City of Mist

OOC: Each of your characters knows a young woman named Emily Craig. Emily is a Sociology major at the university. She's a sophomore and hasn't had the best luck of making friends. She's also gone missing. None of her friends or family has seen her in three days, and they're getting worried. She's not someone who'd just disappear.

For each of your replies, please tell me the following.

1. How do you know Emily? Is she a friend, a fellow student, your roommate, a former girlfriend, a relative, a client? Whatever you like, but you do know her.
2. How did you find out Emily was missing?
3. Establish some detail about Emily. That detail is true. I will totally run with it. Want to say she has a prosthetic limb? Groovy. Want to say she had weird succubus powers? Well, okay then. Want to say she has a pet Pekinese that loves her and hates everyone else? Groovy. Just establish something about Emily you'd find interesting.
4. What are you doing about her disappearance?

5th class? That implies Victoria isn't a licensed Midwife yet, unless she's teaching. If she's not licensed, she doesn't have unfettered access to the maternity ward. Is Victoria a midwife instructor? Perhaps this is a class she's teaching for people interested in midwifery and Emily was one of her students?

Emily lived in Wilde Hall, which was a coed dorm largely populated with humanities majors. Theatre, English, Soft Sciences, and the like. It was fairly notorious on campus for drama. Almost as if all the young people living in the dorm were part of a CW drama. It was a complicated web of shifting social and sexual dynamics, with rampant infidelity, scheming, backstabbing, and vendettas. Curiously, not much violence. Threats, sure, but not much actual violence. It, like all buildings on campus, was secure, but it wouldn't be difficult to ghost into the building by following someone else who scanned their student ID. One could probably find a door propped open with a stone, or just knock and asked to be let in. Secure buildings on campus usually weren't.

Victoria didn't have a lot of luck at the maternity ward. Emily had only recently started the Midwifery class, so just hadn't spent much time with actual pregnant women.

However, before she gave up, she came across Collen Mickelson. Colleen was a professional surrogate, highly sought after because of her northern European heritage and strong bone structure. She was beautiful and very, very pregnant.

"Yes, I remember Emily. Sweet girl. Asked me all about the company that brokers my deals, Global Genetics. I think the poor girl was interested in my career, but I tried to warn her off it. She's sweet and smart, but people looking for surrogates want someone … well, beautiful. Even if you're hosting one of their eggs. Emily is just too mousy for people to pick her, you know?"

Blaise was able, perhaps because doing so could potentially cause chaos and strife, to find Emily's room. He picked the lock, although one might wonder why a rich kid politician would learn how to pick a long, and slipped inside before he was noticed... maybe. Inside was the dorm's common living area. It was a bit of a mess. Paper trash, plastic bottles and takeout containers scattered about a central, nondescript couch. A television and game console was propped on some milk crates.

Three doors led from the room. One was open and led to the bathroom, which was considerably neater and showed a clear demarcation between the roommates. There was a plastic caddy with a few personal care items, carefully organized, then the rest of the room had makeups, lotions, and hair products haphazardly scattered everywhere.

The second door had a large poster of Taylor Swift in her 'Bad Blood' outfit. The other door had a whiteboard. Upon the whiteboard was written:

Down in the lobby, Emily's roommate, having conveniently been summoned away from the room that someone was breaking into, walked into the lobby looking around for... she blinked at Miss Ash' outfit and walked over to her. "I... hello? Are you here about Emily? I'm Carla."

"Probably. Global Genetics has a webpage. I contacted them by email, but they've got other contact information, including an 800 number. If she wanted to get ahold of them, she could, regardless of anything I might say." The birth mother to be shrugged a bit, "I couldn't tell you what was in the girl's head. That's between her and god."

There was another lock to pick, but since we've already established that Blaise knows how, it posed little risk.

Emily's room was largely unremarkable. There was no computer, no tablets, no mobile phones, although there was a charger cord plugged into the wall. Micro SD charger, specifically. There were a fair number of books on the shelf next to her desk, most from her classes. There wasn't a backpack in the room.

The room was sparsely decorated and very orderly. There was a desk calendar on her desk with a 'dog shaming' theme. The calendar was still on the page from 4 days ago.

It didn't appear that the calendar had any personalizations on it. It was the desk 'cube' style, where each day had it's own page one would peel off to reveal the next day.

The bookshelf wasn't fruitful. It had very little of personal import. A little pop-vinyl figure of Velma Dinkley, and that was it besides books. Joseph Campbell, Harry Potter, Mythology, Stephen King...

Under her mattress, he found her vibrator along with a diary. The diary was locked, but the lock was child's play. Inside, the diary was... coded? It was like it was written in some sort of pictogram. At least most of it was. The last page, dated 5 days ago, stated simply:

"Well, it's nice to meet you... Miss? I'm sorry, it just feels like I'm talking to a pallette swapped Carmen San Diego." Carla looked at the card, shrugged, and tucked it into her back pocket, "Still, anything that can help find Emily. I'm worried about her."

