"Alright. The food burnt. We should still be fine on food even if I remake it right?" Ava walked back into the kitchen, staring at the vegetables that she had left on the stove for too long.
"That should be fine, we have some wiggle room in our budget." He walked into the kitchen to see the burnt meal. It looked like mixed vegetables that were slightly burnt, some white rice, and he could smell that the vegetables had been cooked in some sort of sweet soy glaze.
With his curiosity satisfied, he reached into a cupboard and grabbed a granola bar to snack on, then he continued to dig for any public information regarding the daycare. About ten minutes passed, yet he couldn't find any information that alarmed him, everything really seemed normal.
The old man was named Thomas Olson, he worked as an activity coordinator, and he started working at Whispering Winds about 9 months ago. In his bios, it gave a basic description for his role, which wasn't really intriguing for Solstice, and apparently he had a couple of hobbies such as gardening and fishing.
'Like you can fish anywhere on the coast in Zephyr Heights…too much pollution and waste kills the fish. Going deep sea fishing can also be quite dangerous, even in the known safe waters.'
He didn't want to wait on this situation, there would only be a couple of ways that he could gain access to private information, or suppressed information. That would be through either the local police files, or through sensitive information that was sold across the black market.
Solstice was not a policeman, and the only person he knew that could get private information for him, and would be willing to do so, was Jest. Getting information through Jest wasn't really an option anyway, since he currently had no way of reaching him.
As far as going through the black market, that was still an option on the table. It was an option he wasn't particularly happy about, especially since it would be costly, but it was a way to get information fast, and he needed whatever he could get. Even a composite record based on public information across the internet would be good if he couldn't afford private records, since he felt crunched on time, he didn't mind paying someone else to get the public information for him, even if could technically do it himself.
While Solstice did have a little bit of experience going up against supernatural beings, such as the wooden automaton, he felt it was inadequate. He wanted to approach the old man carefully, and to do that, he preferred having some level of knowledge and preparation.
Luckily, he did know someone that could get him information fast.
Solstice slept for an hour, awoke and did some exercises, then he started driving down Bolton Avenue, eventually making a left turn down Smith Street, heading west. Instead of heading to the end of Smith Street where Steele's Workshop was located which was still about 5 blocks away, he took a right heading off onto Bissell Avenue, pulling into an empty lot of a convenience store, he parked his truck and got out.
Entering the 24/7 convenience store, he walked up to the cashier who looked bored out of her mind.
"Hey Felicia, Maverick got some time for me?"
"Wow! I thought we were close, what happened to when you used to just call me Fe!" Her dimples accentuated her cute smile.
"We were never really that close."
"Y'know, I haven't seen your face in years, how've you grown. Are you…back in that line of business."
"I was never in that line of business. That wasn't really me."
"That's too bad. Hmmm…Oh! Maverick isn't available."
"Really?" Solstice's tone shifted into an annoyed one.
"Yup!" Her smile only grew more bubbly.
'Yeah right.' Solstice ignored her and walked to the maintenance closet, moving some boxes filled with cleaning equipment out of the way. He knocked on the wall a few times, a combination of short knocks and long knocks.
A couple seconds later, the head of a meek bald man inched out from behind the door. The man slowly peered over to Solstice, recognizing who he was, the bald man tried to quickly slam the door before Solstice caught it, keeping it open.
The meek bald man was caught off guard at Solstice's strength, as he still struggled to close the door on him.
"Relax Raphael, I'll only be here for a couple minutes."
Raphael relented, sighing and steeping aside, allowing Solstice to enter the hidden room, which was a billiard room.
"What's gotten into you kid? Just a few years later and you're taking steroids or something?"
"No." Solstice said curtly, he didn't want to deal with these people any longer than he had to.
Walking further in, a group of burly men of all sizes looked over at his direction as they had stopped their game of pool.
Some of the men knew him, most didn't, regardless Solstice ignored all of them heading for a door and the far end. Opening it led to a short flight of stairs that only went a couple levels down, descending into a long corridor.
After a couple minutes walking down the dimly lit corridor, he opened the door at the end of it revealing the room where Maverick stayed. The room was also dimly lit, the only lighting coming from the seven monitors, one gigantic monitor in the middle, and six large monitors, three on the left, and three on the right. A man sitting in a swivel chair turned to face Solstice, with an unamused expression.
Maverick was a well maintained man considering his reclusive lifestyle as a shut-in information broker. He had a fluffy middle part for hairstyle, dirty-blond in color, with a stubble, average height, and slightly muscular. He had a white short sleeve button-down shirt that was unbuttoned, with a beige chino, some sandals, and a nice watch on his right wrist.
