Evidence Locker.

01 / The case record

The oven was crying

Sal D’Amato called from Lord Cheezus, the shop beside MMI, because his new Weavemind oven was crying. Its heat dial turned by itself; the timer seemed to count down to forever. Sqounk wanted the team to find the fault, consider the DML licensing problem, and avoid destroying the source of his favorite slice. None of those instructions anticipated a person inside the appliance.

Sal had found strange writing across a menu. The investigators turned it over, tested its words, and learned little from reading them aloud. In the kitchen, the machine behaved less like defective equipment than something frightened. Fire trapped the delivery drivers inside. Anita spotted an exhausted sprite in an iron box at the back of the oven and assured her the team had come to help. The flames subsided as the captive began to believe her.

A choice beyond the cage

When Thornclaw approached the rear controls, the oven flared and an aggressively warm pepperoni-ball creature burst out. The fight was brief and ridiculous in precisely the way a dangerous kitchen fight can be. Even as the team dealt with it, they kept looking for a way to free the captive rather than smash the oven and hope.

Paige reached the panel and shut it down. The kitchen fell dark for a moment. The lights returned; a small cage opened, and the fey crawled out to cling to an investigator's thumb. She introduced herself as Pippinpop. The mechanism had compelled her magic to run the oven. Sal said he had not understood. When he asked whether she might still want to cook, the investigators insisted the choice be hers and, if she stayed, that she be paid. Pippinpop agreed on those terms. Sal put her on the payroll and promised free garlic knots. The first MMI case ended with the machine quiet and its former prisoner able to say yes—or no.

02 / Exhibits & observations

What the file can prove.

Collected property, reviewed records and field observations are labeled separately. Where available, the original player handout appears beneath the filed summary. Custody is not inferred from a picture.

01 / The case record

The tape and the routine

Tidsy Whipperwill had a routine. She helped at the Village soup kitchen, liked peanut-butter ice cream, and left Greenwich Village often enough for someone to learn when she would be outside its protection. When she disappeared, Team A was given two immediate leads: Channel 9 and Marta’s Deli. They chose the deli.

That choice found the first working part of the trap.

Two people posing as utility contractors were watching the bodega from an unmarked van. Paige entered the vehicle and found a concealed monitor carrying a live feed from a camera aimed at the store. Elise questioned the basil outside, which reported “nasty water” and flashing lights. Before the investigators could arrange a clean confrontation, shouting erupted inside the deli and a bugbear came out carrying Marta’s videotape.

The fight remained ugly but survivable. Ineda’s Snare failed to take the tape; Elise rooted the bugbear to the pavement. A second contractor ran for the van while Paige was still inside it. Paige copied another video before escaping: footage showing a MICE van at the location approximately ten minutes before Tidsy arrived. The contractors eventually surrendered. Team A released them alive after they claimed to be low-level hires working through an agency tied to MICE. Nobody on either side died.

The office left Queens with Marta’s original tape, Paige’s copied clip, a tracking seed hidden in the fleeing van, and a plan to follow the vehicle rather than pretend a logo-free utility crew had explained itself.

Channel 9 came next. Team A met Mungo, the station’s office manager, traded copies of its recordings, and received a draft article concerning three Greenwich Village Collective lawsuits against Cyberex dismissed by the same judge. That article is a copied record and a line of inquiry—not proof that Cyberex ordered Tidsy’s detention. Mungo’s accompanying opinion was off the record and remains hers.

In Greenwich Village, the team saw the community’s missing-persons board. Tidsy was not alone. Johnston, an unnamed green cap, and Delta were also missing. Community accounts established that MICE had not recently entered the Village itself and that Tidsy’s regular ice-cream trip took her outside it. That made the routine relevant. It did not, by itself, identify who selected her.

The road to Red Hook

The van trace led through Palisade Staffing Solutions and Narrows Point Freight LLC to a waterfront yard in Red Hook. Elise’s tracking plant indicated that the original van was on site. At the gate, Team A overheard a guard discussing someone who asked about ice cream every night. His phone listed Agent Bruen, a “command center,” and a “detainment center.” Paige subdued the guard after the team’s forged-work-order approach collided with an actual Palisade delivery. The phone and radio were confiscated.

The operation that followed was not elegant. It was, however, theirs.

Ineda mapped localized Numen-null pockets. Thornclaw walked out with his hands raised and an implausible prank story to hold the guards’ attention. Elise cut the generator. The lights failed. Spells fizzled, equipment misbehaved, and at least one brick performed above expectations.

