The Damaged (The Insiders Trilogy 2)

She paused before moving farther down the hallway. “Everyone knows who you are. And after your meeting with Ms. Wells, they’ll flock to you. Peter Francis is a god to us.” She narrowed her eyes, skimming me up and down. “If you had merited this program on your own, I’m sure you’d understand.”

Oh, snap.

My back straightened.

I felt the heat start first in my belly, and it was rolling up at a fast pace.

“Merited? On my own?” I narrowed my eyes. “You think I got in here because of who my father is?”

She went farther down the hallway, her back to a closed classroom door, and stood facing me. “I don’t think it. I know it. I work in the graduate office and I was there when Peter Francis called Ms. Busich about you last spring. I’m the one who answered the phone.”

That wasn’t—My stomach dropped.

Wait, though.

What did that mean?

I got in on my own. This was bringing up concerns from earlier, worrying if I got those scholarships because of me or because of my relation to Peter. I knew who I was. This girl, she didn’t. She had no clue who I was, which said more about her than me.

“If Peter called about me last spring, it wasn’t to get me a spot. I got early acceptance on my own.”

“Your name wasn’t even in the files until after that call. Daddy got you in. We have a B-average requirement. If you can’t hack it in the program, you’re out.”

Once she stopped insulting me, her eyes went past my shoulders, and this wasn’t the first time since we started the tour.

She stepped close, lowering her head. “You know that guy?”

I turned, seeing Erik bending over at the water fountain.

His backpack was on. The bulge was sticking out on his side, and he was watching us from the corner of his eye.

“He’s been following us this whole time.”

The jig was up.

But she didn’t say anything or wait for me to respond. Her hand went to the door and she was going inside.

I stepped behind her and turned.

Twelve sets of eyes turned my way.

THREE

They were gawking. They were whispering. They were staring.

I knew this would happen, so I ignored it all and settled in for my first class.

The professor came in, but he didn’t act any differently toward me than the rest of my peers. That was a relief. He came over to introduce himself to me. Brian Zerr. He told me right off the bat that he came from India. I wasn’t sure why he told me that, but I noted it and took a seat next to Hoda.

It was after class, after discussing advanced theories of coding systems, that it happened.

I was swarmed as soon as class was done.

I wasn’t going to remember their names. If they’d had name tags, I would’ve memorized them no problem, but they didn’t, and all the guys seemed to know each other. The university might need to rethink the idea that the IT department was one of the most isolated programs. These guys seemed like long-term buddies, asking about discord servers and if my dad was going to create the rumored AI forum.

One: that alarmed me. Slightly. It also excited me, too.

And two: artificial intelligence was unparalleled and unbarred. The possibilities of that … I was kicking myself for sticking to helping Cyclone with his robot rabbit when we could’ve been reading up on AI theories this entire summer. What the hell. Summer had been wasted, besides all the really great stuff that came out of it, like me getting a family, me getting a father, me falling in love with a scary and dangerous business guy, and you know, the whole other other world, like black markets and everything that Calhoun Bastian represented.

Besides all of that happening, total summer wasted.

AI.

Seriously.

That’s what these guys were into?

The question was rolling around in my head when Hoda took me to Ms. Wells’s office, and once I was in there, I knew we weren’t going to be talking about my class schedule, because I’d asked last spring to take on more than a full-time student’s load. I could handle it and I wanted to graduate in one year, not two. But seeing the set on her face, I braced myself. She had a round face with light pink freckles, strawberry-red hair that was combed through and styled to rest just under her ear, and a white satin blouse that was a size too small. It was snug, and there was a small pudge forming on her side, but as she shifted and pulled at her shirt to cover it, I wanted to tell her to let it go. Embrace the curve. And I was only thinking that because I was still nervous and worried, but I couldn’t quite point my finger on why I felt that way. It’d come to me, or more than likely Kash would just straight-up tell me.