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CHAPTER 8

Keslow, Colorado

1146 Hours, August 20** th ***, 2052*

"...and without further ado, we shall begin the voting. Whatever the future may hold, let it not threaten our humble community." concluded Francis Newbolt.

The Expeditors had gathered to one side of the town hall and were about sick of talking. They lived their lives for actions, and to them the use of words was best kept to a minimum. Needless to say, had their MIA leaders been present they may have had more patience. Sasha and Owen had always enjoyed the game of debate. Warren pressed his back against the cool wall and let out a quiet sigh.

"I can't stand this." said Sam through the helmet's intercom. Sometimes it was nice to be enclosed in their helms. They could effectively carry on a conversation without any others hearing them.

"I hear that." responded Paul. He almost seemed bare without his huge rifle, like an old man without his walking stick. He kept opening and closing his hands in anxiety.

"I just hope the vote goes our way. Your little incident better not have cost us the vote, Warren." hissed Sam. Though he had not told them, Warren knew just how volatile word of mouth was in a small community. Marcus had figured it out in a matter of an hour, the others following closely.

"Relax." said Marcus, "I doubt these people will care. Half of them seemed to hate that guy anyways."

Mr. Johnson had given the opposition speech about ten minutes ago to a mixed reception, some people praising him, others shouting him down. The Expeditors had held their tongues for the entire endeavour, erring on the side of caution when it came to making public appearances. The fact that they had all chosen to wear their armour beforehand was no accident, however, as it indeed served a purpose. They drew many stares and quick glances, which was precisely the point. They were displaying that the gene projects and humans could come together in peace and create something that worked better than any of its individual parts. Well, it was either that or they looked as intimidating to the civilians as a wolf might be to a rabbit. Either way was just as well, the point was more to let the townspeople know that they were a real force that would make a good ally.

The Expeditors looked on as the assembled people, some two-hundred and fifty bodies all told, with a serious lack of interest. They slowly made lines to two ballot boxes located inside hastily-erected screens in the opposite corners of the room at the far end. Murmurs and whispers created a static background noise as the town decided its future. Warren smiled when he noted that several furs were being permitted to vote. That should help a little with the outcome. He even spotted Jennifer in amongst them, her orange fur making her stand out in the crowd as she eyed the ballot clenched tightly between her hands.

His gaze ran around the width and breadth of the largely open hall. People filled most of the centre and there were very few things noticeable about anyone in particular. Then one man caught his eye. He blinked. No, he had to be wrong. When he looked again, scanning he people for any trace of the phantom, there was nothing. Despite this, he felt his shackles rise from within his armour. "I need to take a piss, be right back."

Warren did not wait around for the others to excuse him and pressed into the slowly moving throng of bodies. His jaw was set and his suit's auto-senses kicked in, scanning for any conceived threat. He emerged on the other side of the hall. Nothing. He was about to give up and join the others again while he spotted his target. He placed a personal electronic trace on him so as not to lose him and his HUD outlined his body in white.

The man was old. Old as in old old. He must have been in his early seventies at least. He was also hauntingly familiar. Warren felt his heart race. After all that time, all that hunting and tracking, following fake leads and dead ends, scouring the earth for even the smallest glimpse, and you're HERE?!? thought Warren, his mind racing.

The man, garbed in the attire of a simple old man and carrying a walking cane, hadn't noticed him yet. Warren doubted the man would know who he was if he looked up. The time gap since they had last been in company was large, the man's memory probably failing, and Warren's identity concealing armour almost guaranteed it. The man looked up for a moment and Warren froze, worried that he had been discovered despite his self assurances. The old eyes didn't hover as they quickly looked about, not even giving Warren a second glance. He was still incognito.

It was almost as if fate blew a kiss in Warren's direction because the man decided to leave the trundling mass of bodies and break for an exit. Wait, had he seen me?_thought Warren, _No. He's moving too slowly to be making a fast exit. He has even stopped now...

The man had stopped in front of the entrance and fumbled in his pocket for something. Warren tensed then relaxed as the man pulled out a pack of cigarette papers, some tobacco, and a cheap lighter. The caned man rolled up a tight wad of the brown tobacco in a white paper, licked the edge, and held it in his mouth. He replaced the tobacco and package of papers in his pants before slowly ambling away out the blue doors. Warren followed a few seconds after the door slid shut, pushing the metal door aside. He had to look around for a minute as his electronic tag became invisible in the bright sunlight. Warren cursed and changed the colour with a few quick winks. The now-red marker was pointing him down the street a little ways towards the bank, his back still in view.

