The sound of turning pages resounded throughout the small room, in which the group of three had found themselves.
The quarters were square in shape, with dim light illuminating the entire place and its metallic exterior.
It was an office, placed in the quarters of the fourth sector's overseeing unit. A place now occupied by three individuals, huddling on the ground each in their own way. One with an empty stare was sitting in a proper posture as his gaze wandered line by line through the document he was currently reading.
Another sat more loosely as he went over the files in a more chaotic manner, stacks of paper covering his surroundings, all of differing heights, his gaze occasionally obstructed by a single strand of pure white, silky hair.
The third in yellow just lay there, his energy depleted, as he held up a sheet of paper, barely able to continue.
They were all surrounded by four boxes each and loose papers flying everywhere.
They all wore thick eyerings, as they had now spent hours upon hours huddling in that room designated for staff, going through one file after another.
Noctis, Recks, and the guy who did not want to give his name.
This man in yellow robes draped in similar golden-yellow hair simply called himself the second junior disciple.
When asked why he didn't want to give a name, he simply answered: Names are important and are not to be given lightly.
'Sure, buddy… Sure.'
Suppressing the mocking words sliding up his tongue, he closed the folder he was reading, exhausted. Then, Noctis slowly stood up and walked to a pinboard with shaky steps.
Authority Wielders were supposed to be superhuman, but even superhumans were still humans!!!
As he grumbled internally, he looked at the pinboard covered with pieces of paper. Each held faces, names, and different facts, with a few red, blue, black, and yellow strings connecting different individuals.
These were not the mystical strings that only he was privy to. No, these were the mundane kind. A flimsy attempt of theirs at bringing order to the chaos.
As a whole, it still looked like a proper mess.
Only he and the two other members sitting beside him would ever be able to take away any meaning from the seemingly random scribbles, as the wall's creators. And with every word written and every newly strung string, even Noctis was having more trouble distinguishing what he had created there.
Even the creators of something can eventually lose control over their own creation. What a funny idea, Noctis thought, half delirious and sleep-deprived.
´I think you should take away the red ones. They are pointless and disruptive.´
"What?" Noctis mumbled out loud in a barely audible tone while placing a new string, gaining the attention of the other two in the room.
"What is it, junior brother? Did you discover something?" The second disciple asked a bit hopefully.
Cursing internally, that random comment of Ouroboros had caught him off guard. He had somewhat acclimated to this unwanted guest living in his mind, but seriously, what was that all about!?
The comment came completely out of the blue.
"Oh no, it's…"
Taking another glance at the more complicated growing pinwall, Noctis stopped in a slightly distant tone.
"Isnt it weird how most of the individuals that disappeared without leaving a body had some kind of illness beforehand?"
Taking another look at the wall, Noctis slowly felt his head buzz as his mind tried to analyze all of the information, every picture and every fact at the same time.
He suddenly cursed out loud, averting his gaze the next moment. "Fuck. Why can't this stuff just be digitized!?"
What kind of sadistic or lazy asshole hasn't ordered all of this to be digitized?
Ignoring the obscenity, used to Noctis's manner of speaking, Recks stood up and looked over the pinwall as well, a thoughtful expression on his face.
"I once heard that it's an order from the upper echelons to digitize as little as possible.
Illnis? Right. Your words hold truth. Good catch."
The second junior disciple looked at the piles upon piles of paper as he spoke enthusiastically.
"The Ancestors work in mysterious ways, but have no doubt. Once we best their trials, glory awaits!"
Ignoring the rubbish, Recks continued unheeded.
"Let's look for any illnesses that could be seen as a commonality."
Hearing this, Noctis rubbed his head in despair, his gaze traveling across the piles of paper once more.
Oh, how did I deserve this, oh mighty 'Hearth'? Howww!?
Crying out internally, Nox walked back to his place as he moved towards his original man-shaped hole surrounded by papers.
He had expected many things when he started working for the government, like being sent to dangerous places on a regular basis, having to apprehend and disperse protests, and so on, but this… this was not it.
Of course, he had to do things of the like often. Noctis was just unsure if he preferred this or the more dangerous alternative.
In all honesty, the only thing he hated more than monotonous tasks was people with green eyes, so it was probably this.
Glancing over to the yellow-eyed newcomer.
He seemed a bit strange, but throughout this god-awful experience, Noctis had understood that he was kind at heart and simply wanted to help.
A truly rare trait in these parts.
He seemed just a little… delusional… on the brink of madness… friendly madness.
