The FBI Closed My Missing Person Case After Months of Silence, but a Blurry Clip Titled “The Hunt” on a Hidden Site Showed Me Olivia Was Alive and Forced Me to Become Her Only Investigator

I used to measure my life in semesters.

Move-in weekend. Midterms. Thanksgiving break. Finals. Then home again, laundry basket overflowing, my daughter Olivia talking a mile a minute about roommates, professors, campus coffee, and how everything in college was “just… bigger, Mom.”

Now I measure my life in before and after the day she disappeared.

Her last text to me was stupidly ordinary.

OLIVIA 3:14 PM: “Love you. Gotta run to study group. I’ll call tonight, promise.”

She added the little heart emoji she’d been using since middle school. I sent back a thumbs up and a “Proud of you, kiddo.” I was in the grocery store checkout line, more focused on using the digital coupons than the fact that my only child was telling me, without knowing it, goodbye to the life we both recognized.

That night, she didn’t call.

At first, I didn’t panic. She was nineteen. Study sessions ran late. Friends dropped by. College had a way of rearranging priorities. By eleven, I sent a text.

“Hey, you alive over there? How’d the study group go?”

No response.

Midnight came. Then one. I told myself she’d fallen asleep. That she’d left her phone on silent. That she’d call in the morning and I’d get to say, “You scared me,” and she’d roll her eyes through the screen.

Instead, my phone rang at 6:42 a.m. The caller ID said HOPE RIDGE UNIVERSITY HOUSING.

I knew, in the quiet animal part of my brain, that nothing good ever came from the school calling before seven.

“Hello?” My voice came out sharp, strangled.

“Mrs. Mercer?” The voice on the other end sounded too smooth, too careful. “This is Diana from residence life. I’m calling about your daughter, Olivia.”

My hand tightened on the phone. “Is she okay?”

“We’re… not sure,” she said. “Her roommate reported that she didn’t come back to the room last night, and she missed her morning class. Campus security is looking for her now.”

The world narrowed to the sound of my heartbeat.

“What do you mean, you’re not sure?” I demanded. “Did she leave with someone? Did she swipe into the dorm?”

“We’re reviewing security footage. Campus police will call you as soon as they have more information.”

“How long has she been missing?” I asked, already hating the word missing.

“It looks like she last swiped into the building yesterday afternoon around three-thirty,” she said. “Her roommate says she left around six for study group and never came back.”

Yesterday. My knees went weak.

“My husband and I are on our way,” I said. “It’s a three-hour drive. We’ll be there by ten.”

“Of course, Mrs. Mercer,” the woman said, still using that careful tone. “I’m so sorry this is happening. We’ll do everything we can.”

She hung up. I just stood there in the kitchen, staring at the refrigerator door where Olivia’s senior photo was pinned under a magnet shaped like a smiley face. Her graduation cap was tilted, squeaky-clean teeth flashing, her eyes bright with a future that suddenly felt far away.

My husband, Tom, walked in, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Who was that?”

I looked at him, and my voice came out flat. “It’s Olivia,” I said. “She’s missing.”

---

By the time we reached campus, the day had turned bright and clear, the kind of crisp fall morning that usually made the brick buildings and changing leaves look like a brochure.

To me, it felt like walking into a movie set where someone had erased the color.

Campus police met us at the station, a squat brick building that smelled faintly of burnt coffee and paper. Officer Ramirez, with tired eyes and a professional calm that only made my heart pound harder, led us into a small room with a table and two chairs.

“We’re treating this as a priority,” he said. “I want to walk you through what we know so far.”

He slid a folder across the table, but I barely looked at it. “I just want my daughter,” I said. “Whatever you need, just tell us.”

He nodded. “According to her roommate, Olivia left their dorm room at approximately 6:00 p.m. yesterday for a group study session in the library. She took her backpack, laptop, and phone. She told her roommate she would be back later.”

“Did she make it to the library?” Tom asked, reaching blindly for my hand under the table.

“We have her entering the library on camera at 6:17 p.m.,” Ramirez said. “She doesn’t appear to leave through the main exits anytime after that. We’re still reviewing side doors and other angles.”

“Did she meet anyone?” I asked. “Is there someone she was seeing? An ex? A… I don’t know, someone who might want to hurt her?”

Ramirez shook his head. “Her roommate says she’s not aware of any relationship issues. We’ve spoken to her professors and a few classmates. Everyone describes her as focused, friendly, no obvious enemies.”

“No one just vanishes,” I said. “Not from a campus full of cameras.”

“We’re coordinating with local law enforcement,” he said. “For now, we’re treating this as a missing person case. We hope that she left voluntarily and will contact someone soon.”

The way he said hope made my skin crawl.

“She wouldn’t run,” I said. “Not like this. She would have called me. She always calls me.”

“Is there anyone she’s been talking to online?” he asked gently. “New friends we should know about? Any unusual behavior lately—withdrawal, stress, changes in mood?”

I thought about our last conversation a few days earlier. She’d been tired, worried about a big exam, but bright as always.

“No,” I said. “She was fine. Busy, but fine.”

Tom squeezed my hand. “You said you have footage of her going into the library,” he said. “Can we see it?”

Ramirez hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll show you what we have.”

