Once she was in the clear and back in her own skin, she retraced her path back, stopping by the donut shop she passed earlier as she almost surely wouldn’t be back in time for the hotel’s breakfast. A few hours after her foray into the Starlight apartment complex, Tamara was back in her hotel room with her feet on the table and a donut in her hand, finishing up the Charity donations misappropriation story and getting it ready to be filed. She tried to imagine the expression on Mr. Church’s face when the guard told him someone’s made off with such question-raising pictures, and the image warmed her heart. Those photos alone could’ve caused quite the headache, but combined with the materials her colleague originally working on this had gathered over the past eight months before gallbladder surgery complications put him out of work, she imagined the fallout from this would be much worse. Even if it would be at least a week before the story got published, she couldn’t think of any excuse Church could cook up that would hold any water. Human beings generally did not take kindly to someone messing with their money.

With this sudden, though far from unwelcome bit of work out of the way, she could redirect her focus back to the reason she was back in this city. Of course finding Parahumans and getting them to talk to her to get their side of things wouldn’t be as easy as opening a shitty lock and getting past a blinded mall cop, since parahumans were all either in a para camp, blissfully unaware of their state or hiding it like she was. Sure, there was the Church of Para, but if even half of what she could dig up about it was true, she’d feel safer punching a bear while wrapped in bacon than intentionally contacting that group.

Fortunately, there were other vectors of approach. She opened a different browser with several recent articles related to parahumans. Increase in funding for para camps, a couple of muggings and robberies, a blown up donut shop… Unfortunately, it wasn’t much to go on, and spread out all across the city. With a sigh, she opened another tab, looking for rental vehicles. Probably a motorbike to get through heavy traffic more easily. She turned the TV on to provide some background noise, currently showing some wannabe comedy so awful one could sprain forehead muscles from cringing.

Minutes later, the room fell into silence. At first she thought the programme interruption was due to a malfunction or an emergency broadcast, but then the same happened to her computer. [color=#44BFFF]”Co do cholery?”[/color] Tam jumped in her seat when the voice spoke, standing up as quickly as she was able to and turned around to face the empty room. To placate her panic, she started a full system scan with her laptop’s antivirus, switched off the TV, retrieved her equipment, sidearm and backpack from the bedroom and headed out, double-checking that the door was locked. She had places to be and questions to ask. As always, she stopped by the reception desk to greet the person working there. The hotel employees thought she was just being nice. They’d be surprised if they knew.