The students looked up with wide eyes. “Uh…” One of them stammered. “W-we’re not in this department. We just use this old lab for… stuff. On weekends.”
Katherine didn’t even want to guess. She nudged Baxter to the side. “Have you seen any older students come in this way? The one we’re looking for is short and thin. She’s white and has really long brown hair. Very cheerful.”
“Oh.” The girl in the group piped up. “I saw her. Yeah, she came in with two other people. One of them was a professor, I think. They went up the stairs.”
“Thank you.”
Baxter couldn’t resist. “What are you doing in here?” None of the desktop computers were on. Backpacks spilled notebooks and folders onto the worktables and three laptops were open, but all three students were also on their phones.
The girl stared at Baxter with wide eyes. “Political hacktivism.”
“Right, carry on.” He pulled Katherine away from the lab and toward the stairs. “The elevator is broken in this building right now.”
“Wait, did they say activism or hacktivism?”
“Not sure. We should go find Kaylee.”
“But—”
“Kaylee.” He pushed her ahead of him on the stairs. “Priorities. Can you climb with your knee?”
“Yes. I’m okay.” She stopped at the second floor landing and poked her head into the hallway. She heard nothing, not even papers shuffling. “Third floor.”
They walked up to the third floor, which was the top of the building, and opened the door. The landing was in the exact center of the hallway, but there were only voices coming from the right.
“This way.” Katherine walked toward the voices, two of which she recognized, Kaylee and a deeper male voice that sounded familiar. She had her suspicions, which were confirmed when she saw Greg Hammond sitting across the table from Kaylee and a professor that Katherine recognized as Alice Kraft, one of the newest tenured professors in the computer science department.
Alice Kraft had very distinctive red hair, and she was young enough to be frequently mistaken for a student. All three were on laptops, and Kaylee had a clipboard and a printout next to her.
When she heard them at the door, Kaylee looked up. “Katherine?”
“Kaylee.” Katherine was breathing a little hard from climbing the stairs. “Hi.”
Greg and Alice Kraft were staring at them.
Professor Kraft frowned. “Professor Pang?”
“Professor Kraft, how are you? Have you met my wife, Katherine Bassi?”
“I haven’t. Physics, correct?”
“Biophysics, yes. I work at the Neuroengineering and Marine Sciences lab with Kaylee.”
“How interesting.” She frowned before she glanced at Greg and Kaylee. “Is there something we can help you with?”
Katherine and Baxter exchanged a look.
“I needed to speak to Kaylee, and she wasn’t answering her phone.”
“Yes, we turned all our devices off because we’re working on confidential study files,” Alice Kraft said. “I don’t want to offend you, but we’re quite busy and this is something that has to be done quickly, which is why we’re working on a Saturday.” She was clearly annoyed that they’d been interrupted.
“If I could borrow Kaylee for a brief moment, I’d appreciate it,” Katherine said. “It shouldn’t take long.”
Her mind flashed back to her brief conversation with Greg at the student center.
“You’re a busy young man. Psychology and technology?”
“I want to focus on how data from wearable devices could potentially transform how mental health professionals evaluate patients.”
“That’s very interesting.”
“Yeah. I mean… Everyone lies, right? But our bodies don’t.”
Greg Hammond. Greg and Alice Kraft? Could Greg have been the student who helped her design the app? Katherine and Baxter guided Kaylee down the hall and into a small alcove near the stairwell.
“Do you have your phone on you?” Katherine asked.
Kaylee glanced at Baxter.
“Professor Pang knows about what happened on the roof,” Katherine said. “He knows about what happened with Abby and Justin and Sarah. You can speak freely.”
“I don’t have my phone.” Her voice was a near-whisper. “Professor Kraft’s, like, super strict about putting it away when we’re working. It’s in my backpack.”
“As soon as you can take it out, you need to go on and delete the reporting app for the study.”
Kaylee frowned. “The reporting app?”
“We think it could be the key that links all the strange incidents. All the grad students and the study participants had the app, right?”
“Yeah. Uh, we got notifications pushed through depending on our role. The study participants got their visualization prompts and reminders to log. Grad students just got reminders, messages from the professors, stuff like that.”
“Who designed it?” Baxter asked. “Was it Alice?”
Kaylee nodded. “Professor Kraft and Greg. And Greg was the admin on the system.”
Katherine didn’t want to alarm Kaylee, but she didn’t want to ignore possible danger either. “It’s possible that something they put on the app—maybe unintentionally—has triggered these episodes.”
Kaylee laughed a little. “I mean… that seems a little far-fetched. It’s just an app. And it’s not even a fancy one. It’s kind of clunky, to be honest, but it gets the job done.”
“Just…” She clasped her hands in front of her. “For me. Please. The study is off, so please just delete it. To be safe.”
Kaylee frowned. “The study is off?”
Baxter nodded. “I can’t tell you details, but please delete the app.”
“Okay.” Kaylee shrugged. “I mean, it’s not like it’ll delete any important data so—”
“Wait.” Katherine had a realization. “Yes, you will.”
“Will what?”
“Delete important data. We need to look at it before you delete it.”
Baxter frowned. “Darling—”
“There could be information on it.” She looked at Kaylee. “Have you cleared your notifications lately?”
“I don’t think so. I usually get them and I just open my phone and they go away.”
“The roof happened Thursday and today is Saturday.” Katherine frowned. “Really? It’s only been two days?”
“Katherine, focus.”
“Right. Unless you’ve cleared your notifications, we should be able to see them, which would show us if anything was sent to you before you went onto the rooftop. I also want to check it for spyware and make sure there’s nothing on there that could be monitoring you. It’s possible that someone has gained access to
