Rai had them wait a few minutes before leaving the station, not because there was much else they could do, but because Tinsel had planted herself outside to make her calls. When it became clear she was not moving off anytime soon, Rai took a deep breath and led Sao past her without a glance or a word, like they were strangers. She responded in kind.

Rai continued, hands in pockets, until they reached the main archway into the campus. Only then did he dare to breathe.

Sao, on the other hand, was already panting from the strain of keeping up.

As he straightened himself out he had the strange thought that they had travelled back in time, and it was still afternoon on the campus. The library was still open, and the dorms windows were all alight. There were more students roaming than there were the day, and they were in good spirits. There was singing.

“So now we wait until morning, is that it?” Sao asked.

“Yeah.” Rai shook melting snow from his jacket and scowled.

“You don’t like it.”

“Of course I don’t. These kids have lost the damn plot and now we’re mixed up in their mess. I should have just been happy with my air con bust and gone home three days ago.”

Sao looked at the sky and chose not to agree or disagree. A misty canopy of colors was rising from the Row’s lightshow. He began to walk along the treeline, and Rai followed.

A few minutes of tramping through crisp snow eased Rai’s fury a little. “It’s always the same thing, here. I never understand why these kids are doing what they’re doing. How do you think Jin and Tinsel know each other?”

“I can’t guess.”

Rai tried on a smirk. “You sounded like you understood perfectly back in the interview. Like it was something you saw on their records in Marsh’s office.”

“I’m glad my bluffing is up to par. But I found no connection here. Tinsel’s in marketing and humanities, while Jin is on some sort of tech track. They’re both second years, but they didn’t meet in a class and they don’t appear to have any linked interests. Maybe they lived in the same dormitory last year.”

They were about halfway along the Row. With dancing lights all around and the cushion of snow beneath his feet, Sao felt he was drifting through a dream.

“Maybe they dated,” he said. “And when Tinsel found her new boyfriend Irving, they had a falling out.”

“Maybe they were friends before that,” Rai said. “Maybe they met before college.”

Sao blinked. “That’s not a bad thought. The school admin might be able to help us check if their home addresses are close to each other.” The idea was growing on him quickly. “If they’ve known each other that much longer, it makes more sense that they’d be willing to take on the other’s punishment.”

“Makes sense.”

“It’s your theory.” Sao picked up the pace again.

“I wasn’t thinking too hard about it. Jin running to Tinsel for help after things went sideways with Triad - didn’t seem like a boyfriend move.” Rai laughed dryly. “But what would I know? I haven’t dated in years.”

“I’m no better.”

They walked on in silence, dyed in blues and greens and yellows.

“You were saying how Jin reminded you of yourself,” Rai said suddenly.

“A speculative version of myself.”

“That’s what I was thinking of. You’ve told me before that your best friend when you were a kid was a girl. I’ve never met her, of course, don’t even know her name, but you always say she was kind of feisty, and also a redhead. So when I saw Tinsel, who wouldn’t lift a finger to defend herself, suddenly sprout a steel spine out of nowhere for Jin, I thought…” Rai shuffled forward, head down. “That could be the reason Jin took it upon himself to mess up Rip, too. And the reason he helped Ayer in the first place.”

“I see.”

“Tin’s asshole boyfriend could have put a rift between them.”

Sao was beginning to think he should protest. But perhaps Jin had also been unable to envision his longtime friend, his defender and confidante, being hooked by some insipid cheating man, and unable to accept it when the nightmare came true. “And neither he nor I possess the guts to reach out to our old friend again. Not without some extreme help. I suppose that makes you Ayer, in this scenario.”

Rai’s eyes grew wide. “You think I would have fallen for your pal?”

That nearly knocked the air out of him. Sao laughed and when he thought he was ready to stop, looked at Rai’s face and laughed again. “Not if you had any sense of self-preservation.”

“I never know. I was a real idiot when I was twenty.”

Sao smiled, and turned to look down the Row which was now rolling through a series of sunset shades, like the first time he’d seen it. “Tinsel said that the Row was supposed to convey a message to her friend.”

“When did she say that?”

“When I met her for the first time, though I didn’t know it was her at the time. I was standing at the front of the Row waiting for you to finish something, and she came up and asked me about my Valentine's plans.” He clasped his hands behind his back and watched the colors flow. “After all this talk, I wonder if it was for Jin. Telling him to relax, or something.”

