The next morning, he walked into Ms. Albright’s office, closed the door, and sat down.
When they knocked on Mateo’s door, he wasn’t there. His apartment was empty. His workstation was wiped clean. But on the wall, written in dry-erase marker, was a message meant only for Leo:
It screamed .
For a second, nothing happened.
Then the fake app did something Mateo never mentioned. The screen flickered. The “ACCOUNT LOCKED - FRAUD ALERT” message dissolved into a new line of text: