@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]

[ hey siri why does god allow suffering

with a sigh, his delivery slows, a measure of delicacy returning to him. it doesn't help that none of them are skilled enough to hack the foreign systems here, taking yet another of daisy's earned skills, like her deft handling of her powers. ]

You weren't answering my messages at the time, and that query wipe was public information from El's broadcast, [ a pause as he lifts one hand. ] though we didn't know the extent of it until now, I suppose.

[ "sorry" ]

[evite]

[ she's still bitter and sore about the slow climb to regain competency in l33t hacking. she practices and learns every chance she get, but it's not fast enough progress for her own preferences. not even close. ]

Erasing someone's public records is one thing. Erasing their history with connecting companies is another thing altogether. Even here, that's going to take a specialist, or somebody on the inside.

[ apology not accepted... but that doesn't matter. she can kick his ass in a boxing ring later. right now, it's all about the mission. ]

Rent is digital now. Even if the housing company doesn't have record of the payments, the banks should. Bobbi's a better actress than me, do you think she could call and pose as a holdings rep? Verifying the transactions to confirm the name?

[ they need that name to start with. ]

[retravel]

[ he shrugs his shoulders, fortunate that his injuries have finally cleared up enough that he doesn't wince while doing so. ]

I agree with you. [ their opposition has resources and skillsets in every discipline, it seems. ] Don't have a name, though. And all bank accounts match with a neural ID, so given that the original ID remains both unknown and has since been erased, there's nothing there, either. Don't have a payment method or transactions.

[ a snap of his fingers. ]

Nothing to trace.

[evite]

Maybe. [ but she's not buying it. ] Maybe on the front end, they do. But on the back end, it's probably still all binary code. It's been a few centuries, but why reinvent the wheel, you know?

[ neural identification might serve as the replacement for damn near everything, but she doubts companies list their end users by their given names. way too much opportunity for someone slick to place a false front for verification that way. ]

How much do you think that apartment goes for? Might be worth trying that angle — [ she affects a prim accent: ] This is Sally from AJJ Holdings calling to verify a transaction in the amount of [ vague gestures ]. Our records show your routing number, but seem to be missing the name of the renter, can you verify?

[ she feels very much out of her depth, but... she has to try. ]

[retravel]

[ in fitz's estimation, everything has been wiped except the physical evidence, which was snatched up by the NAFD or a group of people posing as them, at least.

his tone shifts, weightier. ]

There's no anonymous calling here, Daisy. [ which is part of why he didn't tell anyone when he was reaching out to the real estate agency and the morgue. now @leo.fitz is on record, looking into these topics like a questionable google search history. ] Anything we do is attached to our legal identities. [ be careful, an echo of how he finished his post. ]

[ still, he shoots her an encrypted file of his notes from the call, containing the same information that he told Damian: Average rent, salaries, and jobs of the tenants. mid to high end across the board. ]

[evite]

[ the sigh is deep, but not melodramatic. an exhale of disappointment — not at fitz, not at the dead end, but at her own lack of usefulness. she knows, logically speaking, that there's no sense of anonymity. there's no hacking into a session or posing as someone else; the nanosecond verification is required, the gig is up and she's in over her head.

she feels, above all: utterly useless. dead weight. a smart man might toss her overboard in the hopes that others might live. ]

You're right. [ as loath as she is to admit it. ] I know.

[ her posture shifts, body sinking into the corner of the couch in defeat; a holoscreen is pulled up, but not with notes to view or add to. it's a game, futuristic tetris, the kind of game daisy back home would have called mind-numbing. the kind jemma might have said was refreshingly zen. ]

Sorry for interrupting your pow-wow.

[retravel]

[ in the same moment, he sighs, equally at a loss for how to proceed in a situation where he can't rig up a solution. he and bobbi have come to the conclusion that the "old school" approach, with a dash of their new powers, is the only way forward. it's hard.

'course he's still miffed that she brushed over all the effort he put into this project with a quip about his name, even if she doesn't know why he so resolutely prefers "fitz" these days. even "leo," his father's son, is better than leopold, the doctor — but daisy lets him be right and sinks down, activating his instinct to chase her. ]

You probably made it more interesting for everyone.

[ he clasps the back of the sofa and leans over, peering down at her. ]

Getting a bit trite with all our network lectures, aren't we?

[evite]

[ when you get used to be able to brute force your way through problems — whether electronically or physically — having to go back to the old school method is like losing a limb. at least bobbi and fitz went through actual training. ]

Interesting's not the same as useful, though. [ a piece slots into place, and the entire board clears. you'd think she'd be proud. ] You're actually, like. Making things happen. You all are.

[ bored of the game she's only been playing a minute, daisy lazily sweeps a hand through her field of vision to close the application; once cleared, her head drops back against the back of the couch, eyes closing. ]

You've always been the best, you know? [ a pause, poignant and sad. that's why ward hated you, she almost says, but thinks better of it at the last second. ] No wonder the mystery machine dragged you here.

[retravel]

[ did ward hate him, or did he want a piece of fitz's life, perhaps even the whole of it, coloured by empathy long before this world made him glow blue? fitz thinks that might be what ophelia desired. wouldn't surprise him if the same was true for a great many of their adversaries.

her words make him still, fingers curling tight into the fabric of the sofa. the best, she says, like it's that simple, dragged here by the cosmos to solve the mystery with his cleverness. he thinks of robin, her little hand brushing over his own, you have to save them. her prophecy, that if there is to be a future at all, fitz needs to rescue his friends — that he's the only one who can. his mouth curves downward. another flickering memory, of jemma holding his hand, eyes sad but smile fond, as daisy tried to change the timeline.

maybe some things are inevitable. maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe — ]

Maybe you need to go back to basics, same as me and Bobbi. [ a soft utterance. rewind is the watchword. ] Only you had a different start.

[ don't do it the SHIELD way; do it the daisy way, well, the skye way. ]

[evite]

[ she opens her mouth to refute — there is no "same as" — but fitz cuts her off, effectively cancelling out her argument with his own follow-up. different start's a bit of an understatement. ]

Yeah, no kidding.

[ but he means well. he isn't ribbing her for her lack of formal education (fitz and jemma both had postdoctorates to their name; skye had dropped out of high school at the first available opportunity), he's just pointing out a fact. her start had been different by design. not knowing who she was, not having the answers laid out at her feet — she'd demanded answers then, and had dove headfirst into the only path that promised them.

rising tide had been the only window into a world she had no access to. maybe fitz was right. maybe she wasn't skye anymore, but maybe daisy johnson could find a window too. dive headfirst into whatever avenue might be willing to give them answers. ]

That's not a bad idea, though. Find the light coming through the cracks. I'll look into it.