🛠 003 🛠 [Encoded]

[xrater]

[Alia appears on the video. She's in a bathroom, wearing a low-cut red dress and wiping make-up off of her face with the steaming hot water in the sink. When she speaks, though, it's all business.]

So, I've done some poking around. Jorgmund employs multiple wireless networks, some with secret nodes, and different security features for each. I guess that they don't want the sanitation crew using up all of the bandwidth that the President would be using.

I'm dispersing my findings via a briefing document hosted on my robot network to reduce load on Lone Star's network. Each of you gets one copy that will delete itself after you've read through it once, so remember at least part of it. Just scroll to the bottom or restart your comm unit to purge. Some of this comes from gossip I've overheard.

[She pauses, then leans in and dabs at a little black speck between her teeth with a paper towel. Peppercorn. Alia continues like she hadn't stopped.]

Others from more solid surfaces. I've seen a few unsecured medical and financial reports and a good bit of security investigations. Some things just required a bit of finger walking, totally unsecured, others were a little more technical work. I'll spare you the explanations.

[It's all done up in a series of quick slides. There's a load of text afterwards, but everything else is either graphs or images, designed to be as easy to understand as possible.

ITEM 1: Murders. The information here is mostly from official sources. There's been at least eight murders being blamed on the redheaded killer. Alia's written one off as being an accident and another as a copycat, but she's also linked this in to sixteen other deaths in the past two years, most of them ruled as accidents, deaths due to Incursions, or suicides. She's even included one that seems to have died of an asthma attack. She's highlighted a pattern: they come in bursts. Three to five victims each time.

No two murders have been committed the same way. Often, extinguished candles are found near the victims. The candles are home made, from fat. Alia doesn't list what kind.

ITEM 2: Every burst targets higher level workers, like she's going up a promotion chart. The first two to four victims are usually executive level workers or secretaries, and then the final one in that spree is someone... minor. Someone Jorgmund wouldn't miss. The final one in the spree almost always comes around two weeks after the first few, and then the killings stop for a few months. It's only the latest one that's gone out of control, but if it follows the same pattern, Alia predicts that it'll end shortly and the killer will go to ground or... whatever happens during her 'rest' periods.

Included in this one is a... actually, fairly detailed map of the Rig. There's still blank chunks missing, but she's charted out a lot of it and highlighted where each person has died. They're, unfortunately, scattered across the Rig, though Alia notes that, according to forensics done at the time, some bodies were moved from an unknown location. No way for her to trace the killer to any specific location from there, but some of them died in very high security locations.

ITEM 3: No physical traces of the killer have ever been found.

ITEM 4: Jorgmund is playing it down to prevent a panic. After the last spree, someone was black-bagged and disappeared, but Alia notes that, in the interrogation video she observed (and decided to leave out), he gave every impression of being innocent, but died in mysterious circumstances that lead to quite a few Security personnel being demoted and a few outright sacked.

The suspect is listed in Alia's list of victims.

ITEM 5: A receipt for services rendered by an exorcist. Notices that gun ownership by executives has increased 300% and private individuals ordering security doors spike with every spree. Only among the executives.

ITEM 6: Gossipy e-mails on cost of benefit analysis on Catra, Dave, Setsuna, Tenten, and Wash. Wash and Dave are mentioned as being solid investments. Setsuna is as well, something about her relationship to a fairy in R&D being the deciding factor in that. Catra and Tenten are down as totally disposable, but Catra's status is in doubt what with the revelation of Adora's new abilities and questions about whatever relationship the two might have.

Alia's findings of fact are brief and easily understood. The mass of paperwork behind them outlining the evidence and how she came up with them aren't. There's a 'skip to the end' button that automatically destroys the file and displays the Met game.]

It goes without saying, nothing interesting on my cameras. After that last recording of Planker, he sat there for 3.7 hours, then went to bed, slept for three hours, woke up, got dressed, and went to work. From the sound of things, we can expect a new obstacle course soon. If you've any questions, I'll try to answer them, but I have work to do in the lab.

Comments

[bringinghopewithme]

Those heartless cogs can invest in new teeth after I knock their old ones out.

[if he weren't already seeing red over Jorgmund's handling of their super murderer, referring to kids .... young adults anyway as disposable would have done it.]

