When we neared the lab, Fitz touched my arm and passed me.
I’d already stopped, remembering the rules, but Fitz said anyway, “I go first.”
He did, and came out a second later, nodding to me. The room had been cleared.
Each of us took a seat behind a computer. I hadn’t gone to this class yesterday and there was a new professor to meet.
Melissa leaned over, gesturing to Fitz in the hallway. “Is he going to be out there the whole time?”
Liam leaned forward from my other side. “It’s his job. Why wouldn’t he?”
She frowned, her little forehead wrinkling. “Because what if something happens to her in here? How would he know?”
Both Liam and I looked around the classroom, but there was only the one door. No windows. Just brick walls, desks, and computers. And chairs.
“And where would the attack come from?”
She shrugged, turning back to her computer and letting her bag fall on the floor. “I don’t know. Maybe one of the other students.”
Liam snorted, mirroring her and facing forward. “Then we’re her guards and we got it. One shout and that motherfucker is barreling in here, gun drawn. Chaos everywhere. Panic. Screams. We don’t want that shit, so on the very low chance one of our own classmates tries to get her, we keep it tight. Okay?”
Melissa and I shared a look.
Neither of us knew what he was talking about, but I lifted up a shoulder. “I’ll be fine. He’ll still be out there when we’re done.”
Her head perked up and she grinned. “Nice.”
Hoda came into the room then, her eyes searching. Finding me. Narrowing. Then moving clear across the room. The other guys were either already seated or were coming in, and once the hour started, we all sat back and learned the fundamentals of information technology.
It was after class when Hoda came over. She avoided my gaze, only responding to Liam. A few of the other guys were with us, and apparently there was a special eating area for graduate students. It was still a café-style eating area, but it wasn’t as big as the undergraduate eating section.
I let Fitz know our destination.
He moved ahead of me, off to the side, but within arm’s reach.
Hoda kept glancing at him, but she was more discreet than Melissa.
Melissa was gawking. And that was when I first really felt surrounded by the typical IT geeks, because none of the guys—Liam was the exception—noticed. They were talking about the newest version of Logitech, which was scheduled to come out in a month. Some of the guys were speaking as if they’d already been using it for the last six months, and I tuned in, not because I fully believed them. They were saying they’d been given early review access and I knew that wasn’t true. Peter was on the board of Logitech, and the review access did not go to grad students from Hawking University. They went to established professionals in the field. So were these guys bluffing for some reason?
Something clicked back in place with me, and I couldn’t hold off a faint grin.
They were bluffing to impress the others.
I was walking among my people.
This was my world. I’d been the outcast, now a novice in my father’s world and Kash’s world, but in this world I was totally a warrior. A kick-ass warrior, to be more specific.
I was thinking this, feeling happy about this, when we walked up to the eating area and noticed the crowd. Or the guys did.
Hoda stopped first, frowning. “What?”
Liam stopped next. His half grin just diminished, so it was a quarter of a grin. He said nothing.
Melissa’s eyes never moved from Fitz. Had to give her respect for her devotion.
It was the others’ reactions that worried me.
“The fuck?”
“Is there a celebrity here today?”
I didn’t know the guys who asked that, but all were watching the crowd, and as we stood there, the crowd seemed to get bigger.
“Those aren’t students.” This was from Hoda. She took a step forward. “Those are reporters. I recognize a few bloggers.”
“Bloggers?” From one of the guys.
The crowd was moving, forming at one end of the court and slowly heading across in front of us. Among the heads moving around, I saw an official-looking older man walking in the middle. A middle-aged woman was with him, and I saw that Busich was with the group.
Someone high up was at Hawking, and it was then that I felt Fitz on my other side. His eyes were hard, focused on the crowd heading toward us. He spoke from the side of his mouth, quietly. “We need to go.”
“Why?”
Melissa jostled into me. “Is something going on?”
Fitz pressed a hand to my back, gently but also assertively, guiding me away from the crowd. I started to go with him when my phone rang.
Kash calling.
I put it to my ear. “Hey.”