The search for Kaito Chen completely took over their lives. It was no longer just another job or a simple task to complete. It had become their single most important goal, a desperate mission that controlled every waking moment of their day. This new, all-consuming obsession forced them to split their efforts into two very different paths. Each path required a completely separate set of skills.

On one side was the digital hunt. This was a world made of code and data that existed entirely within the glow of Evelyn's computer screens. On the other side was the physical search. This was a gritty, hands-on effort that required them to put their boots on the ground and investigate the city's forgotten corners. They were essentially fighting a war on two different fronts: one battle was happening in the invisible streams of the internet, and the other was happening on the cracked pavement of the decaying docklands. They knew that their survival might very well depend on their ability to succeed at both.

In Unit B17, Evelyn became the absolute master of the digital domain. The air in the room grew thick with the smell of strong coffee and the silent, frantic energy of her intense focus. She built a makeshift "war room" on the screen of her main laptop. Her fingers flew across the keyboard in a constant, hypnotic rhythm. To anyone else looking at it, the dozens of windows filled with graphs, maps, and lines of code would have looked like pure chaos. But to Evelyn, it was a detailed and understandable map of the city's hidden veins and arteries—its power grids and data networks.

"It's like trying to find a whisper in a hurricane," she muttered one afternoon, rubbing her tired eyes. Ace looked up from where he was sitting, methodically testing a stack of refurbished headphones. His own mind was too restless to sit completely idle. Evelyn explained her approach: "A guy like Chen, with the kind of advanced technology he would need to use… he would create a massive, hidden drain on the electrical grid. And he would need a hardline internet connection—something extremely fast and reliable. A man like him would never trust public Wi-Fi; it's far too easy for someone to intercept and trace."

Ace watched her work, feeling a familiar pang of helplessness. His own special ability, his System, was completely silent on this matter. It offered him no shortcuts for this kind of painstaking, detailed detective work. He realized that while he could process information at incredible speeds, he couldn't create that information from nothing. It was the difference between a powerful computer and the programmer who tells it what to do. He was the computer, but Evelyn was the brilliant programmer.

Suddenly, words flashed in Ace's mind.

<<SKILL ACTIVATED: INFO-FINDER LV. 1.>>

<<PROCESSING AVAILABLE PUBLIC DATA STREAMS: REAL ESTATE RECORDS, UTILITY OUTAGE REPORTS, MUNICIPAL PERMITS.>>

<<CROSS-REFERENCING WITH PARAMETERS: INDUSTRIAL ZONE 7 (DOCKLANDS), STRUCTURES BUILT PRE-1990, ACTIVE FIBER OPTIC LINES.>>

A list of addresses began to compile in his mind, a dozen possibilities pulled from dry public records. It was about a dozen possibilities pulled from dry public records. It was a start, but it was too broad and unhelpful, like being given a single page torn from a giant phone book.

"Anything?" he asked, leaning over Evelyn's shoulder to look at her screen.

"Maybe," she said, not looking away from a complex graph of squiggly lines. "See this? This is the average power draw for a six-block grid in the old cannery district. It's been a dead zone for years. But look at these tiny, regular spikes." She pointed to a series of barely noticeable bumps on the line. "They happen every single night, between 2 AM and 5 AM. The amount of power is minuscule. It's like it's being carefully taken from a dozen different power sources to avoid a major drain on any single one. It's a brilliant way to hide. And it's totally paranoid."

Ace felt a thrill of excitement. It was a pattern. A digital footprint. "Can you pinpoint exactly where it's coming from?"

"Not from here," she sighed in frustration, slumping back in her chair. "The electrical grid in that area is too old, and the monitoring equipment is too crude. I can narrow it down to about four square blocks. But that's still dozens of crumbling warehouses and factories. It's a start, but it's not a specific address."

Meanwhile, Silva's approach was much lower-tech. He became their man on the street, their connection to the city's gossip and rumors. He spent hours on his cheap, burner phone, his voice a low, conspiratorial murmur in the corner of the workshop. He called in every favor. He spoke to every old contact from his bartending days, people who owed him one or who might know something about the strange, unseen things happening in the city's underbelly.

He'd hang up and make a note on a physical notepad—"Manny says the old fish-packing plant has 'residents'. He hears weird hums at night."—and then dial another number. His notebook became a collection of clues from the city's unofficial gossip network, information that would never show up on any computer.

His breakthroughs didn't come from data streams, but from human stories. He learned which homeless veterans knew the best spots for shelter, which delivery drivers noticed which abandoned buildings never seemed to have boarded-up windows for long, which cash-only grocers had a customer who only bought bulk noodles, energy drinks, and vitamin supplements—the strange diet of someone who never leaves their computer.

