@leo.fitz

[retravel]

Hi everyone,

It's time again for the irregularly scheduled update on the shadowy conspiracies surrounding our spacetime displacement.

If you don't already know me, I'm Leo Fitz, one of the arrivals from the first transport. Prior to being here, I was an engineering and technology operative at SHIELD, an American extra-governmental military counter-terrorism and intelligence agency. Myself and several others have been investigating the circumstances of the fire and the nurse's death, with the generous aid of Gaby, El, and Morningstar's contacts.

Debris samples from the apartment site collected by Kylo (@kylo.ren) and I contained the expected signs of fire damage as well as a significant oddity: Residue left by an organic material. While the residue was too insubstantial and damaged for a full chemical analysis, it showed matching markers to the samples of the smaller creatures of unknown origin (designated 084s), previously tested by Kylo through Morningstar.

At great personal risk, Katelin (@katelin.philips) and Marcos (@marcos.diaz) also questioned the morgue attendants. In doing so, we learned the following information:

1. Our nurse suffered blunt force head trauma, noted as his cause of death prior to the fire reaching his body. Such an injury occurs most often by accident, as in the case of a car crash, or when an object is used to bludgeon the skull, as in the event of a homicide.

2. I'm inclined to classify this cause of death as suspicious, and it seems the local authorities agree, with a group of individuals in possession of NAFD Forensics identification having carted off the corpse before we arrived. Additionally, records of the nurse's collection and autopsy have been scrubbed, much to our morgue attendants' surprise and alarm.

Further investigation shows that all of the nurse's data has been wiped, as if he never existed in the first place.

Maybe this only confirms our suspicions of foul play and establishes a concrete link between the fire and the creatures. To me, it guarantees that we are dealing with an organization capable of using, coercing, and erasing individuals, even those who have proven useful to them in the past. Everything we do in pursuit of answers is a risk, so please be careful as we work together to solve this.

— Fitz

Comments

[retravel]

[ oh, the smart boy. ]

We have a physical description: Male, tall, dark-skinned, hazel eyes, short hair, five o'clock shadow. Might be worth having a sketch drawn up, actually (@markus.manfred).

His apartment building was owned by AJJ Holdings, a real estate company that specialises in mid-to-high range apartments in New Amsterdam. Most occupants have cushy jobs and higher salaries, so our nurse or his backers had the funds to foot the bill.

AJJ has no records of his recent rent payments, his rental application, or anything, for that matter. They were pretty unsettled when they realised there was a gap in their data and preferred to believe I'd made an error, suggesting that the man was never a tenant in the first place.

[batricide]

[ Fantastic. ]

A friend or a family member may have filed a missing persons report, though I suspect if they were this thorough then they'd either not allow it to be published or have erased anyone who would have missed him well before this point.

Is the company itself owned by any larger corporations?

[retravel]

Appears to be what it says on the tin, unfortunately. All real estate. Always worth a second pair of sharp eyes looking into it, though.

@connor.resnik

[cyberlife]

Excuse me for interrupting, but I could look into AJJ Holdings' head office. If that's a lead our team would like to pursue.

My work as a safety officer often involves housing developments and other real estate dealings. I've provided security consultations for managers and supervisors of several apartment buildings in my branch's neighbouring districts and could... correct the paperwork on their yearly inspections.

It could get me a meeting with them.

[batricide]

With how little we have to go on every possible lead is worth pursuing.

[cyberlife]

I agree. Even something insignificant may eventually develop into something dangerous.

I'll share my findings when my mission is complete.

[retravel]

Be careful. Ensure someone's on call and actively monitoring your location.
That's standard protocol, even if it seems like a small job.

[ oh, we're doing this now. alexa play the shield theme. ]

@markus.manfred

[saviorexe]

I’ll do what I can, with what I have to work with.

[It isn’t much. This falls under the realm of being a police sketch artist, reliant upon secondhand accounts and personal description to create something one only hopes is accurate.

Not that Markus isn’t immediately on board with trying.

And yet, this wayward thought provokes something else.]

