Peregrine

Grace
The last time Grace set up here, she was tracking the purchases of one Grant Kherrington Junior as he made his way through Colorado. Seems everybody is moving through Colorado these days, no? Strange that he would be so on the heels of Lydia...

Still, it's not much to go on. Once he's settled down somewhere, used that money to rent a hotel room, something -- she can act on it a bit more... decisively. For now, his finances go on permanent watch. She will set up a warning program to notify her when he so much as buys a pack of chips at a gas station.

There's other things afoot than just this guy. There's also the matter of the murdered Apprentices to get to in the meantime, while she waits.

the keeper of secrets
She expects him to settle down and, to a certain degree, he does. The older man seems to be doing his work just fine before he stops in Colorado Springs. He rents a motel room halfway between Denver and there- the Colonial Inn.

Rented the room for a total of sixteen hours, it seems. Yes, it's one of those motels.

The thing is, though, that this is the last purchase he makes. After that, the man is just... gone. No activity on his accounts. No money going to or from. It's like he just decided to halt.

Grace
Non-digital money is the worst. I mean, money is already the worst, but at least with digital funds, it's easier to track. No, this guy probably went cash -- but why Colorado Springs? Of all places?

Something clicks around in Grace's head. Maybe she's not dealing with two murderers after all? Well. It's worth a shot.

The next target on her list is the El Paso County medical examiner's office. Cracking into this place should be fairly easy -- at least not as hard as trying to bust into a Technocratic establishment, eh? Let's find out where that evidence is...

Grace
[Int + Computers, diff 8 - 3 (Chloe!)]

Dice: 9 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]

the keeper of secrets
Grace hsa no trouble looking and getting into the digital records in el Paso county. The warehouse that happened to be housing all of the data from these two particular murders happened to be housed on the outskirts of Colorado Springs. This is a public department, though, and while the security was pretty good this was only because the system itself was so antiquated that someone with a lick of sense would have had the worst time trying to get through it.

What she does find, though, isn't that evidence is being kept from people, it's that there's so little of it. There's the hair sample that they found. The bullet casings. A note about the partial finger prints and the ongoing look into the national databases to try and find a match.

There's another body that seems to pop up with a bullet retrieved that matched the La Croix murder (and just as damaged and hard-to-place). That body belongs to Jacqueline Paix.

Grace
Government servers suck ass. It has to be something about all the equipment being bought from the lowest bidder, and all the software produced by somebody's nephew on the cheap. This place, man... this place! Somebody was anal about making sure their Windows Server 2003 was fully patched, oh sure. And then loaded screensavers, games, and about fifty Internet Exploder plugins on it. On a server.

Somehow, Grace just doesn't think they're going to find that print in the national databases. Just a hunch.

Whatever, right? They're just not as capable as she. And they have her little hair sample. It's time to go bending the universe to her will for it...

[Corr 3, Life 2 -- Teleport some DNA samples! Diff = 6 - 1 (taking time) - 1 (personalized focus)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[Extending!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

the keeper of secrets
Grace easily receives the hair sample and it is transported ever-so-carefully to the place that she is doing her work, likely sealed away and carefully held up in some place that it wouldn't contaminate all of her other things. What she notices is that the hair has been bleached. That the hair, for anyone else, would be so degraded that they would have had the worst time finding it.

But there it is. All pale and blond and holding of secrets.

Grace
The first thing she does is to index the DNA data of this hair's tiny root -- to save it off, because this is going to have to go back to the medical examiner. If she ever needs it again, it'll be nice to not have to go through all that work.

All told, a normal human's DNA is about two thirds of a gigabyte in terms of storage. A tiny amount, for something so intricate as the instructions for growing and maintaining a person. She could compress it down even further, if she liked...

[Life 1, Scanning the hair for DNA. -1 Quint for making it a permanent data file. Diff = 4 - 1 (Personalized instrument)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 5, 9) ( success x 2 )

Grace
Now, of course, comes the fun part. Since the medical examiner wasn't obviously bribed, it looks like the owner of this hair is something special. Just going in and finding them could be difficult and dangerous in itself.

But there's nothing quite so dangerous as a Mage who's had time to prepare for eventualities.

First, a mental shield, to keep herself from driving her car off a cliff in thralldom or something.

[Mind 2: Shields Up!  Diff = 5 -1 (taking time) -1 (personalized instrument)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

the keeper of secrets
She spends some time getting together and focusing, rewriting the mental parameters and essentially putting up her own sort of firewall from mental attacks and what-have-you. It's so common, so much something that she has done that this is just the nature of the beast. Just the nature of what she is and how she operates.

