Ennis gets the door. "- yes?"

He looks for Paige; she was involved in handling last year's fiasco. "Can you send your underclassmen out."

Paige is confused. "- what, all of them, for how long? If the Domina's son gets eaten because I sent him wandering the halls -"

"I'll stick with the others, Paige," sighs Ennis. The underclassmen file out, leaving just Paige and Leo and Louis and Eleanor.

"I'm sorry," Asher says. "Shanghai's adopted a maleficer suspected in two murders and we're considering whether to assassinate him."

"- bloody hell," says Leo, after a silence.

"Yep. Annaka wants everybody who stands to lose in the room, you can all come or send one. She'll explain everything but I can answer enough questions for you to figure out who's going."

"I'll go," groans Paige. "Louis, you too, take minutes."

Louis sighs and gets up.

"We're in classroom 404." And he's gone and off to the next reading room, which Boston and Philadelphia share. Knock knock.

"Come in," says Ryan, looking up from where she and her two yearmates are poring over a massive diagram with a 'this had better be important' face.

Unfortunately, Asher's news is very important. "Can you send your underclassmen out." Preceding this at all with 'I know it's a big request but' or something would undermine the urgency, so he's ignoring his instincts and just saying exactly what needs to happen to everyone. 

If this is some bullshit she's going to gossip about him so hard later, and he knows that, so it's not some bullshit. "Everyone who's not a senior needs to clear out."

Everyone who isn't a senior clears out.

"Shanghai just adopted a maleficer suspected in two murders and we're considering whether to assassinate him."

Ryan lets out a breath that's just barely not a sigh. "You want to go over the evidence here and now, or get everyone in one place so you only have to do it once?"

"The latter. Annaka's got nine witness interview transcripts, I'm supposed to tell you however much you need to know to decide who to send."

"I'll go. Sam, Aaron, you guys can go ahead and start fabricating if you get the blueprints done, if you want my input on something I'll give it but no need to wait."

Next up: New Orleans/Atlanta.

An Atlanta senior opens the door, raising an eyebrow in surprise when she sees who it is. "Hi, what's up?"

"Confidential, can you send your undergrads out - does New Orleans even have any seniors -"

"No," says Suze.

"Is this about -" begins Bella, but she cuts off.

"I guess whoever's oldest from New Orleans," says Asher, not quite nodding at Bella but not not nodding at Bella either. 

She briefly weighs the potential consequences, then turns and says, "everyone from Atlanta under the age of seventeen, scoot." 

"Annette, what's going on--" one of the other seniors asks before she makes a cutting motion. 

The underclassmen file out with various grumbling and glances at the New York junior. 

Bella tentatively gathers her belongings, waiting to see if she is interrupted at doing that.

She already knows most of it but it'll be weird if there's one freshman in the room; Asher waits for her to leave.

Then he tells them. "New York has been investigating a maleficer suspected of two murders. Then, this afternoon, Shanghai adopted him. We're deciding whether to assassinate him."

"Uh," says Suze, "do we know... why... Shanghai did that...?"

"No. We know they know he's a maleficer, we don't know what they're thinking."