While HelpMe2 had carried out hundreds of successful raids—sometimes as many as a dozen in a single day across the United States—there was one raid that would change everything.
It was large in scope, devastating in detail, and so high profile that it would shake the very foundation of the country.
This particular operation targeted a sprawling, multi-location trafficking ring disguised as a youth mentorship foundation. It operated out of three major cities and had quietly been functioning for nearly a decade—undetected, well-funded, and protected from the inside.
The raid began like many others—surveillance, drone deployment, sleeping gas infiltration, and a synchronized breach.
But what the HelpMe2 teams uncovered inside was unlike anything they had seen before.
The building held over 60 captives—children and teens, many under the age of 14—most of them in shock, malnourished, and drugged. But it was the computers, hard drives, and data caches that revealed the real story. When the evidence was brought back to headquarters and decrypted by Warren’s cyber team, the findings were beyond horrifying.
Not only did the files contain graphic video footage, transaction records, and location data—they also included names.
Real names. Powerful names.
Verified identities of clients—not traffickers, but buyers. And not just anyone. These were individuals who held public trust, legal authority, national influence.
Once cross-referenced and authenticated, the evidence exposed a shocking list:
Each entry included photographs, occupations, payment logs, communication threads, and the explicit acts they had paid for—detailed descriptions of the abuse they had committed, authorized, or supported. The scope of the evidence was staggering. There was no room for doubt.
Warren Davidson and his team made a decision:
Every single name and every single face would be posted.
Three days from the raid, the HelpMe2.info website would go live with its most explosive release yet:
A page dedicated to exposing “The Faces of Corruption.”
Each profile would include:
“Trusted by society. Exposed by the truth.”
It would be the most controversial, most politically explosive move HelpMe2 had ever made.
But Warren didn’t flinch.
To him, this was the core of the problem.
The demand.
The so-called respectable citizens who enabled the industry by hiding in plain sight—men and women who wore suits by day and committed atrocities by night. Without clients, there would be no market. Without buyers, there would be no victims.
To truly end trafficking, Warren knew he had to do more than rescue the children.
He had to destroy the illusion that the guilty could hide behind power.
The world would be watching.
The media would erupt.
The political fallout would be unprecedented.
But the truth was coming.
And this time, it had names.
Edward Cobau, the fourth member of the Think Tank, had always seen the world differently.
As a child, he wasn’t drawn to superheroes or cartoons like the other kids. Instead, he spent hours crouched in the dirt, observing the smallest of Earth’s creatures—insects, arachnids, millipedes, and beetles. If it crawled, slithered, or skittered, Edward wanted to know everything about it.
By age five, he could distinguish between six-legged insects and eight-legged arachnids. By eight, he knew which species had compound eyes, which spun webs, which went through four life stages—egg, larva, pupa, adult—and which skipped stages altogether. He was fascinated by how they ate, how they traveled, how they defended themselves, and how they were designed.
It wasn’t just scientific curiosity. It was something deeper.
To Edward, the intricate patterns and behaviors of these creatures hinted at intelligent design. He saw purpose, precision, and possibility in their biology—and that sense of wonder never left him.
As he got older, his curiosity expanded.
He studied mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians, marsupials, arthropods—anything and everything. But his questions remained the same:
He wasn’t just watching animals. He was watching systems, defenses, adaptations, and biological technologies—many of which had never been replicated in the human world. In time, he began to imagine how those designs could be applied. Medicines. Materials. Tools. Technologies.
And then, one day, inspiration struck.
Edward had long been fascinated by zebras. Not because of their size or speed, but because of their stripes—and the unique way those stripes confused predators. Unlike camouflage, zebra stripes didn't blend in. Instead, they created motion dazzle—a visual effect where fast-moving stripes made it difficult for predators to track any single zebra in a herd.
To the lion, the herd became a blur.
To the hyena, there was no clear target.
This amazing defense mechanism—the “zebra effect”—protected the weak by confusing the strong. And Edward realized:
What if that same principle could be digitally weaponized?
What if traffickers could no longer track their victims?
What if facial recognition, GPS tracking, and data mining systems were overwhelmed with false data, visual confusion, and pattern interference, just like predators in the wild?
What if technology could make a victim disappear into a digital herd—untrackable, untraceable, uncatchable?
That was the idea.
The Zebra Effect.
And it would change everything.
For the first time in nearly a year, Ashley Davidson was lucid.
No drugs. No sedation. No chemical fog.
Just her thoughts—raw, clear, and fragile.
She wasn’t sure why her captors had skipped the daily dose. Maybe they ran out. Maybe they made a mistake. Maybe something was changing. Whatever the reason, Ashley felt awake—truly awake—for the first time in twelve long months.
The pain was still there. The cold, the hunger, the fear. But she made a choice: she would not dwell on the present.
And she refused to let her mind spiral into the despair of an uncertain future.
Instead, she reached deep into the past—to the warmth of her memories.
She remembered her sister Paige, her best friend in all the world. Even though Paige was older, the two had always been close. In their early years at the K–8 school, Paige had been fiercely protective. Ashley recalled one time when a classmate tried to bully her—Paige stepped in without hesitation, standing tall with confidence Ashley had always admired.
Then came the memories of family vacations—Disneyland, adventure parks, camping trips, spontaneous road trips through Montana’s wilderness. She remembered laughter. Cotton candy. Silly jokes. Singing in the car. Even in the chaos of traveling, the Davidsons were a unit.
With her mother Anna, the memories were softer, slower, filled with warmth. She remembered baking cookies side by side, learning recipes, and sitting at the kitchen table late into the night just talking. Her mother was gentle, thoughtful, always patient, but strong in her convictions. Ashley admired her mother’s quiet strength—and missed it deeply.
Then came the memories of her father.
Warren Davidson.
He wasn’t just her dad. He was her teacher, her protector, her explorer-in-chief.
Together they had spent countless days hiking through Montana’s vast landscapes. He had taught her how to navigate using moss growth on trees and how it changed depending on the hemisphere. He showed her how to float a magnetized needle on a leaf to find north. He taught her about edible plants, water purification, survival science—and he made it fun.
One winter day, he had explained the science behind ice—how, unlike any other liquid, water expands when it freezes, making it lighter and allowing it to float. He told her this one fact was why lakes didn’t freeze from the bottom up, which would kill all aquatic life. She had marveled at the elegant design of nature, and how it all worked in harmony.
Ashley smiled through the tears as she remembered one of her favorite conversations—a playful challenge about bugs.
“Dad,” she asked once, brushing away mosquitoes, “Why did God make mosquitoes and flies? What’s the point?”
Warren smiled. “Do you like chocolate?”
“Of course!” she said, puzzled. “You know that’s my favorite food.”
“Well, without mosquitoes, there would be no chocolate.”
She blinked. “What?”
Her dad explained, “Mosquitoes are the primary pollinators of the cocoa plant. Without them, no cocoa beans. No beans, no chocolate chip cookies.”
She laughed, amazed. But she wasn’t done.
“Fine,” she said, grinning. “But what about flies? You can’t possibly justify flies.”
Warren didn’t miss a beat.
“Are you sitting here?”
“Yes.”
“Are you alive?”
“Obviously.”
“Then thank the flies.”
