Futuristic Mortal Coils

[_Line 213]

Beneath Moon and Pine



2:42 AM, Eastern Time
Essex County, New York State​

For the past few hours, when he hadn't been looking over the crime scene, Stanford found himself gazing at the movements of his superior's leather gloves.

They were incessant in their squeaking, the polished leather protesting each time the investigator slid his fingers past one-another. The nervousness of humans seemed a beautiful oddity, one of their many natural, seamless methods of communication. Machines had to learn nervousness, subtlety, non-forward intricacy. To them, even what was secret seemed straightforward, flavored and coded solely for those who would already understand--or who were meant to understand. There were no open secrets. Given their variety, perhaps such things were impossible. How could one fidget without limbs, gesture without fingers, blink without eyes?

Stanford looked down at his own hands, tented, each mechanized joint perfectly locked into place, unwavering as his rubber-tipped fingers tapped against each other just lightly enough for him to feel it.

He attempted to fidget. To give himself that same sense of apprehension. Even to him, it looked fake.

"Stanford." The voice that cut through his thoughts had become familiar as of an hour and thirty minutes ago. The suited human had identified himself as his overseer for the evening, offering his name and allowing his ID to do the rest. Craig Richards; pale, balding, and dour, both in person and in the photo attached to the card pinned to his front. Field Oversight Officer, SAB--and according to his file (Stanford was curious) 55 years old, two children, divorced. The human gestured for Stanford to step forth in tandem with the arrival of what seemed to be one final car; some had been milling about the crime scene for quite some time, while others appeared to have just arrived. Yet, the conclusion of preliminary observations was only ever the beginning of things.

The humanoid stepped forward, arms, hands and fingers still locked in their seemingly-relaxed, tented position as he made his way over to the senior investigator. "It's time to get the ground crew together, we're not wasting any time," Craig said, waiting just long enough for Stanford to arrive before turning and beginning his own brisk pace. "I want to get the briefing out of the way as soon as possible so that we can move things along. Have you documented everything?"

"Yes," came the machine's one-word response as he looked to his superior.

"And you're ready to tell everyone else what they need to know?"

"Yes." The caution and station lights reflecting off of his cool exterior shrouded his nervousness with proficiency far greater than attainable by man. His fingers slowly parted, his arms and hands lowering to his sides as he and Craig stopped at the end of the pine-lined roadway, the region still cloaked in night mist and the remnants of rain.

"Okay, ground crew," the man said, raising his voice just loud enough to be heard, yet low enough to be considered a disturbance all the same, "ground crew, you know who you are--let's see you over here, please, come on over here."

 

[AliceNWeb]

11:30 PM, Eastern Time
Essex County, New York State​

Jacqui had just stepped through the door of the small country-side diner. The interior was something you'd expect to see out of a classic movie with checkered flooring, swivel stools in front of a long bright red countertop and seating booths lining large open windows to match. The door swung shut with a friendly chime. It had just started sprinkling when she arrived so she grabbed the lengths to her jacket and gave it a brisk tug flinging droplets of water onto the floor, she gave her hair a bit of a fluff preventing the water from dripping down to her face. She took a moment for herself to breathe and scanned the Diner and took notice of a familiar silhouette.

Quickly she made her way over to a booth in the corner where a man had been awaiting her arrival, she slid herself into the booth and peered across to Will with elbows on-table and fingers intertwined.

"Hello Will, nice to see you made it."

At that moment a waitress came by to take their orders.

"I'll just take the darkest coffee you have, no sugar no cream"

She smiled at the waitress catching sight of the clear band around the waitresses wrist. After taking both Jacqui and Will's orders she retreated to the back to retrieve them.

Jacqui turned the other way to catch a glimpse outside the window speckled with drops of rain. The illuminated parking lot, the darkened foreground with pines that reached up for the sky reminded her of a lot of the cases she worked in Verdun. The unkempt blacktop of the country side glinted with rays of white and red as a car passed exposing the solid double yellow lines in the center of the road momentarily.

She turned her attention back to Will.

"William, or is it Will?" She prodded curiously.

"When was your last case? For me it would have been..."

Her eyes seemed fixated on something that wasn't there momentarily as she thought.

"A little over five years, give or take?"

She teetered her hand back and forth with a wrinkle to one side of her face as she said this.

"So it's like I'm being thrown back into the fray I suppose."

The waitress came and set their coffees down without a word and walked away.

The rest of their conversation was about small interests, personal lives, the excitement and unease that came just before a case.

