Marisol handed the marker over and listened intently. Both detectives had differing views on the subject. That in itself made sense. They were still piecing things together. Knowing the irijaq operated in hives brought some new information to light though. Ivan was right in that it would be a good idea to dig deeper into the victim. It didn’t mean they’d have answers there, but it also wasn’t necessarily a cold trail.
Marisol chewed her bottom lip in thought, considering before speaking. ”So the females don’t feed - at least in the hunting sense. The males get food for them. If the feeding was incomplete…then it could have been ordered by the Queen to stop…” she looked at Dorian, sure that was where he was going with this. ”That seems odd…” perhaps that is what concerned Dorian. Odd didn’t mean wrong - it usually meant bad.
Marisol’s haze lingered on Dorian for a bit. There was something about him that made her think. He seemed sad. She remembered that like her, he had only sent a few texts when thy had got the message they were snowed in. Perhaps he was a lonely man. Marisol understood that. She had her parents and a few friends. Both groups were enough to count on one hand. She had dedicated herself to her career. That meant sacrificing any semblance of a social life. Mom, dad, Cade, Ricky, and his charge, Marta. That was it.
She turned to Ivan. ”Ill look into the Vic - its procedure anyways. We have several angles to cover,” that at least was normal and there was something comforting in that. Her gaze turned to Dorian. ”How sentient are these things - meaning - are they intelligent?” she wondered at that. Could the irijaq be planning something.
Sentience... He didn't really know the answer to that. "I suppose Ivan would know a little more as he's seen them actually functioning. But the fact that one took over a human host, they have some."
Dorian ran the name through the Atharim database. They had information on everyone. It was strange using their resources in such an open way -- though it was through the back door. He wasn't officially one of them anymore.
Ivan pursed his lips as Vega gave what he could about the ijiraq. He went to the board again and in a clear spot, wrote "ijiraq"- hesitating because he had no idea how it was actually spelled- and underlined it. Then he wrote "Female- queen: fed by males?" Under that, he wrote "Males- workers (drones?)" Indented and under that, he finally he wrote "getting food for queen? ordered to stop by queen? directed to kill?"
He turned to Vega, shrugging. "Not much there." He paused, thinking on Dorian's last words. "I did see them. The ijiraq had turned the ball into a nightmare." He had focused on keeping people safe, so his attention was divided. But he did remember the woman who had been possessed. "The woman- Oriena you said her name was?- had been possessed. And she spoke. I don't remember much of what she said. Really, none of it, excep that she seemed angry and was seeking some sort of retribution."
Tapping the pen on the word "queen" he said, "Other than Nox, the person we need to speak to is this Oriena."[/color] He looked over at Vega. "I can track down her name. She was a guest at the ball. Which means she had to be listed. He wouldn't contact Ascendancy. It's not like he had the man in his wallet for casual texting. But he had some friends he could reach out to.
"Maybe Oriena could tell us more about these queens. We need to know about these things. If they breed or something, then their number can grow. And we will see more of these types of cases." He turned to Guerra. "And we need to know everything about the victim. Maybe they chose him for a reason. Maybe he tasted good. Or was dangerous in some way. We just don't know." Until they knew more, they were just spinning their wheels and guessing.
Dorian chuckled. "You don't need to track her down, Nox knows where she is." Given his location he was likely with her right now, but he wouldn't mention that to her. "She is Nox's boss and part of his found family. But I don't think she'll talk to us. She's not exactly the cooperating type. But when Nox gets back to me we'll see what he knows and what he can learn from her. But I imagine he'll have the same problem as we would -- she's not very cooperative." And she probably wouldn't take kindly to threats either even if they could back it up.
Threads were being drawn together and contacts were being brought up. Thankfully, Dorian's contact with Nox would help them with getting contact with Oriena. If she would even talk to them. Shit - creatures that could possess people. Ivan wanted to know more about the victim though and that was easy enough. She had the file on the guy. She went to the computer in the room and worked as the men spoke about various things.
She found the file and perused it before beginning to speak. Viktor Sokolov, goes by Vitya. Age 34, residence in central Moscow, occupation: municipal transit data coordinator. He manages scheduling databases and maintenance records for the city buses and subways. He graduated from Moscow State Technical University with a degree in information systems and data management. Family: Mother, Elena, and little sister Katya. He has an estranged father named Mikhail. According to his friend, Yuri Belov, Vitya was quiet and reserved most of the times, introverted, and worked from home. He lived by routine and wasn't terribly ambitious. Routine schedule every day - same cafe's, same order, that type of deal. As stated, his behavior changed before the incident, becoming more erratic and paranoid." Marisol paused, sat back in the chair, and looked up at the detectives. "No connections to political or criminal groups, and what we've found doesn't suggest the conspiracy type looking into government secrets or anything." Truth be told, he seemed like a normal introverted guy.
So they had to wait on Nox for either this Oriena or details about ijiraq. And they would soon be snowed in, if the warnings weren't overreaction.
So... that left working the victimology. At which point Guerra had come back with basic information.
He frowned, shaking his head at the board. "Yeah, just a regular guy with a boring job. No reason to think he was targetted for any obvious reason. Family or friends as the target don't appear likely." He chewed at his lower lip for a moment and then looked at Guerra.
