The next morning I received a new ear piece and was told that the mercenaries were looking for them twice as hard. So I had to be extra careful. Cleo went back to work but her son was sequestered in a safe house. She wanted an ear piece but was denied. She took it like a trooper and moved on. As for me my disguise changed drastically. I went from blonde to full on goth for some reason and this transformation was something that was floating around for a while now. I sat down as they pasted tattoos all over my body. The think tank went into overdrive as they heard from the gossip vine that the mercenaries were ready to retaliate. So escaping after a kill is going to be difficult and dicey. It is possible that they would have reinforcements eagerly waiting outside so I would likely be killed. So for now we are going to keep a healthy distance. That idea lasted a week and then a witness was discovered slaughtered and a few US Marshals along with them. The news was going bananas. The nerd squad was already tracking the killers as they drove to their hideout. It was an abandoned hotel. A decent place to hide. Getting out would be problematic. Considering the variable the odds were stacked against me. The anxiety levels reached astronomical heights so I requested that the hackers get protection too. So they were assigned men and women who served in the military and were given an honorable discharge. They weren't told a damn thing other than to keep them safe and sound. Considering their salary was better than their time in their service they served silently. We waited till the hotel was vacant before I was authorized to check the place top to bottom. A dozen drones would follow me for safety reasons. I would wear all black and a ski mask. I had to practice to hide my gait so that no one can tell who I am.
There were arguments to have our bugs implanted but the possibility that they would catch them and use it to track us was considered a possibility. The problems that would arise from that are going to be astronomical. They would kill us and make us look like the bad guys and convince others to track the rest of us down. Then the idea hit me. Why don't we deputize the police so they would look the other way and assist us in escaping and track the bad guys while remaining in a safe distance. They and their families would be unharmed. I approached the captain of Cleo's precinct and he wasn't happy with the idea until Cleo confessed that these people had tortured her without reason and is now looking for her son. The recording of me rescuing her was used as a means to get him to say yes. A list of trusted police officers was compiled and were briefed in secrecy. I told them this is going to be easy if there was a way to get the police to handle it. One of the members of the think tank asked them to see if there were any missing kids and pay someone to say that the hotel is where the kid is being held. An hour later the police raided the hotel. They searched the place from the basement to the roof and they grabbed everything in sight. The excuse was an anonymous tip was sent to the tip line regarding a missing eight year old girl. A woman swore that she saw a girl fitting her description being dragged kicking and screaming. An hour later we found the actual girl at the gas station. The girl was rescued by a man from LAFDA who was off duty. We sent SWAT to one location and there was a fire fight but nobody was injured. The other officers arrived and they were cuffed. The men wanted to know how they found out about these guys to begin with. The only thing they got was an anonymous tip saying that there was a terror threat in that location and the person in question was handling biological weapons. As amused as these individuals were they were pissed off and were swearing to end the tipper in the most horrific manner. At least their facial expression showed it for a brief moment.
The recording was deleted but the number was not so the bad guy tracked down the call and found himself in front of a payphone. The noise was such that tracking the person was impossible but the hunt was a foot. I gave my report during a video chat and the response from one of the nerds was, "This man is a man who really believes in cream." I gave her a look, "What?" She grinned, "Cream stands for Cash Rules Everything Around Me. Do you understand it now. CREAM means someone who believes that people can be bought or everything is for sale. Or he doesn't have enough money to live the life he wants." I gave a sigh and asked for a progress report as the bad guys are now looking for individuals who would help them track us down so they could unalive us. The trick was to find these ads and delete them before anyone had any opportunity to answer. As natural order dictates a few joined their side too and things started getting ugly. Like the time we lost the traffic cams for a brief moment. We got it back and had to do a thorough scrub down for worm programs and back doors. We made sure to check for anything that would trigger a response. We found several bugs and it took several days to fix it. By the time we had a hold of our bearings we had to move the enterprise to a different location. The think tank sets out scouts to find people who can invent stuff that can't be hacked or duplicated. This wasn't an easy task. But as soon as the inventors found out that their toys are going to be used to track down and stop bad guys. We proved that we were making a sincere difference and they joined and rallied others to their cause too. Each was given a warning. Be careful who they talk to because the bad guys have people with their ears to the ground. We did mention that we are going after a serial killer with some serious connections. We looked in land ownership and found nada. We checked for places with excellent vantage points and multiple exits. We found several possibilities. But the problem was that we found out about the bodies when they are long dead. So the computer geeks and inventors started on a device that can detect a heart that is fading to the point of death. It took a few dozen mishaps but they found one before long. The cars were ghost painted. Which means from one angle in it would appear a specific color but from a different angle it would appear another color.
