The two detectives just stand back in stupefied disbelief, unsure what to say or do as you quickly take over the investigation and all but ignore their presence. Skynet's drones begin their sweep, Thorn takes to the Astral to find the emotional echoes of this place, and Detective gets to work living up to his name and examines the evidence he finds in detail, all while Stix reclines into the Matrix under the watchful eye of Dectective's turret.
Thorn is immediately awash with the astral presence of this place, decades of decay and human suffering in the dirges of poverty soaked into every brick and stone like a spilled drink left unattended on a carpet. But there is a more recent stain upon the astral here, one of panic and violence, still fresh upon the surface, like a wound.
The door is the first thing with a story to tell, cracked in half with a sense of urgency, but a distinct lack of rage or aggression. This was a calm act of violence, planned and precise.
The stairway starts to tell a different tale, a story of kindness masking deception in the walls, followed by extreme violence that climbs the stairs and washes through the landing on the second floor. There is more emotion here, panicked, confused, and desperate. Continuing in, these emotions begin to increase, along with a distinct sense of terror. You find the body of the ork cut in two, and the emotions that linger almost pulsate with the fear and pain that permeated the room and halls. This man died violently, painfully, and in a state of overwhelming fear. There are tinges of shock and confusion, a lack of understanding what was happening, like the ork didn't know why he was dying. You suspect he never even saw his attacker. Strangely enough, you find no evidence that there was an attacker at all. No rage, no aggression, no killing intent. Whoever or whatever killed him felt no emotion at all, and left no astral trace.
This pattern continues as you find the troll, then the two burned corpses of the remaining runners. Confusion is the running theme. This was a surprise attack on an unprecedented level. None of these runners even knew what hit them. They were dead before they knew why.
Something strange stands out to you as you finish examining the entire scene. Downstairs, you were able to distinguish between attackers and attacked. Someone breached the building, came up the stairway, and engaged in an extended fight with a terrified inhabitant, one they seemingly won. But for the rest of the building, you feel nothing from the attackers. They were given no chance to return fire, no opportunity to survive, and their killer left no trace of his or her presence on the astral.
From this, you get the feeling that two separate attacks occurred here. The first wiped out the running team with ruthless efficiency, and the second breached the building to capture Elden.
As Thorn performs his Astral searches, the Detective busies himself collecting samples and examining the evidence on the physical plane. He starts with the tire tracks outside. He finds from the wheel base, and the depth of the tracks, that he's dealing with an Armored Personnel Carrier, most likely a fully loaded Ares Roadmaster. And judging from the impressions the tire tracks left, it was equipped with Smart Tires.
From there he turns to the tracks leading to and from the building. He sees 6 distinct sets of tracks, one troll, two orks and three humans, judging from the size and stride of each set. They move into the building in a sweeping pattern that looks tactical, but the tracks leading out are more interesting. Only 5 sets of tracks walk back out of the building, and there are two distinct drag marks, likely from the moving of a body, that lead back to where the vehicle was parked. From this you gather that 6 men went in, and 7 came back out, but two of them had to be carried.
Entering the building itself, and turning towards the detailed mapping Skynet is feeding from his drones, Detective finds evidence of an extended firefight that started between the first floor and the second floor. Numerous bullet holes line the walls of the stairwell, as a clear line of fire occurred up the stairs. There are more signs of bullet holes that originate from the upstairs going down, looking like smaller caliber rounds, while the few holes the other way are at least the diameter of an Assault Rifle, if not larger. Looking in the bullet holes, the Detective finds signs that the slugs were dug out of the holes, and is not able to determine what type of bullet was fired.
Continuing up into the rest of the building, he finds that his initial suspicions from the camera feeds were accurate. The ork's body has all the signs of a monofilament wire flung at high velocity through his body, and it was at least 2 meters in length judging from the slices through the walls and ceiling of the room his body was found in. The troll was completely shredded by high caliber bullets, and the firing angle suggest it came from outside the building and from above, firing through a solid wall to kill the troll, with the bullets continuing on their path through the floor. If there was anything left of them, they'd be lodged in the walls and floor of the basement.
Finally, the Detective finds himself in the burned out room with the two bodies, one of what was formerly a human man, twisted in agony from having burned to death, and the other appearing to be an elven woman on closer examination. Studying her body, the Detective finds a small hole in the side of her head that looks like an entry wound. Judging from her position on the floor, the size and angle of the hole, and the way she fell, it looks like a sniper took her out with a single shot, through a nearby broken window. She was likely the first to die, her body burning post mortem.