That made her sit up. “What are you talking about?”
So he told her the story—of Henry Davidson I, their ancestor who served in World War I. He had been gravely injured by shrapnel. Infection set in. Gangrene. The doctors couldn’t stop it. Amputation wasn’t an option.
But then, they did something radical.
They placed maggots—the larvae of flies—into his wounds. The maggots ate only the dead flesh, leaving the healthy tissue untouched. When the infection was gone, the doctors cleaned the wound, closed it, and saved his life.
“Without flies,” Warren said, “Henry wouldn’t have lived. He wouldn’t have had a son. And eventually, he wouldn’t have had a great-great-granddaughter named Ashley.”
She had fallen off her chair laughing. “Okay! Okay! I believe you.”
Now, locked in her cell, Ashley held onto those memories like a lifeline. The pain in her body remained. The darkness still surrounded her. But in her mind, she was home. With Paige. With her mom. With her dad.
For the first time in a long time, she felt a flicker of joy.
And it reminded her that she was still Ashley—not Joanne, not a number, not a shadow.
She was a daughter.
A sister.
A fighter.
And with every memory, she felt something stronger growing inside her.
Hope.
Robert Brock—known to his friends simply as "Brock"—was the fifth and final member of the Think Tank. His lifelong passion had always been music. From an early age, he taught himself to play the guitar, bass, and keyboard. He joined a classic rock band, learned hundreds of songs, and never stopped immersing himself in the art. But over time, just playing and performing music wasn't enough—he needed to understand it.
Brock dove into music theory and was fascinated to discover that nearly every song ever written is made from just twelve total notes—seven of which make up the common diatonic scale. With only seven notes, there were infinite possible combinations. That fact astonished him. He learned that over 300,000 new songs are submitted to the U.S. Library of Congress for copyright protection every month. How could so many songs emerge from so few notes?
He studied melody structure and noticed something profound: the iconic holiday tune Jingle Bells, one of the most widely recognized melodies in history, uses the same note for its first seven tones. The difference came not from the pitch, but from the rhythm and timing—an “aha” moment that changed the way Brock thought about sound.
He moved on to studying instruments. The guitar quickly became his favorite due to its sheer versatility. Unlike monophonic instruments (which can only play one note at a time), the guitar is polyphonic. It can produce chords, harmonics, vibrato, bends, slides, and a wide range of timbral textures—making it, in Brock’s view, the most expressive instrument ever created. He also studied how the piano, though technically percussive in nature, gave a perfect visual and auditory model of music with its seven white and five black keys—twelve in total, mirroring the twelve notes in a chromatic scale.
Brock was captivated not only by how music sounded, but how it was recorded. He learned the evolution of music production—from analog reel-to-reel tape machines to modern digital audio workstations. He immersed himself in the digital realm, studying .wav files, MP3 compression, frequency shaping, and mastering techniques. But what made Brock unique—and the reason he was recruited into the Think Tank—was not just his musical talent, but his innovative mind.
He began developing forensic techniques based on sound waves. Using wave inversion, he could isolate a single sound—such as a snare drum or a human voice—from a complex audio track. He experimented with frequency cancellation and wave layering, creating methods never used before in forensic science.
His breakthrough came when he developed a system that placed microphones throughout densely populated cities. These microphones continuously recorded ambient street sound. Using samples of children’s voices—recorded from home videos, school events, or family archives—Brock created what he called a “voice fingerprint” for each missing child.
If a voice was captured by one of the city’s microphones, even for just a few seconds, Brock's software could detect it. Advanced AI models helped eliminate ambient noise and enhance vocal frequencies to match the voiceprint. If there was a match, triangulation from the microphone network could pinpoint the exact location of the voice.
This was a revolutionary advancement in real-time search and rescue. It meant that even if a child was hidden away in a city apartment or walked down a street with their captors, their voice—if they spoke—could be detected, identified, and traced.
This was Brock’s gift. Sound, for him, was more than art. It was science. It was math. It was memory. And now, it was rescue.
Believe it or not, the sanitary sewer system—a phrase that’s almost an oxymoron—became one of the most critical tools for the technical and tactical teams at Help Me Too Incorporated. What started as a clever deployment method for drones became one of the most powerful forensic pathways ever developed.
It began with simple tactics. A crowbar would lift a manhole cover, and 10 to 12 of their micro drones—each only one and a half inches in diameter—would be dropped into the main sewer line. Once deployed, the team realized the full potential of what lay beneath every city.
They started to visualize the sewer system as a massive underground freeway network. The main sewer trunks were like interstates. Mid-size lines were secondary roads, and the smallest 4-inch lines leading to individual buildings were like driveways. Every home, apartment, office, and warehouse was connected.
This changed everything.
Once they understood this layout, the applications multiplied. Beyond releasing sleeping gas, drones could now carry listening devices, micro-cameras, or even chemical samplers—all delivered from below, entering buildings invisibly. In many cases, suspects had no idea they were even being watched or tracked.
Then came a major breakthrough: the forensic value of waste.
Feces, vomit, saliva, and even toothbrush rinse water all contain DNA. Every time someone spits, brushes their teeth, or uses the toilet, their biological fingerprint is left behind—and it all ends up in the sewer. With the right tools, that waste became a searchable database.
Enter Project Echo-2.
To make this a reality, the team needed access to the digital DNA profiles of missing children. But this data was not publicly available. It was secured in police servers and government databases, and any attempt to hack or forcibly extract it would be flagged and blocked.
This is where Anna and Paige became essential.
Unlike the technical or tactical teams, Anna and Paige approached the problem with compassion, personal appeals, and direct human contact. They didn’t demand or sneak—they showed up in person, sat down with department heads, and told the stories. By now, Help Me Too was nationally known. Most people they approached had heard of the organization’s success in rescuing children.
In smaller towns and counties, administrators would often give them the DNA profiles on the spot. In larger cities, it was more difficult due to stricter protocols and computer firewalls. But in every case, the question boiled down to one decision: Would you risk your job to save a child?
Many said yes.
Anna and Paige always came prepared—with extra thumb drives, secure encrypted storage, and even handwritten thank-you letters for those who helped. They built the national database quietly, respectfully, and effectively. And though not everyone agreed with their methods, no one could argue with the results—thousands of children rescued.
With the digital DNA database in place, Echo-2 could begin.
Sampling started downstream—at the largest trunk lines of each city’s sewer system. Samples were processed using advanced AI to break down and analyze every strand of DNA in the waste. If no matches were found, the team moved on. If matches to any missing children were detected, they followed the line upstream, taking samples at each junction.
Step by step, they narrowed it down.
From trunk to branch, from branch to lateral, and finally from lateral to the 4-inch pipe leading into the building. It was a reverse roadmap made of pipes instead of pavement.
Eventually, they could pinpoint the exact building where a victim was being held. And best of all, no one inside had any idea they were being tracked. Not the traffickers, not the buyers, not even the children.
Every building uses the sewer. Even in the most horrific cases where children were forced to use buckets, the waste was still dumped into toilets. There was no escape from the sewer system—unless the property was on a septic tank.
This groundbreaking use of infrastructure became one of the most discreet, powerful, and unstoppable forms of forensic detection ever created.
