Ivybridge Academy is rehearsing a modernized production of Hamlet directed by an energetic Mr. Bartlett. Andrew is a phone-staring Hamlet, Tommie is an expressive Ophelia, Bea is Gertrude, and Lola plays Horatio . For Lola, the real drama lies backstage: the narrow corridor runs directly past a painted-over, unmarked door bearing the faint numbers 17 . Room 17 is right here, on the same floor as their rehearsals. During a run-through, Tommie's phone blasts her mother's ringtone, but she brilliantly stays in character, answering it on stage .
The comedy shatters into terror during Friday's rehearsal. Lola notices a heavy, twenty-kilogram painted canvas castle flat beginning to tilt forward . She screams Andrew's name, but he freezes . In a flash of red velvet, Bea Wenckheim sprints across the stage, tears her royal gown, and tackles Andrew to the floor just as the massive wall smashes into the boards where he stood . Rae inspects the wreckage and discovers that an upstage right metal peg was deliberately loosened by hand by exactly two centimeters . The stage collapse was sabotage.
Tommie overhears an eighth-grader, Bence Domján, talking about 'easy money' in the gym locker room. Confronting him in the canteen, Tommie forces him to confess that a mysterious man in a grey suit paid him one hundred euros to loosen that specific peg . In a huddle on Lola's bedroom rug, the squad breaks the truth to Bea . Marcus Wenckheim engineered the structural failure to give Bea a manufactured heroic moment so she could spy for him without suspicion .
Disgusted by her father's actions, Bea switches sides, refusing to ask questions for him . Amidst the chaos, Lola advances the historical track: while searching Mr. Bartlett's desk drawer for a script, she discovers a third loose page of Louisa Ivybridge's diary . The page confirms the Circle expects an opponent's child to join and points to the library shelves for the next page . Lola realizes she is being passed like a secret parcel into a network far larger than she imagined.
