The door of the debriefing room swished open, jerking Kaynor from his light sleep. He winced as wounds, wrapped tight in white bandages, twinged, and he briefly toyed with the thought of asking for more painkillers before dismissing the thought. It wouldn’t do to dull his mind when his superiors needed a picture of what happened that was as accurate as physically possible.
They’d put him here hours ago. He didn’t know what had happened to the rest of Line Ark, not yet, but he was rather hopeful that they were alright. Telah, brutish as she was, hadn’t been all that bad a boss, and he found at least a little part of himself wishing her well. Still, regardless of what had happened to them, he’d still been in this concrete and steel box for hours now. He’d gotten up on occasion to stretch his legs, and at least the seat was padded, but he was about sick of the gray walls and plain white light. So he’d resorted to napping between interviews by different individuals either verifying his story or querying about this or that detail, which is precisely what he’d been doing when the door woke him. He stretched in his chair a little, suppressing a yawn, looked up... and froze.
The person who’d walked through the thick door wasn’t law enforcement. His eyes danced over black armour lacking any sort of sigil or recognizable symbol, just curved plates and a shiny visor in the helmet. As they stepped forward, pulling out the chair opposite to him and swinging themselves into it without much sound at all, he found himself leaning back instinctively. The way they moved, the way their head was turned towards him, reminded him of vids he’d seen of predators- even more than that RJ Batarian bastard. He’d been confident and predatory because of power that’d been bestowed upon him by a higher power, that being the Board of RJ. This person, on the other hand... their entire countenance practically screamed of concrete and unshakable confidence in the fact that they were the most dangerous person in the room. Years of working the streets, and undercover at that, had made Kaynor very adept at reading people, detecting danger, and it was those instincts that were screaming at him now.
“Relax.” They waved an armoured hand- five digits, Kaynor noted absently. “Kaynor Ah’Lec, correct?”
He found himself nodding, suppressing the urge to swallow the feeling rising in his chest. His digits tightened very slightly on the table, though if the armoured figure noticed either, they didn’t indicate it. The voice had been modulated by the armour, not synthesized, but it had been made entirely androgynous. If he met the person behind the helmet tomorrow, he doubted he’d recognize their voice- which was most likely the point.
“Yes... yes, that’s correct.”
They nodded, once. He got the sense that the question had been one part confirming information they’d already known, three quarters icebreaker. He wasn’t ungrateful for it. As he watched, they took a slab of glass from beneath the table, setting it gently on the steel surface and tapping the surface. The air above the thing lit up with a series of three dimensional images. To his surprise, he recognized the subjects themselves, his eyes darting questioningly to the blank faceplate.
“Do you recognize these people?”
He swept his gaze over them again. “Yes. They form the mercenary group known as Line Ark.”
The figure nodded to themselves. “Can you confirm that, at three sixty-six today, you and the members of Line Ark where present in the Red Jurraut regional headquarters, and the circumstances of such?”
A blink. Kaynor was at a loss. All of this information should have been relayed in his report, so why were they asking? Who... who were they?
“I... yes, we were present, at that time.” Kaynor cleared his throat. “Line Ark had been asked to come to a specific location on the request of a shell company who was suspected to have RJ links, ostensibly for a contract with them. Once there, we were instructed to ride an air car to another location, the specifics of which we were unsure of. Once we were there, we were directed down a corridor that led to the entrance of the compound itself.”
He paused, unsure if he should continue, or ask the person specifically what they wanted from him. Before he could form the words, the waved for him to continue, their hand the only part of them that moved. He hesitated for a moment longer, then picked up where he’d left off.
“We were led through a number of static defenses by contractors wearing the equipment and livery of PSS, though none wore the symbology of the group.” He stopped, glancing to the side, then back to the person. “I take it they didn’t...?”
They folded their hands on the table. “The current status of the investigation isn’t relevant to the subject at hand. If you would, describe the space that you were led to, where you met the Red Jurraut officer.”
What were they after? “Um... the room was... large. Big enough to house a frigate, filled with server arrays and terminals. There must have been climate control because the temperature wasn’t uncomfortable, even with so many people and computers packed into the room, large as it was.” The figure stayed perfectly still for his entire description, though they shifted nearly imperceptibly when he mentioned the people.
“Can you describe the people in the room? Did any of them stand out?”
“I, well... not... particularly, not in specifics. They weren’t anything you wouldn’t expect from a computer operator that would be employed by an organization such as RJ, and none of them stood out in particular. Not that I remember, in any case.”
They leaned back slightly, which Kaynor interpreted as disappointment. They were looking for someone specifically, then, but why ask him? There were security tapes, he’d seen cameras installed throughout the RJ headquarters, even in the room where they’d had the actual meeting and briefing with the Batarian representative of the Board... unless, of course...
“... what is this about?” He said, eyes narrowed at the reflective visor opposite him.
They seemed to mull the question over for a few long moments, their head tilting to the side. He watched them closely, trying to divine something through their armoured suit and helmet, finding both as impenetrable as they had been when the figure had first walked into the room. Still, when their hands unlaced and one reached forward for the tablet, he was still surprised.
