"A hired hand stole the BOOK?!"
A young lady with long black hair and golden eyes stared at Weinstein in shock. A frightening pressure emanated from her body. The young man took a few steps back. He knew how crazy she could be, and how unpredictable she became whenever she got mad.
"Yes," Weinstein replied. He pushed back his glasses with his index finger, then glanced at the young man leaning by the exit of the office. The man looked completely unbothered by the situation.
"Why am I just finding out now?!" She glared at Weinstein, who found it increasingly difficult to keep his composure under such pressure.
"We thought we could handle it on our own, but it's been two months and we still can't find him. He hasn't been spotted anywhere. We guessed he must either be in hiding and waiting for the situation to pass over, or he's no longer in this part of Elendora." He glanced at the young man, who finally pushed himself off the wall and walked closer until he stood beside him.
"It seems he created his account with falsified information," the young man said. He placed a document on the table. "According to what we got, he is Jaden Garfield from Sector Phimora. But when we checked that out, we found that Jaden Garfield actually died three years ago in a level four dimension breach."
The young lady picked up the documents and looked at the man in the passport area. "So it's not entirely a false identity."
The young man nodded. "We also called in a favor to the Nexus to check their database for Endless. According to them, Jaden Garfield is the real owner of the account."
Weinstein nodded in agreement.
"So he stole it?" the young lady asked.
"Though we're not jumping the gun here, that's how it appears," Weinstein replied. "From the records of the retinal scans taken for the account registration and even the avatar creation, the face present during the whole process was indeed that of Jaden Garfield." He pushed up his glasses once more.
For a few minutes they all stayed silent as the young lady took in the information.
"They have to be connected somehow," she said.
Both young men nodded.
"Yes, but the records show that Jaden Garfield is the sole child of the Garfield family, who are all now deceased due to the Phimora incident three years ago."
She roughly ran her hands through her hair and moved them back and forth in annoyance. She then sat down and slammed the table with a clenched fist. "There has to be something. Someone knew his logins, and that person has to be someone close to him." She paused, deep in thought. "How about friends and distant relatives?"
They both looked at each other, then back at her. The young man with blonde hair and maroon eyes spoke. "They are all dead. Well, mostly." He slid another document on the table. "You see, the day of the dimension breach coincided with an event the Garfields were hosting that day. Apparently Jaden was getting engaged to the daughter of one of the main pillars of power in Phimora. Regardo Salvador."
The young lady frowned. "You don't mean Commander Regardo. I never knew he had a daughter."
Weinstein nodded. "We were surprised as well, but that's what our findings show. Apparently, back then he was the captain of the Sixth Division of Defense Force in Sector Phimora, and he had two daughters and a son."
The lady nodded slowly, then gestured for him to continue.
"His first daughter, Mia Salvador, was supposed to get engaged to Jaden Garfield on that day. The event was a big deal. Many influential figures in Phimora were invited. It was during the peak of merriment that the dimension breach occurred. According to the reports we got, all the attendees of the event died. That includes Jaden Garfield and his whole family, relatives and all, as well as Mia Salvador and her brother Nathan Salvador. As for the commander's last daughter, there are no records about her. Whether she's dead or alive, we don't know."
The lady leaned back further in the chair, thinking. "Is there really no one else connected to him that survived that day?"
Weinstein, who had now taken a seat, shook his head. "Whoever we are dealing with here, there is something off. Very off about them."
The other man chipped in. "But I did find something this morning." He pulled out a photo and slid it on the table.
Weinstein frowned. "Is that Endless?"
"Not a hundred percent sure about it. From the moment I saw him, he had a mask on. But this was taken from a gambling den in Goldland Town four months ago, where he had registered with his name Endless."
They all stared at it for a while.
"This looks nothing like Jaden Garfield," Weinstein said.
The other man nodded. "Yes, it should be his face in real life. As you should know, once the VR scans pick up a wrong face different from registered, it rescans to capture the new face."
"But why didn't the Nexus include this in the report?"
"They probably didn't pick it up."
"Well, it's a lead at least."
"So Captain, what do we..."
"Captain?"
"This face." The lady frowned even more.
"You know him?" the blonde asked with widened eyes.
She shook her head. "No, but..."