[xrater]

Apparently there's been some marvelous work done in the field of dental glue.

[bringinghopewithme]

I got a friend who'll compensate their loss.

[The Tooth Fairy. He is absolutely talking about the Tooth Fairy.]

Hope they've got good dental insurance, because she won't compensate them much.

[walkingballpit]

That’s a huge data dump for humans.

[ He took his time reading it to try and commit as much as possible to memory, because it's hard to determine what’s important and what’s just weird. He suspects the candles are just weird. ]

When you were going through the records, were there any staff who might’ve been attacked and survived? I mean - guns, security doors, they’re throwing the kitchen sink at her. She can’t be that good - well, bad. You know what I mean.

[xrater]

No.

The only survivors have been among us, largely through chance interruptions and, apparently, sudden manifestation of healing powers we hadn't known about before. Washington should be dead, if she really dropped that much on top of him.

[There's a brief pause. Is this tasteful?]

I am curious as to why she hasn't taken a step towards eliminating those who have slipped away from her in the infirmary. Either she doesn't know they lived or doesn't particularly care about them. I doubt that she considers the risk to be a factor, considering that she sees no problem with carrying out her works just around the corner of the infirmary.

[walkingballpit]

I kind of doubt everyone’s going to have a secondary mutation to save them, and we can’t bank on chance interruptions.

[ It’s not tasteful, but it’s necessary. They’re not debating the “value” of medical treatment for the hires; they’re looking at all the angles because you can’t plan for what you don’t think of. Robbie’s not a planner, but Alia is. ]

Maybe she’s already gotten what she’s after. Serial criminals are after a goal, right? Power in some form. What if the goal isn’t actually death? As long as she’s achieved the goal, she doesn’t need to attack the same people again. She can keep taking targets of opportunity.

[parannoyed]

It didn't heal. It never hurt me in the first place.

[Wash is still a little loopy but a bit more with it now since he's healing up and needs a little less pain medication.]

The explosion and crash knocked me around and pinned me but the fire just tickled and the collision didn't knock me out or even cause a bruise. And somehow I was able to lift the debris off myself when I shouldn't have been able to.

But crawling up the elevator shaft was a nightmare. That I felt. And I had all the other injuries she gave me.

[He scrunches his face in thought.]

I survive a lot of ridiculous things. I wonder if the Stuff changed me to survive only extremes.

[heterochrocatic]

I'm not letting them use me to control Adora.

[ Not again. Not this time. Not when she can stop it. ]

[xrater]

I'm not quite certain you'll have much of a say in the matter, but I thought it might be a good idea to give the two of you a heads up on that in case you could figure something out.

[heterochrocatic]

No. I'm done with being a pawn in someone else's bullshit games. I don't care what they do to me.

[ Because ultimately, she doesn't matter. There's no one in the universe who really gives a damn except Adora and she'd rather die than let herself be used like that. ]

[breq]

They're aware of the problem, but don't know how to solve it.

Although they probably only care because its beginning to affect those at the top.

[xrater]

That's a problem with capitalist dictatorships.

[breq]

A problem with many societies, I think. Even those without tyrants.

video

[parannoyed]

[That's a lot to take in and it's hard to process when he's so out of it. The nurses keep chiding him since he should be resting anyway, especially Special K. But he's spent some time walking around the Infirmary, leaning heavily on his IV stand, since it's good for him to move a little. And he used his spirometer and was a good little very experienced Infirmary patient so she'd finally handed his comm back after snatching it for a while.]

[He zeroes in on the one part.]

Of course they assessed whether or not it was cost effective to keep some of us alive.

[He squints at his copy of the data.]

Judging from the timestamps, my request would've been around when they first got me into pre-op in the surgical suite. While I was bleeding out, they waited for the accounting okay before moving me into surgery.

Charming.

[He pinches the bridge of his nose.]

With the rest of it, it's not shocking they'd have a problem they'd sweep under the rug. That's how soulless bureaucracies like this work.

[He looks very tired all of a sudden. His voice has a slight catch to it that makes his next words sound very personal.] The human cost never matters.

I don't believe in the supernatural so I can't believe I'm saying this but I think we need to focus on the possible connection between that angle and the possible motive. She can heal, she can magically pull any weapon out of nothing, she might have some kind of connection to the Biblical story of the first murder. And she's murdering her way up the ranks.

