Hobin-Jin had been staring at the report on his screen for the last minutes, trying to make sense of it. He had already read through it several times, and yet the contents still continued to puzzle him. How had multiple of their hit squads, along with the tracking asset, all gone missing?
It was baffling!
They had known the supposed location it had happened at and yet there was no trace of them when they had gone to investigate. The drone aboveground had found no traces of them, and the people they had sent through the sewers later had no better luck. There was a new metal door at the location where the asset was reported as having burst through the wall. That was it.
There were no further signs of them.
For now, the warehouse and its occupant were a person of interest, but that was it. The young man who lived there, one Trace ‘Tune’ Delevey, was a mere first-tier edger. Someone who had just begun the path. He had shown some promise with his understanding of older technology, but that was it. He was nothing more than uneducated street-meat, desperately clawing his way out of the gutter.
Jin applauded him for his efforts, but he didn’t think for a second that this Trace had the skills to eliminate their trained agents or the asset. Really, he couldn’t care less about the agents. It wasn’t as though they had been anything special. Only a few of them had actually earned their position on those teams. The rest had been using combat modules. They were nothing more than hacks, and frankly, in his opinion, it was no wonder they had disappeared.
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It was the disappearance of the aberration asset that was much more worrying and annoying. The loss of personnel he could easily cover up. The loss of a very expensive and valuable asset that was actively being used in multiple research projects, however, he could not.
The report they had received had been too valuable to ignore. After all these years, Meredith had made a move and even entered the city of Denver. The higher-ups of Vinna-Kwoi had pushed the foolhardy mission through. All in a bid to acquire some uncorrupted nanites.
As if the steel goddess would ever let that happen.
His fingers tapped on his desk as he read the report yet again. Finally, he made his decision on how he would report everything to his superiors. Along with that, he would be placing a few drone emplacements to maintain a watch on the warehouse location.
Did he think there was something there, no? However, it was the last place the agents, and the asset were all seen, and he had to be seen doing something in the report he wrote up for his superiors. This would be better than nothing.
In a few weeks, after the drones detected nothing, he could call them back. Hopefully, by then, he would have a lead and could put the resources toward something better.
There was one last thing he needed to do before beginning on his report. He needed to find some gonk to blame this mess on. It needed to be someone believable, preferably someone after his own job, and if possible, a person he didn’t like.
Hobin-Jin grinned as the perfect fall guy for this entire affair came to mind. The annoying sack of pig excrement had been screwing up his department and plans for a while now. It was time to get rid of her.