2:28 AM, Eastern Time
Essex County, New York State​

Jacqui pulled up to the crime scene. The familiar blue and red flooded the interior of her car. The mechanical whirring of windshield wipers stopped as she clicked them off, coming to a stop well-away from the caution tape on the side of the road. She turned the car off and slid the keys into her jacket pocket with a jingle. Reaching over she popped open the glove box on the passenger side - pulling her pistol, badge, and a couple of blue latex gloves from their box inside. She flicked it shut, put her car in park and stepped out onto the road.

The cool air whipped at her face, the smell of pine filling the nostrils. As she approached she holstered her pistol and flashed her badge, putting her gloves on as she stepped under the caution tape. She stopped briefly staring at the faint blue glow that seeped into the water off in the distance, from the vic. She turned to the police officer that had let her under the tape and asked

"Who is the Field Officer?"

The officer pointed off into the distance towards a bald looking man and responded "Craig Richards, He's the one who's in charge of the site right now!"

Jacqui nodded and walked over to where the vic was being collected for examination at Forensics. She stopped about 15 feet from where the vic was being collected and reached into her pocket pulling out a small earbud and slipped it into her ear. She pulled her phone out from her side pocket and slid it into the breast-pocket.

"Kane, Cossette, Jacqui SAB dash 5792, start recording and analysis."

Her phone chimed and her earbud lit up with a faint blue as it responded "Identification confirmed, recording and analysis authorized for SAB agent 5792."

She walked around in a wide circle being sure to capture the crime scene from every angle, but far enough away as to not disturb anything the vic may have dropped if there was a struggle.

2:43 AM, Eastern Time
Essex County, New York State
​

"ground crew, you know who you are--let's see you over here, please, come on over here."

Jacqui had been squatting down taking a look at the blacktop around the puddle where the vic's fluids had leaked into when the order rang out.

Her eyebrows furrowed in concentration briefly before she squinted looking for the Field Officer, sure enough he was the one who issued the order. Jacqui took the butt of her wrist and wiped the condensation from her forehead not wanting to get it on her glove. She stood up and made her way over to the Field Officer.

"Craig, or if you prefer Richards, My name is Jacqui I was recruited by the SAB to assist you here. I used to work as a Lieutenant in France."

She said with a clearly french accent, and an outstretched hand as was accustomed in the United States.

After they shook hands she fell in line as the others made their ways over.

( L Libero simj26 _Line 213 Gradous13 The One Eyed Bandit Huntertabbysandshark3 Feel free to contact me if you want to coordinate any interactions in the future. I'm alright roleplaying with anyone. )

 

[simj26]

She drew her grey jacket closer around herself. She wasn’t too sure why she’d be here in the first place. Someone might have taken the boss’ suggestion a bit too seriously. Her abilities really didn’t warrant herself being dragged out of her comfy office to help out with whatever the SAB had in their hands. True, she was probably their best, but she wasn’t really THE best, was she? She was sure the SAB had enough influence to pull in better forensics staff into the mix. She sighed and twirled a lock of her hair around one gloved finger. One of those investigation types had already pushed her way into the area and was looking around. Ana didn’t think she was from around here. She didn’t know how she knew, but her gut instinct told her so. She had long learned to trust that instinct of hers ever since she had been in Homicide. The one time that she hadn’t had not been kind to her, or her colleagues. She subconsciously raised a hand to her eyepatch, tracing the edges of her scar poking out from underneath the cover. She gave another tired sigh, and let her hand drop to her side. She twitched every time the lady rounded the investigation area. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, per se, but it just kind of irked her. No one should be rummaging around the area like that. Contaminating the scene before any forensics got to work on it was...not advisable. Someone could have given her a fresh pair of booties, at least. She scratched at her chin, and removed her phone from her pocket, scrolling through her messages.

“Craig Richards, huh.” She murmured to herself, then closed her phone, shoving it back into her jacket’s pocket. Dusting down her black sweater and brown skirt, she tugged at her jacket again, and moved towards the Field Officer’s direction, before she froze. What was that lady doing? She was getting too close to the body! There was no way there was going to be a clean investigation now! She'd have to scrape up all those foreign materials from God knows where off the pavement. Worse still, what if her foreign materials contaminated OTHER relevant foreign materials?! Ana opened her mouth to say something, but was immediately cut off by a call for all ground crew to attend a briefing. Steaming, Ana stormed towards the Field Officer’s area. The woman did so as well. Goodness, she was one of the ground crew? Preposterous! Ana fumed in silence as the other woman spoke first, having been the first to arrive at Craig before the others had.

