“Check the boiler room,” Li Wei whispered from the doorway. His face was pale.

He checked the hallway. 7:42 PM. Empty. The playground. 7:42 PM. Swings swaying in the wind, no child.

The old system had been a relic of fuzzy, stuttering ghosts. The new HiLook software, with its clean, almost sterile interface, painted the four hallways, the playground, and the front gate in crisp 4K. It was a silent, digital god, watching without blinking.

Zhang frowned. “There’s no camera in the boiler room, sir.”

Then, Officer Zhang, young and tired, asked to see the security footage. Mei Ling led him to the back office, her hand trembling as she double-clicked the HiLook icon. The software bloomed on the screen—a timeline, a grid of cameras, a clean search bar. It felt clinical. Wrong.