Meanwhile, inside the base of operations—
while 777 was out dropping off the stranger—
Rick remained behind.
Alone.
Almost.
Jennifer's voice echoed gently through the overhead speakers, curious but calm.
"What shall we do until 777 gets back?"
Rick stood motionless for a moment, eyes distant.
"Let's just sit back," he said, finally. "And analyze what we've got on our hands."
"Okay, Dad," Jennifer replied sweetly. "Let me guide you to the server room."
A soft chime echoed as hidden LED strips lit the path forward—each light blinking to life like a breadcrumb trail of warm amber.
The rain tapped against the roof in uneven rhythms, soft and strange—
not like a storm, but like the sky itself was mourning.
It sounded like crying.
It sounded like the last time he saw Shalit.
Light.
Cold.
Unfinished.
It wasn't just grief.
It was the quiet ache of losing something that was once part of him.
Not violently—just… gone.
As he walked through the corridor, boots thudding gently against the concrete floor, Rick muttered to himself, barely audible:
"I was there alone one day… sitting in my room.
Convinced I didn't need anyone.
That I didn't have to rely on anyone again."
Jennifer's voice came through softly—cutting through the silence like a daughter stepping in on an old memory.
"Then you created me," she said. "Your daughter."
He smiled.
A rare, subtle thing.
"Yes," he said.
They continued in silence for a few more steps. The server room door loomed ahead, locked and silent.
"Not to say this out loud," Jennifer added after a moment, her voice more human than code,
"but I'll always be here for you.
Even if you lose everything."
Rick slowed his steps.
"…And what if I disappear?" he asked, voice low. Like it wasn't meant to be heard.
There was a pause. A beat.
Then—Jennifer's voice came through again, certain and unwavering.
"But you won't."
Rick exhaled quietly and stepped into the server room.
The lights adjusted automatically to his presence—dim and ambient, but with a crisp focus on the far wall. A massive digital whiteboard stretched across the entire display, filled edge-to-edge with glowing data clusters, stills from surveillance, timestamps, maps, and fragments of decoded logs. It looked like the inside of a mind trying to solve something that refused to be solved.
Everything they had gathered about the case—every thread, clue, mistake, and silence—was there, floating.
Jennifer's voice came again. This time, sharp. Professional. Serious.
"I've arranged everything we've found so far," she said. "You can sit back and review comfortably."
Rick lowered himself into a chair. The synthetic cushion hissed beneath him as it adjusted his weight.
He leaned back, eyes heavy, coffee still warm in his hand.
"Okay," he muttered, gaze fixed on the glowing display. "I'm ready. Lay it out for me."
A moment passed. Then the wall lit brighter as Jennifer began.
"So—Shalit and Tobey entered Central Park at 1:30 PM."
A timestamp blinked at the top left corner of the screen. A map segment of Central Park zoomed in, two green pings moving across the path.
"At 2:19, the tracker went dead. No exit logs. No visuals. Nothing."
She paused, as if weighing how much guilt she should let seep through.
"I was undergoing a core security update at the time—installed by 777—so from 12:00 PM to 1:15 PM, I was offline."
Footage on the screen showed a camera feed from the house exterior, time-coded and flickering slightly at the point of her reboot window.
"The security wasn't compromised," she clarified quickly. "There were no breaches, no tampering, no system corruption. I simply wasn't there to watch the cameras during that window."
The footage rewound and played again in a side panel—showing their driveway, calm.
Still.
Normal.
"I did, however, recover and review the footage from the local backup drive once I was reactivated," she continued. "And… there was nothing unusual. No one entered. No one left. No strange movement. No evidence of interference around the house."
The board flashed once, then highlighted the phrase:
"House perimeter: no anomalies detected."
Rick narrowed his eyes slightly. His fingers tensed around the handle of his mug, but he said nothing yet.
Jennifer's voice softened, just slightly, aware of what this meant to him.
"So for now," she said, "we can safely assume that nothing happened around the house."
Rick didn't respond immediately. He just stared at the glowing screen, the pale light brushing against his face, casting his features in blue and shadow.
Then, after a long pause, he leaned forward in the chair.
"I found Shalit's hair tie," he muttered. His voice had that same restrained sharpness it always did when things got too close. "It was left on the ground in Central Park, near one of the benches."
The whiteboard responded—new markers appearing on the park map. One small pin lit up red at a bench just off a quiet walking path.
"And… I found Tobey's tablet."
He closed his eyes for a moment before continuing.
"It was near the sandbox. The screen was cracked but it was still alive. Still had power."
Jennifer quickly logged the second location on the map. A faded timestamp hovered above it—fuzzy, but present.
"I don't know when he broke it," Rick added. "There were no impact logs, no sound triggers. If I'd known when it happened, I might've…"
He stopped himself.
Jennifer didn't interrupt.
Rick's fingers tapped lightly against the edge of the chair.
"If this was an assault," he continued, "then we need to go by what we do have. And what we have… is Tobey on footage."
The main screen shifted—displaying grainy but clear footage. A small figure—Tobey—moving quickly across the path. Following someone.
"He was chasing someone wearing biker gear," Rick said, narrowing his eyes. "A woman. Straight hair."
Jennifer zoomed in on the figure—long coat, helmet. No facial data.
"Based movement, it's not Shalit," Rick said quietly. "Doesn't move like her. Doesn't look like her. We can assume that whoever Tobey was following… it wasn't his mother."
He leaned back again, shoulders tense.
"Then there's the blood."
The screen changed again—highlighting a still from an abandoned facility. Dirt. Concrete. A dark patch on the floor, analyzed and marked.
"Shalit's blood. Mixed with saliva. On the ground."
Jennifer highlighted the chemical breakdown: elevated iron levels, stomach acid traces. Blood vomit.
"But no sign of her entering that place," Rick added.
His voice dropped lower. Not in volume—but in something deeper. Like it was getting pulled down by gravity.
"No gate logs. No camera sightings. No footprint trail.
It's like she just… appeared there. Bleeding."
Rick sat in silence.
The room hummed with low fan noise and digital breath—rows of servers blinking slowly like sleeping animals. The pale blue glow from the whiteboard lit his face unevenly, casting long shadows under his eyes.
On the wall, the still image of Shalit's blood hovered.
It shouldn't have been there.
And yet… it was.
He stared at it like it might shift or disappear if he looked hard enough.
"Jennifer," he said, voice rough, barely above a whisper. "Do me a favor. Just… don't talk for a second."
She went quiet.
Rick leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring down at the floor.
"…Okay," he muttered. "Let's walk this."
He looked back up at the board, eyes scanning the timeline, the pins, the red markers.
"Three possibilities."
He held up a single finger.
"First—someone took her. Forced entry. Dragged her in. But they were smart. Covered their tracks. Wiped every trace except the blood. No prints. No camera hits. No entry logs. Could've been professionals… or someone with tech beyond our grid."
He raised a second finger.
"Second—mental break. Shalit lost it. Some kind of episode. She wandered there on her own. But that doesn't line up. There's no history. No triggers. No medication. And even if she did… that wouldn't explain the blood pattern. She vomited. She was hurt."
A pause.
He raised the third finger slowly.
"…Third. Something messed with the data. A glitch. Maybe not even a normal one.
A hole in recorded time.
Surveillance logs rewritten.
Reality... not adding up."
He let the hand fall. Stared at the screen like it had just dared him to say one more thing.
Rick leaned back in the chair. The cushion hissed slightly under the weight shift.
"Or maybe…" he muttered. "Maybe it's none of those."
He looked toward the speaker in the ceiling.
"Jennifer. You ever consider that it wasn't the world that glitched?"
She didn't respond.