Chapter 77

“Officer, I have the surveillance footage right here,” Dustin said, sinking into a
nearby sofa and crossing his legs. His arrogance was palpable; he wasn’t scared at all. “It will prove that my son is indeed the victim.”
At his words, Qadir and his friends frowned. There were indeed cameras in the area, but wouldn’t showing the footage just prove that Waheed and his group started the fight? Would Dustin and his son be stupid enough to hand the police evidence of their own wrongdoing? This had to be a trap.
And it was. When the video played, everyone in the room was stunned.
On the screen, Juniper’s initial movements to dodge Waheed were edited to look like a malicious shove, sending him crashing to the ground like a helpless victim. The subsequent footage showed Juniper attacking the other boys, who writhed on the ground in agony. The part where she was fighting back was there, but the initial provocation—the part where they attacked first—had been completely cut out. The video painted Juniper as the sole aggressor and the Eclara High students as defenseless victims.
“Do you have anything else to say?” Dustin took a drag from his cigarette, a smirk playing on his fleshy face. “I demand that Aurora High School expel the attacker immediately. I will be pressing charges to have her detained.”
“This footage is fake!” Qadir shouted, refusing to accept that Juniper would be expelled. “We demand you pull the original footage!”
Just then, another officer entered, holding a laptop. “Carl,” he said in a low voice, “all the cameras near the milkshake shop are down. We’ve tried to repair them, but the original data is completely corrupted. The chances of recovery are basically zero, unless we get one of the two major hacker groups involved ‘Binary Oracle’ from Subterra Vanguard or ‘Cybernetic Shadows’ from Sigma Network.”
“Then we’ll proceed with the evidence we have,” Carl said, his head already throbbing from all the shouting. Dustin was a well-known real estate tycoon in the area, and the precinct relied on his patronage for many of its facilities. With video evidence in hand, it was clear that the Aurora High students were at fault. Any sensible person would know how to handle this.
All the cameras near the milkshake shop were down? What a coincidence.
Salma glanced at Dustin, who was still puffing on his cigarette, a triumphant smile aimed in their direction. He had maliciously edited the footage and then destroyed the original, leaving them with no way to prove their case. It was despicable!
The three parents exchanged worried glances, their hearts aching for the lonely girl in the corner. Ultimately, while their children were involved, she was the one who had done the fighting. To resolve the matter, it was likely she would be the only one expelled.
But they had all heard stories about Juniper from their kids. They knew she came from Moultlands, that her living conditions were tough, and most importantly, that she was a poor, vulnerable orphan without parents. They also knew she was a talented dancer and incredibly loyal. Today’s conflict had started because she was defending a classmate. If she were expelled and sent to jail, wouldn’t her entire life be ruined?
“We don’t believe for a second that this girl started the fight,” Orlando was the first to speak up, standing tall. “Give me some time. I’ll find someone to recover the footage.”
All three of their children had insisted they weren’t the aggressors, and as parents, they believed them. So what if they had to hire a hacker? He’d just sell a few more pigs. He had the money.
“That’s right,” the other two parents chimed in, equally furious. “We demand a hacker be hired to recover the data. We’ll pay whatever it costs.”
So what if those Eclara High students were rich? They wouldn’t let the guilty walk free while the innocent were wrongly accused.
Juniper looked up at the three adults, a pang of warmth spreading through her chest.