Collateral

Rose enters the principles office. The principal is an older woman, with silver-white hair, and horned glasses.

Ellie doesn’t look up when Rose enters but keeps staring at the ground. The principal looks at Rose and gestures for her to take a seat next to her eleven-year-old daughter.

“Ah, Mrs Griffith. Glad you could join us.”

“It is Miss. Not Mrs.”

“I am sorry. Miss Griffith. I am glad you could join us. I have to speak to you about something that has been quite concerning. Your daughter has hacked into the school’s mainframe. We caught her and a friend red-handed, with her tablet plugged into the school’s server.”

“Is that true Ellie?”

Ellie still doesn’t meet her gaze and keeps staring at her knees. She slowly nods her head.

“Little angel, please look at me.”

She tries to grab Ellie’s hand but she flinches and pulls away. This is strange. Ellie never is averse to touch. Something is going on. Something that is way more complex than her being scared or feeling guilty.

“Lucky for her, we have checked both the access log and the change log, and turns out we caught her before she could do any damage.”

“So no harm was done, right?” Rose says.

“That might be the case, but your child still broke in into the school server and tried to hack it. I don’t need to tell you how big of an infraction this is. We are suspending Ellie for five days. If something like this happens again, we will expell her.”

Rose looks back at Ellie, who she notices has tears in her eyes. Ellie looks off, she is clearly scared, and her left hand is finicking a lot. She is also tapping her foot. Yet her right hand is completely still.

“Ellie, please roll up your right sleeve.”

Ellie keeps looking down and shakes her head.

“Ellie! I am not asking you again.”

Ellie shivers and slowly rolls up her sleeve. Her arm looks heavily bruised. Her right hand is also in a strange pose. Did she break her arm?

“Honey, what happened to your arm?”

Ellie just murmurs some incomprehensible words.

Rose looks back at the principal, stands up and smashes her arms on the desk.

“My child is sitting here with a possibly broken arm and instead of calling a doctor or the nurse or getting her to a hospital, you are sending her here to be punished?”

The principal goes pale and backs away. “I didn’t know” she stammers.

“We will talk later. I am now gonna take my daughter to the hospital.”

Rose turns back to Ellie. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”

Rose walks with Ellie out of the office, and they walk back to Rose’s car. After Ellie gets in the passenger seat, and Rose tells the onboard autopilot to drive to the hospital, Ellie starts quietly sobbing.

“Little angel, I am not mad at you, I am just worried.”

Ellie looks at her mother, her eyes are red from crying.

“I am so sorry, Mom. I really messed up.”

Ellie wipes the tears from her eyes and looks at her mother.

“Thing morning, on the playground Finn came up to me, and twisted my arm behind my back until it snapped.”

“Oh, Darling. Why didn’t you tell the teacher.”

“The teacher was looking right at it, and did nothing.”

“So, what did you do?”

“Sophia helped me to break into the server room, and I changed all of his grades to be slightly failing.”

“The principal said you did get access to it.”

Ellie bows her head.

“You removed yourself from the access log, didn’t you?”

Ellie nods. “And the change log.”

Rose smiles. “I am proud of you, kiddo. But next time someone hurts you, you can call me.”

“You’re not mad?”

“Of course not.”

The car arrives in front of the hospital, and Rose and Ellie walk in.

The receptionist looks up as they arrive. Her cybernetic eye looks smaller and more advanced than the last time they were here.

“Hello, what can I do for you today?”

“My daughter has broken her arm, I would like to see a doctor”

“Do you have-”

Rose interrupts the receptionist. “No, I don’t have to insure, yes I know the drill.” She picks up a credstick from her pocket and throws it on the table. This contains twelve thousand eurodollars. Enough collateral to have my daughter checked out.”

The receptionist looks confused and then regains her composure.

“All in order. You can wait in private room A103”

Rose paces in the hallways talking on her phone.

“Hello, you are speaking with Principal Murray, what can I do for you?”

“Hello. This is ELlie’s mother. We spoke earlier.”

“Ah, yes. Hello Miss Griffith. How is Ellie.”

“The hospital techs are taking an x-ray of her arm right now. Doctors think it is a spiral fracture.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

“Ellie told me another kid broke her arm on the playground.”

“Why didn’t she run to a teacher immediately then?”

“A teacher was watching, and did nothing.”

“Ma’am, I can assure you, every teacher I employ would step in if they see a kid breaking another kid’s arm.”

“Apparently not.”

The Principle sighs. “Did she mention which kid hurt her?”

“A kid in her class named Finn.”

“Finn?”

“Yes”

“I can assure you Finn is a model student. His father even sponsors the school.”

Rose sighs. Is the principal implying that his father sponsoring the school makes him a model student? From Ellie’s stories, he seems to be a spoiled brat.

Rose shakes her head. “Can you arrange a meeting between me and his parents?”

“Of course. But to be honest, I assumed you knew his parents. That they were family or something.”

“How so?”

“You have the same last name.”