[hr][b][h1][color=d5dbdb]Samantha Cole[/color][/h1][/b][hr][hr]
[i][u]Old Raygate, Prince Ed-Field.[/u][/i]

Sam hastily reviewed her mental checklist. Had she done everything properly? Had she masked her trail sufficiently that her would-be client couldn't be linked back to her? Blacking out emergency systems meant blocking the interference of the authorities. The only reason to do that at a public event was a little higher on the list of crimes than Sam wanted to think about.

But it wasn't that innocent lives were in danger. That neuron did not fire, for some reason. Her concern was being connected to what she became increasingly suspicious was some kind of attack on the rally. That was the one and only reason she could think of that would necessitate squelching the cops and EMTs. If you don't want your wrench to fall off the table, you don't put it near the edge. If you don't want to be stopped from killing folks, you don't allow the chance for interference.

[i]"I definitely scrambled the IP,"[/i] Sam reassured herself. She pulled the battery from her tablet and triggered the quick-release tab she'd installed into the side of its casing, and the back hinged away to reveal its inner-workings. [i]"GPS is still disabled, no power going to the camera..."[/i]

She quickly took inventory of her other countermeasures. The battery meter woven into the inside breast of her hoodie still registered a decent charge, so she clicked on the camera baffler in her hood. Digital cameras were the best thing ever to happen to criminals and delinquents; infra-red light showed up as white light on nearly every model, save for those with a purpose-built IR filter, and those systems were useless for night-time recording anyway. The best they'd get was black clothing and a white dot where her face should have been.

Sam avoided the busier streets as she made her way through toward the edge of Old Raygate. It was slow going, and she couldn't help but calculate how much faster it would have been if she could have hitched. But there was no way of knowing whether they were on to her yet, so that option was flatlined before it even presented itself.

[i]"They..."[/i] Sam chided herself. [i]"Which 'they'?"[/i]

To pass the time, she decided to get acquainted with the man who'd asked her to commit at least three felonies in one afternoon. Unlike the modded tablet, this phone was disposable; meant for emergencies in which prolonged online activity might compromise her security. She logged in to one of the local transmitter towers' computer systems and redirected the signal to a Chinese place over in Courtbridge.

Sam's passive pout transformed into a full-fledged scowl when her investigations turned up a burn phone and a falsified signal trail. If she'd IDed the man right away, maybe there would have been a chance, but now that the trail had gone cold...

[i]"Asshole probably had an IC team..."[/i]

The more she poked and prodded, the more she realized she wasn't getting anywhere; and that, in itself, told her plenty. She reached the inarguable conclusion that this man was not working alone, and that he probably answered to forces she had no intention of facing off with. Sam had already resolved to clear out, but now? Now, she was facing the prospect of being declared an enemy of the state, if she couldn't scrub any evidence of that conversation. She secretly hoped that a man smart enough to use a burn phone was also smart enough to employ at least some form of countermeasures against recording devices.

At least she had remembered to engage the camera baffler when he called. Regardless of whether the phone's camera had been working, somebody on the level she was thinking of could have used any surveillance systems in the area to bypass that little trick.

The plan, now, was to lay low and wait to find out what happened at Havenfield.