He'd return from quick, nervous trips to meet his contacts, his clothes smelling of cigarette smoke and the damp, metallic smell of the docklands. He was their bridge to the real, grimy world outside their steel door.

"Okay, listen up," Silva said, gathering them around after one such trip. He looked more excited than he had in days, like a hunter who had caught a fresh scent. "I got a name from a guy who knows a guy. Mrs. Hazel lived in a rent-controlled apartment near the docks for sixty years. Think of her as the neighborhood watch. Only, she's like a woman who believes anyone under fifty is a hooligan."

"What did she say?" Evelyn asked, turning away from her screens, her full attention captured.

"Mrs. Hazel keeps talking about the quiet Chinese boy who lives in her building," Silva said, his eyes wide with the importance of the clue. "He lives with his old grandmother and never bothers anyone. He always pays his rent in cash, and always on time. But Mrs. Hazel says he gets strange packages—huge boxes of computer parts. And his apartment is always too cold like he's running a meat locker. She's even joking that she thinks he's a vampire." Silva said the last part with a shrug, as if this was a perfectly normal suspicion.

Ace and Evelyn stared at him, and then at each other. The pieces clicked together in their minds all at once.

"Computer parts? An apartment that's too cold from all the computer heat?" Evelyn said, her voice rising with excitement. "Silva, that's not a vampire, that's a data center! He's running computer servers in there!"

"But an apartment building?" Ace asked, doubt clear in his voice. "That doesn't sound like the sort of place a secret hacker would choose. It's too exposed with too many people around. A guy as paranoid as Chen would want isolation like a warehouse, something he could control completely."

"Unless…" Evelyn said, her thoughts rushing through her head. She turned quickly back to her laptop, typing as fast as she could. "Unless he's not powering it from his apartment. What's the address, Silva? The apartment building?"

Silva gave her the street name. Evelyn's fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up a new map and overlaying it with the data about her power grid anomaly.

"The cannery district," she breathed, a triumphant smile breaking across her face. "His apartment building is right on the edge of the grid I identified. It's perfect. Don't you see? He lives in a perfectly normal, unremarkable building. But he could be running cables… tunneling into the abandoned cannery warehouse right next door. He's using his apartment as a front, but housing his real operation in the dead space behind it. No one would ever think to look for a master hacker in a little old lady's apartment building. It's the perfect hideout."

It was Ace who connected the final dots. He stood before the large city map Silva had pinned to the wall, his eyes losing focus as the Neural-Interface whirred to life in his mind, processing everything they had just learned.

<<DATA SYNTHESIS: EVELYN'S POWER GRID ANOMALY + SILVA'S HUMAN INTEL (SUBJECT CHEN'S GRANDMOTHER, COLD APARTMENT, CASH PAYMENTS) + PUBLIC BUILDING BLUEPRINTS.>>

<<ANALYSIS: THERE'S A HIGH CHANCE THAT CHEN IS USING APARTMENT 3B AT 1412 MARINER'S VIEW AS A COVER.

HIS REAL SETUP IS PROBABLY HIDDEN IN THE OLD CANNERY WAREHOUSE NEXT DOOR (UNIT 7).

HE MIGHT BE GETTING INTO IT THROUGH THE BASEMENT OR OLD UTILITY TUNNELS.

HE'S PULLING ELECTRICITY FROM THE APARTMENT BUILDING TO HIDE HOW MUCH POWER HE'S REALLY USING.>>

<<CONCLUSION: TARGET LOCATED.>>

His eyes snapped back into focus, sharp and clear. He picked up a red marker from the workbench, uncapped it, and with a sure hand, circled a large, dilapidated warehouse on the map labeled 'Cannery #7'. Then he drew a firm line to the smaller residential building right beside it.

"He's here," Ace said, his voice calm and certain, leaving no room for doubt. He tapped the red circle he had just drawn on the warehouse. "He's not working from the apartment. He's only using it for cover, probably as a place for his grandmother to live. His real lair, his machines, his entire operation—it's all in here. Right next door. He's hiding the massive heat and power needed for his computers inside a building that everyone thinks is completely empty and dead."

"The room fell into a stunned silence, broken only by the gentle hum of Evelyn's computers. They had done it. Through sheer, stubborn, collaborative effort—Evelyn's digital detective work, Silva's street-level intelligence, and Ace's strange, intuitive ability to connect the dots—they had pinpointed a ghost. They had found the unfindable."

In that moment, they weren't just a barista, a bartender, and a guy with a secret anymore. They were a team. And they had their target. The next move, which would be the most dangerous one, was now theirs to make.

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