Chapter 20 Chapter Twenty

• The student housing portal required three different credentials before it yielded anything useful.
• Alex sat in his office after the last meeting of the day, the door closed, the screen angled away from the glass wall. He had started with the public directory of the university’s residence system. From there the path narrowed through a series of administrative pages that were not meant to be accessed without proper authorization. He did not use company resources. He used a private route that left fewer traces.
• Luis Reyes. Second-year. Assigned to a shared unit in the east complex. Current balance listed as partially settled, with a hold flag that would trigger automatic release of the room if the remaining amount failed to clear by the stated deadline. The sum matched the figure Sylvia had mentioned in the diner. Two hundred dollars. Small enough to be invisible in any other context. Large enough to keep a younger brother dependent on his sister’s ability to stretch an already thin margin.