After cleaning myself up in my room, I took out my table, and plugged the chip into it. When the screen booted up, I saw a map of the city with a dots laying out several key locations across the city. After sending a message to NB-213 too let him know what was going on, along with a picture of the map, I packed what I needed, and left my room, to go and search out the areas listed on the map.
Outside, the effects of the previously announced purge was beginning to be seen. People were being dragged out of their rooms, and anyone who resisted would be shot. Those who were successfully dragged off, would probably just be dropped off is one labour camp somewhere, and left to rot. The propoganda that was playing at this time was currently praising them as heroes, and most other were actually buying it! I just quietly put my head down and kept moving.
The first point on the map was in a market a few miles away from my hotel. Upon zooming into the map, the point was sitting in the middle of a splitting path, but when I arrived, there was nothing ther, save for a few markings in the middle of the path. On closer inspection, the markings appeared to be symbols that match graffiti found throughout the area. Similar symbols were found in every area where there was a point on the map. With nothing more to find, from these locations I returned to my hotel for the night, and gave my report on my findings.
By morning, I was called back to the slums. The results had just came in, and gave the name of an animal that could only be sold by a few specific places on the planet, because of how rare they were. Along with this, several photos on the house showed what they believed was the victim. The victim was a female green, which was a humanoid race native to the Ulm system, where Ovnorak is. The have green sling, with fully black eyes, making it even stranger that the locals did not remember much about her. We were to go around to all the spots that sold the animals, and ask if they have information about her. I was given the market I had went to last night.
“Have you seen this woman?” I found myself asking this question hundreds of times in that morning, and despite the prevalence of greens, in this area, no on had spotted her over the past few days. Not even the store that sold theanimal whose blood had been found at her house. The markings I had found last night were still there, but weren’t in anyway scratched out, despite having multiple people walking, and running over it in the past hours.
As I prepared to send my report on the situation, I received a message on my tablet, from an unknown person. The message read,” Looks like my message wasn’t received well by you. Maybe this will be easier.” With the message, was another file, this time with all of the symbols I had seen, in different colours. Alongside it, was the same map from before, except all the dots were different colours, matching the colours of the symbols in the previous image.
When I brought this message up to NB, he dismissed, due to my previous lead having come up empty, but agreed to allow me to investigate it solo, as long as I didn’t interfere with his investigations, and didn’t use up any manpower from his own team. After agreeeing on these terms, i set of to find out what the different colours could mean.
Blue, red, grey, green, and yellow. These are the colours I am looking for, and anything that has all of these colours on their own, or in some form of relation to the symbols, could lead me to a clue to my next location. After hours of research and interviewing, I once again came up with nothing. After a while, I approached the librarian, to see if there was any other meanings to the symbols. She told me that the symbols belong too several different tribes, and cultures across the history of the planet. However, they all meant similar things, peace, freedom of thought, that sort of thing.
When I asked about the colours, in specific, she said that there was no obvious link between the colours, and the symbols. However, the order of the colours which had been seen in that same order on many decorative pieces, and flags from times past matched the order of when the symbols came into use. With nothing else to find, I left the library once again with nothing found. As I left the library, and passed the spot in the market where I had been the previous night, I noticed something strange on a nearby wall.
On the wall, was graffiti of each of the symbols I had seen the past few hours researching, in the same order, as before, and with one of the symbols being ia different colour, but from the same set. When I reached out to touch it, the symbol turned white with a flash. Slowly, I tapped all the symbols in the right order, and they turned the right colour with a flash. I heard whirring sound behind me, and the part of the ground where the symbol once was had disappeared, with a dark hole and staircase leading downwards replacing it. After a moment, I descended it, and the trapdoor closed behind me.
ns 15.158.61.48da2
