Gemotions

She drummed her fingers on the cold metal table, each tap a tiny drumbeat celebrating the impending chaos. The department head’s office felt stuffy, suffocating, but she didn’t care. A strange heat was building in her cheeks, a flush that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature.

This was it. The culmination of weeks of meticulously crafted deception, the perfect storm of borrowed words and clever misdirection. The evidence, presented by the visibly flustered professor, was damning.

“Miss Evans,” the department head began, his voice laced with disapproval. “We have received irrefutable evidence that your research paper contains plagiarized material.” A slow smile crept across her face as she looked around the room. It was going to be something else.