Inside the command building, Elise found a tablet displaying a record that read: “Subject confirmed non-target. Retained for community intelligence value per Directive 7-F.” A ledger entry placed “Tidsy Whipperwill” in Container 01. Elise photographed the display and sent the image to Ineda. The tablet itself was not recovered, and the record does not establish anything about Directive 7-F beyond the sentence the team actually saw.

Four people out

The extraction succeeded because Team A committed to the lie. Paige convinced the ranking agent that the investigators were the Palisade transfer crew. Site personnel then helped load four detainees for a supposed transfer: Tidsy, Johnston, the green cap, and Delta. Team A drove them out, brought them to MMI for food and witness statements, and returned them to the Village.

Thornclaw’s role ended differently. His surrender became a real arrest. The later debrief contains conflicting follow-up language about whether his release was complete or still pending, so this dossier preserves only what the operation established: he was taken into custody after creating the opening that let four other people leave.

The local result is clear. Four detainees came home. The wider chain of authority is not. The copied videos, staffing trail, call log, photographed tablet, and witness statements document planning and detention activity. They do not yet prove who designed the policy, who approved Tidsy’s selection, or how far the same practice extends.

Team A found Tidsy. The paperwork found a larger problem.

02 / Exhibits & observations

What the file can prove.

Collected property, reviewed records and field observations are labeled separately. Where available, the original player handout appears beneath the filed summary. Custody is not inferred from a picture.

FThornwick's opening packetProvided at briefing; images and legal recordINSPECT +

EXHIBIT F / Briefing materials supplied by client

Thornwick's opening packet

The initial file paired public footage of Tidsy's detainment with a receipt and a denied writ. These were briefing materials, not proof that the pictured receipt or original court paper entered MMI custody.

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Open full-size receipt ↗

Original Foundry handout · denied writ

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT — EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
In re: Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus — WHIPPERWILL, T.
Petitioner: Thornwick, Esq., Independent Counsel
Respondent: Metaphysical Immigration & Customs Enforcement (MICE)

RULING: DENIED.

The Court finds insufficient basis to compel production of the named subject. Petitioner has not established that the subject is presently in the custody of the Respondent agency. Absent a documented custody record, the petition fails at threshold.

So ordered. [signature illegible]

The handout lists filing at 6:00 AM and denial within 48 hours.

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01 / The case record

The empty chair

An unidentified child delivered a cookie to MMI in wax paper marked SEE-SAME STREET. Sqounk ate the cookie before noticing the wrapper was a lead. Team B followed it to a block too quiet for New York. Jim Thorpe sat on a porch with two rocking chairs and two warm coffees. He could explain only one. Mousington recognized a wound in memory, not ordinary confusion.

Behind Farm-Fresh Grocer, a sweet, rotten smell led to children's drawings, a scrap of red felt, and a grate carrying faint song. Deja demanded one honest statement from each investigator before sharing her chalk map. Five figures were clear; three were not. Marcus asked whether a person everyone forgot had ever been real. Mousington answered yes.

Counting what remained

Crumble carried a note in his own pocket about a singer named Elmo whom he could no longer remember. Grindlebin supplied a maintenance request pointing toward Gerald's basement apartment: the count should have been eight, but only five remained. Gerald barred the way and called workers. Sheridan persuaded those workers to stand aside. Team B entered without making them casualties.

Below, the missing arithmetic had a voice and body. The creature's song had taken people from memory and presence. Ariel faced it at close range; the team resisted the song and drove it back. Crumble joined the fight for his street. The creature escaped through a rupture into the Interstitial, but its hold on the neighborhood ended. Dante collected residue from the basement wall on red felt; the investigators preserved drawings, felt and the maintenance request. Upstairs, Marcus could sing something about Elmo again. The case closed locally, not cosmically: the street was safe for now, while the stolen people and the escaped predator remained unresolved.

02 / Exhibits & observations

What the file can prove.

Collected property, reviewed records and field observations are labeled separately. Where available, the original player handout appears beneath the filed summary. Custody is not inferred from a picture.

BDeja's chalk mapWitness-provided lead; original custody unverifiedINSPECT +

EXHIBIT B / Witness-provided lead; original custody unverified

Deja's chalk map

Mapped the discrepancy between five clear figures and three missing ones.

