The international arrivals hall at JFK's commercial terminal was a chaotic sea of screaming tourists and crying babies.
Pushing through the crowd, completely unnoticed, were two five-year-old children sharing a single mini Rimowa suitcase.
The boy, Juelz, wore a black tech-wear jacket and a baseball cap pulled low. His jaw was set in a tight, serious line. In his small hands, he held a heavily modified, encrypted satellite phone. His thumbs flew across the screen, actively severing the airline's unaccompanied minor tracking signal.
Beside him walked Jaylynn. She wore a vintage, frilly Lolita dress and clutched a ragged teddy bear to her chest. Beneath her oversized pink sunglasses, her face was a terrifyingly exact, miniature replica of Kingston Savage.
"Over here! You little monsters!"
Sloane Donovan, Audrey's fiercely loyal best friend, shoved her way through the crowd. She wore combat boots and a leather jacket, waving a neon green sign.
She dropped to her knees and pulled both kids into a bone-crushing hug.
"I cannot believe you two," Sloane hissed, looking around nervously. "You convinced your mother's head of security to smuggle you onto a private cargo flight? And forged my signature on the pickup manifest? If Audrey finds out I aided and abetted this, she will murder me."
Juelz pushed his sunglasses up his nose. His voice was chillingly calm and entirely too mature. "Mommy came back to New York alone. She is walking into enemy territory. That toxic father of ours is a threat. We are here to provide tactical overwatch."
Jaylynn smiled sweetly. She reached into her little pocket and pulled out a square of artisanal Swiss chocolate, pressing it into Sloane's hand.
"You won't tell Mommy, Auntie Sloane," Jaylynn chirped. "Because you love us."
Sloane groaned, pocketing the chocolate. She grabbed their suitcase. "Get in the car before someone sees your face, Jaylynn. If Kingston catches a glimpse of you, the gig is up."
Sloane shoved them into the back of her armored Land Rover Defender and sped out of the airport.
Sloane's safehouse was a heavily secured, industrial loft in deep Brooklyn.
The second they walked through the steel door, Juelz unzipped the Rimowa suitcase. It wasn't full of clothes. It was a high-powered, portable server rack.
Within three minutes, Juelz had three external monitors hooked up on the kitchen island. Lines of glowing blue code cascaded down the screens.
Jaylynn sat on the rug. She unzipped the back of her teddy bear and pulled out a handful of micro-listening devices and signal jammers, methodically placing them around the loft's perimeter to block any outside surveillance.
Sloane set two mugs of hot milk on the table. "Alright, cyber-terrorist. What's the play?"
Juelz's fingers blurred over the mechanical keyboard. A 3D wireframe model of the Savage Tower security grid spun on the center monitor.
"Step one," Juelz said coldly. "Blind the bastard. He has the best intelligence network in the city. We cut his eyes out so he can't find Mommy."
Juelz hit the enter key, deploying a custom-built polymorphic virus directly into Savage Corp's external firewall.
Inside the Savage Tower cybersecurity center, all hell broke loose.
Red strobe lights flashed. Sirens blared. "WARNING: CRITICAL BREACH" flashed across fifty different monitors.
Max Keller burst into the CEO's office without knocking. Kingston was pacing behind his desk, waiting for the identity of the woman in the photo.
"Sir!" Max yelled over the alarms. "We're under attack! Someone is systematically wiping our core intelligence databases!"
Kingston's face darkened. He shoved Max aside and marched out to the security floor.
He stood behind his lead engineer. On the screen, every search query for "Echo," "JFK private arrivals," and "European Art Director" was being actively deleted in real-time.
Suddenly, the main server screen went pitch black.
A crude, 8-bit pixel animation popped up on the screen. It was a little demon wearing sunglasses. The demon unzipped its pants and urinated directly onto a pixelated image of Kingston's face.
Below the animation, bold white text typed itself out:
System purged. Your firewall is pathetic. Better luck next time, garbage.
Kingston slammed his fist down on the engineer's desk. The coffee mug shattered, sending hot liquid flying.
"Trace the IP!" Kingston roared, the veins in his neck bulging. "I want the location of this hacker right now!"
The engineer's hands shook as he typed. "I can't, sir! The IP is bouncing through forty different proxy servers across Russia, China, and Brazil. It's... it's a ghost."
In the Brooklyn loft, Juelz watched the "Trace Failed" notification pop up on his screen.
He smirked. The expression was a terrifyingly accurate copy of Kingston's own arrogant sneer.
Juelz hit one final key. He permanently corrupted all high-definition CCTV footage along the highway leaving JFK, replacing it with AI-generated loops of empty traffic.
Jaylynn clapped her hands in delight. She pulled up an iPad, scrolling through the guest lists of New York's upcoming high-society galas. "Okay, Juelz. Let's find Mommy a stage."
Back in Savage Tower, the screens flickered back to normal. But the damage was done. Every digital trace of the woman in the photo had been scrubbed from existence.
Kingston stared at the blank screen. His chest he heave.
The fact that she was being protected by a hacker capable of crippling Wall Street's best security only confirmed his suspicions. This wasn't a coincidence.
Kingston turned to Max, his eyes cold and dead.
"If we can't find her online, we find her on the street," Kingston ordered. "Lock down the city. Put men at every luxury hotel, every high-end restaurant. She's breathing my air. Dig up the concrete if you have to. Find her."
