Summary:Skye and a Rising Tide colleague tag team investigate a vile double Murder in Canada, and finds some leads closer to home. Log Info:Storyteller: Hank-McCoy |
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Poor Daisy, she FINALLY got to nap — all bundled against the cold and then a fairly obtrusive alert sound from one of her laptops lets her know she's just gotten pinged by one of her Rising Tide sources. The weather is a bit chill, the spot she's parked in thankfully a little less so due to being an abandoned parking structure near the disaster zone. Regardless, when Cory wakes and gets unbundled she'd find a broadcast message, highly encrypted even over their own secure network, from one of her main sources in Rising Tide, a person (gender being difficult to assess) with the handle 'Maestro', because hacker types rarely have large egos! The message downloads as follows:
- Bio-weapon attack in Montreal killed only 2 of 217 people exposed.
- CEO Vincent Marchez, and his Daughter Hannah Marchez.
- Attack was launched by winged people.
- Need your help Skye.
A rare admission that! Maestro is actually very good, and very proud.
Waking up to an alarm clock is one thing. Waking up to the sound of an infrequently used alarm set specifically for 'official Rising Tide matters' is something completely different. Skye awakens with a start, an arm flopping about and automatically reaching for her primary phone only for it to get knocked off of the stool and rattle to the floor. The stool very nearly comes to fall on top of her, too.
"Ah- -jeez! Hang on hang on hang on- -"
The stool gets dragged into place and a sleepy and chilly hackerette hunkers down in front of the screen, one hand keeping the blanket pinned around her while the other goes to man the helm.
What's waiting for her is most unexpected. Maestro may as well be untouchable in this scene. She still has no idea what country they're coming from. To have gotten a direct ping from them, and one so encrypted, is -super- unlikely to happen.
Perhaps even more surprising is the message, itself. It takes a moment to process but it doesn't take long to formulate a response.
- On it.
- Targeted attack with fallout like the Litvinenko assassination?
She has to retype that word a couple of times before it looks correct.
- Any details on Marchez family?
- Winged people??
There's going to be a lot of angles to search but it all begins with looking for anything official. Then comes the backtracking and the dirt-digging.
Even more amazing - he or she, Maestro is live, he's chatting real-time over that super encrypted download. First time that's happened!
- Negative - bio-weapon, not nuclear.
- Preliminary exam deets scarce, possible heavy metals, but not 'hot'.
- Office building, 217 people confirmed exposed.
- 2 Deaths.
- Marchez Family - industrialists, some ties to Canadian military.
- Never on our radar until tonight, attack only 7 hours ago.
- Commando style raid, five winged peeps, three female.
- One server crashed, hard drive missing. Presumably a data raid.
- They flooded entire building with some sort of 'bio-phage', only two deaths.
- Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Blink. Okay… -Wow.- This is definitely big.
- Well equipped. Black ops?
- Bio-phage??
- Confirmed use of metahuman assets. Worth checking database.
- Will dig into office CC records ASAP, if anything's left I'll find it.
- Beginning hunt.
Skye knows the city. The office in question should be easily located by looking up the Marchez name. There may be multiple buildings involved but after an attack like this the odd one out should stick out like a sore thumb. Then comes the fun part of trying to isolate a path to their local network. Chances seem likely they'll have had ample security cameras there. Money -had- to have been a factor given the resources used on the attack itself.
If she can get some hard evidence of who or -what- had invaded the office it'll be a good start.
Chilled fingers are briskly rubbed together as she drills at the keyboard. As soon as a connection is discovered she'll send a copy of the IP address back to Maestro.
- I'm in. If server online should show a gap somewhere.
The 'bio-phage' detail keeps rolling around in the back of her head. How did Maestro come up with a name for what was used in the attack..? Do they know something Sky doesn't know?
Maestro's replies come quickly, and Skye is no doubt right to be concerned. Still, he's been quite reliable in the past, and is a member in good standing for several years in Rising Tide.
- Exotic armor, hawk-like helms, golden armor, melee weapons and some shields.
- Gold Ops? :D
- Bio-phage, term from report I intercepted.
- Sounds balls nasty.
- Copy. AFK for bio.
Daisy's hunt to the Montreal grid, and then wending her way through the various layers of firewalls and other such takes about a half hour.
- Back.
- Searching winged folk on my end.
And then she gets in. There are indeed video feeds of the attack. The people in the digital recordings are very powerful physical specimens. They're wearing armor that's form fitting and made of a golden metal and they all sport hawk visaged helms. They're armed with several types of -melee- weapons - the lead woman wielding a golden mace, her two 'sisters' armed with short swords much like a Roman Gladius, and the two men are much burlier, armed with spears and round shields.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot indeed!
