Suck it in. Suck it up. And get going. You have a degree to conquer. You’re going to earn a master’s of science in computer information systems.

  I sucked it in, sucked it up, and I was good to go. Hearing my mother’s voice smoothed it all away, and I was ready. I would be fine.

  I changed tactics. “I love you.”

  He was quiet for a moment. He wasn’t buying it, but he said it back, and I knew it was a pass. He’d deal with this tonight, and what “this” was, I wasn’t even sure myself. But I hung up with Kash.

  I knew he had my back.

  I knew he loved me.

  Knowing that, feeling that, accepting that, I was ready to go.

  TWO

  I stepped inside, and there was a greeting line for me. No joke.

  Or, well, that was an exaggeration, but Ms. Busich was there, wide smile, her dark hair swept up in a bun. Alongside her were Mr. Goa and two other faculty members and two students. I knew the faculty members because I did my research. One was my advisor, Ms. Wells, and the other was another professor in my studies, Mr. Dvantzi. The students, I didn’t know. I hadn’t researched them, which said how off my game was. Three months ago, I would’ve scoured everything I could find and I would’ve had a hard time not poking around for a list of upcoming first-year graduate students.

  “Ms. Franci—”

  I stopped Busich with a polite smile. “It’s Hayes. I’m still just Bailey Hayes.”

  She paused, her eyebrows pinched together behind her glasses, then her face smoothed back out. Her smile returned. “Of course. Miss Hayes. Welcome.” She gestured to the students. “This is Hoda Mansour and Liam Smith. Both are students in your cohort.”

  Hoda’s face was gorgeous. Big, dark eyes, smooth tan complexion, and lips that were so round they were almost an oval shape. Her hair was robust. It was the only word that came to mind, because there was a lot there. It was smooth and hanging just short of her shoulders, but the volume had me salivating. If she’d had a blowout that day, I wanted to know who her stylist was, and I wasn’t that type of girl. Chrissy, yes. My mother would’ve been all over her, exclaiming over her pedicure and cream-colored nails and the earrings that were hanging and sparkling from her ears. But it was the look in Hoda’s eyes that had me snapping to attention.

  She wasn’t one to be messed with. I saw that right away. A sharp and almost calculating look was in there. I stared back at her with the same look and her lips pressed together in a flat line.

  Okay then.

  I would toe the line with her.

  Liam was almost the complete opposite. Messy blond hair that was sticking in the air, a permanent wave where you could see he pushed his hand through his hair, leaving it where it lay, and as I studied him, he did just that. An almost goofy smile came to his face. Lines around his eyes and mouth were soft, giving him a sleepy look, too. Blue eyes that were smudged with exhaustion or something chemical, but he had a jock’s body type. Broad shoulders. His polo shirt cut off on his biceps and they were built, so the guy spent time in the gym.

  The two together were not what I’d been expecting. Then again, I didn’t fit the IT stereotype either. Looking past them to the hallway, I saw plenty of gangly and awkward-standing guys who did, though, even a girl that dashed past everyone, rushing to our group. Petite. A darker complexion, small lips, and her face was rounder.

  I liked her instantly.

  “Ah. Yes. This is Melissa Zvanguam.”

  “Hello.” She stuck her hand out, her eyes wide and taking me in.

  I knew. I just knew. It was instant, but the starstruck look was there.

  If I’d been questioning it before, I would’ve kicked myself now. The others were keeping themselves more restrained, or they just didn’t care, but this girl cared.

  And I knew what words would come from her next, in a breathy awed tone. “You’re Peter Francis’s daughter.”

  I put my hand in hers and she gripped me tight, gushing, “I am a huge huge fan of your father’s, and you’re going to be in my cohort.” A deep breath.

  Ms. Busich frowned. “Get ahold of yourself, Miss Zvanguam.”

  “Yes.” Melissa nodded automatically, eyes glazed and glued to me, and stepped back. Her hand didn’t disengage from mine, so she was bent forward. “I can’t let go of your hand.”

