Final Exam

The room buzzed with a nervous, electric tension as the senior chemistry students tore open their final exam envelopes. Fluorescent lights hummed above, casting a pale glow over rows of lab benches. Scratch of pens, rustle of papers, and the occasional sigh of anxiety filled the air.

At the front of the room, Professor Alton McClain stood with his arms crossed, a steel-jawed figure with gray in his beard and wariness in his eyes. He had spent thirty years teaching chemistry at Langley College, long enough to know when something felt... off.

Two hours. One test. No second chances. Passing this final exam meant graduation, and it was of critical importance.

The exam packet had arrived that morning in a sealed box from the registrar’s office containing twenty-eight envelopes, one for each senior, all clearly labeled. As always, he had inspected the outer packaging, initialed the receipt, and signed the exam log. Everything routine. Everything, at least on the surface, normal.

He had handed them out one by one without a word. Students watched him with the guarded reverence most reserved for final gatekeepers. The doors locked promptly at the hour. No one else could enter. No one else could leave.

As the chorus of papers settling into position faded, McClain turned back to the cardboard box on the front desk, intending to toss it aside. But something caught his eye.

At the bottom lay a folded sheet of white paper, plain, clean, deliberate.

He unfolded it.

The message was typed in a simple sans-serif font. One sentence.

Jenny Johnson may be your star pupil and always the first to finish her test, but this time, you will be finished too.

– BKS

McClain’s stomach dropped.

Brent K. Samuels.

Brilliant. Arrogant. Dangerous.

He had been one of the most talented students McClain had ever taught. His hands were steady, instincts sharp, but riddled with disdain for authority. Last winter, McClain had flunked him, not only for insubordination and hostile outbursts, but for a verified cheating incident during a midterm practical. Brent had screamed about sabotage, called the faculty corrupt. He’d sent angry emails, posted cryptic messages online. Then disappeared.

Most dismissed it. McClain hadn’t. Some minds, when warped by bitterness, could become weapons.

Now, this note.

His gaze swept the classroom. Twenty-eight students. Twenty-eight bright futures, one test away from graduation. His eyes landed on Jenny Johnson, front and center as always, bent over her paper, pen flashing.

She was the class’s top student. Quiet, focused, flawless under pressure. Her exam envelope lay neatly flattened at the corner of her desk, as unusual. Most students tossed theirs aside until later. But Jenny was precise.

McClain read the line again.

When she finishes...

The words echoed, a drumbeat in his ears.

Could Brent be planning something through her? Something triggered by the act of finishing? Of submitting? McClain scanned the locked exits, but no signs of entry. The windows were sealed, the lab secure. No intruder.

But Brent didn’t need to be present to unleash hell.

He remembered Brent’s final project from last fall. An independent study proposal on reactive nerve agents. Rejected, of course. But the research was sound. Too sound.

What if...

McClain walked quite briskly toward Jenny. Whispers followed him. She looked up, startled, pen pausing above her final answer.

“Professor?” she asked softly.

He said nothing. Reached for her envelope. Peeled back the glued flap. And there it was.

A narrow, translucent vial embedded in the paper lining, nestled just beneath the seam. Invisible to the eye unless you were searching. It was sealed with a contact-triggered mechanism.

His heart stopped.

He recognized the compound almost instantly. VX derivative. A hyper-toxic nerve agent synthesized in trace amounts. Absorbed by breathing. Designed to activate under specific chemical exposure.

In this room, surrounded by volatile reagents, the result would be instant and catastrophic.

Jenny’s pen hovered. One answer away. She would’ve sealed the exam and handed it back—and likely set the mechanism off.

“Ms. Johnson,” he said, calm but firm. “Come with me. Right now.”

She blinked. “But I’m almost—”

“Now.” His tone brooked no argument.

She stood, bewildered. Around them, students whispered, some raising eyebrows, others glancing around nervously. McClain tucked her exam and the envelope under his arm and led her out the side lab door. Behind it was a storage room with a direct line to campus security.

He locked the door behind them and reached for the emergency phone. His voice was steady as he described the situation. Then he ushered Jenny outside, made her wash her hands thoroughly, and sat her under the emergency eyewash station, just in case. She was trembling now.

“Am I in trouble?” she asked.

McClain gave a tight smile. “No. You’re very lucky. We all are.”

By the time the bomb squad and hazmat teams arrived, the lab had been evacuated. Students clustered in confused groups under the sunny spring sky. Word spread quickly that someone had tried to poison the class.

Inside the lab, forensic chemists carefully dismantled the envelope. They confirmed McClain’s suspicions: the vial contained a fast-reacting nerve agent that would have aerosolized upon contact with any number of common exam materials—residual solvents, printer ink, even perspiration from a sealed paper.

The intent had been mass exposure. Quiet. Untraceable. Devastating.

“Someone wanted a test,” one technician muttered, shaking his head. “But this was never about chemistry.”

Brent K. Samuels’s name was quickly brought up. Authorities combed his last known residence. He was gone. His email addresses deactivated. Socials wiped clean. A ghost in the system.

He had left behind only one thing: a sentence and a death trap. McClain wondered if that had been the final project Brent had always intended.

Days later, McClain returned to the classroom. The lab had been scrubbed and cleared. Jenny sat with him while he finalized her test score—98%. She was safe, but shaken.

“You saved my life,” she said.

He nodded. “And twenty-seven others.”

“Why didn’t you just wait? Let me finish?”

“Because,” he said, folding his hands on the desk, “Brent was brilliant, but he underestimated one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“That I’d learned to trust instinct over intellect a long time ago. And sometimes, the greatest test we face isn’t written on paper.”

She smiled faintly.

When graduation came, Jenny walked the stage first, proudly, and Professor McClain sat in the front row, watching, his mind still haunted by what nearly was. There were no medals for what he’d done, no headlines. Just twenty-eight young adults allowed to continue dreaming.

The final exam had come and gone.

And Professor McClain had passed with life-saving insight.