Warren hesitated. Should he tell the others? No, they wouldn't understand.

He activated his suit's stealth function, the colour receptors and projectors creating a slightly distorted view of his surroundings. A power readout appeared in the upper left corner of his HUD denoting battery life expectancy. It was good; it had been charging all night and the battery was full. He took off down the street, being as careful as he could, pursuing the man who meandered along on the cane and smoking a freshly-rolled cigarette.

**

Denver, Colorado

1346 Hours, August 20** th ***, 2052*

The MAV stopped in the middle of an almost unscathed street a bit down from what used to be Union Station after a sudden deceleration over the course of several dozen meters. A newly co-opted helicopter took off from the improvised pad out of the view of the MAV's crew and turned, doing a slow flyover above them and away to a pre-designated area. The station and its outlying buildings were fortified, sandbag emplacements lining the streets and rooftops while steel barricades guarded the approaches behind thick girders welded together into porcupine-like tank traps. The grand white structure of the station, despite being a lot shorter than most buildings in the area, was still the crown jewel of the city from an architectural standpoint. The headquarters of the once-rebel movement now turned government, the ultra-modern building was akin to the Sydney Opera house in style with great white coverings and an open top over the main terminal. The buildings in several directions all around were in the process of being fortified and reinforced, turning the area into the stronghold for the new owners of the Denver area. The place was rife with an heir of authority and power, the building one of the few remaining areas not devastated wholly by the initial KSS attacks. Any progress was stopped, however, by a new development taking place right in front of the entrance building.

Ahead of the armoured vehicle was a huge mob of people blocking any movement about the area. They were protesting the new rule presiding over the city. The horde was not armed, this instead being a more peaceful protest in light of the previous wave of violence that had wracked the city, and the responding soldiers cramped into the MAV were more than glad for the positive change. According to the protestors they did not hate furs and had no violent intentions, but it was rumoured that there were some ex-humanist armed forces in the throng. Though Wilks believed their intentions to be debatable, they insisted that it was a bad idea for furs to lead the city and pull it back onto its feet and had yet to lift a finger in aggression.

According to the vehicle's radio, it was their turn to 'sweep the sidewalk' so to speak. This had been done several times lately and mainly involved forming a line and pushing them back down the street until they gave up and stopped holding up the progress. Several troops manned the barricades warily in front of the building while workers and planners were lining the sides of the streets and watched from windows and doorways. Their laxity almost made this look normal.

"Everybody out," said Sergeant Wilks as he slipped the roaring vehicle to a halt, "Henderson, you're on the BG. Standard procedure."

"Sure thing Sarge." came the grunted reply as the man shuffled up into the cupola from the back seat. Wilks heard the large bolt being drawn back on the side of the machine gun above as he picked up his assault rifle and exited the too-warm interior of the patrol vehicle.

He was glad to be getting out of the vehicle for once. The weather had been incredibly warm over the last few days. To make the problem worse, the air conditioning had somehow broke and they hadn't yet gotten around to fixing it. They were about to get some down time after the latest supply distribution run but had been ordered to respond to this newly-risen problem.

From the passenger seat, Robert smacked his helmet twice to ensure that it was on properly before slipping his red-tinted goggles down over his eyes. They fit a little oddly, not quite sliding down to a comfortable position on his muzzle, but Robert knew that it was better having the edge of the goggles pressed in under his lower eyelids than having dirt or shrapnel in his eyes proper. He hefted the SAW in his left hand, barrel down, temporarily and opened the heavy, jam-proof door with a slight groan coming from its metal hinges. His ears bugged him as they scratched around inside of the foam-lined, ex-military helmet but Robert ignored it and looked over to the make sure the remainder of the squad were out.

Frank Henderson manned the hefty .50 on top of the vehicle, careful not to point the barrel of the gun directly at the gathered people, instead directing it above their heads at a carefully neutral angle. Corporals Lucy Sheer and Bill Patterson had formed up on the opposite side of the vehicle around Wilks who stood casually looking out at the people who were now starting to take notice of their arrival. They were all humans in regular clothing, none looking too haggard or worse for wear despite the two years of warfare. The civilians were not being openly violent, but slogans like 'Furs Don't Equal Freedom!" and "Human City, Human Leaders!" were common amongst the crowd on brightly-coloured cardboard signs held aloft above the heads of the protesters. Robert couldn't help but feel a little nervous as he joined the others in a loose, exaggeratedly-relaxed line facing the mob.

