Clashing Obsessions

Chapter 18 - Agent Cassanova

The office is blurry. I feel nauseated. The bustling sounds of the people in the busy space around me sound foggy and far away. I need rest, but I know that even if I tried to fall asleep, I couldn't.

"Cassie?" An echoey voice drifts by my ears.

No, it's not real. I read something, somewhere, about sleep deprivation and audicto— auditory hallucinations...

"Agent Cassanova?"

Staring across the room with my head on my desk, thoughts circling and voices passing around me... some of them real, some of them not, and telling them apart is a losing battle.

"Rachel!" My partner shouts my name, jerking me back into the present, the now, the real.

"Wha— What?" I ask, blinking rapidly.

"The local captain wants us in the briefing room in five. To update him on the Codebreaker case."

"Right... I, uh, I'll just grab the file..." Where is it? My office desk is a mess, a clutter of flash drives, notes, empty coffee cups and the odd holo-projector. Agent Grey holds up the file I was looking for.

"Already got it." He pauses for a second. "Cassie... Are you OK?"

"Yeah. Of course. Fine."

"You haven't slept in days."

"Just working. It's an interesting case, that's all."

Grey sighs and shakes his head, but proceeds to the briefing room.

"Agent Grey. Cassanova." The local captain nods as we enter the room.

"Captain, good morning," I say.

"Afternoon." Grey corrects me, and I check my watch. 16:14. Already?

Dismissing the mild concern — where did the day go? — I pull my holo-projector from my pocket to show the captain my current plan and recent case notes. "There have been a few setbacks, but we're moving forward with the Evan Barcy plan. I'll attempt to make contact with Codebreaker via the dark web forum by the end of this week."

"The main problem," Grey says, continuing my explanation, "is what to do once we — hopefully — can set up a meeting with her. The original plan was to have Evan transfer payment to her with a card that would upload a virus to her pCard, flagging the account. Of course, this won't be helpful now — we know she's been using a fake pCard, we already found it, and there doesn't seem to be any connection between it and any real person. Oh, and the photo on the profile self-deleted, so we weren't able to use facial recognition."

"So, I've been trying to figure out another way to get information about her real identity from this meeting. I was thinking maybe Evan could plant a tracker. We tried to track her pCard, but she must've concealed the location somehow. One of those signal-blocking wallets, maybe, I don't know." I shrug, trying to appear nonchalant, but honestly, this is yet another frustrating example of her being a step ahead.

"Actually," Grey chimes in, "the location suddenly came on last night. I sent a few agents to follow it once I got word this morning, but all they caught up to was a truck with an empty pCard taped to the undercarriage. She must've ditched it. No DNA, either."

"What? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to disturb you, you were really focussed and I figured I'd update you when the team had news. Sorry."

"It's fine, just... Wait, why would she ditch the pCard? Dammit, she must somehow know we found the account! Must've been part of the photo deletion program, to send her a notification, or something."