Used to, huh? Guess she wasn’t in the Force anymore. Or wasn’t a Lieutenant any more. If Ana had to guess, it’d be the former. No way they would let a disgraced officer assist them with an SAB related investigation. But her behaviour was simply unforgivable! “I’m Anastasia Brighton, Forensics Division, assisting with SAB investigation, sir!” She introduced herself quickly, then swiftly continued, “And it is my professional opinion that officers, investigating or otherwise, shouldn’t be contaminating the area before forensics has gathered all relevant materials, sir!” She puffed her cheeks out in indignance, then quickly realised her temper had gotten the better of her. She coughed and her cheeks deflated immediately, and she scratched her head sheepishly. “What I, uh, meant was…” she trailed off, and rubbed her neck, then turned to the French ex-Lieutenant. “Hey, Jacqui, right? Don’t make my job harder, please?” She realised that must have sounded a bit too harsh, and winced again. “I--what I mean was-- aw, fuggedaboudit, you know what I meant! Don’t go plodding all over my crime scene, and no hard feelings! Just don’t do it again, alright?!”

 

[The One Eyed Bandit]

The country air stung like battery acid. Around the outer boundaries of the crime scene, a miserable-looking woman lurked. Fidgeting about, she hovered just about as far away from the eye to the police cordon's storm as she could. Crime scene investigation was not her field of expertise.

For a time, she'd managed to keep herself entertained. The woman's overgrown bangs veiled her eyes from any onlookers as she'd probed about the rest of the police cohort. Most of them were as droll as the morning sun. Yawning assisants, overworked detectives, and all other shades of assorted nosy parkers circled the scene like crows would carrion. Boring. She'd seen enough dicks, private or no, to last a lifetime and a half.

But, Ah~ Even in the midst of Mother Nature's most dramatic of tantrums, there was a always a beam of sunshine that shone through. The most mechanical of the outcast-woman's companions, oh my, he was an adorable one. From afar, she watched over him like a guardian angel. The carefully simulated nervous ticks that would occasionally jostle his stiff and stoic frame, each and every one was like a tiny pop of fireworks. It was incredible, and it would never cease to be. The Embryonic Minds, they were mankind's greatest play at imitating God yet, and never once did they never fail to fascinate her.

She'd have to make a point out of playing the bot's Battery administrator, whenever his seasonal checkup happened to crop up.

Shaking the woman from her perversions, a gruff voice called out across the crime scene. Her collar was being pulled. It was time to go to work.

Meandering her way across the scene, she could hear that the cadre of the week was already starting to get spirited. She wasn't sure, and quite frankly she didn't care very much what they were bickering about, so she just logged away a note as to their fiesty inclinations.

"Good... Would you call this hour morning, yet?" Approaching, the woman spoke with a surprisingly refreshed-looking smile, a consquence of her little observation session. Juxtaposed against the bags that circled her eyes, which seemed deep and heavy enough to stuff the victim's body inside of for transport, the expression struck a stark contrast.

"Mmm... I guess that doesn't matter though, does it. Crime never sleeps, yes?" She rambled. Classic corporate small talk, as it was. In theory it was just enough to seem polite, but not enough to have anyone making the mistake that she wanted to play friends. "Anywho. Seraphina Cain, from... Profiling, Interrogation... There's a lot, I guess, but I'm here this morning as your E.M. Specialist." Her mouth hovered on that last syllable for a moment, considering whether or not to tag on some formality or another, but she decided to cut herself off. That was more than enough for now. Her throat was starting to hurt.

 

[Gradous13]

Beneath Moon and Pine


2210hrs, Essex County NY


Marie's Diner...


Will sat in the heat of his car, the neon sign of the diner barely illuminating his face, a few droplets of rain tapped softly as they hit the windshield. An old song played softly from the radio, he enjoyed /Band On The Run/ as the song changed around so much, reminded him how things can change so quickly. Will knew it was going to be a long cold night, he could sense it but it wasn't bad thing... Not to him at least. He looked at his analogue watch, which automatically glowed when looked upon, showed that midnight was closing in slowly but surely. Will emerged from his vehicle to make his way into the diner.



