Cindy was tired and worn out with the job at NCMEC. Every day for the last three years she sat in a cubic with a dozen other people going through the emails and phone calls that came in about missing kids. Each volunteer had their own reasons to be there and hers wasn’t even the saddest. Originally taking the job to help deal with her own daughter’s disappearance Cindy constantly searched and questioned the tipsters about her sweet, blond hair, blue eye 5 now 8 year old girl. Constantly hoping someone saw or heard something that would help her find her daughter. Today she was on email response and already there was over 2000 emails in the queue waiting to be reviewed. By lunch she had managed to get through 600 of them and only 3 had even a possibility for leading to a missing kid. After checking all three carefully none of them could be her little girl Sandy. By 4:00 she had managed to complete 1356 of the emails and was already thinking about going home to her empty house. The current email had a large attachment but it made it through the virus checker so Cindy opened it. A single line was in the email stated the attached file had information on a number of missing children. Puzzled Cindy opened it and saw a massive file containing names, addresses dates and where they were now. Thinking it a cruel joke but with a faint hope in her heart Cindy typed Sandy’s full name in the search bar. A single match was found in the file with Sandy’s name highlighted. Their old address, the date of the abduction and a new address two states away was shown. Cindy broke down in tears starring at her screen..

* * * * *

The first thing needed I decided was to quickly identify the location and condition of all those kids as soon as possible. Hawk was having no problem identifying where the children were now but getting him to provide the physical address instead of GPS coordinates seemed to somehow annoy him. I based the thought he was annoyed on a slight delay he made in his responses. Over the last few months working with Hawk it seemed to be his way of showing it. My assumption this time was his annoyance for using imprecise street addresses. Still he would do it and get the information faster than I could enter it in a spread sheet.

With me being the bottleneck now I needed some way to directly add that information to the spreadsheet. I wasn’t a fast typist being more of a two finger one. The problem was Hawk didn’t have any physical presence as far as I could tell and I didn’t see any way a portal could enter data on a spreadsheet. He was basically physically handicap when it came to computers. I decided to try looking online for a solution. The very first suggestion that appeared was software already on the computer used for Speech Recognition. The verbal commands could be used to control the computer including typing. I wasn’t sure if Hawk’s monotone voice would work better or worse in the program but it was worth a try.

After some back and forth with Hawk the sample data added. The speed was still slow both with the verbal translation and the need for Hawk to go back and correct some entries. That would be easy to fix I just needed to add more computers. With each computer processing a different section of the list I could quickly get all the children located. The different spreadsheets could then be combined into one and sent. Now I just need to get a few more computers.

One of the conspiracy theories floating around the web talked about how the NSA and Chinese could identify the source of files. Supposedly based on the computer MAC addresses and IPs embedded in common file formats. I never checked enough to see if it was true but deciding to play it safe by getting used computers from multiple locations. With a portal I easily grabbed six fairly new laptops from the shelves of six different pawn shops in New York and Chicago. As an after hour procurement I didn’t have to worry about them being traced to me. Instead I left more than enough cash behind (curtsy of Hector) to pay for them twice over. I kept the nicest looking one separate for Samantha. This waqs assuming I could come up with an excuse she would accept for giving it to her. I set the others around my cabin on every flat space I could find. The file of the missing children from the NCMEC site was divided amount the laptops and Hawk went to work on it. That night I fell asleep with the mummer of Hawk’s voice coming from multiple locations all at the same time. The next morning over ten thousand children had been located with their information entered. I now had to get this to the NCMEC but make sure the source of the information pointed at someone else.

I always found conspiracy theories amusing and with Hawks help I researched several of them. Not all were fake, some were actually true and some others were partially true. One thing I did learn was that to have someone believe in a shadow organization all you really need are the right kind of shadows. A few rumors and misdirection or two will help imply its existence. Then leave it up to the distrust and some paranoia that a lot of people have to do the rest. I decided to start with the misdirection first using the source of the list file.

Later that night at a closed hospitality room at an international trade conference a portal opened up and a young man appeared out of nowhere. Sitting down at once of the complimentary computers used by attendees he then proceeded to upload a file from a USB drive. The file was routed through a couple on not so secured proxy servers before entering the NCMEC mail server. A few moments later the room was again empty waiting for the conference attendees to appear.

Back at my cabin I looked at all the laptops and how many kids were still left to find. Also Sammy would be by in a few hours and I could not think of and excuse for having so many computers. I needed a better way to do this and at least ten times more computers to do it with. Thinking about where I could get a room or two full of computers to use I decided on a computer lab. Schools taught students in rooms just full of computers. At night no one would be there and the classroom wouldn’t be monitored. The question was where I could find a computer classroom that would also misdirect anyone searching. The misdirection might not be needed at this point but just in case. The next three nights schools in Bermuda, Cayman and the Virgin Islands were visited by a late night caller. The one thing those places had together was they were a territory of England.

