Knocking once, Anya didn't wait for an invitation. Pushing the heavy oak door inward, she stepped into Professor Davies’s cluttered office. Dust motes danced in the slivers of afternoon light piercing the drawn blinds.
Davies sat hunched over his desk, a half-empty teacup steaming beside a stack of old lecture notes. His usually neat white hair was disheveled, and dark circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes. He looked up, startled, his spectacles askew.
“Anya, my dear… I wasn't expecting you.” His voice was reedy, thinner than she remembered.
“Professor, we need to talk. About the competition. About the fire.” Her tone left no room for pleasantries. She closed the door behind her, the soft click echoing too loudly in the small space.
Davies’s gaze flickered, darting from her face to the stacked papers, then to a faded painting on the wall. A nervous tic started in his jaw.
“What is there to say, Anya? It was a tragedy. A terrible accident.” He tried to sound dismissive, but his hands, clasped on the desk, trembled visibly.
“Accident?” Anya took a step closer. “Or a convenient way to bury a scandal? The fire wasn't accidental, was it? And neither was the manipulation of the competition results.”
His eyes, magnified by his glasses, widened slightly. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“You’re… you're speaking nonsense, child. Conspiracy theories.” His voice cracked on the last word.
Moving to stand directly opposite his desk, Anya leaned forward. “The original scores, Professor. They were suppressed. I know. I saw them. Your name was on the review panel. You saw them too, didn’t you?”
Davies flinched as if struck. He pushed himself back from the desk, scraping his chair across the wooden floor. His breath came in shallow gasps.
“It wasn’t… it wasn’t my choice.” His voice was barely a whisper now, thick with a confession already forming.
“Whose choice was it then?” Anya pressed, unrelenting. “Who had the power to make an entire institution look the other way? To silence everyone involved?”
He slumped back, defeat etched into every line of his face. His gaze fell to his trembling hands. “The Everhart family,” he murmured, the name a venomous secret escaping his lips.
Anya’s heart lurched. She’d suspected, but hearing it confirmed, openly, felt like a punch to the gut. “Elias’s family?”
Davies nodded slowly, his head heavy. “They… they had interests in the competition. A protégé they wanted to push through. They were invested in the academy’s reputation, but only on their terms.”
“And the fire?” Anya's voice was sharp. “How does a ‘convenient’ fire fit into their interests?”
“It was after,” he whispered, his voice gaining a strained urgency. “After the initial uproar. When whispers started. When people began asking questions about the results, about the missing files… The fire, it made everything disappear. Irreplaceable records. Evidence.”
“And you helped them, didn’t you?” Anya accused, her voice tinged with a raw disappointment. “You were supposed to uphold the integrity of this place.”
Shame painted his face crimson. His eyes were wet, glistening behind the lenses. “I was… I was threatened, Anya. My pension. My reputation. My life’s work. They have long reach. So much power. They promised to protect me if I cooperated. To make it all go away.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, a tear escaping and tracing a path through the dust on his cheek. “I signed the revised reports. I corroborated the official narrative. I watched as they systematically erased the truth.”
“Who else knew?” Anya asked, her mind racing, connecting the dots of Elias’s strange protectiveness, his sudden shifts.
“Many knew, in part. Few knew the whole monstrous truth,” Davies said, opening his eyes, their depth now filled with a crushing despair. “But one, he tried to fight it. He saw the injustice. He tried to expose them.”
Anya felt a cold dread creep up her spine. “Who?”
Davies looked up at her, a profound sadness in his gaze. “Elias. He was just a boy, fresh out of his own academy, interning with the family's corporate arm. He’d seen the manipulation, had access to some of the initial reports. He believed in truth, in honor.”
“Elias tried to expose his own family?” The idea was staggering. Elias, the enigmatic, powerful heir, a rebel in his own right, fighting a ghost from his past.
“He did,” Davies confirmed, his voice choked with emotion. “He was disgusted by it all. He tried to gather evidence, to leak it. He thought he could outmaneuver them, bring it to light.”
Davies leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, as if the walls themselves had ears. “They almost destroyed him for it, Anya. His own family. They silenced him completely. Professionally. Emotionally. He disappeared for months. Some said he had a breakdown. Others, a severe accident. But I knew. I saw the fear in his eyes. He was a broken shell when he returned. A warning to anyone else who dared to cross them.”
Anya stared, horrified, as the true, devastating scale of Elias’s past, and the family’s ruthless grip, finally clicked into place. The pieces of the puzzle, dark and twisted, now formed a complete, agonizing picture.