Behind them a second MAV came to a stop. It wasn't long before Martinez's squad joined them, fanning out to complement the small row of troops. "What's the plan?" asked Martinez, the large tiger morph stretching out and bending his legs quickly as he approached his superior.

"Just maintain the peace. We don't need a bloodbath, that would just lend to their cause." replied Wilks as he shouldered his rifle. The crowd had obviously not expected a military show of force and were backing away from the soldiers slightly. That was good. "Standard spread, keep level. Robert, get in the MAV and follow us closely."

Wilks started walking forwards at the crowd while letting his weapon fall back into a two-handed grip, the other squad members walking beside him at a steady pace. Robert turned back around and climbed behind the leather wheel of their MAV, starting the engine again. Henderson shuffled a bit as he panned the gun back and forth across the heads of the crowd. Robert pressed down on the gas pedal slowly, coming to follow the staggered line of the two squads arrayed ahead of him, the large vehicle acting as the driving force for the flat 'plow' of soldiers. Beside him the Martinez's MAV helped to make the rest of the crowd sweeper, both vehicles moving forwards indomitably to push the civilians away.

Wilks stopped, letting the MAV draw past him a bit, to get the loud speaker from a saddlebag on the side of the MAV and started telling the citizens to back away slowly down 16th street. On the other side, several other squads from inside the station had joined in to dissolve the seemingly solid crowd, mirroring the tactic being employed by the 15th mobile response unit. They gave reluctantly, the military forces pressing in on them, and were soon walking away begrudgingly to their dens of refuge.

This was the second time that the civilians had performed just such an open protest in the past twenty-four hours alone. Wilks knew that if it kept up they may not give headway so willingly the one time and another conflict could come to a head. And it went without saying that the city's riot supplies were at an all time low since the initial breakout. Teargas, flashbangs, pepper spray, and riot armour were all at an all-time premium, their use rare and conservative. The major police actions in the city had seen to that after the DPD and other police forces in the region had tried in vain to stop the uprising. That was not good. It meant that the now-militarized ex-freedom fighters were that much more likely to use lethal force.

Robert heaved a sigh of relief as the last few dozen people decided to call it a day. The workers slowly went back to work welding and creating barriers as the station's on-site troops relaxed and resumed their regular patrols around the 5-block radius. The MAVs once again fell silent and the squads were chatting amongst themselves amiably, glad that today was not the day that the crowd had decided to snap.

"Hey," Robert heard one trooper say, a man from the station's garrison, in a hushed tone as he joined a cluster of soldiers around the side of the Martinez's vehicle, "You guys hear what happened to those spec-ops guys a few days ago?" Lucy decided to take the bait.

"No. Why? What happened?" The trooper looked around before continuing.

"Well, this goes no further, but I heard that our 'high and mighty' leaders are missing somewhere up in the Rockies." The others looked sceptical and the man shrugged.

"What?"

"Missing?" chuckled Wilks, not buying an inch of it, "Look, I met these guys. Thankfully, it wasn't in a dark alley because those bastards can fight. I mean really fight. As in 'rip your heart out and shove it down your mouth before you can even blink' fight. There's no way they are lost."

"Is that so?" sneered the man, a young twig of a soldier wrapped in jeans and a desert cammo jacket. "And where would you have seen them?"

"Invesco. We were in the main assault. Robert here dropped in with them. Isn't that right Rob?"

"Yeah, right in the chopper. Dropped in the seating after the attack helicopters had a go about the area." Robert found he was actually bragging. A huge change from being held in a holding facility. "Actually met one of 'em. Said his name was John."

"What about their armour? I hear they can take rifle rounds like nothing." asked another trooper that had just joined them from across the road.

"Rifle?" thought Robert, "I don't know about that. But there was this one chic who took some pistol shots to the chest. She barely flinched. Then she turned around and shot the poor fucker that had hit her."

The others raised some eyebrows and nodded, obviously impressed. Robert couldn't help but grin a little. "There was this other guy, a bear or something. Had a friggin' minigun. A minigun! No tripod or anything!"

"Yeah," said the man who had asked the original question, "Well their leaders are gone now and nobody knows where they are. That means OUR leaders are gone."

It was a troubling thought and Martinez posed the question they were all thinking at the moment. "If you're right," he said as his tail swished gently on the hull of the MAV behind him, "Then who's running this place?"