We were hard at work when we heard the news of a fire in one of the RVs stationed in the park. The person in question was one of the most prominent conspiracy theorists. His call sign is the gatekeeper. He was advising people that he has discovered a gold mine of information that is going to change how people viewed the world. There were those who were saying that he stumbled on the conspiracy to implement the world wide lockdown. The news was already talking about a virus that was infecting the locals and it seems deadly. People were saying it was a con to monitor how people live their daily lives. Their spending habits, social media and other personal stuff. So they enforce some sort of totalitarian draconian lifestyle on them. People were saying that stuff will get digitized and there will be chips implanted in people's bodies. Most stuff will be like using Wi-fi. For example keyless doors. That means it requires finger prints or a small metal keychain. There will be cards that don't require any sort of swipe but require a simple tap. Leaving the property would require a permit so they can form an algorithm to figure out how to control the masses. This guy has been shouting about this conspiracy for the past three years. I snuck in to see his personal effects. According to the doctor he was waterboarded. Then I saw that his ribs were cracked. It only happens with aggressive CPR. My guess would be that someone tortured him and tried to resuscitate him and failed. Amongst his personal effects one specific thing stood out like a sore thumb. It was a wedding ring. I gently pulled it out and washed it. I saw that there it resembled stuff you see in computers. I slid the ring into my wallet and walked out the door. I wished them well and hoped that they would catch the killers.
I called Tanya and she guessed that he had stumbled on something worth murdering for. Whatever it was, convinced the majority of the people to waterboard him for information but he stood his ground and he died without giving them anything. Tanya asked that I send over the portable memory drive so she can read its contents to get a picture of who we were dealing with. I joked it could be the sanctuary killer. She gave me a look of death before she signed out. I was about to mail every digital information I had acquired to her P.O. box which she believed was a ridiculous idea. Until she was reminded that these people are retracing their steps if we were caught in anything then it is possible that they would track it to her address. I promised to have her shifted to another location. I will send her the stuff then. That way nothing gets lost in transit. She wasn't happy to leave but she moved out for her safety. First her stuff was shifted and then she was sedated before transportation. I made it clear to leave a bug or two just in case trouble shows up so we can have a heads up. Sure enough a day later Henry came to her address asking if she could help with something but unfortunately for him the new tenant was a single mother with four kids. Thankfully she was someone in the know. Tanya called after she was conscious and gave me her current address. I sent her every ounce of data I had mined. The delivery man was dressed in plain clothes. He gave me a parcel and I gave him mine. I had placed a tracker on it so I would know if there was anything that was any sort of foul play. It was delivered to Tanya the next morning and she said that she will get started after she finishes rearranging her apartment to her liking. That would normally take a month but now she has AI to give a virtual tour. The Feng shui was done in accordance with her preference. She started to dig through the data. Apparently some of this info wasn't shared with her. So she was pissed but she decided that she won't tell anyone.
The police raided a place belonging to a private company after it was discovered that the guns registered to their names were used in a murder. So while the police were interrogating the suspects I snuck into the server and started copying everything. Afterwards I copied the files in the CPU of the head of the company and quietly snuck out. While the think tank got the stuff from the police I sent mine to Tanya directly. She was pleased. The others took it as favoritism. I reminded them that they had systemically left her out of the loop. What if she discovered something they missed. A few were jealous but swallowed their pride to work for a common goal. The company must have figured out that I was working to stop the sanctuary killer. So they approached the police asking for a description of their lab tech who had browsed their servers and private laptops. The chief said that they are still processing the information and have yet to call their lab tech. This put them at a disadvantage as I had my hoodie up, wore gloves and also wore a mask with a series of QR codes stamped on it. These little stamps cleverly disabled the security cameras and deleted all video recording here and in any place they may have backed up in. I made sure to make two copies and send them in both directions. Both were pleased that I wasn't one sided. They discovered a secret meeting they had online. The meeting wasn't recorded obviously but the link led to other locations which widened the suspect pool. These people were tailed to identify the crook and soon we found ourselves eavesdropping on the culprit himself. He sounded like a middle aged man who had respiratory issues. Soon the nerds were scanning the web to search for a voice matching his. Each person took a grid and took it from there. Some searched for military related videos. Others interviews or social media posts live and old. They came up empty. So they waited for the next phone call and traced it to Washington DC.
I got permission from Jake to get out of the city since it was too dangerous to work. We made peace with the fact that this could be a decoy and that we are falling into a trap. There were moments where people talked about aborting the mission but some of the guys decided to brave the weather and keep going. The moment I arrived there was a group of people waiting to take me to my new residence. The place was not far from John A. Wilson building. The tenant was a school teacher and his wife. They were renting out their son's room. The couple had fewer questions than my transport. The refused to shut up. I had to pretend to pass out for him to stop talking. The others had sent out feelers i.e. drones. I knew that the creep would keep an eye for new arrivals it would narrow their suspect pool. I was told to wear a medical mask at all times. I did as I was told. I had the nerd squad check to see if the voice was AI. But it turns out to be authentic. I asked them if it is possible to transfer a virus by voice transmission. They checked for that too but it came up empty. The think tank was certain it was him but I wasn't. This is round two. The military has used decoys before to smoke out the crook so it is possible they are doing the same right now. I stood by my previous experiences. The nerd squad chose to go with my gut. Sure enough they discovered a hidden program that was monitoring and tagging everyone. The way their height, their walk and their style of clothing. The nerd squad had to find the server for the traffic cams to remove this spyware. They installed a different program that shut down all the cameras the moment anyone made a few specific hand gestures. We had to be sure that it won't be triggered by accident. We also made sure it erased the past twenty minutes so it won't interfere with any missing persons investigation.