V2Ch34-The Job

After DaSilva had departed, Yulia put away her headphones and smartphone.

“What did the Detective have to show you that I couldn’t see?” she asked.

“Pictures of remains from the killings,” Mina replied. “The killer is more monstrous than we realized before.”

Aren’t all murderers monstrous in one way or another? Yulia questioned to herself. She stared at her sister, who seemed to be lost in thought.

“Was there anything else?” Yulia finally asked. “Do we need to do anything? Why did he come here anyway?”

“He just wanted to pick our brains,” Mina said. “I have a couple of ideas for things we can do. But there’s no rush to try and catch the killer. Now that we think it’s someone on our team, we can afford to wait until the next challenge to do more sleuthing. If we rush in and start trying to interact with the team to investigate them now, when we haven’t shown any interest in socializing with them before, it will only make the person suspicious. I think the best thing I can do for now is practice my magic. I have to make sure I’m strong enough to help the Detective apprehend the criminal, after all.”

She smiled. Yulia felt some tension leave her body. There was a plan. Mina knew what to do next. I can relax.

Yulia smiled back. “I’ll just watch you practice. Maybe train my Healing Aura too.”

Mina began quietly chanting to herself, and Yulia stood and looked at her until Mina stopped, about thirty seconds later. Several hundred droplets of water had materialized in the air around her. Without really looking at what she was doing, Mina began manipulating the droplets. Like a conductor directing an orchestra, she waved her hands, and the water moved almost like a living thing responding to orders.

She’s getting so much better at that, Yulia thought. How can I make myself more useful?

Yulia surrounded herself with Healing Aura. It was the only thing she could think to do. Then she put her headphones in again. Healing Aura didn’t require much in terms of focus.

—

DaSilva stepped out into the frosty air of the public square.

Is it colder today? It had been snowing a lot. Maybe the weather was getting worse.

“Oh, Officer, I’m so glad to run into you!” Annette Danziger practically ran up to him as he turned to leave the inn. The tall blonde woman clasped her hands together, almost as if she was praying—or as if a prayer had been answered.

“The pleasure is all mine, I’m sure, ma’am.” DaSilva smiled politely and waited. I’m a detective, not an officer, but how can I help you?

“Do you already know what’s been going on?” she asked.

“I’m not sure specifically what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, you must come with me!” Mrs. Danziger declared.

DaSilva allowed her to lead him by the hand into one of the non-winners’ lodging buildings. He immediately saw that there were nine people sitting in the main area, worried expressions on their faces.

A full team’s worth of people, now that Mrs. Danziger is back with them. Did something happen in the challenge?

“Ah hem, what’s going on here?” DaSilva said, drawing himself up to his full height and putting a note of authority into his voice.

“Oh, it’s good to see you, sir!” said one of the men. Andy something?

DaSilva smiled and nodded politely. “What seems to be the trouble?”

“We were just getting ready to move our things over to the new housing, since our team was one of the winners of the last challenge,” said another man.

Jaime something, DaSilva remembered.

“We realized after we got to the bottom of the stairs that we were getting hungry,” Jaime continued. “So Andy went through his bag to get some of the food we got as a prize. And it was gone. I told Gwen here—” He gestured to the woman to his right—“and we started going through our bags. Our food was gone too!”

DaSilva’s eyes widened. This could be a serious problem.

“Can I assume that this is true for everyone here?” DaSilva asked, looking around at all the faces. Everyone nodded.

“First those horrible murders, now this,” Mrs. Danziger said, sniffling slightly. She stepped closer to Detective DaSilva and pressed her arms together on either side of her chest, accentuating her rather ample cleavage. “What will we do?”

Don’t stand so close to me, to start, DaSilva thought, glancing over at Mr. Danziger. Your husband’s right there, lady! Mr. Danziger, who looked around fifteen years older than his wife, was occupied talking to one of the other members of their party. DaSilva nevertheless took a step away from Mrs. Danziger.

“Ah hem. Why don’t you guys walk me through your movements after the challenge, step by step?”

They did. It was fairly straightforward, though.

The party had all been together prior to the challenge, so they remained together when they were transported back after the challenge. They continued with congratulations, high fives, and hugs for a short while longer, before they split up to go and get their things out of their respective rooms. This involved some of the party members leaving for a different inn, while others simply walked upstairs. People in both groups were robbed of their food without being aware of it until they reconvened downstairs.

It’s just like I thought, DaSilva recognized grimly. The most likely scenario is that one member of the group robbed the others with some sort of thief Skill without anyone being aware of it. Do I tell them that, though? What will they do to the thief? It’s not like I have a cell to put him in.