By now, Warren J. Davidson had become the most recognizable name in the United States—more known than the sitting President, and by many, more admired. His crusade with Help Me Too had ignited a nationwide movement, one that brought to light a hidden world of trafficking and systemic failure. Yet, despite his growing popularity, the legal question loomed large.
Roughly 20% of the country, though a minority, remained loudly opposed to Warren’s actions. Their stance was unwavering: “We must follow the law. No one is above the law.” That refrain echoed across networks, editorial pages, and Senate hearings.
Facing mounting pressure from within his own administration and across the aisle, the President could no longer ignore the situation. Demands from senators, House members, and legal advisors forced his hand. A decision was made: the President would meet face-to-face with Warren Davidson in the Oval Office.
The meeting was set for May 3, just 14 days away. It would be one of the most anticipated events in recent American political history. The entire nation was watching. Would Warren be arrested? Would he be pardoned? Would he walk free, or would he become a political scapegoat?
When Warren agreed to the meeting, he immediately pulled together a private war room: the five members of the Think Tank, twelve senior tactical officers, and a handful of trusted advisors. Thirteen in total, not counting Warren.
The tone was electric.
The tactical officers were blunt: “We keep going until we’re physically stopped. Let them try.”
The senior leadership was more cautious. They urged Warren to consider turning himself in voluntarily to preserve the company’s momentum and potentially shield his team from legal blowback. “You’re the face of this, Warren. If you fall on the sword, we can keep going,” one of them said.
The Think Tank, however, came armed with the most unconventional—yet strangely compelling—ideas.
Option One: Pre-arrange a presidential pardon. Since the President was nearing the end of his second term, he could grant clemency as a final act before leaving office. Warren could even plead guilty, knowing freedom would follow within five months.
Option Two: Go to trial. Based on polling data and public sentiment, it would be nearly impossible to convict Warren. “You’d never get 12 out of 12 jurors,” they noted. “There will always be two who refuse to convict, no matter what the law says.”
Option Three: Strengthen Help Me Too Incorporated to the point that its economic, political, and cultural weight would outweigh any opposition. If the company became too big to fail—or too respected to silence—even Congress would back off.
Option Four: The most outlandish of them all—hire a body double to surrender to federal authorities, impersonate Warren, plead guilty, and serve time. The real Warren would continue his work behind the scenes. When the mission was complete—four years down the road—they would reveal the switch and the innocent man would be released, generously compensated.
Warren actually laughed out loud at the absurdity of the last plan. But later, walking alone down the hall, he admitted to himself: It might actually work.
Still, he wasn’t ready to make a decision. He wanted to hear what the President had to say.
The only thing the team insisted upon before the meeting was a signed agreement: a 21-day immunity pact, protecting Warren and Help Me Too from arrest, subpoena, or prosecution. They weren’t about to send him into a trap without a lifeline. That letter—signed by the White House Chief of Staff and countersigned by the Attorney General—would serve as a legal buffer zone for the duration of the talks.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, the President gathered his own high-level council: his Chief of Staff, Attorney General, Vice President, Secretary of State, and top legal and political strategists. The risks were discussed openly. They laid out all possible outcomes, including the fallout from either protecting Warren or arresting him.
In the end, they agreed: this meeting had to be private. Just two men, alone in the Oval Office, confronting the future face-to-face.
What would come out of that room might shape the course of the country—and the fight against trafficking—for generations.
The project known as Echo had begun with micro-dust—minuscule scent particles collected during operations—but it unexpectedly led to one of the most powerful breakthroughs in identifying not just traffickers, but buyers.
At first, Warren Davidson and the team at HelpMeToo had focused entirely on rescuing victims. But Warren came to a realization: rescuing children without punishing the people buying them was like treating symptoms without addressing the disease. He likened it to wildlife poaching—where the illegal killing of endangered animals was only fueled by the demand for ivory, rhino horn, and other “trophies.” In many cases, these trophies sold for more per ounce than gold.
The poachers were evil, yes—but the market was driven by buyers.
The same applied to human trafficking. These children weren’t just kidnapped and abused by their captors—they were sold. And the people purchasing them, even for short periods of time, had become the true focus of Warren’s fury.
“If we stop the buyers,” Warren said, “we destroy the market. No buyers, no demand. The whole thing collapses.”
That became the new mission: stop the buyers.
The weapon? Fear.
Warren was convinced that shame, exposure, and the threat of being caught were more effective than prison sentences in stopping high-profile buyers. If they believed they would be identified, named, and publicly shamed, many would stop.
As the Echo team analyzed more samples of micro-dust—traces left on the clothing and bodies of rescued children—they began to detect recurring scent signatures. Much like DNA or fingerprints, human scent is unique. Some smells kept appearing over and over. These were the buyers.
Now, HelpMeToo needed a way to collect these scents without tipping off the suspects.
They developed a covert field technique: trained undercover operatives would casually engage with suspected buyers—shaking hands, patting backs, even brushing against them—and during that interaction, they would wipe a slightly damp cotton swab along the skin. The swab was sealed in a sterile bag, tagged with the individual’s name, and sent to the lab.
If the name never matched any evidence, it was archived and forgotten.
But if the scent matched one found on a rescued victim’s clothing? That person was now a confirmed buyer.
This system was revolutionary.
Those confirmed as buyers were listed on a dedicated website: HelpMe-2.info. Their names, photos, addresses, occupations, and the details of their crimes were posted for the world to see.
They were given 21 days to turn themselves in to local authorities and plead guilty.
If they failed to do so, the consequences were clear: they would be captured by HelpMeToo’s tactical teams and delivered to Hell—the off-grid prison camp operated under the agreement between Warren and the President, finalized just weeks earlier in the Oval Office.
For many buyers, the mere threat of being sent to Hell's Hole was enough. Within days, hundreds turned themselves in voluntarily, preferring a courtroom to the unknown fate awaiting them in that remote detention facility. It worked. The plan was functioning perfectly.
The President’s agreement was clear: if buyers voluntarily surrendered and pled guilty, Warren would not banish them to Hell's Hole. It was a compromise—one that spared law enforcement from being overwhelmed and allowed justice to be served without bloodshed.
Many in the public, of course, wanted harsher punishment. They believed buyers deserved the same fate as the traffickers who had held these children in cages. But the strategy was working. The shame, the exposure, the fear—it was enough to bring the hidden monsters into the light.
And Warren knew: when you stop the buyer, you stop the business.
The project known as Echo had begun with micro-dust—minuscule scent particles collected during operations—but it unexpectedly led to one of the most powerful breakthroughs in identifying not just traffickers, but buyers.
At first, Warren Davidson and the team at HelpMeToo had focused entirely on rescuing victims. But Warren came to a realization: rescuing children without punishing the people buying them was like treating symptoms without addressing the disease. He likened it to wildlife poaching—where the illegal killing of endangered animals was only fueled by the demand for ivory, rhino horn, and other “trophies.” In many cases, these trophies sold for more per ounce than gold.
The poachers were evil, yes—but the market was driven by buyers.
The same applied to human trafficking. These children weren’t just kidnapped and abused by their captors—they were sold. And the people purchasing them, even for short periods of time, had become the true focus of Warren’s fury.
“If we stop the buyers,” Warren said, “we destroy the market. No buyers, no demand. The whole thing collapses.”
