Story code: ST-001544
Part 2: The Raw Footage
The grip on my shoulder was like a vice, the leather stiff and unyielding. I was yanked backward, my thumb missing the record button as my screen blurred. I spun around to find myself staring at the tactical chest rig of a man who smelled distinctly of stale coffee, spearmint gum, and gun oil.
“Phones are a security risk during lockdown sweeps, kid,” the contractor grunted. He snatched the device from my hand before I could even tighten my grip.
Through the glass, Principal Sterling stopped laughing. He handed his paper coffee cup to one of the other guards and pushed through the heavy suite doors, his polished dress shoes clicking sharply against the linoleum. He adjusted his tailored suit jacket, his expression smoothing out into a mask of professional concern.
“Is there a problem here, Officer Davies?” Sterling asked, his eyes locking onto me. He knew my face. He knew the faces of all forty-two legacy students left in the senior class, the ones dragging down the school’s new pristine test averages.
“Caught him loitering outside the suite, sir. Phone out.”
“I was texting my mom,” I lied, keeping my voice perfectly flat. I forced my heart rate down, drawing on years of practice dealing with cops who stopped us for walking too fast down our own streets. “She heard the sirens. She thought there was a real shooter.”
Sterling’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “A perfectly natural response, Mateo. But as you know, the student handbook strictly forbids unauthorized recording on campus. Especially during safety protocols.” He held out his hand. The contractor dropped my phone into his palm. Sterling tapped the screen, but it had timed out, locking instantly.
He handed it back to me, leaning in just close enough that I could smell his expensive cologne. “We are building a resilient, forward-thinking community here. We need students who can adapt to our new standards. I would hate to see you fail to adapt, Mateo. We already have so many applicants on the waitlist who are eager to succeed. Return to class.”
It was a threat, wrapped in administrative polish. One wrong move, one unexcused absence or minor infraction, and I was out.
I shoved the phone in my pocket and walked away, my hands balled into fists so tight my knuckles ached. The evidence was gone. If I went to the school board with just a story, they would call me a disgruntled, underperforming student making excuses.
By the time I reached the cafeteria for fifth period, the division in the room was nauseating. At the long tables near the windows, the transplant kids were laughing, trading stories about how they thought the drill was an immersive theater project, eating their artisanal lunches.
In the shadowed corner near the vending machines, the legacy kids sat in absolute, suffocating silence.
I slid into the booth next to Marcus. He hadn’t touched his food. His leg was bouncing with a manic, nervous energy, and his eyes were bloodshot. Maria was tearing a napkin into tiny, microscopic shreds.
“I’m gonna bring a bat tomorrow,” Marcus whispered, his voice trembling with a rage that terrified me. “Or a pipe. Next time one of those fake-ass soldiers rattles my door, I’m swinging. I swear to God, Mateo, I’m swinging.”
“That’s exactly what Sterling wants,” I said, leaning in low. “You swing at them, you’re not just expelled. You’re arrested for assaulting a security officer. They want a reason to call us violent. They want us gone.”
“So we just let them terrorize us?” Maria asked, her voice cracking. “My little brother is in the freshman wing. He wet himself, Mateo. He wet himself in front of the new kids, and they laughed at him. He’s in the bathroom crying and won’t come out.”
The cold, sharp focus that had settled in my chest back in the hallway crystallized into something harder. A plan.
“No,” I said quietly. “We don’t let them. But we don’t fight them with a bat.”
Sterling had spent a million dollars upgrading the school’s security infrastructure. That included the new 4K panoramic cameras mounted at every intersection, every hallway, every office. The administration boasted that the system uploaded straight to a secure cloud server to ensure total transparency. Tonight was the first massive PTA meeting of the year-the “Safety Showcase.” Sterling was going to pack the auditorium with wealthy transplant parents and show them a heavily edited, PR-friendly highlight reel of the drill to justify the budget.
He had the footage. I just needed to steal it and change the reel.
During sixth period, I asked for a bathroom pass and slipped into the library. The new IT contractor had set up all the teacher workstations, but like most lazy tech rollouts, they hadn’t changed the default administrative passwords on the shared faculty drives yet. I knew this because I used to help the old janitor fix the routers before the school outsourced his job.
I sat at a hidden terminal in the back stacks, typed in the default admin credentials, and bypassed the faculty firewall. The security subfolder was massive. I found the directory labeled ‘Morning_Drill_Raw’.
I clicked the first file. The screen filled with high-definition footage of the chemistry wing. There was the freshman, crying hysterically as I pulled him from the closet. I clicked another file. Marcus, clutching a desk like a shield, his face twisted in pure survival panic.
Then, the goldmine. The camera feed inside the administration suite. No audio, but the visual was undeniable. Sterling standing at the reception desk, smiling broadly, handing a thick envelope to the laughing tactical guards while students outside were hyperventilating.
I plugged in my flash drive and copied the files. My hands were shaking again, but this time it wasn’t fear. It was power.
I spent the next hour in an empty bathroom stall on my laptop, splicing the raw footage together. I cut the footage of the traumatized legacy students directly against the footage of Sterling and the guards laughing. It was brutal. It was undeniable. It was the truth.
But I couldn’t just email it out. Sterling’s IT team would scrub it from the server and claim it was a deepfake. I needed the transplant parents to see it with their own eyes, in a public forum where Sterling couldn’t hit the kill switch. I had to project it at the Safety Showcase tonight.
Which meant I needed access to the auditorium’s AV booth.
I skipped my last class and slipped into the auditorium. The cavernous room was dark, the stage already set up with a massive projector screen. I crept up the carpeted stairs to the AV booth at the back of the balcony. It was empty, but the control board was already powered on, a single laptop plugged into the main feed.
I crouched beneath the desk, waiting for the final bell to ring, planning to swap the files on the laptop and hide until the meeting started.
But then the heavy double doors of the auditorium slammed shut, the locking mechanisms engaging with a loud, electronic thud.
Footsteps echoed on the stairs leading up to the booth. Heavy, leather boots.
“Sweep the room and lock it down,” a voice barked, the sound carrying perfectly in the acoustic space. It was Officer Davies. “Nobody goes near this projector until Sterling gives the signal. I’m sitting in the booth myself.”
The door handle to the AV booth began to turn. I was trapped under the desk, clutching a flash drive, with nowhere to run.