Silence in my ear. I could almost hear him thinking, recalculating.
“Okay. Plan B. Alex, you have your student ID?”
“Yeah...” Alex said.
“Try it on the card reader. Sometimes these doors default to student access if they’re not properly secured.”
Alex stepped closer, pulled his wallet from his back pocket and his arm brushed mine. Heat shot through me. Fast and sharp, something I couldn’t stop. Something that I wanted more of.
He swiped the card, and the door beeped and a green light flashed on the card reader.
The lock clicked open.
“Thank God,” I said.
“You’re in?” Noah asked.
“Yup,” I said, pushing the door open.
The server room was small—maybe ten feet by ten feet. Server racks lined the walls, equipment stacked floor to ceiling. Blinking lights. Red, green, yellow. The low hum of cooling fans. Blue ethernet cables snaking everywhere like veins. Itsmelled like electronics and recycled air and something metallic I couldn’t identify.
This was where Kingswell’s digital infrastructure lived. Student records. Financial data. Email servers. Including the video of me and Alex racing at dawn.
“Find the main terminal. Should be labeled. Plug in the USB I gave you and run the script,” Noah said.
I scanned the room. Equipment everywhere. How was I supposed to—
There. A workstation in the corner with a monitor and keyboard. A label on the tower: ADMIN TERMINAL 01.
“Got it.”
I moved to the desk. Pulled the USB from my pocket.
My hands were shaking.
I forced them steady. Plugged it in.
The screen lit up—bright blue login screen. Windows logo. Username and password fields.
“Noah, it’s password protected.”
“Username is ‘admin.’ Password is ‘KSU2024athletics.’ Capital K, capital S, capital U. No spaces.”
I typed it in. Slowly. Carefully. I hit enter and prayed this would work. The screen changed. Desktop loaded. File directories opened.
“I’m in.”
“Okay. Open the USB drive. Should show up as a removable drive. Double-click the file called ‘cleanup.bat.’ It’ll run automatically. Don’t touch anything else.”
I found it. The USB drive icon. Opened it.
One file. cleanup.bat.
I double-clicked.
A black command prompt window opened. Text started scrolling past—white letters on black background, movingtoo fast to read. Technical commands. File paths. Progress indicators.
“It’s running.”