Thinking about it, was this a common trait in Oracle, or was he sent away because he was such an outlier?
What was Oracle like…
Shaking his head, as Nox reprimanded himself for drifting off, he picked up the next sheet of paper.
Such musings were pointless. No one ever left the Abyss.
__________________________________________________
Name: Albert Roth… Age 24… gender: male…
Went missing on 28.06.1162 ACW...
...Reported by a near family member...
...Diagnosed with Red Breath days before the incident...
...Diagnosis confirmed by Dr. Klemens of Noxen Pharmaceutical...
...Last seen leaving his residence shortly before dusk...
...No signs of struggle were found at the scene...
...Personal belongings left behind, including wallet and identification...
...Witnesses reported persistent coughing and disorientation in the days prior to disappearance...
...Believed to have traveled alone...
...Current status: Missing. Investigation remains open.
__________________________________________________
Name: Adiana Smith… Age 22… gender: female… ..
Went missing on 20.06.1162 ACW...
...Reported by a friend...
...Diagnosed with Red Breath...
...Diagnosis confirmed by Dr. Klemens of Noxen Pharmaceutical...
...Last seen leaving his residence shortly before dusk...
...Personal belongings left behind, including wallet and identification...
...Current status: Missing. Investigation remains open.
__________________________________________________
Name: Gregorie Retch… Age 27
...Diagnosed with Red Breath...
...Diagnosis confirmed by Dr. Klemens of Noxen Pharmaceutical...
...Last seen leaving his residence shortly before dusk...
...Personal belongings left behind, including wallet and identification...
...Current status: Missing. Investigation remains open.
__________________________________________________
Name: Walter Stalin… Age 24
...Diagnosed with Red Breath...
...Diagnosis confirmed by Dr. Klemens of Noxen Pharmaceutical...
...Current status: Missing. Investigation remains open.
"Age 20-30; red breath; Dr. Klemens of Noxen Pharmaceutical"
____________________________________________________
Rubbing his head thoughtfully, Noctis took a last glance at the document he was holding before slowly standing up and walking over to the other two, now waiting, each having found their own points of suspicion, intensely studying the pinwall which had now become even more cluttered and chaotic.
___________________________________________________
Underground market in a small alleyway.
***
Knock, knock, knock.
A gloved hand met the exterior of a door, a thudding sound resounding throughout the alleyway. Each thud held a certain rhythm. Rather than the expected cold thunking of flesh on metal, it held a certain distant, yet somehow near warmth to every strike, as each knock was carefully spaced to create a very plain, but inviting melody.
A moment later, the small shop door opened just barely, to reveal half the face of an elderly man. His hair grey-streaked on the edge of turning white, a shabby bronze monocle resting over his left eye, the only one that perked out of the door.
Analyzing the three guests in their peculiar attire, made up of dark blue thin jackets that did not seem to hinder one's ability to move in the slightest; in return, however, they did not seem to protect from the cold or anything else, really. The man who was about to speak, maybe greet the new arrivals, was stunned into silence for a moment's time.
For a moment it was difficult to tell what the man was about to do: shut the door on the group and run, or simply accept them with open hands. For a moment, the man in front of the group, the most senior member of them, seemed to lift his right arm, perhaps to extend it into the barely opened crack. Before he could do so, however, another hand gently stopped the action.
Throwing the more junior member a questioning gaze, the interaction was cut short.
The door suddenly opened, the elderly man finally revealing himself fully.
Quickly composing himself as he dusted off his shabby, vaguely white clothing and took a step to the side.
"I'm honored to greet such esteemed guests.
I'm Dr. Klemens. Would you like to enter my humble abode?"
Not rejecting the three "investigators" passed by, each in their own way.
Two of them wore the standard-issue dark blue coat that officers were supposed to wear and strode in rather reservedly. Their auspicious clothing had probably told the doctor all that he needed to know. The third wore an eye-catching yellow robe. A type of fashion almost unseen in the cold expanse of Abyss City, gathering him a few inquiring gazes wherever he went.
Not reacting to their appearance, after initial shock, Dr. Klemens continued.
"Would you like some tea? I could go brew some up real quickly. Of course it probably wouldn't be up to your standards." The elderly man asked in a voice filled with eagerness, unexpected for a man of his age.
As they passed through a long, shabby entryway filled with a few peculiar sights, Recks wore a somewhat funny expression upon seeing a foot, seemingly human, floating lifelessly in a jar.
