the truth is out there

The crowd is more than large enough to make Niko nervous. He likes people well enough, sure, but mobs of them have a tendency to be unpredictable and Niko isn’t exactly the most adept at being in the field for something like this. He feels...sad, he supposes, but there’s an undercurrent of ‘wrongness’ that cuts through the sadness and makes him more uncomfortable than anything else. As the crowd begins to grow a bit less quiet, he shuffles closer to Sage. Buddy system, right?

“Doing okay over here?” he asks under his breath with a quick smile.

Dante puts a hand on Wrynn’s shoulder, and nods. “Forward it to everyone, sooner than later.” He didn’t know how to comfort him, especially since he’s always known to give him and Doe the widest berth known to man, but it couldn’t hurt to try. A squeeze on the shoulder and it’s off. He could admit that he wasn’t exactly the friendliest character in Blackwolf, but he still had a heart. Just buried under twenty feet of pavement. “Who knows, maybe we can get out of here in a week—get some fucking leave. I’d say I missed my bed, but I think I sleep at Blackwolf more than my apartment at this point.

Niko shakes his head and nods, a bright smile replacing the temporary softness of retrospection. “Will do, boss,” he chirps. Dwelling on sadness, he finds, is never productive. Niko snorts at Dante’s comment. “Oh, man, that’d be the best. I’ve been meaning to get back out west and get some more footage.” The sequel to his pride and joy—the groundbreaking sasquatch documentary that had put him on Blackwolf’s radar—had been under way for several years now and with the footage he already had, it was shaping up to be even grander than the first. “Hey, at least we got that new couch in the break room. It’s a real nap game changer.”

          Oscar clicks around until he, by some miracle, manages to find a long-sleeved version. It’s even better; the sleeves are made up of three sections of patterned prints, one of them’s definitely got dancing hotdogs on it. “Bingo,” he says reverently, and adds two to his cart. “I’ll see if I can find some ties that go with them. We’ll be all formal.”

          While the page is loading – good old dial-up – Oscar glances over at Niko’s spreadsheets. So organized. “What are you working on? Adding up all the theories?” Because they’ve got a few, at least. “I’m putting money on some sort accelerated growth pod people. Only pod people would willingly call a guy they’re not related to Dad.”

“So formal,” Niko agrees sagely, leaning away once it’s decided.

He glances back to his screen. “Yeah, I’m typing up everyone’s case notes and organizing them by agent, potential suspect, reliability, and stuff.” He scrolls down the page, finds Oscar’s name on his list, and carefully adds “accelerated growth pod people” to a new table cell beside it.

“It is kind of weird, right? Maybe it’s some sort of mind control or something. It would have to be pretty powerful to affect this many people...”

victoria stared at the man, quizically. he didn’t seem like any fbi agent she’d ever met before, or really any investigator at all. plus with the other weird one around it seemed like the fbi was hiring any strange person. “you don’t have to ask my permission to take picture. do whatever you have to do to solve the case.” she said, crossing her arms “if that actually is what you’re trying to do.”

Niko blinked. “We’re here to do everything we can to help find out what happened do your daughter, ma’am,” he says. Curious, that Victoria was so hesitant about that. Skimming around the room, he started by taking a few wide angle shots before striding closer to the desk to take some closeups. “Have you been having trouble with some of the other agents?”

Even Wrynn didn’t have the slightest clue about what could cause this—if he didn’t know any better, he’d talk about witchcraft and demon summonings, but that wasn’t on the table just yet. “Great—Dad can command ghosts to kill people,” Dante grumbles, rubbing a hand over his face, “Amber’s turning my hair grey. If that’s true, I’m hoping to any god out there that we’re not haunted. Did you at least get anything from Victoria?”

“Took some pictures of the apartment,” Niko says, motioning in the vague direction of his laptop. He scrubs his fingers through his hair and winces. “It was kind of sad, really,” he admits softly. It is always difficult to talk to grieving families—though Victoria had seemed happy to see them, which was better than many. Death is part of the job, he knows, but it’s not the part he signed up for. “Everything looked pretty untouched and nothing really stood out at the time but I’ll forward the images to everyone to see if anyone else can pick something out.”