. I want to know what it is, and why they took it."

  Vale studied her for a moment, then let a wry smile escape from one side of his mouth. "You're Evelyn's daughter, all right. But, if you are going to dig into this, you need to tread carefully. There's a real possibility that whatever Evelyn discovered is the reason your parents were killed."

  "I know." Amelia straightened. “But we might have a lead."

  Vale raised an eyebrow. "Go on."

  "Have you ever heard of someone called Alexander Bennett?"

  "Yes. Indeed I have. Another name from the distant past,”

  “Well, I think he’s behind all this. I’m pretty sure he had something to do with my parents being killed.”

  Vale shifted against the desk. "I don’t know where this lead came from, but I'm afraid you’re mistaken, Miss Swanson.”

  Amelia blinked. "What do you mean?"

  "I knew Alexander. Not well, but well enough. We moved in similar circles. He was close with your parents. Your mother, she always spoke highly of him. Intelligent. Principled. Someone she trusted.” Vale removed his glasses and cleaned them on the hem of his lab coat. "He disappeared at the same time—the day they died. Nobody's seen himsince that night."

  "Exactly,” Amelia spat. “That can't be a coincidence, can it? Seems like he killed them, and then ran so he wouldn't get caught.”

  Vale hesitated. "I suppose that is possible. But the way your mother spoke about him, I'm not so sure. She was good at reading people, and she considered him a good man."

  "So what are you saying, Professor? That I'm right back at the start again?"

  Vale's eyes met hers. "I know you want answers, Amelia. And I'm not trying to get in the way of that." He held his glasses up to the light, then placed them carefully back on the bridge of his nose. "But certainty can make you blind. Believe me, I know. After your mother died, I threw myself into the work. It was a convenient place to hide; my brain has always found comfort in numbers. But something in the data was gnawing at me—I couldn't tell you what, exactly, but I knew something was wrong. I could feel it. So I started digging."

  "And what did you find?" Amelia asked.

  "I obsessed over the key climate tracking markers for weeks: ice sheet loss, CO2 levels, ocean temperatures. I was so convinced the answer was staring at me that I ignored the rest of the data. The anomalies in the deep ocean thermal layers didn’t fit my theory, so I dismissed them early on." He pushed himself off the bench and paced toward the map on the wall. “Those anomalies were a warning. If I’d just listened to what they were telling me, I could have raised the alarm. Nothing would have stopped Leda, but I could have warned people. Saved lives. An entire city was destroyed; millions of people lost their homes. All because of my tunnel vision. I was so certain I already knew the answer that I ignored what was right in front of me.”

  “So you think I’m wrong about Bennett?”

  "Bennett's disappearance is suspicious. I won't argue with that.” Vale shrugged, his hands in his lab coat pockets. “It could mean he's guilty, and he ran. But it could also mean he was a victim, that someone also silenced him too. Don't make my mistake, Amelia. Don't force the data to fit around a conclusion that you've already reached.”

  Amelia nodded faintly, hands tightening around the strap of her bag. “Okay. So, if Bennett isn’t responsible, you think he might be dead too?"

  "I honestly have no idea. But, either way, he's gone. Nobody's heard from him in over a decade." Vale flicked his watch up to check the time. "Look, I wish I could tell you more, but in five minutes I have a class arriving. Under the circumstances, I don't think you should be seen here. And I'd rather not explain to twenty students why the building's secure access has been dismantled and there are two teenagers in my storage cupboard. The Dean is pushing hard enough for me to retire as it is.”

  Amelia nodded. "You're right, we should go. Thanks, Professor Vale. I'm sorry we broke in—"

  "Don't." He raised a hand. "You came here looking for answers. I can understand that. Hopefully I’ve given you something useful.”

  “You have. Thanks.”

  Vale pulled a pen from his lab coat pocket and scribbled on a scrap of paper. "If you find anything, or you need help, here." He held it out. "My office number. And my personal line."

  Amelia took it.

  "I mean it," Vale said. "If you're going to do this, you both need to watch your step. And don't assume anyone is who they say they are."

  Marv glanced at Amelia. "Do you think the Council—"

  "I think," Vale interrupted, "that people who send armed security to ransack a dead woman's office aren't going to take kindly to snooping. You're lucky it was me that found you." His gaze moved between them. "And I know Evey would want me to make sure her daughter doesn't —" He stopped himself. "Just… be smart, will you?"

  Amelia met his gaze. "We will."

  Vale moved toward the door, opened it partway and checked the corridor. He pushed it wide, then turned back to them. "Now go, quickly. And be careful."

  "Thank you, Professor," Amelia said quietly.

  Vale nodded once. As they moved toward the door, Marv paused.

  "Sorry about your card reader, Professor. But maybe now the university will pay for some proper security."

  Vale's expression didn't change, "Don't count on it, Mister Dumile. Don’t count on it."

  They slipped into the corridor. Vale watched until they reached the exit. Then he moved back into the lab and let the door swing shut.

  * * *

  Outside, Amelia and Marv retraced their steps back to the exit. The campus was quiet now—game day over, the air still.

  "So what now, Ames?" Marv asked. "Do you believe him… about Bennett?"

  Amelia kept her gaze ahead. "I don't know yet, Marv. But everyone seems to have a different story. There's only one way to get the to the truth—we need to hear it from Bennett himself." She paused. "If he's out there, we need to find him. If he's not, we find out why."

  Marv was quiet for a moment. "Professor Vale just told us that whatever this is, it might've gotten your parents killed. You sure you want to keep going, Ames?"

  "I have to, Marv."

  “Yeah.” Marv buried his hands in his jacket pockets. “I know."

  They stepped through the gates and onto the sidewalk. The air had shifted. A coolness hung on the breeze that hadn’t been there before, carrying with it the faint smell of rains yet to come. They turned a corner toward the bus station. Neither of them noticed the dark green sedan with tinted windows that slid out from a side street and followed, half a block behind.