Hidden Perpetrator

"Someone's taking control of Celeste and Cynthia too!"

"No way," Kyra rejected the idea. She didn't want to imagine that sort of threat.

"What else could explain their situations? Tell me, Celeste, do you hate all of us enough that you'd want to keep us stuck in this building with yourself included?"

"No…"

"Then why would you cause such an injury to Sav that he can't use Gateway?"

"I don't know… I wasn't ever trying to do that!"

I now turned to Cynthia. "Why are you hardening right now?"

"I'm not! Or at least I'm not choosing to!"

I looked back at Kyra. "Seriously, Cynthia only uses her Fractal for defense. We aren't even being attacked right now, and you think she'd just put herself in an uncomfortable position like that for no reason? And you know Celeste more than the rest of us. Would he betray us like this?"

Kyra hesitated to respond. "No… It's just that none of this is making sense right now… I'm trying to understand!"

"I know! That's why you need to trust me when I say that someone must be controlling them! Whoever's controlling the tenants must also be causing those two to do those things!"

"But why?!"

"Maybe to prevent us from leaving? Whoever it was made Celeste cancel out Gateway with Trajectory."

"But who?!"

"I don't know!" We caught our breaths for a moment, realizing the heat and tension that'd arose in the room.

"If what you're sayin' is true, Klyson, then you're sayin' that some fella has a Fractal that can control other people?" Sav asked.

I nodded, realizing the horror in that statement. "I guess so…"

"But where?" Emanuel was still looking around. "How the hell could they do all of this without being in the same room as us?"

"Their Fractal must be so much more expansive than we can imagine. We're talking being able to control masses of tenants all at once."

"I need help!" Cynthia called out to us. "I want to move!"

I tried to make sense of why they caused this upon Cynthia. I understood why they'd made Celeste do what he did, which was to disable any chance of our escape by injuring Sav's ability to use Gateway. But causing Cynthia to be stuck in her hardened state, that I couldn't comprehend.

"You can't move at all?" I asked.

"No. I'm trying to disable my Fractal, but I can't for some reason!"

With everyone in a panic right now, I had to try to collect myself and look at this from a broader perspective to make sense of things. That way, I could figure out a way to help Cynthia. First, it was clear that whoever was in charge of the events inside the building did not want us to leave. They were keeping us here for a reason. Second, it was made clear from the start that they were willing to hurt, or even kill us. They'd easily sent all of the tenants our way to the top floor where we weren't supposed to have any escape. That was where the first instance of Gateway was used by Sav. Meaning, in that moment, they must have witnessed the wormhole transportation itself.

"They're watching us." That was the first statement I made. "They must be able to see our every move in order to cause a domino-effect like this."

In a sudden quick succession, Celeste threw four shards of broken glass, all towards the four corners of the room. The security cameras previously placed in those areas were now broken and nonfunctioning.

"That should cut their sight of us, at least for this room," Celeste said.

"If they can't see me anymore, why am i still stuck like this?" Cynthia exclaimed.

"We don't know. It's only a possibility that they were watching through the cameras," I said. 

"If they were watching through the cameras, shouldn't that mean they're in the security office or something?" Emanuel asked.

"You're right. We should go there and confront them, and have them put an end to their Fractal." Kyra looked around for its door. "But where is it?"

"Not sure. We're gonna have to look around."

"But I'm stuck!" Cynthia made sure we didn't forget her. I began to think up a reason once again why they could have put her in that state, then it occurred to me. Whoever was in control must have also known about her Fractal and its defensive capabilities. They were keeping her like that to disable the use of her Fractal in our favor. They wanted to give us as minimal protection as possible.

"Shit…" I realized that whoever was doing this was playing us like a game of chess. 

"I can stay back with her," Emanuel told us. "You guys search for the perpetrator and put an end to all of this. Free Cynthia from her state."

"Please!" She added on.

We nodded. "Let's go then."

