Once again, Dalton parks away from the Krispy Kreme. I didn't advertise before, not gonna start now. He chooses a location between the public terminal Jazz identified and the donut shop.
------
As the approach the parking lot, Book furls one eyebrow. "Is anyone else's paranoia acting up? Is it strange that there are so many cars here?"
------
Dalton nods, "Think its time to put this new drone to the test." He launches the drone and sends it out over the parking lot recording license plates and looking for things that appear out of place for the neighborhood like a concentration of out of state license plates, AR tags on the cars that flag them as 'out of place', security forces of any type, etc.
------
Book replies, "I will project and perform some non-invasive recon of the area." He looks around for comments, then leans back, projects and begins surveying the area looking for astral presences and security then probing to see if there are astral defenses around the Krispy Kreme.
------
As the fly-spy begins its recon, Dalton looks over at Jazz. "You wanna check out that public terminal?"

@ Dalton
There is a high cluster of sequential plates; however, only one car is out of state. There are three from out of county.

@ Book
There is a medium force ward over the back room where you had your meet earlier. Otherwise the area is clean except for the standard mish-mash of a background count that passes for normal in Atlanta.

Dalton's interest perks up when he finds sequential license plates. He makes a first pass inspection to see if he can determine if they look real or official in some capacity.
-----
Book returns to his body and sits up. "Nothing out of the ordinary except for the warding on the back room. I'm going to recon the area.. Check for any perimeter security." With that, he leaves his body and begins to sweep a one block radius looking for sentries or more warded sites.

@ Dalton
The sequential numbers appear to belong to a group of Star vehicles. Interestingly, there are two unmarked cars among that group.

@ Book
There are a few low force wards in the area with a decent sized ward near the back of a street facing shop.

Dalton reports his finding, "Well I'm seeing a number of Star vehicles, but this is a freaking donut shop. I'm not ready to call it a conspiracy yet... Except to inflate the sales for Krispy Kreme." The last part was added with a snicker.
---------
Book on the other hand returns to his body. There are several wards in the area, one of which I am taking into consideration. He pulls up the area overhead in the team net that Jazz established. "Dalton. I think you should send your fly-spy over here to check out this building in this room. I found a magical ward there." He marks the area where he found the larger ward facing the shop.
---------
Dalton replies, "Null sheen chummer" and he sends the fly-spy off to perform a recon of the area.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Mid-Morning; Outside Krispe Kreme, Atlanta, CAS

"Sure."

Jazz heads over to the terminal and takes a look at it before getting to work. She positions herself in a way, that the camera, if there seems to be one, does not take pictures of her. First she hacks into the terminal, then - if everything goes according to plan - she searches for whatever bits and pieces she could identify from the half erased email she found in Fulerton's mail folder, hoping to find out more about its content, maybe even a recording of who has sent it from here.

@ Dalton
The fly-spy flits hither and thither down the street in a decent imitation of a real fly. As it closes in on the area indicated by Book, you can see a sign reading, "Anna's Arcanum."

@ Jazz
The poor local network doesn't stand a chance. The reality filter kicks in and provides you with your favored image - nice and clean. There are logs of the last several conversations and emails from this terminal. You are able to quickly locate what you want. You find the message which in whole reads:

<I miss you. Want to see you again. My husband will be out on Wednesday. Come alone around 2200. My place.>

There is also a file with video of the sender but the quality is not so great. It will take some massaging to get it right.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Mid-Morning; Outside Krispe Kreme, Atlanta, CAS

< [Jazz] Ok, got some more data... message said: "I miss you. Want to see you again. My husband will be out on Wednesday. Come alone around 2200. My place." - will work on the image taken by the camera here, in order to get a better idea of the sender, but later. >

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Mid-Morning; Across the street from Krispe Kreme, Atlanta, CAS

Book smiles, first at the sign from the video feed that the fly-spy provides then at the intel provided by Aeryn. "Finally! I think we are getting somewhere. We have an affair, though we don't know for sure who yet with. I'm not ready to jump to any conclusions yet that this will bust things open. I'd much rather catch him collecting money from Aztechnology." He rubs his hands together as he thinks, now a little excited. "Jazz. Earlier said there was a 'note for a meeting roughly every two weeks at Starbucks near his office'. Did you say when the next meeting is?"
---------
Dalton recalls the drone. Listening to the conversation.
---------
Book continues talking with Jazz. "I think we should stay around here until you get that image cleaned up, then we can track her down... If she's not our ork, then she's an additional lead...."

