Chương 158: Book 3 - Chapter 5 - Agitation

I didn't know exactly what to say to Helen as she knelt in front of her friend, mourning. After a couple minutes, she stood up, wiped her face off, and turned towards me.

"We need to find out who did this," she declared angrily.

"According to this note," I said, flashing the crumpled piece of paper, "he was killed for trying to intervene in the riots."

"Bullshit! First of all, riots down here are normally super rare. There are thousands of people willing to work in the surrounding districts, and those that have jobs don't want to fucking risk them; not unless they stand to gain more than they lose."

"Maybe…" I started.

"And there's no way that a bunch of fucking hooligans managed to storm in here without security noticing," Helen continued.

"I literally project a field that convinces people to ignore me, yet we were still stopped. Do you think a bunch of unorganized, grubby labourers would have made it in here? Plus, I just checked his augs. It looks like someone scrubbed it clean to destroy whatever data or evidence Andrew found."

"So… who would do this, if not the rioters?" I asked.

"We're here to investigate whether someone is instigating the riots, remember? I told Andrew not to dig around, but if he found something…" Helen trailed off.

"Do you have any squirrels in this area? We need to see who came and went." I pinged my bot network and found two squirrels within range. One was way down the street and had a terrible angle, but one had apparently wedged itself within the pipes hanging directly above the factory's entrance.

"One. It's hidden above the road, so I doubt it got a look at any faces," I admitted.

"It'll at least give us a clue on how many people were here and which direction they went," Helen growled.

"Gimme a copy of the footage." I glanced over at Helen, who was noticeably agitated, before shooting her a copy of the surveillance feed. I skimmed through the footage, concentrating on the section between when Andrew showed up for work and we arrived, but didn't find anything. I went over it again, more slowly the second time, but still couldn't see any sign of movement.

"Nyx, can you…" I started asking.

"I've got it, one hour and seven minutes ago," Helen interrupted, before shooting me an exact timestamp. I jumped to the point in the footage but didn't see anything. Before I could open my mouth to ask for more info, Helen elaborated.

"Watch the steam in front of the gate. You may have to go frame by frame." I frowned but did as she said. It actually took me a couple seconds of rolling the footage back and forth to catch what she saw. A blurry human silhouette was briefly covered by the rising steam rushing around their form.

"What the hell is that?" I asked.

"No, better question, how the fuck did you notice that?"

"Because I was watching for it," Helen replied quietly.

"I'd like to say it's because I spent most of my adult life trying to avoid surveillance, but the truth is it's something I learned from our last encounter. Sometimes you need to look for something missing, not something there."

"Well, that's great," I mumbled, "glad I could teach you something during our last encounter. Let me repeat the question. What IS it?" Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! It appears to be some sort of adaptive camouflage. Either very high-end human tech, or very low-end samurai tech. If it was Class II I doubt you'd have even caught it on camera. Since Helen nodded as soon as Nyx was done, I assumed they were broadcasting to her as well.

"Wonderful!" I growled, "I guess that confirms your hypothesis that someone's fucking around but doesn't help us track down the assailant." I paced around the room for a moment.

"Nyx, can you access the rest of the squirrels in the area and figure out where this ghost went?" I've already cross-referenced the surrounding squirrels and surveillance networks and managed to track the distortion back towards the lift. Unfortunately the local networks are focused on the individual factory compounds, and the tech is impressive enough to fool the squirrels, so I lost them before the lift. I tried to look for similar distortions in a wider area, but haven't found anything.

It's likely whomever assaulted the foreman changed to a more mundane disguise somewhere along the way.

"Sooo… we've got nothing," I grumbled.

"No," Helen said, standing up and suddenly heading towards the door.

"We have plenty." I had to run in order to catch up with Helen before she left the building.

"You want to explain?"

"Tech like that doesn't just appear out of thin air, so I've sent a message to Zetta and asked him to track down any companies that have the capability to manufacture something like that. We also have the riots… which someone has gone out of their way to ensure they continue," Helen explained without turning to look at me.

"Okay, fair. So where are you going?" I asked, as I struggled to keep up with her long strides.

"I hope you're not planning to run headlong into the riots, in order to investigate."

"Of course not!" Helen hissed.

"But maybe we can find some clues if we investigate the previous riot locations and see what was damaged."

"Sure, I guess that works. It's not like we can look it up or check on the squirrel surveillance," I said. Helen didn't reply. She just hopped the gate and started storming back towards the lifts.

"Are you alright?" I finally asked.

"You got pretty emotional back there." Helen finally stopped, but she didn't turn around to face me.

"No. No, I'm not," she admitted quietly.

"I've known Andrew for a long time. I met him long before I awakened as a samurai. When I asked him to investigate the situation, some part of me knew he wouldn't be able to resist digging deeper… I'm the reason he's dead." She sniffled slightly and sounded like she was about to break out crying again.

"Bullshit! You couldn't possibly have known whoever is fucking around down here would see him as a threat," I snarled.

"If you had, I'm sure you would have chosen a much more subversive way of collecting information and not risked your friend's life. It's the agitator's fault, not yours."

"Are you trying to comfort me?" Helen asked, half turning so she could glance in my direction.

"No! I'm just trying to keep you focused on the objective and who is actually responsible for his death instead of wallowing in pity. I can't go home until we solve this, remember," I denied.

"If you go stomping around without thinking about things, we'll be here forever."

"Right…" Helen paused, a tiny smile on her face.

"Well, I guess you had a point earlier. We don't have to go directly to the riot locations. We can take a look at them remotely and pull up the damage assessments remotely. Just not here. We need to find a place a little less conspicuous than the middle of the road in a shut-down district."

"Then let's get back to the lift. We can decide where to go from there," I suggested. Helen nodded and started turning back around, but before she started off, I broached a topic I hoped wouldn't set her off again.

"What about your friend's corpse?" I asked quietly.

"If we leave him there, not only will there be an investigation, but the corp may take his death out on his family." Helen hesitated for just a moment, then started off again at a much slower rate than before.

"I already took care of it. I asked Mirage to covertly take control of the investigation and make sure he's taken care of. It's the least I could do." We walked for a minute or so in relative silence.

"Thanks for your support," Helen finally muttered.

"I didn't do it to support you," I denied.

"I did it to keep you focused and on track. But… if it did help you somehow, then you're welcome." Helen just chuckled lightly.

"I forgot how blunt you were. It's nice to work with someone who doesn't use doublespeak or try to over-analyse my every word, looking for lies again. It feels nice to work with someone simple again."

"I take it back, and I hate you," I grumbled as we slowly made our way back towards the populated part of the district once again.