Ok... bear with me on this because I'm IRL a Logic 4 or so person trying to stay with a logic 8 character's mindset... so I'm going to explain what exactly I'm wanting to do and hopefully we can figure out how that works mechanically
Elena knows that covert operations aren't her strong point, so she has to find a way to use her strengths to find his weaknesses. Basically, Elena is approaching her assignment like a good scientist and is going to try to put a methodology to ferretting out the mystery man/woman. So, what I am thinking is first she had to determine her sample... which she just did... its super-big.
Now, what she knows is that there are a lot of people in attendence - including heavy hitters. The agent she is looking for is a 'Hot Shot' - so he's full of himself, but he has reason to be so he isn't stupid. Her sample size is too big right now, so she needs to use what she knows to narrow it down.
Being a hot shot, he's going to want to fullfill the following criterea:
1. Be armed
2. Have freedom of movement in the Gala
3. Not be forced to do menial things to avoid blowing cover.
That eliminates serving staff and most non-administrative/security employees.
He's not stupid, so he will also want to fullfill the following since the penalties would be too great if he gets caught:
1. Not piss off a dragon
2. Not cause an international incident
3. Not test the security of a AAA
Ok, so that narrows down the list of covers he could use... it eliminates the following:
1. Anyone without a conceal carry permit
2. Anyone from Saeder Krupp, NeoNet, or Tir Na nOg (they have too many people in attendence that could blow his cover)
3. Any servants working for the Gala itself - he won't want to have to pour drinks because it would be beneath him
So, that throws out a nice chunk of the people she has to worry about.
Now she has to consider the other possible variables...
Wildcard variables:
1. Pride - he probably is going to want to pull this off with finesse to show off to his superiors... this means that he may try to insinuate himself into a position of authority. That means administrative staff (guest or Gala), Gala security, or guest security.
2. Humility - he may want to keep a low key, so he may want to pose as a low-level executive or guest himself - but it almost certainly will be someone with a conceal carry.
3. One-ups-manship - he may want to impress his superiors by making other EVO employees look like fools. This means that EVO personel are not eliminated.
4. Prep-time - Volusia doesn't know how much prep-time the agent has had - so his cover might have been on the list for months, or it might be a new addition. He also might be replacing someone.
Ok... now that she has her variables, she has to figure out what she's going to do with them. She isn't a hacker, but there is a wealth of databases she has legal access to, so...
With her newly limited sample size, she's first going to try to get a solid guest/entourage listing. Once she has that, she'll cross-reference it with the violent offenders listings that are publicly available from law-enforcement sites - removing all matches from her test sample since Gala security would have flagged them for extra attention, and the agent she is looking for is smart. Then she'll attempt to find a database to crossreference the list with to remove all individuals without conceal carry permits. Now she should be down to guests, security, and a small number (relatively) of administrative assistants. Now she eliminates anyone who is high profile - this can be done by (she'll have her agent help her with this grunt work if need be, or she'll write a quick and dirty algorithm to help since its just grunt-work) doing searches on all the major news publications online archives - anyone on the list that has articles return on the search is thereby eliminated, as they are too high profile for him to impersonate.
So now she should have a much more managable sample size to deal with. But how to tell who is a fake and who is a genuine article? It'll still be too many people to analyze the identity of every one of them to see if it was tampered with... and he may have replaced a real person.
So... here is where she has to fall back on another strength and make it work (because if she doesn't think outside the box here, she knows she's doomed to fail since she can't talk to people in a non-threatening manner to save her life, can't give away her own cover, can't make a scene, and can't interview everyone to allow her psychological training to catch him in a web of lies...). So here she needs to fall back on her medical and technical expertise. She knows he'll be disguised, but a test isn't worth months of surgery or transgenic modifications for. So, that leaves a few options for him: latex prosthetics, nano-paste computer generated disguises, and bioware that is reusable based on injection.