“Kind of.” Rai eyed him with brows furrowed. “Do you know what the colors represent? We saw the pink set a whole bunch last year.”

Feeling rather sluggish, Sao shook his head.

“Hold on.” Rai held up his gloved hands. Sao had unwittingly seeded another theory in his head. “We’ve been going out of our way to ignore someone who's been there the whole time, begging to be involved. Think you have the energy to circle back to the police station one more time?”

“I wasn’t planning on going anywhere else,” Sao said.

He might have misspoken, or Rai might have stumbled in his excitement - but as Rai moved past him, one padded glove seemed to bump into Sao’s upper arm. It was more of a graze, really, a suggestion that they were turning around, rather than any application of force. He thought of Marsh’s enthused pumping of Rai’s hand, and Skogul’s talons pulling him close for a peck on the cheek. If they could stand it –

A harmless accident didn’t warrant such thought. Sao followed Rai back down the Row to the campus gate.

—

Sao regretted that he was at all responsible for the experiment Rai had laid out.

They were seated in Jin’s interview room again, with Jin exactly where they had left him. His sweatshirt had been confiscated but he was given a blanket which he had foregone and left folded on the table. He wasn’t indulging in much beyond staring at the table in front of him, head tenuously propped up in his hands.

Tinsel was shown in. She too had barely moved; they found her in still front of the theater, staring at her phone with distaste. Her face was still dour when Rai called to her but when she saw Jin the hardness melted. She might have happily stood in the doorway until daylight if Rai had not told her to clear the way for another visitor.

She went for the blanket and put it over Jin’s shoulders. “They weren’t planning to leave you in that chair all night, were they?”

Jin slowly raised his head and looked at her as if she were a total stranger.

“Were you? You’ve proven nothing yet and you’re already treating him like a prisoner.” This salvo was aimed at Rai.

“I gotta wait for one of that officer’s superiors to arrive.” Jin reached out a hand as if to touch her sleeve, but thought better of it. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

The officer in question pushed open the door to lead in Ayer, who looked bizarrely presentable despite the drooping khaki pajamas that hung off him like drapes. He smiled toothily at Tinsel and let the curl of his lip become a snarl when he saw Jin. “She shouldn’t have to be here.”

“Why?” Rai asked. “Planning to do something unsightly?”

“No, of course not.” Ayer pushed up his sleeves and sat on the last spare chair, opposite Jin and Tinsel. “Definitely not with a lady present.”

Tinsel, her chair set up next to Jin’s, and had gone out of her way to have the back of the chair face Ayer. And like some reverse switch had been flipped in him, Jin’s head was now up without the support of his hands, his face taut with nervous attention at the sight ahead of him. He made a noise in his throat, but cut it short before it became anything coherent.

Ayer was facing him, but not seeing him. Ayer only had eyes for Tinsel, who was far more interested in her hands on her lap.

“What is the point of this?” Tinsel asked her hands. “You’re not letting him out and you’re not taking me in, so I’m guessing you’ve found nothing new. Are you just here to gloat?”

“Unless it scares some new information out of one of you, then it’s true, this won’t exonerate anyone, legally speaking.” Rai folded his own glove-clad hands on the desk. “I wanted to do something to clear the air for all of you, though.”

Their three-way balancing act snapped apart when Rai turned, stared deep into Ayer’s soul and asked, “What’s your dating life like?”

“What?” Ayer let out a gasp of a laugh. “I don’t have one. I’ve been pretty busy.”

“You weren’t seeing anyone when you were in Highland?”

“No. Come on,” Ayer sighed, shooting several ineffectual glances at Tinsel. “Why are you hammering me with all this? I played around with a few girls in my very first semester here, but that was over a year ago. It never meant anything. I know that sounds pathetic but, man, I don’t know what you want to hear.”

Jin was fidgeting, increasingly close to an outburst. Ayer finally laid his eyes on his old roommate and stood up so quickly his chair flew back. “You lying fuck. What have you been telling them?”

Jin opened his mouth and closed it, and forced his eyes down, which only made him look guilty. “Nothing.”

“Never mind. I see what this is.” Ayer’s thrust a muscular forearm at Jin, his outstretched finger coming just short of jabbing him in the eye. “Revenge.”

“Revenge for what?” Jin barked. The force of his voice finally drew Tinsel’s eyes up to the faces around her.

