Chapter 52Lucas sat slumped on the worn couch in his apartment, a blanket draped loosely over his shoulders. The city outside his window was quiet, unusually so, as though the world itself had paused to give him space to breathe. But even in that silence, his mind raced.Estelle sat across from him, her arms folded lightly over her chest, her posture calm but watchful. She hadn’t said much since they arrived. Only that he needed rest, that everything was ‘handled’, again.Lucas ran a hand through his hair, eyes heavy from exhaustion but unable to close. The adrenaline hadn’t fully left his system, and his thoughts looped in spirals of doubt and dread.He looked up at her. “Estelle.”She tilted her head slightly in acknowledgment.“Why me?”Her brow furrowed ever so slightly, but she said nothing.“I’m serious,” he continued, his voice low and fraying at the edges. “I’m just a scholarship student. I came here to study, to get a degree and maybe build a decent life for myself. I’m not

Chapter 54Lucas stayed put in the room while closing the door. The new USB drive that he purchased from one of the campus shops was placed on the desk beside the laptop. The drive was tiny because it would hold all the information. He purchased it in cash because he does not want the traces to lead themselves to him. He had been planning to make the move a month earlier.If he was able to forge academic records, seed evidence in university systems, and hack into his submitted work, he was certainly able to hack into his laptop. Lucas has to think differently now. Not like a student who thought that the system was safe, but like someone whose life was invaded.He had visited Dominic that morning, hearing rumors of corporate conspiracies and family secrets and entanglements between his attacks and wider business rivalries. Dominic's speculation had pushed credulity to the breaking point, but it was sufficient of what was real in Lucas's own imagination that he could not entirely discou

Chapter 56Lucas sat in a coffee shop three blocks off campus, far enough away from his usual hangouts that running into anyone from his life now was unlikely. He'd made his way here on different routes, using strategies that Estelle had taught him about avoiding surveillance: checked the surroundings for any suspicious activity, walked through and out of a department store by different entrances, and changed pace unpredictably. If anyone was following him, they'd have to work hard to keep up without being noticed.Marcus was manning a post somewhere in the area, Lucas was sure. Estelle had flat out told Lucas that security would not again be called in, regardless of what Lucas desired. But Lucas had also come to know Marcus's mode of operation, and he was reasonably sure the security expert was maintaining a remote perimeter rather than close surveillance.Reasonably certain, but not definite. Which was why Lucas had his computer up on a generic study session page and his phone—the o

Chapter 58Lucas massaged the space between his eyebrows because he knew that he was going to have a hectic week. Although he had listed out the problems and was coming up with the possible solution for it, that does not mean that he would remain idle.He has a tired look on his face but always tries to mask it up whenever Estelle is around as he had a little knowledge from his experience with Estelle that she could spot a tiny detail and tell the meaning from that.Lucas went into the computer lab and he found Dev there. Smirking because he has an inkling that Dev had been up all night.Dev had a feeling that someone was watching him so he looked up and saw Lucas having a weird look on his face."How long have you been here?" Dev asked."Five minutes " Lucas replied.Dev sighed out loud as he looked at the firewall in which he was creating and saw that it was in his final stage. Lucas could not understand it as the codes that were used in creating the firewall was a complicated one.

Chapter 60Lucas had chanced upon the power of formal information requests accidentally. He'd been skimming the handbook of the university, looking for something that might shed some light on the procedures that had been applied to him, when he found it: Section 7.3, Student Access to Educational Records.Under federal law, students were to be provided and to possess copies of their school records, discipline records, access records, and administrative notes related to their cases. The university was required to comply within thirty days and could only charge reasonable copy costs.Lucas already understood the potential. He'd been fiddling around from the outside, trying to piece together what occurred with interviews and guesses. But this gave a view of the administrative machine that processed his cases—a trail that could very well indicate who was pulling the levers behind the scenes.He wrote his request carefully, using words of the statute so he could be certain to articulate h