Access Denied
Abel let Ray take the lead since he was more familiar with the setup of Harold's office and the other had given him permission to look since they were friends. He also thought that it would be wiser to let his partner do it since he was determined to as he was well aware of the fact that the chef's office wasn't at a diagonal location to where Harold's desk was located and the glass front would allow for him to see any kind of commotion that occurred. Abel had no intention of giving the other a reason to reprimand him before he had the chance to prove that he was right.
It didn't take long for Ray to find the folder that Harold had told him about. Putting on the other's unoccupied desk he began to go through the papers inside until he found the section that belonged to Ace Hedgings. He gave a low whistle when he saw how thick it was. He knew that that kid had been in there a lot, but he never realized how bad it actually was.
"Johnny, can you double check this with the system to make sure the address isn't the same." Ray called out to the young police officer who had reported to them earlier that the address on record was a fake.
"Yes sir, ready when you are." He called back to the detective know he had the information up on his system.
"105 North street, Orion Avenue, Saint city." Ray read out the address slowly to make sure that the other could follow what he said.
"There's no match in the system for it." Johnny replied back after he had double checked with the other to make sure that he had input the address in correctly.
"Well, if he hasn't jumped from this address to somewhere else, we might know where to go and find him."
"Should we do it ourselves?" Abel asked. as Ray handed him the piece of paper so that he could put the folder back in it's original place.
"It might go over better. He's not that familiar with us, but he might not panic as much as he would seeing two unknown cops walking up to an address that shouldn't be on file." Ray agreed.
"This time though, I'm going to be the one driving since I know my way around this place better than you do." He told the other before stepping into his office to grab his keys. Abel shrugged it off. While he did prefer to drive, he wouldn't argue with the other that he knew the area just as well as he did. It would perhaps come across as odd since he was supposed to be new to the area as a recent transfer from elsewhere. Besides, not driving would give him some time alone with his thoughts. He had things he needed to figure out with himself.
Ray seemed to understand that Abel wasn't in a talking mood when they got into the car and were leaving as he opted for turning the radio on rather than trying to start a conversation with his partner or talk about the case. Abel wasn't that fond of music, but he wouldn't complain about his partner's choice. It was a song he didn't recognize but it didn't sound bad to his ears as most other music had.
His main focus though was on figuring out how to get Prose activated and why the times it activated were spontaneous or at least he hadn't figured out the pattern to it.
He had tried a number of different commands and threats. Requesting permission or attempting to activate it by name only caused the system to relay to him that he didn't have permission to access it. When he tried to ask how to get permission or who had permission. That came back with a blank as well. The suave voice would just respond that he didn't have the right to know that.
When he got frustrated and threatened to murder it. The system got what he called 'cheeky' and replied back that it was not capable of nor did it condone murder of any kind and thus that was an invalid request as well.
"If you don't tell me how I am supposed to this, how do I know where to start?" He asked mentally hoping that if he took a different approach to asking the system he might get a different answer.
"Upon initiating system, you denied the request to provide user a hint. Thus, system in disallowed from telling you how to activate it." upon hearing this, Abel closed his eyes in frustration. He had no recollection of that so why was it being held against him.
"Desire to change that permission so that I can access that system." He replied
"Permission rejected, you cannot request permission to change anything within the system until you unlock." it replied back to him.
"How can I get permission if I don't know how to access the system in the first place?" He held back making any noise of frustration as he knew Ray wouldn't understand what was going on since he wasn't a part of the conversation he was having in his head with the frustrating system.
"You have to use the correct code to activate the system." It repeated.
"How about I just reject you instead since you're practically useless to me as is? THREE YEARS and you've hardly done anything for me!" He snapped mentally.
"Incorrect, the system is not the useless one. The user is useless for forgetting the passcode they set in order to activate the system." Upon hearing this, Abel shut the conversation down. His temper was reaching boiling point and since he couldn't actually do any damage to the system in his mind, he knew that if he wasn't carefully he would end up lashing out at something around him instead.
The drive only took a little over an hour, but it was evident that the address located in the more rundown part of time. The roads weren't as well taken care of and the houses looked shabby and as though they hadn't had any kind of repairs over the last decade. A man in beany hat, t-shirt and torn sweats was sitting on the corner trying to pan handle for money. Based upon his downtrodden look it didn't seem as though he was having much success. He wasn't the only one either. The further Ray drove down the street, the more evident it became that there were a number of people who weren't doing well financially.
It wasn't a surprise considering Ace's background that he would live in an area such as this though, he wasn't that well off in terms of money and had had little success in getting a decent job that would help him.
Ray stopped the car at the corner of one of the streets. He figured that it would be safe enough there since he was going to lock it and they wouldn't be walking too far away from it.
"Can you double check what the house number is?" Ray asked as he parked the car and waited for the other to look for him. He wanted to make sure that they were indeed close enough before they bothered getting out. Abel scanned over the paperwork until he found what his partner was asking about.
"The house number is..." He trailed off for a second once he saw what the number was- 31.
"It's number 31." He replied composing himself. The moment he spoke the number out loud he felt a sharp pain in his head that caused his vision to swim. He put his free hand on the side of his head in order to try and help steady himself somehow as the wave of pain washed over his head.