Investigating a Missing Recruitment Team

I’m not a fan of campgrounds like this. Some people might like the peace and quiet, but there are too many people for that. One family, which means feeling the barrage of text messages. In and out with no regularity, and not enough other noise to silence them. Fortunately for me, the actual job Bossman sent me on probably won’t take place here. One of our recruitment teams went for an interview with a likely empath, and haven’t reported back in. I suspect something happened that turned it into a tag-and-bag and that failed, but to find out, I need to find them. According to the message, they went missing. Not dead, not swept under the rug or arrested, but missing. Which Alden finds concerning.

Campgrounds don’t have many digital elements, but fortunately booking is. As are the few cameras on the property. This particular campground only has its security cameras around their own buildings, so finding what happened wouldn’t really be an option. Not that way at least. Though even if they did have cameras, our teams are trained to eliminate any potential for recording prior to an interview. There are always ways to track the happenings, it mostly involves working back from the end though. Which means figuring out what happened to turn a conversation into a tactical response.

I approach the desk, ostensibly to ask about when they open up next year. I give a pleasant smile as I ask, “I saw this place and it just looks lovely. What time do you guys open up in the summer, and when do you start taking reservations?” I ask the kid at the front desk, who looks barely in his twenties. As he begins his banal reply with dates, and about the amenities involved, I run back the customer records until the week that mister Lawrence Sommerfeld was here. Probably trying to learn on his own what we would’ve taught him. Some modicum of control. Only three other sites were occupied that week. One, a family of four. The other a young woman on her own. One Danielle Snyders. Something about that name feels familiar. Then a pair of people with different surnames. It’s a start at the very least. After all, people carry around so many digital records, they often have phones and smartwatches that know more than they even realize, if you know how to look. “Well, thank you,” I say to the kid, “I’ll have to convince my other half, and we’ll book as soon as we can.” And I leave.

The moment I’m out of the camera’s sight, my smile fades. I begin to walk towards the city, and look up the names in our white pages. Hopefully, they’re local. Otherwise this job will not be as quick as I’d like. The Douglasses live in the northern suburbs. Miserable to get to without a car, but doable. The couple broke up. One, a Mister Nathan Ericksen, lives in the city outskirts, the other lives out west. Hopefully she isn’t involved. Miss Snyders lives in the city proper. As I look her up, however, a ping on the Company files shows up, too. I wave it open as I sit down and wait for the next bus into town. Jacoby filed a report about a failed TnB off in the desert. Suspected massive Electromagnetic interference, though how or the scale of it was not determineable. Jacoby always did prefer the bare minimum. Labeled her as a proceed with caution. I shake my head. I can guess what happened to make the interview go south. And, unless the empath is more than an empath, it moves her to the top of the suspect list.

But everything has to be by the book, which means first I get to head to the electric substation. Our teams will follow blackout protocols, which means looking into areas of heavy brownouts which our teams use to disguise their shutdowns. The bus into town was mostly empty. No one bothered the driver, though his phone did have some interesting recordings of local rumors that I grabbed. Evidently there is a problem with pickpockets and muggings near Miss Snyders’s apartment. Might be relevant, and at least useful to know if I’m nearby. This bus will take me to the metro, so as long as we go slowly near the station, I shouldn’t have any trouble ripping the data to my tablet.

Lawrence Sommerfeld is at the university. While there were some strange electrical surging nearby a week ago, it isn’t in the manner that our teams are trained to do. Too irregular and sudden. More likely some sort of interference caused by Danielle, or someone or something with a similar electromagnetic-effecting nature. There were rolling brownouts for a day near Miss Snyders’s apartment. Which means the team ignored the caution order to go after her. Though she handled the previous team nonlethally, so the fact that they have yet to check in is somewhat interesting. And, if she did change her modus operandi, how did she cover up the deaths so effectively. I’m missing something. As we make it to the metro stop, I get off the bus and head to wait for the train. More people here means more noise. Also means a better chance of finding something useful or interesting. So I begin to sift through the emails and texts coming into everyone’s phones, looking for any information about a week ago.

The woman next to me smiles as we climb into the metro car. “Hey,” she says. She’s ignoring a phone call. Third from the same number in as many minutes.

I give a smile and nod back. I don’t really want to engage. I’m on the job. She recognizes my focus and sighs, looking back ahead, still ignoring her phone. Doesn’t even look. So she knows who it is and doesn’t want to talk. Unimportant. Probably. As far as relevant information, it seems the center of the pickpockets is a few blocks away from the area in question, and the muggers are closer. If something happened, they might know how to clean it up, but why would they bother? It isn’t as though they couldn’t just relocate to a slightly different area. According to messages on one guy’s junkmail account, they do so on a somewhat frequent basis.

