Luis Hernandez always said the campus was alive. Not in a mystical way, like those poetry professors liked to pretend, but in a practical way. It breathed through the ventilation ducts, groaned when it rained too much, and buzzed with secrets. And Luis? He was the guy who kept it running. If the campus was a body, he was the immune system—quiet, unnoticed, cleaning up messes no one wanted to see.

But lately, the body had been acting strange.

It started small. Someone from the math department smashed a coffee pot in a fit of rage. Luis didn’t think much of it—he’d seen worse. Then came the rumors: the business students were hoarding the good projectors, locking them in their fancy MBA wing, refusing to share. The engineers retaliated by “borrowing” the key to the IT storage closet and rigging their own AV system. Then, just last week, Luis had found a pile of shredded philosophy books in the dumpster behind the library, reeking of gasoline. Someone had tried to burn them but apparently chickened out halfway through.

Petty, childish stuff. Luis thought it would blow over. Universities always had their little dramas, and he’d seen plenty of them in his fifteen years on the job. But something about this felt different. There was an edge to it, like a knife pressed against the skin. Students scurried through the halls in tight clusters, their voices low, their eyes darting to the corners like they were being watched. Professors whispered behind closed doors, and even the administration—normally oblivious to everything that didn’t involve donor money—had started posting memos about “maintaining decorum.”

Luis didn’t care about the politics. He cared about the floors. The students could fight over who got the fancy lecture halls, but they’d damn well take their muddy boots off before they stomped across his freshly mopped tiles.

Still, the tension gnawed at him. Tonight, as he pushed his cart through the dimly lit science building, the air felt thick. His walkie buzzed with static.

“Luis,” crackled a familiar voice. It was Debbie, his supervisor. She sounded nervous. “You’re still in the science wing, right?”

“Yeah. Just finishing up.”

“Keep an eye out. Security says the chem labs got broken into again.”

“Again?” Luis frowned, stopping by the window of one of the labs. The lights were off, but something felt off. “What’d they take this time?”

“Don’t know. Just… stay alert, okay?”

The walkie went silent. Luis stared at the darkened lab, his reflection faint in the glass. He’d been on this campus long enough to know when things were about to go sideways. And this? This wasn’t just another prank war. This was something bigger.

The faint echo of footsteps reached his ears. He turned his head, listening. It wasn’t the usual shuffle of a late-night student or the hurried clack of heels from a professor. These were deliberate, measured steps. Someone who didn’t want to be heard but wasn’t quite careful enough.

Luis reached for the flashlight on his cart. “Hello?” His voice bounced off the walls, swallowed by the empty hallway.

No response. Just the fading sound of footsteps.

He thought about calling it in, but decided against it. Debbie would just tell him to let security handle it. And security? They were probably too busy handing out parking tickets to care.

So he grabbed his keys instead.

The thing about being a janitor is, you get used to going places you’re not supposed to. Supply closets, basements, utility tunnels—Luis had access to all of it. And if someone was messing around in his science building, they’d have to go through him first.

He followed the footsteps, his flashlight cutting through the darkness. The halls seemed to stretch longer than usual, the shadows thicker, deeper. When he rounded the corner, he expected to see some student hunched over a stolen test or lugging a pilfered box of lab equipment.

Instead, he saw a pile of empty chemical bottles, neatly arranged in a line across the hallway. The labels had been scraped off, but Luis recognized them anyway. Acids. Solvents. Things that didn’t belong outside of a locked cabinet.

And on the wall above them, written in bold red letters, was a message that made his stomach twist:

“THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING.”

For the first time in years, Luis felt a cold sweat prick the back of his neck. He’d always thought of the campus as a machine. But now, it felt more like a powder keg.

And someone was about to light the fuse.