Reborn to Love Mr. Right – Episode 83
Campus police removed the package before Arianna touched it. The box contained no explosive or transmitter. Inside rested eleven sealed cards, each predicting a choice she would make during the next twenty-four hours.
The first claimed she would demand Hayden fly to campus immediately. The second said she would leave her residence rather than endanger other students. The remaining cards were numbered but unread.
Arianna asked that the unopened predictions be photographed and secured. Reading them would let Compass shape the behavior it claimed merely to foresee.
Her roommate, Maya Chen, learned only that the threat concerned stolen personal data. Arianna did not burden a stranger with impossible histories, but she gave Maya enough information to choose another room.
Maya stayed. “Someone else making you dangerous doesn’t make you guilty,” she said, then helped campus officers move both beds away from the window.
Hayden wanted the next flight. Arianna asked him to wait until law enforcement cleared his travel because Cole might be counting on that response. They arranged an open video call instead of turning distance into silence.
Donald attended an emergency oversight hearing with the Compass records. For once, he did not speak on Arianna’s behalf. He submitted the evidence and let her recorded testimony define the harm.
Cole contacted the hearing remotely. He denied kidnapping Hayden and described Morris as an unstable subordinate. Compass, he argued, could prevent violence by predicting the decisions of dangerous people.
Arianna answered from a secure campus office. Cole had not modeled Victor, Derek, or Malcolm until after their crimes. He had built his most detailed profile around the person they harmed because victims were easier to observe than powerful offenders.
The hearing chair ordered Cole to surrender. He disconnected after warning that destroying Compass would erase the only defense against another continuity signal.
Technicians examined the package paper. Its fibers matched stationery used by the university policy institute, directing investigators toward the professor whose signature had been forged.
The professor disclosed that Cole had applied for a visiting position months before Arianna accepted admission. The university rejected him, but his application granted temporary access to service corridors and mailing systems.
Campus cameras found Cole entering the institute before lockdown. He wore a maintenance uniform and carried a case large enough for a portable scanner.
Police began clearing the building. Arianna remained in the secure office as instructed, resisting the urge to turn herself into bait.
The third prediction card was opened under court order. It claimed Arianna would volunteer to confront Cole when evacuation stalled. By refusing to read it earlier, she had avoided receiving the suggestion as her own idea.
Officers discovered a student trapped in an elevator near the institute. Cole offered to release him if Arianna entered the seminar room alone.
She demanded live proof. The supposed hostage appeared on camera without showing his face, repeating phrases taken from an emergency script.
Maya recognized the voice as an automated campus announcement slowed to sound human. There was no student in the elevator. Cole had manufactured a moral emergency from public recordings.
Police flooded the seminar room with disabling frequencies and entered. They found the portable scanner, the remaining Compass files, and an open service tunnel—but no Cole.
On Arianna’s desk, the university map Hayden had given her unfolded by itself as the air vent switched on. A red mark had been added beneath the greenhouse at the Taylor estate.