Chapter Text
Vlad opens the folder for the current day, finding six videos inside - one for each camera. At first he'd watch it live, but as his duties increased after taking the office, he didn't really have the time for that, instead resorting to briefly checking in in the evening and breezing through the saved videos in search of anything unusual happening in the house. Checking the footage has become a ritual of sorts, the same way people read the news in the morning to be kept in the loop.
Vlad clicks on the kitchen first.
After fast forwarding through the night, he stops at about seven in the morning. Jack is fumbling with something at the stove. Maddie, beautiful as always, is working on a weapon of sorts, while her children are finishing their breakfast. It's a peaceful, almost idyllic picture.
Vlad's wistful thinking about him being there instead of Jack is interrupted by a sudden flurry of movement in the kitchen. The whole thing takes less than five seconds, but it feels much, much longer.
Daniel gets up to clean his plate. Maddie raises the finished gun to inspect her wield work. She either presses the trigger, or crosses the wires, or something, and the gun shoots. A beam of energy hits the top cabinet, millimeters above Daniel's head. His hair is probably singed. Daniel flinches, violently, and the plate falls in the sink, breaking into pieces. Jasmine slams her hands on the table and rises with enough force to send the chair flying on the floor; the audio explodes in a cacophony of screams as they yell at each other. Daniel is gripping the sink, his back to his family, staring at the shards.
Maddie didn't mean to shoot him, it was a simple mistake.
It was an accident.
An accident.
The word keeps repeating in Vlad's mind.
He opens the videos from the previous day, going through them with more scrutiny than usual. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, but he's still frowning as he watches the incident again.
8 hours 53 minutes later Daniel comes to the kitchen to look at the spot, and even with the less than ideal quality Vlad can see his hand shake as it traces the burnt edge.
Interlude 1
As he checks the foyer footage, unusual movements catch his eye, and he rewinds the video to the beginning.
Daniel walks in the foyer, carrying a full bag. This alone raises eyebrows. The Fentons do their groceries once a week, and so far Vlad hasn't seen the children doing any shopping.
Curiously, it's not food, but a large amount of small bottles. Even more curiously, Daniel grabs a few of them and starts wandering about the house - Vlad has to synchronize all six feeds to keep track of his movements. The bottles are stashed all over the place - in the kitchen cabinet behind the canned food, under the couch in the living room, behind a potted plant in the hallway, in the bathrooms.
The last thing in the bag is a much bigger bottle, and when Vlad pauses the video and leans in he can see it's an industrial size bottle of peroxide. When the video is resumed, Daniel carries it to his room and places it under the bed.
Vlad does quick googling, but peroxide can't be used as an explosive or a drug, so he is at a complete loss why else a teenage boy would need it, and in such amounts, no less.