| Welcome to Xmen Revolution. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Without a Trace; S.H.I.E.L.D. | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: May 11 2012, 04:47 PM (615 Views) | |
| Feedback | May 11 2012, 04:47 PM Post #1 |
|
Unregistered
|
April 14th 10am Point Pleasant, Ohio A town. A complete town? How it the heck was it possible for over 4,000 citizens to disappear over night without anyone taking notice? This had to be the weirdest assignment Reina had ever received and she was comparing it to the time they had to take on a bunch of mutated, flesh-eating, radioactive humans. Point Pleasant was a small town barely on the map. Nothing exciting happened outside of the Harvest Festival that the people took pretty seriously. The only reason they were even aware of the situation was because a trucker that had been making his morning rounds stopped through for a quick fill up. There was no one at the gas station, no one to ring up his cup of brew, no one anywhere. The man panicked and called the cops who eventually called the National Guard who finally put in a request for S.H.I.E.L.D’s presence. A few quinjets hovered over the town above the National Guard that was still present on the scene. At least there would not be a lack in man power. The jets landed in different sections of the city and when the one carrying Reina touched ground she wasted no time in marching down the hatch. In her hands was a basketball sized, mechanical sphere. She opened a panel on the machine, typed in a few numbers, and then let it go as it came to life. “You are live, Agent Orchard.” Henry had a prior arrangement, but his investigative skills were much needed here so this was the solution. The drone would see and hear everything that they did and was able to respond to his vocal commands. Reina looked around the area. Besides the hustle and bustle of the Guard, the town was dead silent. It was too odd not seeing people out going about their mundane routines. She checked her weapons and ammunition. Hopefully they would not be needed for this situation, but it was best to always be prepared. Their captain spoke with the commanding officer of the Guard to coordinate their efforts and see how much they knew. It was not much. They were working on the same information as SHIELD. Four thousand people... just vanished without a trace. “This is something you see in a movie… right before a bunch of aliens come down and glass the place.” Reina began heading towards one of the many abandoned homes with a few others. “What do you guys think happened?” |
|
|
| Noelle Blanc | May 12 2012, 12:30 AM Post #2 |
|
Unregistered
|
You put Pleasant in a town’s name and sooner or later, somebody is going to use that town for something decidedly unpleasant. Ok Elle admitted to herself, maybe she had watched The Twilight Zone one too many late nights when she couldn’t sleep but the way she saw it, it was just too cliché. She was putting her money on a human intelligence behind the mass disappearance, not a natural though unknown phenomena and definitely not Aliens. Two days as an official Shield operative and already she was put on something really big and very messed up. Noelle Blanc smiled as she stepped from the quinjet and out of the way, she was pretty confident that somebody deserved to die for kidnapping 4000 innocents and she was happy to deliver the sentence. Elle slowly scanned the houses, building, even the horizon with her naked eyes, whoever – whatever took those people was possibly watching her end everyone else right now. If they could take 4000 without raising any alarm, without leaving a single sign of struggle, they might just well be able to handle a few National Guard and Shield personal. If a trap was waiting for them then she would not be surprised at all. She was smart enough to let people with Geiger counters and fancy shmancy scanners set the trap off for her though. But shouldn’t 4000 people leave a helluva lot of footprints going somewhere? She was the newest recruit and didn’t know the others very just yet; she’d wait before speaking up. She was little more than a gun for hire at this point anyway. Keep her head down and try to be a team player once more. With little to occupy her mind just at this moment, Ballistique went over all the tactical resources. Headcount of the National Guard and their collective capabilities, Shield personal including Meta’s and Mutes, vehicles, their firepower, personal capacity, pilots and drivers, and their tracking systems. She went over a map of the town and outlying geography and of course she went over her own gear. Bullet and stab resistant armour, com unit, some sundry paraphernalia on her belt and her leather trench coat, the heat of Ohio at this time of year didn’t even register against her training. A single thought did make her a fraction nervous, mass hypnosis if possible could account for the situation and that was something she couldn’t easily counter with her bullets. She squashed the thought away, worrying over unknowns was not productive. |
