October 9th, 2020, Freedom Force HQ

By the time Freedom Force reconvened at HQ their meeting with the President made the evening news, together with snippets from their earlier press conference.  Another Mutant made the news as well – the aforementioned 'Zoey', the woman who was supposedly responsible for the murder of the Mutant prisoners held at Camp-X barely a couple of months ago.   The government issued a warrant for her arrest, and circulated her picture to every news channel and law enforcement agency.  A warning was issued as well; that she is to be considered extremely dangerous, and anyone identifying her shouldn't attempt to capture her on his own, but call 911.

It was still too early to know how the public will react to the terrorist attacks in New York, the Freedom Force initiative, and President Davis welcoming Mutants into the White House.  But it would be a stretch to believe that these set of circumstances are going to help her in the polls.  The pundits on the news were going to discuss the events for weeks to come, all the way up to the election.  For them, the terrorist attacks were a veritable goldmine.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:30, Sat 26 Feb 2022.

Johnson has already set up in the conference room by the time they arrived, his own black trolley standing at the corner.  There was a wealth of information he received from the FBI in the last couple of hours, and he didn't have the chance to review even a fraction of it.  He had experience in such investigations, and concluding it in one week with such a small team was impossible – under normal circumstances.

"Sit down; we have lots to cover" he handwaved for them to sit down and turned on his laptop

"The FBI sent us all the material from their investigation into 'Essex'.  You can find it on our servers.  As you know, Essex is one of the top pharmaceutical companies in the world.  Their headquarters is in London, but they have subsidiaries all over the world.   Now, according to the files, Dr. Adler confessed before his death that it was Dr. Bernard Karasu from Essex that offered to treat his son's cancer in return for Mutant DNA samples, and harvested organs.   Essex top management claim to have had no knowledge of such a deal, and that Dr. Karasu acted independently.  I find it hard to believe; someone should have been asking the questions on how he was able to procure all those DNA samples…"  he stopped to make sure they were still following
This message was lightly edited by the player at 17:28, Sat 26 Feb 2022.

In reply to Agent Johnson (msg # 2):

John's armature was hard at work downloading all the info Commander Johnson had just authorized. It would have been nice to be given access ahead of the meeting, but beauratic snafus no doubt slows eveything down.

One arm creates a hologram of  Dr Alder, a paragraph of info listed under the image.

"Ok...downloading all available data links between targets." A list of images pop up, each connected by a holographic thread to each other, words floated over the image describing the connection. It summed up the available data for easy observation for Freedom Force. John touched one of the threads with his human hand, and expanded it with his fingers. Showing more information available if anyone else wanted to see it.

One of the listed targets was an image of Zoey, and all the information on her John had. He could tell something was wrong with the team. Given he could remember everything the team had said, verbally anyways, he knew something of what happened when she was a member of the team. Ir could fill in the gaps anyways.

"So....anyone wanna bring me up to speed on what's the deal with Agent Fujino?" He looked around at the rest of Freedom Force.

"She's not an agent," Frank said, shaking his head slightly. John must have simply misspoken, but Frank couldn't help but correct him anyway. He couldn't imagine Zoey even wanting to be an agent. "She's an X-Man.

"During the Camp X fiasco, it got to the point where the Brotherhood was about to wake up all of the prisoners at once. Zoey prevented this by killing all of the prisoners."

In reply to Tank (msg # 4):

"Ooookaaaay...." John said, quickly adding those notes to his files. "So this is when the team encountered the...X-men? Weird name. That is the rival mutant group who has been spotted in the media fighting the Brotherhood, right?"

There was clearly a connection to Charles Xavier, but the last thing he wanted to do was to mention that in front of Commander Johnson. He would need Xavier's to rally the mutant community. He already got the idea the heavy hand of Johnson would not be keen on trusting mutants. Even mutants under his command.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:44, Sat 26 Feb 2022.

"Fujino, or the X-Men, are not the issue here" Johnson cut the two of them off
"We're investigating the clandestine experiments at Camp-X, which happened way before the prison was attacked.  I need you to stay focused"

Being able to fly at double the speed a car would manage even with minimal traffic and being able to go in a fairly straight line, Ana Sofía is able to get herself and Kate to HQ on time after having had some real down time at her house. Even with the two of them there, it is fairly empty, but Ana Sofía insists it holds crowds quite well when she bakes cookies.