Who benefits? It's not most of the people up top; clearly they're scared stiff.

video

[fromfryingpantofire]

It almost feels like she's a...manifestation of something in particular.

[He's been thinking about this. A lot. Possibly too much if the smudges under his eyes are to be believed. But this is Sam's bread and butter and he can't just leave it alone. It's like a loose tooth that he should leave alone but keeps prodding.]

Maybe we're going about this the wrong way. I've been thinking that she comes from another world, brought in like us. Maybe even something that wasn't entirely fully formed in her own world.

But what if she isn't? What if she's native to here and has been...summoned, for lack of a better word. It could explain why she's picky about her targets.

[He's writing as he's thinking aloud.]

I wonder if there's anybody who has been benefiting a lot from some of the executives suddenly being killed. A place like this, they'll do their best to promote from the population on the Rig. They can't afford to fly people in, after all.

[credit_not_blame]

Thanks for putting this all together, Alia.

[Stacia doesn't try to memorize anything; instead she skims, looking for information that catches, information with questions attached.]

The pattern's weird. She goes for a few executives -- or people who know their schedules and handle all their stuff -- and then ends on someone the Jorg would probably classify as "unskilled". Could those ones are her "real" targets? Or could killing someone outside the executives/secretaries be what puts her into stand-by mode?

Also, what kind of fat are the candles made out of? Does the Jorg stock candles made from fat? Because that seems weird enough that it might be a clue for the magic nerds. Especially since they called in an exorcist. Where did that visit fall in the murder-calendar? If it was effective even temporarily, it might be worth it to give it a try ourselves...

[xrater]

It was no real trouble, Stacia. It just took time. Mostly the human element.

[There's enough people with good memories involved, Alia included, that she's confident Stacia will find someone who can bring up the facts if needed.]

It's hard to tell. If I were to indulge in the more... fantastic theories, I'd wonder if there was something of the soul involved. As we all know, the higher up the ladder you go, the less of one you have. [She cracks a little smile that fades.] But I really couldn't say.

Human. Hand-crafted, most of the time. And, no, Jorgmund doesn't stock candles made from fat, at least not ones that are... freely available. It anything, however, events have shown that they're prepared for more arcane events.

As for your final question, it happened during the fourth burst of activity, shortly before the final murder of that spree. The exorcist was apparently left in the Livable Zone.

[humandroid]

If anyone has difficulty retaining this information and would like to reference it further, they may be directed to me if needed. I will not forget it.

Are we able to ascertain whether the exorcist performed an exorcism or merely offered a professional consultation? It would seem they were not necessarily useful in either case.

[ Wild. It's too bad there hasn't been a safe opportunity for studying this mysterious "woman in red." A new, unknown life form is worth the interest, but not at these levels of existential threat. ]

Perhaps those resources would have been better applied to medical care for the victims instead.

[googledox]

You're not alone. We should both act as a backup repository for the data. Having redundancies in place in case Alia comes to harm would be a prudent course of action.

All of us are at risk of attack.

[breq]

Whether the exorcism succeeded or not, whether it was real or not, I think the point is more for morale purposes.

I've seen it before, in other cultures. Whether one believes in spirits doesn't matter. What matters is that they do.

[xrater]

I couldn't tell from the data available to me, but I would assume a religious ceremony of some kind took place. It was a big deal, after all.

Of course, it goes without saying that it wasn't useful. Religion has only ever provided a cherry-picked philosophy for humans and Reploids alike.

[Alia's seen too much to believe in any kind of benevolent divine power.]

And that would be the logical choice, but when have corporations ever been perfectly humane, outside of when they're forced to be by an outside power?

[walkingballpit]

Something’s just reminded me - was anyone on that list named Linda?

[xrater]

Mm... No. The Linda from the cake was a secretary in HR. Ended up moving to the Livable Zone due to sudden pregnancy.

Audio

[myagents]

Perhaps the candles near the bodies were part of the exorcism mentioned in the receipts? If there is a ritual significance to these acts, we might want to examine them. While it might not be the case, the fat could be taken from previous victims.

[xrater]

With Tenten, Setsuna, and the guard, there were two lit candles and one recently burnt out.

It seems that previous victims are the most likely explanation, as that attack and the exorcism don't line up.