002.1 Checking in with Kurk

Immediately upon leaving the private room at Jessica's, Jack receives a new message from Kurk. Could use your insight. Meet me at the corner of 2nd Street and Victory Blvd.

Arriving at the specified location a short while later, Jack sees it is crowded with onlookers, the mostly unemployed denizens of the QZ watching as Kurk's forces work with the understaffed and overworked Enforcement Agents that still do their best to maintain law and order within the QZ. The mouth of an alley off of Victory Boulevard seems to be the focus of their investigation, and as Jack approaches Kurk makes his way down the sidewalk to intercept him. The two men pass each other by, neither betraying their recognition of the other, and Kurk manages to catch a glimpse of the crime scene which seems to be the focus of the investigation.

Spotlights bleach all color from the alley, where refuse is piled high against one wall. At the base of the pile is a body, or at least, what remains of one. Enforcement agents work near the body gathering evidence and taking images and measurements, and some of Kurk's military forces are speaking with eye witnesses, recoding their statements on their bodycams.

Kurk meets Jack around a corner and out of eyeshot, and the two walk together.

"I know our relationship has always been a little one-sided, but I need your help. I don't know if you actually can help, but I'm hoping your contacts inside the QZ can turn up something my uniformed patrols can't."

Kurk passes a datacard to Jack. "This is the second murder. All the data I can share is on there. Right now we've got no suspect. We just need a lead. I don't even care if it's something I can prove. I need to wrap this up. If I don't, it's just one more thing Ms. Parker can use to make us look ineffectual. She already has control of the Distribution Center back end logistics. This is all she needs to get us moved permanently to police duty and have her people replace mine on-site at the Distribution Center as well. I don't need to tell you how that will affect your flow of supplies."

"You wouldn't be a member of HTML if you couldn't count on us to help" Jack smiles, taking the datacard and "plugging it" into his own ... "mind". "And we can't have that viper controlling the distribution into the QZ, she would corner the supply distribution and quickly take over everything. It is bad enough as it is. I'll see what I can do, maybe Malachi, or his ambitious underling, Bella, can be persuaded to intervene" Jack, looks around to make sure they are still out of eyesight, and calls in for a holo-bot. If one was nearby, they could hide behind an illusion hologram easily. "I didn't get a good view at the scene. What happened here?"

"It was... brutal. I've seen combat. You know what it's like. This was something else entirely. It looked like the victim's head was crushed in an industrial press, but the wounds aren't consistent with anything we've seen. My people are theorizing his skull was crushed in someones' hands. The strength it would take to do that to a human skull... it's disquieting, Jack."

Kurk pauses for a moment, then looks Jack dead in the eye. "This whole thing is turning into a shit show pretty fast, and it's gonna go south even faster unless we can get this wrapped up. The QZ is a pressure cooker and it's close to exploding. Locking up all these people would be bad enough without the power freaks trying to kill each other. It's just a matter of time, Jack. One of them is going to get out of the zone, and then the whole city will be locked down. When that happens, we lose a lot of leverage very quickly."

"Are you suggesting... someone crashed his skull with their own hands?" Jack fakes shock as he remembers the recent events at Jessica's. "What time do you think this... mess was? Have you identified the what is left of the victim?" This happened before Brennan stormed in... Could he have done this as well? Jack wondered, trying to keep his toughts hidden for a little longer as he carefully considers the sequence of events, connecting to the server's processing unit as he spoke.

"It looks like someone did, in fact, crush his skull in their bare hands. I can't imagine it, but that's what the evidence suggests. As far as identity, we can't be certain until dental records come back, but the victim was wearing dog tags that identified him as Evan M. Jones. Looks like he was ex-military." Kurk looks at Jack.

[]b"When it happened is the weird part. Coroner says time of death was between more than thirty-six hours ago based on rigor mortis not being present in the body. But he's not sure how much longer, because it looks like the body was kept cool before it was moved here. Whoever did this did it somewhere else, and moved it here for us to find."[/b]

Kurk shakes his head. "I'm hoping this isn't the first in a series, but it has a lot of the signs of a serial killer, according to the Enforcement Investigators. He was posed, laid out on the ground, arms crossed over his chest. His head, or what was left if it, looks like it had been reassembled. I'm not sure what to make of it, but we're keeping those details out of the media."

Kurk exhales sharply. "This isn't my area of expertise. I've got the brass on my ass to make us look good in here, this Parker lady gunning for my job, someone making off with supplies from the Distribution Center, troops doing police work without the proper training, and nowhere near enough trained cops to deal with this kind of thing."

Kurk seems on the verge of saying something else but then stops. "Any help you can provide would be... well, one hand washes the other. You know I'll take care of you, help the cause any way I can, but I need you to help me out here, too. If this gets out of hand, I'll won't be able to do anything for you anymore. Parker will be in charge and I'll be just another mouth to feed inside the QZ with no strings left to pull."

"36 hours? And you say he was military?" Jack is sincerely surprised by the confirmation of his fears. It seems like Scarface could be involved in this murder, but it was something calculated, not a moment of fury. If this was the case, Eli could be in real danger! This would play well with Veronica, he thought... However, the question was why would someone this methodic just rush into Jessica's? "What do you mean, someone making off with the supplies? Is the situation that bad that security can't handle it?". Jack raises his hand, holding Kurk's reply and pretending to be receiving information. "Ever hear of a certain Spc Orlan Brennan? As far as I can tell, he matches the murderer's description. Maybe you can have a look into him?" then he points to his mind chip "If we could get some temporary security access, it would be just a matter of distributing the real time data for high performance processing and we would find him easily."

"It occurred at least thirty-six hours ago, possibly more. The body could have been stored in cooler temperatures to throw off our estimates.

"And we're assuming military. As I said, that depends on whether or not the remains match the information on the dog tag. But working under that assumption, yes. Military. And not one of mine. Who else would have military in the QZ? Something is going on here, and I don't have enough information to figure it out."

Kurk clears his throat as he addresses the supply issue. "Some of my men were found unconscious. Supplies were missing,. Mostly medical supplies, but also some luxury items. Anything of high value. We suspect the criminal element, possibly someone with these new superpowers." Kurk shakes his head. "My men aren't trained for this, and we're being made to look like fools."

"Never heard of this Brennan, but thanks for the tip. We'll get his details out, see if we can't shake him loose from wherever he's hiding."

Kurk clasps Jack's hand. "Thanks, Jack. If we can bring this lunatic down, it will go a long way toward improving our standing with the powers that be. We need to maintain strict control here. This place is ready to explode."

"True... these supers are becoming too dangerous to deal with... Be careful, I have witnessed what he can do first hand. When the time comes and the military needs to use some other methods, I can try to persuade Bella to use some of Malachi’s resources for the public good. I have a feeling Malachi would appreciate her efforts to bring down that specific criminal..." Noticing that he probably took too much time with Kurk already, Jack starts to slowly move into a darker street, so their encounter doesn’t look too suspicious "Let me know what you find on this case... HTML would be very interested in this information "