Beginning of the investigation

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"Okay, what are we going to start with?" asked Shadow.

"The best to begin with is to get more operatives into our team," suggested Bagley. "Look for the most skilled people on the streets and talk to them if we can be any of help. Probably simply save someone from a soldier like Pete did with you.
Or - you can start investigating it yourself by looking at Blume archives — maybe something will turn out."

"I will help as many people as I can anyways, but let's start the mission."
"Ok, first of all we gotta go to the explosion site and look for evidence there."
"Let's go."

Shadow decided he could learn to drive as the site was far away. He jumped down and unlocked a parked car with the phone.
"Hope it has an insurance."
Bagley explained the basis of how to drive a car and Shadow started. He learned fast so by the time he got to his waypoint he already drove almost like Peter.

At the site he hijacked a cargo drone and jumped on it, and flew over the site. Bagley explained that there was a DedSec operative inside trying to diffuse the bomb when it exploded... that is why everyone thought he's the one who planted it. Shadow suggested going to the plant to see if anything is left.

He connected to cameras located in the zone to check where security was. Then he jumped off the drone to a safe place and sneaked to the epicenter of the explosion. He skillfully dashed behind the Albion soldiers leaving himself unspotted. There were several soldiers controlling the site though. Shadow turned on the invisibility device and knocked them out one by one. By the time the device discharged all the soldiers were lying unconscious. He calmly came to the crater in the floor. Of course, the crater itself didn't contain anything, so Bagley suggested looking around carefully. Shadow noticed a small hole between the ruins and a spiderbot dock station. He connected to the bot which was inside and explored space behind the wall of wrecked concrete.

It was a parking site. An Albion truck was there, also covered with concrete. Bagley suggested building an AR events reconstruction using the CCTV data.

There had been three people carrying a huge box out of a truck. It must have been the bomb. They planted it and a guy gave a case to the other two.

"Here he is," said Bagley. "Unfortunately, I cannot identify them in this mode. But it is an Albion truck!"
"So much for the army," said Shadow with anger.
"I'll try to track where the truck came from," suggested Bagley.
"Would be awesome if you can".

In a second the truck in AR began to move backwards. Shadow jumped back onto the drone and followed the virtual truck.

The truck went zigzagging through half the city and stopped in a garage at one of the city's many backyards, which had fencing with razor wires around it and a bunch of armed criminals from Kelly clan controlling it.

"It begins to look like a conspiracy," noted Shadow. "How about assuming all those organizations are the Zero Day?"
"It can be possible, though we cannot assume that based on a single evidence"
"Also true".

Shadow quickly knocked down all the criminals and searched through the place just in case there was any evidence there were, just some criminals team commander's audio logs:

Recording of 1 day ago.
Kelly has warned us of some visitors today, but we were all scared to see a truck of Albion. I hardly could convince guys to not shoot it. We carried the chest in and off the truck went. Wonder what was inside... Funky all of it is

"Ight, this checkpoint was just an intermediary point and these logs are no help. Sorry man," Shadow said to an unconscious commander laying near him. The Optik now said the guy was harder to recruit as Shadow attacked him. Simple pre-written code. Anyway, Shadow decided he would try to because:
1. DedSec needed at last one member from each organization in the team,
2. Shadow heard from the audio log that the guy was unhappy with his clan affiliation and what's happening overall.

So Shadow carried him to a nearby roof and gave him some health potion he had. He didn't wake up but Optik showed he regained health. He just was exhausted.
So to not waste time, Shadow connected Bagley to the sleeping man's chip so that he knew what was going to happen and went off to search for more evidence.

You've reached the end of published parts.

⏰ Last updated: Jul 24, 2023 ⏰

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