A sulfurous odour filled the air, making Jared wrinkle his nose. It penetrated his nose without hesitation. If this had been the first time he had tried to taste it in the air, he might just have had himself a coughing fit, the sensation of his burning throat, not something that could be endured without preparation.

Yet as he looked over the camp of the dead, he was reminded of just how many times he had seen that very same sight. It might have been in different sizes, with different people, but the scenery very rarely changed when it came to the smell. There were only so many ways human flesh could be burnt, and Jared had seen most of them.

Skipping over a surprisingly whole body, Jared spent a moment looking over the corpse, just to make sure it was in fact a corpse. He had just entered the clearing itself, making it peculiar to see a body already at his feet. He guessed that some on the outskirts of the circle might have seen or heard the missile before it landed, able to run a few more steps away before it landed.

Checking the eyes and pulse, the officer was happy to find the body luckily dead. When he had heard that the missile used only barely had a kill-zone for the radius of the circle, Jared had been afraid that he would find bodies still alive. Those were always the worst. But, as the man looked over the unmoving corpses, he was glad that Cass’s information was accurate.

Speaking of that delicate flower… Jared couldn't help but sigh. She shouldn't have looked. The officer knew that he should have objected to her going out and searching for the encampment, knowing fully what procedures could be done if the numbers were higher than expected. Cass might have been in the job for over a year, but she had yet to fully see what the position had to offer. She hadn't experienced the horrors that would have to be accepted.

Maybe that was why she had been so adamant about checking out the camp herself, speaking about some child that needed to be found. Jared guessed that might have been the so-called human sacrifice. Since the altar had been exactly where the missile had been directly aimed at, Jared would be surprised if he even found the slightest hint of a child being present. Looking at the middle of the clearing, he could see everything there had been well and utterly destroyed. The grass had been uprooted, dirt throwing to the sides. When the snow finally began again, most of it having been destroyed from the sheer heat of the impact, Jared could see shrapnel and dirt making a layer on top of the white powder. It shined beautifully in the sun.

Bits and pieces of various objects littered the ground. Jared did his best not to stand on any of them, knowing exactly where some of them came from. But others… They were given a wide berth for a very different reason.

While Cass’s report might have had bias attached, she had clearly not been lying about the number of weapons there had been. Even when broken from the missile, there were enough chambers to really see how much there had been. And from how it looked… some had been carrying Incendiary grenades as well. Some had been activated during the initial strike, but there were a few on the ground that had yet to be sprung.

Jared sighed, taking out one of the detectors that had been required to bring with him. It was a screen of sorts that could be held, transparent enough to see through. It was designed to be used as a more direct scanner of sorts, able to detect grenades and any other incendiary weapons from a distance.

If not for the scanner, it would have been like walking through an active minefield. There was no way the officer would willingly interact with broken grenades that were able to blow at the slightest touch. And with the fact that some of them were likely still hanging onto the bodies of the dead, bodies that Jared was obligated to thoroughly search for anything of note, the officer clearly had his work cut out for him.

At least they were all adults. Every single one of them was over the age of twenty. Maybe even thirty. Jared wasn't really sure, his own age making it increasingly harder to see the difference. Yet another symptom of ageing that he wouldn't have minded not having. The mind that had once been so sharp was losing its edge with use. He could only guess at the time where it would be dull.

Jared shook his head, throwing himself out of what would have been an eternity spent reminiscing about the past. He was out on a mission, a task that needed to be completed within the day, and there was no time for breaks to begin with. He had gone through an entire MRE on his way in the car, so there was no chance of him lacking the energy. The only thing he needed was willpower.

And so it started right up. Taking the scanner in hand, he went through the first corpse of the day. It lay still in the snow, lying on its stomach. Red stains surrounded it, likely made from projectiles having penetrated its body. Or… Jared supposed he should have called the corpse a she. He needed to remember doing that, lest he really would disassociate from the work before him.

Seeing no alerts on the scan, he went down on his knees and flipped the dead woman over and made her lie on her back instead. The cold had stopped the worst of the effects of death, but the skin was clearly still being affected by the snow. Spots were starting to appear. It wasn't as extreme as on a living body, but frostbite had clearly still set in. A gruesome site to be sure, but not one that Jared even flinched at.