In a small office, he pulled up grainy black-and-white video. There she was—my daughter—walking through the front doors of the library, backpack slung over one shoulder, dark hair in a messy bun, wearing her favorite yellow hoodie. She looked like every other student coming and going.

The timestamp read 18:17:32.

She walked in, glanced at her phone, and disappeared from frame.

We watched the footage fast-forward. Students went in and out. Groups gathered and dispersed. My eyes stung as minute after minute ticked by, Olivia nowhere in sight.

“Maybe she left through a side door,” Tom said.

“We’re checking all of them,” Ramirez said. “We’ve requested footage from the city for nearby streets as well.”

“What about her phone?” I asked. “Can you track it?”

“It pinged a tower near campus around seven,” he said. “Then it went dark. Either the battery died, or it was powered off.”

My stomach twisted. Olivia’s phone might as well have been another limb. She’d once joked that if it ever went off, we should assume she’d been abducted.

At the time, we laughed.

---

The FBI got involved on day four.

By then, the campus was covered in flyers with Olivia’s photo. Students passed us in the halls with too-bright eyes and hushed whispers. We did interviews, press conferences, anything they asked. I watched myself on the local news begging for information, and I barely recognized the shaky woman with swollen eyes and hair shoved into a ponytail.

Agent Miller introduced himself with a firm handshake and a neutral smile. Mid-forties, graying at the temples, suit that looked like it had seen a hundred such cases.

“Mrs. and Mr. Mercer,” he said. “I’m sorry we’re meeting under these circumstances. We’re going to do everything we can to find your daughter.”

“Have you found people like her before?” I asked.

His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “We have located many missing college students,” he said. “Every case is different. Right now, we’re focusing on gathering as much information as possible.”

They took Olivia’s laptop, copied her phone records, pulled footage from every camera within a mile of the library. They talked to friends, professors, baristas, anyone who might have seen her that night.

They found… nothing.

No suspicious cars. No arguments caught on camera. No messages that screamed danger. The last thing on her phone was a meme from a friend and her text to me about study group. After that, silence.

As days turned into weeks, the investigation shifted from frantic to methodical. Search parties gave way to specialized teams. Her photo stayed on the news, but the stories grew shorter, moving from the top of the hour to the middle, then to the end.

Our house changed too.

The dining table turned into an evidence board: timelines, printed emails, phone logs. Her room remained exactly as she’d left it—unmade bed, half-unpacked suitcase from her last visit home, the scent of her coconut shampoo lingering like a ghost.

Tom and I learned the language of grief websites and missing persons forums. We learned about “ambiguous loss,” the kind that doesn’t give you a body to bury or a clear ending. We learned how many other parents had sat where we sat, holding onto hope with one hand and reality with the other until their arms shook.

We also learned how to fight.

One night, about three months in, Tom came home from work and found me in the living room surrounded by printed articles and notes.

“You’re still at it,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “Laura, you have to take a break.”

“A break from what? Trying to find our daughter?” I snapped. The words came out sharper than I intended, but I didn’t take them back.

He sighed. “That’s not what I said. I just… The FBI is doing everything they can. There’s a whole team of professionals working this. Sitting here reading anonymous theories on the internet isn’t going to—”

“You think I don’t know that?” I said, heart pounding. “You think I enjoy scrolling through message boards at two in the morning? I do it because I can’t sleep. Because every time I close my eyes, I see her walking into that library and never coming out.”

His face crumpled for a moment, then hardened. “And you think I don’t? You think I’m not haunted too? I just… I can’t live in this. Not every second.”

He gestured at the stacks of paper, the photos with circles and question marks, the growing shrine of desperate hope.

“If we don’t fight for her, who will?” I asked.

“We are fighting,” he said quietly. “But at some point, we have to accept we might never get answers.”

The room went still.

“Don’t say that,” I whispered. “Don’t you dare say that about our daughter.”

“I’m being realistic,” he said. “We have to survive this too, Laura. Both of us. Together.”

I shook my head, tears blurring my vision. “Maybe I don’t care about surviving if she’s just… gone.”

His shoulders sagged. For a moment, I thought he would come closer, put his arms around me, and we’d cry together like we did in the early days.

Instead, he picked up his keys.

“I’m going to sleep at my brother’s tonight,” he said softly. “I think we both need some space.”

The door closed behind him with a quiet click that felt louder than a slam.

I told myself I didn’t care. That if I was the only one willing to keep pushing, then fine, I’d carry that alone.

Then, two weeks later, I got the message that changed everything.

---

It came through a missing persons support group.

I’d joined a forum where parents of missing kids shared updates, vented about law enforcement, and, sometimes, celebrated small victories. There were threads about media strategy, private investigators, home security systems. It was a grim community, but it was one of the few places where people understood without me having to explain.

I posted occasionally—Olivia’s photo, details, pleas for anyone to share or pass along information.

One evening, as I stared at the screen, a new private message appeared from a user named ShadowWatch.

SHADOWWATCH: “Your girl won’t be found where the FBI is looking.”

My heart lurched. I’d received strange messages before—cruel jokes, fake psychics, anonymous “tips” that led nowhere. The FBI had told us to forward everything to them and not to engage.

I almost ignored this one.

Instead, I typed:

“Who is this?”

The reply came a minute later.

