Kelvin was being cautious, but he didn't need to. No one was following him around. Those he suspected of following him had other things to do.
An hour after he left, Pauli returned to pick up his ant. He was not happy that he couldn't use it to find Kelvin's home and discover other things about him.
He got back into his car with a sullen expression. His mood didn't get better when Mel called him.
She said, "I see that the surveillance failed. That's unfortunate."
He asked, "Did he notice it or was it a fluke?"
She replied with a tone of finality, "It doesn't matter. He interfered with the surveillance, so it must be stopped. Those are the rules. We can't risk anymore."
He said with irritation, "I know. I am just unreconcilled. Without any surveillance, we will have no leverage on him. He might not choose to join us, and we are terribly low on manpower."
"That's why I said it was unfortunate. Unless Thorin is willing to meet him, the best we can do is have you offer him goodies. Tempt him and woe him."
Pauli sighed. "I'll do my best."
Then he asked, "Did you find anything new about him?"
Mel replied with frustration, "There is nothing new and nothing useful yet. We can be certain that Riptide is not his real name. It didn't match his real name in the destiny towers."
"Also, according to our searches, he should be dead. Unless he has a twin brother who died or he is the same person who faked his death or is a different person that did surgery to look like the dead person or a shape-shifter who is using the dead person's identity."
"Those are the options for why he has that face in order of likelihood. We can basically cross out the last part since we already know his ability. I believe that he might be the twin brother or that he faked his death. We might be able to use that against him if we know for sure. So I am investigating to see which it is."
He and Mel talked about Riptide's true identity and other things about him for a long while. It is because they needed leverage on him.
This leverage could be something negative or something positive. It could be a secret of his to force him to work for them or a favor they can do for him to convince him to work for them.
It could be the carrot, the stick, or both approaches. But they need to have something they can use. Unfortunately, they are discovering confusing and sometimes contradicting information about him in their investigation. This is making them very cautious about how to deal with him.
As people who have access to a lot of information and have seen various possible things on the foreign battlefield, they know that all it takes to die is for them to commit one mistake.
They know the feeling of feeling small in a big world around terrifying predators. They remember the experience of treading carefully so as not to draw too much attention to themselves or anger someone they can't afford to anger.
They also know that real life is also like the foreign battlefield. The only difference is that the killing is muted and goes on in the background, not on the surface. So know that they have to be careful with how they handle things and interact, as death can come at any time.
That's why they have the rule that they will only try to spy on someone once and will stop immediately if the first attempt fails. It is a rule based on a lesson that they learned with blood.
Another rule they have is to keep things business and not make it personal. It is because things get messy when it becomes personal. And when it gets messy, the rules of engagement fly out the window, and the attention of powerful entities is drawn to the mess.
The appearance of these powerful entities can lead to a team wipe. So even though they are investigating Riptide, they know not to go too far. They also don't want to have to use force to convince him. Instead, try to lure him with benefits.
So they were very open to it when Kelvin asked them to help him find vulnerable people who have just awakened powerful abilities.
This request came five days after their meeting. Kelvin still wasn't interested in joining their cabal since he didn't trust them. But he was interested in using their information network to his advantage. So he decided to throw them a difficult puzzle and see if they could solve it.
He had texted Pauli, "You tested me, so I think that I should test you in return. I want you to help me find vulnerable targets that have just awakened powerful abilities so that I can kidnap them for research. If you can show that you are reliable, I will join your cabal. That is as long as I don't have to do anything and have the freedom to choose what I want to do."
Pauli texted back, "This is a very difficult task. This kind of information is not about the skill of finding information. It is about luck, how large the information network is, and how fast the system responds to the information."
"The information you want is not static information. It is time-sensitive, so it is a race against time. If you want a list of powerful individuals in the city, we can put one together for you. It might not be updated, and it might not contain every powerful individual as some might be hiding, but it is something that we can do with a certain level of assurance and completion."
"But getting information about individuals who just awakened is a race with other powerful corpos and information brokers. It is first come, first served. I don't think we are that fast and our network doesn't cover the whole city, so there is a lot we will miss."