She can eliminate the bioware, because the injections wouldn't last more than an hour apeice, and he wouldn't want to risk missing the re-ups during the event due to a conversation he can't get away from or some such. So that leaves nano-paste and latex.
Both nano-paste and latex are going to be a different density/composition than metahuman flesh. This means that they'll collect body heat and dissipate it at a different rate than the rest of the body. Ok... this may be able to help.
What else is medically applicable... bone and muscular structure. The shape of everyone's face is determined by bone and muscular structure, which are known densities and compositions by metatype etc.
So... combining what she knows, Volusia now has plan A for getting a suspect.
Plan A: Wander around the Gala watching people and generally acting the way she would anyway since she hates socialites. Whenever she sees someone in the sample that she's come up with, she'll snap a shot of them with her cybereyes in both regular and thermographic vision. Now loading up her editing software (praise the lord for DNI since that means she can do this without being obvious
), she uses the software to compare the images and remove the skin from the picture based on heat dissipation from the thermographic image. Then she (still editing the image) paints a generic image onto the skinless model. If there was a latex/nanopaste disguise throwing off the heat dissipation model, then the new image will not match the original image in facial structure at all. If there was no disguise, the images should be a very close match. Volusia knows that this won't be full-proof however, since it can also be affected by bioware and cyberware that the person she is observing may have independent of the possibility of them being the agent. However, it is a good way to get a suspect.
Plan B: Everyone has to have a commlink. Everyone's commlink has to be in active mode since the gala is a high security event. So, if Volusia looks at someone and accompanying SIN, user name, etc doesn't pop up in her AR, she has a suspect.
Plan C: Anyone acting out of character of what is expected given their status is automatically a suspect.
Plan D: Anyone Volusia notices with her perceptive abilities to be disguised or otherwise suspicious is automatically a suspect
So, now Volusia has four solid plans to acquire suspects. Once she has a suspect, she needs a methodology to investigate that suspect... so...
Suspect Investigation methodology: First, take the picture of the suspect (or both the actual picture and the created one if the suspect came from Plan A - if she doesn't have the created one of the suspect yet, she does so now) and do a matrix search on them. Cameras are everywhere, so every
real person has a picture somewhere on the matrix somewhere - be it a fan site, somebody's blog pictures from a convention, a news feed, or what have you. If nothing comes up or stuff comes up that is supposed to be different people but both match the face, then Volusia has a good possibility of having found the agent - but she needs more corroborating evidence. Unless the person wasn't broadcasting a sin (and if they weren't, that is corroborating evidence in and of itself), she does a datasearch on that identity and analyzes the results looking for evidence of tampering. Any tampering is corroborating evidence. If she can't find corroborating evidence that way, she has to observe the suspect more closely and look for something.
Whew... ok... I think that that is a suitably scientific plan to go about it. I IRL can't think of anything else the character can really do in an attempt to catch this mystery man/woman. Like I said, had to really think outside the box to figure out a way she could do this with her skill set without just relying on her perception skill. So, given that plan, what do I need to do/roll game mechanically to make it happen - keeping in mind that she is willing/able to write quick and dirty custom one-time-use software (assuming time to do so) to help her and can use her agent to help with a lot of the grunt work in which actual skill isn't necessary?
Ok... and also... I hate to but I do have to throw a monkey-wrench into my own plan (not important now, but it will be once she is actually at the Gala)... Volusia sees this as a golden opportunity to act on one of her delusional theories. She is going to concentrate on finding the agent, but she is also going to snap shots of any and all Ares and Saeder-Krupp personel as well as human celebrities and politicians - thereby getting untampered with thermo and real pictures... and when she gets home afterwards she'll apply the same technique as in Plan A for finding a suspect, and compare them to pictures from her 'known Nazis' list in her conspiracy theory. I know it probably won't matter, but it could so I wanted to mention it now while I'm thinking about it.
Yeah... I know... I write a lot.