“For going after a girl you had your eye on. Except, you would never have had the chance to know she existed if it wasn’t for me. You didn’t care about defending her until I got caught, but then you saw your chance and swooped in. Fucking delusional. You couldn’t even do a decent job with Rip.”

He noticed Tinsel staring at him and smiled, anxiously.

“You don’t know anything,” Tinsel hissed.

Ayer’s smile wavered. “You’re taking his side. You should know: he saw your picture, and all the other girls’ pictures, all the bare tits with the blood and writing, and what did he say? That we shouldn’t get involved. I’ll bet he was just with me for the jerkoff material. Is that it, Jin? Were you putting on that faggy act so I’d pass you more pictures, is that it?”

Tinsel stepped in to tear his attention off Jin again. “Excuse me?”

“Point out a good looking girl to him, and he always had some buzzkill line about her hair or her ‘confidence’ or some bullshit. All those pictures of gym rats on his computer - I get it now, he wasn’t hot for them, he wanted to be them. I missed the big giveaway - you should have seen him getting all shifty and red when he saw your picture. I thought he was gonna ask me t–”

“Alright, we get it,” Rai said.

Ayer might have gone on if not for Tinsel, who stood and placed a hand on Jin’s shoulder. Ayer’s face slowly dropped into a strangely sad smile, a leftover of his old charming self. Sao recalled how he had practically bounded off Jin’s shoulders when he and Rai had met them in their room.

“Jin, I do love you very much,” Tinsel said. “But god, your taste in men might be even worse than mine.”

The effect she had was comparable to a Murnau cold snap. Jin and Ayer both froze, unbreathing, until Ayer fell backward into his chair. Jin laughed bitterly and put his head in his hands once more.

—

Ayer was now the one who couldn’t bring himself to meet anyone’s eyes. Jin kept flashing him tiny looks, and Tinsel was staring at him straight on, as if he were a zoo animal. She seemed pleased with herself.

“The trees,” Rai said, clearing his throat. “You told my assistant that it was a message to a friend. It was for Jin, wasn’t it?”

Tinsel nodded and turned to Jin, giving Ayer a moment of respite. “I’m not sure it was clear, though.”

“When I saw it was you who set it up, I knew,” Jin sighed.

Sao looked from one satisfied face to the other and said, “I’m still not sure I understand.”

“You remember the girls with the suicide pact and the zombie pills, last year?” Rai was one of the satisfied faces. “One of the girls, Maya, was some kind of lesbian-focused influencer. Do you remember the backdrop she used on all her ad posts?”

“You mean the girl on Neocam who mailed three boxes of vibrators to her churchy hometown?” Tinsel pressed Jin’s shoulder again. “We followed her in high school, remember?”

“I remember the suicide thing too,” Jin said. “After that party where her friend shot herself on stage, Maya changed. She just posts about fish now. She has some pretty crazy looking fish, but it’s not the same...”

“What in the world are you talking about?” Ayer groaned.

“I’m talking to him,” Rai said, attempting to regain his grasp on the conversation. He swiveled his chair out to face Sao. “The red, pink, orange stripes. It’s supposed to be a flag symbolizing her, I guess, pride in her sexual persuasion. There are color combinations for a bunch of other groups, a different one for men, a whole host more for other identities. Flying the colors on the Row is probably a solidarity thing. Am I right?”

“Not that it worked very well in a place like this,” Tinsel lamented.

“That kind of show would be a hit in Mainline. And hey, you managed to shock some awareness into this guy, so you did something right.” He smirked at Sao.

Sao thought of the fistfight that morning, the talk which had provoked it. “It’s a rather brave statement.”

“I get it now,” Ayer was muttering. “I get it. It would be rough.” He dared a glance at Jin. They exchanged smiles that were unsure, but better than nothing.

“You’re finally, actually, getting it this time,” Tinsel said, and Ayer’s smile became something bright enough to guide ships.

“Well, I’m glad Valentine’s day is off to a good start,” Rai said, checking the time on his phone. “You were all acting in the name of love. That’s great. But Triad has people who care about him too, so if anyone’s got more info to share about him now, please do.”

Ayer composed himself. “What happened to Triad?”

