The atrium stairwell was supposed to be a brightly lit, main artery of campus life. But at 10:00 PM, it was a hollow concrete shell, echoing with the distant, ominous thrum of the ventilation system. Mel stood under the third-floor landing, the heavy RFP packet clutched in one hand. Every shadow seemed to stretch and shift, making her feel as though she were being watched by Kallen himself. This felt less like a clandestine meeting and more like an audition he had covertly orchestrated.
She didn't hear Leila Vaughn approach. One moment the landing above was empty; the next, a shadow detached itself from the gloom.
Leila looked nothing like a student. She wore an immaculate, dark blazer over a simple black dress, and her hair was pulled back in a severe, professional knot. She carried no bag, no books, only a minimalist leather portfolio. Her eyes, sharp and assessing, landed on Mel's frantic, exhausted face.
"You look like a casualty," Leila said, her voice low and completely devoid of warmth. She descended one step, closing the distance just enough to make Mel feel small and exposed.
Mel fought the urge to check the ceiling corners for hidden cameras. "I need access," she stated, skipping any preamble. "The political volatility metrics and the legal brief structure. Kallen locked the data behind a paywall to filter out the students without resources."
Leila didn't blink. A faint smile, cold as sterile steel, touched the corner of her mouth. "You're asking me to hand over the key that separates the winners from the losers. Why should I bother? Your failure is inevitable."
"Because I'm willing to lose everything," Mel shot back, the raw honesty of the admission surprising even herself. She pictured Kallen's dismissive face. "I'm not doing this for status; I'm doing this to stay in school. I will execute better than anyone else if I'm given the instructions."
"A bold claim," Leila murmured. She reached into her portfolio and pulled out a single, unmarked white business card. It was thick, heavier than it should be, and felt like stone. She held it out, forcing Mel to step forward and take it.
"I won't give you the data. I'll give you the tool," Leila stated. "But my payment is immediate: absolute silence. If you tell anyone—Kallen, any friend of yours, or even a wall, that you saw me, the tool stops working, and you will have wasted my time."
Mel looked at the card, then up at Leila, whose shadow seemed to stretch the length of the stairwell. The condition wasn't monetary; it was an imposition of isolation and secrecy, which Mel knew was exactly what Kallen was testing for.
Leila leaned in, her voice dropping to a near whisper. "The information you need for the political assessment is not in a database. It's in the footnotes of five specific, archived faculty papers published between 2008 and 2013. You won't find them searching by title. You have to cross-reference the secondary author list against Kallen's department grant submissions."
Mel's mind raced, translating the cryptic instruction. It wasn't a shortcut; it was a complex, hidden scavenger hunt that required obsessive focus, a puzzle only a handful of people would ever think to look for.
Leila tapped the card in Mel's hand. "This card has one key: the password to an abandoned server on campus. It was used by the Law School's corporate ethics team. You will find a legal template brief there. Don't copy it. Study the structure and replace their data with your own. Kallen is looking for methodology, not results."
Leila straightened, her business concluded.
"You have twenty-one days," she stated, her eyes locking Mel in place. "The clock started the moment you took the RFP. Assume Kallen is watching your every move. Now get out of my sight and go work."
She turned and melted back into the gloom of the fifth-floor landing. Mel was left alone, clutching the illicit white card, the silence of the stairwell now ringing with the chilling realization that success required not just intelligence, but the courage to operate in the professor's shadow, entirely alone.