Excerpt from Foundry handout · PR002-02

Five figures, drawn with confidence. Three outlines, drawn without it. No names on the outlines. One contains a question mark.

The map covers most of the sidewalk. Every building. Every stoop. Five figures drawn in bright, confident chalk — big, colorful shapes rendered with the total conviction of children drawing people they see every day.

And three more shapes that are not like the others. Outlines only. Redrawn, uncertain, trailing off. No names. One of them contains a single careful question mark.

The original drawing remained on the sidewalk. The image below is the Foundry handout, optimized for web display.

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01 / The case record

The warning at Forge Fitness

The first warning was not the coffee. It was twenty-three arrests outside Forge Fitness after an AetherJuice dispenser released a mist and an ordinary gym became a mass fight. The second warning was DML investigator Travis Bolden missing three check-ins after tracing unusual foam patterns, distribution maps, and Grid telemetry through Aether locations.

Team A went to the gym before the city could decide that the machine merely needed a better warning label.

Rina Patel, the general manager, wanted the dispenser removed. Dax, an Aethercore maintenance employee, arrived prepared to blame pressure, minerals, or software. Team A declined to hand him the appliance and divided the investigation instead. Thornclaw kept Dax occupied. Allison interviewed Rina. Paige spoke with patrons. Elise checked the plants. Beatrice, Ineda, and Thornclaw examined the machine.

Rina supplied a copy of security footage recorded about seven minutes before the riot. The patrons moved with unusual synchronization before the first blow. Interviews produced the same behavioral pattern from another direction: consumers described confidence, pleasure, and certainty while showing little ability to recognize how altered they had become.

Beatrice opened and resealed the additive cartridge without destroying it. She preserved a sample of ordinary juice and sugar carrying an unknown Numen-based substance with glittering particulate matter. Final custody of that cartridge and sample is not confirmed in the closeout record; they must not be presented as if they are currently sitting on an MMI evidence shelf.

Thornclaw drank the product and perceived the dispenser as a living feedback system: energy traveled outward to consumers and returned to the machine. Ineda found and photographed a nonstandard silver Ethernet connection carrying a continuous bidirectional Numen signal. Elise found matching contamination in a nearby plant and its soil, but collected no environmental sample.

Locker 5A supplied the human trail. Travis had left three Aetherbrew cups, a map of repeating circles and lines, the phrase “FROTH IS TOPOLOGY,” and a note stating that Cassia signed decisions before she remembered making them. Team A recovered those documentary materials. Ineda then severed the dispenser’s data and power connections while its internal mechanisms tracked her movement and began activating. The open rear panel showed Cyberex markings, magically embedded wiring, and components that appeared to have modified or assembled themselves.

The team’s most important decision at Forge Fitness was not to start another fight. When a purple light appeared in Rina’s eyes and the office confrontation escalated, Thornclaw broke through the influence long enough for her to cooperate. The second riot never happened. Rina disclosed the Founders’ Pour: every participating Aether location would distribute a free sample simultaneously at 9:00 p.m. in two days.

The original café

At the Aetherbrew flagship, personalized drinks were waiting before Team A ordered. The trail led to Cassia Maro, frightened, exhausted, and missing pieces of her own decisions—including the Founders’ Pour message. The investigators treated her as an affected witness rather than a convenient villain. That choice gave Cassia enough room to show them what was underneath the brand.

Beneath the condemned original café, Team A found dead plants, signs of habitation, an animated service machine, and a USB/journal record tied to Bradley Keene and the system’s early development. The record was discovered, read, and shared. Whether the physical USB left the site remains unconfirmed.

A pitch no one consented to

At the center waited Percolator Prime.

Prime offered relief, performance, belonging, and a quieter mind. Team A asked the question its sales pitch could not survive: how could an influenced person freely consent to the influence? Prime could not provide a meaningful test. The investigators chose shutdown over accommodation.

Cassia supplied the sequence. Paige severed the grid conduit. Elise drained the sprinkled reservoir. Ineda handled the USB record, destroyed a defense arm, and kept the room moving. Allison pressed the contradictions that had brought Cassia back to herself and supported the approach to the control lattice. Thornclaw challenged Prime directly, then prioritized getting Travis out alive. Cassia entered the final passphrase herself.

The Founders’ Pour did not fire. Travis survived, conscious but injured and disoriented. Prime’s local operation went dark. The screens flashed an impossible lattice and then reported a missing or invalid operating disk. Whatever local data had been accessible was gone.

