Interlude: Number Man

The Number Man enjoyed data. This was entirely separate from the way that data allowed him to do his duty to Cauldron, and by extension the world(s) – he found a sense of meaning in the flows of data. So long as the data was accurate, and Cauldron's very often was, there was a purity of essence to numbers and statistics that he had found lacking in his life before his recruitment.

Data didn't lie, so long as it was accurate. It could be misinterpreted, by fools or charlatans, but it never lied...and he was neither of those. All together, this was why he occasionally picked through reports even during his time off – if it was enjoyable and lowered stress, then it still could be counted as downtime. So, occasionally, he paced in his office, going over reports and data that weren't essential to Cauldron's operation or finances. The difference between these times and his ordinary work was negligible to the others, but it was an important distinction in his own mind.

Even so, he could admit that his current situation felt a bit unhinged when looked at from an outside perspective. For the past week, he had been searching, tracking, and gathering data on the same subject, attempting to put it together. Numbers had become both his work and his life, and he could track them in moments what would take ordinary men days or weeks. It took him longer to write reports on what he learned from the shifts in global economy and statistics than it did for him to understand them.

This, though.

This eluded him still. It had started simply – the Namibian economy had suddenly broken in twain, and then the effects had rippled out across Africa far faster than such shifts should have normally occurred. A few minutes research had led him to the simple conclusion that someone had removed a major stabilizing influence in the region – and there was only one stabilizing influence of that magnitude on the African continent.

Moord Nag was dead, or otherwise removed from play, then. This was a mild irritation, considering how useful she had been in keeping things stable with her iron hold over the African regions...but more concerning was that they'd projected her to remain for quite some time. She was well-entrenched in the area, after all. He set the information aside, prepared a report for the others, and continued with his work.

It was another day before he noticed. Oddly specific transaction amounts that caught his eye, only for him to trace the money back to spoils from the African collapse. Emigration and immigration patterns that didn't match what he'd originally projected from the region, even after Moord Nag's fall. Death tolls scrambled across regions, completely out of sync with what both Parahuman and military intelligence had led him to believe.

On their own, each was a small ripple in the pond. For any other individual, they would have been noted as odd and subsequently accepted as a consequence of Moord Nag's death.

But he had a longer, more far-away view of things. He saw the way the individual ripples crashed together and failed to interact in the way that they should. Emigration should be higher in areas with larger death tolls as a simple consequence of widespread violence – and it wasn't, instead people flowed from peaceful regions into more dangerous ones. Money found its way to organizations with no ties to the regions whatsoever by paths that made no sense.

So he'd spent a week compiling each oddity. Logging them, one by one, watching for the patterns that must be present. After the second day, he had stopped investigating during his "official" hours, out of a seed of doubt that anything would come of it.

Yet, it bothered him. The idea that it was truly chaotic, that there wasn't some larger pattern to identify.

Thus, he had begun his own personal investigation. And, in the last twenty-four hours, no new oddities had appeared. Perhaps whatever had caused them had moved on...or its purpose was simply complete.

He looked over his notes with a critical eye, wondering where the patterns would fall, and found nothing. He sighed, closing his eyes for a moment and allowing his focus to wander before he snapped it back with fresh eyes. He was missing something, and that was unacceptable.

Looking at the numbers individually produced no results. Looking at the numbers connected produced no results. So he looked at them as a whole.

And his eyes widened slightly.

It was a cipher. A ciphered message hidden in such obscure patterns and places that it was insane. Nobody could reasonably be expected to discover this. Even others with access to his level of data, without the assistance of his power, would have failed – it was a simple fact, rather than arrogance.

Which implied two things. Someone knew who he was and what he did...and had intended for him to find this message.

In the end, he worked late into the night to decipher it and arrange it.

Code:

kurt harbinger cauldron meeting 5 5 1147 door to 1145 bakersfeld tallahassee fortuna cannot see the end