“I look where they don’t. You need to search deeper. Look for ‘The Hunt.’”

A bolt of anger shot through me. “Is this a joke?” I muttered at the screen.

But the phrase stuck: The Hunt.

I forwarded the exchange to Agent Miller’s secure email with a note: Received this today. Probably nothing, but sharing.

He replied a few hours later.

“Thank you for sending. Likely a troll. Please don’t respond further. We’re continuing to pursue all leads.”

I stared at his words, at the blandly professional tone.

Then I opened a new browser tab and typed “The Hunt missing persons” into the search bar.

Pages of results appeared—mostly unrelated. Movies, video games, blog posts about outdoor scavenger hunts.

Nothing that felt like the thing that had slithered into my inbox.

I dug deeper—old news stories, fringe blogs, conspiracy forums. After an hour of scrolling, half-dizzy from links and rumors, I found a thread on an obscure tech forum.

“Anyone heard of an invite-only stream called ‘The Hunt’? Friend of a friend says it’s like a live action survival game, super underground. Sounds fake but curious…”

Most of the replies were jokes.

But one user had commented: “If you have to ask, you’re not ready. Also, don’t look for it. People get lost in there.”

I sat back, skin crawling.

I knew enough from news stories to understand that there were corners of the internet most people never saw. Places intentionally hidden from regular search engines. People online called it all kinds of things—hidden, encrypted, underground.

The dark web.

I also knew I had no idea how to get there.

For a while, I tried to convince myself it didn’t matter. The FBI had the message. If it was important, they’d handle it. They were the experts. I was just a school librarian who could barely keep up with app updates on my phone.

But every time I closed my laptop, I saw Olivia’s face. Her yellow hoodie in the library footage. The silence after that last text.

In the quiet of the night, the idea grew teeth.

If there was even a one-percent chance that this “Hunt” was real, and that it had something to do with her… What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t at least try to find out?

---

In the end, I did something I never imagined: I called my nephew.

Ethan was twenty-three, a graduate student in computer science, the kind of kid who fixed everyone’s tech problems at Thanksgiving before he’d even finished his mashed potatoes.

He answered on the second ring. “Hey, Aunt Laura. Everything okay?”

“No,” I said. “Can you… can you come over? I need help with something. And I need you not to tell your mom yet.”

He hesitated. “Uh. That sounds ominous.”

“It’s about Olivia,” I said. “I’ll explain when you’re here.”

He arrived half an hour later, laptop bag slung over his shoulder, concern etched into his face. I showed him the message from ShadowWatch, the forum thread about The Hunt, the comments about “hidden streams.”

“Have you heard of anything like this?” I asked.

Ethan’s mouth tightened. “Not… specifically. But, yeah, there are some pretty dark corners of the internet. I stick to normal stuff, but I’ve read about it.”

“Can you get there?” I asked. “To those corners?”

He sat back. “Aunt Laura, why? The FBI told you not to respond to this person, right? If there’s something there, shouldn’t they handle it?”

“They don’t think it’s real,” I said. “They think it’s a troll. But what if it’s not? What if that’s where she is?”

“A hidden streaming game?” he said skeptically. “It could all be a hoax to get people to look. Or worse, it could be a trap.”

“I know,” I said. “But if there’s even a tiny chance—”

He rubbed his forehead. “Going to those places is not safe. For your computer or for you. There’s fraud, malware, people trying to recruit, sell things, all kinds of stuff. And if anything we find is connected to… real crimes, you shouldn’t investigate it yourself. That’s how people get hurt.”

I met his eyes. “Ethan, someone already is hurt. My daughter. I’m asking you to help me look. If we find anything, I’ll give it to the FBI. I just… I need to know if this is nonsense, or if there’s something there that mentions Olivia.”

His shoulders slumped. He looked at the photo of her on the fridge, the same one I saw every day.

“Okay,” he said softly. “I’m not promising we’ll find anything. And if anything feels off, we stop. Deal?”

“Deal,” I said.

What followed was the strangest evening of my life.

I won’t pretend I understood half of what he did. He talked about encryption and hidden services, about special software you needed to access routes that weren’t visible from the regular internet. He set everything up on an old laptop he’d brought “so nothing nasty touches your stuff,” he said.

“Remember,” he told me as we watched a cursor blink on a blank screen, “lots of this is rumors and scams. People say things to sound edgy. Don’t believe everything you read.”

“I’m married to a man who thinks wrestling is real,” I said. “I’m used to skepticism.”

He snorted despite himself, then got to work.

We started with the phrase from the message—The Hunt—combined with keywords for streaming, game, show. Most of what came up was nonsense. Dead links. Empty forums. A marketplace we backed out of so fast my heart thudded.

Then, on a small, sparsely designed page, we found a thread.

USER: NightRun
“Anyone else watch the last Hunt? Production quality is up. That girl in the yellow hoodie was fast.”

My chest seized.

“Scroll up,” I whispered. “See if there’s more.”

The thread went on, users swapping comments in a mix of slang and coded language. They talked about “seasons” and “rounds,” about “runners” and “handlers” and “terrain.”

And there, halfway down the page, was a still image embedded in a reply.

A grainy screenshot from what looked like a video. A young woman sprinting across an empty parking structure, dark hair flying, backpack bouncing. Even through the blur, I recognized the shape of her jaw, the slope of her shoulders.