“We told you before. After Rip’s picture was sent out, Triad called Jin to his office to confront him, accusing him of framing you for the attacks before that. There was a scuffle and Triad got hurt. Jin claims total responsibility, although so did Tinsel. In any case, we haven’t been able to locate Triad.”

“What about cameras to the building?” Ayer’s investigative spirit had returned, but he was to be disappointed again.

“We have to wait for security to call in someone from IT. But knowing he’s injured, we’re trying to do what we can before then.”

“You guys,” Ayer said, taking to his feet again, this time painfully. “Just tell them. Professor Triad didn’t want me spreading this around, but he’s really sick. He’s on all kinds of medications, he hinted to me that it might be terminal. I know he’s kind of a brick, he’s not the best with women, but he’s always stuck his neck out for me. He needs painkillers. If you know anything, just say it. Please.”

His heartfelt plea cut through Jin immediately. “We’ve already told the cops what happened.” To prove it, Jin reiterated, “He collapsed in his office. The one on the second floor of Eggers. We left him there and didn’t go back.”

The chain reaction reached Tinsel. “But you keep asking. That must mean…”

Rai raked his searching gaze over each of them in turn. “Security checked his office when Rip woke up in hospital around 11pm. They checked again when you two turned yourselves in with your matching stories. Wherever Triad is, he isn’t there.”

—

i know what you did last night
Of there is anything to say before i go to cops meet at 9:00 at my offic/ ee

The school’s head of IT had been able to access email logs remotely and present them a copy of the garbled message sent to Jin from Triad’s faculty address. It came with assurance that it was the last message Triad sent that day, and the text had not been tampered with. Security camera footage was pending.

“I’m surprised the camera data is only accessible on the campus,” Sao said.

“Don’t be. This kind of place anticipates people like you will call up their corporate buddies to pull footage off the cloud, if they have good enough reason.” Rai read the message again. “What was wrong with Triad’s hands when he wrote this?”

“On morphine, in total darkness perhaps,” Sao reasoned. “I’d have made a few errors too.”

Rai didn’t argue. Typos weren’t going to help them locate Triad, or Triad’s body if it came to that. Sao was being cavalier, but at least he pretended to care. With the lovesick trio, Rai had seen nothing but unfettered relief at the news that Triad had seemingly vaporized.

“Maybe the stabbing wasn’t so bad. Maybe he left on his own.” Jin looked at Ayer while he said it, and Ayer bought it.

Or pretended to. He laughed. “The professor wouldn’t be taken down so easily.”

“See if anyone with stomach injuries checked into the hospital,” Tinsel added. She was so overcome with relief that she remembered what day it was, and what she would soon be hosting, and excused herself. She gave Jin a one-armed hug before she left and, after some consideration, patted Ayer on the shoulder. Once.

Rai left Jin and the sergeant to listen to the gushing monologue Ayer would inevitably follow up with. He and Sao intended to join the sweep of Eggers Hall, but it was already winding down by the time they pushed through the two-ton dungeon doors. The dorm parties were also on the decline, but if the previous nights were any indication, there would always be some stragglers up until sunrise.

Some curious students were sitting and smoking on the steps of the nearest archway. They stretched their necks out to watch Rai and Sao enter the Hall.

The lights in the big stone entryway and the antechamber lounge were on. Rai was a little disappointed at the sight of it; in gloomy daylight it was a convincing vampire bastion, but electric lights zapped away any of that chilling atmosphere. Then again, he shouldn’t be wishing for more dark corners and mystery.

A mixture of campus security and local police had combed through all four floors of the building, every office and bathroom and even the basement, and come out empty handed.

A summary of findings was dutifully, and a little too enthusiastically, reported by a campus guard. “We’re going to check the rest of campus and question the students,” the guard said. The guy had pimples and an immaculately ironed uniform. Liyu had looked pretty young too, Rai wondered if they put newbies on the night shift.

The second floor was dark except for one doorway shining a bright rectangular beam into the hall, which turned out to be Triad’s office. It was the first time they had gotten to see it fully illuminated.

The room was cavernous, with a black timber roof that seemed to sag, and every surface outside Triad’s pacing circuit (which was helpfully carved into the carpet) was caked with dust. The sitting room furniture had cushions of a faded rose color, and the curtains that had looked dark red in stingier light were actually a matching shade. The medicine counter was a huge sideboard with carved legs and knobs that spanned the entire left wall. They had missed entirely that there was a disused fireplace under the shelf where Triad kept his photos and plaques. There were a few conspicuously empty spaces there too, and a frame on the floor. Rai picked it up. The picture of Triad with the farmers, in front of the Aurora lily field.