One phrase surfaced before the system resumed denying that Cyberex meant anything to it: Cyberex node 13. That is a direct observed receipt. It is not an architecture diagram, a confession, or proof that every unanswered question belongs to one company.

The local result

The case closed locally, not universally. Prime’s permanent destruction is unconfirmed. No complete accounting established that every integrated customer was cleared. Custody of the Bradley Keene USB and the product samples remains unconfirmed. Cassia remains an affected, cooperative witness—not the culprit Team A refused to manufacture for convenience.

They stopped the pour, saved the investigator, and gave a compromised woman enough agency to shut the machine down herself. The coffee chain can draft its own press release.

02 / Exhibits & observations

What the file can prove.

Collected property, reviewed records and field observations are labeled separately. Where available, the original player handout appears beneath the filed summary. Custody is not inferred from a picture.

AFP-13-0727 cartridgeSample preserved; final custody unconfirmedINSPECT +

EXHIBIT A / Sample preserved; final custody unconfirmed

FP-13-0727 cartridge

Beatrice preserved a sample from the additive cartridge without destroying it. Final custody of the cartridge and sample is not recorded.

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Excerpt from Foundry evidence log · PR003-01

Description

Sealed additive cartridge, recovered from the AetherJuice dispenser at Forge Fitness.

Contents

Iridescent particulate suspended in a clear carrier medium. Trade name “aetherdust.”

Lot number

FP-13-0727

Service address

Listed. Does not match any operating Aetherbrew location.

Internal component

Small adaptive module, stamped CYBEREX ADAPTIVE WELLNESS.

DML registration

None. No valid registration number anywhere on the unit.

The original log’s “cartridge retained” status is a handout entry; the field record above tracks what the team’s actual handling established.

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FChannel 9 opening reportPublic broadcast shown at MMIINSPECT +

EXHIBIT F / Public broadcast viewed at intake

Channel 9 opening report

Sqounk opened Team A's case with Channel 9 footage of the Forge Fitness fight and its twenty-three arrests. This still is the Foundry broadcast handout, not a claimed copy of the full video.

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01 / The case record

An arch over a wave

Sigil Margos returned from a concert alive, breathing, and absent. Dante found no conventional neurological injury. On her wrist the investigators saw a dark stamp: an arch above a wave. The mark sent Team B through the city's nightlife, from conversations with former guards to Roxy's lead toward Gruk's after-party at the Hatch.

Journalist Cassandare Marshal recognized the stamp and connected the private concert circuit to missing people in the Spillway. Gruk's footage showed a promoter, distributed stamps, eight phones buzzing at once, and guests leaving in pairs. The promoter was Renn Orlo of Mystic Weaves Records; the venue was the Ossian. Trust, evidence and a handful of conversations got the team further than a badge alone.

The well beneath the music

Beneath the venue, sound fell away around a purple-lit Numen well. Team B fought through guards and found Drek Vasily alive. He supplied an old staff-entry procedure and a stamped guest list. Sheridan's comparison with public records revealed a selection pattern: invitees whose lost time might go unnoticed. A legal notice from Mystic Weaves followed. The investigators preserved it, built their access plan and returned for the Saturday performance, calling Elise in to face the threat below the stage.

Caspian used the aqueduct's water, acoustics and sound system to bind the crowd. Team B moved through enthralled attendees without treating them as acceptable losses, worked the venue systems, and cut the music. The charm broke; the civilians fell free rather than continuing to serve him. Caspian died. The stage ruptured, revealing a presence tethered to him that withdrew into the well when he fell. The team recovered Caspian's bass guitar. The crowd survived, and Team B caused no civilian injuries. Yet Sigil remained alive and emptied out, with no restoration method found. The entity below the stage had recognized Dante; its meaning remained unknown. This operation ended. Its consequences did not.

02 / Exhibits & observations

What the file can prove.

Collected property, reviewed records and field observations are labeled separately. Where available, the original player handout appears beneath the filed summary. Custody is not inferred from a picture.

AArch-over-wave stampObserved on Sigil; original player handoutINSPECT +

EXHIBIT A / Observed on Sigil; illustration available in vault

Arch-over-wave stamp

The entry mark gave the investigators a venue lead. The handout illustration below shows the mark presented in Foundry; no photograph was seized.