|
|
| Hyatt Jenkins | May 12 2012, 02:04 AM Post #3 |
|
Unregistered
|
Every transport trip Hyatt's mind was blown, whether it was those energy guns being standard issue or that mechanic crystal ball Agent Rivera was holding around to let an Agent Orchard observe the proceedings of a town gone empty; the kind of crap the SciFi channel televises weekly. Why SHIELD had to be dragged into this so quickly he didn't understand, the National Guard was more than capable of investigating. But orders were orders, and there he was staring out the window, Mateba and SIG Sauer holstered, and seeing various groups of National Guard meeting. When the jet landed, he walked out slowly, putting his sunglasses on, and watched Rivera's machine turn on. "Isn't that why we have Skype, ma'am?" Hyatt took a sweep of the groups meeting: Some were hollering on loud speakers and radios with orders, others were looking at road maps and setting up search teams. Just take a standard manhunt of a fugitive to and multiply it by a million and it was a pile of red tape he wanted no part of. Hyatt noticed a few familiar faces on the SHIELD squad today, but there were also a few new ones he'd never seen. One went into the road He followed Rivera into town as she compared it to an alien invasion-like movie. That brought out a chuckle from Hyatt, along with passing by an empty liquor store. "There's something definitely wrong here..." The commotion of the groups behind them died out, intensifying the sound of the bell attached to the entrance door swinging in the wind jingling. "Leave all that alcohol unattended with the entrance open to the world and not a drop has been taken? No broken bottles? Buddy of mine did that once with his store and it was bone-dry in two hours. These folks are gone..." |
|
|
| Henry Orchard | May 12 2012, 03:12 AM Post #4 |
|
Unregistered
|
Hundreds of miles from Ohio Henry Orchard was in a foul mood. He’d been dragged away from something important and dumped in a chair in the ops room. That pissed him off. Then people had started throwing paper at him and it turned out those papers described an attack on an undefended civilian target in the heart of the continental United States. That really, really pissed him off. Then he’d been shown the drone controls, which were mostly comprised of two tracker balls. That made him absolutely bloody livid. In Ohio the drone juddered about the place, pitching and spinning on its axis as Henry struggled to acclimatise to the awkward interface. The occasional murmured obscenity was broadcast over its speakers. “Heinous feck… shitbagger… what... god damn… how is this even… did you build this? You built this? How are you not dead? How do you even feed yourself being that much of a- Oh, voice controls? Right.” After that the drone levelled out and behaved itself, almost graceful even. With the basics sorted out Henry quickly figured out the rest and got the drone up to speed, firing up its instrumentation and setting it to orbit Reina’s team while scanning the perimeter. Henry himself got to work. He flipped through the initial findings of the National Guard, they weren’t much to look and he quickly abandoned them for his own intuition. “Just reading the stuff I’m getting here my first impression is teleportation.” Certainly something like this was certainly within the capability of someone like Spiral, but as much as he wanted to deal with that particular problem Henry couldn’t easily fit her to a mass abduction. Also the jokes were starting to fly around now. He wasn’t terribly impressed given the circumstances but when he caught himself on the cusp of dropping in a Halo he flicked himself in the ear to refocus. He got back to the job and started to break his stride. “We won’t know for certain until we start in earnest but that’s my first guess. Either way, something like this didn’t happen overnight. There would have been prior observation, tagging this many people who ever did this would have had to have known how many residents there were and where they’d all be. We need to be on the lookout for signs of surveillance and we need to find anyone they missed. An operation of this size they’ll have missed something, just down to human error I guarantee you. People who are off the beaten path are the best bet. Recluses, the homeless, people just passing through and that sort of thing.” He took a deep breath. “We want to start pulling our own surveillance data too. Start hitting ATMs, storefronts, public buildings and residences of crazy paranoid people. This is America. There will be crazy paranoid people. We need the tapes.” He waved a technician over and got her to start marking down likely locations of CCTV on the drone’s map data. There weren’t as many as there would have been back home which only added to Henry’s frustration. Perhaps Small Town America wasn’t as paranoid as he’d hoped. They’d have to branch out. “If they have a weather station we need that too. Look for abrupt changes in pressure that would coincide with a massive teleportation event. Anything. Everything. Data, we bloody well need it. Grunt work, door to door, go go go.