Chapter 4: Framed in White Coats
"Mr. Quill. Step away from the locker."
Rowan raised both hands to shoulder height and stepped back.
Over the shoulder of the nearer security officer, at the far end of the hallway, a man was standing beside the vending machines. He was tall and heavy-set, with dark red hair cut close to his head and a green polo shirt with a small white logo on the chest. Halcyon Biotech.
Nolan Crane. Rowan's stepbrother.
He was smiling.
The next four hours happened in rooms with no windows.
First, a small office in the security building, where an officer photographed the vials, bagged them, and asked Rowan to empty his pockets. He did. Phone, keys, wallet, the white card with Cassian's number, which the officer looked at and handed back. The navy notebook stayed in his bag, and nobody asked to see the bag.
Then a conference room in the medical school administration wing, where three members of the disciplinary committee sat on one side of a long table and Rowan sat on the other. The Associate Dean read out the report. Three vials of an unidentified substance found in a student locker. Possible theft from laboratory stock. Possible personal use. Given the events at the Aldercrest Gala on Friday night, which had apparently already reached the Dean's office, the committee had concerns.
Nolan sat at the end of the table, in a chair against the wall. He had been introduced as a representative of Halcyon Biotech, which funded part of the toxicology lab, and which had "a strong interest in the security of its research materials."
He did not look at Rowan once.
"I didn't put them there," Rowan said. "Someone opened my locker between seven this morning and three this afternoon. I'd like to see the hallway security footage."
"Security has already checked," the Associate Dean said. "The camera outside the lab had a technical fault today. There's no footage for that period."
Of course there isn't.
"Then I'd like the access card log for the lab corridor."
The committee members exchanged a look. The Associate Dean made a note.
Rowan was suspended, effective immediately, pending investigation. He was not allowed to enter any lab or clinical area. He could keep attending lectures online. The substance would be sent for testing.
When he left the conference room, Nolan was already gone.
By the time he got back to his apartment, his phone had forty-one new notifications.
The second-year group chat had a photo in it. Someone had taken it from a window: Rowan walking between the two security officers across the quad, hands at his sides, face completely calm. Under it, someone had written: bro looks like he's going to a picnic.
Under that: he pulled a FIRE ALARM on a cop last weekend, my cousin works at that clinic.
Under that: pretty little psychopath lmao.
The phrase had been repeated eleven times by the time he stopped scrolling. He noted the first person who had posted it: an account he did not recognize, created the day before, with no profile photo.
His stepmother called at seven.
"Rowan, honey." Diane's voice was soft and anxious. "Nolan told me what happened. Are you all right? He says you've been under a lot of stress since the party. He's very worried about you."
"Is he."
"He thinks maybe you should take a break. Come home for a while."
"I'm fine, Diane. I'll call you tomorrow."
He hung up before she could say anything else, and he sat on the kitchen floor with his back against the cabinets for a while, not thinking, just breathing.
At nine, Priya texted him to meet her outside the library.
She was sitting on the stone steps with two cups of tea from the vending machine, her hood up against the drizzle. He sat down beside her. For a few minutes, neither of them said anything. Students passed below them on the path, and two of them glanced up at Rowan and then quickly away.
"I saw the group chat," Priya said.
"Everyone saw the group chat."
"Can I say something, and you won't make the face?"
"What face?"
"That one." She handed him a tea. "You're not a psychopath, Ro. You're just the only one who thinks when everyone else panics. That's not the same thing. It's actually the opposite."
He did not answer. But he noticed, a moment later, that his hands had stopped shaking around the paper cup. He had not realized they were shaking.
The next morning, he started working.
He could not enter the lab, but he could enter the facilities office in the basement of the administration building, where a tired technician named Gary controlled the access card system for the whole medical campus. Rowan had once helped Gary's daughter with her biology homework. He brought coffee and asked a very specific question.
Gary printed the log for the toxicology corridor without complaint.
Most of the entries were students and staff. One was not. At 1:42 p.m., a card labeled HALCYON-VENDOR-03 had opened the corridor door. The card had been issued three months earlier to the Halcyon Biotech liaison.
Nolan's title at Halcyon was inventory manager. He handled all sample deliveries to the university.
At 1:42 p.m., Rowan had been standing at a chain-link fence on Harrow Street, nowhere near the lab.
"And the camera?" Rowan asked.
Gary checked. "Wiped," he said, frowning. "Not a fault. Someone deleted the file from the server at 3:10. Admin credentials. I can't tell whose."
That was a good start and not enough. A card entry proved Nolan had been in the corridor. It did not prove he had touched the locker.
