---
The building was the same.
Clean glass walls. Marble floors. Sunlight bouncing too brightly off the polished surfaces — as if the place had nothing to hide.
Elara Voss stepped into Saint Adriaen University for the second time in her life. Not physically, but in this second life she never asked for — the one she now held in her hands like a knife waiting to cut clean.
Her shoes echoed across the hallway. The scent of espresso and disinfectant clung to the air. Everything was too familiar. Her body still remembered the route to her department, even if her soul wanted to claw its way out of this place.
The **Academic Integrity Board** notice stood tall in the lobby, glass-framed and sterile, like a gallery of public shaming. In her first life, her name would be pinned to it by sunset — accused of data theft and academic fraud.
> "But not this time."
---
She entered the classroom three minutes before the bell.
Second row. Third seat from the left.
The same seat where she'd been handed the USB that destroyed her.
Professor Kessler looked up from his desk, his face unreadable behind those thick-rimmed glasses.
"Good morning," he said smoothly, nodding to her like she was no more than another name on his list.
But she knew the truth.
He had forged it.
He had buried the evidence.
He had watched her drown in silence while sipping coffee in his office.
"Elara," he said, passing her a familiar black USB drive. "Simulation case file. Plug it in. Run the model. Submit results by Friday."
She took it with steady fingers and a smile so subtle it felt like ice melting in a dead room.
> *'In my last life, I plugged this in over lunch. The malware launched at 1:43 PM. They said I tried to steal research from the central lab. They made me a thief in the span of twenty minutes.'*
> *This time, I'm the one setting the trap.*
---
Lena Amsel slid into the seat beside her like a shadow in designer perfume.
"Late again?" Lena whispered, flashing that perfect smile that always came just before betrayal. "You're usually early."
"I was rewriting things," Elara replied coolly, eyes still on her laptop. "Didn't want the past catching up to me."
Lena paused, her brows twitching just slightly. Elara could almost hear her thinking — trying to decode the words, figure out whether she was being watched, recorded, cornered.
> She should be.
---
The first move wasn't dramatic.
Elara never believed in loud revenge.
She believed in precision.
Instead of plugging in the USB, she inserted her own — identical in shape, but already cleaned, rewritten, locked down. Kessler's USB went into her pocket. She'd clone it, dissect it, and expose the malicious script hidden within by nightfall.
But not publicly.
Not yet.
The downfall had to be quiet at first — like blood dripping under the floorboards.
---
She spent the next three hours moving through her schedule like nothing was different, while everything was.
The real Elara — the Elara of the first timeline — had cried in the bathroom stall after lunch, called Rowan in a panic, and then made the mistake of trying to "talk it out" with the administration.
This Elara?
She sat calmly in the girls' restroom at 11:41 AM, second floor, laptop balanced on her knees, running a silent line of code.
Her clone script filtered through the files on Kessler's USB in real time.
And there it was.
**Malware Script Detected. Last Edited: 03:17 AM.**
"Sloppy," she murmured under her breath.
She smiled — not the sweet smile she used to fake in group photos, but the real one. The dangerous one. The one that only surfaced when her hands were steady and someone else's world was about to fall apart.
---
By the time her last lecture ended, the trap was already set.
A forged email, identical to the one Kessler had once used to accuse her, now sat in her drafts — ready to be triggered and leaked, anonymously, at her command. All the timestamps. All the proof. Every breadcrumb of corruption. All pointing back to him.
And she would *not* use it yet.
No.
This was a test.
She wanted to see if he'd try again. If he'd dare send the same letter, make the same move.
---
At 4:18 PM, it happened.
A summons email landed in her inbox.
**"Academic Concern. Please report to the Dean's office at 4:30 PM."**
> "So predictable," she muttered, standing up.
---
This time, she didn't walk into that office trembling.
This time, she wore the face of a girl who knew every line of the script before the first page turned.
Dean Rochford sat behind a wide, oak desk — stern, stiff, old-fashioned. Kessler stood to the side, papers in hand, pretending neutrality.
"Ms. Voss," the Dean began, "There's been a concern raised about the integrity of your simulation project—"
Elara cut him off.
"Before you continue," she said, placing a flash drive onto the table, "I have something for you. It contains a full breakdown of the malware embedded in Professor Kessler's USB drive. Along with the metadata showing the file was edited in his home directory. Early this morning."
The room stilled.
"I also have screenshots of his email, forged in my name, accusing me of data theft. If you'd like, I can send it to the university board now. Or we can have a more private conversation."
Dean Rochford blinked, lips parting slightly. Kessler's face twitched for the first time.
"But…" he started, "…how did you—?"
Elara leaned in slightly, her tone calm, her gaze cutting through the room like winter steel.
"I told you," she said.
**"I rewrote the story."**
---
And just like that, the first piece of the past shattered clean.
She didn't yell. She didn't scream.
She just ended the accusation — before it could even begin.
--