[Sequel to The Mission] Natasha's years of training never prepared her for the things she's experienced lately. Despite her initial resolve to stay home, she finds herself being called back to Russia, only this time, she won't be going alone. With a...
After sending Charlie and Isaac to talk to Nick, I finally get back to my room and start working on my original task. I snap a picture of the strange tattoo with my phone and send it to myself in an email so I can do research on my laptop. As usual, I probe the deep web for answers. A reverse image search provides an abundance of geometric symbols, though none of them match exactly.
An hour later, I stumble upon a blog post that contains a small picture of an identical tattoo in red ink. The blogger appears to be anonymous, but nothing's ever truly hidden on the internet. After hacking the account, I discover the blogger is a young man named Timur Gorokhin. From there, I look into his social media pages and discover several encrypted messages. It's been a while since I've had to crack Russian codes, but I manage to decipher it in under an hour; the messages mainly talk of odd jobs, but a few words stick out: cult and grand master. Could this be a member of the secret society we're looking for?
I stare down at the picture again and try to recreate it. While sketching a few of the lines, I recognize Russian letters in them. Pulling it all apart, I form as many possible combinations of letters I can that would make up the entire image. Most of them are gibberish, but one forms a familiar word. КИНЖАЛ. Dagger.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Returning to the deep web, I search for anything containing the words Russia, secret society, cult, and dagger. It takes a while, but I finally find something concrete; a single message, sent from one phony account to another, welcoming a new member into the Cult of the Dagger. I attempt to trace the IP addresses, but end up with a whole lot of nothing. Whoever sent this message knew what they were doing and sufficiently covered their tracks.
Clint comes wandering in, a towel slung over his shoulder and a small duffle bag in his hand.
"How's the research going?" He plops down next to me on the bed, disrupting my scattered notes.
"I'm not 100% sure yet, but I think I've at least uncovered the name of the secret society," I sigh as I clean up the mess of papers around me. "What have you been up to?"
"We went to check out the, uh, facilities."
"You went swimming, didn't you?" I narrow my eyes slightly as I take in his damp hair, prune-y fingers, and the unmistakable scent of chlorine.
"Are you mad?" he asks sheepishly.
"No," I sigh, "just disappointed I missed out on the fun."
"But hey! You've made great progress!" His smile is wide and genuine, a bright spark lights up his eyes.
"I suppose. Do you think I should try to find more on my own before going to Nick?"
"How long have you been working on this?"
"A few hours," I shrug.
"You've done enough for today. Say, how about we head down to the hot tub when you get back?"