"Are you sure I should come with you guys?" For once, Celeste sounded uncertain. He must have realized the potential threat he posed having already been used against us. "I don't think I should. What if I'm taken control of again?"

Kyra looked at him, unsure. She understood that out of the rest of us, Celeste posed the most threat for fatality with his Fractal Trajectory. Sav on the other hand, even if he were to be taken controlled of, had his Fractal currently unable to use. Then there was her with a simple scouting Fractal, which wasn't too dangerous on its own. And lastly, me, who was Fractless. I wasn't much of a threat whether I was being controlled or not.

"Are you sure, Celeste?" She asked.

He nodded. "I don't want to impede the mission any more than I already have."

"But we need you to disable all those cameras for us with Trajectory. Cut off the visual for whoever's in that security room, in case they really can control us through 'em," Sav told him.

"Then let me go ahead, first." Celeste gathered handfuls of glass shards and gripped them tightly. "I'll clear out the cameras floor by floor so that you guys won't be at risk of being controlled when searching for the office."

I grew worried about the idea of sending him off on his own. "But you need to be careful, Celeste."

"No shit," he replied. "Look at me. I'm in shambles. Just let me do this so we can get out of here even sooner. We need reinforcements badly."

"I know." Kyra scratched her head with stress. "This isn't an operation meant for just the six of us. More people like J from the task force should have been sent instead…"

Kyra took out her watch and began pressing a sequence of codes. I could tell she was communicating back to A.X.A. that we needed help sent our way. From this, I could tell that Kyra's worries weren't out of fear for getting hurt, or fear of death. She was worried for the rest of us. She was scared for our safety.

"I'm sorry for bringing you all into this mess," she told us. "I promise I'll take responsibility for everything. I'll get you all out of here safely."

She looked at Cynthia, currently disabled in her position. Kyra felt immediate guilt. "Let's get going now, so that Cynthia doesn't have to be stuck like that for any longer."

Celeste nodded. His eyes were squinted as he set out ahead of us with hands full of glass.

"Can he still use Trajectory effectively even with impaired sight?" I asked Kyra.

"Yes. No glasses for him is nothing more than a slight handicap. He's already prepared for a scenario like this before."

After Celeste had left the lobby, we could already hear the following sounds of machinery being punctured and broken in consecutive sequence. He was busy clearing out the cameras on the first floor.

"That just leaves the three of us to find the one behind all of this then." Kyra looked at me and Sav. "If there's anyone who's going to be as closely connected to Heathen that we could find, it should be the one behind all these events."

Ding!

We heard the elevator leave the first floor. That meant that Celeste had gone up a level. 

"That's our signal," Sav said. "Let's check out the rest of the first floor."

We left the lobby to Cynthia and Emanuel. 

Walking into the hallway of rooms, I already felt unease etch at my insides. The only reassuring sight was that of the broken cameras in the ceiling. At least with the strategy Celeste approached, the rest of us wouldn't have to worry about being taken controlled-of.

"If this fella can take control of someone by seeing them through a security camera, I wonder why they didn't do it with J during the ambush on the top floor?"

Sav had brought up an interesting thought. In all honesty, we'd all probably be dead by now had J been taken controlled-of in that moment, whether to him or the tenants. So it truly did make me question why the perpetrator behind all of this had not just done that to begin with if they were already willing to try killing us with the tenants.

"I just hope J is still hangin' in there. He's a strong fellow we could keep by our side."

"If the tenants haven't come flooding down to the lobby by now, it should mean he's still holding them off up there," Kyra said.

I had something to ascertain. "If we're going to explore the whole building to find the security office, we'll eventually run into the tenants, won't we?"

Kyra nodded. She pointed at the knife sheathed in my holster. "If it comes to that, let's give Sav a replay of what we pulled off at New Zina."

The sudden confidence took me by surprise and made me smile. "Sounds like a plan."

