The last few weeks flew past without much notice. Stephanie had been keeping up with her lighting design work as she promised Jessica, but in between doing iterations for the project and planning positions for the lights, she didn’t take a night’s rest from being Nova. Nova’s name was spreading throughout the gang territory, fewer and fewer members were seen dealing drugs since no one wanted to get on Nova’s bad side. The Blazers had once believed they ruled the darkness, but with Nova’s presence growing each night, they had begun to acknowledge the true monster of the night. According to Gary who was keeping tabs on the whole situation for Stephanie, many of the members had gone into hiding and business was becoming difficult to maintain. With no one willing to go out on the streets, deals weren’t being made. To make matters worse for the Blazers, every time Stephanie had come to destroy their storehouses, she would raid their saving of cash and truly left them with nothing but ash. Within three weeks, she had compiled ninety grand for Hyori’s payment, out of the total 150 grand. The “Darknet Fairy” had finally put in her order for advance equipment to improve her tech setup and with the speedy delivery, they should arrive soon enough. Hyori had finally made progress on hacking the classified police files and Stephanie was excited to finally see some progress in the investigation. “So, you finally found something?” Stephanie asked enthusiastically.

“Yeah, I found out you guys are idiots.” Hyori huffed.

“What? Why?” Stephanie questioned.

“You said thirty missing persons’ reports as if it’s a huge deal. In three years, it’s honestly not that bad, but you didn’t notice that because you failed to consider the fact that these are all the reports on public record. These reports are every single case filed, aka if a protective mother hasn’t seen her child within a few hours and impetuously calls the police just to know where they are, that gets filed as a missing persons’ report.” Hyori explained.

“So, most of the cases are just exaggerations?” Stephanie asked glumly. She didn’t want to start from scratch again, it seemed like every time she made a baby step in the investigation, someone would pick her little baby feet up and toss her back to the beginning. Hyori could see her dimmed expression, but luckily the bad news was out of the way and now it was time for the good… hmm, maybe good isn’t the right word for this news, but one thing is for sure, they were definitely going to make progress. “Alright, don’t look so down, Sandra.” Hyori laughed at her dark expression.
“Just because I introduced myself to you as Sandra doesn’t mean you’re allowed to use it.” Stephanie said sternly.

“Alright Stephanie, my bad. Anyways, even though the majority of the reports were exaggerations, twelve of them weren’t. In fact, these twelve cases have had eyewitness reports where each case had either men with orange bandanas or a white van.” Hyori began.

“Finally, we’re getting somewhere. Keep going.” Stephanie gestured.

“So, these are the twelve case files I managed to pull from the police archive,” Hyori revealed twelve individuals onto the screen and two of the victims stuck out to Stephanie quite clearly.

“Taeya and Jessica.” Stephanie gasped.

“Taeya? You know her?” Hyori questioned.

“Yeah, she’s my best… she was my best friend, we haven’t talked in a while. But I’m the one who stopped her from being fully captured.” Stephanie explained.

“Ahh, well that makes you the defining factor of these cases then. Taeya and Jessica were the only ones who have been found, the rest are completely unknown.” Hyori said.

“Can you place them in chronological order please?” Stephanie requested. With a few clicks and keyboard functions, Hyori had rearranged the victims starting with Taeya as the first. “It all started with her.” Stephanie sighed.

“Yep, these disappearances…”

“Abductions.” Stephanie corrected.

“Right, abductions, have been going on for three years already. You’re the only one who’s managed to prevent them.” Hyori finished.

“It says here, they’re ongoing investigations. Is it possible that the police have extra information we could get?” Stephanie questioned.

“Nope, it may say that these cases are still ongoing, but I checked who was assigned to these cases and there wasn’t a single officer assigned. No detectives, inspectors not even the FBI are looking into this, someone’s clearly pulling some strings to keep these guys MIA.” Hyori pointed out.

“I guess all we have to go off of are the victims then. Have you searched for any similarities?” Stephanie asked.

“Yeah, of course, I have. That was the obvious thing to do, but umm… do you want the bad news first?” Hyori smiled forcefully.

“Sure.” Stephanie sighed.

“Apart from the obvious, that they’re all Asian, they have nothing else in common,” Hyori admitted. “And even being Asian isn’t a link. Your friends were both born in the states, some people here are born in Korea, while others in China and even Japan. Besides that, mixed genders, four male, eight females. Age range, anywhere between nineteen to thirty, for example, Yerim Kim, nineteen years old, studied photography here in LA vanished two years ago. Then there’s Kyuhyun Kim, thirty years old, indie musician, had a few gigs around LA was taken two months ago. There’s absolutely nothing that links these people together.” Hyori concluded.

“Great, another dead end. Sherlock Holmes always made this investigation stuff seem a lot faster on T.V.” Stephanie sighed.

“Hey, I said I’d give you the bad news first. There is still some good news.” Hyori smiled. “The Blazers had me captive for a while, actually I’ve been captive there for two and a half months. Barely fed me and if only they just ing paid me, I would’ve done whatever they needed.” Hyori scoffed. “Anyways, not the point. During my two and a half months in that hell hole, they gave me a handful of jobs to do. One: Accounting, keeping their money in check. Which is why I know how much money is placed in each storehouse. Two: decrypting encrypted messages. Around two weeks after they abducted me, I received the first encrypted message that honestly was quite difficult to decrypt, but being the badass I am, I cracked it and the message came out like this:”

                Name: Kim Kyuhyun

                Date: March 8th

                Time: 8pm

                Location: Venice Beach

                key Minds oddly reJect or Halt

“They sent you a target, they told you when and where to find him.” Stephanie grasped. “But what the hell is up with this weird phrase?” Stephanie questioned.

“That I don’t know. Honestly, it’s barely a phrase, it doesn’t actually make any sense. Maybe with some context, it makes sense, but right now, it’s gibberish.” Hyori laughed.

“Wait, I thought this was supposed to be good news. I fail to see how this is good news?” Stephanie questioned.

“I’m not done yet. This wasn’t the only order I received, I actually got one a few weeks ago, four weeks to be exact.” Hyori said suggestively. Stephanie’s eyes lit up at what Hyori had just mentioned if her memory was correct, Jessica was almost abducted four weeks ago. In fact, without Stephanie’s help, she definitely would have. “You mean, you got Jessica’s target orders??” Stephanie questioned.

“No, and that’s the good news. Jessica wasn’t the original target, as to why they chose to take her anyway is beyond me, but the actual target is a woman by the name of Joohyun Seo.” Hyori smiled. “Do you understand what this means Stephanie?” Hyori questioned.

“There’s a target out there that they failed to capture, so if we get to her first…”

“We can find out what