memory sectors that could contain fragments of erased recordings. Their goal was to reconstruct the crucial seconds of Ethan's disappearance.
The main screen split into dozens of small windows, each displaying a video feed, some clear, some grainy, some distorted, indicating possible manipulation. Its pattern recognition and artificial intelligence algorithms, powered by the brute force of the Lakeside Technology Center, began processing every pixel, every microsecond, searching for any unusual movement, any shadow, any electromagnetic distortion that might point to the dark car or the man in the hat. It was like having a thousand eyes watching the same moment, a thousand minds analyzing its nuances.
As the camera sweep progressed, it opened up a new attack vector: thecell phones connected in that areaAnd at that time. He didn't need warrants or permissions. His entry was silent, his presence undetectable. He would search for communication metadata: activated cell towers, data traffic spikes, unknown numbers interacting in the same area. Most importantly, he would try to identify any device capable of emitting electromagnetic pulses, a specific type of device that could cause the "glitch" in the cameras Ethan's mother described. He knew such devices were rare, restricted to military operations or highly equipped criminals.
Simultaneously, Daniel launched acomprehensive search for dark sedan car. Not just in camera footage, but intraffic records, electronic tolls, license plate readersscattered throughout the city and surrounding areas. He wanted the license plate, but knew that a vehicle used in a kidnapping would likely have cloned or fake plates. However, each car had a unique signature: tire wear, small dents, specific dirt, even the frequency of its toll transponder. The Lakeside Technology Center could compare millions of images and data in seconds, searching for matches.
Once the license plate, or even a unique visual signature of the vehicle, was identified, he would head off tosearch for the owner. Not just the legal owner, but the actual owner, the driver at the time of the incident, and the network of contacts linked to them. Driver's license records, insurance policies, traffic ticket history, social media accounts, criminal associations—everything would be scanned and correlated. If the car had aOnboard GPS– and most modern sedans did – Daniel would hack it. He wanted the vehicle's route history for the days before and after Ethan's disappearance, mapping every stop, every detour, every shadow the car might have visited.
Daniel's intuition about the "glitch" in the LAPD's cameras led him down a riskier, but vital path. He would beginhacking of LAPD serversNot to sabotage, but to observe. He knew the police had access to camera feeds the public didn't—high-resolution feeds, traffic system feeds. More than that, he wanted to see the investigators, hear their conversations, understand their reasoning. The woman had said she no longer trusted anyone, and Daniel needed to know why. If there was something murky in the police investigation, he would uncover it.
With the dexterity of a conductor conducting an invisible orchestra, Daniel opened a new window on his screen. The LAPD's digital environment materialized before him, not as a tangle of data, but as a three-dimensional structure, a graphical representation of its security architecture. He began scanning its defenses, its entry points, its weak points. It was a complex dance of disguises and countermeasures, each step calculated. He needed to be a shadow, a whisper in the network, not a thunderclap. He would enter, collect what he needed, and leave without a trace.
Breaking into the LAPD wouldn't be like taking down an amateur hacker. It was an institution, with robust firewalls and dedicated security teams. But Daniel, the Ghost, had lived past his 17th birthday with feats that made intelligence agencies cringe. He was the richest man in the world, and his financial empire gave him access to computing and human resources that surpassed those of any government. With every line of code he typed, he felt the familiar rush of a real challenge.
He started toread police reports in real time, sifting through the bureaucratic jargon, looking for inconsistencies, omissions, any sign that the investigation was being biased or sabotaged. The reports on Ethan's disappearance were, at first glance, standard: descriptions of the searches, interviews with neighbors, no solid leads. But Daniel searched between the lines, the dates and times of the records, for missing information.
