This was probably not the smartest idea I'd ever had. I tried to think of which things I'd done that were dumber than this, but I was drawing a blank. Admittedly that was only about 5 years of time to draw from, but in that time I think I acted mostly logically.
I hadn't been able to shake Daphne's interview and questions since it occurred this morning, and after working some other cases on higher priority, I had an idea. Now I was looking at the building where Travis truedied. And by that, I mean I physically went to the spot.
I am not a field investigator. Vanessa and Jason were, and even they usually didn't do this sort of thing. But I was suppose to keep quiet about the investigation, and get more details. So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided that meant I should go and check out the building in meatspace. I requisitioned one of the travel auditing kits. They came in a large metallic tube, maybe 13 centimeters in diameter and nearly a meter tall. It had a carrying handle I used when walking, as that was more comfortable than the weird shoulder sling. I think a package magnet grip would be better, but I guessed since the kit was sensitive they didn't want to use that.
The autocab dropped me off a few buildings away, since there were no traversable paths to the entrance. They were just the narrow winding corridors between the residential buildings. Presumably days before, Travis had walked this same corridor. It was a cluttered area, one that didn't get the same amount of cleaning drones as my sector, and was hubward and low, with little air current to move things. Container boxes piled up outside of brushed metal doors, codelocked to keep people out, but not worth enough to put inside the cramped living environments. These were as close to slums as the sprawl had, to my knowledge.
It was a place where less Corp interaction occurred, so less Federation happened. Most of the people living here were probably transplants from another sprawl who got the short stick, or they were non-corp citizens in need of housing or on long work rotations without Corp backing. Some were non-federation integrants, people from the frags who wanted to be brought back into the fold, but had to fight through bureaucracy first.
Since they were low value and low priority areas, it was little shock that they only had DNA marker scanners active in this area. No imaging devices or disturbance trackers. These trackers weren't even aligned to triangulate, either. It was more for tallying up the people who traversed the area. More like a bare minimum appeasement of some regulation than part of the normal sprawl monitoring systems.
Tracking my own movements from the Autocab to the building helped me assess what sensors would have been seen. After wandering a few of the corridors, I found that there was only one path from the last sensor tagged by Travis to the place of death.
I finally walked into the building and found, as I feared, they had already restored and replaced everything inside. The hidden room had been removed for storage. A cursory scan with the device yielded nothing useful. Some residents passed me and gave me a wary eye, but most ignored me once they saw the investigation badge and equipment. After the initial battery of tests, I packed up the instrument. There was nothing to be found here that wasn't already noted.
But I had another thought. I walked back to where I could hail the autocab, and spent a few minutes tapped into Novost resources scouring for similar floor plans. These fabricated buildings hubward weren't likely to be unique architectures. There may be dozens of this exact same model. At least 3 of them came up as being the same build type, but much like this one, no current floor layout was recorded. I checked if any had minimal sensors, and set my destination as the closest that met my criteria.
~~~
86-12 NNW sector held a dingy apartment block called The Heavenly Greens. Dust and debris cluttered the edges of the walkways and door frames, and there were signs of disrepair on the buildings. This was clearly a worse area than where Travis was meeting, and I decided to start recording my surroundings, in case something unfortunate happened. I'd never found a place of Epsilon sprawl that was disconcerting until stepping into this alley. I'd heard rumors of gangs and other syndicates within the sprawl, but this was the stereotyped area it would be in, if movies meant anything.
Of course, I was also standing here in Novost gear, holding an investigation kit. So I was also hoping I was right. I set my head unit to record what I saw, and tapped into the sensors in the nearby radius. Just DNA and a few movement trackers. At least if a battalion of armed mercenaries descended on me, I'd have a few minutes to react. I found the building shape I was looking for, and used my investigation override to get in the door. It was all audited, but there was at least a 48 hour window before anyone came asking me questions.
My breath caught a little. Ahead of me was a thin corridor, which then turned to go down the main hallway of the unit. Based off this layout, it may still have that service closet behind the wall. I set up the investigation kit, and scanned for the entry pad. I hadn't realized how nervous I would be while I waited to see if this was the same or not. The glasses showed me the progress, and provided the overlay of the foyer and architecture. Initial sensor sweeps were highlighting the walls and frames, then surface penetrating scans swept the room, a soft hum grew from inside the tube, which was now splayed open on a tripod base. Visual queues updated, and I saw the outline of a door, hidden in the wall. My breath caught in my throat. If this was another deal room, there could be something happening right now. I looked about nervously, but the area was empty. It was the middle of first shift for the city, and I guessed most of the people here didn't linger about unless they had to. I changed the scan order and called up thermal imaging next, to see if there were any bodies in the room.