That became the new mission: stop the buyers.
The weapon? Fear.
Warren was convinced that shame, exposure, and the threat of being caught were more effective than prison sentences in stopping high-profile buyers. If they believed they would be identified, named, and publicly shamed, many would stop.
As the Echo team analyzed more samples of micro-dust—traces left on the clothing and bodies of rescued children—they began to detect recurring scent signatures. Much like DNA or fingerprints, human scent is unique. Some smells kept appearing over and over. These were the buyers.
Now, HelpMeToo needed a way to collect these scents without tipping off the suspects.
They developed a covert field technique: trained undercover operatives would casually engage with suspected buyers—shaking hands, patting backs, even brushing against them—and during that interaction, they would wipe a slightly damp cotton swab along the skin. The swab was sealed in a sterile bag, tagged with the individual’s name, and sent to the lab.
If the name never matched any evidence, it was archived and forgotten.
But if the scent matched one found on a rescued victim’s clothing? That person was now a confirmed buyer.
This system was revolutionary.
Those confirmed as buyers were listed on a dedicated website: HelpMe-2.info. Their names, photos, addresses, occupations, and the details of their crimes were posted for the world to see.
They were given 21 days to turn themselves in to local authorities and plead guilty.
If they failed to do so, the consequences were clear: they would be captured by HelpMeToo’s tactical teams and delivered to Hell—the off-grid prison camp operated under the agreement between Warren and the President, finalized just weeks earlier in the Oval Office.
For many buyers, the mere threat of being sent to Hell's Hole was enough. Within days, hundreds turned themselves in voluntarily, preferring a courtroom to the unknown fate awaiting them in that remote detention facility. It worked. The plan was functioning perfectly.
The President’s agreement was clear: if buyers voluntarily surrendered and pled guilty, Warren would not banish them to Hell's Hole. It was a compromise—one that spared law enforcement from being overwhelmed and allowed justice to be served without bloodshed.
Many in the public, of course, wanted harsher punishment. They believed buyers deserved the same fate as the traffickers who had held these children in cages. But the strategy was working. The shame, the exposure, the fear—it was enough to bring the hidden monsters into the light.
And Warren knew: when you stop the buyer, you stop the business.
Ed Cobau had always lived at the edge of innovation and madness. Some called him a genius. Others, including many in the Think Tank, called him Crazy Ed—affectionately, but with a hint of truth. His ideas were big, eccentric, and often sounded more like science fiction than science. But Ed didn’t care. He didn’t think like everyone else.
That’s why he saw a time machine in the stars.
One night, as he stared through a telescope at Alpha Centauri, he remembered something he had learned in school: the light from that star took nearly 20 years to reach Earth. So what he was seeing in the telescope wasn’t now—it was two decades ago. If the star had exploded 19 years ago, he wouldn’t know it for another year.
That realization hit him like lightning.
If you could look far enough and had a powerful enough telescope, you could literally watch the past. Not through magic or fantasy—but through physics.
“That’s it,” he whispered. “The universe is the time machine.”
He never let go of that thought.
Back at HelpMeToo headquarters, Ed began applying his “crazy” theory to something practical. What if he could record everything happening right now, across thousands of locations, and then go backward to examine it later? That way, even if they didn’t recognize a child’s face in the present, they could go back days or weeks later and track them, identify abusers, trace patterns, expose networks.
He pitched the concept to the Think Tank:
A satellite-based surveillance system with 10,000 synchronized cameras.
Each camera would use facial recognition, motion sensing, and AI prediction to identify vulnerable individuals, particularly children.
Every second would be captured, indexed, and ready to search.
In Ed’s words: “We record everything. We never miss anything again. It’s our time machine.”
The team loved the concept. But there was one massive problem—data storage.
Recording 10,000 video streams, 24/7, was impossible with current technology. The amount of memory required would overload every supercomputer on the planet.
Ed knew he needed a breakthrough. And, like before, it came from the strange corners of his brain.
He remembered a silly question his dad used to ask him as a kid:
“Is a zebra white with black stripes, or black with white stripes?”
It was a joke, of course. But Ed couldn’t stop thinking about it. And then it hit him—again.
“What if… the zebra is white,” he said, “and all we ever need to remember are the black stripes?”
He applied this to video storage. Instead of recording full-color footage at 30 frames per second, Ed simplified everything.
• No color. Black and white only.
• One frame per second, not 30. Enough for facial recognition and pattern tracking.
• Assume white as the default. The system only stored the black pixels. If nothing changed, nothing was stored.
That single insight led to the biggest compression breakthrough in surveillance history. By recording only changes, and only the dark elements, Ed reduced storage by over 500,000%.
He called it the Zebra Effect 2.
Now, storing and scanning global data became feasible. AI could reconstruct color, interpolate motion, and even re-create realistic 3D environments from multi-angle cameras. With this new system, they could go “back in time” to monitor previously missed events, locate traffickers, and track children that had not yet been identified.
When Ed ran the concept to the rest of the Think Tank, they were stunned. Javier laughed out loud. Brock actually dropped his coffee. Paige just said, “Build it. Now.”
So they did.
The Zebra Effect satellite array was quietly launched under the cover of a global weather research mission. No one suspected its true purpose. The system was already scanning urban areas worldwide, prioritizing known trafficking corridors.
And just like that, Ed had done it.
He hadn’t bent the laws of time.
But he had bent the rules of perception.
It was 2:12 a.m. when the alert came through.
The Zebra System—just activated a week earlier—had been quietly collecting footage across five of the nation’s most high-risk urban centers. With 10,000 motion-sensing black-and-white cameras mounted to the orbital satellite array, each feeding into the Think Tank’s neural AI core, it silently sorted through a mountain of visual data. The goal: to retroactively identify individuals tied to child abductions and trafficking operations by linking their facial recognition signatures to previously unsolved cases.
That morning, the AI flagged a hit. The client was identified by face-match at a nondescript apartment complex in Chicago’s South Loop. The timestamp: 11:08 p.m., 31 days ago. He had exited a backroom hallway of the fourth floor—holding the hand of a small girl.
Ed Cobaugh, already asleep on a cot in the Think Tank’s lower lab, was jolted awake by the system’s automated voice alert.
"Zebra Event Tag 19482. Cross-match: D.O.E. Case #74629. Timestamped overlap. Facial vector probability: 97.8 percent. Confirmed movement trail available."
Ed rubbed his eyes and stared at the footage. It was clear. The client was a man previously unconnected to any trafficking network, not even on a watchlist. His face had never made it into any criminal database—but a few frames from Zebra’s satellite memory had changed that. In the clip, he walked the girl down a hallway, out of frame, and into a black SUV. The license plate—almost illegible at the angle—was reconstructed by Zebra’s AI with a combination of movement vectors from five cameras spaced across the skyline. It produced a match.
Warren was called in immediately.
The girl, now identified as Kayla Morris, age 10, had been missing for nearly nine months. Taken in St. Louis. Her case had grown cold. But now—Zebra had shown her alive just four weeks earlier, hundreds of miles away. The client’s name, uncovered by tracing the vehicle registration and matching home security system footage through public access overlays, was Leonard Greaves, a senior partner at a mid-sized law firm.