At the briefing she listens to Agent Johnson and looks at what John projects. Then she asks, "Sir, how much authorization do we have to investigate Essex? Are we allowed to go into another country? Are we allowed to hack into their computers or minds?"

"The British still refuse to accept our help, but since Essex are also operating inside the US we have full authority to investigate them, here, locally.  Interview employees, search their premises, seize documents if we have to - all in agreements with the warrants Miss. Cooper will get for us by the end of the day.   And since the President has just made this an issue of national security, we have authorization to hack into their servers in England as well.  Best if we can avoid that, or do it undetected - we don't want to cause an international incident.  But we have the option, yes"

Johnson eyed John and nodded silently as he concluded, a tacit approval for him to get the information they needed directly from Essex servers.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:02, Sun 27 Feb 2022.

In reply to Agent Johnson (msg # 8):

John picked up on the nod, although he was mostly working off bio rythm data whenever he was interacting with someone. Being able to detect the subtle changes in heart rate, blood flow, and eye movements was not as efficient as telepathy for example. But when you had access to facial recognition/psychology databases it did have a high degree of accuracy.

"It will be done, sir." He said. Then he proceeded to start downloading the info in order to update his holographic suspects list. Via hacking if need be.

While he did do a tiny bit of what could be considered computer crimes, they where mostly harmless level stuff that barley qualified as misdemeanor. Now he would be going directly against another country's servers. On the plus side, it would be by a means they had no way of knowing about or likely had any way of detecting. It's not like evey country had a mutant IT person at thier beck and call after all.

One thing Kate was watching for was word about how the government itself had flooded the prison OR launched missiles to destroy Camp-X.  She wondered how you became a deep throat...

She arrived with Ana, and left in the restroom with a backpack full of her clothing was quick to get dressed and come out to join the rest, so she was waiting with the others when Johnson came in.

While Johnson tried to keep people focused Kate had another agenda.  "What about the people who ordered the missile attack to kill everyone and everything on the Island?  Do we know who fired, who gave the order, and who told them to do so yet?  The President said we were supposed to arrest EVERYONE responsible.  And those people are also criminals."

"Why are we ignoring all of the soldiers who were at Camp-X?  Who send them there, who authorized it?  What about the secret puppetmasters in the government who are keeping everything away from even the President and actually set up Camp-X?  And how is it connected to Camp-X anyway?"

She had more questions, like who was going to try and get Wax up and out, but figured one topic at a time.

In reply to Kate Messer (msg # 10):

"Uhhh...missiles? Someone tried to wipe out everyone on Camp-X? I assume it was some sort of contingency in response to a mass escape? That's not in the official files." He looks over at Kate, wondering if this had something to do with Zoey. It was clear Kate was upset, and what went down at Camp-X had hurt the team terribly.

He looked over at Commander Johnson, wondering how much permission he was allowed to investigate this event. He was pretty sure Johnson did not want anyone looking into Camp-X at all. John was also worried he would at some point have to decide between his oath to Freedom Force and his loyalty to his fellow mutants.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:16, Mon 28 Feb 2022.

"It's not in the official files, because it never happened.  The island was never carpet bombed" Johnson gave Kate a stern look.  He had an agenda for the meeting, and the only reason he didn't ignore the disruption was because he didn't want her lies to be left unopposed.  Yes; he decided those were lies, rather than an innocent mistake.  Kate was on the island.  She knew there was never a missile attack aiming to 'kill everyone and everything'.

"Dr. Adler did have assistants, but they were all slaughtered by the Brotherhood.  I sent a request to exhume their bodies, and once we get that approval I'll have Fiona resurrect and question them.  Hopefully there's enough of them left to be of some use.  Now - "

He leaned forward on the desk

"I set this meeting to discuss Essex, and that's what we're going to do. If anyone has any questions or concerns regarding the other investigations, feel free to approach me later.  Agent Ohm - you start compiling what data we would need a warrant for. Agent Mendez; I want you to interrogate  Dr. Karasu; the FBI arrested him over a month ago, but he has since been released. He didn't answer any questions, and pretended like he never heard of Dr. Adler"
This message was last edited by the player at 19:58, Tue 01 Mar 2022.