The Annoying Sleepwalker novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Sorry, Jess

I ran down the hall in my socks and pounded on the door of 3B.

Casper opened it before my second knock, in a T-shirt, with his hair standing up.

"The file," I said, and held out my phone.

He read the alert, and his face went still.

"The lounge terminal," he said. "Come on."

The lounge was dark and empty.

One monitor glowed on the corner desk, signed in to my account.

I sat down and opened my presentation.

The cover slide was mine.

Slide three was not.

It held the same six pieces that had been flagged in the fake submission, each with my name stamped on the corner.

"She put them back," I said. "Same six."

"Can you undo it?"

"The cloud keeps every version." My hands were shaking, but I made them work. "The one from nine last night is clean. I'm restoring it."

I clicked the old version, and the slides rolled back to my own work.

Then I printed the restore log with the time at the top.

12:09 a.m.

"She had your login," Casper said. "You changed the password twice."

"Saskia's number has been my account recovery phone since freshman year."

I stared at the screen.

"She didn't need the password," I said. "She just asked the system to text her a code."

Casper was already looking up at the corner of the room.

His tripod stood where he had left it, by the door, with the camera still on top.

A red light was blinking.

"I never turned it off," he said, almost laughing. "After the meeting. I forgot."

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