“The Last Ping”

The rain hadn’t stopped in three days, and the city’s neon lights blurred against Detective Mara Quinn’s windshield like streaks of watercolor. She parked outside an old warehouse on the east docks—the last known location of tech entrepreneur Adrian Vale, missing for forty-eight hours.

The only clue: a single message Vale’s phone had sent before going dark. It wasn’t to a contact, but to himself. Three words.
“They found me.”

Inside, the building smelled of oil and metal. Her partner, Leo, swept his flashlight across rows of dismantled drones and circuit boards. “He was working on something big,” he muttered. “Quantum encryption for personal data—unbreakable, supposedly.”

Mara nodded. Vale had been paranoid. Convinced his own company was spying on him. His last GPS ping came from here, but the phone was gone. What wasn’t gone was the hum of a nearby server rack—still powered, still online.

She connected her tablet. A single file waited on the main drive, labeled VALE_LOG_13. It opened to a video: Vale’s face, pale and frantic.
“If you’re seeing this, they breached the prototype. The encryption works too well—they can’t steal it, so they’ll erase it. And me.” He looked off-screen, then back. “The code isn’t here. It’s in the cloud. Hidden where only the right ping can find it.”

The feed cut to static. Mara’s screen glitched, then flickered with coordinates—ones that weren’t part of the video. Her tablet had received a signal just now.

“Leo,” she whispered, “that wasn’t from the file.”

Before he could respond, the overhead lights buzzed on. Every server in the room rebooted in unison. The same message appeared across every monitor:
WELCOME, DETECTIVE QUINN.

Leo’s voice dropped. “How would it know your name?”

The rain outside intensified, drowning out the hum of the city. Mara stared at the glowing words as her tablet vibrated—an incoming message from an unlisted number.

Three words.
“They found you.”