Chapter 424
I had no idea how fast Job had been driving or exactly how far it was from Shepherdstown to DC, but we had reached our destination. He pulled into a spot in front of a rundown, brick office building. It wasn’t huge, but then this was the space most of the Independents worked out of, when they worked together, which just meant they truly answered to no one except Job, the leader they had appointed, and had no government funding. The second part showed.
None of us said anything as we followed Job inside. We ran into a few people in the hallway and all politely greeted each other, but my mind was elsewhere. If I couldn’t find Holland, and I couldn’t find Stewart, what else could I do? I was starting to go a little crazy, and the person who is always there to calm me down and get me back on track was nowhere to be found.
A tall woman with short blonde hair I recognized as Trina, the Hunter Leader for DC, was already in the conference room. So was her Guardian counterpart, a short guy with dark hair and a stocky build named Oswald. We all said hello, and I noticed Christian sitting in the corner with headphones on, staring at a laptop. I wondered where Ashley was.
Job also introduced the tall guy looming over a 3D model of the festival field as Ahmed. I didn’t remember him from last night and figured he either wasn’t there or was one of those people running around in all the chaos. There was also a woman with short pink hair who looked like she had enough energy to power a small town. Job introduced her as Lisa.
We all gathered around the table, except for Christian, who stayed in his corner with his headphones on. He hadn’t even looked our way when we’d come in, and even as Ahmed was talking, my mind was flickering back over to Christian. He always seems weird, but something seemed more off than normal about him at the moment.
“This is the festival grounds,” Ahmed began. “This is where we found the first set of objects, here and here, and this is where we know Aaron and Elliott were stationed.”
Lisa jumped in. “Brandon and Jamie were over here, on the other side of the festival grounds.” I followed her fingers with my eyes, but I felt myself tensing up as she talked about what my boyfriend was doing moments before he disappeared. “And Dax and Alex were here.” Also not comfortable. “The second set of objects was picked up right about here.”
“All right...” my sister said, like she wanted to know what we were supposed to do with this information.
I studied the model for a moment, noticing where the broken mirror was located and where the other set of objects was in regards to where Brandon was stationed. Tracing a line with my finger, I said, “So Brandon and Jamie must’ve crossed through here on their way to Elliott.”
Cadence was thoughtful. “Yeah, I’d told him to go find his dad because you were telling me the moon was moving.” Her expression told me she hadn’t given much thought to my spell from right before this happened. “He was worried about you.”
“He must’ve taken off through here.” Ahmed traced a line almost identical to mine.
I could see the wheels spinning in my sister’s head now. “Do we have audio of the conversation he was having with Jamie while they were headed that direction?” she asked.
Job nodded and shrugged at the same time. “Christian is working on that. Lisa, can you step over and ask him if he’s gotten that far?”
“Sure.” Her step was more like a bounce, and again I was envious of her energy.
Oswald looked at me and said, “You were saying the moon was moving?” with his forehead scrunched up in confusion. I couldn’t blame him.
“I was,” I admitted without going into detail. “But I don’t remember it.”
“Do we have that?” Trina asked, and I wanted to blurt out a solid no. I didn’t want everyone gawking at me as I made a fool out of myself screaming at the moon until I blacked out. But then, if it would help find Brandon and the others....
“I probably do,” Cadence said, and I watched her digging through her IAC in order to find it. She had a projector on her wrist, and she used it to show everyone.
I could see Cadence clench her fist as Aaron’s voice filled the room, and I almost felt as bad for her having to watch this as I did for myself. I looked like a crazy person. I had a slight memory of what had happened, but I had no idea just how frantic and creepy I had been. It’s no wonder my sister was worried.
When it was over, my sister turned it off, and I muttered, “Holy crap. I really don’t remember that.” Not like that anyway.
My sister’s voice was sympathetic. “Brandon was concerned so I told him to go find his dad.”
I was about to ask her if she had her IAC on when Brandon was doing just that, but Christian called to us from the corner, “I’ve got some footage for you, too.” My sister jumped, like she’d forgotten we’d asked about that, and she put her arm around me as we moved over to his laptop.
Hannah was sending out some of her warm, calming waves of emotional stability behind us, which was nice, but in my present mood, it wasn’t doing much but dulling the edges. I was nervous to watch what Christian had found, but there was something else bothering me, something about how he was vibrating, that was telling me everything wasn’t as it seemed.
Christian used his projector instead of the smaller laptop. “All right, I’ve been through the raw footage from Aaron’s and Elliott’s IACs. There’s no audio, just what they were looking at.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Because of the nature of the operation. If it had been a hunt, we’d have all of that, but we don’t automatically collect data all of the time from IACs, or else, as you know, we’d have a lot of private conversations recorded that no one would want anyone else to hear.” I was totally with him on that. “So... in this instance, we didn’t turn to full hunt recording mode on the drives, just observational. If we would’ve actually gone into hunt mode, then the audio would’ve automatically kicked in. That’s what happened as soon as Cadence arrived on the scene this morning and started interviewing Vampires.”
We all nodded in understanding, and Cadence asked, “So what’s this?” gesturing at the footage.
“This is about thirty seconds before Aaron’s IAC cuts out.”
My sister’s grip tightened, and I put my hand on top of hers on my shoulder. This would be tough for any of us to watch, but especially her.