The yellow hoodie.

My hand flew to my mouth. A strangled sound escaped.

Ethan leaned closer, face draining of color. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. “Is that…?”

“Yes,” I choked out. “That’s her. That’s Olivia.”

He clicked on the image. It enlarged slightly but stayed pixelated, like whoever posted it had intentionally degraded the quality.

Above it, the caption read: “Favorite moment from S2E3. She almost made it to the line.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but the words made my skin crawl.

“Is there a video?” I asked.

Ethan poked around, opened a few links that led nowhere, to pages that timed out or gave error messages.

“Looks like this is just a screenshot,” he said. “There might be a stream somewhere else, but if it exists, it’s hidden behind some kind of login or token system.”

“Can you get in?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not without doing… things I’m absolutely not going to do. And even then, probably not. Whoever’s running this isn’t an amateur.”

He took a quick screenshot of the page—careful not to interact with anything else—then disconnected.

I sat there, shaking, staring at the frozen image of my daughter mid-run, her face turned away, her form caught in that moment of desperate motion.

It was the first time I’d seen anything new of her in months.

It felt like being punched and given a glass of water at the same time.

---

Agent Miller came to the house the next day.

He sat at our dining table, the screenshot and thread printouts spread in front of him. My hands shook as I walked him through everything—ShadowWatch’s message, Ethan’s help, the phrase The Hunt, the hidden thread.

“I know we weren’t supposed to go looking,” I said. “But when I saw people talking about a game with a girl in a yellow hoodie—”

“You did what any parent would do,” he said, surprising me. “I’m not here to lecture you. I’m here because this is a potential lead.”

He studied the screenshot, jaw tight. “It does look like your daughter.”

“It is her,” I said. “Same hoodie, same backpack. And the date stamp under the image—that was three weeks after she disappeared.”

Tom, who’d come back home the night before after I’d called him sobbing, leaned forward. “So she was alive then,” he said. “Three weeks after. That means someone had her.”

Miller nodded slowly. “It strongly suggests she appeared in whatever this… Hunt is,” he said. “We’ve seen illegal content streams before. Sometimes they’re staged, sometimes not. Either way, this is serious.”

“So what happens next?” I asked. “You shut them down, right? You trace the people posting, you find the organizers, you find her.”

“It’s not that simple,” he said carefully. “Sites like these are designed to be anonymous. Servers bounce connections around the world. Identities are masked. It takes time, specialized tools, international cooperation.”

“Time?” I repeated, my voice rising. “She’s out there somewhere, being forced to run in some kind of twisted game, and you’re telling me it takes time?”

He held my gaze. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Because if we rush in blind, we risk tipping them off. They disappear, take the streams down, move the operation. We lose our chance to find anyone—your daughter or any other victims.”

The word victims made my chest ache.

“So we do nothing?” I demanded. “We just… watch them talk about how ‘fun’ it was to chase my kid through a parking garage?”

“No,” he said. “We don’t do nothing. I’m going to escalate this to our cybercrime unit. We’ll work back from the captured content, see what we can glean about the location, the people involved. But you need to understand—this won’t be fast, and I can’t share every detail of the operation with you.”

Tom put a hand on my arm. “Laura,” he said softly. “Let them do their job.”

I pulled away. “Their job hasn’t brought her home,” I said. “I’m glad they’re finally taking this seriously, but I’m not going to sit back and wait for another screenshot to show up.”

Miller frowned. “What are you planning to do?”

I swallowed hard. “I don’t know yet. But that person who messaged me? ShadowWatch? They knew about The Hunt before I did. Maybe they know more.”

“Do not contact them,” Miller said firmly. “We don’t know who they are or what they want. Engaging with people on those forums can compromise your safety and our investigation.”

“So I’m just supposed to ignore the only person who’s pointed me toward something real?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, his voice steely. “For your safety.”

He meant it. I believed that. But I also knew that without that anonymous message, Olivia would still be nothing more than a face on a flyer.

And I was long past the point of doing only what made other people comfortable.

---

I waited three days before I broke my promise.

In that time, I imagined all the worst possibilities. I pictured Olivia in anonymous concrete rooms. I pictured her running, always running, some unseen line she needed to reach, voices cheering or jeering somewhere in the dark.

I pictured never knowing.

On the fourth night, at 2:00 a.m., I logged back into the support forum and pulled up my messages.

ShadowWatch was still there.

My fingers shook over the keyboard.

“I found The Hunt. I saw her. The girl in the yellow hoodie is my daughter. Tell me how to find where they’re doing this.”

The reply came twenty minutes later. I spent every second pacing the kitchen, staring at the clock, wondering if I was losing my mind.

SHADOWWATCH: “Told you. They move locations. Abandoned places. Warehouses. Empty malls. It’s a show for people who like to watch other people run.”

“I don’t care about the others,” I typed, hating myself a little even as I wrote it. “I care about her. Where is the next one?”

The answer was slower this time. When it came, it made my heart pound.

“They don’t post locations publicly. They stream, take bets, vanish. But I heard talk. Something about ‘S3 finale.’ Outdoor terrain. Old amusement park. Midwest. Sponsor wants something cinematic.”

