Justin contacted Division to find out what information they had on the bombing, and was bought up to date, including the detail that Senator Rassidae had been on site for the explosion, something the media appeared to have missed or been told not to report on. He was also told that Shade was still lurking around the Municipal Center, waiting to see what else he could discover as emergency services finished containing the site.
Division seemed content that they should find out more on the bombing itself as soon as the officials did, but Justin contacted Shade directly for more information. First on the dead prisoner, who had apparently been found near the city planning office by a fire crew, his corpse badly burned and cut up. The current theory was that he'd gotten caught up in a localised secondary explosion caused by the fire, but his body had been shipped off to the ME for further analysis.
Justin was pretty happy with that, not because they were likely to discover anything, the Wayne County medical examiner was known to be both wildly incompetent and laughably understaffed; but because it meant he wouldn't have too much trouble getting in to see the body himself.
Secondly, Justin asked Shade to try and acquire a copy of the Municipal Center footage. At the moment the site was still under the control of emergency services, but as soon as it was cleared, Justin was pretty sure it would be passed over to federal investigators. He wasn't sure on the procedure at that point, but he imagined the Center security systems would end up bagged and tagged and sent off to a secure site well beyond their current reach.
He was a little surprised with how happily Shade agreed to commit what was probably multiple felonies. He knew the lurker had been bored the last couple of days, but still. Then he remembered discovering Shade's history as a former gang member and thief, and decided he wasn't the only player who'd decided on a more pragmatic type of heroism. He doubted Division would be pleased with their sticking their noses into what was sure to be a federal investigation, but as long as the boy scout didn't find out, things would probably be fine.
It took him a couple of Kip hours to design and build a small enough device capable of both powering up a computer system for a few minutes and with a drive large enough to contain a server worth of data for later decryption. He gave Era the job of flying it out to Shade with the remaining battle drone, while he concentrated on finishing up the mark II Phantom.
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Justin had coated the mark II in electrically-adaptive paint. It defaulted to a pale blue-white meant to be unnoticeable against sky and clouds, but with the application of a small current, it instead turned a dull grey-brown, all the better for lurking in alleys and blending in at night. He was currently attempting to do both, hovering in an alley opposite the Wayne County medical examiner's office at one in the morning.
He'd given the mark II a couple of folding manipulators instead of the forward prods of the previous version, he now had other drones for getting into conflict, the Phantom was supposed to mimic its namesake and stay out of trouble. He'd been expecting to have to use the manipulators to gain access to the building, but was currently watching in interest as a night attendant propped open a fire escape, stepping outside with a phone in his hand and an unlit cigarette in his mouth.
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The man was so focused on his phone that he forgot to light his cigarette, and was completely oblivious to the small drone skimming silently through the door behind him.
Successful Skill Use +12 xp to Stealth - Beginner Level 3 [25%].
Inside, Justin quickly sped down the dim corridor, taking two rights and a left before ending up outside a pair of locked doors with 'Morgue' printed across them. He'd downloaded a floorplan before setting off, and had spent twenty minutes circling the building, using passive and active sensors to map out the interior and identify any motion that could be an employee. The cold room had been obvious to his heat sensors, even without the plume of slightly heated moisture being released through the small outside vent.
As far as he'd been able to tell, there were two security guards located in the main lobby who had so far limited themselves to watching late night TV, and two morgue attendants, one of which had left ten minutes ago in the ME's van, and the other outside, not smoking.
Since Justin was monitoring the police band and emergency services channel, and hadn't heard any calls that would require a pick-up, he was half convinced the other attendant was off on personal business, which was both good and bad for Justin. On one hand (manipulator?), it meant they were unlikely to return with a body to wheel into the morgue itself, but on the other, there was no way to know how long the errand could take, he could be gone a couple of hours or only ten minutes. Which meant Justin really needed to hurry.
He hovered in-front of the electronic access panel, luckily for him it was a low quality RFID reader keyed to the employee ID cards, and it was the work of a couple of seconds to mimic the outside attendant's ID chip. He doubted the system even logged entry and exit.
Justin mentally smiled as he considered Division's response to such poor building security and procedures. It would probably have annoyed him enough that even he would have been fine with breaking into the place, and he would probably have submitted a security review afterwards. Should Justin let them know how bad their security was? He might need to break in here again in the future, but at the minute, so could pretty much anyone else.
Justin felt the drone dip sluggishly in the cold air as he slipped through the mechanically opening and closing doors, and heard the AC spin higher as it compensated for the small influx of warmer air. Consulting the white board inside, he found the refrigeration drawer for Ainsley Barrows, and pulled on it with his forward manipulators, having to activate his secondary rotors for a moment to create enough pull to get it moving.
Once the drawer was open, he took a mental breath before pulling back the sheet. The cadaver was in worse condition than he'd expected. The hair was all gone, probably burned away in the fire that had turned his skin such an interesting shade of red and black, and there were deep cuts and gouges messing up the arms, chest and face, the edges rough and torn enough that he could understand why the onsite responders had assumed an explosion rather than something like a knife or blade.
Justin hovered slightly closer as his enhanced optics detected chips of something like bone caught in the wounds, and after releasing a quick burst of radar, he detected no breaks or fractures and no deep tissue damage, nothing that he'd expect to see in a body caught in an explosion.
Successful Skill Use +15 xp to Investigation - Novice Level 1 [15%].
+7 xp to skill group Inquiry - Novice Level 2 [81%]
Successful Skill Use +12 xp to Biology - Novice Level 1 [43%].
+6 xp to skill group Science - Novice Level 3 [16%]
New Skill Discovered! Diagnosis has been added to known skills.
Successful Skill Use +8 xp to Diagnosis - Beginner Level 1 [08%].
Honestly, the corpse looked more like the victim of an animal attack which had then been torched. Was it possible that this was a decoy to cover Barrows' escape? Had the accountant paid someone to get him out? If so, he was going to be a bit upset when he found his offshore accounts empty, and Justin hoped he'd arranged payment upfront, because otherwise his 'rescuer' wasn't going to be very happy either.