  Hoda coughed, stepping forward. Her hands were clasped in front of her and the movement tore our hands apart.

  Liam was stoned. I was pretty sure. His smile never dimmed or changed. He didn’t move at all.

  Yep. Stoned. I was certain.

  “Ah. Miss Mansour. Why don’t you show Miss Hayes the premises, help her get situated.”

  I was situated. I said it, too. “I had a tour last spring, and I’ve studied all the maps and layouts. To be honest, I just really want to get to class and get started.”

  Hoda stepped more to the side so she was half next to me, facing Ms. Busich.

  “Yes, well…” Busich glanced to the other faculty, which made sense. She was the head of everything. This was a more specific question.

  Ms. Wells took her cue and nodded, another formal smile on her face. “Hoda will still show you the more pertinent faculties. Hoda?”

  “Yes, Ms. Wells?”

  “Bring her to my office after class. Miss Hayes?”

  Miss Hayes was so formal. “Bailey. Please.”

  “Bailey.” Her smile seemed a touch more genuine. “It’s lovely to meet you. After class, Hoda will show you to my office. We need to go over your program.”

  I nodded. I had been expecting that.

  A meeting with your advisor was normal. The rest of this was not.

  “Sounds great. Thank you.”

  Hoda started the tour with a bang. She marched ahead of me, and I had to hurry up, but she was already going.

  “We have twelve students in our cohort. Three are half time. Nine are full time. There’s three females. You, myself, and Melissa make up those stats. The rest are guys, and we have two older adults, and when I say older, I’m meaning they’re middle-aged return students.” She passed an open classroom, nodding inside. “Classes on Monday start at nine thirty a.m. Classes on Thursday start at twelve thirty. Each is three hours long. Your advisor will go over the rest of your schedule with you. Here is our personal student lab.”

  She went to a door and swept it open. It was a bricked room, no windows, just computers. Lots of computers. The printer was set up in the corner, and next to it was an attendant for the room.

  “We do use the school’s library for extra studying, so if we’re not in here, more than likely we’ll be in the library. Most are graduate assistants, GAs, but loitering in the extra offices is frowned upon here. The IT department is stressing a cohesive and connected cohort with this program and so yes, that means we’re guinea pigs. There was more than the average number of student suicides last year. They’ve looked at the most isolated programs and the IT program rated high. So there you go. We’re being force-fed friends, not that you’ll be lacking.”

  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.

  “How was your first day at Hawking?”

  I blinked.

  That was … Okay. Not what I’d expected first. I was going to go with it.

  “I’m processing everything.”

  “The other students don’t know about your brain.”

  Right. My photographic memory, which seemed to be sharpening with each year and not fading.

  She picked up a pen, the end digging into her notebook, as she studied me. “They also don’t know about your tech skills.”

  “Okay.”

  I folded my hands together on my lap, frowning a little. I wasn’t sure where she was going with this.

  “I’m sure you’re aware of the stats, but I’m going to tell them to you anyways. There’s one student in your cohort with the IQ level of a genius. There are three students with the IQ levels just below genius. Five students are technical geeks, if that’s the term to use. They love computers. They love everything about computers, and their knowledge level is exceptional, but regarding their general IQ level, they are above average, which is typical for students in our department. The remaining three are newer students to the IT department and are here only to secure a job for their family’s security. The intelligence levels don’t factor into this equation because they’re the outliers. They are actually just normal people.” She paused. Her eyebrow raised. The pen ground more into her notebook. “Are you following me?”

  My nails dug into my palms, just slightly.

  She wasn’t coming at me like Hoda had, mistaking me for one of those “average” students. Ms. Wells knew my résumé. She was coming at me like I was going to be a problem for her or the department, and I didn’t like that. I didn’t like it at all.

  “Ms. Wells.” Shit. Was I going to do this?

  I liked professors. Professors liked me.