**

Union Station, Denver, Colorado

1200 Hours, August 20** th ***, 2052*

"Holy shit..." sighed Arthurs as he flopped down on his cot deep underground in the bowels of the station. He had just been running around for the past ten hours fetching data pads, coffee, snacks, and other assorted items for the official and unofficial officers currently running the station and the gene forces throughout the city. He needed a break.

The control situation was tenuous. The fact that General Daystar and Colonel Smith had disappeared a few nights ago had not helped the ragtag group of people supposed to be leading the rebellion. Now there were a few people who thought that they were not going to be returning any time soon, vying and grasping for the next level on the tiered chain of command. Arthurs hoped that nothing would come out of it. Infighting was the last thing they needed.

Arthurs rubbed the banded area of his dark-fur masked face and hoped it would alleviate the pressure building behind his eyes. It didn't. "Christ..." he muttered as he grabbed at a bag lying next to his lumpy cot. He pulled a rattling container from inside the duffel bag and quickly popped the red lid from the top. He pulled one of the few remaining circular pills from inside the medicine bottle and popped it into his mouth. Not bothering to wash it down, he swallowed somewhat harshly and closed the plastic container. He chucked the near-empty bottle back into the bag and it bounced off of a layer of clean clothes. His comm buzzed from inside his pants pocket before a voice message came over the small speaker. It was work calling again.

"Arty, we need some more coffee, could you get on it? Thanks."

Sometimes he hated this revolution. It was easier watching children...

**

Arthurs walked slowly towards the table, careful not to spill the freshly-brewed coffee all over the floor of the command centre. He made it to the small snack table and set the pot on an insulating pad with a depressed sigh. The sad thing is that it will be gone in a half hour...

"You look tired, Arty." said Dutch. He had practically taken up Daystar's now vacated position with a very solemn sense of duty. As a result, the man had almost aged several decades over the past few days, his new duties and responsibilities taking their toll. His eyes were hung with black bags and his hair was a greasy mess.

"I look tired?" guffawed Arthurs, "When was the last time you slept, sir?"

"About.. 60, 65 hours? It's been a while." admitted Dutch. Arthurs was shocked. He had thought that his eighteen-hour shift was bad. Dutch saw the surprise on Arthur's face and smiled glumly. "Yeah. I hate bugging you for coffee every ten minutes, but it's all that's keepin' me going." Arthurs nodded slowly.

"No problem." Dutch just smiled again and looked over at the coffee pot. Arthurs noticed that he was still in between the two. He moved out of the way quickly. "Sorry, sir."

"No problem, Private."

Arthurs excused himself from the table and made his way towards the exit as the rest of the officers shuffled over to mob the coffee pot like zombies an immature teen in a bad horror flick. He leaned up against the wall outside the door and waited for the inevitable 'refill' call.

**

Keslow, Colorado

1203 Hours, August 20** th ***, 2052*

Warren had stalked the man halfway across the town to watch him disappear into a a house on the outlying eastern edge of Keslow. The streets had been almost completely bare, so it had been no trouble avoiding contact with other civilians. The man had taken his sweet time getting to his destination, dawdling along at a pace almost too slow to be considered leisurely. Warren had thought that maybe he had seen him on the way over, but doubted it. The cloaking system was very effective and, to make sure that he wasn't detected, he stayed out of a direct line of sight, instead relying for the most part on his electronic tag.

The man had long since discarded of the butt of his cigarette only about a hundred meters from the hall and now held only his cane in his hands as he mounted the steps up to the building's font door. He fumbled with a set of keys for a moment before sliding one home in the lock with a metallic jangle and turning it. The door opened and swallowed the elderly man before the door once again closed.

The electronic tag on his HUD flashed a warning saying how the target was out of view but Warren ignored it and dismissed the tag altogether. He no longer needed it. He made sure that he himself wasn't being followed, the very idea preposterous to him despite his tendency to err on the side of caution, and confirmed it. Warren took a few breaths and sprinted full-out towards the house from behind the overgrown hedge he had hidden behind, keeping to the grass of the lawns between him and the door to minimize the noise of armoured boots.

He made it to the wall of the faint green coloured house and stopped just below a large window on the front side. He risked a peek, his stealth field still active, over the sill and tried to make out anything inside. There was a living room that looked as if it hadn't been touched in years, dust accumulated on the surfaces, that held the usual television set, couches, chairs, and coffee table. The fact that it was daylight meant that light would probably not give away the man's location in the house so he had to resort to listening.