“ “After all,” The drone drifted up and around Hyatt. “Isn’t that why we have the Lone Ranger? Call Tonto. Maybe he can help too.” |
|
|
| Sharon Carter | May 13 2012, 05:07 AM Post #5 |
|
Unregistered
|
“Skype doesn’t quite compete, Agent.” Sharon commented, surveying the group briefly. There were a few regular agents here, some that had been around for a few years, but there were quite a few new faces. They needed agents on the scene and something like this was a good starter for the newer ones, though her guess was that they still needed assistance. New agents tended to miss things. It wasn’t a jab at them, simply a fact. She had been the same way at one point. In their data there had been photographs and video, all showing nothing. The entire town looked almost fake, like everything was set out for the perfect movie shot. This type of problem was beyond the National Guard, clearly. Based on a brief survey of the area she was a little surprised they weren’t called sooner. There was no obvious evidence in sight. Feedback commented about aliens and Sharon chucked lightly, walking with her towards the houses. “I can’t deny it does look like something out of a sci-fi movie.” She pulled out her SLR and adjusted the lens as they walked. This data, most of it would not be used by her or would be repeated of everything they’d seen so far. However there was the possibility that she would catch something the initial investigation hadn’t. After all, they were SHIELD. There were things that they looked for which the military did not. “I’m not sure how they’d get everything this…calm… otherwise I’d chalk it up to a possible Magneto attack. Maybe the first big step in his humanity war.” |
|
|
| Cain Marko | May 13 2012, 09:18 AM Post #6 |
|
Unregistered
|
This mission was one of those low intel, extremely high risk sort of things. So it paid to have the worlds one and only unstoppable mutant on the team; that way if they found what had done this, he could punch it enough that they could interrogate it. He didn't mind that they saw him as a meat tank, a human battering ram. That's what he was, and that's the way he liked it. He whistled as they came to a stop and he looked around. This was the first literal ghost town he'd ever been too, and this place was huge. Roughly 4,000 folks were now MIA, and what looked like an overnight job too. Whoever had done this had access to a crazy amount of super science resources, or they were powerful on a level that sent shivers even through him. His now all black uniform drew some attention from the weekend soldiers still on the scene; some of them were even bold enough to speak about him like he wasn't there. He ignored them for the time being, turning towards Feedback and the others. He chuckled when Hyatt voiced his opinion that something was wrong. "Oh really? And what gave you that idea, Jethro? The cars still in the street? The stores and houses with doors wide open? Or maybe it's because 4,000 people just ain't here anymore." He shook his head and absentmidedly rubbed the helmet held under his arm as he kept looking around. He pointed to the robot when the agent on the other end suggested teleportation. "Claptrap over there's got an idea. We gotta outta Coney Island with teleportin. Only problem is...this is a town a 4,000 plus. We barely had a few hundred and those were some a the best 'porters available and were usin portals. To take a town this size...they'd need somebody seriously powerful or some crazy kinda tech." He looked at Reina and shrugged his shoulders. "Don't know what ta' think about this Rivera Number Two, but whatever's goin on, we got our work cut out for us." Walking up to a diesel truck, he put his hand on the hood and it was hot; hell the damn thing was still running. He looked at the blond when she mentioned Magneto, then he put one hand under the front end of the truck and pushed up and back. The thing flipped over onto it's back, then he got a grip and rolled it into another car. "You got it wrong, lady. What I just did, that's what it looks like when Magneto decides to attack someplace like this. You 'member that attack in Kansas a few months back? They found a whole city, hundreds a feet down in a huge crater. Everything was leveled, and everything else was burned to cinders. Brotherhood did it, no doubt. That's the kinda stuff you see when Magneto decides some place needs to get taught a lesson. Coney Island's what you see. This...I bet people's lunches are still on the table." |
