After getting through a solid ten meters of the ice blockage, Cassandra felt that the groups were getting too rowdy again. People had started tempting fate, getting closer and closer to the actual street. Having already left Jules inside the car to suffer its own shouting, the woman had done her best to set up more poles meant to deter any wannabe intruders.

Not that her attempts of passive intimidation actually worked, the general police having more limbs than iq nowadays. A warning against entering was the grandest of invitations to them, the promise of slightly fuller pockets likewise fueling a part of the stomach that nobody needed to ever fill.

This did require her to disperse the groups growing more and more, a task that the woman didn't actually have anything against. Able to hone her interactions with the civilians, Cassandra grew calmer and calmer in the events that would soon come around. With the help of having a live feed of the TV crew's location, she knew exactly how long she had to make the place a decent view. Once again, the woman could only cherish the fact that the country's terrain made it extremely hard to travel easily in vehicles over long distances. Mountain ranges were truly a gift by the ones who drew fates.

How she loved it all. The world was with her this one time, making it easier and easier every step of the way. Cassandra truly wouldn't have been surprised if a gift bag would drop out of the sky soon.

Miracles like that were becoming more and more likely with time. The crowds were proof of that, the woman knowing that not a single soul would have liked to leave their rooms or apartments without being forced before. It was a non-zero chance of seeing anybody outside before, yet now… they were out in masses, nobody fearing being robbed, stabbed, or forced to hear religious preaching.

… That did make Cassandra wonder just who had reported the incident, to begin with. Now that she thought about it, who exactly would have taken a walk over to the stores? They were closed semi-permanently for the foreseeable future, and the place wasn't really something that would promote staring inside. And with how long a distance there was to any residential buildings, it couldn't have happened from random chance. It needed to have been a very long and tedious walk for anybody.

Intrigued and slightly mystified, Cassandra went through the database, scouring it for the report needed. There was some part of her mind that thought of the whole thing as slightly outside of the protocol. She wasn't truly required to know of the person's name this soon, with it only really being needed when she was writing her after-action report. Yet… something just didn't make sense to her, and she needed some parts to be written down in official formatting.

There! In the most recent pile of reports put out by her station, Cassandra was able to find the one she looked for. It was between countless writings by her boss, Grunwald seemingly doing nothing but writing such things. The woman supposed the man had done something inside the station when he was known for almost never leaving it. Focusing on it, she opened the report, her eyes instantly honing in on the spot and finding…

Nothing. Well yes, there was definitely something, the thing normally being called a black tearing. It had been redacted from standard personnel. The name of a common reporter had been removed from official documentation, only able to be seen by higher personnel. Not even her boss would be able to look at it. Just… what?

That didn't make sense, to the point where Cassandra had to stop her patrol around the perimeter. There weren't too many civilians around her, and they certainly were not close enough to be a danger to anybody or the street, making the woman comfortable enough to take her attention somewhere else.

‘Jules, did you catch what the name of the person who reported this incident was? I can’t find it,’ Cassandra sent to the automation, feeling that the construct could at least be helpful in that path of research. The thing had been made to simply overview the process from inside the car, after all, forced into the position the woman had been in only twenty minutes earlier.

‘No, I didn't. No clue that it was important enough to look at. Any reason you wanted to know?’ Jules questioned. Looking over at their vehicle, Cassandra could see the automation staring at her while shrugging its shoulders. The thing clearly wanted to get in on the action, no matter how minor it was. Truly a sad existence, yet one she could have related to previously just as much.

‘I’ve begun to wonder just who reported this incident. From what Grunwald said, it was a civilian who found it randomly. Yet, with how little outdoor activity has been witnessed in the last weeks, I find it hard to believe that anybody would have found this. So, I want to look at the person who reported this incident’s data, and check out their earlier walking data to see if it truly was random,’ Cassandra explained, giving out her future plans while she was at it. If the automation could get the data for her, it wasn't a bad idea to have it already know what to do after the fact.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

‘I think that’s commonly known as downright stalking,’ Jules commented very quickly. The woman wasn't sure what else she had been expecting from the piece of intelligent metal.

For an entity with fluid-based hardware, it was an awfully dense thing. Or maybe it just liked to act like it was, making their entire time together even more frustrating for the woman. Maybe a piece of ice could get through the windshield if she threw hard enough…

‘It would be best to think of it as a standard background investigation. The information being presented to us is suspicious and requires a more detailed look at the source of it,’ Cassandra threw back, knowing exactly what to say to get what she wanted. She had a point and that was more than enough to keep up the confidence. It did help that her opponent was making faces at her.