We walked down from one end of the hall to the next, reading the labels on every open door we passed. Peaking inside each room, it was clear that all the tenants had vacated and either blocked off the entrance to the building or had gone up to the top floor to fight J. Every single door was labeled 100 to 160, besides the elevator and emergency staircase doors. Other than those, there was only a single room that was distinct to the rest.

[ Janitor's Closet ]

We'd saved the room for last, considering it was the odd one out. Piqued with the most curiosity, Sav was the one to open the door using the keycard we'd found at the receptionist's desk. Upon looking inside, we were met with an unexpected sight. It wasn't a small room filled with cleaning items as a janitor's closet should have had. It was a bedroom. Unlike the rest of the rooms in the building, it was painted all black. And rather than being empty and void of any furniture, there was a bed, a desk with a lamp, and covering every wall of the room were large TV's consisting of numerous panels that looked like security camera footage. As we entered and looked at the panels, we realized that each one was of a camera's view into a tenant's room, except every room was empty now that the tenants had been set loose. Every panel was labeled according to the room number, such as 103, 236, or 558.

"What the heck…?"

There was no other security camera perspective other than ones that looked into the rooms. It was just the rooms, all 300 of them.

"What is this?" Kyra looked at everything with worry. "Are these all of the rooms in the building…?"

Every room was white, empty, and had a circular symbol on the wall as speculated. What was interesting was that every camera was pointed to look in the direction of the circle, meaning every camera had been set up in the same position in each room.

"Someone's been watching all of the tenants… Isn't this where the perpetrator should be?"

My question quickly built unease in the room, and we all stuck to one another, preparing for an ambush. After looking around carefully and waiting for some time, we realized it was just us, a bed, a desk, and three hundred security camera panels in the room. That's when I finally noticed what was lacking.

"The circle." I observed every dark black wall in the room, but each one was plain. "There's no circle here, not like all of the other rooms."

"Didn't y'all say in the report that the receptionist used a circle for her Fractal?" Sav pointed out.

"Yes… yes!" It clicked in my head. "Who else would keep watch of all the tenants and the circles in their rooms? This had to be Iyonna's room, the receptionist's room!"

Kyra was stunned hearing this. She observed her surroundings and realized how much it made sense. "A bed to sleep, and hundreds of panels to keep observation of whether her Fractal's in check… Why would she commit herself to this?"

Sav tried to come up with his own reason. "Maybe good pay."

"The chief said she used to work in psychology, and from the sounds of it, she used her Fractal for the good. How did she go from that to maintaining a controlled center of her own victims…?" It wasn't adding up to me.

"Heathen. Something about Heathen had to overpower her morals completely to switch her into living a sociopathic lifestyle like this." Kyra continued to look around the room. She activated Panorma to look at things from a wider perspective, paying attention to details in the few things that filled the space. "This just all feels so unsettling…"

"I get what'cha mean. Place's creepy."

"Even though we're in a room that watches others, I can't shake the feeling that we're being watched right this instant."

Kyra's words put me on immediate guard. I looked at the corners of the room for cameras Celeste definitely missed-on, considering he only got the ones in the halls, but there were none. The room was void of security besides the camera panels it displayed on the screens.

"There must be another place like this. Another room just like this with panels that looks through security cameras, but instead, for the main areas like the halls and the lobby. Otherwise, how else would the one behind all of this be able to tell what we're doing?"

Kyra agreed with me. "You're right. That was the room we were trying to find in the first place. Whoever's behind all of this has to be in a position where they can oversee all the action going on in the main sections of the building."

"Celeste must've cleared the cameras on the second floor by now. Shall we?" Sav motioned out of the room.

"Let's," I followed. We went back out into the hall and made our way to the elevator. When we got in and pressed the button labeled "2," I felt the unease in my body rise. The idea of making our way floor-by-floor up towards the bloodthirsty tenants didn't exactly suit my anxiety. But it was the only way we'd be able to find the main perpetrator.

We had to find out who was behind all of this.