|
|
| Noelle Blanc | May 15 2012, 03:55 AM Post #7 |
|
Unregistered
|
Elle watched with detachment as Cain demonstrated his superhuman strength on a poor unsuspecting truck. It might have been bad PR for Shield but because it wasn’t her, she didn’t mind. “Breakfast Marko, its still morning here”. Her face and voice were bland and expressionless. It wasn’t that she was hiding her emotions; the situation simply didn’t really bring much out of her. She would have to be a little patient in waiting for the excitement to come; some smart person was going to have to find a definitive clue before she could exercise her right to bare arms. But time, right now she all the time in the world, waiting was easy. She went over and looked in one abandoned car. The keys were still in the ignition, a cell phone and handbag were still on the passenger seat but there was no sign of any driver and the door were still closed, like they had been beamed up with the clothes still on their back. It was an idea that struck as she looked back to the cellphone. Slowly but with an air of purpose, Elle walked over to the Orchard Drone. “Orchard, I may be late on this but it occurs that some of the taken may have their cellphones about them, has anyone tried to contact or locate them that way?” Of course if anyone did have an active cellphone on them, then it was equal chances that wherever they were, there was no reception. She strongly suspected that anyone capable of the mass Houdini act was more than capable of rendering cellphones useless, but sometimes small details do get missed. |
|
|
| Feedback | May 16 2012, 06:16 PM Post #8 |
|
Unregistered
|
Henry was cursing up a storm because of his inability to take control of the drone and it made her grin. Finally the agent was able to make the thing work and soon suggested that the people were probably teleported away. Reina was likely to agree with him on that one. Four thousand people went missing and not a lick of evidence was found by the NG or police. This was straight up insane. Reina stopped in the middle of the road and had a look around. Everyone had a guess about what happened, but no proof. There had to be someone somewhere right? It could be possible that they were hidden from the public. She was really trying to keep an optimistic mood about this all, but it was not working out that well. “I hope that humans were responsible for this,” she relayed to Orchard. “Then again if humans have the technology for something like this…” That worried the hell out of her. Agent Carter suggested the possibility that Magneto could have done this. The man’s organization had been somewhat quiet lately, maybe waiting to do this. But the Thunderbolt disagreed. Reina cringed a bit when Juggernaut flipped over a truck and smashed a car. That could have easily been taken as a sign of aggression resulting in agent action. “You could have just described what the man could do instead of causing unnecessary damage. But you have a point.” She looked to the others. “Everyone split up and search everywhere and everything could leave behind a trail.” Reina inhaled and closed her eyes. She then exhaled and opened her powers to the world. Every sound made within a 150 yard radius was heard. There were several pets whining to be let out for their morning drop, a few car engines here and there, televisions, running faucets, someone’s bathtub overflowing. She even checked beneath the pavement and into the basements. There were no secret, underground bases or anything. Any and everything possible yet no human sound. This was some seriously jacked up stuff. “Guys I’m not picking up anything useful with my power.” She cursed and headed over to a drugstore to check the security tapes. |
|
|
| Hyatt Jenkins | May 17 2012, 04:20 AM Post #9 |
|
Unregistered
|
