Chapter 133: Kendall Hall

NORA’S POV

The drive back from the arena felt like a race against an invisible countdown.

Forty-eight hours. Monday morning, nine o’clock.

Outside the passenger window, the morning sun reflected off the frosty lawns of the fraternity houses. Knox kept both hands on the wheel, his knuckles pale against the black leather.

He didn’t speak until he pulled the truck into the SinBin driveway.

"We don’t panic," Knox said, cutting the engine and looking over at me. "Brennan is giving us room to breathe. Now we find the leak."

I gripped the strap of my satchel and nodded. "We find the leak."

Inside the house, the atmosphere was filled with tension.

Jake was sitting at the kitchen island surrounded by empty mugs, his fingers flying across his laptop keyboard. Bear stood by the back door talking quietly on his phone, while Priya paced the length of the dining table.

The second the front door clicked shut, Priya looked up. "Well? Did Brennan bench him?"

"Not yet," I answered, setting my satchel down on the counter. "We showed him my signed timecards, the study logs, and Knox’s registered accommodation paperwork."

Jake let out a sharp breath of relief, looking up from his screen. "So compliance backed off?"

"They backed off the fraud charge," Knox said, walking over to the island. "Pierce gave us until Monday morning at nine o’clock. If we don’t prove who took the photos and leaked them by then, he’s suspending my captaincy."

"Forty-eight hours," Bear muttered, hanging up his phone. "That’s a tight window."

"Which is why we aren’t wasting time guessing," Knox said. He looked at Jake. "Did you find out who runs Briar Buzz?"

A faint, victorious look crossed Jake’s face. He spun his laptop around so we could see the screen.

"Briar Buzz is a local web app hosted on a private virtual server, registered through a campus domain three years ago. The guy paying the hosting bill is a senior computer science major named Elias George."

"Elias George?" I repeated, recognizing the name from campus tech fairs. "The guy who runs the engineering lab help desk?"

"That’s him," Jake confirmed. "He built the app as a student project sophomore year. He acts like the platform is completely decentralized, but he holds the master admin keys and server logs."

Priya stepped up beside the island, tapping her pen against the legal pad. "Where does he live?"

"Patterson Hall," Jake answered. "Room 412. I texted Tyler on the floor below him... he said Elias has been holed up in his room all morning."

"Let’s go," Knox said, grabbing his keys off the counter.

Fifteen minutes later, our boots echoed down the fourth-floor corridor of Patterson Hall.

The building smelled of stale pizza, burnt solder, and industrial floor wax. Knox walked ahead, leading the way toward Room 412.

He stopped in front of the door and hammered three sharp knocks against the wood.

A moment of quiet passed before the door cracked open.

A tall, thin guy with messy brown hair and black-rimmed glasses peeked out, wearing an oversized gray Briar Computing hoodie.

The second Elias George recognized Knox Sheridan standing on his welcome mat, his eyes went wide behind his lenses. He tried to pull the door shut, but Knox planted a flat palm against the center of the wood, stopping it cold.

"Elias," Knox said in a low and level tone. "We need to talk."

"I... I have a project due on Monday, Sheridan," Elias stammered, stepping back into his room as Knox nudged the door open. "If this is about the hockey threads on the forum, I don’t edit content," he rushed out. "It’s an open student board."

"Nobody asked you to edit anything," Knox replied, stepping inside the cluttered room.

Priya and I followed closely behind him.

The room was dominated by two massive monitors glowing with lines of green and white code, flanked by empty energy drink cans and scattered computer parts.

Elias backed up against his desk, clutching a wireless mouse like a shield. "You can’t come in here and threaten me. Briar Buzz is protected under student speech guidelines."

Priya took a single step forward, crossing her arms over her wool coat. "Student speech guidelines don’t protect criminal defamation, Elias."

Elias blinked, shifting his nervous gaze to Priya. "Who are you?"

"Priya Patel, pre-law," she answered without missing a beat. "And you are currently hosting stolen personal property, non-consensual financial records, and confidential academic documents on a server connected to Briar University’s internet network."

"I didn’t steal anything!" Elias protested, his voice cracking slightly. "Users upload their own files! I don’t control what people post!"

"Under university network policy Section 12, the platform administrator is strictly liable for hosting materials that violate the student code of conduct," Priya said sharply. "By noon today, I can have Dean Hastings and Campus IT freeze your network credentials, seize your private server, and flag your academic record for a disciplinary hearing."

Elias’s face drained of all color. "I’m graduating in May. I have a job offer lined up in Seattle."

"Then I suggest you protect that job offer," I spoke up, stepping forward beside Priya. "We aren’t here to shut your site down. We just want the access logs for the contract leak posted last night at ten-fourteen."

Elias looked between Priya’s stare and Knox’s imposing frame. The fight left him instantly. "Okay," he breathed, dropping into his swivel chair. "Okay, just... don’t call the dean."

His fingers blurred across the keyboard. Within seconds, a black terminal screen filled with scrolling server logs and connection timestamps.

"Here’s the post ID," Elias said, pointing at a line of code. "It was uploaded through a throwaway handle. No real name, burner email."

"What about the raw image files?" I asked, leaning closer to the screen. "Does the server strip the EXIF data on upload?"

"I disabled automatic compression last semester to save CPU load," Elias muttered, clicking into the image storage directory. "The raw metadata is intact."

He clicked the file properties for the first image of Knox’s contract.

A small dialogue window popped up on the monitor.

Capture Date: Saturday, October 22.

Capture Time: 11:38 PM.

My breath caught in my throat.

"October twenty-second," Knox murmured. "That was the night of the Western game kickback."

"They took the photos weeks ago," I said, staring at the timestamp.

"What about the upload connection?" Knox demanded. "Where did the post come from last night?"

Elias highlighted the IP address from the ten-fourteen PM log and cross-referenced it against the campus network directory.

A building tag appeared at the bottom of the terminal.

Network Node: Kendall Hall Wireless Access.

"That’s all the system logs," Elias said, raising his hands in surrender. "The post came through the campus Wi-Fi network at Kendall Hall."

"That’s as specific as the routing goes," he added anxiously. "I don’t get individual names or room numbers."

"Kendall Hall," Knox repeated quietly.

"That’s all we need," Priya told Elias, tapping the edge of his desk. "Delete the post, or I make that phone call anyway."

"Doing it right now," Elias said, frantically clicking his mouse.

We turned and walked out into the corridor, leaving Elias scrambling at his desk.

The door swung shut behind us. We walked down the quiet hallway toward the stairwell, our footsteps echoing against the linoleum.

I looked up at Knox, my mind racing as the puzzle pieces began to assemble.

"Kendall Hall," I said. "Knox, who do we know that lives in Kendall Hall that had access to the SinBin during the Western party?"

Priya froze at the top of the stairs, her eyes widening in sudden realization. She turned to look directly at Knox as she replied. "Chloe."

Knox didn’t look surprised. His gray eyes turned cold as winter ice. "Chloe lives in Kendall," he confirmed quietly. "And she was upstairs that night."