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Mid-Morning; Outside Krispe Kreme, Atlanta, CAS

"Sorry, no idea about the biweekly meeting. Gave you all the info I found. There wasn't anything else."

"Okay. Working on it as we speak..."

Jazz then runs some of her programs over the image in order to hopefully get a better picture of who's depicted there.

Jazz is rewarded with a somewhat fuzzy but adequate picture of a svelte ork. Well, svelte being a relative term. She appears to be heading off to the building across the street.

Dalton looks are the image of the ork woman... "Wow... For an ork... She's kinda hot.."
----
Book ignores their wheel-man, instead focusing on Jazz, "Great work with the picture. " He gives his teammate an uncharacteristic, brief smile before returning to his business like demeanor. "Could you cross extract the dates of last three meetings at the Starbucks near his office from the data you retrieved? "

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Mid-Morning; Across the street from Krispe Kreme, Atlanta, CAS

Book frowns at the lack of dates on the Starbucks. Far less than optimal. How can we work around that? "Ok, here's my thought. I think we are up to three solid leads right now. Number one, our fine damsel of the orkish variety this Wednesday, 10pm. We just need to find her. Number two, these transactions at a Starbucks. Jazz, we are going to need your magic there. Can you get into their security system and run an agent or something to locate footage of the target. Hell we may not need to catch him in the future if you can get good footage in the past, though we will probably need to stage to get our own audio. Third, this upcoming fund raiser where the Smoking-Man thought Ares might make an appointment. We need a date on that fund raiser, a location and means for us to get inside. How does this sound?"

Dalton just nods and looks to Jazz and Dean.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Mid-Morning; Outside Krispe Kreme, Atlanta, CAS

"Hmm... not sure I really want to mess around with Ares security system, so for that appointment we will have to look somewhere else. Starbucks, however, should be less of a problem. Will see what I can do there. How should we go about with the mistress? The picture is well and good, but a name would be better. Maybe you can ask around or something? The pic won't be much use in a search, I'm afraid. Maybe we should find a new location, though, hanging around here with all the cops might not be the best idea..."

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Mid-Morning; Outside Krispe Kreme, Atlanta, CAS

Dalton looks to the trio in the van, "Give me a few minutes." He then sits back in his seat and slips into full-VR and off into the matrix and zips across city at the speed of thought to EZSoft 4u, software whole seller. He makes a few selections and uploads the electronic payment.
Once he returns to his own com, he begins using his new edit program to clean up the video of the woman hoping to pick up more details about her.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Late-Morning; Outside Krispe Kreme, Atlanta, CAS

Dalton begins work on the video, moving the van down the street and around the corner after ten minutes to keep from drawing attention to themselves. He then sets in to the task of continuing to clear up the video to attempt to determine the woman's direction or perhaps of mode of travel.
--------
Book on the other hand is suitably bored about forty-five seconds after the van is moved. Looking to Dalton he says, "Wake me when you have that video cleared up more and a direction or vehicle."
Thinking a moment more about what might need to be done, he decides to summon a spirit of man before taking his nap. The spirit arrives taking the form in astral space of a large, middle aged man, beaten down by years of manual labor. It waits silently for its summoner's command. Thank you for coming. I will have a task for you shortly.
--------
An hour later, Dalton wakes up Dean and Book, "I was able to clean up the video even more, but we have a no go as far as mode of travel or even direction."
--------
Book looks at the picture; Studies it. He then shifts his perception to the astral and looks to the patiently waiting spirit. Thank you for your patience. I have one task to ask of you. He places the images of the woman in the video in his mind, very happy that Dalton was able to clean them up. Find this woman and tell me where she is so that I may go to her.
As the spirit begins circling out into astral space using its search powers, Book looks back to Dean, Dalton and Jazz' VR-induced-comatose body. "Shall we get lunch? I expect that the spirit will take some time to locate this woman. I expect she is in this area, though not necessarily close to this location. Being married, in a relationship with a politician and careful of her husbands movements I doubt we will locate her in a nightclub or bar... a country club perhaps... "

After about 35 minutes the spirit returns to Book. It again appears as a man accustomed to manual labor. With the expression of one who would rather not be talking to his supervisor the spirit says, Excuse me, boss. May I talk to you for a sec? I found the woman you asked me about.

