[COLOR=GRAY][CENTER][COLOR=dimgray]
[sup]________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________[/sup][/COLOR][img]https://i.imgur.com/GxrTKQH.png[/img][/CENTER][indent][sub][COLOR=silver][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [I]Faculty Housing[/I] - [I]Dundas Island, Pacific Ocean[/I][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=silver][b]Take On Me #3.034:[/b][/COLOR] [I]Suspicious Minds[/I][/right][/sup][/indent][COLOR=dimgray][SUP][sub]____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________[/sub][/SUP][/COLOR][INDENT][sub][color=silver][B]Interaction(s):[/B][/COLOR] [I]None[/I][/sub][SUP][RIGHT][COLOR=silver][b]Previously:[/b][/COLOR] [I]After Coffee[/I][/right][/SUP]
[INDENT]Standing over a desk with a piping hot mug of black coffee, [color=#808080]Miguel Ramos, the Fist of the Alexandria Foundation, studied the monitors in Teresa Torres’ apartment. A direct feed to H.E.L.P.’s security system had given him both eyes and ears across the entirety of the Pacific Royal Campus but there were far too many blind spots for his liking. Out of respect to the students’ privacy, the security in the dormitories didn’t exist outside of common areas and most of the campus grounds weren’t monitored, meaning the surrounding forest and trails were entirely vulnerable. [/color]

Too many variables for his ability to accurately account for, and that was without taking into consideration the students themselves. You had students who could fly, those who could teleport, phase through walls, travel underground, and the list went on and on. Without limiting students to specified routes and essentially putting the campus on high alert, the Fist had no way of controlling the variables. 

It would have been well within his power to issue an alert to the Chancellor and install the Foot’s soldiers across campus but then Daedalus would have been alerted to his presence and their game of cat and mouse would be over. 

Pacific Royal was subsequently the safest place in the world for Hyperhumans while also being incredibly vulnerable and void of the necessary precautions that would have stopped the likes of Daedalus, or even Hyperion from making their moves. Time and time again, the school had proven exploitable to members of their own kind while still keeping students and the surrounding community safe from the world that hated them.

While Torres would never voice it, both she and Miguel knew that Daedalus had to be one of their own. The Foundation was no stranger to experimenting on their own, and while most experiments were conducted in a safe, controlled environment, there was one girl who had been put through such horrific experiments that she was extradited by the former Chancellor of P.R.C.U. for her safety. After that, those experiments, and in fact that entire level had been ordered to be shut down.

Shortly after that, the abductions started.

Originally there was no pattern. Students would disappear and those that reappeared were too traumatized to help, bearing scars, stitches and other signs of invasive procedures. Some of those who reappeared claimed to be ‘healed’, their Hyperhuman abilities gone or at the very least inert and nigh-undetectable. Then a pattern began to emerge, firstly vulnerable students who had no family to come looking for them and then, subclass Hyperhumans. Hyperhumans who appeared inhuman or had extranormal features, appendages or otherwise couldn’t walk down a street without alarming the general populace.

No matter how many times they changed security clearances, and rotated staff, the experiments had continued and each time they were discovered, Fist only arrived in time to find an abandoned laboratory covered in blood stains. More than once a victim had died in his arms, too severely drained of blood to survive until help arrived.

While several students had vanished in the wake of the Chancellor’s takedown of House Orcinus, the Hyperion’s Children sect that had been lying in secret under Pacific Royal’s nose, one particular name fit the pattern.

Robert Arkwright.

A large man who appeared more akin to a troll or an orc than a human. He wouldn’t have been easy to subdue in a direct fight which either meant that Daedalus had ways to get a victim to come along willingly, or Arkwright had been sedated and transported otherwise. 

The Fist took a long sip of his coffee, pouring over the notes he had gathered over the last few days. Robert had last been seen the day before the Trial sabotage, and while plenty of evidence pointed to the idea that he had sabotaged it, Naira Cameron took that fall. None of the other incarcerated Orcinus members tried to pin the blame on Robert either, which either meant he wasn’t directly involved or still held some sort of leverage over them.

But Miguel had to believe Robert’s disappearance could only be connected to Daedalus. Which meant he needed to return to the Southern Plateau. There was only one place to make someone as large as Arkwright disappear and that was the forest. 

And if an orc fell in the forest and no one was around to hear it, would it still make a sound?

Miguel finished his coffee and adjusted his tie. If there was evidence to be found in the forest, then it was as good as found.[/INDENT][/INDENT][/COLOR]