"Well," began Ms. Studney, leaning forward in her chair, "now that we've gotten that taken care of, let's get on with why we're all here."
She reached out and pressed a red button projected onto the surface of the debriefing room table. That button activated the room's custom AV suite, most of which, at least now that I had replaced most of the older parts, designed by me. The upgrade allowed for a, if you pardon the pun, more intuitive use of the room.
The lights dimmed, and the table's surface transitioned from black to the various files that Ms. Studney had collected for the debriefing. First, she called up a satellite image of downtown Auraria. Colfax and Broadway were immediately obvious, as was Cherry Creek and the South Platte. I-74 ran North-South along the west side of the image, with I-35 running along the southern edge, the Mousetrap marking the south-west corner. A window popped up over one of the buildings on Colfax, marking it as the First Jefferson Bank building.
"At 1217 today, APD received a silent alarm at the FJB building on the 900th block of East Colfax," Ms Studeny narrated as the satellite image zoomed in, evolving into a 3-D hologram of the building coming out of the table. It was ten stories high, and occupied the southeast corner of the intersection. The other buildings around it were shown on the map that now occupied the surface of the table, but only the FJB projected above it. "Within five minutes five more calls, three from inside the building itself, were received. None of the calls made mention of any Paranormal activity, so the APD contacted BARCOG," which she pronounced as Bar Cog. "We were the on-call team for today, so at 1225, the four of you were called down to my office for a briefing."
I hadn't noticed it before, but as she mentioned the times, subtle changed occurred with the hologram. I was impressed, most of the time she didn't animate the hologram during the debrief. She must of gotten my memo about the new software upgrade I did last week.
"By 1235," and as she mentioned the time, a holographic helicopter appeared, hovering a scale three hundred meters above the street, "we had arrived on scene. Insertion was executed per SOP." Five holographic windows opened in mid-air above the table, with extensions pointing to where their vantage point was. Four of them were ours, and fifth being the belly camera of the helicopter.
Four holographic figures jumped from the helicopter. The four of us around the table all 'oohed' softly as we watched our holographic selves free-fall towards the alley pavement, and the surface of the debriefing room table.
The hologram then zoomed in once again, showing the four of us stop two scale meters above the alley pavement, then drop softly to the ground. The belly camera window winked out of the hologram as the helicopter was cropped by the ceiling.
The windows continued to play the full-color video feeds from our uniform mounted cameras as our holographic selves moved on the surface of the table.
"Unfortunately, that's when SOP was thrown out the window, it appears," she chided. The playback paused. It showed me pointing to the holographic representation of the bank and the storage room behind the alley wall. "Breaking established protocol, the Lead opted to cause damage, luckily not damaging the stability of the building."
"Won't insurance cover it?" I asked.
"Yes," she replied curtly, "but that's not the point. You broke protocol by not using your team's abilities."
"Jessica's teleport is limited to two other people, forcing her to potentially fatigue herself prior to encountering the hostile targets, limiting the team's effectiveness in combat, even with normal humans."
"Yes, but you shouldn't have gone through a wall."
"Did it damage the stability of the structure?"
"No."
"Did the bank have insurance to cover it, or would ARCOG have covered it?"
"Yes, on both counts."
"Exactly. I figured that was the easiest way in. Plus, it played to the team's strengths."
"Okay, but next time, could you please make a smaller hole?" she asked.
"My bad," remarked James, an ounce of sincerity mixed in with a pound of sarcasm.
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