Found Obsession

Chapter 92: Acceptance

Sasha had to slowly sit on the floor, as her eyes roamed over the photographs and notes pinned to the walls. Every victim's face told a story of unspeakable horror and torture, but it was the shadows behind them—more victims, children—that left her trembling.

Mark's gaze locked onto a single photograph, his breath catching in his throat. His mother. Her face stared back at him from the collage, haunting and cruelly out of place. He staggered backward, shaking his head as if denying what his eyes were showing him.

"No... Rose," he choked, his voice trembling. "My mom... she's on there."

Rose sobbed, unable to meet his gaze.

She reached out and pressed play on the recorder in her phone. 

Keywords were soon formed. 

The lists have been encrypted.
Vacation.
Gathering.
The top families.
All the children are already distributed.

Each word sank into the room like a dagger. The air turned suffocating.

Mark clutched the wall for support, his knuckles white. Sasha pressed her hands over her mouth, her wide eyes staring at nothing. Jonathan stood frozen, his expression unreadable, though his trembling hands betrayed him.

"The top families..." he whispered, his voice hoarse, as if the words themselves were too terrible to say aloud.

Rose sat in her chair, her body shaking. She felt impossibly small, as if the weight of the truth could crush her at any moment. "I need to see the complete lists," Sasha muttered, her voice breaking. "My family is one of the top... It can't be true. He can't be referring to my family too..."

Rose wiped her tears with the back of her hand, steeling herself as she turned on her computer. The screen flickered to life.

"I need your lines of code," she said, her voice lost and painful.

For a moment, no one moved. The reality of what she was asking, what they were about to uncover, weighed heavily in the silence. Slowly, as the gravity of her words sank in, Sasha and Jonathan reached beneath their collars, pulling out USB drives hidden on chains around their necks.

Jonathan hesitated, clutching his tightly. Very soon she plugged the drives into her computer. The screen filled with cascading lines of code. Rose's fingers flew over the keyboard, her pale face illuminated by the glow.

Rose soon realized that all the line of codes unlocked the one she thought was missing, her lines of codes. 

The final barrier unlocked, and the screen filled with names. Twenty lists. 

Rose manage to print each list, completing a book.

By the time Rose finished gathering the lists, she could barely stand. Her legs felt like lead as she sank to the floor beside the others. The room was suffocatingly silent, the only sound the soft hum of the computer and their ragged breaths. None of them spoke; their eyes were all fixated on Rose's trembling hands clutching the pages.

Her fingers shook as she opened the first list. She tried to steady herself, but the enormity of what she held made it impossible. Slowly, she began flipping through the pages, reading the names aloud.

Rose went silent on the next name and swallowed. She heard Sasha's hard breathing. 

"Fin Hutton—"

Sasha's scream tore through the silence. She doubled over, clutching her chest as if the words had physically struck her. Mark was pale, his head in his hands, his body trembling with silent sobs.