060 LOOKING AT IT WRONG
Damen discreetly opened his messaging app and sent a message to Lander:
"Check Irine in class. Her stats jumped five points fast. Something's off."
While Lander dug into Irine's feed history, Damen turned his attention back to the front.
Miss Gallum entered the classroom, carrying her usual calm presence. She greeted them, activated the holo-board, and began her lecture as if nothing was out of place.
But Damen couldn't shake the feeling that something was.
-----
"Did you check Irine?" Damen asked.
"Yes," Lander replied, rubbing his eyes. "I've gone through all her feeds — past few days, previous week, even the archived records. Nothing unusual. It's just... perfect."
He sighed. "Too perfect."
"So, another dead end?" Dorin asked, slumping in her chair.
Lander shook his head. "No. It's too perfect. Something's wrong somewhere."
Damen leaned forward, thinking. Then an idea struck him.
"Maybe we're looking in the wrong place."
Lander looked up. "Elaborate."
"There are only two possibilities if every feed looks too normal," Damen said. "One: we're wrong. The students really did improve their meta scores naturally, with no foul play."
Lander frowned. "But what are the odds that so many students advanced that fast? It doesn't add up."
"Exactly," Damen said. "Which brings us to the second possibility."
"Our feeds have been manipulated," Lander muttered grimly.
The room went quiet. Everyone understood what that meant.
In this world, CCTV feeds could be hacked, rewritten, or replaced. But only one organization had the power to do that seamlessly — the Alliance of Evolution.
"Alliance of Evolution," Dorin whispered, her eyes wide.
They all exchanged grim looks.
"This is hopeless," Lander said finally, frustration bleeding into his tone. "If our source materials are fake, how do we even investigate? Without authentic feeds, we're blind."
He slumped back, exhaling hard.
Even for someone as methodical as Lander, a genius profiler known for precision, working with false data was like being asked to solve a puzzle with missing pieces…. was asking too much.
"You said we were going about this the wrong way," Lander said, turning to Damen again. "What's the right way, then?"
"If the recordings are fake," Damen said slowly, "someone had to fake them. But even Quantum himself couldn't manipulate every camera out there. Somewhere, there must be footage they missed."
Lander frowned. "But I've checked everything related to Irine. Where did I miss?"
"That's exactly it," Damen said. "You're looking at the wrong person. We shouldn't be checking Irine."
Dorin blinked. "Then who?"
"Kurt."
"What — Kurt?" Dorin echoed.
"I was in the same class with them," Damen said. "They're close — couple kind of close. If Irine got hold of something that could boost her meta score, do you really think she'd hide it from Kurt? Even if she promised not to tell anyone?"
Understanding flashed across Lander's eyes. He immediately began cross-referencing new feeds.
Minutes later, he froze.
"This is strange," he said. "Look at this — two different videos of the same time. One shows Irine sitting at her desk, studying. The other shows her outside, meeting Kurt."
He projected both clips side by side.
"It's obvious," Dorin said. "The classroom footage was edited. Someone replaced the real feed with a fake to make it look like Irine stayed put."
Lander nodded grimly. "And the original shows her meeting Kurt off-campus."
They traced Kurt's movements further, pulling data from external city cameras. After several minutes, Lander stopped scrolling.
"Wait," Dorin said, squinting. "Is Kurt... going into a motel?"
"With another girl," Damen said quietly, his eyes widening. "He's cheating on Irine?"
Dorin groaned. "Don't tell me we went through all this surveillance just to uncover a love triangle."
Lander didn't react. His face stayed cold and analytical. "It's not a simple case of cheating."
He zoomed in on the second girl's file.
"She's another student," Damen said after glancing at the data. "She's in our class. I know her- Sazie. She's had a crush on Kurt for months… but Kurt always liked Irine more."
Lander didn't say anything for a moment. His eyes stayed fixed on the screen.
"Then why," he murmured, "does every record of this girl stop the night she entered that motel? She's not been seen ever since."
The air in the room went still.
"Sazie's our latest missing person", Damen said.
-----
It didn't take long before confirmation came — Sazie was reported missing not long ago.
This time, the team had a solid lead though. The last place she was seen in public was in Motel Blue Moon.
Within minutes, Lander pulled up every available footage from the motel's surveillance system. His face hardened as he scrolled through frame after frame.
"These footages are too clean," he said flatly. "They're fakes. All of them."
Dorin groaned. "Now what? We can't raid the motel without proof that Sazie's still there. What if they've already moved her?"
"If the perpetrators saw us moving so quickly to the motel, they would be spooked by us. They might leave town and that would be the end of our case", Damen added.
Lander didn't answer. The silence stretched.
Then Damen spoke. "We go in undercover."
Dorin raised an eyebrow. "Undercover?"
Damen shrugged. "It's the only way to confirm she's there."
Lander studied him for a moment, then nodded slowly. "He's right."
"Alright, if there's nothing else, I'm going to the gym", Damen said to them.
But they would not let him go. They turned to him and both said at the same time, "you suggested it, you go…. Undercover."
"Wait— hold on," Damen said, pointing at them. "Don't look at me like that. I'm not going in alone… undercover or what. You're SIA — don't you have actual operatives for this kind of thing?"
Lander's expression didn't change. "The AOE is involved this time, they are more resourceful than we can imagine," he said quietly. "I can't even trust my own people when it involves the AOE. There are too many ways information can leak. We'll do this ourselves."
Dorin looked uneasy. "Are you sure, Lander? If the Alliance of Evolution is really behind this, that ups the game — even for us. We should report this."
"We've had too many investigations sabotaged by spies in our own department," Lander cut in sharply. Then his tone softened as his gaze settled on Damen. "Damen's our best chance. He's new. Off the grid. Smart, resourceful — and no one's watching him."
Damen hesitated. He wasn't a hero. He never planned on becoming one.
He was only an intern — whose name was probably buried at the bottom of the SIA's roster if ever his name was there at all.
There was no reason for him to risk his life for a case that didn't affect him at all.
"Should I risk myself working as a spy for the SIA? And worse still, we are dealing in AOE territory. They could crush me like an ant if they wanted to", Damen thought.
"What should I do?"