There was some gunk on the floor by the desk - blood, according to the guard - and a couple of drops half sunk into the edge of the chunky carpet. But there was no coat, no shoes, and neither hide nor hair of Triad.

Rai couldn’t think of anything to say until they were down in the staff lounge. “Do you want a slushie?”

“Rai, it’s four in the morning.” Sao melted into one of the bruised leather couches.

“So what the hell happened here?” Rai dropped into the one opposite and felt himself sink into the seat; the leather was softer than it looked. “Someone did bleed, at least a little, that much is clear. But did Jin really hurt Triad as much as he thought he did? Or did Tinsel do something to Triad when Jin called her over? Would they have even been able to see what they were doing in that dark office? Or…” He bit his lip. “Did Triad just get up and go home?”

“You sound like you don’t want that to be the case.”

“We shouldn’t get complacent.” Rai stared at his phone. There had been no activity since his last check. “Triad didn’t answer Ayer’s calls.”

“It’s four in the morning,” Sao said again. “If Triad went home, chances are he’s asleep.”

“You always pick up at night.”

Sao stewed on that one for a while. “If I was a celebrated professor with a possibly terminal illness, and also your boss, I might not.” He probably felt that was too rude, so he brought his neck up weakly, to smile. “You could be right, of course. But if Triad is in trouble, what’s our next move?”

Rai looked at his phone again. Naturally, there was nothing new. He put it facedown on the table and went to the vending machine. “Jin and Tinsel. They’re so jittery I can’t tell if they’re lying or withholding something, but they were so relieved about the news that Triad wasn’t in his office, I wonder if they were expecting it. If Jin spills anything to Ayer in a fit of nerves, would Ayer tell us? Tinsel wouldn’t want him to, but is his loyalty to her stronger than it is for Triad?”

The machine hummed patiently. It had a bright blue facade, plastered with an ad featuring multicolored fake snow that got on Rai’s nerves, for some reason. Maybe because it was unnatural. Or because it reminded him of his hands.

“I’m an idiot. Obviously Tinsel’s more important to him.” Rai keyed in the code for a Snow slushie. “True love or whatever is making these kids lose their minds. And now we know platonic love is just as bad. Tinsel was willing to let herself get thrown in jail for murder in place of her regular old pal Jin.” He watched the cup fill up behind the little glass panel of the machine and a whisk descent to mix the ice. “A pride lightshow on a campus that thinks women are a checkbox for marketing. Why would those two even apply to a school like this?”

He snapped his slushie out of the vending flap and unwrapped the straw. For a few minutes, he looked out the tall window and lost himself in the sweet taste of snow. Outside, the Row was glowing serenely, waving like a low-hanging aurora.

“I guess I have to give it to them. They don’t shy away from a challenge.” He set the cup down. “You know what Jin was probably thinking when he blew past us up by the Alumni House? You remember that you were fooling around with the flowers? The ones Tinsel gave me, I should add. He probably thought he was seeing something scandalous.” Rai looked at his face in a dark patch of the window. He didn’t look as amused as he was hoping to. “I didn’t want to bring it up in front of him. We probably violated his privacy enough back there.” He frowned and tried to think of a shift in topic. “Come to think of it, he was probably there to watch us, maybe Ayer asked him. That might be why Ayer turned up at the train station…”

In another dark patch of window he saw Sao with his head flopped over the top of the couch. His breathing was even, and his eyes were closed.

Quietly as he could, Rai took his slushie up to the second floor so he could look over the office again, without distraction. He regretted it the moment he stepped into the room. It was too bright, too still, and the floor creaked seemingly at random, which made him constantly jump and look behind him. He expected Triad to leap out from behind a door or from under the desk and strangle him, and was just as disappointed when he didn’t.

The truth was, Triad wasn’t there anymore. He was alone.

Rai slurped his drink and browsed the medicine tray. An extra jar of morphine sat in the back, but most of the prescriptions were pills. He recognized one of the names on the tubes as an antidepressant, and another as a mild sedative. For the one unfamiliar name he opened the box and scanned the lengthy sheet of ingredients and specifications and gathered that it had something to do with the treatment of anxiety and seizures. Side effects included amnesia and fatigue.