And it wasn’t just Kayla.
With Greaves’ profile isolated, Zebra ran a secondary batch search—thousands of hours of surveillance across weeks compressed into a single night of analysis. Eight additional appearances were confirmed across three states, each time with a different child. Each time, the timestamp overlapped with the date of an open abduction report.
Warren stood in silence as he reviewed the findings with Frank, Ed, and the Think Tank.
“This is it,” Frank said. “This is the proof of concept. We just used a satellite time machine to catch a predator. There’s no room left for error.”
The tactical team was deployed that evening. Greaves was apprehended just as he was stepping off a chartered flight in Denver, unaware that facial recognition drones were now sweeping every terminal. Kayla Morris was found alive in a rented cabin just outside Boulder, along with another young girl recently reported missing.
The Zebra System had worked.
Back at headquarters, a monitor displayed the recovered image of Kayla smiling weakly as she reunited with her mother. Another line appeared beneath it—automatically generated by Zebra’s AI core:
"First retrieval attributed to Operation Zebra: Time to recovery—29 days."
The Think Tank exchanged no words—just long looks and nods. They knew this was only the beginning.
Somewhere in the lab’s darker corners, Ed was already scribbling notes for the next upgrade. Warren quietly picked up his phone. The President needed to hear this.
And upstairs, locked away in a secured prototype drawer, a small device the size of a grain of rice lay dormant.
Its name: Beacon One.
Its purpose: to make sure no child would ever disappear again without a signal lighting the path home.
To be continued.
The requests began as whispers.
An email from Brazil. A voicemail from Germany. A handwritten letter from Kenya. Then they came faster—government messages, child advocacy groups, international law enforcement agencies, all asking the same thing:
“Can Help Me 2 come here?”
Warren read every message personally. His inbox overflowed with the names and photographs of missing children—some gone for days, others for years. In every case, the pain was the same. Each country begged for a lifeline.
For the first time since the operation began, Warren allowed himself a flicker of hope—real, tangible hope. Not just for Ashley. Not just for America. But for everyone.
A summit was held in the Situation Room of the Help Me Too headquarters. The Think Tank, tactical leads, and Warren sat together for over six hours, mapping out what it would take to go global.
Frank opened the meeting.
“We’ve done the impossible already. But replicating it across dozens of countries? We need to ask: What does this look like?”
Money, surprisingly, was no longer the largest barrier. In the wake of the Zebra System's first recoveries and widespread media attention, public support had surged. Private donors, foundations, and even a few national governments were pledging millions. It was the mission of a generation, and people were ready to fund it.
Ed Cobaugh, scribbling equations and drawing orbits on a whiteboard, added his voice.
“Funding isn’t our bottleneck. It’s infrastructure. Different time zones, different satellites, different data privacy laws, different digital languages, even metric vs. imperial. We can adapt, but we need partnerships on the ground.”
Tactical Director Hayes cut in.
“And boots. We can’t teleport drones and rescue squads across borders without resistance. We’ll need local allies, trained with our methods. But we can’t wait for red tape—if kids are in danger, we move.”
Frank nodded. “Then we train them. Host-country teams. We supply the tech, the systems, the AI. They execute the missions with our guidance.”
Warren remained quiet until the final hour of the meeting.
“They asked. We answer.”
He stood, holding a document in hand—an agreement draft titled Global Child Recovery Accord. The idea was simple: participating nations would allow Help Me Too full operational oversight regarding missing child investigations, with localized cooperation. The countries would retain sovereignty—but the system, the methods, and the technologies would be shared.
But there was one caveat.
“I’ll only sign this,” Warren said, “if every country commits to transparency. That includes opening their prison records, trafficking investigations, and yes, their failures. We won’t work with anyone who hides monsters.”
The team agreed.
The next steps were outlined:
• Regional command centers would be established in Europe, South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
• Each would be staffed with a hybrid team: locals, trained by Help Me Too operatives.
• The Zebra System would be upgraded for multilingual pattern recognition, legal parameter filters, and regional satellite access protocols.
• And finally, every country involved would be asked to contribute their own missing persons data to a new unified database: Project Echo International.
It would not be easy.
There would be opposition—governments afraid of exposure, criminal organizations with reach beyond borders, and bureaucracies that value silence over salvation.
But Warren and his team were undeterred.
That night, he sat alone in his office, rereading the names of children he’d never met. On the corner of his desk sat a tiny prototype chip—Beacon One—still dormant, waiting for global approval. Someday soon, maybe it would silently protect a child across the ocean.
As the sun rose, Warren made a simple announcement to the press.
“To the world’s children: We’re coming. Hold on.”
Warren knew that assembling the Think Tank wasn’t just about finding the smartest people. It was about finding the right kind of thinkers—those who could imagine the impossible, then calmly build it into reality. And to lead that group, he needed someone with vision, humility, and quiet authority.
That person was Franklin Dale.
Known simply as Frank, he had once been a tenured engineering professor at Arizona State University. But titles had never interested him. His true gift was less in equations and more in inspiration. Warren described him best: “He doesn’t lead from the front. He lifts people to see farther than they thought possible.”
When Warren asked Frank to form the Think Tank, they both agreed on one thing immediately: five members.
Five was the magic number. Small enough for deep trust and seamless communication, yet diverse enough to challenge assumptions and spark innovation. Frank didn’t pick the loudest voices or the most decorated resumes. He picked creators. Inventors. Disruptors. And he protected their focus fiercely. His job wasn’t to control them—it was to give them the mental freedom to create and the practical structure to finish.
And it worked. From the Zebra Effect to Echo, from micro-drones to forensic DNA tracking, the Think Tank had built the technological spine of Help Me 2.
But now, as the mission expanded globally, Frank saw a new challenge emerging—one that the Think Tank alone couldn’t solve.
“Technology doesn’t save people,” Frank told Warren during a strategy session. “People save people. And people are different, everywhere.”
He was right.
The work ahead wasn’t just about algorithms and satellites. It was about navigating cultural barriers, legal frameworks, language nuances, and historical wounds. Each country was a different puzzle. Some welcomed Western help. Others were suspicious. Some had child protection laws—others barely admitted trafficking existed.
To solve this, Frank proposed building a second group. A counterpart to the Think Tank. Not technical experts, but cultural integrators—a group that could bridge the gap between the mission and the world it hoped to save.
He called it the Cultural Operations Council.
This team would be ten members strong. Ten global thinkers—anthropologists, sociologists, multilingual legal scholars, economists, diplomats—handpicked to understand systems, values, traditions, and fears.
Where the Think Tank pushed the limits of what could be built, this new team would shape how those inventions landed in the real world.
Warren agreed instantly.
“You’ve got two weeks,” he said. “Then we introduce them to the world.”
Frank smiled, already thinking of names—some from former classrooms, others from NGOs, and a few from places Warren had never even heard of.
It was the next evolution of Help Me 2.
The brain. The hands. And now, the heart.
And somewhere across the globe, a child who had never heard of Warren or Frank was waiting to be found.