Warren maxed the audio receptor settings in his helmet before carefully placing one side of his head to the wall below the window. He heard a rhythmic thumping from inside. Footsteps. Warren listened more intently and noted that they were heading towards him but getting fainter, as if the man were descending stairs to a basement. Warren grinned. That was always good; basements were almost always secluded. A good place to corner people.

He backed away from the wall and carried on around the side of the house, mindful not to step in the odd pile of dog shit that lay littered about the grass, and went up the cement stairs. He stopped so that he was facing the door and pressed the side of his helmet against it silently. Nothing. He put one still-camouflaged hand on the door, the stealth system blurring the appearance of his hand so that it showed the image before it on its backside, and turned it slowly to see if the man had left it unlocked.

The door was still open.

Warren turned the knob as quietly as possible, only a small clack sounding from the internal latch. He pushed it open gingerly with one hand and stepped inside the entrance. Warren almost ran into a second door only two feet back from the door he had just see to. He would have let out an annoyed sigh if it hadn't meant possibly blowing his cover. He bit it back and closed the first door once he was safe inside and opened the second.

The smell of a house long unused made it through the filtration system of his helmet and he almost gagged on the heady musk. There was no way that the man had lived here, it was just too untouched for somebody to eke out an existence within it. Warren made to grab a weapon from his side, but soon realized that all of his usual armaments were back at the city hall with the mayor's chief of security. He kicked himself for not thinking ahead but decided that he could take an old man with only his knife if he needed to. He pulled his knife out of its sheath and held it lightly in his gloved right hand.

Warren made his way through the still living room and towards the back wall of the house. There he found a set of stairs almost exactly like to the ones he had pictured in his mind. They were properly trimmed with a golden-coloured aluminium and a white linoleum composed the actual contact surface. He stepped on the first gingerly, half expecting one of those squeaks straight out of a children's cartoon to spring to life and alert the man to his presence in the house, but none came. He noticed vaguely that the scar on his neck was starting to itch, but he ignored it and continued.

His booted foot came to rest soundlessly on the smooth surface and Warren waited for the man to confront him from below on his way back up. Nothing happening, Warren moved his other digitigrade leg down to the next step. It too fell silently. He was soon stepping lightly downstairs, pausing every few seconds to make sure that he remained undiscovered. So far, so good.

He reached the bottom of the flight of stairs without incident and found himself in a cement-floored basement that the previous residents had once sought to finish but had come up short. The walls were all painted and the ceiling lights were fitted but the floor was still barren and there was a distinct lack of furniture. He spotted light coming from under the crack of a door off to his right and hesitated in indecision.

Warren took a muffled breath and plucked his way past empty paint cans, boxes of Christmas decorations, an old bike, a workbench, and several other miscellaneous items that he had found were common in basements across North America. He reached the white-painted plywood door and paused once more, his grip on his silver knife tightening.

He readied himself and grabbed the handle, tensing before committing. The scar on his neck was really itching now, but he suppressed the urge to scratch it and focused on the door. Now was not the time to be distracted.

He flung the door open and crouched in readiness, his right hand draw back for a slashing motion. He didn't need it. There was nobody inside, just a simple light bulb and some yet-to-be-plastered walls. Warren tensed as he heard a noise coming from behind him. He was about to turn and investigate when he was hit in the back of the neck with 700 thousand volts of electricity in a steady pulse.

Warren's active camouflage flickered and died as his legs gave out, his bowie knife falling to the floor. He convulsed mightily on the floor, the HUD blinking red and orange warnings wildly as it was overloaded before going dark altogether and revealing what it had hidden. Muscle fibres in the suit surged with arcing power and they moved of their own accord, whipping about without restraint and forcing Warren's limbs to follow suite. His tail coiled and smacked about like an angry serpent, almost vibrating with energy, before the nerve synapses died out and it stopped moving, all life now gone from the appendage. For the first time in a very long time, probably for the first time ever, Warren tried to cry out in pain. His indignity was covered by the fact that his lungs had already contracted into two withered husks next to an over-stimulated heart, and no air could be pushed from them no matter the amount of extra pressure applied.

Then it all stopped. Pain lingered and he hissed in anger and frustration as air once more filled the crumpled shells of his lungs. He opened his eyes and tried to move something, anything, to see if he was still alive.

He couldn't. He was numb and, ironically, had no energy left in his entire being.

Warren tried again, trying to forge his anger into something useful.

Nothing.

Again.

Movement.

With a vicious surge of willpower, he managed to lift an arm a fraction of an inch above the concrete floor. He would have smiled if he had the spare will to, but he didn't, so he couldn't.

