Somewhere in Chicago

"What the fuck dude, you work way too hard!"
Broody opened another bottle of Miller and poured the cheap beverage down his throat. He watched his friend filling his backpack with notepads, extra batteries, pencils and all the other crap he was carrying around all the time.
"Its Saturday night for crying out loud, you should roll with us tonight instead of being out doing...whatever the hell it is you do." Beanie walked over to the bookshelf to see if his drone was charged yet, then he turned to the door.
"No rest for the wicked" Beanie said, as he smiled while putting on his helmet and checking his go pro battery level. Before leaving the student apartment he grabbed his 69' crusader, the skateboard was among his most prized possessions mainly because it was his only form of transport. Slipping in his ear piece and plugging it into his phone, he turned to Broody giving him a half hearted wave as he walked out the door.
"See you tomorrow, don't wait up"
Before reaching the stairwell, Beanie searched through his phone for his personal notes and hit play on the recording.
"June 3rd, 2025", the voice started every new note with a date, Beanie wasn't sure why he did this since every recording was automatically date and time stamped anyway, but it somehow legitimized the notes as the work of a proper journalist.
"This is getting weirder and weirder by the minute. The symbol keeps popping up in my investigation. A strange circle with a an almost cross like design and though it looks like something out of history, I haven't found a single reference to it anywhere in a historical context. So far I have tracked down two missing people who had the mark one of which I found in the morgue. In all cases, when interviewing the parents of the missing victims, they had no knowledge of their kids having any tattoos on their neck. What am I dealing with here? A gang? A cult? A coincidence?"
After a momentary pause the next note began.
"June 6th, 2025. Had a vegan sub for lunch, best sandwich I ever had. Lucky's Sandwich shop on 3rd and Michigan, definitely a you-tube video for the channel".
"August 15th, 2025", the voice a lot more energetic and excited this time.
"A cop is dead, Jay Jackson. Horrid circumstances. Given that the Tattoo story has come to a grinding dead end, I'm going to see if there is an onion to peel here. Personal note, My friends are giving me hell for working too hard. Tonight I'm going to appease them.
"August 16th, 2025. Breakthrough! Today I saw this young women with the symbol of the Tattoo, it was just pure dumb luck. I was coming home from the clubs and she walked past, looking rather ragged, clearly a walk of shame situation. I glanced over and there it was clear as day. I followed her discreetly, shouldn't be difficult to figure out who she is.
"August 19th, 2025. The women's name is Olivia Pierce, a medical student from the UK. She had a visit from The Chicago PD, to my surprise is was Gus Tramell, the homicide detective investigating the Jay Jackson murder. Are they somehow connected? Ms. Pierce appears to associate with another fellow member of whatever group or cult they belong to, she had the same Tattoo.
"August 22nd, 2025", Beanies voice is low in this recording, lots of people could be heard talking and laughing in the background. "I finally found the connection between Olivia Pierce and Jay Jackson. Carl Owens is the son of Debroah Owens, who was in turn a long time girlfriend of Jay Jackson. Not entirely sure what the nature of Carl Owens and Ms. Pierce's relationship is, but they definitely knew each other. The thing is however, according to the news outlets Carl Owens was killed. I don't know how everything is connected, but I think I have had about enough of the sneaking around, it's time to confront Ms. Pierce.
-Story by Adam Lundell