"I gotta work on my delivery..." Whether it was that or just not being in the field enough, Agents Marko and Orchard let him have it. Marko stated the obvious, then at the mention of Magneto from Agent Carter, took the opportunity to break down a diesel truck to rule him out. Great. And after taking a few minutes trying to work out the kinks of that thing, Orchard quipped at him to get working and call for "backup"...little twat. "If he wasn't doing eight and a third to twenty-five, I would..." They hadn't worked together before and it showed. Hyatt was sure he had a reasonable excuse for not tagging along, but being live on the scene just couldn't be replaced. Him not knowing the controls didn't help Hyatt's mood, either, but he shook off his anger and listened in on the suggestions for the search; a cellphone was found by another new face, Agent Blanc. Teleportation seemed to be the general consensus of the team and Rivera told everyone to start looking around. She also said there wasn't a trace of human activity with her power. Instead of heading over to the before-mention liquor shop, Hyatt figured the simplest way to start would be a convenient store. Cameras were in easily-accessible areas and the parking lot had plenty of cars to be searched. He headed over there before another snide comment got on his nerves... |
|
|
| Sharon Carter | May 21 2012, 07:38 PM Post #10 |
|
Unregistered
|
Agent 13 watched with little reaction as Cain flipped the car to 'demonstrate' how Magneto attacked things. She understood his point completely, of course, and the pit in her stomache told her some truth but the point was to do detective work here. "Yes. I do understand his trends in action, Marko. However I don't think that he should be ruled out on that factor alone. While it does seem out of his reach, he is a criminal mastermind. Its not beyond him to try and trick us into believing something else. Unless further proof is found, he should stay as an option. Not the option, but one." That was probably the most she'd bothered saying to any of the thunderbolts. Not that she had anything particularly against them, especially the two that appeared to be attempting their reform. It was impressive that they did it of their own accord. "I'll get the ATM cameras." Sharon pulled out a small device from a pouch on her belt and headed down the street to the bank. ATM cameras ran almost constantly. Though they only gave a small window of view for the town, it would give them data. Combined with other camera systems and logs, they would be able to find out when the last time a person was seen in the town area. It was small, so it probably would be a larger window, but it gave them something to work with. She approached the machine and started to peek around it, unimpressed with the fact that it had been sunken into the outside wall of the bank. The panel she needed to access without destroying the whole thing was at the left side near the bottom. Convenient that it was covered by brick. Explosives were always an option, but that tended to leave a residue that she didn't want to deal with. One finger pressed to the communicator against her ear. "If Cain or Mala are free, I could use a hand at the bank. I have a wall to break." She started pulling out cabling and attachments, getting the handheld electronic ready. |
|
|
| Henry Orchard | May 21 2012, 10:16 PM Post #11 |
|
Unregistered
|
Rivera gave the order to split up and search for clues. Henry swung the drone around to watch each of the others disperse in turn. Most of them he didn't know and as such his present opinion of them was ambivalent at best. Rivera, he heard had faced down Victor Creed so that made her brave in the worst possible way. Marko, who had had the chance to escape but had freely chosen to remain in the custody of SHIELD. That spoke well of his character but perhaps not of his intelligence and as far as Henry was concerned The Juggernaut was not much more than SHIELD's Uber-Thug. Jenkins he didn't know a damn thing about, but the man had a stupid hat, and when he came back with some sort of impenetrable back-woods retort the drone ruffled its panels and let out a patronising "Oooooeeeoh, get you." With that the drone bobbed once and shot up into the air. It came to a sudden stop about fifty meters up where it began to drift towards the centre of town. As the video feed passed over a succession of deserted streets Henry leant closer and closer to the monitor, his cheeks pressed against his fists as his eyes darted from every imagined sign of life. He wanted desperately to see something, anything that might even slightly suggest survivors and by the time the drone came to a stop Henry had buried his knuckles in his eyes. It was becoming increasingly apparent that they weren’t going to find anyone. If this had happened as fast as they thought then there wouldn’t have been time for resistance or even to flee it would have been a screaming rush of incomprehensible, inescapable horror. More than once in his life Henry had felt such a thing, even as recently as two weeks ago. He didn’t know these people or even what had really happened to them but nonetheless he could feel the terror of their last moments. Vividly. “Sir?” Henry