7. Missing Footage #2
By ten-thirty the rink had emptied enough that the quiet felt territorial.
Noah should have left. Instead he crossed campus to Halcyon Academic with his overnight bag slung over one shoulder and the dented brownie tin tucked under his arm because he’d grabbed it without thinking on the way out.
Burnt sugar still clung faintly to the metal.
The tutoring center occupied the second floor, all fluorescent wash and institutional carpet patterned in colors no human had ever chosen on purpose. At night it looked exactly like what it was: a place built to prove support existed, whether or not it worked.
A student employee was locking the front desk gate when Noah stepped off the elevator.
She startled, then squinted. “Oh. Hi.”
He recognized her vaguely—Mina, maybe? She worked evening shifts, wore cardigans no matter the weather, and had the efficient, unillusioned face of someone who had seen too many panicked undergrads try tears as a strategy.
“Sorry,” Noah said. “Is someone still here?”
“Depends who.”
He smiled automatically. “Anybody from the tutoring office?”
She hesitated, key still in the lock. “Talia left an hour ago.”
The disappointment hit too fast and too specifically. He masked it. “Not looking for Dr. Shah.”
“Mm-hm.”
He let that go. “I just need to ask something.”
Mina rested her hip against the desk. “This feels suspiciously like looking for Dr. Shah.”
“It’s not.”
“That answer was somehow less convincing than the first one.”
Noah blew out a breath. “Do you know if records are getting reviewed from, like, specific nights? Sign-ins, submissions, that kind of thing?”
At once, her expression changed. Not open panic. Wariness.
“Why?”
Because my entire team might be bleeding out from a secret and I don’t know where to put pressure without making it worse.
He did not say that.
“Coach mentioned there could be an issue,” Noah said instead. “I’m trying to get ahead of what guys are freaking out about.”
Her gaze dropped to the brownie tin, then back to his face. “You know you’re not subtle, right?”
“No one’s ever accused me of that.”
“True.” She tapped the key against the desk once. “There was… some weirdness with system timestamps from one night a few weeks ago.”
His whole body sharpened.
“What night?”
She frowned. “Why?”
Noah stepped closer, keeping his voice low. “Because if I know what night, I know who was in here.”
Mina studied him for a beat too long. Then she named the date.
Noah recognized it immediately.
St. Brendan week. The Tuesday before the away game. Mandatory study hall after practice. Cole pale and wired and pretending his Econ paper was under control. Dylan snapping at everyone. Foster in and out of the room with coffee and that relentless, practical calm of his.
And later, much later, Noah leaving to tape his thumb again in the bathroom while a printer jammed at the end of the hall and half the room shifted because everyone was fried.
He could see it all at once, as vivid as if the fluorescent light were still in his eyes.
“What kind of weirdness?” he asked.
Mina lowered her voice too. “Camera glitch. One of the hallway feeds cut out for like eighteen minutes. IT says corrupted file. The submission record on one account got entered right inside that window.” She paused. “Which is apparently not ideal.”
Noah’s heartbeat went heavy and slow.
Whose account? he almost asked.
But he already knew what his brain was doing—sorting bodies in that room, matching panic to opportunity, remembering who had vanished and who hadn’t.
Cole had left his station twice that night. Foster had gone down the hall toward the printer room. The assignment in question had been one everybody kept whispering about afterward because a freshman who’d been drowning suddenly turned in something polished enough to stop the emails.
Beloved assistant coach. Vulnerable kid.
The floor seemed to tilt under him.
“Was it hockey?” he asked.
Mina’s mouth flattened. “I’m not supposed to discuss active review details.”
That was another not-no.
Noah looked past her into the center. Empty tables. Whiteboard with half-erased citation rules. A forgotten sweatshirt over the back of a chair. The smell of old coffee and printer toner and the cold dust of overworked buildings.
“Did Dr. Shah tell you to say anything to me?”
“What? No.”
“Did anyone?”
“No, Noah.” She crossed her arms now, defensive. “I mentioned a glitch because you looked like you were about to put your fist through the wall if I gave you another generic answer.”