Various service pipes illuminated in the walls and floors, but nothing humanoid appeared in the room. From the scans, it looked like the only thing in the room was a table. Not even chairs to go along with it. Whether it was bravery or curiosity, I'm not sure, but I decided I had to see inside that room. There could be information there invisible to the scans that would shed much needed light on this case. So I called up the scans, pieced together the data, and found a likely spot for the controller interface. Just next to the door outline was a pressure pad, with some key entry system. Thermals showed nothing useful about the pad, so I decided to give in and tap the pad. Nothing happened at first, nothing to show it wasn't just a piece of the wall. I tapped a few more times, and then a faint numeric keypad appeared. Zero through nine, in a 2x5 horizontal grid. There was a large number of permutations if it was a 4 key combination, and even more if it was arbitrary length.
But the good news is that humans are lazy creatures, so I tried the simple patterns.
0-1-2-3-4? Nothing. 5-6-7-8-9? Nothing. 9-8-7-6-5-4... and with a click, the edges of the door revealed themselves and recessed faintly. I cautiously pushed it opened, expecting sirens or explosions, or any number of horrible events. But the door swung noiselessly inward. Not even a pocket door, but a hinged door! A rarity around here.
I folded up the scanner, and stepped into the room, checking the back of the door and found a simple metal rail on the back side that looked to act as the opening mechanism. If I got trapped, at least there was signal and I could call for backup. I'd have to explain how I got in such a ridiculous predicament, but I suspected if I said it was for the PATs all would be forgiven. That was my hope, anyway.
I pushed the door shut, gingerly. Waiting again for explosions or Klaxon horns. When nothing happened, I surveyed the room. It was empty, save for a simple fabricated table. Nothing on the walls of interest, no signs of contraband or illegal items. Just some basic lighting along the ceiling.
No, that's not true, I thought. There was clearly some sound dampening in this room. Something here prevented external sound from bleeding in. I'd guess it was a dampener material in the walls. Maybe the previous report had something about that, but it didn't strike me as familiar. Now I wondered if it was shielded by something. maybe my IR scan was a false readout.
I propped up the field kit again, this time next to the table. I didn't trust the table just yet, so I avoided touching it. I'd let the scan tell me if it was safe or not. After extending the tripod and initiating scans, I found the room was a little less spartan than I thought. The table had embedded electronics, and the walls contained extra sensors and equipment for scrambling external readings. I saw now that the room was warmer than external scans showed, and now everything beyond this room was opaque to me.
I'm starting to think these aren't transaction rooms, but interrogation rooms. I tried my comms, and found that I was still able to reach the outside world. Maybe it required something be activated to get it into full lockdown mode? I checked the handle on the door. It didn't immediately open, and I started to panic. The door shimmered, and a vague outline of the exterior hall appeared. A hunched figured was walking down the corridor, headed for the exit. There was a red light near the handle, where my hand rested. I watched, and after he stepped outside and the door behind him shut, the light went green, and the exterior feed died. The door clicked open smoothly. I checked the hall, found it empty, and shut the door again.
At least now I had an explanation for why these weren't located before. It's not perfect secrecy, but it's a lot more effort than most people would put into units in this area.
I tapped back into the kit, to check it's scans. Nothing in here stood out as specifically dangerous. Even the small implants in the walls were just for deflection and hiding. Nothing analyzed as explosive. I tapped the table, but nothing happened. Unlike the door, it looked like this required some type of near-field authentication. The kit didn't provide anything interesting. It did it's initial scan of the connections but found nothing open. The table was locked. This would be the point where some more specific teams could start to dig in and assess it.
Though this building wasn't Novost property, to my knowledge. So maybe the PATs would have to be the ones to assess and bag it. I folded up the kit, and labeled some of my review of the room. I should probably send it to Daphne now, but I wanted to take it back to my workstation and review it first. See if there was anything of interest before the PAT stepped in and took away my data.
I folded up the gear and had just put my hand on the kit when the door swung open. A gangly man, with subdermal piercings resembling horns above his eyes stepped in. He and I exchanged bewildered looks, assessing each other. While he looked at my Novost uniform, I looked over his pleather bouncer suit, white tie with shifting symbols flowing across it, and dermal tattoos lining his jaw and leading up to the horns, before disappearing beneath his neon purple dreadlocks.
When the shock wore off, his expression darkened, and he twisted his right arm behind his jacked to grab the handle of some weapon. Adrenaline kicked in, and I rushed forward, pinching him in the doorway. It pinned his arm long enough for me to swap my grip on the kit, now wielding it like a club. He pushed the door open, bringing out a deep grey pistol shape, simplistic outer cowling that hid whatever type it was. I cracked the kit into his gun elbow, making him wince. He was already grabbing for my arm with his free hand, and I felt him clamp on to my upper right shoulder.
