Rose looks at the contacts she downloaded from Ciarán’s cell phone. She knew some of the people on his contact list. She knew the people he had on his contact list were well-connected. Rose wonders if the people Ciarán turned to were connected to anyone on Ciarán’s list.
She did a Google search of the people she knew and the locations of some of the people who had been changed. She also checked to see who some of the enemies of the people who knew them were. She leans back in her chair and watches as a list of people appears. She cross-references those names with possible missing people.
After about twenty minutes, several matches appear. Rose looks at the information and wonders why he is doing what he is doing. There has to be some connection. She turns on the GPS tracker she slipped into his pocket and gets its location.
Rose transfers the information to her tracker and changes into her bodysuit. She based it on a cosplay outfit she once wore. It is skintight, made of flexible Kevlar, and capable of stopping all bullets, including rifle rounds.
She slips her helmet on and heads towards her motorcycle. She custom-built it, and it couldn’t be traced back to her. When Rose mounts her motorcycle, it automatically starts up. She emerges from the hidden garage and drives to the location where the GPS tracker is located.
When she arrives at the location, she hides her motorcycle and heads towards the GPS. Rose notices that the GPS is inside an old-style brownstone building that looks like it has been renovated. The GPS tracker is located on the fourth floor.
Rose shoots her grappling gun towards the roof and secures it. She lets the grappling gun do the work of lifting her up to the top floor. She scans the window for an alarm sensor and spots one. She disables it and slowly opens the window.
The enhanced vision systems inside her helmet detect a motion alarm. She removes a small device from her belt and disables the motion detector. She enters the bedroom and locates the GPS tracker she slipped into the jacket.
The jacket was hanging in Ciarán’s closet. She looked around the bedroom and noticed Ciarán was a neat person. Everything had a place; if she moved anything, she had better put it back the way he had it. She looked around in the bedroom but didn’t find anything of value.
She checks the next floor and notices where he keeps his collection of stage artifacts. She finds all sorts of various gimmicks and stage magician items that used to belong to famous magicians. There were also books that looked to have belonged to some of the famous magicians. She spots a few items that belonged to Wildfire in the collection. Some of the items looked to have been damaged. Rose takes a few pictures to send to Sasha.
While looking through the book collection, Rose discovers a concealed entrance. She figures out how to open it. She watches as the secret door opens, revealing a strange room with various artifacts. She immediately recognizes some of them, but there are others she has no idea where they came from or the symbols/writing on them.
Rose takes pictures of everything. Maybe she could show Sasha the pictures to see if she recognizes them. She closes the door again and searches each floor until she reaches the garage. When she walks into the garage, she discovers all sorts of tools and sees dust lying around. She takes a test tube from her belt and scoops some of the dust into it.
Afterward, she looks around some more and finds various pieces of broken wood with writing on them. The wood was so rotten that she couldn’t recognize the symbols carved into it. She carefully puts the pieces into an evidence bag and seals it. Later, she examines the bag back in her lab.
Rose keeps looking around the garage and finds a few sheets of paper with people's pictures and names. The helmet enhances the ambient light so she can see the pages. Some of the names grab her right away. All the people that she researched earlier were on this list.
“Gotcha!” Rose folds the paper and tucks it inside her outfit.
When she turns around to leave, she is suckered punch by a figure dressed in black like herself. Her helmet absorbed the punch as she tried to regain her footing. The optics of her helmet flickered, but they were working okay. She watches as the person draws a sword from behind his back and takes a swing at her with it.
Rose parries the sword with her forearm. The suit she was wearing was immune to bladed weapons. She extends two electro pongs from her wrist and fires them towards the person.
The unknown person knocks them aside and comes at her again. He swings his sword again at her, and flames surround the blade. He goes in for another strike, but this time for her midsection.
Rose backflips out of the way of the attack. She spins around on her right foot, then brings her left foot up and kicks the other person. She feels her foot blocked and pushed away.
“I really need to bring some weapons with me next time.” Rose tosses down some black eggs.
Smoke starts filling the area as she dodges past the figure and out the door behind them. She runs as fast as she can towards the nearest window and throws an explosive disk towards it. The disk explodes as she leaps out the window.
The helmet she is wearing shows the person chasing her. She tosses down some clear balls behind her. She keeps running as she watches the person slip on the substance she tossed down.
“Try getting up from that, creep!”
Rose runs back to where her motorcycle is hidden and jumps on it. It automatically starts up as she speeds away from the area. Just to be on the safe side, she is being followed. She takes the long way back to her place.