Frank sat in his modest corner office, the hum of the Think Tank’s labs behind him, staring at a blank whiteboard. At the top, in his neat block handwriting, he’d written:
GLOBE TROTTERS – 10
The name was personal. His father had taken him to see the Harlem Globetrotters when he was just eight. It was one of his clearest memories—basketballs spinning on fingertips, no-look passes zipping through the air, a symphony of talent, timing, and joy. It wasn’t just the skill that stuck with him. It was the unity. The elegance of people moving with shared rhythm toward a single goal. They made it look easy. But Frank knew it wasn’t.
Now, decades later, he needed his own Globetrotters. Not to dazzle a crowd, but to save lives across continents. He needed people who could move through the world with purpose, speed, and cultural fluency. People who could pass the ball, see the whole court, and outthink their opponents without ever raising a voice. So, he began to build.
1. Dr. Eleni Stavros – Greece
A multilingual legal scholar and human rights expert. Eleni had advised the UN on child protection laws and knew how to bend bureaucracy without breaking it. She could walk into a parliament and walk out with an MOU. Her specialty: international law and sovereign negotiation.
2. Amir Dahlan – Jordan
A former intelligence officer turned humanitarian liaison. Amir was a ghost in warzones, now a bridge in peacetime. He understood tribal networks, power structures, and could negotiate ceasefires in five dialects. His specialty: field strategy and conflict navigation.
3. Dr. Clara Bassey – Nigeria
A cultural anthropologist who specialized in post-colonial systems of trust and trauma. Clara had mapped social dynamics in over 40 countries and understood how to build trust in communities that had none left. Her specialty: ground-level community integration.
4. Mateo Rojas – Chile
A tech-savvy economist with a passion for ethical finance. Mateo understood how black markets functioned and how to build parallel economies that outpaced them. His specialty: funding operations with clean money that couldn’t be traced or blocked.
5. Hyejin Park – South Korea
A language acquisition phenom who spoke 11 languages fluently and another 15 conversationally. She helped break barriers before they ever formed and trained others in cross-linguistic immersion. Her specialty: translation, education, and quick diplomacy.
6. Vincent Okoye – Canada/Nigeria
A cyber diplomat who had brokered intergovernmental data sharing deals between NATO allies and African nations. Vincent’s code was as smooth as his talking points. His specialty: digital infrastructure and international data cooperation.
7. Yuki Tanaka – Japan
A systems thinker who viewed entire governments the way an engineer views a power grid. Yuki could see where something would break before it did. Her specialty: operations mapping and logistics.
8. Soraya Haddad – France/Morocco
A former journalist turned intel-gatherer, Soraya had embedded with every major global aid group. She understood how media worked, how narratives shaped policy, and how to keep the right secrets. Her specialty: story management and political optics.
9. Rajan Mehta – India
An ethicist and tech philosopher, Rajan was tasked with making sure nothing Help Me Too did crossed lines they could never uncross. His specialty: moral oversight and cultural sensitivities. He would be the voice in the room asking “should we?”—not just “can we?”
10. Ana Ruiz – Mexico/USA
The final choice, and in many ways the glue. Ana was both an academic and a street-smart fixer. She’d worked from orphanages to embassies and knew how to get what was needed from people who didn’t want to give it. Her specialty: everything else.
Frank looked at the list, now complete on his whiteboard. He smiled.
This was his new team. Not soldiers. Not coders. But a squad that could walk into any country, any city, any village—and open doors no one else could. They weren’t just liaisons. They were cultural engineers. Social operatives. Borderless tacticians.
They were his Globe Trotters.
And in the months ahead, they would be tested in ways even Frank could not yet imagine. Because what was once a national mission was now becoming a global reckoning.
When Help Me 2 made the decision to go global, it was not just a geographic shift—it was a philosophical one. What had begun as a desperate domestic response to a silent war against traffickers was now evolving into a worldwide campaign. And the globe was ready. The problem was universal. The solution was rare.
The first wave of global entry focused on strategic nations—those with high levels of trafficking activity, relatively stable governments, and enough digital and physical infrastructure to support the Think Tank’s systems. After weeks of negotiations, cultural vetting, and data mapping, eleven countries were selected for the pilot expansion:
1. Brazil
2. India
3. South Africa
4. Mexico
5. Philippines
6. Thailand
7. Ukraine
8. Nigeria
9. Colombia
10. Romania
11. Kenya
Each of these countries had two things in common: an alarming rate of child disappearances and a willing point of contact—a government agency, NGO, or high-ranking official who agreed to give Help Me 2 conditional access to operate.
The Entry Model
Frank and the Globe Trotters designed what they called the “Controlled Corridor Model.” It was a stepwise method of integration that respected national sovereignty while embedding Help Me 2’s systems in a way that was almost frictionless.
Each rollout followed five core steps:
1. Legal Clearance and Data-Sharing Agreement
Vincent and Eleni handled this. Without violating local laws, they drafted limited-access agreements that allowed Help Me 2 to install Echo, Zebra, and limited-use satellite support for forensic and real-time tracking.
2. Deployment of Local Tactical Teams
Using Amir's field networks, former special ops and elite tactical forces were recruited from within the host countries. These local operators were trained by Help Me 2's own tactical veterans and partnered with their seasoned team leaders.
3. Installation of Infrastructure
Yuki coordinated satellite downlinks, Zebra storage grids, and secured server connections. These nodes were set up in local embassies, consulates, or trusted NGOs to ensure redundancy and stealth.
4. Cultural Integration
Clara and Hyejin worked directly with local leaders and communities. They translated Help Me 2’s mission into cultural terms that resonated. They trained village elders, pastors, school principals, and city officials on what to watch for and how to respond.
5. Silent Operation Phase
No press. No fanfare. Operations would quietly begin, with missing child databases from each country fed into the system. Facial recognition, microdust analysis, and sewer-line DNA testing (where possible) would begin behind the scenes.
Within six months, the program yielded its first international success: a 14-year-old boy missing from Mumbai was located via a sewer trace tied to Echo-2 technology in a building just outside Hyderabad. Two traffickers were arrested. The boy was returned to his parents.
Then came more—rescue in Medellín, bust in Bangkok, tracking lead in Cape Town, client identification in Tijuana.
Nations Watching
As results became impossible to ignore, twenty-three more countries formally requested inclusion. Some of the most prominent included:
• Argentina
• Poland
• Egypt
• Vietnam
• Indonesia
• Turkey
• Spain
• Peru
• Ethiopia
• Malaysia
• United Arab Emirates
But not all countries were willing participants. Some declined, citing sovereignty, privacy laws, or political tensions. A few even labeled Help Me 2 a “rogue agency” and banned its operatives from entry. Still, with support growing across civil societies and private sectors, the resistance was becoming harder to justify.
The Silent Momentum
By the end of the first year, Help Me 2 had a presence in 36 countries and had contributed to the recovery of over 4,200 missing children, with thousands more under active investigation.
But Frank, Warren, and the team knew they were only scratching the surface. The systems were working. The world was responding. But they were up against something ancient, systemic, and deeply entrenched.
Going global was just the beginning. The battle had left America’s borders. Now it stretched across oceans.
And Help Me 2 was moving faster than ever before.
Her name was Dawn Dale, and while she never sought the spotlight, those who met her rarely forgot her. To Frank, she was not just his wife of thirty-five years, but his grounding force, his heart, and now—unexpectedly—his secret weapon.