I replanted my foot, spinning my shoulder away from him which pulled him off balance and over my center of gravity. Using the kit as leverage, I put my other hand at the bottom and pushed across his chest, checking him into the other side of the doorway. This time his head made solid contact with the metal frame, jarring him enough to knock the gun loose. I kicked it away, and dropped just slightly downward before punching him in the kidney. The quick reflex took me out of his recovering grip and attempted bear hug. Sensing an opening, I pushed the kit against the side of his jaw and quickly kneed it from below, sending a sharp impact into the hinge and knocking him out. I dropped his lump body to the ground, breathing heavily.
My enhanced endocrine system providing the energy and adrenaline for me to check the hall for others, pulling up scans of how this guy could have gotten so close without me noticing, when I realized he wasn't appearing on any of the DNA tagging machines either. I scooped up the pistol and pulled the body into the room. This was a untagged person! My adrenaline flood stopped, and I wobbled on my legs, shooting out a hand to grab the wall and steady myself.
There lay a person who knew about these rooms, still alive, if bruised and unconscious, and I had just somehow managed to defeat him in hand-to-hand combat. How did I know how to do that? Was he-I combat trained?
I looked over the gun. I'd never seen one of these before, that I remembered. Aside from some basic training at Novost, weapons were new to me. I looked at the pistol, the unconscious man, and the room.
It was time to call Daphne.
But I had another thought. I walked back to where I could hail the autocab, and spent a few minutes tapped into Novost resources scouring for similar floor plans. These fabricated buildings hubward weren't likely to be unique architectures. There may be dozens of this exact same model. At least 3 of them came up as being the same build type, but much like this one, no current floor layout was recorded. I checked if any had minimal sensors, and set my destination as the closest that met my criteria.
~~~
86-12 NNW sector held a dingy apartment block called The Heavenly Greens. Dust and debris cluttered the edges of the walkways and door frames, and there were signs of disrepair on the buildings. This was clearly a worse area than where Travis was meeting, and I decided to start recording my surroundings, in case something unfortunate happened. I'd never found a place of Epsilon sprawl that was disconcerting until stepping into this alley. I'd heard rumors of gangs and other syndicates within the sprawl, but this was the stereotyped area it would be in, if movies meant anything.
Of course, I was also standing here in Novost gear, holding an investigation kit. So I was also hoping I was right. I set my head unit to record what I saw, and tapped into the sensors in the nearby radius. Just DNA and a few movement trackers. At least if a battalion of armed mercenaries descended on me, I'd have a few minutes to react. I found the building shape I was looking for, and used my investigation override to get in the door. It was all audited, but there was at least a 48 hour window before anyone came asking me questions.
My breath caught a little. Ahead of me was a thin corridor, which then turned to go down the main hallway of the unit. Based off this layout, it may still have that service closet behind the wall. I set up the investigation kit, and scanned for the entry pad. I hadn't realized how nervous I would be while I waited to see if this was the same or not. The glasses showed me the progress, and provided the overlay of the foyer and architecture. Initial sensor sweeps were highlighting the walls and frames, then surface penetrating scans swept the room, a soft hum grew from inside the tube, which was now splayed open on a tripod base. Visual queues updated, and I saw the outline of a door, hidden in the wall. My breath caught in my throat. If this was another deal room, there could be something happening right now. I looked about nervously, but the area was empty. It was the middle of first shift for the city, and I guessed most of the people here didn't linger about unless they had to. I changed the scan order and called up thermal imaging next, to see if there were any bodies in the room.
Various service pipes illuminated in the walls and floors, but nothing humanoid appeared in the room. From the scans, it looked like the only thing in the room was a table. Not even chairs to go along with it. Whether it was bravery or curiosity, I'm not sure, but I decided I had to see inside that room. There could be information there invisible to the scans that would shed much needed light on this case. So I called up the scans, pieced together the data, and found a likely spot for the controller interface. Just next to the door outline was a pressure pad, with some key entry system. Thermals showed nothing useful about the pad, so I decided to give in and tap the pad. Nothing happened at first, nothing to show it wasn't just a piece of the wall. I tapped a few more times, and then a faint numeric keypad appeared. Zero through nine, in a 2x5 horizontal grid. There was a large number of permutations if it was a 4 key combination, and even more if it was arbitrary length.
But the good news is that humans are lazy creatures, so I tried the simple patterns.
0-1-2-3-4? Nothing. 5-6-7-8-9? Nothing. 9-8-7-6-5-4... and with a click, the edges of the door revealed themselves and recessed faintly. I cautiously pushed it opened, expecting sirens or explosions, or any number of horrible events. But the door swung noiselessly inward. Not even a pocket door, but a hinged door! A rarity around here.
I folded up the scanner, and stepped into the room, checking the back of the door and found a simple metal rail on the back side that looked to act as the opening mechanism. If I got trapped, at least there was signal and I could call for backup. I'd have to explain how I got in such a ridiculous predicament, but I suspected if I said it was for the PATs all would be forgiven. That was my hope, anyway.
