“Your Officer was missing, and you didn’t bother to set up a search?” TO snapped at the screen that currently displayed Paga’s image in resolution high enough that TO could easily see her flinch. She was lucky that they had their armor back on, because though the words came out with more of a snap than usual, she couldn’t see how their ears pinned back in frustration.
“To be fair, we’re missing nearly a quarter of our personnel due to damage caused by the insurgents,” Her response was terse and sharp. She had frills on her neck which flared out only slightly. “It was reasonable to assume that he got injured or killed in the attack.”
“And you have no ability to track your people?” TO demanded, “No trackers in their badges? Their communicators?”
Her frills flared out more before she took a focused breath, and the frills smoothed down flat against her scales once more. “We do, of course.” She said, “But the insurgents damaged the equipment for that in the attack last night, so at the moment, we have no way of tracking anyone.”
Of course, they had no way to track them. A growl escaped TO’s throat, but the helmet thankfully cut it off. “And you didn’t even know the insurgents had taken him? It’s right on the security footage!”
“We did not.” She said, “We confirmed the route the insurgents took, but that’s all. I’ve not been able to spare anyone to look over video footage yet.”
“And that didn’t seem like the first thing you should do?”
“In all fairness, honored synths,” she said, her controlled voice straining against her temper, “I’m without a quarter of my personnel. Half our systems are down, and we have others prisoners who aren’t insurgents who also escaped, and might become a problem for normal citizens.” She pressed some buttons before her and brought up an image of the center superimposed over her on the screen for TO to see. “As you can see, the insurgents did a great deal of damage to the facility, with major technical issues arising because of damage here, here, and here.” Areas of the center lit up in red. “One of the damaged sections had the systems responsible for the auto-feeders, so I had to assign personnel to produce food manually, and distribute it to the prisoners who had missed breakfast, and now lunch. I recognize it’s important to be hard on insurgents, but as a mere civilian, I can’t bring myself to allow the other prisoners to starve.”
“That was not my suggestion.” TO said. Of course, the prisoners shouldn’t starve. “They must have their regular meals-”
“My medical staff is currently doing their best to provide emergency care for the injured, but that’s going slowly since the main power is out across the center and we have to rely on generators. I have personnel working to clear the debris to the damaged areas to allow my electricians to fix the power. Once they fix the power, they can fix the tracking network. Until then, we’re doing our best to clear rubble while my actual security force is either on extra guard duty since they knocked half our security out, or out tracking other prisoners while I facilitate everything.” She stared cooly into the camera, “I’ve not had a single person available to look over the recordings. I was waiting for the messages to get to you and for you to arrive, as I knew that would be the primary focus of your investigation.”
TO wanted to rub at their eyes, but of course they couldn’t through the helmet. If only they had bothered to read the message!
No, if only they hadn’t been on a date.
“If I’m correct, there’s a work system for the indebted on Arkane.” TO said. They remembered what Lendulin, Petra, and Pearla said about all that, how it was an awful system, but they decided that at this moment, it would be the quickest, most useful solution. “Contact the Debt Facilitator, and request as many people as you need.” They pulled up a map of the security district. “It won't take long; they’re in this district as well. Hurry the cleanup to find the rest of your personnel.”
Paga’s features tightened, her frills flaring. “If you insist, Honored Synth.” she said.
“Did that not occur to you before now?” TO asked.
“In all fairness, I find the conditions that they hold the indebted in to be questionable in the least.”
Odd. Paga wasn’t legless, wasn’t poor, and yet she still had the same distaste for the debt program as Lendulin, Petra, and Pearla. “You have a resource available, and a time sensitive job with lives depending on its completion. Use what you have.”
“Understood. Is there anything else?”
“I’ll inform you if there is.” TO said. They turned off the communicator, and as soon as the video window closed, they removed their armor, put their elbows on the table, their face in their hands, and gave a long frustrated scream into their palms.
“That awful?” DH asked from where they were sitting on the floor, surrounded by the parts of a drone they were currently disassembling. “You heard that, right? I know that the debtor system isn’t perfect, but it’s a resource! They could at least use it.”
“Look, even if they’re in debt, they have food and shelter, and they’re being given work. I see no reason to avoid using them in a case like this.” DH carefully pulled out two parts of the drone that TO didn’t recognize, and peered carefully as they poked at the wiring. “But it’s civilians. Maybe some of the missing people could have been saved by now if she called for extra hands earlier, but she didn’t because she disagrees with the system.” They sighed, and pulled off a panel from the piece they were looking at, “Civilians can’t understand sacrifice for the greater good. If they did-” They pause as they focus on unscrewing something, “If they did, then King Deacon wouldn't have needed to make synths. Agree or disagree with the system, but using them at this moment saves lives.” They glanced at TO over their work, “Like how I got my eye.”
At that moment, TO wondered if they’d do the dissection again. If the officer gave them the choice, if they had the option to save the youth, but at the cost of a fresh eye for DH, what would they have done?
Somehow, they knew that they’d do the surgery; it wasn’t even a question. That knowledge made their stomach churn. They felt so awful doing that, the smells, the sounds, the cutting, and even just watching the actual juvenile synths die right in front of them; would they really choose all that for DH’s eye?
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It wouldn't have survived. It would have died anyway. It was minimizing losses. It saved DH’s life.
They could hear bones cracking.
They sat up quickly. No, they had no time to be worrying about this! They had work to do, didn’t they?
“Are you alright?” DH asked, catching how low TO’s ears had dipped, and how pale they had suddenly become.
“No.” They admitted, “But you know that.” They didn’t need to go into detail.
DH looked away, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Doesn’t matter.” TO said, “What are you finding with the drones?”
DH held up the two pieces, showing off a mess of connections on a motherboard. “What do you see here?”
