Koushik seemed a little extra fired up that day. He completed all the tasks Olivia had assigned before time and even brought up his own observations on his progress and drawbacks and how those could be handled. Whatever he said were things she already knew when they started but she was pleased to see his enthusiasm in wanting to figure out what worked for his body.
"Good. Make a list of old and new routines, level of comfort and discomfort in both, rate how fast you're learning and executing them properly, make an order of warm-up excercises according to your preference starting with light to heavy." Olivia said.
Koushik nodded and noted everything on his watch. They were done for the day but he did not feel that much fatigue, could be because of the dopamine he received after being able to convince Olivia to be his martial arts coach. After yesterday's incident he had decided to take self defence lessons. Their group's popularity is growing so these stalkers will only grow in number. This time he got lucky but he was not stupid enough to tempt fate. Their manager had informed that they'll be assigned bodyguards next time onwards but Koushik did not feel comfortable being fully dependent on them. Being prepared for an unfortunate incident will do him anything but harm. Especially after witnessing Olivia's prowess, he could not ask for a better coach.
Being done with Koushik, Olivia used the remaining half an hour to finish her own routines and headed back to freshen up at 7:30. She cooked breakfast, rice, dal, vegetables and fish curry, got dressed for class and waited for the others to arrive. Everyone was supposed to have breakfast at her room and start with the meeting so Ritutandra, Trayee, Parijat, Abhirup, Surjo and Nilambori came straight to her room after getting ready.
"Okay, let's start." Nilambori, the last one to finish eating, came back from the kitchen and said.
Olivia looked at Trayee, "Take it out."
Everyone focused on her as Trayee fetched a multicolored roses bouquet from a pocket inside her blazer. She proceeded to unwrap the foil paper on the stem. As the last past came undone, there was nothing underneath besides the stem and thorn. She inspected the wrapper, multiple layers of aluminium foil was rolled together to prevent the thorns from poking through. The layers were so tightly attached that separating by hand was not possible with tearing some part.
Trayee handed it over to Nilambori. The latter took off her hairband and straightened it. The hairband did not break rather the plastic rim reveled a shiny edge as she pressed certain parts. Nilambori held the blade and slid it over the foil a few times. The layers separated. She turned the blade back to a hairband and put it on.
Olivia took the segmented foil and placed them on the Board. Turning them around they saw parts of a QR code. Abhirup messed around with them for some time and arranged them in a specific order then scanned them on his watch. A second later the watch displayed each part of the code on a single page. Everyone stared at the holographic projection as Abhirup worked on it to assemble the code. Two minutes later the screen displayed a proper QR code. Olivia scanned it on her watch. A screen popped up asking for password. She entered their mission pincode. A green check mark appeared followed by a letter.
"What does it say?" Ritu asked.
"Weird pattern of sudden disappearance and reappearance of people in the entertainment industry. Mostly young rookies who recently debuted and gained lots of attention or rose to popularity pretty quickly. Majority has humble background with little to no connection in the industry. Around ten or twelve people disappear across various companies and entertainment sector, no particular bias noticed. Duration of disappearance was one and a half day max. This is the seventh occurance. Explanation for fans was exhaustion, fatigue, sickness, etc. After reappearance they are said to have a boost in performance. Except two people went missing in this time."
"On the surface nothing seems extraordinary, celebrities can fall sick and after rest their performance does improve. The number is very low so this could easily be classified as a coincidence. The same group people don't appear or disappear together either so no obvious suspicion. Two missing so public focus is on missing case." Parijat concluded.
"Then the only prominent suspicious partner is them being radio silent during their disappearance. Of course the company wouldn't say outright that they're missing but cook up an excuse about sickness which that person will then follow after returning. What are their managers' reaction to this?" Surjo asked.
"The time frame is too convinient to do anything except warning them but the increase in output was enough for the companies to let it slide. A lot of them even received help to get out for a day without supervision. The celebrities framed it as detoxification." Olivia answered making quotation symbol with her fingers.
"You'll inform A.G about this today right?" Ritutandra asked.
"I'll be away for the evening. Text me if I am needed earlier. Else I'll be back by 7pm."