Camp Caius Infiltration

Camp Caius Infiltration is Myfanwy Alice Thomas’s investigation of a hidden school funded with money siphoned from the Checquy. By following the financial trail and entering the compound herself, she discovers a second Estate devoted to training children into a secret force; the files she finds expose its costly instruction, surgical facilities, and high student mortality, but not the identity of the person directing it.

Discovery of the second Estate

Myfanwy traces an irregularity in the Checquy’s accounts to a substantial sum redirected over a period of years. Though small compared with the organization’s total budget, the stolen money has bought land in southern Wales, paid for buildings, and supported the creation of a small army of unusually capable children. The discovery is consequential not merely because money has been stolen: it reveals a second institution reproducing the Checquy’s most important source of power.

The ordinary Estate’s authority rests on more than the supernatural abilities of its operatives. Children are brought in young and trained rigorously, and that long preparation helps make Checquy agents effective. A parallel school could therefore create a powerful force outside the Checquy’s legitimate control. Myfanwy regards the second Estate as an illegal weapon and decides that its secrecy makes independent investigation necessary.

The decision to enter

Myfanwy does not trust others to investigate the school in her place. The students tell her that guards pass periodically on conspicuous four-wheelers with lights, but that their approach is visible enough for someone to hide. She judges the site’s security inferior to the original Estate’s: the woods could conceal an intruder, the nearby village offered an additional contrast with the more controlled surroundings of the established school, and secrecy appeared to be the compound’s main protection.

That assessment does not make the approach safe. Wearing black clothes, a ski mask, and gloves with only the tips of her fingers exposed, Myfanwy enters the woods at night. Her fear is sharpened by practical knowledge of what the world contains, and she relies on a gully to keep her bearings. Even so, she walks into the fence. Its lack of razor wire lets her continue rather than leaving her trapped there.

She waits among the trees for a guard to pass, then crosses the lawns toward a building. The guards’ checks of the fence line seem careless beside the fieldcraft Myfanwy learned at the Estate; the grounds also lack floodlights, though she has identified fixed cameras during preliminary surveillance. She slips between them and presses herself against a wall beside a bush. The plan is working, and she is beginning to feel a measure of excitement, when a man lights a cigarette less than two metres away. The near discovery interrupts her progress at the moment she is poised to inspect the nearest door.

Searching the administration building

Myfanwy continues far enough into the compound to look for records, reasoning that offices and classrooms must exist and that the files will disclose more than a view of the grounds. A panel map identifies four buildings: Living Quarters, Instruction, Physical Plant, and Medical, the largest of them. With limited time, she chooses Admin rather than trying to investigate all of the facilities.

In the offices she finds memoranda naming the site Camp Caius. The filing cabinets, rather than the computers, seem the likeliest source of information she can reach: she can pick a locked door more readily than a computer’s protections. Using skills taught at the Estate, she changes from her wool gloves to latex ones before opening an office, takes care to lock the door behind her, and searches paper records. The surveillance may be primitive, but the office doors are locked; her training allows her to overcome that obstacle without leaving the room unsecured.

The documents she can access concentrate on finances and students. Records dating back twenty years confirm that the redirected Checquy funds went to Camp Caius. They also show that the money was not being spent on luxuries: a sizable share paid for training and surgical facilities. Instructors at the school earned more than staff at the established Estate, while the surgeons were paid more still. Myfanwy notes the names of instructors and doctors, but the papers she has found do not explain the operation as a whole. She estimates she has about half an hour before she needs to leave.

The files’ revelations and limits

Student records suggest that Camp Caius keeps its pupils longer than the ordinary Estate does. They remain until age twenty-three and are then forwarded to a place called Albion, whose location and nature Myfanwy cannot establish. The number of apparent graduates is strikingly low: the school has produced only about fifteen in five years, despite currently having fourteen students.

The files supply a grim explanation for that imbalance. Many students die at Camp Caius, some in training exercises but most during surgery. The elaborate expenditure on surgical facilities and highly paid medical staff thus acquires a human consequence: the school’s small output is not simply a matter of limited enrollment. Its training and medical practices are deadly to the children subjected to them.

Yet the most politically important question remains unanswered. Myfanwy finds no mention of any member of the Checquy Court, although she believes an operation of this scale requires the Court’s power: access to money, authority over the acquisition of children, and influence across several fields. The reports are sent to an unnamed Founder, but the records do not identify that person. Myfanwy begins copying the front pages of current students’ files to learn who they are and how they were obtained. She has just returned the originals to their drawers when someone tries the office door, leaving the search at a new point of immediate risk.

Significance

The infiltration turns an accounting irregularity into evidence of an institutional rival. Camp Caius does not merely divert funds; it imitates the Estate’s method of developing young people into operatives, while apparently extending their training to adulthood and adding extensive surgical intervention. Myfanwy’s findings therefore connect financial misconduct to the creation of an unauthorized force and to the deaths of many of its students.

The investigation also makes the limits of discovery part of the event’s tension. Myfanwy can verify the destination of the money, identify the school’s buildings and expenditures, and uncover the students’ fates, but cannot yet name the Founder or determine what Albion is. Her choice to investigate alone gives her access to information the school’s secrecy is meant to protect, while exposing her to danger inside the compound. The files bring the hidden institution into focus without resolving who in the Checquy may stand behind it.