2026-02-26 12:37:41The silence in Lecture Hall 402 was so thick you could choke on it.
Ninety students stared at Nathan Walters. A few seconds ago, they were howling with laughter, treating him like the punchline to the biggest joke on campus. Now, they were just confused. The kid with the bruised jaw and the cheap, faded t-shirt had just told their professor he was going to be fired.
At the front of the room, Mr. Zain blinked. Once. Twice. Then, a harsh, incredulous bark of laughter ripped from his throat.
"Fired?" Zain asked, his voice cracking slightly with sheer disbelief. He looked around the room, making eye contact with Mark Epstein, as if seeking confirmation that he had just heard correctly. "Did you all hear that? The janitor is going to fire me."
Mark leaned back in his chair, a cruel grin spreading across his face. "Careful, Prof! I hear he’s got high-level connections in the poultry industry."
The class erupted in laughter again, emboldened by Mark.
Zain slammed his hand down on the wooden podium. The loud smack instantly silenced the room. He wasn't amused anymore. His face flushed a dark, ugly red. He felt profoundly disrespected. This wasn't just a student talking back; this was the lowest rung of the campus ladder daring to challenge his authority in front of the Principal's son.
"Are you out of your mind, Walters?" Zain snapped, stepping away from the podium and pointing a dry-erase marker at Nathan's chest. "Are you drunk on chicken poop? Is that it? The fumes from the utility closet finally got to your brain?"
Nathan didn't flinch. He just stood there, his hands resting easily at his sides.
"I am a tenured-track professor at Braxton College, with 20 fucking years of experience," Zain continued, his voice echoing through the mic, thick with venom. "I hold two master's degrees. You hold a mop. You don't have the right to speak to anyone in this room unless they ask you to empty their trash can, let alone threaten my career. Your audacity is actually hilarious. It would be funny if it wasn't so incredibly pathetic."
Nathan let the professor finish. He let the insults hang in the air for a few seconds.
"Mr. Zain," Nathan said calmly. "It would be best if you apologized right now. Save yourself the humiliation of losing your job forever."
Zain’s jaw tightened. The absolute lack of fear in Nathan’s voice was unnatural, and it made Zain furiously uncomfortable.
"Get out," Zain hissed, his arm shooting out to point at the heavy oak doors. "Get out of my classroom. NOW! You are going straight to the Dean's office, Walters. And I’ll be calling ahead to make sure you're permanently expelled before you even reach her desk. Now get out!"
Nathan gave the professor one last, chilling look of pity. He didn't look at Mark. He didn't look at Amanda. He just nodded in agreement.
"As you wish," Nathan said quietly.
He turned around and walked out the door. He didn't slam it. He just let it click shut behind him, leaving the lecture hall in a strange, uneasy quiet.
The hallway was empty and bright. Nathan walked slowly toward the administrative wing. As he walked, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. It was an old model, the screen cracked in the bottom left corner—a phone he had bought used for forty dollars three years ago.
He pulled out the slip of black paper his father had given him the night before. There was a single, ten-digit number embossed in gold on the back.
Nathan typed the numbers into his cracked screen and hit dial.
He held the phone to his ear. It didn't even complete a full ring. Less than three seconds passed before the line clicked open.
"Young Master. Greetings."
The voice on the other end was smooth, deep, and carried an undertone of absolute, lethal efficiency. It didn't sound like a secretary. It sounded like a man who ended wars before breakfast.
"I was waiting for your call," the voice continued smoothly. "My name is Dwayne. I am your newly assigned Personal Assistant, here to serve your every directive. How may I assist you this morning, sir?"
Nathan stopped walking. He looked out the hallway window at the sprawling green campus of Braxton College. Yesterday, this place felt like an insurmountable mountain. Today, it felt like a sandbox.
"For your first job, Dwayne," Nathan said, his voice dropping into that same cold, flat register he had used in the classroom. "I want you to call the Dean of this school. Her name is Mrs. Shawn. Ensure Mr. Zain, a lecturer in Computer Engineering, is fired indefinitely. He crossed borders he never should have crossed."
There was no hesitation on the line. No questions about university policy, no asking for a reason, no warning about how hard it is to fire a professor.
"Consider it done, boss," Dwayne said.
The line went dead.
Nathan slipped the phone back into his pocket and resumed his walk.
Four minutes later, he arrived at the Dean’s office. It was located in the oldest, most expensive part of the campus. Thick mahogany doors, plush carpets, and walls lined with portraits of wealthy donors. Nathan knew this office well. He had spent hours dusting the baseboards and polishing the brass nameplates on the weekends.
He knocked twice on the door marked DEAN OF STUDENTS - EVELYN SHAWN.
"Come in," a sharp, impatient voice called out.
Nathan pushed the door open. Mrs. Shawn was sitting behind a massive, cluttered desk, typing furiously on her laptop. She was a stern-looking woman in her fifties, wearing sharp reading glasses and a silk blouse that cost more than Nathan's entire semester tuition.
She didn't look up immediately. "Just leave the files on the chair, Brenda, I'll sign them when…"
She stopped typing and looked over her glasses. Her eyebrows shot up toward her hairline.
She recognized the young man standing in her doorway. The whole faculty had received an email about the "incident" at Demo Day. She saw the bruised face, the cheap clothes, and the complete lack of a cleaning cart.
