Chapter 4: The Erased Tape
Rain pattered softly against the windshield as Clara parked her station wagon behind the grand hotel venue where the disaster had occurred less than thirty-six hours prior. She adjusted her coat and walked toward the security office located near the service entrance.
The security room was small, filled with glowing monitors showing live footage from dozens of angles throughout the hotel. A young technician in a gray uniform was seated at the control desk, sipping lukewarm coffee.
“Can I help you, ma'am?” he asked, turning around.
“My name is Clara Sterling. I was here on Saturday night during the reception in the main ballroom,” she said, stepping closer. “I need to see the footage from the ballroom corridor between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM.”
The technician’s expression instantly stiffened. He swallowed nervously and shifted in his chair. “I... I’m sorry, ma'am. We had a system glitch on Saturday evening. The drive for that specific hour was corrupted. There’s no footage available.”
Clara didn’t flinch. She watched the young man’s hands—they were twitching nervously against his coffee mug. “Corrupted? Or manually deleted?”
“Look, lady,” the technician whispered, leaning in and lowering his voice dramatically. “I just work here. A gentleman in a dark suit came in here at midnight on Saturday with two hotel executives. They spent twenty minutes in the server room. By the time they left, the logs for the ballroom corridor were wiped clean. My manager told me if I talk about it, I lose my job.”
“Did they wipe everything?” Clara asked quietly, her heart pounding.
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The technician hesitated, looking at the door to make sure no one was listening. “They wiped the main cloud backups. But whoever did it wasn’t a professional tech guy. They didn't realize that the old local analog drive in the basement records continuous raw feed on an independent loop. It doesn't connect to the main network.”
He reached under his desk, pulled out a small black USB drive, and gently pushed it across the counter toward Clara. “I saved a copy before they locked the basement door. Don't tell anyone where you got it.”