“... A motherboard?”
DH’s ears flattened, “Well, yes, but what do you notice about the motherboard?” They asked, their ears twitching with frustration.
They strained their eyes to see what DH was showing them. “I… It’s a motherboard.. It’s uh-” They weren’t sure. “Smaller than normal?”
DH sighed, “The motherboard itself is actually synth tech, but obviously a civilian did the soldering here. It’s obvious if you look at how chaotic the connections are.” They gesture to the wires, “but the wiring here is nearly perfect; Synth work. A synth worked on this, but here, a civilian worked on this.” They held up the motherboard again. “A synth had to teach them how our motherboards work! That goes beyond being forced to do wiring.”
Somehow, the insurgents were forcing information, complex and secret, from synths. How were they doing that? Were they brainwashing them, or just torturing them? Could a synth even be susceptible to brainwashing? It seemed to TO that they’d have too much discipline to give into something like that.
“At any rate, that’s a tiny piece of information for us and confirmation that the insurgents built these drones. It’s all made of salvaged tech again, but the wires seem new.” They held up one, but TO couldn’t tell an old wire from a new one, “They purchased it here, judging by the code on the wires.” They pointed to a collection of numbers on the insulation. “That might be something we can look at.”
“Maybe..” TO mused as they turned back to their screen. What did they hope to find if they investigated the wires? Probably a purchase made fraudulently, or by someone who had already disappeared.
Or maybe someone on TO’s new list had made the purchase.
With a gesture of their hand, they brought up a list of over thirty people that Vince had had more than casual contact with over the last several weeks. TO documented anything more than a friendly hello in the hallway, and sorted the people by just how much contact they had with him. TO knew that they had to collect data, and if Vince was the biggest clue they had at the moment, then interviewing all these people might help.
Still… why? What was the point? They stopped and rested their head in their hands once more. What was the question they were even trying to answer?
Where did the insurgents go?
How did this happen?
The first question seemed like the water system itself already answered it; they went into the water systems and got pulled into the purification system. The second question was getting more and more complex with every new discovery.
Another call came in on TO’s chip. TO gave another frustrated sigh, put their armor back on, and sent the call to the larger screen. When the video loaded a bird-like civilian with colourful feathers framing her face came on. The information at the bottom of the screen told TO that she was a scientist with the Arkanian Authorities.
“Honored Synth.” She said, bowing her head slightly, “I represent the Arkanian Forensics Department with a report on-“
“You have DNA results.” TO said, cutting her off; they were quickly losing patience for all these formalities.
The scientist’s feathers pressed against her scalp, as though trying to make her look smaller. “Yes, exactly.” She said as she pressed a button to display a more detailed report. “Unfortunately, it was difficult to get a clean sample from the water itself. We hoped that since there was only one purification center between the event location and where the, uh… remains? We found we might get a decent reading, but we weren’t so lucky.”
“Don’t tell me what you don’t have.” TO snapped, “Tell me what you have.”
Even DH looked up from their work and gave TO a concerned look before going back to their tech.
“Right. Well.” she looked around, as though fumbling for something in front of her. Eventually, she pulled up another list. “Mostly, it was inconclusive DNA. TO be fair, DNA analysis isn’t as exact as people think. Mostly, we could only confirm some species, but not individuals. We cannot confirm the number of individuals involved in the incident. We can identify at least five separate species, though, two Osteichthyes, one Serpentes, one Decabrachia, and one Gastropoda.”
Fish based, snake based, squid based, and snail based. It wasn’t like Arkane had a slew of those types of creatures, both sentient and non-sentient, which roamed the area.
“Now, our teams did have the idea to go to the purification system itself, and see if we could get more materials from there.” The scientist continued, “Maybe something got trapped in the filters. They were right, and we could get one piece of conclusive DNA, and an identification!”
“Show me.” TO demanded.
Another gesture of her hand, and another picture came up on the screen showing Vince the guard.
“We found a collection of Chitin that was dissolving in the chemical solvents, but we saved some and could get an identification.”
TO tried really hard not to think about how the shell ended up in the filters, and swore to themself that no matter how curious they might be, they would not look up how the purification systems worked here.
“That’s all you have?” TO said.
“Well, yes, but we’re running some more tests to try to-“
“Inform me if you have new information.” TO said. And cut the communication. They removed their armor, and once more set their head in their hands as they rested on the desk.
“You were a bit short with her…” DH said carefully.
“She kept going on about what they couldn’t find!” TO said, “And all I got from that was that Vince and a handful of other unidentified individuals ended up in the purification system.”
“Well… what was it again? Fish, snake, squid, and snail? Did we have several insurgents with that type of genetic background escape?”
“Yes.”
“And if we have Vince, who the insurgents took with them, then that means it’s really them, right? That the insurgents are dead?”
TO took another breath, and leaned back in the chair as they looked at the screen, staring at the buggy face of Vince. “Maybe.” They muttered. It seemed too easy. Why would the insurgents go through all this effort and mess up their escape at the very last moment? And why was the only conclusive DNA they found from the guard the insurgents had captured?
And why were there no bones? The question came to them unbidden, but it bothered TO and made their ears twitch. Shouldn’t there be bones? If they found chitin, then a bone or two should be there too, shouldn’t it be? They did say they found it in a chemical solvent.
After a moment of consideration, they sent off a message to the lab.
== Information request; Regarding the chemical solvents used in the purification system. What would dissolve first, chitin, or osseous tissue.==
They looked back at the screen, at the names before them. The question of if chitin or bone dissolved first in the solvents was more a curiosity to TO, a line of questioning to be picked up later. While they were sure they could find the answer themself, TO had more important work to do.
TO had interviews to conduct.