14

Augmented Reality

Gray light filters through the skylight at the top of the dormitory stairs. I hurry onward, swearing beneath my breath. It’s later than I intended. Nearly dawn. I need to get the video feeds back to their undoctored state before campus security notices anything amiss.

A tendril of unease curls its way around my abdomen. I’ve been messing with the security footage too often. I meant to lay off for the rest of the summer session. Keep myself out of trouble. Stick to the rules. But there was no way I could follow curfew last night.

My dorm room lies ahead—lights out, door closed—the way I left it. I make a beeline for my desk and log into my laptop. A few familiar keystrokes pull up my trusty .exe file.

Winthrop Secure Server [10.0.10.240]

C:\ Augmented-Reality.exe_

I drum my hands against my thighs. Time for some old-school “augmented reality.” Little known fact, but Emerson Kemp’s whole interest in AR began as nothing more than a schoolboy’s efforts to circumvent curfew. I’ve been using his old hack for three summers now. Hard to believe no one on campus security has caught wind. They desperately need to update their cybersecurity protocols. It only takes this one script to override the password and gain full access to Winthrop security’s internal server.

My fingers clench against my knees as I wait for it to work. I’ve gone through these motions more times than I can count, but something tonight has me unsettled. I have the weirdest feeling I’m about to be found out. What would Dr. Carlyle do if he realized that Reese, Eleanor, and I have been playing games with the camera feeds all this time?

Something tells me that Reese and Eleanor would be fine. I’m the one who would end up out on my ass with a one-way ticket back to my grandmother’s apartment in New York.

I scowl. There’s no reason to think that campus security will figure it out on their own. The only hitch could be if Eleanor decides to clue them in, just to screw me over. Yet another reason I have to play along with her.

How did I get myself into this mess? Everything was under control until yesterday afternoon. I was sitting right here at my desk, preparing to get started on the format libraries. Nora and I were supposed to work together after dinner, and I wanted to have something to show for myself before we met up…

But then I got that frantic text.

PRIVATE MESSAGES WITH REESE

Reese: Maddox! You need to get over here.

Maddox: Can it wait? I’m in the middle of something.

Reese: Now! Come to Fenmore. Emergency meeting!

Maddox: What happened?

Reese: Eleanor’s dropping out of our group.

Maddox: Seriously? Why??

Reese: Like you don’t know…

Maddox:

Reese: Maddox, you need to smooth it over.

Maddox: Whatever. Are we in preschool? Let Eleanor throw her tantrum.

Reese: WE NEED HER!

Maddox: For what? Nora’s a stronger coder.

Reese: Yes, but the visors are all registered to Eleanor. If she leaves, our whole project goes with her.

I’m getting really tired of Miss Winthrop and her games. I’d be perfectly content to “augment” that girl right out of my “reality.” If only there was a hack for eliminating annoying exes from one’s social circle.

I had no choice but to bail on Nora. By the time I got to Eleanor’s room, she’d gone MIA. Reese and I spent half the night begging her to come back and talk it over before she finally deigned to grace us with her presence.

I blow out my breath with a huff. It might be best if Nora and I don’t work in the library anymore. Those glass-walled rooms aren’t exactly private. Someone spotted us hunched together over a laptop and sent Eleanor a pic, precipitating her latest freak-out. I guess I had my hand resting on the back of Nora’s chair. Perfectly innocent. I wasn’t even touching her shoulder!

At least, not that time…

A grim smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. Eleanor’s not imagining things. I can lie to her and pretend my interest in Nora is all business—but the truth is, I like that girl. I like her more and more each time I’m with her.

I should have been with her last night. I hope Nora isn’t pissed I ditched our work session. I haven’t exactly been pulling my weight. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, between the ex-girlfriend-drama and the financial fallout if the Winthrops cut me off.

But Nora doesn’t know about any of that, and I can’t tell her. I can’t tell anyone. Not without violating the deal I made with Eleanor.

Which means I’m stuck here in this no-man’s-land, tiptoeing around the truth with both of them. I walked right past Nora’s room on my way out of Fenmore. Her light was on, but I didn’t dare knock—not after that conversation with Eleanor.

“You haven’t told anyone, have you?”

“No, I haven’t told anyone.”

“And you think people won’t guess, when they catch you hooking up with some sophomore?”

“I’m not hooking up with her!”

That much was true. At least, not yet…

I bite my lip. I’m playing with fire. If I really mean to steer clear of trouble this summer, I should keep a safe ten feet of distance from my partner at all times. I gave Eleanor my word. I may be a shameless rule-breaker when it comes to stuff like curfew, but I’ve always been a man of my word.

Right?

I tip back my head and contemplate the ceiling. I don’t know. Is a man’s word binding if it’s coerced?

I never would have gone along with Eleanor’s nonsense if I had a choice in the matter. She’s blackmailing me, essentially. So I really have no moral obligation to follow her “terms and conditions” if I can get away with it. That’s why I broke up with her in the first place. So I could do my own thing. Be my own man. Hook up with whomever I like.