“Old amusement park in the Midwest” sounded like the world’s most useless clue.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “What do you get out of it?”

“Some people like to watch from the stands,” they wrote. “Some of us get tired of the game. Call it a conscience. Or boredom.”

“I need more than that.”

“Then pretend you have money,” they replied. “They love money. There’s a contact layer. People who handle ‘investors.’ Find one. Say you want to watch in person. You might get a location.”

I stared at the words, horror creeping up my spine. Investors. People who paid to watch kids—for entertainment.

“How do I find a contact?” I wrote.

The reply took longer this time. I pictured someone sitting in a dim room somewhere, fingers hovering over a keyboard, deciding whether or not to cross some internal line.

“Look for user ‘SilverHost’ where you found the image,” they finally wrote. “They recruit. They talk smooth. But be careful, mother. You’re not built for their world.”

I almost laughed at that. “You’d be surprised what I’m built for,” I whispered.

---

Ethan was furious when I told him.

“You what?” he nearly shouted, eyes wide. “You went back on there? You talked to that person again? Aunt Laura, the FBI specifically told you—”

“I know what they said,” I cut in. “I also know they’ve spent months telling me to be patient, and I’ve spent months staring at an empty hallway where my daughter should be.”

“You could be talking to one of the people running this thing,” he said. “They could be baiting you. They could be tracking you. This is exactly the kind of situation those agents warn people about.”

“Then help me make it safer,” I said. “Help me do it in a way that doesn’t reveal anything about us. We create a persona. A name. We keep everything vague.”

He shook his head, running his hands through his hair. “This is insane.”

“I’m her mother,” I said quietly. “What other option do I have?”

He sank into a chair, defeated. “You could let the FBI handle it,” he said. “You could send them these new messages and wait.”

“I could,” I agreed. “And if I do, and something happens to her, and I had a way to get closer but didn’t use it… I’ll never forgive myself.”

Silence settled between us.

“Please,” I said. “Just help me talk to this SilverHost, see if they slip up. If it gets weird, we walk away. We’ll document everything, send it to Agent Miller after.”

“You’re going to send it to him after you break every rule he gave you?” Ethan asked dryly.

“He can add it to the long list of things he doesn’t like about me,” I said. “I don’t care.”

He stared at me for a long moment, then exhaled. “Okay,” he said. “But we do it my way. New account. No identifying information. And if at any point I say we’re done, we’re done. Deal?”

“Deal,” I said.

Together, we set up a new identity on the forum where we’d found The Hunt thread. Ethan chose the username: QuietPatron.

“Sounds like someone who watches and pays but doesn’t talk much,” he said.

We posted a cautious message under a related discussion, vague enough to be deniable.

QUIETPATRON: “Heard good things about your events. Looking for something more immersive. Interested in supporting next season. Who handles access?”

Hours passed. I tried to distract myself with chores, but my mind kept returning to that single frozen frame of Olivia running.

By evening, we had a reply from a new user.

SILVERHOST: “We appreciate interest from serious patrons. Discretion is required. Contact me privately.”

Ethan muttered, “Bingo,” under his breath.

In direct messages, the tone shifted immediately. SilverHost was slick, polite, practiced.

SILVERHOST: “We don’t advertise. We curate. How did you hear about us?”

Ethan and I had rehearsed our story.

QUIETPATRON: “Saw clips. Parking structure, yellow hoodie, good tension. Friend recommended you for something ‘exclusive.’ I have resources and prefer in-person experiences.”

SilverHost replied with a smile emoji.

“That was a popular run. She had spirit. We like spirit. You understand our events are… outside traditional regulations?”

“I prefer entertainment without rules,” we wrote. I almost gagged typing it, but I also knew that if this worked, if it got us even a step closer…

“Good,” they replied. “We’ll need to verify who we’re dealing with. No names. Just proof of means and willingness. There’s a finale event planned soon. Limited in-person invitations. Outdoor setting. Very cinematic. Your ‘friend’ must have good connections to have heard.”

My fingers hovered over the keys. Ethan took a deep breath.

“Ask where,” I whispered.

“Location?” we typed.

“Not yet,” SilverHost replied. “First, a gesture of commitment. A transfer to a holding account. Fully refundable if we decline. Consider it a background check. If you pass, you’ll receive coordinates and instructions.”

Ethan grimaced. “Yeah, not happening,” he muttered. “We’re not sending them anything.”

“Need general idea to plan travel,” we wrote instead. “Region? I don’t fly commercial.”

There was a long pause. I pictured someone on the other end weighing greed against caution.

“Midwest,” they finally wrote. “Three-hour radius of [REDACTED CITY]. Abandoned amusement park. That’s all you get until we see you’re serious.”

Ethan’s fingers flew, capturing screenshots of the conversation.

“That’s enough,” he said. “We’re done. We have a region and a type of location. We take this to the FBI now.”

For once, I didn’t argue.

---

Agent Miller’s face went through at least three colors as I walked him through what we’d done.

“I told you not to engage,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I know,” I said. “And if you want to yell at me later, feel free. But right now, you have something you didn’t have before.”

He glanced at the printed chat logs—SilverHost’s hints, the mention of the amusement park, the region. Ethan had removed anything that could lead back to his setup.

