The search did not feel like a search.
It felt like exhumation.
Lucia stood in the center of the subterranean operations room, surrounded by layers of data that pulsed and shifted across transparent screens. Dates. Locations. Birth records. Hospital registries. Adoption files. Everything that could be touched by human error or human greed.
Everything that could be rewritten.
"Elena," Lucia said quietly, "filter by facilities with irregular funding sources in the twelve months surrounding my disappearance."
"Already in progress," Elena replied.
Dominic leaned against the edge of the console, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the cascading data. "How many so far?"
"Two hundred and nineteen," Elena said.
Dominic exhaled slowly. "That narrows nothing."
"It narrows everything," Lucia corrected.