Rai was tempted to pop a few. He wished Sao was there to distract him.

He pushed himself along and gingerly opened a few of the counter’s drawers. They were packed with papers; stapled student essays and folders bulging with permits and budgets for his various projects. In the bottom drawer, he found a few of the frames missing from the fireplace. They were all of Triad in better days, hovering over brown-faced kids and grimy construction workers who seemed happy enough to be in his presence. The one picture of Triad alone showed him in front of a low charcoal grill, beside a mountain of indistinct meat. A particularly unpleasant piece of pink goo was sitting on the grill and Triad was giving the thumbs up over it.

Rai put the pictures back and went through the remaining drawers without making a sound. He wasn’t sure why he felt so furtive about it. It wasn’t as if Triad was going to spring out of one if he pulled too hard.

But the curtains behind the desk looked like a great place for a tall guy to hide. Rai tiptoed over, breathed deep and yanked them back. There was nothing to see but a window reflecting his dim face over a view of a brick wall; the inside of the wall that surrounded the campus.

He cracked open the window and looked out. It was snowing again, light fluffy flakes that would replenish the carpet of white that covered the campus and make it nice to step on again. Triad’s view didn’t hold much of interest though, beyond the thin strip of path that ran behind the building, the one Rai had chased Triad through the first time he’d seen him. There was nobody in the alley now but it had definitely been the avenue for a private party at some point that night, because the path was littered with beer bottles, cans and extra-large snack wrappers, slowly being covered by the fresh snow.

A crunchy footstep in the snow might be a half-finished bag of chips. He went back downstairs feeling even more disdainful of Murnau than before.

“You have a message.”

Sao hadn’t moved and his eyes were still closed. But he had been the one to speak.

“I thought you were asleep,” Rai said, picking his phone off the table. “The security guys finally sent me the camera footage. Ugh, it’s through some proprietary service of theirs…”

“My corporate overlord will be so disappointed.”

After some fumbling with a password lock and a firmware update, Rai was able to play the video from the camera facing the doors of Eggers hall. Sao was pretending to be unconscious again, so he didn’t have to see it. Rai hunched over on the couch and watched, and watched it again, to make sure. The tightness in his stomach was back with a vengeance; the pain, he knew now, came from not knowing. A new element had dropped into the mix, rendering it something entirely unfamiliar.

“Triad came in at four in the afternoon. People are in and out pretty frequently until around six. A janitor heads in then. And Jin at nine, like Triad asked him to, and Tinsel twenty minutes later. Then someone else comes in at 9:35.”

Sao shuddered slightly. He must have heard the twist in Rai’s voice.

“The janitor comes out and lets me in at 10:02. I leave about ten minutes later. And then fifteen minutes after that, Jin leaves, and five minutes after him, Tinsel. Then…” Rai hit the pause button and inspected the heavily clothed figure coming out the doors. “This unknown person leaves around eleven.” He set the phone down. “And the doors stay closed until security comes to check on Triad, when Rip told them about his day - that’s just before midnight.”

Sao’s eyes were open. His arms were wrapped around himself, pulling his coat tight over his shoulders. “And by then he’d already moved.”

“And he isn’t here now. But as far as the footage is concerned, Triad never left the building.”

They were quiet. Rai was grateful for the oblivious hum of the vending machine now, he also was grateful for the distraction provided by Sao, who, scruffed up from his nap and slightly shaken, was no longer pretending anything.”

“A third person.” Sao turned Rai’s phone around so he could see the frozen image. “Though, they don’t appear to be carrying a body out. Meaning…”

“Triad’s probably still in the building. Or there’s been a trick.”

Sao was still staring down at the scarf-covered, dark hooded figure. Its silhouette was close to Tinsel’s bogged down by all her winter wear. Not a very revealing shape. “Who is this, though?”

“I don’t know.”

“You had a list of all identifications that were scanned for entry.” Sao pushed the phone back to him, a shallow frown taking shape. “But I suppose you would have immediately suspected any names that came up within that timeframe.”

“Yeah. This person didn’t scan an ID.” Rai left the stranger standing between them. It felt better, to not be facing some unknown by himself. “There is a way to get in without scanning. I was let in by the janitor. I just got lucky with the timing. But if this person was involved…” The shadows seem to stir around them. “It’s more likely they knew the person who let them in.”