That evening, Rowan sat alone in a booth at Dot's, an all-night diner near campus with red vinyl seats and a coffee machine older than he was. He was writing a timeline on a napkin when someone slid into the seat across from him.
She was maybe twenty, with long box braids dyed purple at the ends, large headphones resting around her neck, and an oversized green bomber jacket. She put a small silver laptop on the table and did not open it.
"Hi. I'm Bex," she said. "Cassian sent me. Before you get mad, he told me to ask you first. So I'm asking." She tapped the laptop. "The campus security system backs up every camera to a cloud server every hour. Whoever deleted the hallway footage only deleted the local copy. I have the backup. Do you want it or not?"
Rowan looked at her, then at the laptop, then at the rain on the window.
"How long have you been following me?"
"I haven't. I was following the Halcyon vendor card. That's different." She shrugged. "Your call. If you say no, I leave, and I delete it."
He took out his phone and the white card, and called the number on it.
Cassian answered on the second ring. "Rowan."
"Your friend is sitting in front of me."
"I asked her to ask you."
"She did." Rowan kept his voice even. "Here's how this works, if it works at all. I lead. You follow. You don't do anything behind my back, and you don't do anything I didn't agree to. If I tell you to stop, you stop. If you can't do that, you leave me alone completely."
There was a short pause on the line.
"Understood," Cassian said.
"That's it? No conditions of your own?"
"One. If you're in danger and you can't reach me, Bex will call me. That's all."
Rowan considered it. "Fine."
He hung up and nodded to Bex. She opened the laptop.
The video was grainy and silent. At 1:43 p.m., a big man in a green polo shirt walked down the hallway, stopped at Rowan's locker, and opened it with a flat gray card held against the lock. He took three small vials from his jacket pocket, placed them on the top shelf, and closed the door, leaving it slightly open. Then he walked away, checking his phone.
He did not look at the camera once. He had believed it was already off.
"Send this to the committee," Bex said, "and you're back in the lab by Friday."
Rowan watched the clip again. Then a third time, slowing it down at the moment Nolan took out the card.
"Not yet."
Bex raised an eyebrow.
"If I send it now, Nolan loses his job and says he did it alone. Whoever gave him that card disappears." He folded the napkin with his timeline on it and put it in his pocket. "I want to hear him say who told him to do it."
The next day, Rowan waited in the staff parking lot behind the Halcyon building at six in the evening, when the shifts changed. He had told Cassian exactly where he would be and exactly where Cassian could wait: at the far end of the lot, beside the exit gate, at least forty meters away. He was not to come closer unless Rowan called his name.
Nolan came out at 6:12, keys in his hand, and stopped when he saw Rowan leaning against his car.
"Ro." His eyes darted left and right. "You shouldn't be here."
"Neither should you, at 1:42 on Monday. In my hallway."
Nolan's face went a shade paler. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You're the vendor liaison. Your card opened the door." Rowan did not mention the video. He wanted to see what Nolan would say without it. "I'm just trying to understand why. Did someone pay you, or did you think this one up yourself?"
"I didn't do anything."
"The camera says otherwise."
"The camera was off." It came out fast and loud. "Halcyon said nobody would check the..."
He stopped.
Rowan watched him understand what he had just said.
Nolan moved first. He grabbed Rowan by the front of his jacket and shoved him back against the side of the car, hard. His breath smelled of coffee and cigarettes.
Rowan did not hit him. He did what eight years of judo had trained into his body. He trapped Nolan's wrist against his chest with one hand, stepped his hip in, and turned. Nolan's grip broke. He stumbled sideways and caught himself on the next car.
For a second, they stared at each other.
Then Nolan ran. He got into his car, started it on the second try, and drove out of the lot so fast his tires squealed on the wet concrete.
Rowan straightened his jacket. His pulse was high. He let it come down on its own.
At the far end of the lot, Cassian was standing exactly where he had promised to stand, beside the gate, hands in his coat pockets. He had not moved.
Rowan walked over to him.
"You didn't come."
"You didn't call my name."
Rowan was quiet for a moment. "Can you drive me home?"
"Yes."
Cassian's car was a dark sedan, clean and plain inside. Rowan sat in the passenger seat and watched the rain on the windshield while Cassian drove through the city without speaking. When they stopped outside Rowan's building, Cassian turned off the engine and pulled the key from the ignition.
The key was on a ring with one small object attached to it.
A lighthouse. Made of brass, about the length of a thumb, worn smooth by years of handling, so that the tiny windows near the top were barely visible anymore.
Rowan's hand started to shake on his knee. It was the first time in days that he could not count his own pulse.