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Agent Ed Barrow got the call as soon as he went to his desk three days later. Looking at his empty coffee mug on his desk Ed gave a Sigh, He really needed a coffee before dealing with an early morning meeting with the assistant director. Walking into the AD’s office Ed now sported a larger than usual Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand. Unhappily forced to put it down when the AD held out a large stacked printout and a case folder. Ed sat down put the printout stack on the desk and got back his coffee cup. Juggling them both Ed got the case folder open and started to read. Sitting down he glanced over at the printout which seemed to be a list of names and addresses Ed opened the case folder again to continue reading about the list. After he finished reading it Ed looked at the AD in surprise. The file was lacking something critical.

He knew getting a case this way was a little unusual but it did happen. What didn’t happen was to get a case that didn’t have an actual criminal or even crime involved. Instead it was about a list that suddenly showed up at the NCMEC email account three days ago. It reportedly contained the location of over 10,000 missing children. Thinking about it Ed decided that Yes, it was a mystery and probably fake but it was up to the NCMEC to verify it. Some verification was being done after one of their people found her missing daughter’s name on it. The daughter was found exactly where the file stated she was. Since then more names were checked and the list had been broken up by location before being sent out to the local law enforcement groups to check. Ed wondered why would the FBI be investigating a non-crime like this? Especially since regular law enforcement was already doing it. It didn’t make any sense but when Ed asked the AD for the reason the answer he gave sounded even more ridiculous. The idea was that a secret organization was responsible for all the missing kids and that a defector from within the group was the one who sent the list. This theory was so preposterous Ed couldn’t help but chuckle in his bosses face.

“Yes, yes I know” the AD responding to his chuckle.” but the NIA and the CIA have both expressed concern about the existence of the list and who the source might be.” .

Ed responded “I can kind of understand the FBI but why CIA. They’re not supposed to get involved in domestic issues”.

“Check out the list” the AD said “there are 183 children on it that are now in another country and 37 are missing military dependents. The NCMEC has already contacting the State Department and some of the parents are starting to find out. This means that it is about to become a major international incident.”

Agent Barrow headed back to his desk with the file and folder already regretting he didn’t call in sick today. By the next morning he had fielded calls from Army CID investigators, Navy’s NCIS people and was now expecting the Air Force‘s group to be calling next. Just then a prompt came up on his computer reminding him of the meeting with the lead investigator from NCMEC had been pushed forward an hour and was moved to the large conference room at the Alexandria building. Cursing at the time change Ed looked at his watch and realized he had just enough time if he hurried.

As Ed walked into the conference room he was surprised to see a dozen people already there. The meeting scheduled this morning was only supposed to be with a couple of NCMEC people to go over how they got the list. Instead it looked like a major inter-agency meeting. Sitting down at the table Ed noticed a smaller stack of paper in from of each person that was color coded and highlighted; he assumed it was the missing kids list but wondered what the big stack that was in the center of the table. Holding off on his curiosity Ed checked out the other people present. Noticing the puzzlement on a few of them Ed realized he wasn’t the only one in the dark right now.

Once everyone sat down an older, severely dressed woman introduced herself as Martha Owens director of data operations at the NCMEC. Pointing at each person around the table she asked their name and agency.

Finished with introductions she then pointing at the center of the conference table she stated “this list just came in.’

Ed wondered why she was making a big deal of it. He had gotten a copy yesterday and he assumed everyone else had seen it. The color coding and highlighting might mean something special but he assumed it was done by NCMEC based on their checking.

Not seeing the look of surprise on everyone’s faces she pointed again directly at the large report stack in the center of the table said “This is the ‘new’ list that showed up today.”

Everyone paused what they were doing and looked at the center stack. Over 20 times larger and toward over the smaller stacks. Everyone stared at the stack with wide eyes shocked at how many missing kids must there. Ms. Owens proceeded to explain that the list had over 300,000 children some from decades ago. She also stated in a more somber tone that the records for the children also had a status the stated if they were in danger, just taken, just ran away or were deceased. The ones marked deceased and a location of the body and in most cases the supposed identity of the persons responsible. The first thought that went through Ed’s mind at this was it was completely impossible. The data just could not exist and no person or agency could have accumulated it. The second thought was about the deceased and their killers, how could this many investigations possibly be done. The criminal justice system was already severely overloaded and underfunded.

Widespread commotion broke out as everyone started to discuss and argue about what that meant. Ed heard the theory of the mysterious kidnapping group raised again only this time they were painted as an evil group of serial killers and terms like psychics and aliens were branded about. Ms. Owens was eventually able to regain control of the meeting only to drop another bombshell when she said the part of the original list had been leaked to several online websites. Quickly quieting the group she further explained that the leaked list only contained the name of missing children who had still not been recovered from the first list. The color codes identified if the locations had been checked or not as well as if a new location for the child was now listed.

A man who was introduced as from the Marshalls service brought up a disquieting point. “Did the second list deliberately get leaked because we are being pushed to recover the children faster?”

The thought that some group was monitoring and judging the recovery efforts was of major concern. Ms. Owens nodded at that idea then dropped one more bomb shell.

Projecting a slide up on the screen she said “this was the message that came with the file.” On the screen were the words:

3 days for in danger

3 weeks for taken

3 months for runaway

3 years for deceased