Chapter 2 - The Missing Footage
Chen didn't sleep.
He never had during operations.
Coffee and code were enough.
By midnight he had built a virtual copy of the university's security network from fragments buried inside backup servers no one remembered existed.
Most of the recordings were gone.
Completely wiped.
Almost.
Digital ghosts always remained.
Tiny fragments.
Broken timestamps.
Compressed cache files.
Enough for someone like Chen.
Hours later a blurry image appeared.
Reyes leaned closer.
"Can you clean it?"
Chen kept typing.
Pixels sharpened.
Rain covered the camera lens.
Students crossed the courtyard.
Then Lily appeared.
She was walking quickly.
Looking over her shoulder.
Not frightened.
Determined.
"She's following someone," Brooks observed.
Daniel watched silently.
Another figure entered the frame.
A man wearing a dark baseball cap.
His face remained hidden.
He never looked toward Lily.
Instead...
Lily followed him.
"Who is he?" Kane asked.
"No idea," Chen answered.
The footage skipped.
Then returned.
Ethan.
Brandon.
Tyler.
All three appeared from different directions.
Too coordinated.
Too precise.
"They planned this," Reyes said.
Daniel nodded slowly.
"They were waiting."
The image froze again.
Chen cursed quietly.
"The rest was overwritten."
"Can you recover it?"
"Maybe."
He connected another encrypted drive.
Minutes passed.
Then suddenly...
One single frame appeared.
The mysterious man turned slightly.
Not enough to reveal his face.
But enough to expose something on his wrist.
A silver watch.
Daniel's breathing stopped.
He knew that watch.
Military issue.
Custom built.
Only issued to personnel assigned to classified defense projects.
Civilian stores never sold them.
Whitmore Defense manufactured them under government contract.
Someone connected to Whitmore Industries had been at the scene before the attack.
This wasn't random.
It wasn't college violence.
It was an operation.
Just then Chen's laptop beeped.
Someone had entered their system.
An outsider.
Watching them.
The screen flashed.
STOP DIGGING.
Then everything went black.
The hard drives shut themselves down.
Smoke curled from inside the laptop.
Chen stared.
"They burned the motherboard remotely."
Reyes looked at Daniel.
"They know we're investigating."
Daniel's voice stayed calm.
May you like
"Good."
"They've finally noticed we're coming."
