The V-tuber Who Became Obsessed With Me

Third person’s POV

Zach answered on the third ring.

"Raina. I was actually about to call you."

"Where have you been?" she demanded as she strode across the parking lot toward her car. "I’ve called you four times."

"I took a break from my phone."

She let out a disbelieving scoff.

"You expect me to believe that?"

"It’s the truth."

"No, it isn’t." She unlocked her car with a sharp press of the key fob. "Anna told you to disappear, didn’t she?"

A brief silence answered her.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Save it. I’ll be at your office in ten minutes."

She ended the call before he could reply.

By the time she stepped into Zach’s office, he was already waiting.

"I figured you weren’t calling to apologize," he said.

Instead of answering, Raina crossed the room and placed a small black dashcam on his desk.

"I need you to unlock it."

His expression shifted immediately.

"Where did you get this?"

"Ethan’s car."

She folded her arms while Zach picked it up and turned it over in his hands.

"I found it beside the road where he disappeared. Whoever took him ripped it off the windshield and threw it into the bushes."

"So they missed it."

"Or they want us to find it ."

Zach walked over to his computer and connected the device with a cable.

"We’re about to find out."

His fingers moved quickly across the keyboard as lines of encrypted code filled the monitor. The dashcam’s security wasn’t commercial software. Someone had modified it, but that only seemed to make the challenge more interesting.

Raina waited in silence, her arms folded tightly across her chest. Every second felt longer than the last.

Finally, the encrypted folders unlocked.

"There."

Zach clicked the most recent recording.

The footage began exactly where Ethan’s journey had started after leaving the cabin.

A narrow road stretched ahead, hemmed in by dense woodland on either side. There were no houses, no passing cars, only long shadows cast across the asphalt by the trees.

Neither of them spoke.

Then a black SUV appeared.

It accelerated from behind, overtook Ethan’s vehicle, and swerved sharply across both lanes, forcing him to brake.

Raina’s jaw tightened.

Two men jumped out before the SUV had even stopped moving.

The first smashed the driver’s window.

The second moved straight for the door.

The attack lasted less than a minute.

Ethan fought, but the taser dropped him almost instantly. The men lifted him into the SUV with practiced efficiency before speeding away, leaving his abandoned car sitting in the middle of the empty road.

The recording continued for another few seconds before ending.

Zach paused the video.

Neither of them said a word.

Zach remained silent for a moment, his eyes fixed on the frozen frame of the black SUV. Then he enlarged the image and focused on the rear of the vehicle as it sped away.

"The license plate," Raina said quietly.

Without a word, he zoomed in further. The picture became grainy, but the characters were still just clear enough to read. He copied the number into a government vehicle registry and waited while the system searched.

A few seconds later, the result appeared.

"Stolen," Zach said. "Reported missing eleven days ago."

Raina wasn’t surprised.

"So they’re using cloned plates."

He gave a slight nod. "Either that, or they stripped the plates from another vehicle after it was reported stolen. Either way, it doesn’t lead back to them."

She stared at the monitor, her thoughts moving faster than the cursor on the screen.

Whoever had taken Ethan hadn’t acted impulsively. They had blocked a deserted road, disabled him in seconds, and disappeared before anyone could intervene. Even the vehicle had been prepared in advance.

Nothing about it was amateur.

"They knew exactly where he’d be," she murmured.

"They did," Zach agreed. "And judging by how quickly they moved, they weren’t worried about witnesses."

"There wouldn’t have been any."

He looked at her.

"The road outside my cabin is isolated," she explained. "You can drive for several minutes without seeing another car."

Zach leaned back in his chair, folding his arms as he studied the paused footage.

"That means they either followed him from the cabin..."

"...or they already knew he was leaving."

The second possibility settled heavily between them.

Raina said nothing.

Instead, she looked back at the screen, replaying the attack in her mind. Ethan had barely had enough time to react before they surrounded him.

It wasn’t just efficient.

It was practiced.

"Can you trace where they went?" she asked.

Zach’s fingers returned to the keyboard.

"If they stayed on public roads, maybe."

He opened a digital map of Harrington and enlarged the area surrounding the kidnapping site.

"The attack happened here."

A blinking marker appeared on the screen.

He traced the only road leading away from the scene.

"From this point, there’s nowhere else to go except the Harrington Interchange. Every vehicle leaving that stretch has to pass through it."

Raina stepped closer.

"So there are traffic cameras."

"There should be."

He opened another program, navigating through several security prompts before accessing the city’s traffic management archive.

Rows of timestamps filled the screen.

He entered the estimated time Ethan had been abducted and began scrolling through the recordings at accelerated speed.

Minutes passed in silence.

The only sounds in the office were the clicking of keys and the faint hum of Zach’s computer.

Then—

"There."

Raina pointed at the monitor.

The black SUV rolled into view.

Zach immediately slowed the footage to normal speed.

Together they watched the vehicle approach the interchange before taking the eastern exit without hesitation.

He switched to the next available camera.

The SUV appeared again.

Another camera.

Again.

Each new recording carried it farther from the city center until, finally, it disappeared beyond the reach of the surveillance network.

