While Wednesday and Sofia immediately huddled over the encrypted tablet, speaking in hushed, clinical tones about black-market supply chains and extraction routes, Enid shifted gears. The pastel-clad werewolf sat down gently next to Victoria on the couch, placing a warm, comforting hand over the weeping mother's trembling fingers, murmuring soft, genuinely reassuring words that Wednesday would have found abhorrent.
Aleksander stepped away from the group. He needed absolute, frictionless clarity.
Reaching into a small, silver tin in his inner jacket pocket, he retrieved a single pill. It was perfectly circular and flat. It was completely clear, translucent, and colorless, looking less like medication and more like a smooth, glossy, glass-like lens.
Without a word, Aleksander placed the pill on his tongue and swallowed it dry.
Almost instantly, his pupils dilated, the vibrant green of his irises glowing with a sharp, unnatural intensity. The effects were immediate and overwhelming. His mind began to race at a terrifying velocity. Every single data point, every spoken word from the witnesses, the street layouts of the San Fernando Valley, the cartel's standard operating procedures—it all fragmented and then violently reassembled in his mind, forming a flawless, hyper-connected web of logic.
"Sofia," Aleksander said, his voice clipped and vibrating with sudden, intense energy. "Your laptop. Now."
Sofia didn't question the sudden shift in his demeanor. She immediately reached into her tactical bag, pulled out a heavily modified, military-grade laptop, and slid it across the coffee table toward him.
Aleksander's fingers flew across the keyboard in a blinding blur. He bypassed standard municipal firewalls in seconds, tapping directly into the San Fernando Valley's traffic grid and security camera feeds. Dozens of small video windows popped up across the screen. His chemically and magically enhanced brain processed the moving images at a speed no normal human could track.
He scrubbed through the time-stamped footage from two nights ago, tracing the route from the party in the Hills.
Intersection 4... Red light camera on Ventura... ATM security feed on Sepulveda...
"There," Aleksander said sharply, hitting the spacebar to freeze the footage.
Sam and Tory jumped up from the sofa, crowding behind him to look at the screen. Frozen on a grainy traffic camera feed was a black utility van, closely followed by a dark sedan.
"That's it," Tory confirmed, pointing at a faint dent on the van's rear bumper. "That's the van they threw her in."
Aleksander didn't celebrate. His fingers became a blur again as he ran a predictive tracking algorithm based on the van's trajectory, cross-referencing it with live toll booth data, highway cameras, and police scanners. He watched the digital blip of the vehicle navigate the grid, waiting for it to jump onto the interstate or head toward a private airfield.
It never did.
Aleksander stopped typing and looked up, his glowing eyes locking onto Sofia and Wednesday.
"They didn't run," Aleksander announced, a dangerous edge creeping into his voice. "The van went dark in an industrial sector near North Hollywood, but it never crossed the county line. They haven't left town yet. Yasmine is still in the Valley."
"Why are they still here?" Daniel asked, stepping closer to the laptop, his brow deeply furrowed in confusion. "If they aren't looking for a payout, and they already have her... why stick around? Why not just get the hell out of Los Angeles before the cops lock down the state?"
Aleksander's glowing green eyes remained fixed on the screen. The clear pill was firing on all cylinders, allowing his mind to deconstruct the cartel's operational playbook with terrifying, emotionless clarity.
"Three reasons," Aleksander explained, his voice rapid, cold, and entirely clinical. "First, tactical evasion. Moving a screaming, high-profile heiress immediately after an abduction triggers highway patrols and border checkpoints. Fleeing in a flagged van guarantees they get caught. Hiding in plain sight within a secured, local black site allows them to wait out the initial LAPD dragnet."
He tapped a key, bringing up an industrial zoning map of the North Hollywood sector where the van had vanished.
"Second, consider their divisions: 731 and 404," Aleksander continued, his fingers flying across the trackpad. "You do not transport a struggling teenager across state lines in the back of a cargo van if she is meant for high-end sex trafficking or organ extraction. The 'merchandise' must be kept in pristine condition. Bruises devalue the product. Stress ruins organs. They need a sterile, soundproof holding facility to properly sedate, prep, and catalog her before they move her to a buyer or a surgical suite."
Victoria let out a muffled, horrified gasp, clutching Richard's arm as the reality of the logistics set in.
Wednesday stepped up beside Aleksander, seamlessly picking up his dark logic. "And third, they failed their primary objective."
Sam and Tory looked up at her, their eyes wide.
"They didn't just want Yasmine," Wednesday pointed out, leveling her unblinking gaze at the local girls. "They tried to take all of you. That indicates they have a specific quota to fill for a large shipment. They expected a haul of five targets, and thanks to your interference, they only secured one."
Aleksander nodded in agreement, closing the traffic window and opening a satellite view of the industrial sector. "They aren't running yet because they are regrouping. They are holding Yasmine locally while they decide whether to cut their losses and transport her alone, or attempt to acquire the rest of their missing inventory before the client gets impatient."
"Which means she is currently alive," Sofia interjected, leaning over the table. "They don't harvest until the buyer is secured and the transport coolers are ready. We have a window."
At that single word—alive—Victoria's choked sobs suddenly stopped. She looked up, her tear-streaked face trembling. Richard's grip on his wife's hand tightened to the point of aching. For the past forty-eight hours, they had been suffocating under the agonizing, silent certainty that their daughter was already dead in a ditch somewhere. Now, cutting through the horrifying, clinical logic of these teenagers, a fragile, desperate spark of hope violently ignited in their chests.
Richard let out a ragged, shaking breath, the color rushing back into his pale face. She was alive. They still had a chance to bring her home.
"A very small one," Aleksander corrected, refusing to let the room settle into false comfort. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the grid of warehouses on the screen. "We need to find out exactly which building in North Hollywood belongs to them, and we need to do it tonight."