looked up at the Tech. She stood over the map of Point Pleasant, still in the process of marking down points of interest, her fingers nervously wringing the pencils she clutched. He tried to dismiss her concern with a wave. “I’m fine. I’m fine.” A slight flex of the shoulders and a wavering raise of her chin told Henry that his lack of conviction was more than apparent. Back home this sort of body language might have been referred to as The Stiff Upper Lip, the traditional British response to unmitigated, underwear ruining terror that had been made famous by hundreds of black and white war films. Don't show emotion. Just stand around smoking, talking about what a prick Hitler is until six o'clock when Sherlock Holmes punches all the NAZIs. That was actually a thing. Hollywood has nothing on Pinewood. Basil Rathbone might have been a consummate badass but Henry Orchard certainly wasn't. Unable to muster the necessary strength of heart to make some sort of rallying statement he elected instead to get on with the work, a move that was in no small way motivated to avoid having some sort of Moment. He wasn't at all in the mood to be dealing with all this wilfully blind hope that seemed to be flying around. "We need to establish the timeline" he said as he turned back to the controls and guided the drone down to street level. "Find engaged lines of communication. Phones off the hook are the most likely and probably the most accurate. When you do find them get the locations of the other party, we want to know if anyone heard anything." There was a short pause and then he caught movement in the corner of his eye. A salute he assumed, and that annoyed him. Every official SHIELD made at him these days made his skin itch, since the breakout it had all seemed so disingenuous. Almost patronising. The Tech's next remark, riding hot on the heels of her first unintentional insult, was the straw that broke the back Henry's patience. "We will find them, sir. We will." She meant well but Henry had more than his fill of well meanings today and his bitterness was hungry for whatever little morsels of hope it could find. Misery loves company after all. "Yes. We will. In fact, history shows us that whenever a large group of people just up and vanishes without a trace they inevitably turn up." His jaw wound tighter and tighter, until the last words passed through his teeth more of a growl than human speech "We always find the grave. Most fucking assuredly." |
|
|
| Cain Marko | May 23 2012, 11:50 PM Post #12 |
|
Unregistered
|
He turned to Noelle who had possibly inadvertently replied with a smart ass retort. He could have easily shot back with one of his own, even though she probably hadn't meant it. He was trying to do the nice guy thing though, and that meant not ripping into people all the time; figuratively and literally he supposed. But still, for some reason she assumed that the people just vanished a few minutes before the trucker and the National Guard got there; in his mind, something like this would have happened hours before hand. "Hmph"; he finally uttered before going back to business. He shrugged and smiled towards Reina; she was a bit like her sister, but they differed in a lot of ways. Professionalism and the seeming inability to have simple fun was one of them. "It was a lot easier to show than tell; and I ain't broke nothin in a long time...needed to get it out my system. And course I got a point. I worked for Magneto a long time; I know the man's M.O. and I'm tellin ya, this ain't it." He nodded when she gave the order to fan out and search and went off to see what he could find; he wasn't expecting much and wasn't surprised when he was right. No real signs of struggle or anything; it was like everyone just stopped what they were doing and made a mass exodus out of the city. He let blondie think what she would, but he knew this wasn't the work of the Master of Magnetism. As smart and cunning as the man was, he was always about making his point loud and clear, and he liked over the top. This wasn't any of that. As he searched, she came over the comm and asked for assistance taking down a wall. Well that was definitely something he could do and always took pleasure in. "On my way, blondie." He made his way over to her and saw her fiddling around with her gizmo and working on the ATM; she wanted the mall removed, so it would be removed. "Step aside for a sec', and cover your nose...don't want that dust gettin in there." When she was out of the danger zone, he smashed both ends of the wall with his foot, then braced his legs in front of the ATM and pushed. With nothing anchoring it to the ground, the wall fell backwards easily and left the ATM covered in dust, but unharmed. "And that ladies and gentlemen, is how you turn destruction into an art form." |
