Chapter 101With his social position secured and his coalition taking shape, Lucas turned his formidable focus to the final, most critical front: the academic. The allegations of plagiarism and data fabrication were the foundation upon which Sentinel had built its entire edifice of persecution. To dismantle it, he needed to make that foundation look not just weak, but absurd. He would weaponize his own intellect, making his academic performance so demonstrably brilliant that the very idea of him needing to cheat would become laughable.He began a campaign of intellectual overkill. In his Political Theory seminar, where the initial plagiarism charge had originated, the final assignment was a 30-page thesis. Lucas didn't just write a paper; he produced a minor academic monograph. He chose an esoteric but critically relevant topic: "The Leviathan as a Precedent: Hobbesian Social Contract Theory in Modern Corporate Paternalism." It was a direct, if encrypted, commentary on his own situati

Chapter 103The coalition was assembled, the academic victory was complete, and the enemy's ranks were fracturing. Now, it was time to move from defense to a controlled, precise offensive. Lucas could not yet unleash the full truth of Sentinel Systems. That would be a nuclear option, and the fallout was too unpredictable. But he could begin the process of immunizing his allies against the official narrative, preparing the ground for the larger revelation to come. He would selectively share evidence, a controlled burn to clear away the undergrowth of doubt and confusion, revealing the stark, organized landscape of the persecution beneath.His first disclosure was to Ben Carter. He invited Ben to his dorm under the guise of finalizing strategy for the resurrected civic engagement project. The room was, as always, dominated by the glow of his monitors, though he had prudently closed all sensitive windows."There's something you need to see," Lucas said, his voice low and serious. "This

Chapter 105The stage had been meticulously set. The narrative had been flipped, his academic prowess established, his coalition assembled, and his enemies were fractured and paranoid. Now, Lucas needed the final piece of evidence that would transform him from a sympathetic figure into an unequivocal victim and his tormentors into campus pariahs. He needed a scapegoat. And he had been patiently, coldly, waiting for Alexander to provide it.He knew Alexander's patterns. Humiliated, isolated, and boiling with impotent rage, Alexander was a pressure cooker needing a release valve. His preferred method was public domination, a reassertion of his perceived superiority. Lucas began a subtle campaign of provocation, a digital baiting designed to lure Alexander into a trap.He used his anonymous persona "Leo" to post on a forum Alexander frequented, a place for the sons of privilege to complain about "entitled" scholarship students. "Leo" wrote a scathing critique of Alexander's defunct "lead

Chapter 107The campus was his. The social battles were won, the academic allegations were dust, and his enemies were scattered. The quiet hum of his room was no longer the sound of a besieged command center, but the nerve center of an expanding intelligence operation. With his newfound social and institutional capital providing both cover and resources, Lucas turned his full, formidable focus to the true enemy: Sentinel Systems. It was time to move from mapping the symptoms—the operatives, the academic sabotage—to diagnosing the disease itself. He began a painstaking investigation into the corporation's very anatomy.He started with the public face, the sterile, reassuring façade presented to the world. Sentinel Systems' website was a masterpiece of corporate obfuscation. It described itself as a "premier provider of integrated wealth management and multigenerational inheritance administration," with a mission to "preserve and perpetuate family legacies through strategic foresight

Chapter 109The discovery of the predatory clauses in his own trust fund was a key that unlocked a new, more terrifying dimension of the investigation. Lucas was no longer just a unique case study; he was a single data point in a much larger, darker dataset. If Sentinel had engineered his trials, who else had they tested? What happened to those who passed? And more chillingly, what became of those who failed?He began a systematic, global hunt for Sentinel's other "beneficiaries." This was a far more complex task than mapping a corporate structure. It required piecing together fragments of lives from public records, social media archives, news clippings, and the digital footprints left in alumni directories and professional networks. He was no longer just a hacker; he was a digital archaeologist, excavating the ruins of lives touched by the same invisible hand.He started with the names he had already uncovered. **Marcus Thorne** was his control subject, a living testament to the "suc