Tapping the jar as he passed, he spoke, as if out of curiosity.
"Thank you, but I'm good… If I may ask, how come you're storing such… curiosities?
You know corpses are quite expensive. Even if it's just a foot…"
Looking at the jar Recks was currently inspecting, the doctor spoke, his voice holding slight amusement.
"Take it as an old man's curiosity. I've heard a superstition about cut-off feet bringing good luck.
Well, considering that inspectors have come to my humble establishment, I'd assume it's truly nothing more than a superstition. Ha ha ha."
With the end of his sentence, the group reached a small room with a small brown, maybe wooden table and a few seats built out of the same material.
"Our visits don't have to always be bad…" Recks spoke in a similarly amused tone.
Laughing in response, the man gestured towards a few seats.
"Please take a seat. My old bones won't be able to sustain my own weight for long."
As he gestured for the empty standing chairs, the man plopped down on his own chair, which looked far more comfortable than the rest.
"So to what do I owe the pleasure?"
Dr. Klemens' attention shifted towards the "guests" leader.
Recks spoke in a comforting tone as he took a seat very fluidly, as if having belonged to the place long ago.
The other two stayed motionless a meter behind, calmly observing the room. Noctis's gaze wandered curiously throughout the surroundings, while the second disciple simply stayed silent, to Noctis's surprise.
'So he could be serious?'
"It's nothing much. We have just hit a dead end on an investigation.
So we were pretty much grasping at straws. Ha ha."
Recks chuckled in an easy sort of way before speaking again. The next sentence that escaped his mouth came out rather quickly, and was less charming than before, packed with few words each suffused with an edge that could make one shudder.
"For example, some of the victims were your patients at one point… or another."
Showing a bit of worry, but not the amount Noctis would have expected from the underlying accusation.
'Had he simply not understood, or was he just thick-skinned, maybe something else?'
Letting his thoughts run wild, Noctis's attention focused on Dr. Klemens, his eyes opening a bit more, revealing some of the golden splendor reflected in them.
Klemens asked, as if in jest, unable to fully hide his real thoughts.
"A-are you perhaps suspecting me? That a frail old man could have done such a horrible thing?"
Not noticing anything suspicious about the reaction, nor getting a sign from Noctis or the new guy, Recks shook his head in response. He clearly tried to keep the friendly atmosphere alive.
"Oh goodness gracious… Of course not. We were just hoping to get a more specific picture through a conversation with their attending physician.
Other than that, we can't ignore the possibility that someone is targeting your patients, or that they are scouting their targets within the surroundings. It's even in the realm of possibility that lost ones are being held nearby."
Klemens did not show much reaction to the words, other than a bit of grief for the poor people involved. Or maybe guilt for not having noticed anything earlier.
It was a simple reaction one would expect from someone in the medical profession.
On the other hand, Noctis could barely suppress a sigh. 'The possibility that those kidnapped were still alive was…'
Distracting himself from the thought, Noctis listened in on the conversation Recks and Klemens were holding, looking for any slip-ups, any reaction, anything that could reveal something, but he truly seemed like a normal old man to the discerning eye of his.
As he shifted his attention and opened his eyes a bit further, the strings surrounding the man became clearer, turning from a blur to almost tangible physical objects one could touch, floating through space unobstructed by objects or gravity.
Sadly, it was very difficult to tell anything from the bundle of strings, given the hundreds of connections he had made through his line of work.
The more sociable a person was, the harder it became to discern the individual connections.
From what he could grasp, there were a few outstanding ones, with one string particularly thick standing out among the rest. This didn't tell Noctis much, only that he had a very deep bond or connection with someone.
This wasn't uncommon in the slightest.
It did not incriminate the man in any way.
The connections linking the Doctor to the missing patients were lost among the myriad other strings, and even if there weren't that many obstructions, Noctis had a hunch it wouldn't have changed anything.
At the beginning of the paperwars, Noctis had excused himself to go and see if his ability would be able to pluck any ripe fruit. He had never stated the specifics of his abilities to the rest of the team, staying vague about them, simply saying it was good for tracking and things of the like.
And it was all Darron wanted to know about him. It even seemed he preferred it that way. At times like these, Noctis deeply regretted not having spent the time reading up on the "Code of Conduct for Authority Holders".
I'll definitely do it one day, Nox thought, deep down knowing that he had already procrastinated on it for half a year and would probably continue to do so.
Stopping himself from drifting off topic any further, Noctis thought back to when he visited a few family members of one of the missing people.
