The Footage

n"Did you get the footage?" Joanette wandered into the bedroom with a towel around her head and a shiny face, courtesy of her skin serums. Ken glanced up at her from where he was hunched over his laptop on the bed, pouring over the contents displayed on his screen.

He'd been retrieving and looking through the ice cream parlour's security footage for a few days, trying to find so much as a clue as to who the woman was and where she came from. They ran her face into the Agency's ID database but couldn't find anything.

"Not yet." He tapped at the keyboard for a few moments, brow furrowing in concentration as he squinted at the screen, looking like some sort of technology ogre. Joanette snickered at her own thoughts and moved into the closet to get dressed, having forgotten her pyjamas before she want into the bathroom after the long day of running around after kids she'd had.

The little goblins were impossible to tire out, completely insane with their energy levels. A morbid part of her wondered if those energy levels could be extracted from the brain and bottled up to give the field agents during their missions. Those levels of whatever-the-fuck was keeping those children up and at em would be sure to get agents through the most gruelling missions with little to no sleep.

What a convenience to have those energy levels. Joanette wished such an upbeat attitude would persist throughout adulthood.

Though, the few adults that she did meet with those attitudes only came off as creepy and maybe a little bit disturbed.

She changed into her very large t-shirt, one that dwarfed her tall frame in a size of triple extra large. The shirt was like a parachute on her but that's what she loved about it. It was comfortable, kept her cozy throughout the night and was very soft.

When she ambled back out into the bedroom, Ken was in the exact same position she'd left him in, typing away like a complete geek. Joanette observed the cords of his body, the fibres of his muscles as his fingers moved. His pinky would press a key and something by his elbow would respond.

The human body was so fascinating.

"Stop staring like you're about to dissect me." He side-eyed her, clicking his tongue in annoyance when she laughed. "You're so fucking weird."

"Shut up, I'm not."

"Yeah, you are." One of his hands came off the keyboard to pat her on the knee affectionately, in the same way that an old woman would pat a helpful young person. "But it's okay, I love you anyway."

"You can take your love and shove it up your—" She didn't get to finish. Her face was smooshed into her pillow in a second. Ken wrapped her long hair around his fist once and rubbed her face into the silk pillow case, nearly smothering her.

"Disrespectful brat."

Joanette clamped a hand on his wrist and twisted it, effectively releasing his grip so she could sit back up. "You ruined my skincare!"

"You deserved it." He turned back to the laptop with a smug grin, leaving his partner to huff and puff her way back into the bathroom to redo her nightly face routine. With her gone, he returned to scrubbing through the security footage, keeping his eyes focused on the screen while he scrutinised every detail.

It wasn't until he reached the end of the day when they were at the ice cream place that he realised the security footage was on loop. Someone had deliberately gone out of their way to cut the woman's appearance out of it.

"You were right," he informed Joanette upon her return. "We're being watched. The feed is on loop until the moment when we leave."

"Shit." She plopped down on the bed ungracefully and manoeuvred around to see what the day's recording held. The moment they showed up, went inside, ordered, went back outside to sit at a table, then they get up and leave.

"I'm following the digital footprint but I don't think I can recover footage from here. I'll have to send it to HQ, maybe an analyst can recover the whole thing."

"I hope so." When she thought back on the encounter, which wasn't much of an encounter at all, she wondered all over again why her instincts singled out the unassuming woman. There was nothing about her that inherently called anyone's attention, so it's not like she could say that the woman was suspicious.

But it's almost like she was too normal. Too unassuming. Too common. Everything about it gave Joanette bad vibes and she didn't. Know. Why.

What was it?

Whatever it was that she noticed, clearly her attention hadn't been misplaced. Everything going on was way too suspicious and knowing what she knew about the children that she was protecting, Joanette wouldn't have been surprised to discover that Saverio was behind everything.

In fact…

"Hello?"

"Jean-Louis, I need you to tell me everything that you know about Saverio Alcunze."