Grace
Next, in case they try to break all of her things and leave her helpless, a little protection against corruption wouldn't hurt. Solidify her equipment against the forces of destruction? Sounds like a good thing to do.

[Entropy 3: Underclocking -- Make her equipment 99.999% uptime guaranteed! Diff = 6 -1 (taking time) -1(Personalized instrument)

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 8) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[Grr, that is so not good enough!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 4, 4) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace
[And that should have been TN = 5... disregard that last roll.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (5, 7, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Grace
Fun fun fun. Facing off against an unknown element? Perhaps now is the time, eh? She takes a breath, and steadies herself before leaping back into the universal code.

Once you have your hands on some juicy data like this, it's just the first step. The next is doing something with it. She doesn't know what's going to be on the other side of her little wormhole though, and that's got her, well, shielding her mind and her computer for starters.

Not knowing can be dangerous. Knowing can be even more dangerous.

Oh well.

[Corr 2, Life 1 -- Trace the strand back to an owner. Diff = 5 - 1 (taking time) - 1 (personalized focus)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

the keeper of secrets
She goes to take a look at where she is going and what she is doing. She peers forward to see what is going on with this particular person and she does, in fact, find him. He is at a bar in Colorado Springs. It's a nice enough bar and the man is tall and fit and relatively charming. He seems to be hanging out with some friends who are also relatively charming and monied.

Trust fund babies, it would appear. Or the kinds of brokers that you would see in American Psycho. Whatever the case, they seem reasonable and normal enough for people who may or may not have committed murder.

Grace
So far, no fireballs. Good. Also -- Colorado Springs. What is with that place? Right now, it seems to be taking the brunt of whatever curse used to land on Denver.

For now, she watches him -- tries to ascertain a name or some other information that would be helpful.

the keeper of secrets
She doesn't seem to find anything, though. A lot of people seem content to call him Wiley. Like the coyote.

Grace
Wile E. Coyote, Super Gen-i-us. This guy, though... He doesn't look like a coyote. More like a pampered poodle.

When she's tired of watching the inanity of rich guys at a bar being themselves (talk about the banality of evil) she takes another stab at it.

He's got to have something. Some plastic whatsit has to be on him, right? An id card from his alma mater, a credit card, a driver's license -- something. Or maybe not. It's worth a try though, just to get a bead on him.

[Corr 2, Matter 1 -- Looking for something small and plastic on this dude. Diff = 5 - 1 (taking time) -1 (personalized instrument)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

the keeper of secrets
She doesn't get anything that has identification on it, much to her chagrin. She would have expected to get information and the lack of information is incredibly suspect. She gets a little credit card from one Elizabeth Palor that is all black and shiny and high limit.

And another card that is simple, white, and has embossed lettering on its pearlescent front.

Peregrine.

Grace
Weird. Very weird, this guy. Guess if you pay enough, people will overlook the fact that you don't have any ID to drink with. Guy doesn't even have a cell phone on him.

He is very obviously not named Elizabeth Palor, unless he is a she doing an incredible drag king act. And she has no idea what the background behind 'Peregrine' might be.

So. It's come to this. More inanity. He has to leave sometime, right? Go to a car, go to a residence, give her something more to go on...

the keeper of secrets
And she waits.

And waits.

And waits.

And it takes awhile before one of his friends drops him off at a very expensive looking flat in the city proper. They tell Wiley goodbye and he walks himself up to the front door of his place only to ring the doorbell. The stoor is then opened by a pretty blonde woman who looks at her equally blond room mate.

She beams. He grins.

"You got in, didn't you?" she asks.
"Yep."
"Ohhhh, Wiley, this is great!" She hugs him and drags him along inside. He laughs andstarts to dig for his wallet, shows her the card with pride.
"What about La Croix, what about him?"

Wiley falters and shakes his head, no

His blonde housemate looks sad.

"Well, can't all be winners, can they?"
"Yeah. But hey! We got where we are and it's good."
"Daddy says hi."
"Sonny says hi back."

She laughs and drags him off to the bedroom and, presumably, Grace gets an eye full of rich people sex.

Grace
Some people are voyeurs. They like this kind of thing. If they had access to the all-seeing-eye, that's all they would do with the rest of their lives is watch other people have sex.

That's not really Grace's thing. She's investigating this guy for murder, not his cunnilingus skills. Ugh, gross. UGH GROSS. She winces when she realizes what's going on here, and severs the connection.

But, not before finding out where he's sleeping tonight. So that's a consolation.

He got in. Somewhere. To Peregrine? La Croix did not. He has a father or father-figure? Maybe it's time to hit up Angela. Ask somebody who knows Colorado Springs, and what might be going on there.

For now, Wiley and his address have been noted.