Miller exhaled slowly. “You’re right,” he said. “You’ve given us leverage. And a potential timeline if ‘finale event’ means what I think it does.”

“What do you think it means?” Tom asked quietly.

Miller met his gaze, then looked at me. “I think they may be planning to end this… season with something bigger,” he said. “More dangerous. More attention within their circle. These operations like spectacle.”

My stomach twisted. “Is she going to be there?” I asked. “Olivia? Is she still… part of it?”

“We don’t know,” he said honestly. “But if this is the same group that used her before, we have to assume there’s a chance.”

He gathered the papers into a neat stack. “Here’s what I can tell you,” he said. “We will coordinate with our field office in that region. We’ll quietly investigate any abandoned amusement parks within that radius. We’ll look for activity—supplies, vehicles, rented equipment. If we find credible signs, we’ll move in with a team.”

“When?” I asked.

“Soon,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting anymore.”

“I want to be there,” I blurted out.

Miller stared at me. “Absolutely not,” he said. “These people are dangerous. If this operation is what we think, there may be armed security. We cannot—and will not—bring civilians into a potential raid.”

“She’ll know me,” I said desperately. “If she’s there. She might not trust anyone else. If she sees me—”

“And if she sees you running into a dangerous situation and gets distracted looking for you?” he cut in. “What then? You want her worrying about your safety when she should be trying to survive?”

The word survive landed like a stone.

“I can’t just sit here,” I whispered. “I’ve done that for almost a year.”

“I’ll have someone keep you updated,” he said. “But you stay put. That’s not a request. It’s the condition under which I’m even telling you this much.”

Tom put an arm around my shoulders. “Tell him you understand, Laura,” he murmured. “Please.”

I swallowed hard. “I understand,” I said.

It wasn’t a lie. I truly did understand why it was a terrible idea for a middle-aged librarian to stumble into a high-risk operation.

I also understood that if something went wrong and I’d stayed home because someone told me to, I would never forgive myself.

---

In the end, it wasn’t courage that made me go. It was fear.

A week later, on a gray Saturday morning, Tom left early for a support group meeting. Miller had called the night before and said they were “developing leads” but couldn’t give details yet.

I woke before dawn, heart racing, a terrible certainty pressing on my chest: They’re moving now. And you’re not there.

I tried to ignore it. Made coffee. Stared at the wall. Checked my phone every five minutes.

Then I opened my laptop, pulled up a map, and looked at the list of abandoned amusement parks in the region the FBI had mentioned. There were three. One of them was near a town I’d driven through years ago on a family trip.

“Just drive past,” I told myself. “Just… look. If nothing’s there, you come home and no one ever has to know.”

Two hours later, I was on the highway, a duffel bag in the back seat, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. I left my phone on, volume up, telling myself that if Miller called, I’d answer and confess everything.

He didn’t call.

As I approached the exit, the landscape changed from manicured suburbs to wide fields and scraggly woodland. The amusement park, according to the map, sat a few miles outside town, closed for over a decade after a series of safety violations. Nature had been reclaiming it ever since.

Turning onto the cracked access road, my heart slammed against my ribs. I half expected to see nothing but rust and vines.

Instead, I saw vans.

Three white cargo vans were parked near the front gates, which sagged on their hinges. Further in, near what had once been a ticket booth, I spotted a generator, cables snaking away like veins. A small group of people in dark clothing moved equipment—cases, tripods, what looked like lighting rigs.

Adrenaline surged under my skin.

I pulled my car off the road, heart hammering, and parked behind a line of overgrown shrubs. From there, I could see but not be easily seen.

Turn around, a voice in my head pleaded. Call Miller. Go home.

Instead, I killed the engine, grabbed my phone, and zoomed in with the camera. I snapped photos of the vans, the people, the generator.

Then, in the distance, movement caught my eye.

Beyond the broken Ferris wheel, near a cluster of faded game booths, a small group of figures stood in a rough line. They wore backpacks. One of them had a yellow hoodie.

My vision tunneled.

It couldn’t be. It had been nearly a year. She’d be thinner, older, changed. There were probably a thousand yellow hoodies in the world.

But the tilt of the head, the way she shifted her weight from one foot to the other… I knew.

“Olivia,” I whispered.

The urge to run to her was almost unbearable. Every instinct I had screamed at me to sprint across the gravel, to throw my arms around her, to drag her into the car and speed away.

Instead, I grabbed my phone with shaking hands and dialed.

Miller answered on the second ring. “Mrs. Mercer? I was just about to call you—”

“They’re here,” I said, voice trembling. “The amusement park near Redfield. There are vans, equipment, people. And I see— I see runners. One of them is in a yellow hoodie. I think it’s her.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. “You’re there?” he said. “Laura, tell me you’re not inside the property.”

“I’m outside,” I said. “Hidden, I think. I took pictures. I— I had to see. I’m sorry.”

“There is a team en route,” he said, voice clipped. “We have surveillance indicating increased activity there. I was calling to tell you to expect updates. You were not supposed to be anywhere near—”

“I don’t care about what I was supposed to do,” I hissed. “I care that my daughter is standing in a line like she’s about to start a race for people who think this is entertainment. Please. Just… hurry.”

He swore under his breath, something I’d never heard him do.

