I spent 20 years looking for a boy that vanished into thin air in 1995. I finally found him, and I wish I didn't. I've been having the best week of my career as a detective. After 20 years of working cold cases, I finally got the breakthrough I've been waiting for. A construction crew called me about something they found buried in the woods, and it might be connected to my oldest, unsolved case. The case that started it all was Tommy Chen. He was 10 years old when he went missing in 1995,and I was just a rookie cop back then. Tommy had bright red hair, freckles, and was wearing a blue backpack when he disappeared on his way home from school. We searched everywhere for months, but he vanished without a trace. His parents were devastated, and I promised them I'd bring their son home. That promise haunted me for two decades. Tommy's mother died of cancer 10 years ago, and his father passed away last year. They both died, never knowing what happened to their little boy. When theconstruction crew called, they'd found a small metal box buried 3 ft underground. Inside was Tommy's blue backpack, perfectly preserved, along with a handwritten note that said, "My name is Tommy Chen. I am 10 years old. If you find this, please tell my mom and dad I love them." My hands were shaking as I read those words. The construction site was about 5 miles from where Tommy had gone missing in a dense forest area. I spent the next week going through property records and found somethinginteresting. Most of the land was stateowned, but there was one small parcel that had been privately owned by a man named Dr. Marcus Webb. Webb had died 15 years ago, and his property had been sitting empty ever since. I decided to check it out myself before involving anyone else. The old house was falling apart with boarded up windows and an overgrown yard. But as I walked around the property, I noticed something strange. There was a section of the backyard where the grass grew differently, like the soil underneathhad been disturbed years ago. I came back that night with a shovel and started digging. About 3 ft down, I hit concrete. It took me hours to clear away enough dirt to reveal what looked like the top of an underground bunker. There was a heavy metal door with a combination lock, but the lock was old and rusted through. When I finally got the door open, I was hit with the most awful smell I'd ever encountered. It was like rotting meat mixed with disinfectant. I grabbed my flashlight and climbed down a ladder into thedarkness below. The bunker was bigger than I expected with multiple rooms connected by narrow hallways. The walls were lined with medical equipment, operating tables, and dozens of glass containers filled with some kind of preservative fluid. I found Dr. Webb's journal on one of the tables, and as I read through it, my blood ran cold. Webb had been a pediatric surgeon who lost his medical license for conducting unauthorized experiments on children. The entries detailed his obsession with preserving childhood innocence foreverthrough some kind of experimental preservation process. Then I found the entry dated 3 days after Tommy went missing. New subject acquired. 10 years old, red hair, exceptional specimen for the process. Initial procedures show promising results. That's when I heard it. A faint sound coming from the back room that made my heart stop. It sounded like someone crying. I followed the sound down the hallway to the last room and what I found there changed everything I thought I knew about this case. The room was set up like a child'sbedroom, complete with toys, books, and cartoon posters on the walls. There was a small bed in the corner and sitting on that bed was someone I recognized immediately. It was Tommy Chen, still 10 years old, still wearing the same clothes he disappeared in 20 years ago. But he wasn't preserved or mummified like I expected. He was alive, breathing, and looking at me with the same green eyes I remembered from his missing person photos. He looked exactly the same as the day he vanished. Like hehadn't aged a single day in two decades. "Are you here to take me home?" he asked in the same voice a 10-year-old would have. I couldn't speak. I just stared at this boy who should have been 30 years old by now, who should have grown up and had a life. But here he was, frozen in time, still the same scared 10-year-old who'd gone missing in 1995. As I read more of Web's journal, I discovered the horrifying truth. Webb hadn't just been preserving dead children. He found a wayto stop the aging process completely, keeping children alive, but trapped in their 10-year-old bodies forever. Tommy had been conscious and aware for 20 years, but his mind and body were locked in childhood. The journal's final entry explained everything. The process is irreversible. The subjects remain physically and mentally 10 years old indefinitely. I have achieved true immortality, but only at the cost of stealing their futures. Tommy looked at me with those innocent eyes and asked, "Is my mommy coming to get me? I've beenwaiting so long." And the doctor said she would come back for me. I had to tell this 10-year-old boy that his parents were dead, that 20 years had passed, and that he would never grow up. Even though I'd found Tommy alive, there was no happy ending. He couldn't live in the modern world as a 10-year-old with no legal identity, no family, and no way to explain his situation. I'd spent 20 years looking for a missing boy. And when I finally found him, I discovered that some people are better off stayinglost. Tommy Chen vanished in 1995 and in a way he's still missing. The child I found in that bunker isn't the boy who disappeared.
