A brief sense of respite ... - Part 6

Getting out of Ald-Tech headquarters proved as difficult and claustrophobic as getting in. Caitlyn still couldn't understand why they couldn't use the Bastion satellite's transporters and didn't believe for a second that each use left a trace of the target location behind. She just thought Kyle wanted to see her go through her stealth skills. Or to see her suffer. Probably to see her suffer. Nevertheless, he had waited until she had fast-floated at least five blocks away before he transported her back into orbit.

Then he made her wait while he and Drone's drones analysed the tablets that she had found while, at the same time, other drones trawled through the data found on Raymond Alden's computer and, by extension, Ald-Tech's servers. This, too, she felt was done to make her suffer. Kyle knew very well that Caitlyn was expected at home.

For a super-advanced satellite, the Bastion headquarters appeared to have a dearth of clocks on show. But, then again, as Bastion had the entire Earth to watch over, it would mean having clocks with every timezone everywhere. Caitlyn settled for looking at her phone. Only half-an-hour before she needed to get home. More than that and she could expect another grounding.

"Why, she asks yet again, do I have to be here for this?" Had he asked, she would have enjoyed performing the analysis with him, but, apparently, she wasn't insured for the equipment. That may also have been a lie. "Do you hate me? Is that what this is? You want my aunt to ground me until I finish college? If I ever get to college at this rate. You know I have homework to do, right? I'm sure Fear probably intimidates your teachers into giving you good grades, but I have to earn mine."

"Actually, I'm homeschooled. Tommy pays for the world's best tutors." With a pencil gripped between his teeth, Kyle scowled over the top of the monitors. "Come look at this."

At last! Something to occupy her mind instead of vegetating while Kyle did all the work. He pushed the wheelchair back, giving her space to look at the monitors, and clacked the pencil against his teeth, watching her reaction. He didn't offer an explanation for what she saw, allowing her to make her own conclusions.

"It's the stuff that my suit is made out of. The ... um ... Black Element? You know, I hypothesised that it was a liquid metal nano-robotic substance ages ago. And I was proven right. But this, on the other side ..." She used the mouse to zoom in to the image. "This isn't the same thing. It's rougher. The replication process is incomplete, giving the substance a much shorter life. This is synthesised."

"Correct! Raymond Alden has been dosing himself with a poor recreation of your suit, mixed with other stuff, too. Synthesised Black Element, lysergic acid diethylamide, and you know what happens to normal humans that come into contact with the Black Element? And no, I'm not saying you are special, before you ask." Popping the pencil back in his mouth, Kyle commandeered the mouse again, searching for and bringing up, a picture. "Professor Halstrom, I'm sure you are aware of. Perhaps one person in every ten thousand can successfully use the Black Element. For this synthesised version, that ratio becomes even wider."

Even now, Caitlyn couldn't imagine Raymond Alden as Fiend. Yes, he had almost lost his daughter due to Caitlyn's poor judgement, but to turn into a monster who thought nothing of trying to kill Alaina, a schoolgirl, or a super-hero, like Kyle? She couldn't see it. But there it was, on that screen. Evidence that Alden had technology that could turn him into Fiend. It wasn't conclusive.

"But it's breaking down. Unstable. Look. Any powers these pills gave would only be temporary. That's why Fiend never stayed around for long to finish what they, what he started." She watched as the synthesised nano-robots broke apart on the screen. "This is why my suit gets antsy around Fiend. It senses the corruption of its own technology. Just how sentient is this suit?"

"Unknown. Worth testing, though. I'm sure Drone would jump at the chance." Kyle moved the wheelchair across the room to another set of monitors and sighed. No progress on the Ald-Tech servers. "You know, this might take more time than I expected. The Ald-Tech encryption is amazing. You should head out home. I'll call when I know anything."

Caitlyn didn't want to leave, but she had to. This equipment available in the Bastion satellite was decades ahead of anything else on Earth and she desperately wanted to make some of those tests on her suit, as well as study the synthesised Black Element to see what, exactly, it did to human bodies. Her aunt, however, would not see the benefits.

-+-

Strictly speaking, Chief Watson should not be here. At the very least, not unaccompanied. And, if accompanied, with a warrant. With an ongoing court case against Joe Morrison, Watson setting foot in this brownstone, off Market Town, could be enough to bring the entire case crashing down. But it wasn't anything to do with Joe that Watson was here. He needed what was in Joe's basement.