They swiped the surface a couple of times, flipping through a number of menus fast enough that Kaynor couldn’t even catch anything of them besides the occasional word or image, which he suspected was entirely intentional. It took only moments before they pulled up a screen that appeared to be some manner of text document, which they gestured him towards with an armoured hand. He gave them a suspicious look, but leaned forward and began to read. The farther he read into the document itself, the more unsettled he became- not because of what it said, per say, more because of what it was... and what it represented.
“This is...” he started, murmuring almost to himself.
“Anti-disclosure of government secrets and-or intelligence agreement form, yes.” They interrupted him, their fingers interlacing once again.
This time, Kaynor really did swallow. What in all hells had he gotten himself tangled up in? But, of course, the terrifying figure was still seated across from him, looking at him in a way that he thought was expectant. In a flash of terrible realization, it occurred to him that the signing of this document might not be a choice. He grit his teeth, scrolling through the rest of it and signing at the bottom, in triplicate. The figure across from him nodded in satisfaction, then began a series of taps and swipes on the glass and in the air above it. Kaynor, for his part, simply felt the dread settling in his stomach as the image of a four-armed fey figure appeared in the air over the table, rotating slowly.
“I assume you recognize this?”
He grimaced, tapping his digits on the steel table. “Yes... it’s a Mudanma.”
“And may I also assume that you recognize what it represents, in this situation?”
“... yes, more or less.”
They nodded. “This image, followed with a short text message-“ said message appeared with a tap, displayed in the same font as it had been on the Red Jurraut’s screens. “Appeared during your time in the RJ headquarters. Appearance of this symbol, accompanied by this text, was around the same time that local law enforcement received a large information dump regarding Red Jurraut activities in the local area, and the same time weapons in the RJ arsenal were disabled by a packet of malicious code that, through techniques as of yet unknown, subverted all firewalls. The only claim of responsibility for this series of events that is demonstrably accurate is the involvement of the individual ‘Mudanma’, whose identity is entirely unknown at this point.” They leaned forward, and Kaynor had the urge to lean back in return, an urge he resisted... for the moment. “All indications and evidence gathered from RJ assets and computers has indicated that the hack may have originated from within the organization, in fact within the headquarters itself. As far as we have been able to determine, the hack originated from an access point within the room you have described. You were present in the same room as Mudanma.”
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Kaynor made no effort to hide his unease. “Why are you interviewing me, then? Why not sort through the security tapes?”
They leaned back to where they had been, and Kaynor suppressed a slight sigh of relief. “Unfortunately, all surveillance and security recordings regarding the events occurring within RJ headquarters is... missing, in its entirety. As far as I have been able to find, they may not have existed in the first place. I have doubts that any cameras, or even any microphones, were recording during the event itself.”
“So they have a scary amount of skill... but that doesn’t answer why you’re searching for them.” He sent a glance at the tablet. The documentation had been... “you’re... using Citadel documentation. You’re interviewing me, you’ve reviewed what sounds to be every piece of evidence there is...” he trailed off, the unasked question lingering on his tongue, afraid of the answer that it might bring.
“What I am is not any of your concern, neither is who I represent.” Even through the modulation from the helmet, their tone turned a bitter cold for a bare moment. Kaynor shivered. “The only thing that I wish to know is whether or not you may have seen anyone, during your brief time in the RJ headquarters, that may have been the individual known as Mudanma.”
Another few swipes in the air, and the hologram switched to a number of floating images, individuals from nearly every race across Citadel space.
“Based on what we can retrieve from the remnants of the Red Jurraut’s records, eye-witness accounts from suspects arrested on-site and Mudanma’s own data package, these individuals escaped arrest and are currently at large. They range across every level of the organization, from grunts to high-level supervisors and officers, and every one has vanished. Any one of these might be Mudanma. Every one of them was in the room with you when Mudanma’s message appeared on the screens.”
His hands clenched, then released. “What do you expect me to do, direct you to him? Recognize him from a mugshot?”
The figure shook their head. “No. I do, however, expect someone with your training and background to perhaps have some recollection of at least one or two of the people on this list. I don’t need something you can’t give, a finger pointed directly at the true identity of the hacker known as Mudanma, I want you to cross some people off my list.”
He nearly flinched at that, nearly asked them what they thought they knew about... but, no. That wasn’t important right now. The person across from him was dangerous in a way that not even a Thresher Maw could be, because while a Thresher Maw might kill you... a spook could do so much worse. And this person? This person was a few steps beyond just a simple spook. His mind raced as his eyes jumped between images, wondering despite himself which one was the person they were looking for, which ones he remembered. Batarians, Quarians, Asari, Salarians, the list was a hodge-podge of species and individuals from practically every background. Many images were accompanied with text, some almost complete blanks besides a name. Even so...
“When, exactly, did the hack occur?” He asked, reluctant. The person across from him leaned back every so slightly, though he was beginning to suspect that every bit of body language they displayed was purposeful, either for his benefit or as some sort of ploy.
