Impossible to Foretell

Chapter 4: Sensing the Pattern

I looked through my meticulous notes. Whenever I go through scrolls or intel, I always take great notes so that I can keep my thoughts in order, and today was no different. It was a long chart with the names of every single kidnapped person, their age, general appearance, where they were taken from, the date that they were taken, and their job. It was a very long chart seeing as seventy-four kidnappings had been reported, and we had no idea about any victims who's disappearances hadn't been noted. Just by glancing at the list, there were a few patterns that jumped out at me. The vast majority of all the kidnapped people were female, and the only time that a male captive was taken was with a group a females as well. I assumed that this meant that they were targeting women and would only kidnap a man if he got in the way or was a witness. Especially since there had been no witnesses reported for any of the incidents. I scanned down the column with their ages seeing that the majority of them were in their twenties, but there was one girl who was twelve, the youngest by far. Anzu Midoriki. I pulled out her personal scroll to see a picture of a young girl with soft, orange eyes and blonde hair that curled tightly around her face. There was a thick spread of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and she seemed to be laughing. Anger curled tightly in the pit of my stomach as I looked at her innocent face and thought about how someone could kidnap someone so helpless and young. I pulled open the rest of her scroll and started to read it.

Anzu Midoriki

Age: 12

Birthday: May 9th

Status: Civilian orphan

Family: N/A

Height: 5" 2'

Distinguishing features: Orange eyes, blonde hair, freckles

Reported kidnapped 07250368

Today was the thirty-first so by looking at the "25" in the date that meant that she had been missing for six days now. My eyes lingered over the word "orphan." I created a new column on my chart and went through all of the scrolls again, marking if they were orphans or not. I was surprised that more than half of the kidnapped women, and the vast majority of the younger ones, were orphans as well. It was probably much easier to target orphans. They didn't have any family to make a fuss when they went missing.

I picked up some the scrolls of the non-orphans and started to look through the family sections. All of them had little to no living family, and the family members that they did have either lived far away, were estranged, or lived in some sort of facility. These were not random kidnappings. Each target was carefully chosen. There were a few exceptions here and there, but I guessed that those were the people who got in the way, witnesses.

Gathering up all of my notes, I drafted a hasty report. I needed to relay my findings.