I pushed the door shut, gingerly. Waiting again for explosions or Klaxon horns. When nothing happened, I surveyed the room. It was empty, save for a simple fabricated table. Nothing on the walls of interest, no signs of contraband or illegal items. Just some basic lighting along the ceiling.
No, that's not true, I thought. There was clearly some sound dampening in this room. Something here prevented external sound from bleeding in. I'd guess it was a dampener material in the walls. Maybe the previous report had something about that, but it didn't strike me as familiar. Now I wondered if it was shielded by something. maybe my IR scan was a false readout.
I propped up the field kit again, this time next to the table. I didn't trust the table just yet, so I avoided touching it. I'd let the scan tell me if it was safe or not. After extending the tripod and initiating scans, I found the room was a little less spartan than I thought. The table had embedded electronics, and the walls contained extra sensors and equipment for scrambling external readings. I saw now that the room was warmer than external scans showed, and now everything beyond this room was opaque to me.
I'm starting to think these aren't transaction rooms, but interrogation rooms. I tried my comms, and found that I was still able to reach the outside world. Maybe it required something be activated to get it into full lockdown mode? I checked the handle on the door. It didn't immediately open, and I started to panic. The door shimmered, and a vague outline of the exterior hall appeared. A hunched figured was walking down the corridor, headed for the exit. There was a red light near the handle, where my hand rested. I watched, and after he stepped outside and the door behind him shut, the light went green, and the exterior feed died. The door clicked open smoothly. I checked the hall, found it empty, and shut the door again.
At least now I had an explanation for why these weren't located before. It's not perfect secrecy, but it's a lot more effort than most people would put into units in this area.
I tapped back into the kit, to check it's scans. Nothing in here stood out as specifically dangerous. Even the small implants in the walls were just for deflection and hiding. Nothing analyzed as explosive. I tapped the table, but nothing happened. Unlike the door, it looked like this required some type of near-field authentication. The kit didn't provide anything interesting. It did it's initial scan of the connections but found nothing open. The table was locked. This would be the point where some more specific teams could start to dig in and assess it.
Though this building wasn't Novost property, to my knowledge. So maybe the PATs would have to be the ones to assess and bag it. I folded up the kit, and labeled some of my review of the room. I should probably send it to Daphne now, but I wanted to take it back to my workstation and review it first. See if there was anything of interest before the PAT stepped in and took away my data.
I folded up the gear and had just put my hand on the kit when the door swung open. A gangly man, with subdermal piercings resembling horns above his eyes stepped in. He and I exchanged bewildered looks, assessing each other. While he looked at my Novost uniform, I looked over his pleather bouncer suit, white tie with shifting symbols flowing across it, and dermal tattoos lining his jaw and leading up to the horns, before disappearing beneath his neon purple dreadlocks.
When the shock wore off, his expression darkened, and he twisted his right arm behind his jacked to grab the handle of some weapon. Adrenaline kicked in, and I rushed forward, pinching him in the doorway. It pinned his arm long enough for me to swap my grip on the kit, now wielding it like a club. He pushed the door open, bringing out a deep grey pistol shape, simplistic outer cowling that hid whatever type it was. I cracked the kit into his gun elbow, making him wince. He was already grabbing for my arm with his free hand, and I felt him clamp on to my upper right shoulder.
I replanted my foot, spinning my shoulder away from him which pulled him off balance and over my center of gravity. Using the kit as leverage, I put my other hand at the bottom and pushed across his chest, checking him into the other side of the doorway. This time his head made solid contact with the metal frame, jarring him enough to knock the gun loose. I kicked it away, and dropped just slightly downward before punching him in the kidney. The quick reflex took me out of his recovering grip and attempted bear hug. Sensing an opening, I pushed the kit against the side of his jaw and quickly kneed it from below, sending a sharp impact into the hinge and knocking him out. I dropped his lump body to the ground, breathing heavily.
My enhanced endocrine system providing the energy and adrenaline for me to check the hall for others, pulling up scans of how this guy could have gotten so close without me noticing, when I realized he wasn't appearing on any of the DNA tagging machines either. I scooped up the pistol and pulled the body into the room. This was a untagged person! My adrenaline flood stopped, and I wobbled on my legs, shooting out a hand to grab the wall and steady myself.
There lay a person who knew about these rooms, still alive, if bruised and unconscious, and I had just somehow managed to defeat him in hand-to-hand combat. How did I know how to do that? Was he-I combat trained?
I looked over the gun. I'd never seen one of these before, that I remembered. Aside from some basic training at Novost, weapons were new to me. I looked at the pistol, the unconscious man, and the room.
It was time to call Daphne.
