After Altair's departure, the room remained silent for a few seconds.
"SAMANTHA." Ronald called out.
!Mr. Akroatís is now at his house in Stockar city.! SAMANTHA replied.
Ronald acknowledged and proceeded to say. "Keep analyzing the room, I want to know when is the best time for the team to move in. The more time we have, the better."
!understood.! SAMANTHA affirmed in her synthetic voice.
Next Ronald returned to the seat behind his table and asked the other two.
"What are your thoughts?"
David answered first. "About Akroatís? It's hard to tell for now, but I think he'll adapt. He's been to different conflict zones and disaster zones over the past month so he should be good with pressure. If there's a twist, he won't snap."
James didn't seem to agree. "Today was different, and that stranger appearing can't count as a twist. Besides, the data SAMANTHA showed him could mess his judgement in a real mission."
There was a short silence.
Then Ronald asked. "SAMANTHA?"
!Mr. Akroatís appears to be coping well with the Red level information he received. His mental state is stable and there are no signs of breakdown.!
Ronald seemed to contemplate and said nothing.
…
In Stockar city, at Altair's apartment.
It was still the middle of the day when Altair arrived home.
He looked at the spot he appeared, standing before the sofa he often sat to watch the news, but instead of slouching in it as he often did, he moved away as if remembering something.
Maybe he developed a little paranoia regarding this spot but he left the living room entirely and went straight to the kitchen.
There, he sluggishly slumped down the wall to the floor and placed his phone beside him. Then, he raised his head and rested it backwards on the wall.
Somehow, the room felt smaller than it used to be, but maybe it was just the contrast to Ronald's empty office that made it that way.
Altair then thought back about the events of the day.
How did it even start?
From the moment he woke up and did the Daily Quest to meeting up with James and then moving to Ronald's office, it was still a little… normal.
After this, things seemed to just speed up as if he was just dragged along the whole time.
The briefing; the red suit he was shot at for; the hours of surveillance footage that played at such a high frame rate that the video was still smooth with nothing chopped off even at x8 normal speed; and then the infiltration, a quiet reconnaissance mission with a somewhat tense ending.
Thinking back, most of the day seemed to be just staring at screens. There was also the way David had sped up the playback, was it a test, if so, what were they testing?
Whatever it was, he thought that he had either passed or the group did not care enough to let him know the result.
Another highlight of the day, was seeing SAMANTHA work her "magic" as James said. It was really an eye-opener.
Altair remembered that Denton Black was supposed to be an upcoming famous magician. So, he picked his phone beside him and searched about Denton Black.
The results were as dramatic as you would expect of the internet with the crisp thumbnails, clickbait headlines and a lot of exclamation marks.
|Watch This Magician Bend Reality In Real Time!!!|
|Live Crowd Gasps At Impossible Trick – No Edits!!!|
Like any good "onliner", he clicked one video and watched.
Then another.
And another.
He could not catch the usual signs of stage magic in any of these videos. None of the clumsy cuts or "awkward sleights". No obvious distraction techniques either, the man did not even have a team from what Altair saw.
It was always like there was no illusion.
At some point Altair almost had the phone touching his face with how hard he tried to spot a fault.
'A real magician…' Was Altair surprised, he didn't really know, seeing as he could teleport himself the idea that someone could actually do all these things was not so unimaginable or inconceivable.
'Could Denton Black teach this magic?' Altair started wondering as he kept scrolling down, then he stopped at a promotion post. It was a new, live event coming soon.
|BIGGEST SHOW YET|
There was even a link to his website.
"Denton Black's Biggest Performance Yet!" Altair read aloud.
The tickets were almost sold out and it was at the end of the week, in five days.
They were really running out of time.
…
The rest of the day was uneventful and soon came the next day.
As usual, Altair woke up very early, around 3 a.m.
He opened the system windows and checked the Quest tab. The Daily Quest had already reset so he left his bed and went to his usual spot on the coast to complete the four tasks of push-ups, sit-ups, squats and run at maximum effort.
Then, he did a light jogging to pass the time, combining it with several other exercises. One hour later, he was not even sweaty but he felt bored of the exercise, so he returned home.
Altair passed by the living room and glanced at the TV but didn't stop. Instead, he went to sit at the veranda outside.
It was nearly the end of January so the air was very fresh outside and it had a calming effect. Altair who was on the veranda enjoying this air soon fell asleep leaning on the wall.
…
A few minutes later, he woke up, took out his phone, started reading web novels to pass the time and soon enough got absorbed and lost in it.
Before he knew it, it was dawn, and the sky was already lighting up.
Altair returned inside the house and equipped the suit/uniform using the System's Inventory before sitting at his dining table to wait for SAMANTHA or James.
Soon enough, he saw James appear in his living room.
Once James spotted him, it only took a moment before James showed a disappointed expression. Then he said "Let's go. To Ronald's office." And he disappeared as if he was never there to begin with.
Altair stood up and picked his phone from the table before vanishing as well.
…
Back in Ronald's office.
The room looked exactly like it had when he left yesterday. The sofas and table had the same arrangement and the walls were just as seamlessly white as before.
However, the front wall was now separated into four pictures with each one showing Denton Black's room but all with different information.
"Was there something else we needed from this image? There's a lot more detail than yesterday." Altair remarked.
David replied. "Yesterday's analysis was at the surface level. It was mostly to look at the occupant's habits and also to confirm whether or not Denton Black lives there alone."
"All of that was just surface level information?" Altair asked with a little surprise.
"Yes. Thanks to doing a deeper study of the picture, we were able to determine that Denton Black has been living in this place for much longer than just a day as we assumed yesterday."
He pointed to the wall and continued. "If you look to the image on the upper right, you will notice a timeline estimation. Each time the silhouette moves to the door, the estimated time of day is highlighted on the column to the side, and we can even see when he visited the door without going out thanks to traces on the floor."
"How are you able to get this much from a single picture?" Altair asked after a couple of seconds of looking at the "playback" which David had pointed at.
"We were lucky on this one." David continued. "From what we got, Denton Black doesn't clean often. According to the analysis, the last cleaning dates back to about 1 month ago, and there are signs that he has lived here for at least that long."
"One month?" Altair's question was almost an exclamation.
David nodded. "Not many people bother to clean if their place still visibly appears tidy, and that seems to be the case here. Thanks to that, SAMANTHA could use minute discoloration patterns, trace spectroscopy and density mapping from dust and fabric compression to determine various things. We could even…"
At this point James cut in. "Don't waste time. He doesn't need all those details."
Then he turned to Altair and said. "Basically, we now know Denton Black's been living in there for nearly a month and also when and how often he goes out. SAMANTHA?"
!Priority windows marked for next entry are 10:15 a.m., 2:40 p.m., or 7:05 p.m.!
"Right," James followed up. "and with this, we can move in to take the pictures of the other rooms and have another "surface level analysis" before deciding where to place out equipment in case of failed negotiations."
'I was actually curious about the details.' Altair grumbled to himself. Then he said, "So, we have about 1 hour."
"Yes, one hour until Denton Black leaves the house for the first time of the day."