The fluorescent lights of the 24-hour Kinko’s off-campus flickered with a sickly, rhythmic hum, casting a pale yellow pallor over the empty store. It smelled sharply of hot toner, cheap breakroom coffee, and bleached paper. The sole employee, a teenager wearing an oversized flannel shirt and enormous headphones, didn't even look up from his comic book as Grayson and Toby walked through the sliding glass doors.
"I always hated these places," Toby whispered, shivering slightly in the over-air-conditioned room. "They feel like purgatory with a laminating machine."
"They are functional," Grayson replied, ignoring the aesthetic entirely. He walked straight past the front counter and approached a bank of bulky, beige public computer terminals in the back corner. "And right now, functionality i