As a reward for his amazing feat of resilience, he was hit again by the staggering amount of electrical power. The pain came back in full force and with a vengeance, this time spreading from a new contact point on his side. Once more he was convulsing. He vaguely noted the taste of copper in his mouth as one of his canines bit clean through his tongue. Blood dribbled in a slovenly, frothy mess from his muzzle and started to pool in his helmet. The helmet clacked as he somehow wriggled over to a wall and began hitting his head involuntarily against it. His arms and legs must have been burned out from the last zap because they barely moved any more and had retreated to an area closer to his chest, putting him in a foetal position. Still, Warren shuddered with the raw force of the electricity. It was a good few seconds before it stopped again.

The last thing he saw through a dimmed visor before he blacked out in immeasurable agony was his target. The old man stood over him, his cane held at a ready position to deliver another jolt if it were needed. It wasn't, and Warren fell into the pitiless void of unconsciousness.

**

"Has anybody seen Warren?" asked Marcus as the final few voters made their way to the private booths. He already knew the answer.

"No," said Paul, "he said he was headed to the bathroom, remember?"

"That was a twenty minutes ago at least," stated Sam, "Something's wrong."

"Either that, or our coyote friend has been hoarding the protein bars from our rations." shrugged Paul, "Those things can make you shit bricks."

Paul's attempt at a joke failed and the group gathered in a slight huddle off to the side of the hall under a window placed peculiarly high up on the wall. This was not good. The last thing they needed was another Expeditor missing in addition to the others.

"I'll go check the bathrooms." volunteered Paul. Marcus nodded and he left, marching across the mostly-empty space to a small corridor with the blue bathroom signs hanging over its entrance.

"How about the locator chip?" asked Marcus. His breathing was becoming quieter and he looked around the room, almost expecting Warren to materialize out of thin air.

"I've checked. He's not showing up anywhere." said Sam after a moment of checking her HUD's personnel tracker program. Warren's tracker tag, hidden away in the back of the suit's neck, was offline, joining those of the other four missing squad members. "Either he's out of range, or it's been disabled."

"Fine. We do it the old fashioned way," ordered Marcus, his voice now taking on a more weighted, but still level, tone.

Sam's body language suggested that she was getting antsy. Marcus was starting to catch the beginnings of it too, his tail not moving so much as an inch and his arms now crossing is chest. Paul returned and shook his head slowly. Warren hadn't been in the washrooms. Marcus cursed. "Okay, we have to keep this under wraps. We don't tell anybody that he's missing, okay? We don't want to send the wrong message here. We search discretely and nonchalantly, no random searches for now. Bursting into places we were not invited into would just suggest that we're not in any condition to run anything. I'll talk to Newbolt and see if I can get any security footage from the cameras."

The others nodded in agreement. They needed to seem in control of the situation, not look incompetent.

"Alright. Sam, I want you to watch the main street for now. Paul, you are going to stay here and see if he comes back. Everyone good?"

The other two nodded.

"Alright. We'll meet back at the rooms in two hours. Dismissed."

**

Keslow, Colorado

1405 Hours, August 20** th ***, 2052*

"So we have no idea where he is?" asked Marcus as he sat on the edge of Sam's bed, his mood sullen and deflated.

"Not a clue." said Paul, who was bouncing a tennis ball of of the wall above a small desk while leaning back from it in a rickety old chair.

"But he did leave the hall, the cam footage showed it." said Sam. She was leaning against a wall and looking out the window to the main street where the sun cast light upon the people now finished voting and living their lives thankfully oblivious to their situation.

"What about the man that went out before him?" asked Paul, "He must be a part of it. Warren looked like he was going after him."

"Newbolt didn't seem like he knew him either." supplied Marcus. "He has something to do with this. I know it. Warren doesn't do anything without a good reason."

"So we just have to find him." said Sam, waving an arm mildly to support her thought.

"Indeed." said Marcus, deep in thought, "But other than watching for him, we cannot do anything. Blaming one of the townspeople for this would make us look foolhardy and rash. Until those votes are tallied, I'm afraid we are powerless. Even when they are, we need a vote in our favour or we're screwed."

"Can't you ask Newbolt for help? He knows about this already." asked Sam.

"I already have. He has people on watch who know only to report to us with news of the man's whereabouts. We decided it was best they didn't know why." Silence descended on the room. A few seconds ticked by before Paul spoke up.

"So we wait? And if we do find him, then what?" Marcus frowned deeply, and his right hand whirred as it formed a fist.

"We talk to him and see what he knows."