Dawn had a gift. She saw people not as categories, roles, or affiliations—but as individuals. Not the shell, but the soul. She didn’t just talk to people; she connected with them. Whether it was a janitor, a CEO, or a diplomat, she approached them with genuine curiosity. Her favorite place to sit on an airplane? The middle seat. “Now I have two people to meet,” she would say with a grin.
Frank had always admired this about her. On long walks or quiet dinners, she would recount stories of strangers she met that day—stories so rich and vivid, it felt like she’d known these people for years. He often joked that she should have her own talk show. “You’d make Oprah nervous,” he’d say. She would laugh, brush it off, and go back to asking him about his team or some new child that had been rescued.
But now, as Help Me 2 expanded globally, Frank faced a different kind of problem—political roadblocks in four major countries that were critical to their mission. Nations where the official stance was cautious, skeptical, or outright hostile. Diplomatic overtures had stalled. Legal permissions were tied in bureaucratic knots. Tactical entry was not an option.
Frank sat at his desk late one night reviewing yet another rejection from a foreign ministry when he looked at the framed photo of Dawn on his desk and whispered aloud, “They don’t need a contract. They need a conversation.”
The next day, he pitched the idea to Warren: bring Dawn. Not as a negotiator, not as a strategist—just as herself.
Warren didn’t even hesitate. “Book the flights.”
Dawn joined Frank on the next international round of visits. Interpreters were arranged. Cultural advisors briefed her on customs. But no one could prepare the dignitaries and officials for the force that was Dawn Dale.
In Uganda, she asked the President what his mother was like. In Turkey, she inquired whether the Minister of Justice had ever lost track of a child in a crowded market. In Hungary, she complimented a translator’s earrings and asked if they were a family heirloom. In every room, smiles softened. Tension eased. People opened up.
It wasn’t charm. It was authenticity. Dawn wasn’t selling anything. She was listening. And when she asked about their children, their people, their fears—she wasn’t working an angle. She was holding space.
One high-ranking official from a previously uncooperative country reportedly said afterward, “That woman made me feel like we were human beings again. Not enemies. Not governments. Just people trying to protect our kids.”
In the weeks that followed, three of the four resistant countries signed formal cooperation agreements with Help Me 2. The fourth didn't sign anything—but quietly gave them everything they asked for.
Frank watched it all unfold with quiet awe. His engineer’s mind had never been able to calculate this variable: empathy as leverage. Compassion as a keycard. His wife, once simply his greatest love, was now the diplomatic heartbeat of a global movement.
And Dawn? She didn’t see herself as a diplomat or a savior.
She just saw people.
And in doing so, she helped change the world.
News of Dawn Dale spread faster than any diplomatic cable ever could.
What began as a quiet visit to four countries quickly became an international ripple effect. Ministers, counselors, ambassadors, and even prime ministers who had previously refused to meet with Help Me 2 suddenly began requesting audiences—not with the team, not even with Warren, but with Dawn. Word had spread among international dignitaries, often behind closed doors, about “the woman who didn’t bring a proposal but brought peace.” And that made all the difference.
These nations had been wary for good reason. Many feared the optics and consequences of a foreign tactical unit—no matter how noble its cause—operating on their soil. They worried about breaches in sovereignty, conflicts with military command, and being painted as weak or incapable of protecting their own children. The very existence of Help Me 2 felt like a judgment.
But then Dawn walked in, and all of that changed.
She didn’t bring PowerPoints or legal agreements. She brought tea and warmth. She asked, “How do you protect your children?” and listened without judgment. In one instance, she sat in a rural clinic with the Minister of Health in Nepal and asked him to explain why doctors were often the first to identify missing or trafficked children. He lit up. For the first time, someone wasn’t telling him what he wasn’t doing—but recognized what he was.
In Brazil, she spent three hours talking with the head of a women's advocacy group, not about strategy, but about the pain of seeing a loved one disappear. She shared stories of her own fears for Ashley and asked how Brazilian mothers coped. The woman wept. At the end of the meeting, she placed her hand on Dawn’s and said, “We’ve waited years for someone like you. You understand.”
In Poland, she spoke with a Catholic Cardinal who initially refused the meeting. But when she thanked him for his service before anything else, and asked about his orphanage work in the 1980s, the walls fell. They ended up discussing how churches could partner with Help Me 2 as safe havens—he would later become an instrumental liaison across multiple European nations.
Everywhere they went, Dawn made it personal. She didn’t make it about programs. She made it about people.
Meanwhile, Frank watched in amazement as doors flew open, one after another. Once-stubborn governments were now voluntarily offering secure airspace, use of local intelligence, and even joint-task forces. Tactical officers from Help Me 2 were being formally welcomed—not as a military incursion, but as a humanitarian alliance.
Perhaps the most unexpected victory came from Egypt. The country had firmly stated its refusal to allow any foreign interference in internal security. But when Dawn sat with their Minister of Antiquities—of all people—and spoke of her love for history and ancient cultures, the meeting took a turn. She respectfully asked whether the children of Egypt weren’t just as sacred as the monuments that were protected so fiercely. The minister paused. “You’re right. We protect our past with everything we have. Perhaps it’s time we protect our future the same way.”
Within days, Egypt became the 17th country to join the Help Me 2 Global Coalition.
By now, even the most cynical diplomats were saying it aloud: Dawn Dale was not just the heart of Help Me 2—she was its key.
Warren, watching from headquarters, could only shake his head in admiration. "She’s diplomacy without the politics," he said to Frank during a secure call. "She’s the light in the room no one knew they needed."
And so, the movement spread—not through force or fear, but through Dawn’s gift: seeing people. Asking. Listening. Caring.
What had begun as a rescue mission was now a global awakening.
And it was no longer just about finding children.
It was about healing the world that had let them go missing in the first place.
From a young age, Frank Dale saw the world through a different lens—not just curious, but insatiably determined to see all the answers, not just the obvious ones. While most kids were content solving the riddle in the back of a cereal box, Frank would solve it, then deconstruct it, then invent five alternative solutions and ask, "Which one’s better?"
This gift—this obsession, really—would later become the core philosophy of the Think Tank.
Frank was a teacher long before he was a strategist. An engineering professor at Arizona State, he was known for stumping classrooms full of brilliant students with problems that seemed basic—until they weren’t. He’d say things like, “Never trust the first answer. First answers are usually reflexes, not reasoning.”
When Warren Davidson selected Frank to assemble and lead the elite five-member Think Tank at Help Me 2, he knew exactly what he was getting. What he didn’t know is how profoundly Frank’s way of thinking would shape the entire operation.
To join the Think Tank, Frank created a “simple” test.
What is the value of √25 minus √9?
Most gave the fast answer:
5 − 3 = 2
Correct. But not complete.
Frank shook his head with a slight grin. "That’s one of four."
He waited.
The few who understood mathematics beyond arithmetic began to smile too. They remembered: square roots also have negative counterparts. Because both +5 and −5 squared equal 25. And both +3 and −3 squared equal 9.
So:
1. +5 − +3 = 2
2. −5 − −3 = −2
3. +5 − −3 = 8
4. −5 − +3 = −8
Those four answers—2, −2, 8, and −8—were the correct set. Only 11 out of 200 candidates gave all four. Those 11 were the final pool for the five coveted seats on the Think Tank.