"Excellent!!" Book exclaims before turning to his team mates, "Be right back". He sits back in his seat and enters the astral.

He says, "Yes, please. Lead on." and follows the large spirit off and out toward the young ork woman.

The spirit kind of mopes toward the apartment building seen in the recording. Despite being in the astral, the spirit gives the distinct impression of walking. He leads Book to the top floor of the apartment building to a very nice apartment. The woman from the video is sitting in her kitchen aparently talking to thin air.

Book turns to the spirit. "Thank you for your service. I release you". He takes several moments to study the location of the apartment inside the building then returns to the van. Once there he works with Dalton to mark the apartment on the GPS.

He then turns to Dean, "Ok, looks like you're up. Anything you need from us? You got audio/video recording gear?"

As Book turns to the spirit and says, Thank you for your service. I release you. The spirit smiles light-heartedly and says, Have good weekend, boss. I know I will. With that he is gone.

Book draws a map in AR for Dalton to the room. "Can you send your little drone up there?"
----------
Dalton nods, "Check". He then leans back, enters VR and jumps into the fly-spy drone. The little drone buzzes around and heads towards the apartment looking for some way to enter through the building either via the main doors or a window or air duct of some sort.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Late-Morning; Near Krispe Kreme, Atlanta, CAS

Having located the woman and come up with the beginnings of plan, Dalton recovers his fly-spy drone and drops Dean off at the Starbucks down the street.
-------
Book gives some parting advice to their teammate, "We've got plenty of time between now and Wednesday. Don't get too close or spend too much time in one place. Dalton will come back and pick you up later this afternoon."
-------
With that, Book, Jazz & Dalton head off towards the safe house. With Jazz doing her magic all the way there that leaves Book and Dalton, with next to nothing in common, to find something to talk about. The ride is quiet.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Lunch time; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

After arriving back at the safe house, Book and Dalton both grab a sandwich and eat in silence. Once completed, Dalton settling into VR to catch up on the latest copy of Fire & Maneuver ezine while Book performs an astral recon of the area and then back to Dean.

It takes three hours but Jazz gains entry. Upon entering the AR domain, she is virtually assaulted by the smell of coffee. The layout looks similar to every Starbucks she has ever seen. She seems to be in the managers office. A young man at the register looks your way momentarily and then goes back to taking orders.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Lunch time; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

< [Jazz] Ok, I'm in. Nice sculpting here, though I prefer a more pragmatic layout, but the darn filter isn't working in here. Anyways, looking for more infos on those meetings now. >

Seeing the young man, likely some kind of white IC, turn his attention away from her was a good sign, that her fake access code was working... for now.

Inside the manager's office, Jazz looks around for an access to the security central, where she will likely find the recordings they are looking for.

Jazz looks at the glass desk top in the manager's office and is greeted by a surface computer style interface. In the upper left hand corner, there is video file running.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Lunch time; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

Jazz taps into the video feed, checking her obvious thoughts, that this is the live feed from the café's security cam, or one of them, anyways. From there, she should be able to backtrack to what she came looking for.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Lunch time; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

Book considers a moment finding something meaningful to do in respect to the project at hand, but finds that for the moment skills in the matrix, and not the astral, are those of the most value at the moment.

Dalton on the other hand doesn't give a second thought to the project at hand. It'd been a long morning already. He stops a moment to indulge in a little fantasy with the hacker while she is in a VR induced coma. Dang is our hacker hot.. Me. Her. A couple of cervezas... He shakes his head.. And when we break up in a nasty fire she then pops in every six months to ruin my ids and empty my accounts to remind me how much better I should have been...
After grabbing a beer and burrito from the frig, he engages Book in a riveting game of Rock-Paper-Scissors... at least for a full five minutes before they move on to virtual poker. Luckily they weren't playing for real money since it takes Dalton ~23 minutes to clean Book out. In the end, Dalton returns to his copy of Fire & Maneuver Magazine while Book reads a dated copy of Shaman Weekly while they wait.

