May 31st

"Ok guys, what have you got for me?" I ask as the group gathers round.

"His name is Robert Emerson," Nikolas says. "No one, not even Miss Merton, knows where he came from. He showed up two days after Ms. Lloyd was fired."
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"According to the records Jess and I borrowed from the principals office he's from LA. His cover letter said he's been a teacher for almost ten years but was looking for a school where he could make an individual difference with students. He figured that a tiny high school in Iowa was a great place to get that kind of experience." Jay chimed in as he flipped through the papers in the brown folder in his lap. Jess was nestled into his side pointed out things in the file as he spoke.

"He just happens to pick a school that's full of kids who spend their nights training to be in the FBI and CIA? He just happens to end up at a school that never, ever, hires from the outside, except that they're in a bind right now? He just happens to arrive days after a valued teacher is fired for leaking private school information? He just happens to teach world history, the same subject as the fired teacher? And he just happens to be from a huge city, making verifying his identity a complicated task?" I could tell that Aly could and would go on for hours, so I held up a hand.

"Those are all good questions Aly, but I think the most important question is why are we the only ones asking these questions? We all know that all the teachers are, or at least were, FBI or CIA, so why do they not seem concerned?" I asked to no one in particular.

The group gathered around me looked at each other and started thinking. Jess and Jay whispered quietly to each other. Aly started writing furiously in the notebook that was never far from her fingers. Nikolas opened up his computer and started typing. Frank glanced at me and nodded towards Miss Merton's office. I glanced over to see her sitting at her desk grading papers. I nod back. Without saying a word we get up and walk to her office. Miss Merton looks up as we enter the classroom. I close the door behind me and Frank steps in front of it, guarding without a word.

"What's up Melody?" Miss Merton indicated the chair in front of her desk and I sat down.

"We're concerned about Mr. Emerson. You know how this school works, and it worries us that no one is questioning his acceptance as a teacher here."

"Why would that concern you? Mr. Emerson seems perfectly qualified as a World History teacher, and I'm sure that the Principal wouldn't have allowed anyone to work here without approval." Miss Merton returned to grading her papers and seemed to consider the conversation finished, but I wasn't done.

"That's what I want to believe, but that's not the evidence right in front of me. Ms. Lloyd was a good teacher, and a loyal agent from what I've read. I can't imagine her selling secrets of any kind, but it seems like no one questioned that either."

"Ms. Lloyd had us all fooled I'm afraid. In fact, if something she sold hadn't been leaked to NBC we might never have found out at all. The trail to connect her to the information was buried quite deep. She wouldn't even admit to it in the end, she was so committed." I stared at Miss Merton, didn't she hear the words she was saying? Didn't she feel, in her gut, that something was off?

It became obvious that I wasn't going to get anywhere with her, so I nodded to Frank and we went back and joined the rest of the group at the courtyard table. As soon as we sat down everyone leaned close. I watched Nikolas scout around the courtyard to make sure no one was looking or listening before he began speaking. He laid his tablet in the middle of the table and typed on his laptop as he spoke.

"I really think that Romans had the best ideas about conquering nations..." Nikolas blathered on about Roman history, but although we responded from time to time, none of us were really listening. Instead we were glued to the tablet screen, reading the words that scrolled there as Nikolas typed. It turned out that there was no record, in LA or anywhere else, of a teacher named Robert Emerson. The credentials on his resume were good fakes, but they were still fake. There was a dummy teacher set up everywhere he claimed, but with some digging Nikolas was able to discover that not a single actual person could back up the computer files. It was obvious that Emerson was a fake.

More than that, though, it appeared that he might have been behind the firing of Ms. Lloyd. It turned out he was in possession of much of the information she supposedly stole, and a barely there computer code showed that he would have been able to take that from her and leave a false trail. It also showed that he recently transferred money to Ms. Lloyd's account. Nikolas reminded us that it didn't mean she was innocent, because they could just be working together. By passing around the keyboard we exhausted all the information each of us had recovered. Eventually we had enough. I took the tablet and lead the way to the principal's office.

"As you can see, Mr. Granger, despite what anyone has lead you to believe, Mr. Emerson is not what he claims to be." I said after laying out all the information in front of the principal. I expected him to look shocked, or horrified, or, at the very least, embarrassed, but instead he just smiled.

"Congratulations Alpha Team, you've completed your first test. The CIA would be happy to welcome you all as recruits."