|
|
| Feedback | May 24 2012, 09:22 PM Post #13 |
|
Unregistered
|
Once inside the drugstore Reina headed to the backroom to check on the security tapes. Unfortunately the door was locked and no doubt the owner kept the key on his person or at home. Reina looked at the frame of the door and the wood that it was made of. It should not be too difficult to get through. The agent took a step back and then kicked the door. The wood near the handle splintered, but held up. Another good kick took care of that though. Reina pushed the door open the rest of the way as she stepped inside the little closet/office. There were three monitors up all displaying something different. One screen showed the inside of the store while the other two focused on the north and south ends of the building. Reina sighed as she flopped down in the sole chair in front of the station. There probably was not anything on the inside camera since drugstores usually closed around nine o’clock. She typed in a couple of commands in the computer to playback the footage from around the estimated time of the disappearances. There was a young man passing by the south corner followed by another. They stopped to loiter and have a smoke, nothing suspicious. Reina fast forwarded the material and watched as a few people passed here and there, a couple of vehicles, nothing that was useful. And then she heard what sounded like a small box crash to the floor in the jointed room. Reina paused the footage and drew one of her guns. She cautiously approached the closed door ready to pop anything that ran out and was not human. She hesitated. Anything could be on the other side and that was why she had to act. Reina slowly turned the handle and then yanked the door open. She gasped as one hell of a rat skittered across one of the shelves and vanished behind some crates. “Alright Rivera… chill.” The woman was really starting to hope that Magneto or some other crazed supremacist was responsible. That would be an acceptable explanation instead of creatures from another world or the underworld or lab experiments gone rogue and where now hungry for the flesh of whole towns. Reina shook her head. “You’ve seen too many Syfy specials.” Back to duty. She played the feedback once again. As it ran on and on she spotted something, a shadow it looked like. Said shadow was joined by another larger one. There was a brief, very brief struggle before they suddenly disappeared. She frowned. “Okay. That definitely wasn’t strange.” If only there was more on the camera than just shadows. She rewound the footage and paused when the shadows appeared. The positioning of them told her that they were standing just shy of five feet from the camera. Whoever was responsible must have known where the cameras were positioned. She contacted the others. “All I’ve seen so far is shadows. Anyone else having better luck?” Reina exited the building and headed over to the location that was on the monitor. She had to visualize where the individuals were standing to get and accurate reading. The way the way the shadows were angled told her that they were standing facing north east. Across the street was another store, this one with one of those revolving cameras. Hopefully it would have captured what the drugstore could not. “I might have something. Stand by.” Reina jogged over to the store bypassing guards and uniforms along the way. |
|
|
| Sharon Carter | Jun 4 2012, 05:26 AM Post #14 |
|
Unregistered
|
As an Agent it was her duty to think about all of the possibilities of the situation, even the unlikely. She needed to make sure that she stayed true to her opinionated work driven self. While she might agree with the assessment of it all, she knew better than to just throw around her assumptions into the air for anyone to hear. And in this type of situation? She wasn’t going to be caught theorizing anything that she actually believed it could be. There were hundreds of unknown people all around her. There wasn’t a single person she was fit to trust, even if the Captain had been here the situation would be the same for her. Right now she trusted only her own knowledge. Sharon had dealt with enough with super powered beings to trust what they were recommending when it came to their powers. She took a few steps away and turned her back, covering her face in the nook of her elbow, waiting until the sounds of breaking and crashing ceased. Turning back around to see Cain’s ‘art’, she simply nodded slightly. “I have to give it to you. You broke it free entirely but from the looks of that wall, it can probably be fixed whenever this situation is over.” She moved her device over to the ATM and started it on a download process. This was only one of the skills she excelled in, though information gathering was nothing but important right now. “Nothing here, Agent.” She didn’t need to review all of the footage to know it. Especially arriving this far out of the scene, they weren’t going to find anything. There was too much planning put into this. |
