HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

I didn’t sleep that night.

How could I? Dr. Moore’s words kept replaying in my head like a warning looping through a malfunctioning alarm system:
Har Irk is the first domino.

By morning, my entire world felt tilted — like the campus buildings had shifted a few degrees overnight and I was the only one who noticed. Students laughed at breakfast, spilled iced coffee on the stairs, complained about exams. People lived inside their bubbles, and those bubbles were thick.

I guess that’s what Moore meant about truth being a lion — most people build cages for it. I’ve never been good at that.

So, after my last class, I headed to the one place on campus where no one bothers you unless they want something:
the Winding Waters College Library basement, where the old political archives live — dust, microfilm readers, the works.

The room hummed with the low static of old machines and fluorescent lights. Perfect place for a quiet search into something I couldn’t yet define. I pulled every book off the shelf that even mentioned Sra: trade treaties, cultural histories, diplomatic analyses. And, of course, the modern textbooks — the sanitized ones.

As I flipped through them, all I saw was the same polished nonsense I’d read in school growing up. “Sra, a democratic ally of Erica…” “Historical tensions with the Alestians exaggerated by regional disputes…” “President Amin Yah, a stabilizing leader…”

The narratives were too clean. History isn’t clean. It bleeds.

I pushed the books aside and dug into independent sources — banned, unpublished, or out-of-print. The kind the library only kept because the staff didn’t know what half their storage room contained.

One, an old banned documentary transcript, stopped me cold.

It claimed something I had never heard: that Sra was not a nation born organically, but engineered — financially assembled by two Royal Kingdom banking giants, Aye and Ath Schil. A project built by money, not by people. And the Alestians? They weren’t “regional neighbors.” They were the original inhabitants. Displaced. Replaced. Erased.

The documentary was fragmented, water-damaged, missing pages — but even its shadows felt truer than the textbooks.

And a line near the end hit me like a chord in a song I’d heard before:

Control the narrative, control the world.

Someone had underlined it in red ink years ago.

I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until the pages blurred.

Then footsteps echoed behind me.

I froze.

But it wasn’t campus security or some intelligence agent in a trench coat. It was a student — a girl I recognized from Moore’s class — Lexia Nesbit, though everyone called her Lex. She hosted a small political talk show online. Sharp voice. Sharp mind. Too sharp for her own good, some said.

“You’re Ames, right?” she asked, stepping into the row. “Moore’s favorite student.”

“I’m not— I mean, he doesn’t—” I stuttered.

“Oh relax.” She smirked. “If he pulled you aside yesterday, you’re in the circle now.”

My heart rate tripled. “The what?”

She raised a brow. “You think he’s subtle? Dr. Moore’s been grooming people for years — trying to build what he calls a decentralized resistance. People who think independently, ask questions, look for patterns. We don’t meet. We just… notice each other.”

I stared at her. “Are you saying you’re—?”

“One of the scattered,” she said. “Not officially. Nobody is. That’s the point.”

I didn’t know what to say, and she could tell.

Lex crouched beside me and tapped the documentary in my hand.

“You found something, didn’t you.”

“Maybe,” I said quietly. “Something about how Sra really started. But it could be nonsense.”

“Oh, it’s nonsense,” she said. “But the dangerous kind. The kind people disappear for talking about.”

Her tone was casual but her eyes weren’t. They were deadly serious.

She leaned closer, lowering her voice.

“You ever wonder why Irk’s the only public figure calling out Sra for the Alestian killings? Why nobody else even touches it?”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Dr. Moore implied that someone’s keeping everyone quiet.”

Lex laughed once — but it wasn’t a happy sound.

“Oh, someone is. More than one someone. Sra funds half the media channels in Erica. And the other half are owned by people who want Sra’s money.”

She stood, dusting off her jeans.

“You want to understand what you’re getting pulled into?” she said. “Start with dark money. Trace every politician who says nothing about Sra. Silence is never free.”

She turned to leave, but paused.

“And Ames?” she added. “Be careful. People who go digging into Sra’s history don’t usually keep their scholarships.”

When she left, the room felt heavier.

I shut the transcript.

Walked upstairs.

And for the first time in my life… I felt watched.

I told myself it was my imagination.

But when I stepped into the evening air, I saw a man across the quad — dark suit, no bag, no phone, just standing. Eyes fixed in my direction. Not moving.

I blinked — and he turned away as if on cue.

Maybe coincidence.

Maybe not.

I walked faster. My hands were sweating. My mind raced.

Dr. Moore’s warning echoed in the back of my skull:

If Irk disappears, the official line will be lies.

And beneath that, a smaller voice — my own:

What did Irk know that made him worth silencing?

I didn’t have the answer.

Not yet.

But I could feel it now — the unraveling had started.

And whether I liked it or not…

… I was already pulling the thread.