After listening to further discussion from the group members that added nothing to his understanding, DaSilva finally reached a decision.

“I have to tell you all, the most likely explanation is that one of you robbed the others,” he said. “That one person would be lying about their bag being empty. Are you all actually willing to definitively answer the question of who’s responsible? Even if it’s one of you?”

“Well, of course!” Mr. Danziger thundered indignantly. “It’s find the thief or starve!”

“Does everyone else agree?” DaSilva asked a bit wearily.

I don’t have time for this crap! Who’s the idiot who robbed their friends?

A couple of people murmured complaints.

“Look, folks, I’m treating you all equally,” DaSilva said firmly. “You know you were the only people apparently present, unless someone has an invisibility Skill or something. That makes you the first set of obvious suspects I have to eliminate before it makes any sense for me to look elsewhere.”

A few individuals looked guarded, but everyone ultimately nodded or verbally indicated agreement with his reasoning.

“Alright, everyone hand over their Small Bags of Deceptive Dimensions, please.”

The party members slowly complied.

Once all bags were accounted for, DaSilva proceeded to open the first bag. He had noticed when using his own bag that he could find an item by thinking of it when he reached in. This was a subject of some trial and error for him on the first night, back when this place seemed like a fantastical adventure out of one of the fantasy novels he liked to read. He’d gotten a childish glee out of storing his sidearm, then calling it back out of the bag with a quickdraw motion.

Now, he attempted the grim task of using the bags’ mechanics to identify a thief.

He had made sure to position each bag so it was between himself and its owner. DaSilva absolutely did not want to lose track of whose bag was whose, because he thought it plausible the thief might be murdered quietly by his teammates. What DaSilva would do if that happened, he wasn’t yet sure, but he wanted to be certain it didn’t befall any innocent person.

But as he searched through the bags, he slowly realized this careful planning had been pointless. None of them contained food. DaSilva tried pulling out weapons and other items that he imagined might be in the bags. That was successful. Somehow, though, he couldn’t find food.

“Ugh. What kind of nutso result is this?!” He shook his head irritably. “The good thing is that you guys might all be cleared. Unless we think the thief actually hid the food somewhere, or consumed it all incredibly quickly. What seems more likely is that someone has a kind of Skill that lets them rob you without you having to be near them. But if that’s the case, I don’t know how we’ll ever catch them.”

“Well, shit!” Andy swore. “If I catch this son of a bitch, I’m going to string him up from—” He stopped himself and looked at DaSilva meekly.

“I’m a man of the law,” DaSilva said. “If we catch the thief and definitively prove who it was, we’ll find a way of punishing them. I don’t know how we’ll identify which food is yours, though.”

I’d probably have to let them kill the person, honestly. In this setting, leaving someone free who can rob people of their food without being near them—and who we know has actually done that!—just seems like a recipe for trouble. Maybe he could get the System’s proctor to erect a jail for their ne'er do well. But DaSilva doubted it. The proctor had been very hands off thus far.

“Anyone write their names on their food or something?” Mrs. Danziger asked wryly.

People either shook their heads or stared at the ground despondently.

“How will we survive?” Gwen asked. She spoke with a slight Irish lilt. “We’ve all had to go rather lean these last few days. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was hoping this food would get us through the next couple of days plus more in case we lost the next challenge.”

The room looked quite glum.

“You all are moving to the winners’ housing, is that correct?” DaSilva asked.

Nods from the group.

“Alright. I think we can ask the people living in the same buildings you’re moving to whether they can share their resources. I’ll explain what happened to you all. Hopefully the people in the buildings you choose will be reasonable. If not, we’ll try and take up a collection elsewhere. No one wants the other people in here with them to starve.”

Murmurs of agreement and gratitude.

DaSilva accompanied half the party to the inn they had planned to move into. Then he went upstairs with them and knocked on a few doors to explain the situation. People were understanding and willing to commit to sharing some of their food, as long as they weren’t expected to give up more than half.

Fortunately, the System has been generous enough this time that there’s really food to spare.

As he came out of the building, another individual approached him.

“Detective,” the man said, “am I glad to see you!”

DaSilva forced a smile.

“What can I do for you?”

The man answered him, and the smile slid from DaSilva’s face.

—

A knock startled Mina and broke her concentration.

Probably for the best that something happened to stop me, she thought. Looking down at herself, she saw that she was covered in sweat. She had practiced for hours this time. She hadn’t looked at a watch, but it had been mid-afternoon when she started applying her water magic. And now the sky outside was completely black.

