🛠 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.]

[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.

[heterochrocatic]

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

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

[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.

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.

[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...

[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.

[walkingballpit]

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

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.