With the streetlights flickering behind him, Watson checked the downstairs door, but that was blocked off. His only way inside was either through the front door, or the back, and he was always the one that rushed in while others waited for SWAT. Taking a look around, not that anyone would care if they saw him, he took a switchblade from his pocket and cut the police seal before picking the lock.

In the darkness of the inside of Joe's brownstone, he waited for his eyes to adjust. He could tell that the reason he had come here wasn't far, but forced himself not to look. If he had thought this through correctly, he would soon be able to see everything. Taking his cell phone from his pocket, he switched on the flashlight and swept it around.

His officers had confiscated pretty much everything not nailed down and the brownstone looked about as empty as he had expected, but what he searched for wasn't something he could take with him, anyway. What he needed was downstairs and he soon found the door to the basement. Unlocked, left that way since Joe's arrest and the subsequent raid, he made his way downstairs.

Like the upstairs, the basement was empty. Workbenches that had once held all of Machina's little toys, deadly in the wrong hands, now sat in an NHPD lock-up, downtown. An armour stand stood empty, where Joe's Machina suit would hang while he made repairs or upgrades. That was in lock-up, too. Taken to pieces and isolated. There, in the wall at the back, stood the door to what he needed. He felt the urge to look around, but he didn't. He knew how to keep his own counsel, even when no-one was around.

This next part depended upon doing this exactly right. The timing had to be impeccable. He reached down for the handle, realising that his palm was slick with sweat and hoping that it wasn't noticeable. Or, if it was noticeable, anyone watching wouldn't realise what it meant. He wiped the palm on his pants and tried again, opening the door and rushing inside.

A Faraday cage. A simple construction designed to isolate an area from all radio signals. Nothing came in, nothing went out. The perfect place to capture ... that.

He slammed the door closed and turned, finally looking directly at the thing that had followed him for days. A tiny drone that whizzed and buzzed around the Faraday cage room. This thing had been his shadow, no doubt relaying everything to its master but, in here, it could relay nothing. Now Watson only had to capture it and hope that it didn't have any offensive capabilities.

-+-

The transporter dropped her five blocks from home and now Caitlyn knew that Kyle was yanking her chain. There was no way that Bastion would use something so inaccurate and she resolved to make Kyle suffer for it as soon as he was healed enough to take a good beating. He would need that wheelchair again not long after he left it.

She had, perhaps, five minutes left to reach her home before Aunt Mary decided to call the police the FBI, US Marshalls, and anyone else that had a reputation for finding people. Only using fast-floating would leave her bordering on being unfashionably late, but she had learned at least one good thing from Kyle. The suit provided her with the rope-like substance of itself to swing through the streets, passing people below that didn't bother to look up, even in a city with supers that regularly crossed the skies.

Her bedroom window had a method of opening it from the outside, but she couldn't use that. Not tonight. Aunt Mary expected her to come home through the door and that was exactly what Caitlyn would do. Landing in the alley, she used the suit's enhanced senses to make sure no-one could see her before sending the outfit back into its hiding place inside her. Another quick look up and down the street and she turned onto the sidewalk before hopping up the stairs.

As soon as she reached their floor, Caitlyn sensed something was wrong. What it was, she couldn't quite place, but it itched in the back of her mind. She resisted allowing the suit to cover her again and edged up to the door. Her hand, key between her fingers, raised toward the lock.

"Caitlyn!" One of these days, she would remember to take out that ear piece, but it was so comfortable and practically invisible, she forgot she wore it. Kyle, however, sounded urgent. "The encryption broke. It's ...there's so much here, but I found ... you have to get home. And I mean, right now! He's been watching them! Your aunt, that cute friend of yours, the cop. Caitlyn, he's been watching them for days!"

She had stopped listening. The lock on the door broke as the suit sloughed over her and she rushed into the apartment, ready to apologise to a furious Aunt Mary if she needed to, so long as her aunt was safe, but Aunt Mary wasn't there. The apartment was a wreck. Furniture upturned and broken. The window shattered inward, leaving shards of glass covering the floor and, in the middle of that floor, Caitlyn could see blood and something else.

One of those monkeys, that clapped little cymbals together and Caitlyn could hear the little clink, clink, clink as she looked at the piece of paper propped against the monkey.

"Can Caitlyn come out to play-ay?"

When the monkey exploded, Caitlyn barely flinched. If Fiend wanted to kill her, he would have. This was only a taunt.