He searched the pockets, going through the sides for any hidden weapons. A small knife was in one of the sleeves, a taser on the thigh, and a revolver was hidden on the back. Whoever this was, they had been more than prepared to be disarmed. Jared grew mildly curious of the person's history to the point where he almost wanted to dig a little deeper.

Then Jared remembered that he was searching through the personal belongings of a corpse, and his curiosity deflated the slightest bit. Scanning her facial features and the teeth, the officer ran a scan through the system, searching for any identities in the country that fit the bill. Nobody came up. The woman was without identity, likely a refugee from another country entirely. Jared wasn't too surprised. The one they followed had been in many different places. It made sense that he had picked a few up along the way.

‘The traps have been disarmed,’ came in from the entity that Jared had hoped would fail in their task. It was peculiar that his mood could fall even further than it already had. ‘Would you like for me to bring the car to your location?’

Along with the process of clean-up and identification of the corpses, Jared had been instructed to disarm any and all traps that could be found leading up to the encampment. As had been reported by Cassandra, there were a lot of them, with some having possibly lethal attacks if triggered. Since he had luckily had an expendable resource at hand, he had sent his automation over to disarm them. That it would succeed in such a short time… Jared did nothing but clench his fast in mild frustration. Getting angry would do nothing. He was in an active minefield. Anger would only lead to him making mistakes.

‘No. Go wait in the car,’ Jared ordered. He got no response, but the GPS on the construct told him all he needed to know. There was not a chance he would let that thing drive around. The damage that could come from it… almost made him shiver. No way would he be getting the blame from that.

Looking back to the encampment, Jared sighed, before getting into work mode once again. The actual process was easy enough. Scan the ground where he walked until he came to a corpse, scan that instead to make sure that there wasn't anything that could make him sneeze too loudly, search through the corpse's former belongings, and finally try to identify the face and dental records.

Surprisingly enough, there were a few successes on that last front. It seemed that the older man had recruited a good ten of them a decade back, all done front to back. They had even formerly been in the same general area. Jared had made himself chuckle a bit at that, musing to himself just what kind of sales techniques had been used.

Heroin, maybe. Most of them had been extreme drug users, some of the people have a criminal record for aggravated assault. There was even a murder.

Jared had found it hard to believe that those people were all drug users, honestly. Most of them hadn't had as much as a single scar, nor any of the normal hints that ticked him off about drug users. None of the weight loss, none of the broken teeth, and none of the veins showing. They all looked healthy and well, and some of them even seemed younger than their years would hint at.

As he got further into the clearing, however… The officer saw less success in the identification of the corpses. He even had it hard finding complete enough bodies to identify. Lethal wounds littered a lot of the faces. That did make sense, weirdly enough.

From the pictures of the altar that had been sent, the missile had it in at the height of the waist. When that was mixed with everybody having enough time to look up at it, and them being down on their knees, most of the blast would have hit the cultists face first. Jared… was not happy about having evidence for this theory.

The faces couldn't be seen as what the name hinted at. The features were destroyed, long pieces of torn flesh having been ripped out. Legs had been ripped off, arms had been fractured, and the upper body had been shredded with metal. Blood littered the ground in spurts, showing off exactly where each person had been. Jared couldn't say he felt much at the sight at that point. His mind had turned off his reactions.

It was all just a job. Scanning, searching, identifying. The last part was redundant at that point, but he did it nonetheless. There were no successes.

As the last phase of clean-up began, the bodies were removed from their resting places, put in a big pile down the road. Jared then went around activating any piece of incendiary device that hadn't blown up. They weren't allowed to leave them there as they were, but neither were they able to bring them back. There were likely defects, making the safest decision to activate them from a distance.

There had to have been over a hundred of the bastards. Jared idly wondered just what they had planned to use them for. But he didn't wonder for long, going back to work not long after. He was the only one doing it, and there was no real chance of finishing before the day was over, if he didn't pick up his pace.