"Nathan," she said, her tone instantly flattening into annoyance. "Aren't you supposed to be in class? Or, given yesterday's... performance, at home?" She glanced at the clock on her wall. "It's barely ten in the morning. It is not time for cleaning yet. You should know the schedule by now. The utility closets don't unlock until four."
Nathan closed the door behind him. He didn't stand nervously by the entrance like he used to. He walked right up to the heavy leather chairs opposite her desk and sat down without being invited.
Mrs. Shawn’s eyes narrowed. "Excuse me. What do you think you're doing?"
"Good morning, Mrs. Shawn," Nathan said, leaning back into the leather. "I’m here to request that Mr. Zain be fired immediately."
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Chapter 375
Austin did not stand right away.He sat at the end of the row with his hands on his knees and his jaw set, and the people on either side of him slid away along the seats until he was alone in a small bare pocket of empty chairs. He had gone gray earlier in the evening and had stayed that way, the color of someone who has been awake for three days. When he finally got to his feet, he did it slowly, with great care, as if the floor might not hold him."I. I think there's been a mistake," he said."I don't think so," Agent Whitlock said.She took a thin folder from one of the agents behind her and opened it. She did not need to look at it. She had read the pages so many times in the past week that she could have recited them with her eyes shut, but she held them open anyway, in the plain view of every camera in the hall, because she had been told that what was about to happen ought to be seen."Mark and Austin," she said. "I'm placing you both under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder
Chapter 374: Karma’s A Bitch
Austin did not stand right away.He sat at the end of the row with his hands on his knees and his jaw set, and the people on either side of him slid away along the seats until he was alone in a small bare pocket of empty chairs. He had gone gray earlier in the evening and had stayed that way, the color of someone who has been awake for three days. When he finally got to his feet, he did it slowly, with great care, as if the floor might not hold him."I. I think there's been a mistake," he said."I don't think so," Agent Whitlock said.She took a thin folder from one of the agents behind her and opened it. She did not need to look at it. She had read the pages so many times in the past week that she could have recited them with her eyes shut, but she held them open anyway, in the plain view of every camera in the hall, because she had been told that what was about to happen ought to be seen."Mark and Austin," she said. "I'm placing you both under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder
Chapter 373: The Fall Of Mark And Austin
Mark had started it. A joke at the boy's expense in front of a class, something about his project being a live chicken with no feathers, and the room had laughed, and by the end of the week it had become a name. Chicken Boy. Epstein had heard it in the corridors, in the faculty lounge, in the mouths of teachers who ought to have known better, Mr. Zain among them, and he had never once corrected anyone.He never did anything wrong.It was such a simple sentence. He turned it over, slowly, in the failing light. The boy had cleaned his desk. The boy had oiled his drawer. The boy had built a thing so beautiful that governments wept over it, and had asked for nothing in exchange but to be allowed to keep it. Life had been unfair to him. It had been unfair to him in a hundred small ways and in one very large way, and every one of them had a face, and several of those faces had been Epstein's own.Was this how it was repaid? Was this karma?He wanted to laugh, if he had had the breath. It wa
Chapter 372: The Fall Of Jeffery Epstein 2
The strange thing was that it did not hurt as much as he expected.There was the burning in his throat, and a heaviness in his chest that felt like someone sitting on it, but those were already becoming distant, like a radio in another room. What he noticed most was how loud everything had become. Mark's voice, somewhere above him, saying Dad over and over. The doctor's calm, low murmur. The sound of three thousand people trying not to breathe. Every noise had edges now, sharp and bright, and underneath them the carpet was soft against the back of his head. It smelled of dust and cleaning fluid. Somebody had mopped it, he thought. Somebody had been careful.His eyes would not stay on anything. They drifted across the ceiling, the long white lights, the underside of a balcony, and then they found a face, and held.The boy was standing over him with his hands at his sides.Not a boy. Epstein corrected himself with an effort. A young man, in a plain jacket that he had worn three days run
Chapter 371: The Fall Of Jeffery Epstein 1
For a moment Jeffrey Epstein did not seem to understand that he had been spoken to.He sat in the middle of the faculty section with his hands pressed between his knees and his eyes fixed on the stage, and the faces of the colleagues on either side of him had slowly started to lean away, the way people do from a man who might be about to get bad news. A glass of water stood on the little table beside him. It was half empty. Sometime in the last quarter of an hour his hand had gone to it, and he had drunk without noticing, the way a dry throat will."Mr. Epstein," Nathan said again, not unkindly. "Would you stand, please. I think it would be better for everyone."Epstein stood.He did it badly, in two stages, one hand on the back of the chair in front of him, and when he was upright he looked small. It was the first time in twelve years that anyone in that school had seen him look small. He wore his good gray suit and his good blue tie, and the sweat had started at his collar and sprea
Chapter 370: The Fall Of Josh Renner
Unknown men in uniforms came in two lines, the way people do when they have practiced it, most of them holding weapons guided by their chins.Eight of them, in dark windbreakers over plain clothes, walking down the center aisle of the east hall at an even pace with their credentials already held out in front of them, and every head they passed turned and followed. At the front was a short woman in her forties with her hair pulled back and a face that had never in its life been talked out of anything. Four of the agents peeled off at the first row and took up positions along the wall. The rest kept coming.The President did not look surprised. Neither did General Reyes. Josh noticed that, and filed it away, and understood a few seconds later that this was because both of them had known since lunch."Joshua Renner." The woman stopped at the foot of the steps and did not raise her voice. "Special Agent Dana Whitlock, Federal Bureau of Investigation. I have a warrant for your arrest."Jos
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