Barletta has developed vonyxsis, or a blackening of the veins, along with a rotting odor common to the infected. To distract Barletta from his worsening symptoms, Devryck tells Barletta about how he nearly had a seizure that stopped his heart.

At 17, he and Caedmon were delinquents and were kicked out of several elite prep schools. At the last school, Caedmon found a peephole supposedly created by a fired janitor that looked into the female staff’s locker room. Caedmon observed naked women voyeuristically, and he charged underclassmen for access. Devryck wouldn’t look due to his fear of enclosed spaces, and he was content with the sexual relationship he already had with a young teacher.

Their father hired a cruel bodyguard to keep them out of trouble. When the boys heard him coming, Caedmon forced Devryck to hide in a locker, triggering a seizure. Two men appeared and took Caedmon before knocking Devryck unconscious. Devryck explains to Barletta that the men were instructed to take one brother—but doesn’t say where—and they chose Caedmon because Devryck wet himself.

Lilia prepares to record herself masturbating under the desk in class. Mortified, she wears a skirt with no underwear. She positions her phone between her knees and begins surreptitiously filming herself; however, Devryck arrives to add to the lecture.

Since Lilia is attracted to him, she continues masturbating, genuinely aroused. Overwhelmed, her body shifts, and her phone falls to the floor. The lecture continues while Devryck comes to Lilia’s desk and takes her phone. The nondisclosure agreement that Lilia signed includes a ban on recordings in class, as the Noctisoma research is privately owned and performed by Dracadia.

He requests that she delete whatever she was recording. If Lilia does, he’d see the video of her masturbating. The other option is to let him confiscate the phone during class, as he claims that he wouldn’t go through a student’s phone. Lilia lets him take it, knowing that she’d likely be expelled if discovered.

She tries to return to class as normal, upset that she’s driven to acts like this for financial stability. She hopes that, due to his past scandal with a student, Devryck wouldn’t risk entering another one.

Having already dealt with two people trying to steal his research, Devryck goes back on his word and checks Lilia’s phone. He’s startled to see the video. Conflicted, he watches the video and grows aroused.

Despite knowing that he shouldn’t risk entering another scandal, he watches the rest of the video and then sends it to his own phone. He then sees the conversations with Conner and Jayda and realizes that Lilia was reluctantly filming herself for money. After class, Devryck returns her phone, pretending not to have looked through it.

Lilia submits the video to the website VoyeurBait and instantly regrets it. She tries to delete it unsuccessfully, and it begins receiving views. She becomes overwhelmed and cries.

She wakes up to the next morning to an email from the website saying that she cannot delete a video she’s earned money on. She’s earned over $500 already, but she’s sick over her actions because she hates feeling helpless. She throws up, showers, and decides not to do it again.

Devryck searches VoyeurBait for Lilia’s video. He scorns the number of viewers who’ve seen it and calls a lawyer, a fellow Rook, to have it taken down. The lawyer coerces the website operator to have it taken down, satiating Devryck, who hates the idea of Lilia being sexually objectified instead of recognized for her beauty and intellect.

Later, Devryck speaks with Barletta, who’s having increased sexual urges because of his infection. They discuss the abduction of Caedmon. Warren violently interrogated their bodyguard, Caesar, along with two men in Rook costumes, which confused the young Devryck.

Devryck overheard a phone call wherein someone was clearly holding Caedmon hostage in exchange for something that Warren was conflicted about handing over. Devryck confronted his father and asked for information, but he threatened to kill Devryck. They both expressed a wish that the other were dead.

Lilia checks the website to find that her video is gone. She hesitates to transfer her funds over, worried that it will make the video reappear. She goes to lunch with Spencer. At the cafeteria, she notices Devryck and Provost Lippincott watching her amid a discussion.

Spencer tries to introduce Lilia to his father, who ignores Spencer. He explains that the relationship with his father is bad. Lilia asks about the woman who attacked Lippincott and is shocked to find that she’s dead, with Devryck having performed her autopsy. Lilia considers why she might’ve blamed Lippincott for her contracting what appears to be a case of Noctisoma.

Spencer’s friends, rugby players, pile into the lunch table. One begins teasing Lilia and demanding to know where she’s from, and Devryck arrives to speak to her, subtly warding off the boys. Privately, Devryck checks that she’s deleted the video and informs her that she’s the only student who earned a perfect score on a recent quiz. Lilia intuits that this pleases him.

Devryck leaves, and Spencer arrives to apologize. He asks Lilia to a charity gala, promising that it won’t be a date; he just wants to avoid being asked by Langmore’s assistant, Kendall. Begrudgingly, Lilia accepts.

