The air in their usual meeting spot was heavy with silence, save for the soft, rapid clicking of Luke’s keyboard. His eyes were locked onto the screen, scanning through yet another set of recovered files. Sen and Hakari, less enthralled by the digital mystery, sat on nearby desks, waiting for something interesting to happen. Yen sat off to the side, fiddling with his camera, snapping pictures of the classroom in its eerie stillness. His eyes occasionally flicked over to the group, but he mostly kept to himself, lost in his own world.

“So,” Sen finally broke the silence, swinging his legs. “What illegal government experiment are we exposing today?”

Luke didn’t look up. “The Lunch Program.”

Hakari groaned. “Oh, come on. If this is about how the meatloaf looked like roadkill, we already knew that.”

Yen’s camera clicked again, a slight chuckle escaping him. “Yeah, that meatloaf was something else…” He trailed off, not wanting to distract them further but clearly amused.

Luke ignored both of them and kept scrolling. “It was supposed to be this big scholarship incentive,” he explained. “Daily free meals for students who signed up, and if they stayed in the program long enough, they’d get a full ride to Shady College.”

Hakari snorted. “And let me guess, nobody actually got that scholarship?”

Luke nodded. “No record of a single student receiving it.”

Sen leaned forward, intrigued. “So it was a scam?”

“More than that.” Luke’s fingers hovered over the trackpad. “The program ended the same day the school shut down. And I just found a report that—” He paused, squinting at the screen. “Wait. This is weird.”

Hakari and Sen moved closer, peering over his shoulder. Yen put down his camera and leaned in slightly, curious but keeping his distance. Luke pulled up a heavily redacted document. Large chunks of text were blacked out, but what remained was enough to send a chill down his spine.

“‘Trace chemical enhancements detected in distributed meals,’” Luke read aloud. “‘Preliminary findings suggest potential long-term health concerns among select participants… Unexplained symptoms reported post-exposure…’”

Hakari blinked. “Okay, that’s way worse than expired chicken nuggets.”

Sen frowned. “Hold up. Are you saying the food was drugged?”

Luke scrolled down. “It doesn’t say exactly what was in it, but the wording is vague on purpose. They didn’t want to outright admit anything. Just enough to cover themselves legally.”

Yen’s fingers traced the edge of his camera, his expression darkening slightly. “If it’s what I think it is, that’s pretty messed up.”

Hakari crossed her arms. “I mean, isn’t that just a fancy way of saying cafeteria food was gross and made kids sick? Not exactly groundbreaking.”

“This is different,” Luke insisted. “It’s not about bad food. It’s about intent. If they were putting something in the lunches, there had to be a reason.”

Sen leaned back against the desk, tapping his fingers against the wood. “Y’know… I actually tried it once.”

Both Luke and Hakari turned to him. Yen glanced over with a raised eyebrow, catching Sen's words in the air.

“You what?” Hakari asked.

“Tried the lunch.” He muttered. “Just once. It felt wrong. Like, bad food wrong. It was, I don’t know, artificial? It was weird enough that I never touched it again.”

Yen shrugged, as if this wasn’t a big deal. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time the school served garbage.”

Hakari raised an eyebrow. “And you’re just now telling us this?”

“I didn’t think it mattered,” Sen said. “The school was already shady as hell, so of course the food would be sketchy.”

Luke looked back at the screen, rereading the report with new eyes. “What if it wasn’t just food? What if it was another part of Project Eidolon?”

Hakari groaned. “Great. Now we’re saying the cafeteria food was mind control?”

Luke didn’t answer, too lost in thought. For the next hour, they kept searching, but nothing outright confirmed what was in the food or why the program ended so suddenly. Any useful documents were missing, deleted, or redacted beyond readability.

“This is pointless,” Hakari finally said, leaning back in frustration. “If they wanted to hide it, they hid it well.”

Luke sighed. He hated dead ends.

Sen, now bored, flipped through a crumpled old lunch menu he’d found in a desk drawer. “These look normal. Meatball Mondays, Taco Tuesdays… nothing screams ‘brainwashing chemicals.’”

Hakari smirked. “No, but those mystery meat burgers definitely scream biohazard.”

Yen snapped another picture, quietly observing his friends with a distant look in his eyes. “Yeah, but biohazard food doesn’t usually end with scholarships.”

Luke rubbed his temples. “There’s something we’re missing. I can feel it.”