"Let's requisition an Agent in the Assist Module to analyze all his movements over a two week period one year ago. Then do the same over the last month. Everything from street cameras, public transport vehical assist cameras, security and everything else. All public available and CCD Security Office feeds. If he is as regular as his family or friends say, we should see a clear pattern over the previous year's footage."
And then he walked up to the board and circled the world Guerra had written. "PARANOID". "He supposedly became paranoid at some point. Enough that those who knew him noticed. So his behavior changed, somehow. If we can identify when this occured, maybe we can figure out why."
A small smile appeared. "That might tell us something."
[[Ooc: not sure what happened to our guy hopefully Nox or Gio has an idea of what happened here, so im not sure what we are going to find. But this is interesting]
[[ OOC: We know what killed him. Whether or not you want to connected it to a bigger picture is up to Gio. ]]
Dorian chuckled. "Wouldn' you be paranoid if you kept seeing this flash of shadow and never seeing it? He's a channeler, probably open about it. Check the Registry to find out for sure. I'm sure you can find footage of him channeling. I bet the Atharim have a file on him." Dorian didn't mention the fact he could get his own hacker to do the work in a fraction of time -- he probably even had some already available. His network grew by the day. Though Wicked Truth wasn't here a year ago -- neither was his former handle.
"Ijiraq aren't common. They are newly resurfaced creatures. And even the Atharim have limited information on their hunting. We don't exactly study the things, we just find and kill them. For all we know this is their hunting pattern. Stalk their prey till they are at a peak point of flavor and then kill. I don't think you are going to find any useful information in this man. You might find useful information in scouring the footage in and around his building looking for smoke monsters, but that won't help you either unless you know how to track them. Either this guy burnt himself out, or an ijiraq did it. Or there is some other supernatural way this man died -- spontaneous combustion. Danced himself to death a firey death is just as plausible at that point. "
Dorian sighed. "We aren't tracking a person. It's more like tracking an animal in a hunt, you don't go about motive and means for a lion stalking a deer. They do it by instinct. The prey isn't going to help you find it."
Dorian wasn't sure what they were doing. What they wanted to acomplish here. He was either a burnt out channeler -- which means it was suicide by channeling his fault or something else -- compuslion possibly. Or it was done to him by a creature -- or compulsion. That was a line to think about -- though he was pretty sure they'd have seen someone and maybe Ivan's video scans might find something but he doubted it.
"One possiblity -- and the only one I can think of is compulsion. This would be someone he knew, or someone who wanted him dead -- though as we just stated he's really not someone of note -- unless it's Atharim. And then well they thought they were doing their job as misguided as a person could be who would do that to one of their own kind. I still think we are looking for an Ijiraq who got careless or for some reason stopped their feeding early"
Ivan's idea was a good one and Marisol got to work on it right away. More information rarely ever hurt and if nothing else, it could always cut some lines of thought that no longer fit into the events. It would take time for the Assist Module to compile information, but that would give them some idea of how his patterns changed. The victim was described as a creature of habit. Any change from that would be something that could indicate premediation. Marisol was trying to keep her mind open to all options.
She followed up on Dorian's question about the registration. Many did register - some did not - mostly because of Atharim. This guy worked a government job though. It was usually best for your employment security to be open rather than your employer find out by accident. "He was a registered channeler." she said. She continued, summarizing. "Registration was a little over a month ago, but states that he has been able to for three months. He states he really doesn't understand it, but not many know that he can use magic yet."
She sat back in her chair and looked at the two men. The Assistant was still processing and parsing through data. Her eyes moved immediately to Dorian as he said compulsion. "You mean someone forced someone else to kill him? Can - channelers do that!? That's pretty intense." It would also bring in significant issues for law enforcement. "So if compulsion is involved its a person and we have a clear direction. If it's an ijiraq, what recourse do we have? I mean we can't prosecute a creature. Is that what Domovoi does - takes care of these supernatural threats?" The Atharim were involved in the sense that this Nox character was an informant for Domovoi. Atharim took care of some of it and Marisol trusted some of them - Ricky for one - but their motives weren't necessarily in line with law - and technically they were a terrorist organization.
Dorian hadn't really met too many people who knew much about their power -- or understood it. There was obviously the Ascendancy and the nine rods of dominion. Nox knew his shit -- but he always said he didn't know half of the things he could do with it. Cruz didn't know anything in comparison. Dorian wasn't sure what Ivan thought he knew or didn't know. They didn't exactly talk about it. But most people didn't know anything about their powers.
"I wasn't think someone made someone else kill him. I'm thinking someone could have made him kill himself by overchanneling. That is total speculation as to a cause. I can't imagine someone drawing on that much power and feeling themselves dying. But also a possiblity. Maybe we should talk with Alex, she if paranoia is any sign of suicide or depression or things like that. But there isn't much we as police officers can do against a monster like the Ijiraq. Domonvoi is still learning how to handle the human variety of monsters. We haven't focused on the monster monsters. Usually, I would ship the case off to the Atharim to handle. And then deal with those ramifaicatins."