060 LOOKING AT IT WRONG
Dan discreetly opened his ssaging app and sent a ssage to Lander:
"Check Irine in class. Her stats jumped five points fast. Sothing's off."
While Lander dug into Irine's feed history, Dan 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 Dan couldn't shake the feeling that sothing was.
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"Did you check Irine?" Dan 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. Sothing's wrong sowhere."
Dan 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," Dan said. "One: we're wrong. The students really did improve their ta 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," Dan said. "Which brings us to the second possibility."
"Our feeds have been manipulated," Lander muttered grimly.
The room went quiet. Everyone understood what that ant.
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 soone as thodical 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 Dan again. "What's the right way, then?"
"If the recordings are fake," Dan said slowly, "soone had to fake them. But even Quantum himself couldn't manipulate every cara out there. Sowhere, there must be footage they missed."
Lander frowned. "But I've checked everything related to Irine. Where did I miss?"
"That's exactly it," Dan 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 sa class with them," Dan said. "They're close — couple kind of close. If Irine got hold of sothing that could boost her ta 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 imdiately began cross-referencing new feeds.
Minutes later, he froze.
"This is strange," he said. "Look at this — two different videos of the sa ti. One shows Irine sitting at her desk, studying. The other shows her outside, eting Kurt."
He projected both clips side by side.
"It's obvious," Dorin said. "The classroom footage was edited. Soone replaced the real feed with a fake to make it look like Irine stayed put."
Lander nodded grimly. "And the original shows her eting Kurt off-campus."
They traced Kurt's movents further, pulling data from external city caras. After several minutes, Lander stopped scrolling.
"Wait," Dorin said, squinting. "Is Kurt... going into a motel?"
"With another girl," Dan said quietly, his eyes widening. "He's cheating on Irine?"
Dorin groaned. "Don't tell
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 zood in on the second girl's file.
"She's another student," Dan 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 mont. 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
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