But this wasn’t just a math test. This was Frank’s philosophy distilled into numbers.
“Every real-world problem,” Frank explained, “is just a puzzle that hasn’t shown all its angles yet. You solve it once. Great. You solve it four ways? Now you’re useful. You think five ways? Now you're dangerous—in a good way.”
He called it coral thinking—like a reef branching out in every direction, growing from one origin point but never linear. Problems, he believed, had surfaces and layers. Coral thinking encouraged members of the Think Tank to challenge every angle, to resist confirmation bias, and to never stop once they’d found one working solution.
When brainstorming technologies like the Zebra Effect, the sewer-based DNA tracing, or even the Time Machine satellite grid, Frank pushed his team to “answer, then re-answer.” They would gather around whiteboards where he'd write one question, then say, “Give me ten answers. And I don’t want two of them to match.”
He would pace, not scolding, but urging. “Don’t tell me what fits. Tell me what bends. Then tell me how to break it.”
Under his leadership, they learned to find elegant solutions not just through engineering, but by embracing nonlinearity, lateral thinking, and sometimes flat-out absurdity—until absurdity turned brilliant.
Frank was never the loudest in the room. He didn’t need to be. He was the gravity around which the others orbited—anchoring creativity with logic, and igniting logic with creativity.
And he never let the team forget one thing:
“You are not here to think like the world does,” he said. “You are here because you don’t.”
So when someone new joined Help Me 2—whether tactical, technical, or cultural—he’d always ask them casually over coffee:
“May I be Frank with you?”
And then, with a smile, he’d slide a napkin across the table with one simple problem.
√25 − √9 = ?
And a world of thinking began.
The mission was global. The permission was granted. But now, the path forward was blocked by the oldest problem of all—money.
Help Me 2 had quietly expanded into nearly a dozen nations, with more inviting them by the week. Countries with deep pain and open arms, desperate to find their stolen children. Yet desperation did not come with funding. These nations—some war-torn, others impoverished—had no means to cover the sophisticated costs of drone fleets, forensic labs, AI infrastructure, tactical mobilization, or satellite surveillance. And Warren’s personal fortune, once thought to be bottomless, was drying up.
Anna and Paige had seen it coming. For months they had watched Warren quietly sell properties, dissolve investments, liquidate every remaining asset that wasn’t directly sustaining the mission. He hadn’t said anything, but the burden showed in his eyes.
It was Anna who first broke the silence.
“Warren, we need to talk,” she said one night after another debriefing. “We know you’ve been funding this alone. But you can’t anymore.”
Warren didn’t answer right away. He just rubbed his forehead, still staring at the digital map of new child disappearances lighting up in central Africa and Southeast Asia.
“I won’t stop,” he finally said.
“We’re not asking you to,” Paige answered gently. “We’re saying… it’s not just yours anymore.”
Anna nodded. “This is our company now. Our mission. It belongs to all of us. And more than that—it belongs to the world.”
It wasn’t about pride. It was about survival.
Help Me 2 had become the most effective child rescue force on Earth, but now it stood on the edge of its own collapse. Anna and Paige knew that appealing for private donations wouldn’t be enough. The world needed to be called—loudly, clearly, and publicly. Governments. Celebrities. Tech giants. Everyday citizens. It had to be everyone.
That night, Anna and Paige filmed what would become the most shared and replayed broadcast in the history of the Help Me 2 movement. A single camera. A dark backdrop. One microphone. No music. No graphics. Just two women who had once been bystanders, now transformed into warriors for the missing.
Anna began.
“My name is Anna. This is my daughter Paige. And we are asking for your attention, your help, and your commitment—not to us, but to the world’s most vulnerable.”
Paige followed, her voice steady.
“Help Me 2 has rescued thousands of children. Quietly. Relentlessly. In places no one would go. We now have permission from countries to help more—but we no longer have the funding. We are out of time, and nearly out of resources.”
Anna looked straight into the lens.
“This is not Warren’s company anymore. It’s yours. It’s ours. This is not one man’s burden. It’s the burden of every nation that claims to value human life. Of every person who hears this call.”
They asked not for donations—but for investment. Ownership. Partnership.
“This is your mission now,” Anna said. “It’s your responsibility. These children are your neighbors. Your blood. Your future.”
Within 24 hours, the video had gone viral across six continents. Hashtags exploded. Anonymous donors pledged millions. International leaders—many of whom had dragged their feet—were now pressured to act by their own people.
But most of all, it did something deeper.
It passed the torch.
The world no longer saw Help Me 2 as Warren Davidson’s defiant crusade. They now saw it as humanity’s cause. And as Warren watched the broadcast from his office, tears welled in his eyes. Not from exhaustion. But from hope.
They heard the call.
It began as an idea, whispered behind closed doors. A moral question. A legal gamble. A desperate answer to a problem the courts could not solve.
For months, Help Me 2 had tracked not only the traffickers and captors—but the buyers. The so-called “clients.” These were the men and women who created the demand. Who paid for the exploitation. Who walked free in the shadows, hidden behind money, false identities, and legal loopholes.
Initially, Warren Davidson had hoped for justice through the courts. That with enough evidence, enough pressure, law enforcement would take them down. But what he learned was chilling—too many buyers slipped through the system. Lawyers intervened. Judges hesitated. Politicians looked the other way.
So the Think Tank proposed something bold. Something radical.
If these buyers couldn’t be imprisoned legally, they could be removed… permanently. Not executed. Not tortured. But exiled.
A second island was purchased. Remote, inaccessible, surrounded by jagged reefs and violent currents. It was once a luxury resort property off the coast of South America, abandoned after a failed development scheme. With enough fortification and infrastructure, it became something else entirely.
A prison of paradise.
The team nicknamed it “Paradise Lost” in reference to John Milton’s epic—an island of beauty, twisted into a home for the damned. The name stuck. A poetic reminder that these individuals, though once powerful, had willingly cast themselves from the grace of human decency.
Each confirmed buyer, after a full evidentiary process, was posted on the HelpMe-2.info site. A photograph. A name. A verified offense. Then, they were given 21 days to turn themselves in and plead guilty.
If they failed to do so, the tactical team would find them.
One by one, the buyers were extracted. Some surrendered. Others fled but were caught. They were not paraded or harmed. They were simply removed from society and placed on the island, where there were no bars—only open space, surveillance, and isolation.
Paradise Lost was fully self-sustaining. Solar power. Water filtration. Basic food cultivation. A place where no outside communication was possible, and no escape plausible. No rescue was coming.
There was no torture. No guards. No violence. Only the relentless presence of their own guilt and the others like them. The exile was final.
The world watched as the list on HelpMe-2.info grew. Former CEOs. Judges. Celebrities. Government contractors. Their names were now etched into digital shame, broadcast to every nation. Some countries protested. Some human rights groups cried foul. But the public sentiment was clear.
They chose this.
They bought children.
They gave up their place among us.
And Paradise Lost became a warning. A message. A mirror held up to the darkest parts of society. The very existence of the island began to reduce demand. Fear worked where law had failed.
It wasn’t justice in the traditional sense. But in the new world Help Me 2 was building, it was something better.
It was accountability.
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