Maverick was also known to be a Grade 0 Traverser, with no ambition to rise in grades or fight against the Wyrd unless it threw problems his way. While no one knew what his exact Gift was, except the World Government obviously, everyone knew it assisted him in gathering information.
"Yo!"
"I need some information on a man named Thomas Olsen, he works at Whispering Winds Daycare, it's off Bolton and Malt."
"Straight to business it is. Can you pay?"
"Yes."
"Alright." Maverick turned around and began typing away at his computer, multiple files with information regarding Thomas Olsen, the old man, appeared on the large central monitor a minute later.
"How much for a public data scrub off the web, and how much for a private dossier?"
"3,500 credits for a public data scrub, and for a private dossier, that would be…hmm give me a second."
'That's almost a quarter month's rent for the public data scrub alone. What the fuck is the private dossier going to be like?' Solstice silently cried inside, but stayed nonchalant on the outside. Despite their complicated past, this was the first time he was paying for information from Maverick, so he had no clue what his prices were.
"This guy isn't so simple, why are you looking into someone like this?" Maverick spoke over his shoulder with furrowed eyebrows at the large monitor. Maverick seemed stuck on something. Solstice wasn't sure what it was, as he watched him click around skimming through documents and files.
"That's none of your concern."
"Heh. I'm asking because there is a time in his life where there is little to no activity from him, specifically from when he was 57 years old to 66 years old. Records show that he was working in the maritime shipping industry, for a small company as the VP of Supply Chain. That's about it for that time period, only a couple team photos, no recordings of him stopping by a restaurant or anything like that, almost like he disappeared, but not really. Then he suddenly left the company and now he's working as an activity coordinator at a children's daycare? He's a strange o-"
"Again, not your concern, just tell me what's the cost."
Maverick looked back and forth between the monitors and Solstice a couple of times with an amused expression, seemingly working something in his mind.
"Well, if you want the current private dossier, that'll be 26,000 credits. If you want to wait a little longer, I can reach out to some folks and see if they can acquire some of the missing information, although the price will definitely increase."
'Damn…it's not worth it, I can't even safely stretch my budget to the current cost for private information. I only have 31,253 credits to my name, and most of that is emergency savings.' Solstice inwardly sighed.
"I'll do the public information summary." Solstice sighed inwardly, walking over to a machine that looked like a strange ATM off to the left side of the room. Taking out his RFID-blocking wallet, sliding out a credit chip from it, taking off the protective cover, he inserted the connector into the slot on the ATM-like machine.
Credit chips were basically, physical pre-loaded cards with a certain amount of credits that the customer can load onto it, albeit within a credit limit depending on the type of credit chip it was.
The terminal showed that it detected the credit chip, as Solstice entered the encryption bypass pin to allow the credits from the chip to be transferred and deposited into the secure account.
A notification bell rang on one of Maverick's screens, he turned to look at it.
"You deposited 4,000 credits."
"You can keep the change." He didn't have enough credit chips with smaller balances to pay what was due, so he didn't stress out about paying 500 extra then the price. Taking the now empty credit chip, he tossed it in a credit chip shredder nearby.
"Catch!"
Turning to the direction of the words, Solstice's eyes widened as a small device was flung his way, catching it carefully, looking at the device in his hands, it looked like an old cheap phone.
"It's programmed to self-destruct in 24 hours, so just toss it in the ocean when you're done."
"I'm assuming that it has protection against unwanted external connections."
"You'd assume correctly, it has a signal jammer built in as well."
'Even though it's all public information I could've gathered myself if I spent more time, at least I don't have to actually spend the time to do it. This trip wasn't completely pointless.' Solstice put the one-time use phone into his pocket.
"Thanks. One more thing, can you pull any recent security footage of him? Just one quick watch before I leave."
"I don't see why not." Maverick typed away, until a recording started playing on the large central monitor. The old man was simply enjoying a couple pieces of toast and black coffee right outside of the cafe.
'The ability works on cameras and recordings too. I wonder how the old man's illusion targeting works.'
Maverick spun back around in his chair, a smirk appearing on his face.
"Whaaat? It almost seemed like you were expecting to see something else. Now I'm more curious…"
"Bye Maverick, we won't be seeing each other again." Solstice turned around walking back towards the door.
"Hey."
Solstice stopped, back still turned.
"I'm going to keep an eye on you now, ya know?"
'Fucking weirdo.' Solstice marched out, the cashier lady waving goodbye to him with her fake bubbly smile, he entered his truck, opted in to be billed in real time for the ride, and exited the parking lot.
The ride home was short and uneventful. He sat on the couch, that was really his new bed, and began skimming through the data on the phone given to him by Maverick.