“Okay, so what’s new?” When Jason, Laura Jensen and Aimee appeared from under a cloaking spell, it startled both Agent Hall and Agent Beckman who were waiting behind a corner on the street, also under some cloaking spells.
“Geez! How did you find us!?” Agent Hall asked: “I didn’t hear you coming at all!”
“Yeah, it’s my favorite cloaking spell, it obscures sounds as well, even the energy signatures that we radiate.” Laura smiled: “Plus, this place has a lot of noise, so - ”
“No, I mean, I didn’t HEAR you at all, and my ability is all about hearing the flow of energy.” Agent Hall shook his head: “But I didn’t hear anything when you came.”
“Ah, it’s because the spell lowers the energy radiation.” Laura Jensen nodded: “And we’re at a place with some really chaotic energy fields around, so it’s understandable.”
“So you’ve never gotten to know about energy field theories?” Aimee smiled and patted Agent Hall on his shoulder.
“Alright, stop with the good student talk and help us out here.” Caroline chuckled, pointing forward at a three story house with a very strange design that combined classic western structure and Chinese exterior decorations and signs, which was still closed: “There, you see that Chinese restaurant?”
“‘Ouyang’s Cafe’? Oh yeah, I’ve ordered from there before.” Jason narrowed his eyes: “But - that’s a really weird looking building for a Chinese restaurant. And that’s where your spell led you to?”
“Yes, it got absorbed by something underneath.” Caroline nodded: “And Jason - if you don’t mind, can you make us some binoculars?”
“Sure.” Jason clapped his hands and conjured four pairs of silver mini binoculars from thin air. The two agents each took one, and Aimee and Thomas each took one as well.
“I just pulled up the history of that building. ” Agent Hall said: “Public history, of course, so that we wouldn’t trigger any alarms - and it said that the building used to be a church, and it was abandoned for a long time after a local gas leak and fire incident. It was then left in the local government’s care, but then due to a couple of financially hard years, they sold it to the owner of this restaurant under certain conditions of preservation and maintenance - so the core integrity of the structure must remain, but the owner can put on extra decorations as long as they don’t damage the building itself.”
“Okay, I just notified people from higher up, and they would be checking the other locations out.” Agent Beckman put his phone back into his pocket and said: “Thank you, treating the locations of these sites as nodes to a bigger array is a really ingenious call.”
“And what are those places?” Caroline’s right palm remained on the ground, unmoved since even before Jason got here: “Can we check the other suspected places as well?”
“Checking right now.” Agent Hall operated on his phone.
“Wait - do you have VPN on your phone?” Jason stopped Agent Hall and asked.
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“All Division issued phones do, why?” Agent Beckman asked.
“I might be overly cautious - but switch to different regional IPs when you check out the information for different sites.” Jason said: “And make sure that you’re not using a publicly known gateway IP, huh?”
“For a non-engineer, you sure have a knack for tech precautions.” Laura Jensen chuckled.
“Yeah - I just have a bad feeling about just randomly checking that information out.” Jason shook his head: “Call it an intuition or something.”
“It’s open!” Aimee said.
“Okay - the guy that opened the door sure looks kinda weird - very hairy, and hairy in a strange way.” Thomas said while turning his silver binoculars to zoom in further: “Aimee, does that guy look weirdly hairy? I don’t want to go into stereotypes, but - ”
“His eyes just flashed yellow-ish green, that’s something.” Aimee nodded.
“Ugh, sharp and dirty nails.” Caroline shook her head and lifted her palm from the ground: “Okay - by rough estimation - the pool of energy should be two or three levels beneath the ground floor, this means that we will have to go down there if we wanna check it out.”
“Sure, I’m all for it, but how?” Jason nodded: “What’s the plan?”
“Wait, this Szechuan Drool Chicken, do you cook with cage free chicken, or do you cook it with chicken legs?” Five minutes later, Jason was sitting in Ouyang’s Cafe and asking a waiter in Mandarin.
“Sorry, we cook it with chicken legs and chicken wings.” The waiter, who looked Chinese but spoke with a heavy non-native accent, shrugged: “We - uh, our customers are mostly foreigners.”
“I’d like a Naples Spaghetti with special meat sauce.” Caroline smiled and spoke with an accented Mandarin: “Sorry, my Mandarin is not good, I just started - ”
“I’d like a Hainan Chicken Rice.” Thomas put down his menu.
“Me too, and a milk tea.” Aimee sighed and said.
Agent Beckman and Agent Hall ordered by pointing at pictures on the rugged menu.