Three who could have been taken from us, permanently.
While this would hardly diminish our organisation to the point of nothingness, matters of efficiency are not what vex me. We are not yet numerous to be considered an army, nor is this our reason for being. As secretive an organ as someone amongst us would prefer we continue, this changes little: I do know these people and, in the case of two, at least, have come to do so by face and name.
Were so many to have disappeared from our ranks in a single day... This fills me with considerable murmurs of internal disquiet.
That there was no clue of where to initiate our investigations, made it somehow worse than I fear definitive news of them coming to grief would have done.
There are children who succumb to what we seek to vanquish. I've not been party to those times when figures of authority must deliver word of their demise to those relatives who still live. I have, however, been needed to question them before such a fate has been discovered. One can witness it in their gaze - the unknowing of it all... The sleepless nights. The toil it must take on their emotions.
The last few days have given me a little more insight to this condition of the human soul.
It's not something one has any great wish to experience twice.