She checked her System alerts while she walked to the door.

Wow! I leveled up twice! And at some point, Basic Elemental Magic: Water had become simply Elemental Magic: Water.

It seemed that the post-System world was one that would reward Mina’s unyielding focus.

“Hello Detective,” Mina said. “Any good news?”

She wasn’t optimistic. DaSilva looked harried and exhausted.

“We have a new crime epidemic on our hands,” he said. “May I come in?”

Wordlessly, she let DaSilva into the room. Yulia took out her headphones and greeted the Detective. Then he dropped the bombshell.

“Someone has been stealing food from people who won the last challenge. At first, I thought it was just a handful of people who got robbed, but there have been more reports since then. Around a half dozen teams have been relieved of their rations. I haven’t figured out how they’re doing it, or where they’re keeping the food. But I think this could end up being a bigger problem than a killer who murders a few people every other night. If people start to go hungry—” His voice faltered.

“They’ll cease to be as civilized as we’ve experienced,” Mina finished.

“That’s a nice way of putting it, yes,” DaSilva agreed.

“So we need to share our food?” Yulia put in, arms crossed.

Mina smiled at her and chuckled. DaSilva nodded and gave a weary smile of his own.

“It’s either share food and carefully ration, or we have to go out and try to hunt some of those beasts the System has mentioned might live around here,” DaSilva agreed. “I don’t really know how much I like the hunting option. We don’t know how dangerous the creatures that live around here are, and I think it’s getting colder outside. Bad weather to be out in the woods, especially if the hunting party has to leave sight range of the settlement. Which I think would be necessary. Of course, if the theft continues, we’ll have no choice but to go out and look for food.”

“On that subject, I should mention a Skill I unlocked while the team was in the last challenge,” Mina said a little reluctantly.

“It’s not a theft Skill, is it?” DaSilva asked sarcastically.

“Ha! No such luck. You’ll have to find your thief elsewhere. But I might be able to help with that.” She explained the Investigate Skill that had evolved from her Identify.

“So you can get a person’s full Status information just by looking at them?” DaSilva asked.

“It seems that way,” Mina agreed. “I haven’t used it a lot, but it worked on plants.”

“We can Identify plants?” DaSilva asked. “Never mind, not important. Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”

“I was planning on doing a little Investigating for you, but I also didn’t want to go out using the Skill today. And not next to you, either. I figured that after the challenge, people would be on edge. It would be dangerous for me or Yulia to be out on our own. But if I was walking around with you, people would figure out that I was a part of your investigation. Either situation seemed dangerous. Someone has tried to kill you, after all. Therefore, I wanted to wait on trying this out until I was sure it was a good moment. So I didn’t mention it.”

“You’re a very careful person,” DaSilva said in a slightly affronted voice.

“Oh, don’t be that way, Detective, it wasn’t because I didn’t trust you or something!”

“You already used this Skill to make sure I didn’t have any suspicious Skills, though, didn’t you?” he asked.

She nodded slowly.

“Alright,” he said. “Fair enough. When and how would you propose to use Investigate to gather more information?”

Mina already had her answer ready.

“On the morning of the next challenge,” she said. “You can gather the members of our team together, and I’ll use it on all of them. We’ll confirm once and for all whether any of them could be the killer, or the thief, or if we have to look elsewhere. And then, once we’re in the challenge, I’ll start using it on the other teams there with us.”

DaSilva nodded slowly. “Sometimes it’s good to be cautious. I’m glad you told me about this now, Officer Danailova. I really didn’t want to make demands on you, but you’ve been more helpful thus far than anyone except Adelaide. Consider this moment me officially deputizing you. I have faith that together, we’ll get to the bottom of both of these matters.”

“Well, Detective—”

[Required conditions met. Job unlocked. Job “Detective” is available to you. Accept?]

DaSilva, Mina observed, looked just as surprised as she did.

“Did you just get a System message too?” she asked.

He nodded and swallowed a lump in his throat.

“The System is trying to name me Chief of Police,” he said.

“Well, then, consider me your subordinate. It wants to make me Detective Danailova!”

“Congratulations on the very quick promotion, Officer,” DaSilva said with faux solemnity.

They shared a brief laugh.

“I wonder if this means we hit on the correct means of catching these criminals,” Mina said.

“Well, it can’t be a bad thing.”

DaSilva left, and the sisters went to bed.

Another night passed. A handful of people disappeared from the population counter.

[2,842/3,397 Survivors]