Jazz is able to backtrack to the video menu without any trouble. She is able to check archive videos or switch views as she desires. When she clicks on the archive files, the program requests a password and the reason for checking the logs.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Lunch time; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

Jazz thinks about what could be a useful reason to access the logs, then she enters 'security check; possible harrassment of customer' and runs her software in order to find an exploit to get past the password check.

The program responds with a "Thank you" and opens the archive menu and displays a search function for the dates and times of the inquiry.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Lunch time; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

After gaining access to the archives, Jazz checks out the recordings from thursday between 1900 and 2130, but will download the recordings for the whole evening for a more thorough search.

If everything works out as expected, she will then remove any traces of her doings from the security logs and finally log out.

The target with yet another host is there as expected. They chat for a few minutes and then a certified cred stick is passed across the table. The other records are recorded for later review.

The image of the young man steps into the office momentarily and asks, Is there anything else that you need boss?

Not getting an immediate response, he heads back to the counter and continues to "ring up" customers.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Lunch time; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

That was close... Jazz thinks, when she logs off...


"Got some visuals for us..." she tells the others and shows them the video recordings of the meeting.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Lunch time; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

As Book and Dalton watch the video, the latter looks over to Jazz. "You're as good as you're hot."

Book glares a moment at the Yankee. <<@Team [Book] We need to ID the guy who dropped the credstick... Or least his replacement. Ok, tomorrow I can go downtown and spend some time downtown searching for this guy. I guess you working your magic finding out about the ork woman and her husband will be our next item. Correct?>>

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Lunch time; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

Jazz laughs about Dalton's remark. "You really need to work on your compliments, but thanks."

< [Jazz] Did you figure out what's her appartment number? >

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Lunch time; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

Dalton looks to Jazz with a wink. The girls in the 151st armor would have all been good with that as a complement.
"Perhaps you would prefer: Your skills are beyond compare and your eyes as deep as the ocean. Both leave me swimming in amazement."

Book listens to the team driver shift gears from street thug to wanna-be poet. That actually wasn't bad....
<<@Team [Book] 1408.>>

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Lunch time; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

"You guys obviously have way too much idle time here..."

< [Jazz] Great. I'll figure out the rest then. Stay tuned. >

Jazz is back online soon after and once she has established a few proxy connections to mask her entry node she starts to look after the address and who lives there, or who is paying the rent.

Jazz runs into a few brick walls as the occupants have covered their trail well. The record indicates that a Mr. Samuel Roche is the only occupant listed on the lease. The payments seem to be coming from an account run through an anonymizer.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Lunch time; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

< [Jazz] Not much yet. Some guy called Samuel Roche is registered as living there. Payment comes from an anonymous source, that's telling something at least. >

Jazz then proceeds to dig up some details about Mr. Roche.

Samuel Roche is a mid level Exec for a startup company in the Atlanta Area called Two Trolls and an Elf - a physical security company. He is the elf in question. He is shown as the lease holder on at least two other apartments in the city. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Afternoon; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

<<@Team [Book] Dean - How about you see if you can gather more information on the woman? Names, whatever.. Just keep under the radar.
Jazz - Great work so far. We'll have to find out more about Mr Roche... We still don't know who the woman is and.....
You all know what? This seems a little off. We need to make sure a husband exists and that that wasn't some sort of code..>>
---------
Dalton listens while munching on a Dole's Brand Soy-Granola Bar.
<<@Team [Dalton] I wish I was from around here. I don't know anyone around here... We need some local contacts.>>
---------
Book sighs.
<<@Team [Book] We are disadvantaged in that regard. We are going to have to resort to slightly more forceful tactics to gain some of our information. I fear we will not complete this run on Jazz' efforts alone.>>

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Lunch time; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

Jazz continues her efforts by looking further into the security company that Mr Roche works for, especially what kind of services they have to offer.

@Jazz

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Lunch time; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

< [Jazz] Some more information about the appartement and 'Mr Roche'. It's actually a safe house. Someone wants the ork girl to be safe and apparantly also does not want her to be found or connected to him. Unless there are some more complicating manners, it seems pretty straightforward who is paying for the appartement. >

Sunday, March 3rd, 2070; Afternoon; Druid Hills Country Club, Atlanta, CAS

<<@Team [Book] Safe houses huh? Hmmm... Makes sense, but it does cause a few complications. We need to perform more physical recon and determine additional security.>>