Lilia continues reading in the Adderly Memorial room for her work study. She focuses on the story of a woman accused of witchcraft and sent to Dracadia for trial; the scientist, Dr. Stirling, saved her from burning at the stake, but only to perform experiments on her. Toward the end of her life, she complained of symptoms of Noctisoma infection.

She also sees sketches of the skulls of the Indigenous people who inhabited the island before colonists arrived. They demonstrated symptoms of Noctisoma too, namely bone fissures. Lilia begins pondering the possibility that studies of the parasite trace back to the 1700s, and she wonders if Andrea Kepling, who attacked Lippincott, was one of the two women rumored to have escaped the unethical tests by Devryck’s father, Warren.

Researching the Crixson Project, she finds that Warren was supposedly seeking a cure for diabetes using a mysterious substance. However, all further information about the study is locked in the library.

While shelving some books, she sees Devryck and overhears Gilchrist asking why their affair ended, claiming that she loves him. Seeking to spare Devryck from another unwanted advance, Lilia pretends to have a report he requested.

When they’ve exited the library, Lilia asks how Andrea became infected with the parasite, a fact not made public. Cornering her in an intimate fashion, he threatens that her nosiness could result in a risk to her life and tells her to leave the topic alone.

Lippincott angrily confronts Devryck. Having only seen Lilia for the first time that day, he realized that she looks exactly like her mother, who he reveals was the other missing patient in Warren’s Crixson study. Devryck suspected this after looking up Francesca’s autopsy report. Lippincott wants to get Lilia expelled, but Devryck assures him that Lilia knows nothing about her mother’s connection to the school.

That night, Devryck considers his attraction to Lilia as he injects himself with a form of the Noctisoma toxin, which is excreted in its host. His version of it has been abating some of his symptoms, but only temporarily. It also inspires an intense sexual urge, something Barletta also experienced.

Considering how much he wants to succeed, he recognizes that Lilia is an issue; however, the toxin increases his libido, and he masturbates to the thought of her.

The next day, Barletta’s symptoms are worse. He hallucinates and grows violent. When he calms down a bit, Devryck continues the story of his childhood. After the confrontation with Warren, he nearly died by suicide, but a hallucination of Caedmon urged him not to. Drunkenly, Devryck returned home to investigate his father’s lab; instead, he found that the kidnappers had burned Caedmon alive and sent his ashes back in a box.

In the present, Devryck says that Barletta is one of the men who transported Caedmon to the kidnappers. The other two have already died, and Devryck wants to know who organized the ransom and killed Caedmon. Barletta says that it was Angelo, Conner’s friend.

Devryck begins to leave, but he sees a figure standing in the shadows, which disappears.

Lilia asks Mel to tell her more about the Crixson Project, as the library materials are private. Mel asks Lilia to meet her but is interrupted by a seamstress, who will be measuring Lilia for a dress for the charity gala. Overhearing that she’s going with Spencer, Mel is furious. Lilia persuades Mel into meeting her that night anyway.

In her room, the seamstress—who is a friend of the Lippincotts—also compares Lilia to Vanessa Corbin, an old classmate. She takes Lilia’s measurements and leaves. Afterward, Lilia sees Devryck reading in the courtyard and watches him from her window. He looks up at her, and she falls back into her room, embarrassed.

Lilia visits Mel’s room at around 10 o’clock. Mel brings her through a secret passageway in her closet and explains that the building is haunted from the Crixson Project and exorcisms performed when the building was a monastery. Accused heretics and witches were sent to the building, tortured, and deposited as corpses into Bone Bay, where Lilia saw Devryck swimming.

They arrive in a cellar, where they meet Briceson (the theater student from Lilia’s first day on the island), Ken, and Cat. The group reveals themself as Anon Amos, who secretly published an article on the woman who attacked Lippincott. They seek to unearth the truth behind cover-ups at Dracadia.

They have old records from previous students investigating the school, which they let Lilia read. Lilia finds a file on Warren’s Crixson Project, in which he sought to cure his wife’s insulin-dependent diabetes. The file details the study, including how Noctisoma larvae were used to create a serum injected into the test patients. They experienced the parasite’s symptoms, resulting in the six deaths.

A picture shows the researchers and patients, including Lilia’s mother. She realizes that her mother’s name is actually Vanessa Corbin. Lilia is shocked that her mother was involved the same year Lilia was born, but she doesn’t understand how a purified Noctisoma toxin spread the larvae into the women or how her mother became infected 16 years later.

Lilia wants to ask Devryck, but Mel warns her against this. Mel still believes that Devryck killed Jenny, as she was last seen on CCTV leaving his midnight lab. For her own safety, Mel tells Lilia to keep quiet. They discuss missing notes in the research, the absence of Lippincott from the files, and a mysterious researcher not named in the study. Lilia is determined to discover the truth.