|
|
| Henry Orchard | Jun 11 2012, 10:30 PM Post #15 |
|
Unregistered
|
The mood in Henry's corner of the Ops Room had cooled considerably. Henry's ire had quickly suffocated under his embarrassment and now, in a haze of quiet mumbling, the work continued in earnest. The Tech would every so often deposit a ream of papers on his workstation, they'd mutter gratitudes and then she'd depart back to her own station. As he factored her findings into his own calculations it became apparent to Henry that perhaps he was under qualified to lead this arm of the investigation. Her work was impeccable, fast but thorough, comprehensive but defined, and her mathematics on more than occasion gave Henry cause to correct his own. In Henry's mind this served only to compound his doubts over his future at SHIELD and STRIKE, it was apparent that he was deficient in both ability and professional conduct. Another sheathe of paper appeared under Henry's nose and his face tightened with frustration as he paged through them. While they waited for the computer to collate the comms data they'd started trying to extrapolate a timeframe from heat dissipation. Henry had started by taking readings from uneaten meals and trying to ascertain how long it would take for them to cool from the time of cooking. The Tech had caught on quick and she'd pulled up some satellite coverage to try and compare the thermals of this town to what she'd expect it to normally be. While she'd been running those numbers he'd been picking up on the hotspots, trying to tie in more factors like the rate of fuel burned in the abandoned cars. All in all it was proving to be largely academic and Henry couldn't quite make anything of their joint conclusions. He handed the papers back to the Tech. "Thoughts?" She sighed and flicked through her own work again. "It's kinda patchy. Last twelve hours maybe?" "I think we'd guessed as much already." There was a brief silence has they both took up with their own thoughts. Henry's were mostly concerned with how much he liked swivel chairs, the reality of the situation a distant rumble in the lower parts of his mind. The Tech on the other hand did not possess Henry's talents for distraction and still had her head in the game. "Do you really think they're dead?" "Pssht. Hhhff". "Huh?" "Sorry, what?" Henry replied, shaking off the remnants of a daydream about little hydraulic levers. "I don't know. Perhaps.". He turned back to the console and watched the drone's camera pan over the rooftops. "If this was a violent attack we'd be seeing weapons residue of some kind, probably just traces from whatever conventional stuff the residents had tucked away. There's nothing. No sign of resistance at all. Like they all just blew away on the wind." He ordered the drone into a wide patrol pattern and stood from the console to stretch. "If we find anything concrete it'll be because we fine comb this place with a couple of thousand guys over the course of about a week. I'm guessing we don't have a week because nobody steals a few thousand people because they just feel like it. There's a plan here but I bloody well can't make sense of it.". With that they slipped back into silence again. There were only so many ways you could say "Duh, I dunno" and they were getting through them pretty quickly. Something bleeped on the next desk and the Tech went to it. She returned, tapping studiously on some sort of tablet. "Comms data is in. I'm just visualising." After a minute or so she flipped the display around and revealed a colour coded timeline. "This," she announced "Is the last connection made. This next point here is where the bandwidth usage starts to drop off. This is where the first connections start to time out." That was their timeline right there, a detailed breakdown of the electronic activities of the towns people showing an inexplicable drop in activity just after eleven. Frankly they could have done without all the messing around with the thermals. Henry dashed back to the drone controls and opened up the radio. "Vega, we've established the point of incidence. Approximately 2300 hours. Did you say you found something?" |
|
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
![]() ZetaBoards gives you all the tools to create a successful discussion community. Learn More · Sign-up for Free |
|
| « Previous Topic · Skrull Plot Archives · Next Topic » |






2:16 PM Jul 11