And I like Nora.

I close my eyes and groan. Life would be so much simpler if I didn’t like Nora.

But I do.

I can’t pretend I don’t.

And I’m pretty well convinced that Nora likes me back. The girl might be a genius at Java, but she’s not exactly a master of deception when it comes to hiding her feelings. She wears her emotions all over her face. Bright flaming red cheeks every time I accidentally brush my hand against her arm.

Honestly, Nora doesn’t even need an avatar. Her face is easier to read in real life.

A flash of movement on my laptop interrupts my thoughts. My script finishes running, and the security interface logs itself in. My eyes skim over the split-screen display, and I click my mouse to maximize the windows I need. One side of my screen shows the live footage from all the cameras located on the second floor of Fenmore Hall.

All quiet. No movement. Doors closed. Lights out.

That’s what the cameras appear to show, at any rate. Appearances can be deceiving.

The other half of the display shows the source code editor. There, buried halfway down the page, are the lines I added last night before my visit to Eleanor’s room.

overlay = Image.open(“CDNM.GIF”)

A GIF…a five-second animated clip, set to the exact same frame-rate as the video input captured by the camera. This one, CDNM, is one of several I use on regular rotation, following the naming convention that Emerson established. CDNM stands for “closed doors no movement.”

I hold down the delete key, watching the inserted commands disappear without a trace. Ready…

Now comes the risky part. I hold my breath as I hit Enter to update my changes. The footage on the other half of the screen freezes for a split-second and then jumps back to life—the fake video loop files replaced by the unaugmented live feed. To anyone watching, it would look like a momentary loss of connectivity. No obvious signs of tampering. The real footage still shows all the doors closed on Fenmore’s second floor. Someone observing closely might notice the lights jump on in the crack beneath a couple of doorframes, but there’s nothing so unusual about that. It merely looks like the occupants inside woke up and turned their lights on.

Done. I lean back in my chair and let out a long breath. That was a close one. It could have gotten messy if people were up and about in the hallway at the moment I reverted to the live footage. I can’t take a chance like that again.

No more tampering.

At least not in the dorms.

I crack my knuckles and lean forward, adjusting the angle of my laptop. I guess I’m not sleeping tonight. It’ll be time for breakfast soon, and I still have one more thing I need to do.

I pull up a different window. My screen fills with row after row of file folders, labeled with serial numbers and timestamps. This server automatically stores the recorded footage from every camera on campus for seventy-two hours—and these archives represent the one major flaw in Emerson’s hack. The inserted GIF files only cover up the camera footage for a viewer watching in real time. Here in the archives, the actual footage gets stored. Only the system admin has delete privileges, which means the truth is preserved here for three long, incriminating days.

Luckily, campus security never bothers with the archived footage. I’m not sure they realize they have it. Still, these folders make me nervous. I always check them before I log out, so I know how damaging the evidence might be.

I pull up the feed from the camera outside Eleanor’s room and tap the rewind key, watching images whiz by in reverse as the time counter races backward.

Empty hallway. All clear…

There.

I recognize my own tall form letting myself out of the room. Hopefully that’s the worst of it. I don’t expect much else to crop up as I keep rewinding. The next images race by, and it takes me a long moment to register what I’m seeing.

“What the…”

My hand flashes to my touch pad, clicking Pause and then Play.

Was that…? I rub my palm slowly against the back of my neck. It couldn’t be…

Nora.

I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping I’m hallucinating. But I’m not. She’s there, standing in the hall outside Eleanor’s room with her back pressed up against the wall. The camera angle crops half her face out of the frame, but it leaves enough visible for me to see her expression.

Her eyes are narrowed in an accusatory squint. I can practically feel them boring into me, and I slouch lower in my chair. I have the strangest sensation she can see me here, watching her, as I sit on the other side of my laptop screen.

I give my shoulders a shake to snap out of it. She’s not glaring at me. This is recorded footage, not live. If it feels like we’re making eye contact, that means she must’ve been looking straight into the security camera lens.

But her face… What exactly was she looking at? She squints harder, until her eyes are little more than two dark slits. Then her gaze shifts sideways, like she’s listening—eavesdropping on the whispered conversation taking place behind that door.

Uh-oh. My mind flies backward. How much damage did I do? I can’t remember half the things I said to Eleanor. All lies. Whatever I could think of to smooth her ruffled feathers.

It’s not clear from Nora’s face whether she can understand any of the whispered words. But then, right there at the 4:40:27 mark…

I hit pause to freeze the image, and her unmistakable expression fills my screen.

“What?” I murmur, gripping the edges of my laptop with two closed fists. “What did I say? What did you just hear?”

Her shoulders go rigid. Her mouth is slack. And those eyes—those huge green eyes I can’t stop thinking about—they go all big and round.