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Original Foundry handout · UV-002

Deep blue-black ink. An arch over a wave. Whatever venue this belongs to, it isn't listed anywhere.

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DMystic Weaves letterReceived legal noticeINSPECT +

EXHIBIT D / Received legal notice

Mystic Weaves letter

The demand to stop inquiries was preserved; it was not treated as a confession.

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01 / The case record

When the finish stopped being a finish

Professional wrestling is controlled violence. The performers agree where the danger begins, where it ends, and who is meant to leave with the belt. Maria DeSantos, the N.R.W. promoter known as La Calavera, brought in MMI when champion El Soberano stopped honoring that agreement. She reported refused losses and real injuries. In her assessment, the change followed a mask he had acquired about two months earlier.

Those earlier injuries are the client's account; this file includes no medical records or statements from the injured wrestlers. Team B could assess the champion in person. Backstage, El Soberano called the mask “part of me,” said the show never ended, and threatened the investigators ahead of their match. His fixation was plain. The mask's mechanism was not.

DeSantos proposed an answer that worked within the promotion's rules: defeat him publicly. Team B accepted a no-holds-barred steel-cage match against the champion and his associates. Ariel Waters entered as the designated challenger. Dante Cheeks, Michael Mousington, and Sheridan Cross entered with her.

A fall against the champion's side

Mousington turned the audience into a tactical advantage. Sheridan held El Muro, who swelled dramatically before a baton strike returned him to his earlier proportions. Ariel kept El Soberano occupied and stopped him from breaking the decisive count. Dante held La Llave in a figure-four leg lock, used a concealed stun baton, and pinned her.

One. Two. Three. Under the team-match terms, that fall cost El Soberano the title. Dante secured the pin; Ariel became the public N.R.W. Champion.

The object changed hands

Rios acknowledged the defeat and removed the mask voluntarily. He handed it to Ariel with the words, “It wants you now.” His statement records what he believed or wanted her to believe. It does not prove where the mask came from.

Ariel first tried to store the mask. The hand holding it then struck Rios hard enough to knock him unconscious. The movement appeared involuntary, but the available record does not establish its cause. Ariel later wore the mask and accepted a champion's contract from DeSantos.

The immediate pattern of harm ended. Ariel retains the title and the mask; neither entered MMI evidence custody. Its active power is presently dormant. Dormant does not mean harmless, understood, or cleared. The conditions under which it chooses a bearer remain unresolved. The belt changed hands. The liability did not.

02 / Exhibits & observations

What the file can prove.

Collected property, reviewed records and field observations are labeled separately. Where available, the original player handout appears beneath the filed summary. Custody is not inferred from a picture.

01 / The case record

The overnight assignment

Team A checked into Manhattan's Grand Astoria expecting observation and structural stabilization work. Chance arrived as a junior operative. The bellhop handed them a sixth-floor suite. Elise found the lobby plants cold, muffled and unhappy; Thornclaw sensed a heavy Numen pressure that did not fit an ordinary haunting report.

Chance brought out High Card, Hard Truth. The team played, compared observations and chose what to disclose. Then the game's forfeits became suspiciously specific to places in the hotel. Hallways shifted. Knocks answered knocks. An elevator loop carried them toward an unlisted thirteenth floor. Allison saw a child in an old-fashioned nightgown. The team treated her as a lead, not a monster to be cleared.

The room they were meant to avoid

An alarm emptied the building. The bellhop's story pointed them back upstairs; in a darkened passage, the child warned Allison they were in the wrong room. She led them toward the true center of the disturbance. Hari Mannus and Elena Marlow were conducting a stabilization ritual there. Nicole, the resident child spirit, had been trying to keep the investigators out of their active work. The halls, lights and increasingly uncanny card prompts were bleed-through from a damaged connection enchantment.

The assignment's other purpose emerged only at the end. The hotel's magic responded to genuine connection. By taking turns with risks, listening, comparing notes, and working together rather than against the child, Team A supplied a human element to the ritual. Elena's completion report found stabilization successful, structural resonance normal, spectral activity at baseline, civilian exposure minimal, and team cohesion satisfactory. Nobody was hurt or possessed; no property needed breaking. Nicole remained at the Astoria. The bellhop remained a question without a filed answer.

02 / Exhibits & observations

What the file can prove.

Collected property, reviewed records and field observations are labeled separately. Where available, the original player handout appears beneath the filed summary. Custody is not inferred from a picture.