Watching Miraclebound

So here's the plan

The symbols flashed across the screen, quicker than Nino's eyes could track. He blinked, but the words, codes and keys he understood nothing about, all blurred into one massive cluster of mind-numbing nonsense.

His eyes drifted to his phone, currently plugged into the monitor of Alya's computer, and then down to the boy situated in the chair before him, watching as his hands flew across the keys at a rapid speed Nino could barely keep up with.

"Thank you again for doing this, Max," Adrien said, laying a hand on the smaller boy's shoulder. "When Alya said we needed a tech whiz, you were naturally the first person we thought of."

"Happy to help, Adrien," Max replied, his eyes never leaving the screen as he continued to type in row after row of code. "A chance to assist in solving a conundrum not easily explained by common methodologies is simply something Markov and I could not pass up, right Markov?" He glanced up briefly at the confirming whirls of his robot which was hovering a few feet above Alya's head.

"One hundred percent!" Markov agreed, the :D emoticon flashing across his monitor as he moved ever so closer to the computer.

"So, if you don't mind my prodding," Max went on, adjusting his glasses as he went back to typing. "What prompted this sudden interest into the world of cybertechnology anyway? No offense meant, but none of you seemed incredibly eager to take up coding when Ms. Bustier suggested it at the beginning of the quarter."

"It's a bit of a long story," Marinette confessed. "But the short version; we are trying to locate someone, and we're hoping Nino's phone can tell us where a certain text was sent from. It's a bit of a long shot, but I don't think it's impossible, and it's at least worth a shot, right?"

"It's entirely possible," Max agreed. "And I don't suppose this 'someone' might just happen to be the infamous Nicholas Lahiffe, would he?"

"He already knew who I was?"

They all stared.

"How could you possibly..." Alya began, sharing a perplexed look with Nino who glanced up at Markov as the robot chittered with anxious laughter.

Max shrugged. "It wasn't that hard to put together, honestly. The sudden urgency in Adrien's text, the fact that the four of you are here--practically the only four, maybe albeit myself and Chloe, who even know Nino ever had an older brother--Yes, Nino, I do my research. Besides, Lahiffe isn't that common of a last name in France--and the way Nino hasn't stopped fidgeting with his hat since I arrived. But what I don't understand is why. Wasn't Nicholas killed years ago in a car crash?"

"That was what we needed everyone to think and I didn't know until the guardians had already done it" Nicholas explained to everyone

Nino opened his mouth to reply, but Alya beat him to it.

"That's what we thought initially too," she explained. "But we've been noticing some things that don't completely add up with that story. And this text is just the most recent one."

Max hummed as he hit the last line of keys and a box of information exploded on the screen. "All right, so, from what I can see here, the last outgoing message to Nino's phone was a two forty-five this afternoon and it was sent from a burner phone, which means I won't be able to positively identify who created the initial message. I can tell you, however, that it was pinged off of a tower outside of the city. But its origin point isn't...hang on." Frowning, Max scrolled across the map of Paris, zooming in and out on the little green blips he'd marked for himself. "This doesn't make any sense," he muttered, continuing to pull the map further and further from Paris.