One security guard is taken out by one of the spearmen, though he survived the attack but is in critical condition. He shot one of the burly men - the bullet stopped cold by the shield.
"What on Earth..?" Skye mutters to herself while squinting and leaning in even closer to watch the videos. Automatically a hand reaches out for a mug which is always at the side of the desk to take a drink of what should have been hot tea. That it's gone quite cold is only acknowledged by a momentary grimace before she goes and takes another sip.
- Potential ties to Asgardians??
They're tough. Fast. Powerful. Using melee weapons. But the gold is what really gives her pause. Not many people rock gold, let alone an entire strike team. Another laptop gets pressed into service as she searches for gold armor.
The swords… She's not an expert but they have that Roman feel to them and that would imply to her that they weren't Asgardian. However, winged women sure sounds like Valkyrie to Skye…
- Hawk helmets mean something.
- Too efficient for cult.
- Secret warriors..?
Hang on. They're using shields. What's one constant of nearly every culture who used shields? -Emblems.- There may be some manner of logo or crest on the front. Skye turns back to the cameras and focuses on any scene involving the shields, going through frame by frame. There's gotta be something they can find here…
Maestro's response comes after Skye's second set, by about nearly twenty-minutes.
- Sorry…had to deal with a thing.
No, (s)he doesn't elaborate either.
- Def not Asgardians.
- Strong, not UBER strong - rent-a-cop hurt, not pulped.
- Secret warriors, highly trained definitely.
- Info scarce.
- Possible sighting of one in NYC.
- Prospect Park - Brooklyn, south of Manhattan.
- Far from me.
- Winged woman seen, at least two others in NY area.
He sends a video feed of a woman with white wings with grey tips dressed in stretchy yoga pants and a mostly backless black top. The video feed shows her following — in flight — a late model pickup, and you can track them to a clinic in Mutant Town, the Tolliver Free Clinic as there are traffic cams up to that point.
Maybe there's an emblem. Maybe not. Tired eyes and pixelated camera stills are not a good combination. "Couldn't these guys have spent a -little- more on better equipment..?" Skye grumbles while again reaching for the cold tea only to find it completely gone.
The idea is quickly shelved when Maestro returns to the screen. None of it is bad information. The last part of it is really..really..GOOD information.
A sighting of someone similar. Right in her back yard. Complete with video.
The outfit looks absolutely nothing like the warriors in Montreal but only so many metas have flight-capable wings.
"Okay..who are you and why are you following a crappy old truck?"
Through the traffic cams it should be trivial to pull up the license plate. If she can get that then a trip through the BMV's database later on should give her make, model, year, and the name(s) registered to it. Assuming the owner used an actual name and not a made up alias like she did.
It could be a lead but she'll save the BMV search for now. What's even better than tracking the truck is following it to its destination: A free clinic in Mutant Town.
"Ho boy" comes muttered under Skye's next breath.
- Stone's throw from here. Street investigation tomorrow.
For now, maybe she can dig into the Tolliver Clinic's records. It's in Mutant Town so they probably keep detailed notes regarding any 'genetic abnormalities' for each patient. The winged lady may not be the patient, she seems to be flying just fine in the videos, but maybe there's something. Skye really doesn't want to stare at more security footage at this hour.
The shields did not in fact have blazons on them, alas. Running the plates would prove to be VERY easy, they are legally registered to a Private Investigator named Nick Gleason, the firm 'Paragon Investigations', and oooh…they have a WEBSITE!
Nick is about six-two, powerful build, and oh yeah - a wolfman.
No joke. An genuine bona fide Lycanthrope lookin' dude. And his assistant, browing the web page, is a woman named Isis Marak, who has some pretty overt /feline/ characteristics.
And they were being followed by a bird winged woman…yeah. Quite the 'Where the Wild Things Are' vibe! Or maybe the Jungle Book.
Alas, the Tolliver clinic does not have any security cameras and their network is either non-existant or air gapped. It is a Free Clinic, however, so the clinic itself has a lot of info that's public record. Just nothing about the patients.
Still, that's a lot of useful info!
That moment in time where being cold and sleepy starts to overcome enthusiasm and motivation. It almost got to Skye. The clinic isn't as helpful as she wanted it to be but it was hitting the dead end which had her looking back to the license plate on that truck.
Then she glances at the time.
"What the heck."
Then she hits paydirt.
"Could this city get any more weird…" she lilts while poking around at Paragon Investigations.
Is this one winged woman going to have any connections back to the bio-phage in Montreal? It seems like a stretch but there may be something to it. She can't discount the similarities.
The firm's address is written on a Post-It then it's back to the keys.
- Strong lead. Paragon Investigations. Skye out.
Looks like it's time to pay a couple of metahumans a personal visit!
Right after she's slept.