“Yeah, well, you keep feeling it,” Hakari said, hopping off the desk. “I’m gonna go feel normal air and not think about government cafeteria conspiracies.”

Sen followed her lead, stuffing the lunch menu into his jacket. “Call me when you find something, detective.”

Luke barely heard them, his eyes still glued to the screen. Something about this wasn’t right. The missing scholarship, the chemically enhanced food, the timing of the school’s closure… Shady High was hiding something bigger.

Luke sat alone, the glow of his laptop screen illuminating his face in the darkened classroom. Sen and Hakari had already wandered off, bored of chasing another dead end. Yen remained seated, now playing with the focus on his camera lens but occasionally glancing at Luke, sensing his tension.

Frustrated, Luke leaned back, rubbing his eyes. That’s when his gaze landed on the old, worn leather notebook Sen had found a few days ago. The one filled with bizarre symbols they hadn’t been able to decipher.

A wild thought struck him.

He flipped through the notebook, scanning the strange script again. Something about it seemed familiar. A chill ran down his spine. He recognized a pattern, one that matched a code buried in the corrupted files from the faculty room’s hard drive. His fingers flew across the keyboard, cross-referencing the symbols. Piece by piece, the encrypted writing unraveled, revealing words.

He had cracked the language.

His heart pounded as he wrote down the translated version of the code. It wasn’t just random nonsense. It was a message. As he was writing it, his breath caught in his throat.

The chemicals in the lunch program were basically poison. None of us knew.

The only people who signed up for the Shady College program were the ones willingly involved with the deals.

The doses were small, but if you did as the program said and ate it every day until graduation, you would die by the end of high school—unless you were given the antidote.

You had to agree to continue serving them, for life, if you wanted the antidote.

It’s a trap and a scam. Don’t listen to them. Don’t eat their slop.

I don’t have much time left.

I’m one of the people who signed up for their god-awful lunch program.

The deals—they’re not international.

Daedalus Industries is heavily involved, but they aren’t shipping outside of Yasoka.

Please, whoever reads this, stop them before they get out of control. They’re still—

The message cut off abruptly. Luke sat frozen, his stomach twisting. Whoever wrote this, they knew. And they died before they could say the rest. His fingers hovered over the keyboard. But before he could do anything…

The file deleted itself. Lines of text blinked out of existence, the screen filling with error messages. It was intentional. Someone had programmed it to self-destruct.

“Luke?” Yen walked over to see what he had written in such a hurry, ignoring the error messages on the computer.

“This is disturbing, to say the least.” Luke concluded, sighing as he rubbed the back of his neck. He’s trying his best not to show it, but he’s more disturbed than he’s letting on.

Yen skimmed over the paper in what could only be described as horror. “Luke, I get that you probably don’t want to hear this from me, but I don’t think you should be getting involved in this.”

“I know that. But it’s the right thing to do. If we did this right, we could really do the world some good.”

“Call the police, then. You shouldn’t be doing this by yourself, we’re just highschool students!” Yen argued.

“I know that, too. But with involvement from a company like Daedalus, and the insane amount of cover-up… These people didn’t leave very many clues, and we’re probably only scratching the surface. I highly doubt the police would want to hear this as it stands.” Luke defended himself.

Yen sighed. “I just want you to be safe. I want us to be safe.”

The door creaked open, making both of them jump.

Hakari stepped inside, raising an eyebrow at their stunned expression. “Uh, why do you look like you’ve just seen a ghost?”

Luke swallowed, staring at the now-empty screen. Yen looked to the side, backing away so that Hakari and Sen could see what Luke found.

“I found out what the lunch program really was,” he muttered.

Hakari crossed her arms. “And?”

Luke huffed.

“It was never about scholarships,” he said, voice tight. “It was about control.”

Yen stood behind them, his camera lowered. He didn’t say anything.

Hakari frowned. “What?”

Luke took a deep breath before he explained. “The chemicals in the food were poisonous. If you completed the program, you were set to die by the end of your high school years. They’d give you the antidote if you agreed to go to their college, and spend the rest of your life working for them.”

“What?” Hakari repeated.

Sen simply stared at Luke, not sure what he could say.

“Read it yourself.” Luke handed her the paper, and Sen quickly read over her shoulder.

Yen fidgeted with his camera, his face expressionless. The weight of the revelation hung heavy in the air, thick with unspoken thoughts.