It had actually been one of the first things he had done in hopes of escaping the piles upon piles of paperwork to stop the paper wars without lifting a single sheet of paper, the way every war should be settled.
This had its difficulties, as it was unclear which red thread connected all the cases and who had simply disappeared at the same time, through human trafficking, or some beast having found an easy meal, eventually ending within the piles of reports they had to go through.
Even though it should have been easy to find a missing brother from someone by following along the string. It turned out to be quite a challenge in and of itself to find out to whom the string was connected without both ends in the same room.
Even if the thickness and texture of a string of fate could show certain features that might reveal information, even after half a year of studying, Noctis was still in the beginning stages of understanding the string's intricacies. Not to speak of the tapestry as a whole.
Since people often had multiple deep relationships, how was Nox supposed to judge them before ever having met the person they were connected to?
Every connection was, in essence, unique, yet even if it was, how could he know that this specific one connected a person to their brother rather than to another relative?
If everyone were unique, no one would be truly unique!
Then there was the most disheartening possibility that the thread wasn't even there anymore, which didn't bode well for the victims.
After all, the only way Noctis knew to cut a string was death, since lifeless bodies had no connections. Perhaps rituals of some sort could achieve it aswell.
All of this eventually led Noctis to give up on this approach. Overall, going from person to person with such uncertainties eventually seemed like a waste of time, and it wasn't the most comfortable activity to question the loved ones of the recently deceased.
As for the ritualistic aspect.
He couldn't be too sure about this particular field, since he had too little talent in it to give a proper evaluation, but there was the possibility, so who was he to deny?
Seriously, how was it all supposed to make sense? It was a bunch of random lines and some gibberish plastered across it! Getting worked up at the mountains of things he had to work on, a gentle phrase suddenly took him out of his contemplations.
"May we look around for a while"
The doctor did not deny them. He simply pointed to a few glass containers and an old bookshelf.
"Please be careful around those places," Klemens said without the slightest resistance in his voice, seemingly eager even to help them find the culprit.
Raising a yellow eyebrow, the Second junior disciple, as he referred to himself, asked questioningly, his voice unable to be any more serious. "Is there something dangerous in those ancient crystal seals, or are there secret long-lost Daoist teachings in those tomes?"
Feeling his face light up, embarrassed at merely being associated with the guy, Noctis stealthily distanced himself from the group as he slipped away.
After a few moments, Noctis heard the elderly Klemens compose himself as he spoke lightheartedly.
"Ahm…No, no… Those are just almost as old as I myself am and therefore just as frail, young one, ha ha.
A bit of relief swelled up at the thought of not being frowned upon and seen as a crazy person. Noctis halfheartedly picked up a book, brushing off a thick layer of dust covering it.
"The theory of mechanical evolution?" He muttered.
The book seemed barely used despite its clearly aged appearance, a circle having formed at its center.
Was it used as a pad for a mug of some sort? This book doesn't seem to be valued by Dr. Klemens.
Not dwelling on it for long, Noctis returned the book to its original place, as he repeated the process with a few other objects.
Not particularly fond of the method of searching, completely clueless, Noctis looked over to his colleagues, with one newer one going through a few papers, and the other staying close to the Doctor, keeping a close eye on him.
Redirecting his concentration onto the world only he could see.
Noctis could see two types of threads: one that connected people, and the other representing someone's future and past.
Observing the threads for a few minutes, until his eyes began to hurt, Noctis didn't find an immediate point of suspicion. After all, he had been exposed to the threads throughout all their interactions, so it would have been illogical for him to find some perfect solution just by looking at the immediate future or past of a person.
But it could give him something to start off.
Noticing something, Noctis' gaze travled towards the shelf the doctor had said was delicate.
Peculiarly, both the future string and the one of the past seemed to wander towards that shelf of books, where they then started twirling on the spot for some time. It wasn't difficult to judge what it meant. The twirling motion represented that the originator of the string would stay there for a time, or at least that was what Noctis had noticed over half a year of observation.
Having a bit of difficulty following the overlapping bundles, Noctis walked over, wanting to see where they'd end.
As his finger slowly ran along the dust-covered metal, his finger stopped on a book that seemed to be favored by the bundles of strings, far more of them surrounding it.
When he tried taking it out, his hand suddenly flinched back a bit, letting go of the book just before pulling it out.
A sound was grating throughout the room, all of a sudden, a sound he knew all too well, a sound that did not bode well.
Beep—beep—beep—beep—beep—beep.