Chapter 3

3.

The university president let out a long, heavy sigh and told me to look out for myself.

That same night, Felix's retaliation began.

He posted several screenshots of my thesis, then set them beside a handful of other papers that shared similar ideas.

The headline read:

"Just how good is this so-called rising star in medicine? Plagiarist or the real deal?"

Below it, he tagged a string of big names in the medical world.

None of them could afford to cross a titan like Felix, so one after another they piled in, agreeing that my thesis was plagiarized.

Their students followed, all of them resharing Felix's post.

Before long, my "plagiarized" thesis was pushed straight onto the trending topics.

Someone even tagged my brother's account, the one that had gone silent for twenty years.

"Plagiarist dog, too gutless to show your own face, so you send your little brother instead. What a waste of a man."

"Right? You did something that shameful, no wonder Attorney Pruitt dumped you. You deserved it."

At the same time, Asher was posting videos across every major platform.

On screen he held up his own thesis, his face twisted with grief and outrage.

"Everyone, I've spent years doing cancer-cure research alongside my father. This paper is the blood and sweat of all those years."

"And today, that so-called rising star in medicine has torn it all down!"

"Now I can't go abroad to study advanced medicine, and that's a huge loss for every single one of us!"

"If he can throw his weight around like this today, tomorrow he'll be prescribing whatever he wants and calling it treatment. The medical world should shut people like him out!"

"He and that brother of his who plagiarized my father, they could be spies some foreign country sent in to hold back our medical progress!"

"Years ago my father saw through the scheme of his plagiarist dog of a brother. And I won't let this one get his way either!"

The comments underneath were nothing but praise for him.

I stared at the screen and gave a cold laugh.

Quite the accusation to pin on someone.

Still, the crowd took the bait.

In no time they were all hammering me, calling me a parasite gnawing away at medical progress.

Some even dug up my contact details and my address, flooding me with messages and calls.

"Overrated plagiarist dog, apologize to Academician Henson and his son right now, or we'll make sure you never get a moment's peace!"

"Abusing your position like that, a man like you doesn't deserve to be called a medical expert!"

"They really are cut from the same cloth. You and that plagiarist dog of a brother are two of a kind!"

As the outcry grew louder, some of Felix's admirers even showed up at my door, demanding I kneel and beg their forgiveness.

For the days after that, I stayed shut inside.

I'd already had a friend look into it long before.

Asher's recruitment offer had only its final day left.

And the other side was demanding that I either come out in person and retract everything, or have it established in a court of law that I was the one making false accusations, otherwise they would drop Asher.

That night, I got a call from an unknown number.

When I answered, a woman's voice came through, cold enough to drop the temperature in the room by a few degrees.

"Luke Dickerson, so you deliberately made sure my son failed his defense?"

"I've already filed suit against you. The attorney's letter will hit your phone any moment now. Tomorrow, you'll come to the courthouse."

"And another thing. Your brother's plagiarism back then is a settled fact, nailed down."

"All these years he still couldn't let it go, sending Felix threatening letters. Truly shameless."

I frowned.

"That's not possible."

Then she let out a scornful little laugh.

"Don't bother making excuses. Every time he sent Felix a threat, Felix told me about it. I've saved every last one."

"A man like that, plagiarizes and then can't even stay gone. He'd be better off dead."

"Tomorrow I'll be filing suit against him as well, so you'd better make sure he shows up too."

"Let me get a good look at what that sewer rat has turned into after all these years."