Chapter 5 Summary

The St. Louis FBI field office projected quiet authority. From the front, it looked like any government building, but the eight-foot fence signaled the seriousness of the work inside. Rows of cubicles buzzed with steady activity as agents pursued cases that rarely left the public eye.

Special Agent Javon Morris, a seasoned Intelligence Analyst, sat at his desk with one of his ever-present notepads. At fifty, he had worked nearly every kind of assignment the Bureau offered, but this case — the strange video of Walter Jenkins, a high-ranking GenaSeed executive — carried a weight that unsettled him.

At 10:20 a.m., Morris phoned the forensics lab. The update brought little relief: the video appeared genuine, recorded in a single pass, and free of any fingerprints beyond those of the TV station staff. If it was AI-generated, the technology was beyond normal detection. For the moment, they were stuck.

Looking for another way forward, Morris focused on the package itself. It had been shipped from Monroe, Louisiana, two days earlier. He called the FedEx office there and spoke with FedEx employee, Shirley Webber, who confirmed the package had originated at her location. Importantly, she mentioned that surveillance cameras had been installed after a series of robberies. Morris urged her to preserve the footage and informed her that an FBI agent would soon arrive.

He then reached out to an old colleague in Monroe, Agent James Tanner. The two exchanged brief pleasantries before Morris laid out the urgency. Tanner promised to drive out personally to collect the footage. It was the first promising lead they had.

Morris hung up, rubbing tired eyes. Sleep had been scarce, and coffee would have to sustain him through the day. As he left his desk, the thought weighed heavily on him: their entire investigation might now depend on a single surveillance tape in a small-town FedEx office.