Digital footprints and identity having disappeared, there must be someone out there missing this man. Family, friends. Passing acquaintances.

Or at least evidence, somewhere, of the same misfortune happening to them.

[If we want to be dark about it. But no man is an island; surely not even this omnipresent force at work can erase every single trail they’ve left.]

[batricide]

It's worth looking into, but I wouldn't hold my breath. They clearly have no issue with killing bystanders in their effort to keep this is under wraps.

[ You work in a shadowy organization you sign on to see everyone you know and love die if you fall short. ]

The message that went out mentioned he saluted a camera and facial recognition was run. Surely they must have gotten a name and saved something. Surely Morningstar can't be that inept.

[retravel]

Oi, slow down there. El does fine work for Morningstar and got us this data even as it was being deleted. Ze then sent it straight out to us, even those who haven't expressed any interest in joining up to the cause. That's not nothing, Hafid.

[ this is a post for TEAMWORK ]

[batricide]

I didn't say it wasn't.

[ casually insulting people is praise didn't u know that ]

[retravel]

[ in this house, we stan tech monkeys ]

Then we're sorted.

[saviorexe]

You're right, but I don't like leaving potential leads hanging, even if they're just dead ends. That being said, this is a line of questioning that we need to be very careful pursuing if we choose to do so. I don't want to turn the wrong heads.

[As for ineptitude. Well.]

All I was provided with was a physical description from this aforementioned salute. El managed to garner a location from a facial recognition scan, which led us to the apartments, but any information supplementing that was being wiped in real-time.

[batricide]

There's a very high chance that looking into this could get innocent people killed. No matter how careful we are. I have nothing against pursuing it if that is all we have, but if there are surviving family members then they're likely to be monitored.

[ He has opinions about that potentially being all they have on the enemy - but then again, he has opinions about everything. Most of them negative. ]

If they didn't save it then they had better have a damn good memory.

[saviorexe]

So you'd suggest we leave it?

[This is a legitimate question. Markus is absolutely the last android who wants innocent blood on his hands; always maintaining balance between risk versus reward is tricky business, and he'd not make a move without the consideration of others. Untended to leads notwithstanding.]

I'm sure if there was more information Morningstar possessed, they would've shared it with us well before now.

[batricide]

No.

[ But maybe they should. For the sake of those people. But he's been playing the numbers game for a while now. ]

I just suggest being prepared to bring them into protective custody the second we make contact.

@mei.zhou

[frostedplum]

Didn't El have video footage of the nurse looking into a camera? If there was a way to save a copy, then Morningstar might still have it. It sounds like everything else has been erased.

[saviorexe]

There may be. But secondhand descriptions can account for details that the security footage may or may not have registered.

[But there’s also more room for error. A bit of give and take.]

Regardless, it wouldn’t hurt.

[frostedplum]

I suppose so. But once you draw a sketch, what are you going to do with it?

[saviorexe]

Share it with others, or if what’s being discussed elsewhere comes to fruition, use it in a bid to find those who might be connected with him. Something to spark recognition.

Either way, it’s a harmless suggestion. I don’t see why I shouldn’t try.

@bellamy.blake

[deployed]

We should look at neighbors. Other people who lived in the building.

Maybe someone there saw something potentially useful to us, depending on how long he lived there and how observant his neighbors were.

[saviorexe]

I did question the neighbors the last time I went digging for answers.

I was provided with little more than a physical description, which you’ve seen mentioned here. Other than that? Dead ends.

[deployed]

I'd have thought he was friendly with at least one person in that building.

Unless that's part of their job. Keep to themselves, don't get attached to people. It'll make our attempts that much harder.

[retravel]

Organisations interested in human experimentation and homicide tend to keep it in the family, so to speak. And they often target isolated individuals for recruitment.

[saviorexe]

That’s a possibility. But that would make his “salute” something of an anomaly, wouldn’t it?

[Out of character and reckless, so to speak.]

Not that this helps us one way or another. There’s always the option of going back and focusing on the apartment with the monster carcasses, if we want to take this down a different path.