He reached into his pocket, his fingers brushing the cool metal of his phone. It vibrated again.
Evan slowed his pace as he hit the sidewalk on the other side of the street, thumbing the screen. A spiderweb crack marred the top left corner—a souvenir from a scramble to catch the 307 bus back home last week.
[ Notification: New Voice Message - Mom. ]
His stomach tightened.
Mom rarely sent voice messages. She texted. Texting was safe. You could hide behind a text, edit it, delete the awkward parts. A voice message was raw. It meant she couldn't type the words because her hands were shaking, or because she needed him to hear the guilt in her voice.
He tapped play, pressing the phone tight against his ear to block out the traffic noise.
"Evan," her voice crackled. She sounded tired. The cheap microphone didn't hide the tremor in her breath. "Can you stop by the store and grab some groceries? Just the usual. We're out of milk and eggs, too."
A slight pause. Then, her voice dropped lower.
"Also… could you help with the rent this month? Mr. Greg came by. He's coming again Friday."
She paused again before adding, "I'm sorry, Evan. I'll pay you back next month."
The message ended.
Evan stopped walking. The crowd parted around him like water hitting a rock.
Rent. Friday.
Today was Monday.
The numbers flashed in his mind.
Rent was $850.
He unlocked the phone and opened his banking app, Novan Trust. The blue logo spun for a second before delivering the verdict.
[Account Balance: $370.80]
He didn't need a calculator. The gap was staring him in the face.
He needed $479.20 more. Add an extra dollar for the minimum balance. And that didn't include the milk and eggs for later.
Time left? Less than ninety-six hours.
"Incredible," he whispered, letting out a short, dry laugh. "I'm not just broke. I'm mathematically impossible."
His paycheck from the bookstore wasn't due for another two weeks. Besides, that money didn't exist yet. He needed cash now.
His mind snapped to the root cause. The one variable that had changed. The thing he had been trying to ignore since he walked out of that office last week.
The memory didn't wash over him; it spiked, sharp and high-definition, dragging him straight back to the Dean's desk.
***
Flashback: A Week Ago
The Dean's office smelled of lemon polish and for Evan, after everything, too much of stupidity. Dean Reynolds sat behind a mahogany desk that probably cost more than Evan's entire tuition.
He tapped a manicured finger on a stack of papers.
"We have a problem, Mr. Kyros."
Reynolds didn't slide the paper across the desk; he nudged it forward with a single finger, like it was contaminated.
[Advanced Systems Logic & Design: Final Exam. Score: 100%.]
Evan looked at the number. He didn't smile. He sat straighter in the hard wooden chair.
"I fail to see the problem," Evan said, slightly confused. "Unless the problem is that I didn't leave any room for improvement."
"The problem," Reynolds sighed, taking off his glasses to rub his nose, "is your score. The class average was 62%. The second highest score was 64%. You finished in forty-five minutes. The allotted time was three hours."
"I optimized the workflow," Evan shrugged. "Questions 4 through 10 were just variations of the same logic gate. I didn't rewrite the code six times. I wrote a kernel for Question 4 and pointed the other answers back to it. It's not cheating. It's efficiency."
Reynolds stared at him blankly. He was an administrator, not a coder. He didn't care about the logic; he cared about the irregularity.
"It's not just the speed, Evan. Professor Vance flagged your practical section." Reynolds tapped a second sheet. "Your solution for the data-sort is identical—line for line—to a patch released by a Senior Systems Architect at LR Tech yesterday morning."
Evan blinked. He didn't need to run the timeline in his head. This was too obvious.
"Wait. You said the LR Tech patch was released yesterday?"
"That is correct. It's a proprietary algorithm."
"Dean Reynolds," Evan said slowly, leaning forward. "I took that exam three weeks ago."
Reynolds paused. His hand froze halfway to his coffee mug.
Evan pressed the advantage. "I wrote that code twenty-one days ago. The LR Tech guy released his version twenty-four hours ago. Unless I built a time machine in my dorm room, I didn't copy him."
Evan's eyes hardened.
"If the code is identical, then he copied me. Or, more likely, we both just found the only mathematically perfect solution."
Reynolds opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked at the dates on the paper.
The math was irrefutable. Evan had submitted the work before the "original" was even published.
Reynolds set his jaw. He looked at the student—ragged clothes, scholarship case, looking at him with that irritatingly intelligent gaze. Then he thought about the University's pending research partnership with LR Tech. If there was even a whisper that a student at this university had compromised LR Tech's data, the multi-million dollar grant would vanish.
The truth didn't matter.
"The dates don't clear you, Mr. Kyros," Reynolds said, his voice dropping to a cold, smooth tone. "They make it worse."
Evan frowned. "Excuse me?"
"It is statistically impossible for a student to independently replicate a Senior Architect's code line-for-line. Impossible," Reynolds said. "Which means you didn't copy the public release. It means you breached their secure servers during the build phase."
"You have to be joking," Evan laughed, a sharp, angry sound. "You're flagging me for corporate espionage because my code was… what? Too efficient?"
"I am mitigating risk," Reynolds snapped. "LR Tech takes theft seriously. This university will not be liable for a student hacking their systems."
"You're ignoring the logs because they don't fit your story."
"I am following protocol. Until the investigation clears you, your scholarship stipend is frozen."
Evan stiffened. "How long?"
"Minimum twelve weeks," Reynolds said, his tone clinical. "I will present your case to the Board when the semester opens. Worse case, your scholarship is terminated."
The hum of the AC seemed to die, leaving a ringing silence in the room. Evan stood up, his calm mask finally cracking.
"You can't do that," he said, his voice tight. "Twelve weeks? You freeze that money, and I can't pay rent. I can't eat. You aren't just pausing my scholarship; you're evicting me."
Reynolds slid his glasses back on, picking up a pen. He was already looking at the next file on his desk.
"That is a personal finance issue, Mr. Kyros," Reynolds said, not looking up. "Perhaps you should have calculated the cost before you decided to be too clever for your own good."