“From what my assets and I were able to derive from the RJ arrays, the major hack and mass data upload occurred mere moments before the message appeared on the screens. While the security and surveillance systems were subverted nearly half an hour beforehand, we believe that Mudanma wanted to have the least amount of time possible between RJ realizing what was happening and the arrival of law enforcement at the scene. They disabled firearms, sealed escape tunnels... it’s very clear that Mudanma wanted as few people to escape as possible, though we’re not sure what their precise plan was, nor how they intended to escape once the hack was launched and the data was in the process of uploading. Regardless, we don’t believe we have them- thus...” a sweeping gesture at the series of images again.
Kaynor gave them a glance over. “That... still doesn’t answer what you want with him.”
“Officially, Mudanma is a vigilante with a potentially highly dangerous skillset that they chose to demonstrate by dropping a bomb into a Thresher Maw nest.”
He looked back at them. “And unofficially?”
They said nothing in response, merely watching him, their gloved hands back to being folded in front of them. The edge of Kaynor’s mouth twitched, and he turned his attention back to the images.
He’d examined the room when he’d first been shown into it, and though most of his attention had been reserved for the server arrays and what he’d thought to be contained within them, he had glanced over the faces of everyone present. That would have been after security had been disabled, however Mudanma had managed that without alerting the headquarter’s mercenaries to the fact that they had done... whatever they had done to it. This meant that Mudanma most definitely would have been in the room with him, large a room as it was. Later, when the chaos had begun and Mudanma’s message had been plastered across the headquarters on any surface with any sort of screen, that was when the hacker would have been fleeing, using the chaos and the panic rife among the Red Jurraut members as a cover for their escape.
So... there had been two times when he could have seen them, once during his initial sweep of the room, and once during the panic that followed his exiting the office that he and Line Ark had been using for the meeting with the representative of Red Jurraut’s Board. His eyes flicked from image to image, trying to let them soak into his memory and spark some recollection, something he’d seen in one of the two cases where he’d had the opportunity to see. Chaos or calm, at some point, he’d most likely at the very least glanced in the direction of every person on this list, even if only in passing. The difficult part would be remembering them.
It took time. Nothing compared to the hours that he’d been here, doing nothing, but regardless, he didn’t really notice it. This spook, whoever they were, hadn’t bee wrong about him in the slightest, and even now he was demonstrating it by being lost in trawling through every bit of information regarding each and every individual on the person’s very long list.
He’d started by sorting them into categories based on the amount of information that was present with their pictures, ranging from the most amount of information to no information at all. From there, he’d cross-referenced that with their jobs, responsibilities and recorded skills. Maybe Mudanma had enough wherewithal to hide their no doubt impressive abilities, but they still wouldn’t have been a security officer, a mercenary, anything but one of those who worked with Red Jurraut’s machines. From what little was here, what little he’d gleaned from the spook during their conversation, he doubted that Mudanma was among the top brass of the organization. While they would have the access to do something like this, they would have no real reason to, as they had been in the organization too long to consider doing anything that would destroy their power base... not to mention, there were only two of said top brass that had escaped the raid, and neither was noted to have worked with any sort of computers.
No, Mudanma would have hid themselves among the mid to lower level people, where they wouldn’t have to be involved with Red Jurraut for too long a time in order to achieve their position, and where they would have the least amount of scrutiny from even this paranoid branch of the Red Jurraut. The problem was that many of these people did have reputations from before Mudanma had appeared explosively on the scene, and many of those reputations didn’t match the sort of mindset that he would guess it would take for someone to absolutely eviscerate an entire branch of a major criminal organization. Not only did that take absolute gall the like of which he’d never seen before, it also took a quite incredible skillset to set the entire series of events up just so, and then to escape and subsequently successfully evade both law enforcement and the criminals that they’d crossed. Red Jurraut, with their reputation tarnished, would make a very public example of Mudanma if they captured them, and they would only do so if they were certain that they had the hacker in question. It would only lose them more face on top of what they’d already lost if they made an example of someone they announced to be Mudanma, only for the hacker to surface elsewhere, still flaunting their authority.
Thankfully, Kaynor was well placed for this work, given that he’d been heavily involved with Red Jurraut and had all but memorized the dossiers of many of the individuals suspected to be working for this particular branch of the organization. In the back of his mind, the suspicion pulsed that the spook had sought him out specifically for this reason, with his time undercover and his... past experiences, as they’d mentioned. He glanced back at them through the hologram, realizing belatedly that they’d been content to sit and wait the entire time he’d been working, silent and watching. He hesitated for a long moment, then pushed the sheet of glass and metal back towards them.
“There. Those individuals are the ones that I believe to be the most likely to be Mudanma.”
The figure turned the hologram towards them in the air with a gesture of their armoured hand, scrutinizing the images, examining the notes he’d left by each and every one. Finally, they turned off the device, slipping it back where it came from and standing.
“Excellent. You and my assets agree entirely. I am suitably impressed, officer Kaynor... expect further orders within the next few days. Welcome to the service of the Citadel Council.”
With that, they turned and exited through the door, leaving Kaynor with the deeply unsettling notion that he’d just been tested for something he had no desire to be involved with.