I found out about the recordings in the offices of AEC Inc. as well as the notes Layla kept in her diary. However, this was much later.

In the offices of Layla Eldritch, Assistant Executive Director and acting General Director, the small platinum blond paced as she twirled the braid on the left side of her face in the supple fingers of her left hand. Her right arm was artificial from the elbow down. The prosthetic was a one of a kind piece of tech. It moved like its mate on the other side, and only lacked in the ability to convey subtleties of sensation. Each finger of the hand concealed titanium blades that could be a very effective weapon. Her father had made sure all five feet of her was honed to full lethality. Her dark blue pantsuit failed to hide her curves as she moved with the grace of a dancer.

Speaking out loud to the speakerphone, she displayed a furrowed brow, ruining its sculpted symmetry, as she demanded, “How is it that a high school boy has evaded you so effectively? He should be searching high and low for his missing ‘mommy’.”

The voice coming from the speaker had only the smallest tremor of fear in its baritone, accented voice. “From what we can tell, he packed his car and took off in a direction he had never been seen driving previously. We accessed the traffic cams in the area and saw his vehicle headed south about five minutes before we could arrive. When he got to an intersection a mile away, the entire camera system crashed in what was found to be a massive cyber attack. At the same time, the GPS transponder for his phone was remotely cloned and registered all over an area of four hundred square miles. We have a team tracing the false trails, but I doubt we will find anything useful.”

Layla tapped her left foot. Her boots were not the most practical due to the 2.5 inch heel, but the blades hidden in the knee high leather and the hidden compartment in each heel gave her a sense of security. The compartments held a variety of survival tools. The blades were thin, but strong and sharp.

“What can you tell me about his friends? Do you also have a team working on them?” Her disdain for the man came through powerfully in her rich contralto voice.

“We do have a team working on that, but the boy was not confident that the subject would contact him. The girl was a shallow idiot. She was so overconfident that she asked for a bonus and then she started flirting with the guy I sent to talk to her.”

Layla’s perfect, pale complexion flushed with anger that a young woman would be such a fool. She doubted that this ‘Brit’ was likely to be of any help. Her father had tutored her personally from a young age. At twenty, she had been the Executive Director for just over a year. Her father didn’t give her a timeframe for his return. She, secretly, wondered if he even planned to return.

He had come out of his private R&D offices with a grim expression on his face and stumbled out to make preparations to shift the burden of the company to Layla’s slender shoulders. After that, he went back into his lab and didn’t come out. Her information from security indicated that he was not on the grounds. He was last seen the previous evening.

She knew that he had the aperture in those labs. Looking at the records, she found that significant amounts of medical supplies had gone into that lab. What a complex dialysis and transfusion setup could be used for in there, Layla could not guess. Detailed reports showed massive power usage over the last few hours of the day the CEO had vanished.

It was a known fact that the aperture required high voltage to be activated.

Layla unconsciously stroked the length of her prosthetic forearm as she considered what all of this could mean. “Continue your search. I want another report in four hours.”

“Yes, ma'am! What…” She cut the call before he could voice his question.

The one place in this facility where her authority still didn’t extend was her father’s laboratory. She could gain access, but it would take a week. There was a sinking feeling in her stomach that told her she would find whatever was hidden in there disturbing.

Her father had always been a demanding and enigmatic man, but he had shared less in the recent year. She could not help but think back to the accident. If Layla had not stumbled and fallen with her forearm lying on the aperture during one of his experiments, she doubted her father would have been so fixated. Most of her forearm had just vanished. There were no burns from the high voltage current that had been coursing through the aperture. Its metal and crystal structure had been cold to the touch instead of hot when he rushed over to stop the bleeding before it threatened her life.

Millions of dollars and a year of research had gone into the prosthetic limb she now wore. Myrddin Emrys Eldritch was a singular man who would spare no expense or effort for his adopted daughter. The search for a way to give her arm artificial nerves and skin to make her normal was assigned to two large R&D teams with budgets that would boggle the mind.

Now, the man was gone. The only clue Layla had to what had happened was the fixation her father had exhibited on the young man and his missing mother.

Layla suspected that the woman had something to do with his vanishing. He had spent longer than Layla had been alive researching the aperture. In a week, she would find out what had been concealed from her in that private laboratory. She could almost hear his thick Scottish accent when she read the instructions he had left for her. It always struck her as mixed with Welsh and British accents.

Her computer emitted a tone that told her that an email had come through. It was from the boy. He asked for an explanation for her interest in him. She quickly replied, “We suspect that your missing family member may be connected to the disappearance of my father. The two occurrences happened at the same time.” She made sure that a special, transparent graphic was included in her signature. People would not see the image, but servers it passed through would see it and send tracking information back to her people. Eventually, this would lead her to the hiding place of a certain Arthur Lafayette.