Chapter 5 - What Was in the CacheLeo returned to the engineering lab that evening.
Technically, he had been told to go home.
He ignored that recommendation.
Professor Ward accompanied him because his credentials were suspended.
Brooke, Priya and Marcus came too.
“You realize,” Leo said as the elevator doors opened, “this might find nothing.”
Marcus carried three energy drinks.
“I’m choosing optimism.”
“You failed statistics.”
“Unrelated.”
Priya pushed past them.
“Stop talking.”
The university’s local caching system retained incomplete outgoing packets for limited periods in case of network interruptions.
Normally those packets were deleted quickly.
But the diagnostics system Leo had helped develop kept incident snapshots when a node experienced physical failure.
If they were lucky, the fifty submissions might exist in fragments.
If they were extremely lucky, those fragments might be complete enough to reconstruct.
Professor Ward logged in.
They searched.
Nothing.
Marcus’s optimism lasted eleven minutes.
Then Priya found an archived directory.
“Leo.”
He moved beside her.
Hundreds of temporary packets filled the folder.
Time stamps from 11:56 to noon.
“Those are ours?” Brooke asked.
“Maybe.”
Leo opened one.
Encrypted.
Apex used client-side encryption.
Without the matching session metadata, the packets were useless.
Marcus slumped.
“So close.”
Leo didn’t respond.
He opened the routing logs.
Something bothered him.
The manual command had rerouted Apex traffic through A-17.
Why?
If the goal was simply to sabotage submissions, someone with administrator access could have blocked the traffic digitally.
No need for Trent.
No broken crutch.
No public scene.
Unless the public scene was necessary.
He looked at Brooke.
“What exactly happened before Trent approached me?”
She frowned.
“You were waiting like everyone else.”
“Anything unusual?”
“Ethan was talking to him.”
Leo turned.
“Ethan Cole?”
“Yeah.”
Marcus nodded.
“I saw that too.”
“What were they saying?”
“Couldn’t hear.”
Priya opened another video.
Ethan appeared at 11:58:21.
He spoke briefly to Trent.
Then moved away.
At 11:58:35, Trent received the photograph.
Sixteen seconds later, he grabbed Leo’s crutch.
Leo stared at Ethan.
“Where is he now?”
Professor Ward said, “He missed the student meeting.”
“He left after I challenged him.”
Brooke crossed her arms.
“Think he’s involved?”
Leo avoided answering.
Instead, he searched the cache again.
This time by device identifiers.
Fifty unique devices.
Then fifty-one.
Leo stopped.
“There were fifty applicants in North Hall.”
“So?” Marcus asked.
“There are fifty-one Apex upload sessions.”
Priya leaned closer.
“Maybe someone uploaded twice.”
“No.”
Leo opened the extra session.
Unlike the others, it showed successful completion.
At 11:59:48.
Twelve seconds before the deadline.
Brooke stared.
“How did one upload finish if the network was broken?”
“It didn’t use A-17.”
Leo opened the route information.
The fifty student applications had been forced through the soon-to-be-destroyed node.
The fifty-first had been deliberately exempted.
Someone’s application had been allowed through the secondary backbone.
Marcus whispered, “Whose?”
The encryption prevented them from opening the file.
But metadata showed the device’s hardware address.
Leo searched the campus registration database.
His administrative account was blocked.
Professor Ward entered hers.
One match appeared.
EC-14-LAPTOP
Registered owner:
Ethan Cole.
Nobody spoke.
Brooke finally said it.
“Ethan’s application went through.”
Leo nodded.
“And ours were rerouted to fail.”
Marcus stood.
“So this wasn’t about destroying everybody’s applications.”
“No.”
Leo looked at the successful packet.
“It was about choosing who survived.”
The room suddenly felt colder.
Priya opened a spreadsheet.
“Were there other applications outside North Hall?”
Professor Ward contacted Apex’s campus representative.
After several calls, they obtained limited numbers.
Westbridge had 312 applicants.
Fifty failed due to North Hall outage.
The rest submitted normally.
Of the fifty-one people uploading from North Hall during the final minutes, only Ethan succeeded.
Brooke shook her head.
“He knew.”
“Maybe.”
“He left when we found the video.”
“Still not proof.”
Marcus slammed an energy drink onto the desk.
“Leo, his upload was specially routed around the sabotage!”
“I know.”
“Then why are you defending him?”
“I’m not defending him. I’m refusing to confuse suspicion with evidence.”
Professor Ward smiled faintly.
“That attitude is annoyingly responsible.”
Leo continued examining the logs.
Then another pattern appeared.
The routing command that sabotaged the fifty students had been executed through Leo’s stolen credentials.
The exception for Ethan used a different administrator account.
Leo clicked.
Professor Ward’s expression changed.
“Whose?”
Leo showed her.
RVOSS_ADMIN
Coach Roland Voss.
Brooke whispered, “Why does a football coach have network administrator privileges?”
Professor Ward stared at the screen.
“He doesn’t.”
Yet there it was.
Leo sat back.
Someone had created an administrator credential under Voss’s name.
Or Voss had somehow obtained one.
Either possibility was serious.
Then Professor Ward’s phone rang.
Dean Bell.
She answered.
Listened.
Her face drained of color.
“What?”
Leo watched.
Professor Ward stood abruptly.
“We’re coming.”
She ended the call.
“What happened?” Leo asked.
“They searched Trent’s phone.”
“And?”
“The messages directing him toward the fiber box are gone.”
Leo frowned.
“Deleted?”
“Not just deleted.”
Professor Ward swallowed.
“The forensic examiner says the device was remotely wiped while it was sealed in university custody.”
Marcus stared at her.
“Someone erased evidence?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
Professor Ward looked at Leo.
“Seven minutes ago.”
Leo glanced around the lab.
Somebody had administrator access.
Somebody had manipulated network traffic.
Somebody had framed him.
Somebody had preserved Ethan’s application.
And now someone had remotely destroyed evidence from inside a secured investigation.
This was no longer a student prank.
Someone at Westbridge was willing to tear apart the university itself to control who received those Apex jobs.
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Leo looked at Ethan’s successful upload.
“We need to find out why his application mattered so much.”
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