“Stay in your vehicle,” he said. “Do not approach. Our priority is the safety of any captives—and now, that includes you. You understand?”

“Yes,” I said. This time, I meant it.

I stayed low, peering through the windshield as the scene inside the park shifted.

Someone with a headset and a clipboard walked along the line of backpack-wearing figures, talking, gesturing. I couldn’t hear words, but I recognized the body language of someone giving instructions.

My gaze locked onto the girl in the yellow hoodie. From where I was, I could see her face now, turned partially in profile.

There was no doubt.

She was thinner. Dark smudges under her eyes. Hair shorter, as if it had been hacked off at some point and grown back unevenly. But it was her.

Tears blurred my vision. I wiped them away, forcing myself to stay focused.

A man with a camera rig walked backward in front of the line, filming. Someone else tested a drone, its small shape buzzing into the air like an insect.

They were getting ready.

Minutes stretched into an eternity. Every car that passed on the distant road made my heart jump. Every shout from inside the park made me flinch.

Then, in the distance, faint but growing louder, I heard sirens.

They started as a whisper, a high keening that could have been the wind. Then they multiplied, harmonized, became a wail converging from different directions.

The reaction in the park was instant.

The man with the headset whipped around, barking orders. The runners looked at each other, confusion on their faces. Someone killed the generator; the hum died. People rushed toward the vans, grabbing cases, yanking cables.

The sirens grew louder.

I ducked lower, heart racing, as vehicles appeared on the road—black SUVs, marked cars, a van with an insignia I recognized from TV. They tore past my hiding spot, dust and leaves swirling in their wake, and barreled down the cracked access road.

Agents spilled out before the vehicles had fully stopped, weapons drawn, voices amplified by megaphones.

“Federal agents! Everyone on the ground! Hands where we can see them!”

Chaos exploded.

Some of the crew dropped immediately, hands in the air. Others bolted, darting between rusted rides and crumbling booths. The runners froze, wide-eyed.

I couldn’t see Olivia.

For a moment, the scene fractured into pieces—shouts, the crunch of boots on gravel, a drone dropping from the sky and shattering. Someone screaming. Someone else sobbing. Hands on heads. Radios crackling.

I clutched my phone, resisting the nearly overwhelming urge to jump out of the car.

Then, through the chaos, I saw her.

She was on her knees near the broken Ferris wheel, hands on her head, an agent in a tactical vest beside her. Her eyes were huge, scanning the scene with a kind of stunned disbelief.

Without thinking, I flung the car door open.

“Olivia!” I screamed.

A dozen heads snapped in my direction. I heard an agent shout, “Ma’am, stay where you are!” but my legs were already moving.

I sprinted across the gravel, slipping, catching myself, the world narrowing to the shape of my daughter half-hidden behind a collapsed concession stand.

“Mom?” she said, voice small, disbelieving.

I stumbled to my knees in front of her, hands hovering like I was afraid she’d vanish if I touched her too fast.

“It’s you,” I sobbed. “Oh my God, it’s you. You’re here.”

She stared at me for a heartbeat, as if trying to decide whether I was real.

Then she launched herself forward, arms wrapping around my shoulders with a strength that surprised me. We clung to each other, both shaking, both making sounds that were more animal than words.

“Ma’am, we need you both to move to the perimeter,” an agent said gently, hand on my shoulder. “It’s not safe here yet. We still have people unaccounted for.”

I nodded, unable to speak, and helped Olivia to her feet.

She was trembling. Up close, I could see the hollowed planes of her face, the way her clothes hung slightly looser.

But she was breathing. Warm. Solid.

Alive.

---

We spent the next few hours in a whirlwind of controlled chaos.

Paramedics checked Olivia’s vital signs in the back of an ambulance. An agent stayed nearby, notebook in hand, occasionally asking questions gentle enough that I could almost forget they were part of an official interview.

“How long have you been with these people?” Miller asked her softly.

She swallowed. “I don’t know exactly,” she said. “Time… blurred. They kept us inside a lot. No windows.”

“Start with how they got you,” he said. “From campus.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again.

“There was this flyer,” she said. “On the board by the library. Modeling work, easy pay, flexible hours. I was broke and tired of asking you for money for books,” she added, glancing at me with a flicker of guilt.

I shook my head. “You never have to apologize for needing help,” I said.

She half-smiled, then continued. “I texted the number. They sounded legit. They said they were doing a promotional shoot for a travel brand, needed authentic college students. They offered to meet me at a café off campus.”

“Did they?” Miller asked.

She nodded. “But when I got there, the café was closed. I started to leave, and a van pulled up. Two guys got out, said there’d been a last-minute location change, offered me a ride. I hesitated, but one of them showed me a sign with the company logo from the flyer. I thought, ‘Okay, maybe it’s fine.’”

Her voice wobbled. “I… I shouldn’t have gotten in.”

My chest ached. “What happened next?” I asked, even though every part of me wanted to tell her she never had to talk about it again.

“They offered me a water bottle,” she said. “Said the drive was long. I took a few sips, and everything went fuzzy. When I woke up, I was in this room. No windows. Just concrete and bunk beds. There were other girls. And a few guys. They said we were ‘contestants.’”

Tom squeezed her hand. “Contestants in what?” he asked hoarsely.