I get off the bus before the area with the brownouts. The cameras around her apartment blacked out five days ago for an hour and change. Likely initiated when she arrived into the area, so it would be impossible to tell when and where she disappeared. It started after midnight, so she was probably at a bar. Means walking distance. There are three, all in the same general direction. I head a block and a half towards the bars, and find a corner gas station. With a sidewalk facing security camera. Perfect. Most will keep footage for a week. I enter and begin looking through the snacks. Opening the camera footage, I skip back to the night in question, around the time of the blackout. And it’s grainy, but sure enough, walking down the street is the probable Powered Individual, with a gentleman caller. Both look dressed for a more dive bar aesthetic, which limits the bar down. I also notice a police car on the road at the same time. Facing the wrong direction to see the fight, but the right way to see the faces of Danielle and her walking partner. I grab a generic brand meatstick and buy it at the counter with cash. Then I begin the walk to the local police precinct.

It’s a flat building occupying half a block, with the other half being a parking lot and a courtyard area. There is a food truck parked outside, giving me the perfect opportunity to relax. Hiding the meatstick, I order myself a taco and sit down at a bench. Close enough to the precinct to feel and access their servers. As I’m logging in, they call my meal and I get up to grab it, then start to eat as I scroll through the video files, looking for the right time. The taco is solid, probably a six and a half out of ten. Good enough that, if the others in the courtyard are any indication, someone who doesn’t work here stopping by is not an irregular occurrence, but not so good that it would be worth it to come if I weren’t snooping. In my opinion. Then I find it. Patrol 14. Danielle, standing next to a man in his late twenties. I don’t recognize him, must be a local. But something about his eyes feels familiar. She looks nervous, he is staring at the sky with an intense focus. Something up there that I can’t see? But the camera doesn’t show anything. Maybe he’s just avoiding looking at her. Nervous for some reason. Though normally, nervous people look at their own feet, not the sky.

I search through the police database, but neither show up. Nor does Lawrence. So not criminals, not victims. Something else then. I would have stopped there, but then I see one last image, six minutes after the pair passed, the car has turned and is driving. But in the distance, up in the air for only a moment, a trio of people appear, then two fall while the other vanishes. I sigh. Best clean that up, I muse as I replace the eighteen frames with people in the air with the surrounding frames without. But that explains what happened. Though why the teleporter turned against the rest of the team is unclear. The woman shouldn’t have been able to do it. Maybe the man?

I send an email to Alden. ‘Alden-Still hunting. Team likely dead. Encountered a caution without caution. But cannot tell details yet. Is this someone in our database? -Ivan’. I attach a screengrab of the man walking with Miss Snyders. While I wait for a reply, I order a ride east onto campus. Might as well make sure it isn’t Mister Sommerfeld behind the teleporter’s betrayal. Because while the data implies empath, there may be more to it. And anything that can affect the mind can in theory control it, if the PI in question is powerful enough or skilled enough.

My driver is focused on the road, not talking to me which is a relief. I need to think. She does play a top 40 station which is mildly irritating, but I can just tune it out. I do my best to only switch lights realistically, so we make it to campus at a fast pace without her becoming suspicious of the speed. And, in the meantime, I think about why. If the muggers knew how to make bodies go missing, it wasn’t permanent, it would only be for a few weeks to a month, likely involving sewers. And a mind controller would explain why they might help. But I don’t want to get too caught up in a single track. Fear might also. If in this last week, Danielle had displayed her abilities, even to a minor extent, in front of the muggers, or if they witnessed the fight that ended in the bodies, they might be scared enough to help her. Or friendship. If the local, the guy with her, was friends with the muggers and asked for help, they might have done something nominal.

We make it to campus and I walk over by Lawrence’s dorm building. The keycard system had him in his building the whole night. There are ways to get out without swiping, but doing so would mean knowing about the attack in advance, and I doubt our team let that slip. Meaning, in all likelihood, the college kid is not involved in the deaths. However, the electric disturbances implies he is at least in contact with the woman. So I will adjust his file to observe and report, rather than interview or TnB. Too risky, but he himself is likely not a risk.

Alden’s email comes back. ‘Ivan- Unclear. Possibly highly dangerous. Do not approach the kid unless absolutely necessary. -Alden’. The kid is an odd way to refer to a guy who seems my age. Unless I’m missing something about him. You refer to thirty year olds as kids if you have no respect for the person or if you’ve known them since they were children. Alden says the man is possibly dangerous which means he definitely respects this individual. Which means he’s known them since they were a kid. Wait, he said possibly. So he thinks he knows who it is, but he hasn’t seen them since they were a kid. Interesting.