‘Fair enough. Give me a second, and I’ll try to get myself another temporary security upgrade,’ the automation said, surrendering before the verbal tournament could truly begin. Cassandra was all the happier because of it, able to delegate the needed task to somebody else.

Applying for temporary security upgrades was one of the most hellish things anybody could be presented with. The amount of paperwork needed for it, at any level, was more than the average officer would need to do in the span of a month. Non-disclosure-contracts, several put-the-blame-on-yourself contracts, and what could only be called a willing resignation if anything got messed up because of one’s own actions was just the start of it. The administration departments made sure to all get their fill. Especially when it was needed in a hurry.

Cassandra had personally only attempted the procedure once in her entire career, and that signal time was enough for a lifetime. The amount of work needed to gain access to higher-tiered documents needed for an investigation was so much more than just asking her superior to give her access directly. In the current instance, Cassandra would actually have done just that, asking Grunwald for what he had written down in the report.

But that didn't work now, since even he wasn't allowed to possess the information. Which was a decently complicated ordeal, since the man already knew it due to writing it… that fact just made another round of paperwork appear, most of it detailing how little the man was allowed to talk about it.

That left the woman with two choices. To disregard her trauma of getting access to it the hard, or… she could make somebody else do it for her. It wasn't hard to figure out which choice she had chosen since Jules was already hard at work on her behalf.

And while she had trouble with the amount of work needed for the access to be granted, the automation had no such qualms, easily able to bulldoze through all the paperwork like it was nothing. Cassandra supposed that was one plus side of being connected to millions of machines, ready for any beck and call sent out.

Not that everything could be placed into Jules’ discretion. The automation clearly had some limits on how much processing power it had access to. That was obvious from the last time access had been needed, the construct having taken more than a few minutes on the task. And, seeing that this was no different than before, Cassandra had started her own tasks with the full expectation of doing a few of them before an answer would come around.

And the woman wasn't wrong, able to do a few laps around the street, threatening any civilians with legal actions if they tried to use questionable loopholes, while also listing off possible legal fees from such a thing. That made most run in fear. Money was the biggest weapon to use, after all. Those who remained… were shown the metaphorical door in other ways.

Luckily for some, however, the automation did actually finish its job after a while. And since the woman had been more than adept at her job, there wasn't too much else that required her attention, making it fully possible to put all her focus on the construct yet again.

‘Did you find a name?’ Cassandra asked, walking without truly looking around. Not that her mind even needed to be put on the task, instincts trusted to react if anybody got close enough.

‘I did not find a name, but I did gain access to what was hidden behind the black bar,’ Jules said, contradicting itself within a single sentence. Quite the achievement for something meant to make sense.

‘The name was under the black bar. If you found what was under the bar, you found the name,’ Cassandra sent back instantly, not wanting anything to do with the construct's attempts at playing a mystic.

‘That’s what I thought as well. Yet, it turns out that things aren't as we thought,’ Jules said. From her position, she could see that smug thing looking happy about the time being wasted. She wanted answers.

‘Give me details. Now,’ Cassandra ordered.

‘Fine with me, darling,’ Jules said, stopping briefly to put its hand up in surrender. The woman did not like the name it gave her, and she made that obvious through her eyes alone. ‘You weren't lying when you said that your boss wouldn't be able to access the name. That security was way too high for that.’

‘How high are we talking?’ Cassandra asked. If it was on the regional level, it would have been quite the work to get it to-

‘High enough for no living human to have the rank required for it,’ Jules answered, much to the surprise of the woman. ‘The security level given to this thing is something that is only there in theory. It has never been used before. That was quite the conundrum to the administrators. I had to go through so many channels to find anybody able to fix that error. Somebody has apparently done the impossible with that one. You weren't meant to be able to give anything that classification no matter what.’

‘But somebody did.’

‘Yup. It took a few calls, but they were able to rectify the mistake. You should even be able to look at it now,’ Jules said.

Instantly, Cassandra opened her internal interface, navigating to the part she knew she wanted. Her mind responded, going through the heaps of reports and over to the one to the one she knew she needed. And in the report there was-

Nothing. The spot was empty. Now void of the black, it was replaced with a white background. The place meant to have a name had nothing.

…

‘I have to go over to Grunwald and discuss this in person. Are you able to oversee this without me being here?’ Cassandra asked, not too sure if she was able to delegate the work to the construct.

‘Of course, I can. But, does this mean I can get out of the car now?’

‘Yes. Get out. I need to use it.’

Cassandra needed answers.