Number thirty-seven, west quadrant. He had said in a manner that she was coming to think of as his 'staged? memories; those things that he knew for a certainty and could answer without thought. Maybe that was just a lie, maybe he knew more than he was telling her but she liked to believe she was better at reading people than that and she felt, in her gut, that he hadn't lied to her yet, or not knowingly. If he was conning her than he deserved a trophy for the performance, no....unless it was proved otherwise she'd assume that he was being truthful.

The west quadrant was not a friendly place, it wasn't a place that anyone would go to willingly without a business meeting set up and then an escape route planned to get back to a friendly part of the port. Val wasn't just anyone, and whether it was good or bad she was confident in her ability to survive the trip solo. She'd looked the place up in the directory, it didn't yield up any results, no surprise there and so she decided to hike down to the place and check it out.

There had been a hint of trouble brewing as she made her way to the specified warehouse, two men that thought a woman alone was an easy target. It didn't take her long to disabuse them of that notion, but it did mean she'd have to speed up so that she didn't need to answer questions about two men lying debilitated in the small space between two of the warehouses.

The building, number thirty seven, didn't stick out, even to her trained eye. There didn't seem to be anything special about it; just another of the first-generation warehouses, built back when the port was little more than a tarmac, a series of Quonset huts, and a run down little grill.

Dressing for success was one of her mottos, which meant she was in dark clothing and had several high tech toys with her, including two pistols holstered at her waist. The dark clothing helped her blend into the shadows. One of the things she could do, that she tried not to advertise, was a type of phasing, she could make herself intangible and pass through physical objects, like walls. It wasn't something she could do for long so typically it was to pass through a wall here or there and no more.

In this case that was all she needed. It was immediately clear no one had been here in awhile, a thick layer of dust on the dirty floor gave evidence of that. Several of the windows had been shattered, years ago by the look of them, and there was a definite hole in the roof not far from the door.

She continued in and found something interesting - there were footprints leading to the door, still covered with dust, which traced back to a 'George'-sized impression on the floor. She didn't have a flashlight with her and there was little light to go by but her golden eyes appeared to glow dully and from the way she knelt near the George-sized impression one might get the feeling she could see as well as if there had been lights overhead. From the kneeling position she scanned the room, the ceiling and the walls, looking for anything that might be a clue, surely he didn't just appear out of nowhere.

There were other footprints, but they were older, partly covered over, and partly obliterated. There was something interesting along the walls; heaver depressions, what looked like large storage containers now long gone. At least four of them, multi-ton crates by the shape of the depressions. Those could hold a lot of stuff.

She wandered toward the heavier depressions and took a deep breath, drawing in the scents that were available, her gaze still sweeping the area. The older prints were noted but dismissed as too far from the time George arrived to be immediately relevant. She was still trying to figure out how he had gotten there. There was the hole in the ceiling, but dropping that far should have hurt a normal human, but checking it might yield up something.

There was a slight cant of her head as she sensed something else here, it was faded but definitive power. Odd, she didn't think she'd be able to pick up on that after so much time, unless it had been something very powerful. It was noted and stored for later consideration, now she was working out a way to get to the roof, she had some fine, silken rope with her, because all good operations required rope.

The roof's clues were lesser, because of weather (and Tropical Storm Hannibal), but two things were immediately obvious - one, that hole opened down and in, it had been punched through from outside. Second, there were deformations on the upper surface of the roof. There had been a fight up here, either between two sumo wrestlers, or some other equally heavy-footed combatants.

Silent, considering she also made a note that the hole in the roof was not, definitely not, big enough for those multi-ton crates to pass through. They hadn't gotten wheeled out, there were no tracks, and no one had walked them out with anti/gravs because no footprints went to the door but the ones she thought of as not-Georges.

It was all interesting but her mind could come up with no conclusions with the clues she'd found, not now. She would head back home and let it brew to see if her mind provided some likely scenarios. All in all it was turning into a good pastime to keep her occupied. *Partially based off play/information from Will Russell

There at the pier, little had changed. The tides were slowly shifting, the moon was working its way towards a first quarter state and that 'scent' of energy remained faintly perceptible, echoing from the shallows just beyond the pier.

The equipment Lore had gotten her on such short notice was impressive in its simplicity and versatility. The body suit fit her like a glove and was lightweight and easy to move while wearing. Waiting until the docks were mostly clear, or clear of anyone that might notice her, before she moved to the end of the docks.

Stripping out of the jacket and slacks she put on over the dive suit and then hooking up the breathing apparatus, she looked at her watch and then down at the waters. She could feel the pull of the energy and oriented herself toward it so when she dropped into the dark waters it wouldn't be so difficult to navigate.

The actual depth was probably no more than twenty feet, though somehow it felt deeper here. The water felt somehow heavier, in a wholly inexplicable way that had nothing at all to do with deuterium. But in the depths of the pier-moorings, the energy sang out to her - clearer now that she was in its element, and not above it in the clear night air.

She was good at seeing in low light but just a few feet down in these waters was completely devoid of illumination and that she couldn't do. She'd tested the light Lore provided and it seemed sturdy and bright, the video cam attached to the goggles and took sub-vocal commands from a transmitter she applied to her neck with a piece of tape. When she got to a depth she could no longer see anything she flicked the light on and headed for the energy source.

Down here, as a shark might perceive the electromagnetic impulses of prey in distress, she could feel it clearly. The bottom was unremarkable in nearly all respects. Sand, random junk thrown off the pier, surely that was a skeleton off at the periphery of her vision, remnants of a long-ago dispute., and then, it came into view.

Half-buried in the sludge and sediment, a cylinder of metal, a little LED glowing listlessly at the visible end, and emanating the waves that she'd felt from the dock. It was hard to judge from a distance, it turned out to be no bigger than a can of beer. When she pulled from the sludge of the bottom, its song was clearer still. She videoed the area, there might be something she could not see properly that the video would reveal to her later. The item itself was an elegant little thing, not your garden variety design.

She began to swim a circle around where she found it, slowly expanding outward and not too far away, almost buried and nearly invisible, a half-circle of metal and circuitry, with a trailing wire that had been snapped clean through. She couldn't smile, not with the apparatus she was wearing so she could breathe, but there was a sense of success that was palpable to those sensitive to such things. She moved toward the other bits of metal and, after a brief examination, would collect that too.

Another few circles and she came to the conclusion that was all to be found; if anything else had been down here, it had either been fully buried beyond sight, sucked away by the current or a curious crab, or sucked into someone's unfortunately placed water jet intake.

Tucking the found items into a pouch she rose to the surface, slipping out of the waters like a shadow and disappearing before anyone could take note of a lone woman, wet and moving around the docks in the dead of night. (Edited from live play with Will Russel.)