At the same time, hehacked into the LAPD's internal surveillance camerasNot the street cameras, but the cameras inside the police station, in the meeting rooms, in the detectives' offices. He wanted to see the investigators in action, observe them as they discussed Ethan's case. The cold, impersonal atmosphere of the police station was transmitted to the screen, showing tired detectives, some with cups of coffee in their hands, papers scattered on their desks. Daniel activated the microphones in their offices, enhancing the audio to capture every word, every sigh. He needed to know: were they genuinely lost, or was a greater force driving them toward a dead end? He wanted to hear if they spoke about Ethan's case with the same urgency as his mother, or if there were other, perhaps more "important" cases diverting their attention. The recordings of the meetings, the murmurs in the hallways, the casual comments: all would be part of his analysis. He was the invisible observer, the ghost in the room.
And finally, he would start asearch for known child abusersregistered in that area of Los Angeles. A standard measure in missing child cases, but one he would pursue with a depth no police force could match. He wouldn't limit himself to public records. His search would extend to private databases, hidden Dark Web forums, and criminal networks that traded in such information. He searched for any connection, any pattern, any link between Ethan and the darker side of humanity. The main screen became a complex map of data points, each representing a life, a crime, a potential clue. If Ethan was connected to this underworld, Daniel would find him.
Adrenaline, a rare sensation in his controlled life, began to pulse through his veins. The boredom the Game Master had induced with the ease of his victory over the other hackers faded. This was a different challenge, one involving real lives, real consequences. Daniel's eyes shone with a new intensity, focused on the screen that now displayed the map of Los Angeles, dotted with the targets of his hack. He was ready.
Still with the headset on, Daniel felt a dense silence fill the room, broken only by the barely audible hum of the Lakeside Technology Center servers, which, though geographically distant, reverberated in his mind like an extension of his own thoughts. His eyes, previously fixed on the blank screen, now moved rapidly across the monitors, already tracing the first lines of a digital attack plan. The woman had provided crucial pieces: the park, the time, the description of the dark sedan, the man in the hat, and, most importantly, the"failure"from LAPD security cameras.
"A failure, huh?"Daniel murmured into the air, a hint of irony in his voice. He knew that "failure" in situations like this was almost always synonymous with "interference" or "erasure." And the Los Angeles police force, one of the best equipped in the world, rarely failed so conveniently in a child abduction case. This, in itself, was a glaring anomaly. A red flag rising above the chaos.
His right hand moved with almost predatory fluidity over the holographic keyboard, while his left positioned the precision mouse. The room, previously illuminated by a soft blue glow, now pulsed with hues of green and yellow as new data panels opened and closed at rapid speed. It was as if the room had come to life, responding to his will.
Daniel didn't ask for results, he demanded them. The vast processing resources he controlled were already in full swing, digesting billions of data points, each a fragment of reality.
On the central monitor, previously a shimmering void, the first images began to appear. The deep scan in thepark security cameras, and in adjacent surveillance networks, from convenience stores, gas stations, and evenATMsWith its wide, sharp lenses, it revealed a digital collage. It wasn't a perfect, continuous recording, but a tapestry pieced together from fragments, residual pixels, and barely perceptible distortions. The park area, under the diffuse afternoon light, took shape on the screens. Daniel saw his mother on the phone, and Ethan's small silhouette playing on the swings, exactly as described. And then, the flash.
An electromagnetic pulse signature, detected by their most sensitive forensic algorithms, pulsed at the exact timeline the woman had provided: 3:45:12 PM. It lasted 1.7 seconds. Long enough to create the "glitch" that blinded the primary eyes of public surveillance. But not long enough to erase the heat trail, the slight electrostatic distortion in the air, or the milliseconds of footage recovered from peripheral cameras, which captured, albeit blurryly, the shape of a car.
A dark sedan. No ordinary vehicle. Its lines were robust, the front grille imposing, the alloy wheels uniquely designed. There was a small, subtle dent in the passenger-side rear door, barely visible to the naked eye, but magnified and isolated by Lakeside's visual analysis. And the license plate. The first reading showed a generic, apparently forged sequence. But Daniel didn't stop there. His deformation and layer analysis algorithms captured the shadow of a second sequence beneath the surface. The screen flickered, Lakeside's algorithms churned, and then, with crystal clarity, the seven characters appeared:"XJ9-741Z". It was the real plate.