  I wasn’t a kiss-ass, but I was the student they never had to worry about or even try to teach. Give me a book and nine out of ten times I could teach myself. But I still needed to pay for the class hours to get that degree, and because of that, I utilized professors. I asked them questions that other students didn’t think about. Professors liked that, a lot.

  They liked my mind.

  This response wasn’t aligning with past professors.

  I wasn’t accustomed to this behavior, and I wasn’t sure how to react to it. My father had never been an issue before. But now that people knew who he is, it seemed everything was going to be new for me. My heart was skipping a whole bunch of beats.

  My palms were also sweating up a storm, but here goes.

  “Yes?” she said.

  Oh boy.

  I let out a small pocket of air, wiping my hands over my jeans. “You’re judging.”

  “Pardon?” Both her eyebrows were up now.

  “You’re judging me. I’m not sure if it’s because of who my father is, because you probably got an extra call from both Goa and Busich, or hell, even if it’s because of who I’m dating”—her forehead puckered at that last one—“but I’m the type of student that doesn’t make waves. Being smart, I got teased a lot when I was younger. Like a lot. My cousins went to my school and they helped curtail some of the more aggressive people, but it happened. I’m a loner because of that, or usually a loner. I show up to class. I do the work. I do exceptional work. And I’m the type of student who wants to learn everything.

  “I didn’t ask my father to make those calls. I didn’t ask to have two security guards with me here. Having said that, I know my father made those calls because he loves me, and he’s trying to make up for lost time. And the two guards are actually necessary. Who I was before is still me, but who I am now just means I’m going to have extra attention. That’s it.

  “Those recommendations weren’t lying. I read them, each one. I can recite them to you word by word if you’d like, but those letters were also earned. Please judge me on those letters and not on who you think I’m going to be because you got two extra calls that other students don’t.”

  She was silent when I finished, her mouth pressed together. Her eyes never wavered. She was taking me in, like she could sift through my own brain to figure me out, and then with a whoosh, all of what she was thinking disappeared. Her shoulders relaxed. Her eyebrows slackened. There was no more pinch in her forehead.

  “Okay.” A low murmur from her. She was nodding, and she let the pen rest on the desk. “I started out by giving you stats to let you know that even though you’re the one genius student, what you’ve taken on is going to be too much for you, because of the recent events in your life.”

  What?

  I stiffened.

  Had I read her wrong?

  She leaned forward, resting her arms on her desk, her hands folded together. She lowered her head, still watching me. “But you’re correct in your assessment. I started out by judging you based on your father, and I wouldn’t have admitted that. I see now that upsets you. I apologize.”

  Whoa.

  Really? A professor who apologized?

  “But I’m still questioning if you’re ready to take on the load that you asked for this year. You’re doing the advanced docket, and that’ll put you at finishing next August. It’s double the load.”

  I had no money.

  That was the practical reason I wanted to finish as fast as I could.

  Kash had money. Peter had money. I was staying with Kash, so he wasn’t making me pay rent, but I wasn’t comfortable with how dependent I actually was, and there was a difference between earning money and receiving money.

  Call it the Hayes pride in me, but I wanted to earn my own way.

  I’d been planning on updating computer systems at Brookley Hospital to cushion my bank account before starting graduate school. That hadn’t happened, so now I was left to decide between asking for money, getting a job, or holding my breath until I slid through school and got my own IT job.

  I was holding my breath through the year.

  I leaned forward. My hands relaxed and I rested them on the tops of my legs. “I’m only taking on one extra course this semester. I know first semesters for grad programs are always the hardest and most intensive. Next semester, I’m doing two extra courses, and I’m doubling up for both summer minis.”

  “Most students want time for a break in the summer second quarter. Are you sure you want to go straight through?” She switched to her computer screen and moved the monitor so I could see what she was seeing. She had my schedule up there. “You’re doing one full internship course during your winter break. That’s not usually even allowed.”