She glanced at me, then at Miller. “They called it The Hunt,” she said.

She talked in fragments after that. About being forced to “train,” to “learn routes” through abandoned buildings and lots. About cameras and drones and people behind screens watching, judging, placing bets on who would “make it to the line” in time.

“Did they hurt you?” I asked, the question catching in my throat.

Her eyes flickered. “Sometimes,” she said quietly. “If we didn’t follow instructions. If we slowed down. But they mostly wanted us in good shape. It was more… threats. And they always reminded us that they knew our families’ names.”

A chill ran through me.

“Did they ever let you see the outside?” Miller asked. “Any clues about where you were being held?”

“Once or twice,” she said. “They moved us between locations. I saw trees, highways. They kept windows covered most of the time.”

“Do you know how many… events… they ran while you were there?” he asked.

She swallowed. “I was in… maybe four? The parking structure. A warehouse. A junkyard. And then… this was supposed to be the last one.”

“The finale,” I said, remembering SilverHost’s message.

She nodded. “They said they were bringing in ‘special guests.’ That this would be our ‘chance to impress investors.’” She shivered. “I don’t think they meant promotions.”

Miller’s jaw flexed. “You’re safe now,” he said. “We’ve apprehended several organizers and crew. Some are still outstanding, but we’ll get them. For now, your job is to rest and heal. We’ll arrange counseling, safe housing, whatever you need.”

Olivia looked at me, eyes suddenly brimming. “I thought you were going to stop looking,” she whispered. “They told us that. That after a while, families move on.”

I pulled her into another hug. “They don’t know your mother,” I said. “I was never going to stop.”

---

The weeks after the rescue were a blur of interviews, therapy sessions, and media coverage we never asked for.

The FBI held a press conference, carefully vague about the role of hidden networks and underground streams, but clear about the fact that they had disrupted a “criminal enterprise exploiting young adults for profit.” They praised the courage of the survivors and the collaboration between field offices.

They did not mention that the whole thing might have slipped by if not for a desperate mother who ignored their orders and chased shadows through forums and encrypted pages.

I didn’t care.

Let them take the credit if it meant no other parent had to squint at a grainy screenshot of their child running for an unseen finish line.

Olivia moved back home with us, at least for a while. She slept with a light on at first. Certain sounds made her jump. Crowded places were hard. So were silent ones. But she also laughed sometimes—small, tentative bursts—usually when Ethan said something ridiculous or when Tom burned the toast trying to “make breakfast like a normal dad.”

One evening, a few months after the rescue, we sat on the porch swing watching the sun sink behind the trees.

“Do you ever watch the video?” she asked suddenly.

I stiffened. “What video?”

“The one from the parking structure,” she said. “The image you saw. The one that made you keep going.”

“I’ve only seen that one frame,” I said. “We never found the full clip. The FBI probably did, but they didn’t share it with me. And I’m fine with that.”

She studied my face. “If you had it,” she said, “would you watch it? Watch me run?”

I thought about it. About seeing her in motion, hearing her breath, knowing that in that moment she was terrified and alone and still pushing forward.

“No,” I said finally. “I don’t need to see you scared any more than I already have. I’d rather watch you walk to the coffee shop on the corner or complain about your homework.”

She smiled. “Good answer,” she said.

We sat in silence for a while.

“Sometimes I think about it as… two different hunts,” she said at last. “The one they forced us into. And the one you went on.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She shrugged, looking out at the darkening yard. “They thought they were the ones doing the hunting,” she said. “Chasing people for sport. Making us run. Making us feel like prey.”

She turned to me, eyes steady. “But you were hunting them too. You just did it with screenshots and questions and stubbornness. You kept going even when everyone told you to stop. You flipped it on them.”

“I was terrified,” I confessed. “Half the time, I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing. I still don’t.”

“You kept going,” she repeated. “That’s what matters.”

A breeze rustled the leaves overhead. Somewhere down the street, a dog barked. It was such an ordinary evening that, for a moment, the past year felt like something that had happened to someone else.

“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly.

“For what?” I asked, startled.

“For getting in that van,” she said. “For taking the job. For making you go through all this.”

I took her hand, squeezing gently. “Olivia, listen to me,” I said. “This is not your fault. They lied to you. They tricked you. The fault is theirs, not yours.”

She looked away, jaw working. “I know that in my head,” she said. “It’ll take a while to convince my heart.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “We’ve got time.”

She rested her head on my shoulder. In that moment, with the porch swing creaking softly and the sky streaked pink and orange, I realized something.

When ShadowWatch first messaged me, saying, “Your girl won’t be found where the FBI is looking,” I thought it meant I had to go somewhere darker than they could.

Now, I understood it differently.

They weren’t just talking about the corners of the internet. They were talking about the corners of desperation, of stubborn, unyielding love. Places where procedure couldn’t reach, but a mother could.

I’d gone into those places. I’d come back with scars I couldn’t see. So had she.

We’d both survived The Hunt, in our own ways.

And for the first time since that 6:42 a.m. phone call months ago, I let myself believe that the rest of our story could be measured in something other than missing posters and timelines.

Semesters again, maybe.

Or porch sunsets.

Or simply days where my daughter left the house and came home, and the only hunt we cared about was finding the TV remote between the couch cushions.

THE END