Snooping (part one)

Edward woke up shortly after his alarm. His head felt a little heavier than normal, which he expected by this point. At least he could feel, and he felt a tiny kindling of rage start a campfire about this time each morning. It was motivating, and he needed it to see this thing through.

The thing. It was all that mattered anymore. He made contact with an old Golden Gaia dropout and met for lunch. Over lunch, he and Jose discussed that day’s events, as best they could recall. Everyone remembered the lights going out, the emergency red lights going on, and the carnage that followed. Jose was lucky that day. Not only was he unarmed, he was in charge of the actors and they agreed that Jose wouldn’t be given a gun; he might scare them, or worse. It was a GG secret that nobody had ammunition. It forced the actors into the illusion of a terror cell, which they maintained by being convinced that they were armed with live guns.

“What about the footage?”, Edward asked. “Footage. See, that’s weird. I know I was recording. I even did a test clip to check all the settings, and played it back to be sure. But later, the clip was corrupted, along with the clip for the broadcast. My comms device never plays games like that.”, Jose replied. “Did you ever take it to a recovery shop, to see if they could do anything to restore the clips?”, Edward queried. “Nah. Kept the corrupted files just in case it was a temporary condition, but I’ve never been able to watch them.”, Jose said. “Isn’t it kinda coincidental that everyone else, including me, ended up with corrupt data from that event?”, Edward wondered aloud. “Now that you mention it,” Jose began, “yeah, it’s a little too coincidental. We all got wiped. But by what, or why? Those little shadow things running around removing limbs? They came out of nowhere and disappeared into nowhere, but they had to be there in the hotel to begin with. I’ll bet they never left. If we could get ahold of one…”.

That was the first step, right there. Revisit the hotel and look for any indications of the Shadows from that day. It had been years, and there’s a good chance they’re long gone, but if they were…installed…then they may still be there, or newer units in their places. Edward would have to discreetly snoop around the nooks and crannies of the hotel and he’d need to be ignorable or get permission first. That would be the easy part.
Edward and Jose shook hands and parted ways, and Edward jumped a Jerry Cab to the hotel. It was still in operation and fairly central to the city, so he didn’t need to give directions to the Jerry Cab, which was always a pain in the neck. They were remotely piloted by people in India, and he could never decipher their accents, let alone attempt a conversation with them. If he couldn’t get the Jerry to take him somewhere in 2 words or less, he just got out and walked.