He unclenched his jaw. Hadn’t even realized he’d done it.
“Sorry.”
Mina sighed. “You didn’t hear this from me.”
He nodded.
She watched him another beat, then said quietly, “If somebody did something stupid because they thought they were helping, the review won’t care about intent as much as everybody hopes.”
The line hit with the force of prophecy.
Noah gave one short nod, turned, and walked before she could say anything else.
The elevator took forever. He stabbed the button with his good hand and stared at his reflection in the dark metal doors. Suit rumpled. Tie loosened. Shoulders too tight. The face everybody on campus trusted to stay calm.
Inside, not calm.
By the time he got outside, snow had started again—fine, needling flakes that caught in his hair and melted cold against his scalp. He didn’t head for his truck. He started walking.
Campus at night let him think in a straighter line.
Sidewalk salt crunching under dress shoes.
Steam lifting ghost-white from vents. Windows glowing over desks where grad students and engineering majors and desperate seniors were still awake under deadlines that had nothing to do with his team and everything to do with their own private emergencies.
The date kept replaying.
He had been there.
He had seen Cole nearly shaking when Talia asked for his draft status in that cool, impossible tone of hers. Seen Foster touch the kid’s shoulder and tell him to breathe, to print what he had, to keep moving. Seen the way everyone in that center looked to adults for permission to be okay.
If the hallway camera had gone down while a submission appeared on a freshman’s account, there were only a few explanations. None good.
His phone buzzed. Sloane again.
You alive?
He typed, Barely.
Then, before he could stop himself, added, Can I call you later?
The dots appeared immediately.
Yes. And don’t “I’m fine” me.
He almost smiled. It vanished fast.
At the edge of the central quad, a figure stepped out from the lit doors of the policy building, scarf wrapped high, tote bag over one shoulder.
Talia.
He stopped so abruptly snow slid under one shoe.
She saw him at the same moment and froze too, as if surprise required full-body participation. Then she came down the steps, measured and self-possessed despite the hour.
“You look terrible,” she said when she reached him.
There was no warmth in it. There was, annoyingly, concern.
“Strong opener.”
“I’m tired.” She adjusted the strap on her bag. “And you look terrible.”
He looked at her face in the campus light—fatigue under her eyes, hair slightly wind-loosened at the temples, the clean severity of her coat doing nothing to hide how alive she still seemed after a day that should have flattened anyone.
“Were you in Halcyon Academic tonight?” he asked.
Her gaze sharpened instantly. “Why?”
Wrong opening. Too obvious.
Noah put a hand on the back of his neck, feeling cold collect in his collar. “I heard there’s an issue with footage from one of the nights under review.”
A beat.
Snow hissed softly against wool and concrete.
“Who told you that?” she asked.
He hesitated exactly long enough to tell her too much.
Talia’s expression hardened. “Noah.”
“I’m asking because I was there that night.”
“And?”
“And I think I know who could get caught in it.”
Her chin lifted. “Caught in what they did or caught in what someone else did for them?”
He stared at her.
Of course she went straight there.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then why are you asking me instead of compliance?”
The question landed in the center of him because there it was, plain and ugly.
Because he didn’t trust the machine not to grind up whoever was smallest first. Because once the board and media and athletics communications got hold of a frightened freshman and an assistant coach with a martyr streak, the story would flatten into something bloodless and vicious and final.
“Because by morning this turns into a process,” he said. “And processes don’t care who panicked.”
Talia’s eyes did not soften. “Sometimes that’s because panic is not an exemption.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
He laughed once, humorless. “You really pick your moments.”
“Yes,” she said. “Deliberately.”
The snow was coming down harder now, stippling her dark coat, melting on the bridge of her nose. He wanted, with a stupid physical force, to brush it away. He kept his hands in his pockets.
“What do you think happened?” she asked.
Noah looked away across the quad, where the rink lights glowed pale beyond the library roofline. “I think a kid was drowning.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I think somebody older decided consequences were optional if the intention was good enough.”