Zach enlarged the map once more and followed the highlighted route with his finger.

"It kept heading east."

He paused, studying the roads branching away from the city.

"There aren’t many places worth driving to out there."

Raina’s eyes followed the route.

Industrial warehouses.

A small clinic

Several old production factories

Then her gaze settled on a name near the coastline.

The Harrington Eastern Seaport.

Something tightened in her chest.

She remembered the damp steel walls of the container where Jade had been held.

The smell of seawater.

Diesel fuel.

Cargo.

A place built around moving thousands of sealed containers every day.

Her eyes narrowed.

"I know where they’re taking him."

Zach looked up.

"Where?"

"The seaport."

He frowned.

"You’re sure?"

"No."

She picked up her bag from beside the chair.

"But if someone wanted to move a man without attracting attention..."

"...they couldn’t ask for a better place than a shipping terminal."

Zach stood as she headed for the door.

"Raina."

She stopped but didn’t turn around.

"If you’re right, don’t go alone."

For the first time since arriving, she hesitated.

Then she glanced back over her shoulder.

"I’m not planning to."

Without another word, she left the office, leaving Zach staring after her as the elevator doors slid shut.

Less than thirty minutes later, Raina’s car rolled through the industrial district on the eastern edge of Harrington. The skyline gradually gave way to sprawling warehouses, freight depots, and towering container cranes that dominated the horizon. Even before she reached the entrance, the air had changed. The scent of the city had been replaced by salt carried in from the ocean, mingling with diesel fumes and the metallic tang of heavy machinery.

She slowed as the Harrington Eastern Seaport came into view.

The terminal stretched for what seemed like miles. Towering stacks of shipping containers formed narrow corridors between loading bays while cranes lumbered overhead, lifting steel boxes with practiced precision from waiting cargo vessels. Forklifts moved constantly across the yard, their warning alarms echoing through the afternoon as workers in reflective vests directed the endless flow of freight.

It was exactly the kind of place where a single shipping container could disappear without anyone giving it a second thought.

Raina parked just outside the administration building and stepped out of the car. She paused for a moment, letting her eyes sweep across the terminal.

Nothing looked out of place.

Everything was moving exactly as it should.

Which made it the perfect place to hide something that wasn’t.

She walked through the security gate with the quiet confidence of someone who belonged there. The guards barely spared her a second glance before returning their attention to the trucks lining up at the entrance.

Inside the terminal, workers hurried past carrying clipboards and handheld scanners, too occupied with their schedules to notice her.

She stopped beside one of them.

"Excuse me."

The middle-aged dockworker looked up.

"Can you tell me where the terminal manager’s office is?"

He pointed toward a low administrative building overlooking the docks.

"Second building on your left."

"Thank you."

She crossed the yard without another word.

The office door stood half open. Inside, a heavyset man in his late fifties sat behind a cluttered desk, comparing shipping manifests with the information displayed on his monitor. He looked up as Raina entered, surprise briefly crossing his face.

"We’re not open to the public," he said. "If you’re looking for customer service—"

Raina walked to his desk and placed a thick envelope in front of him.

He looked down at it but made no move to touch it.

"I’m afraid I can’t just hand out company records."

Without saying a word, she placed a second envelope beside the first.

The man glanced from the envelopes to her face. Whatever hesitation he had disappeared. He quietly slid both into a drawer before folding his hands on the desk.

"What exactly are you looking for?"

"I need your surveillance footage."

His expression tightened.

"From when?"

She gave him the date and approximate time.

He nodded once and turned back to his computer.

The security archive loaded onto the screen, displaying dozens of camera feeds covering every corner of the terminal. One by one, he worked through them while Raina stood beside him, watching in complete silence.

Minutes passed.

Forklifts.

Loading cranes.

Cargo trucks.

Workers moving containers.

Nothing.

The manager switched to another camera positioned near one of the secondary storage yards, an older section of the terminal where containers often waited before being transferred onto outbound vessels.

Raina’s breathing slowed.

"Go back."

The manager rewound the footage several seconds.

"There."

He froze the frame.

Three figures appeared on the screen.

Two men were carrying an unconscious person between them, moving quickly across the yard.

Even from the grainy footage, Raina recognized him immediately.

Ethan.

Her fingers slowly curled into fists.

The manager pressed play.

The men reached a shipping container positioned near the back of the storage yard. One of them unlocked the doors while the other lifted Ethan inside.

Raina never took her eyes off the screen.

Then someone else stepped into view.

A woman.

She walked toward the container with calm, measured steps, speaking briefly to the two men before watching them secure the doors.

The camera couldn’t capture her face clearly at first.

Then she turned.

Raina felt the blood drain from her face.

Anna.

She stood perfectly still as the footage continued.

Anna waited until the locking bars had been secured before giving a small nod. The men climbed back into their vehicle, and together they disappeared from the camera’s view as though nothing unusual had happened.

The recording continued for another minute before returning to the ordinary rhythm of a working seaport.

Neither Raina nor the terminal manager spoke.

The silence inside the office suddenly felt suffocating.

At last, Raina drew a slow breath and asked the only question that mattered.

"Where is that container now?"

to be continued