"Yeah, the last time I saw her was like Monday morning, before class, but she wasn't herself. She'd been weird all weekend. Scared, anxious, spooked. I tried to ask her what was wrong, but she just kept telling me 'Nothing's wrong,' but she said it in the way that you know something's wrong, they just aren't ready to tell you." The black girl shrugged, "I dunno. I just gave her space, figured she'd tell me when she was ready."

"Then, on Monday, she's all happy and relaxed. I mean, it was weird. She's never like bubbly. It was like, and you'll need to pardon me, but it was like she'd gotten a really good dicking down the night before. The sort of sex that pops your back, you know?" She rubbed the back of her neck, "Trick is, Emily is, as far as I ever knew, asexual. Never showed an interest in guys or girls. I just have a bad feeling, like she got caught up with something. Especially since she hasn't been to class all week."

The pregnant woman /clearly/ didn't get the Bilbah reference, but probably though she'd just misheard whatever Victoria was trying to say. She waved, "Thanks for visiting," as the midwife left.


Regardless of how Victoria contacted Global Genetics, she'd get the same answer. 'We're sorry. We cannot, for confidentiality reasons, give out any information on our clients, or even if someone is our client. I'm sure you understand. However, if you'd like to schedule a consultation, we'd be happy to discuss your Genetic Future.'


Emily's classwork was accurate, but demonstrated no real passion. She did the work, did it well, but there was no personality, no spark. And there was no real change in quality. No trend beyond a general sense that she wasn't all that invested in the class.

Mr. Jenkins arched an eyebrow at the young woman standing before him. "I am aware of Emily, yes, although she hasn't been to class all week. Who are you, why do you want to see her work, and do you know why Emily hasn't been coming to class?" Mr. Jenkins was a white man in his mid forties with a mustache and black hair that had already started turning salt and pepper. He was curiously still pretty fit, and was know to ride his bike to and from work.

Carla looked pretty uncomfortable. "Emily didn't like to talk about her home life, but apparently, her mom raised her alone and passed away from cancer a few years back. It was really sad, because Emily had found an experimental treatment, but they couldn't find a way to pay for it. It really broke her up. She didn't really get close to anyone after that. I tried to get her out there, but she was always doing her own thing."

Shaking her head, Carla answered, "She really didn't have much money. She had a work study in the sociology department. Some sort of data mining, I think. It sounded boring. She'd hit up thrift stores and goodwill for clothes. I would buy her undies for the holidays. She was a great roommate. She'd help with homework, never fussed if I had a guy over. I'm really worried about her."

Miss Ash spotted the rich guy moving through the lobby toward an exit. He was conspicuously nondescript.

"I suppose not." Carla shrugged a bit. "Of course, her door is locked. I had the RA come by just to check she wasn't in there. I'm not sure how much you can get out of the common room."

If Miss wanted, Carla would escort her up to the dorm room and let her look around.

There was someone at the RA's desk, but they weren't really paying attention to anything going on in the lobby. They were either texting or playing a game on their phone while listening to their headphones.

"Running out of what?" The girl replied, not really sure what Miss meant. As she took Miss upstairs to the room that was described earlier in thread, she said, "If you need, I could go see if my RA is in."

"Midwifery?" The professor replied in a surprised tone, eyebrows arching. He accepted the hand and gave it a shake, clearly regarding her. "You strike me as young for a midwife, not to mention an instructor."

He shook his head, "Regardless, it is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Booth. I am uncertain what you hope to find in her work, but I can give you access to the drive I store the student's assignments in, so long as your instructor credentials are up to date."

The professor did a bit of a doubletake, noticing the deliberate crossing and recrossing of the legs. Arching an eyebrow, he tilted his head to the side and regarded her levelly. "Are you flirting with me, Miss Booth? I typically find with a young woman who appears less than half my age is flirting with me, it's a deliberate choice. Are you trying to make me more pliant, or are you legitimately interested in older men? Do try to answer honestly. I've had a great deal of experience determining when someone is trying to lie to me."

"You're avoiding my questions, Ms. Booth, which is an answer in its own fashion, I suppose." He got out his laptop from a case beside his desk and started it up. Quickly, he checked her credentials, then gave her access to the drive he stored the student's work on. It was a shared drive, so the department grad students could grade them. "There, I've given you access to the folder with her graded homework. You should be receiving an email momentarily with the link."

"I think, you might be a bit young for me, Miss Booth. I prefer my women a bit more seasoned. I doubt the two of us could have a good dinner conversation. Not to imply I feel you're intellectually inferior. We simply have different life experiences." Perhaps more similar than the professor believed. Not that he'd know that.

"Still, if you want to try to prove me wrong, I'm not opposed to taking risks." He wrote his cell number on the back of a business card and slid it across the desk to her. I do hope you find the girl. She was a good student."

At this time of day, the Sociology Head didn't have office hours, but Blaise would see another office open and lit. There were voices coming from inside, and if he explored, he'd find Victoria speaking to one of the sociology professors.