A small bell rang as he opened the door, making his presance known the waitress kindly asked him to sit anywhere. "Hey, I'm expecting someone, I'll order when they're here" the waitress replied with a "Alright, I'll be here" her welcoming demeanor was appreciated. A booth towards the corner of the diner suited him most, bringing a sense of security to him. Will removed his heavy coat and placed it in the booth corner seat. He slid his hand into his right pants pocket, a silver case presented itself along with a lighter. The man relaxed into the seat, taking in a breath, the cigarette shortening as he did. Will exhaled quickly, /"What was her name again?"/



He broke away from his thoughts as door of the diner opened. /"Oh yeah, that's right... Jacqui"/ Will recalled, seeing the woman enter. The past few weeks had been very long, and he was bad at remembering names anyways. Wilhad met Jacqui only a few days ago and their introduction was brief and their second encounter was just as short. Though Jacqui had suggested Marie's in order to know each other more professionally which was fine by him.



Thanks, good to see you again, nice place, I hope they have some decent coffee" he said in reply to her greeting. The waitress had made her way to the booth, before Will could ask for coffee Jacqui had beat him to the punch, "I'll have the same" the Waitress moved away from their table Will gazed at his car for a moment before giving Jacqui his full attention. "Wilson, actually but most prefer Will... Mueller is my last."



Jacqui wanted to know when his last case was, revealing that hers was at least five years ago. Will understood how she felt, oddly, Will hadnt discharged his weapon in a couple years, aside from the range. That was until seven months ago.



"Last case huh, was a relatively short one, evrything was said and done six months ago" Will was glad that one was over, but he felt that there was another brewing, as they always were.


The waitress set down the pair of coffees onto the table before quietly walking away. The two would talk for sometime before being called short by a call Will had to take...



0242hrs, Essex County, NY

Will had stood several feet away from Stanford for sometime now, studying the scene from a distance. Will pressed his left arm into his heavy coat while he continued to drink his coffee. Will shivered sporadically and swayed to his side's in a poor attempt to warm up. The "heated" shirt wore failed to charge, again. "Paid too much for this damned shirt, the least it could do is fuckin work" The man looked miserable. Will had been here for the better part of what felt like an hour. A familar voice grabbed his attention. Will was greatful to hear Craig beckon those apart of the ground crew towards him. "Finally" He muttered while he made his way over.

 

[_Line 213]

"There's our local rep, thank god..." Craig muttered as the county detective made his way toward the group, "...save us a lot of headaches..."

He gave the group a quick look-over, counting heads following their newest arrival. This seemed like everyone he was expecting; whether or not the Bureau would shift things around during the night was something he'd just have to leave up to fate. Even with the numbers adding up as they did, the overseer could not help but feel as if there were always more cases than there were warm bodies.

"My name is Craig Richards, and with any luck, I'll be the one seeing the rest of you through the night. You can all introduce yourselves later, but I'd like to point out this man, right here," Craig began, gesturing to Will in the midst of his introduction, "this is Wilson Mueller, he's with the county police, which means he's your local contact. If you need access to local resources, it'll be easiest to go through Will, generally things will require a little less paperwork on the county's end." He swung his hand around, now gesturing to the machine just beside him. "With that I'd like to turn it over to Stanford; he's a rookie, but I'm gonna be having him run intel for you. So, put 'im to good use."

The Servitor looked out toward the group, then back to Craig, who shored him up with a secondary gesture. "Thank you, Mister Richards," came Stanford's calm, synthesized voice as he looked back to the group at large. "I have been instructed to provide you all with an overview of our current circumstances. I am sure that some of you have already taken the time to inspect our crime scene. Nonetheless, please allow me to run the details past you all to ensure we are all on the same page." His head briefly turned part-way over his shoulder, taking stock of the massacre behind him, before reorienting upon the so-called ground crew, his lenses refocusing. "Our casualty was known as Vincent Redding--Caucasian male, fourty-one years of age; no children, no immediate family on record save for a divorcee residing in Chicago, Illinois. The cause of death seems to be vicious lacerations upon the back which led to rapid blood-loss. The rationale behind the Bureau's involvement is two-fold; firstly, due to the nature of the wound, the majority of non-machine-related explanations have been discarded for the time being. Secondly, as some of you may have noticed, a small processing fragment of unknown origin has been found roughly two yards away from the victim's body."

The rookie paused, his lenses refocusing as his account seemed to come to an end. "...Besides the crime scene itself, I have been informed of two other potential interests. The first is an impromptu path through the nearby pines and underbrush; it has not yet been followed through to its conclusion, though a group has been sent forth, should any among you wish to join them. The second is the fuel cell station across the street from us; I have been informed that it is machine-manned, making a witness account a possibility."

Another pause, this time marking a more definite conclusion. "Please let me know where my presence would be most needed."