Who: Roger, Max and Helena What: Recon and post-turkey day confrontations Where: Aceso Advancements When: The morning after Thanksgiving Warnings: None
It was the morning after Thanksgiving Dinner, and Max was so damn eager to talk to Roger that she’d gotten into her truck as soon as the sky had begun to lighten. The stop by Oracle’s drop point, for a recording device for Roger to wear on his name tag, took less than fifteen minutes. She’d spent the next twenty minutes picking up makeshift security uniforms from Kyle at Seattle PD for herself and Roger.
By the time she met Roger, they only had thirty minutes to spare for suiting up. She’d taken her truck, and the extended cab made for an uncomfortable changing room, but it would do. A few extra minutes went into getting Roger tapped in to Oracle’s visuals and audio, and two baseball caps with the word SECURITY across the front finished off the ensemble. The gun at her hip was real, loaded and ready to use (if the need arose), and she stepped around the truck and waited for Roger before starting the block-long walk to Aceso’s entrance.
“We’re meeting Doctor Helena Amsel,” she told Roger as they walked, and she squinted at him in the morning light and finally said what she had been running over in her head the entire drive. “I know what it looks like, but I wasn’t using you to make him jealous last night,” she said casually, as they walked. “The hospital incident a month back, it made the connection between the Bat and I too fucking public, and I was trying to lessen that connect by making a scene with someone else. His plan, for the record, overall.” She slowed, then stopped, reaching for the recording device and turning it off. “Say something.”
While they were suiting up, Roger acted like he didn't even know Max. No, it was worse than that. He acted as though he was just her loyal assistant that spent a majority of his imaginary career handing her lattes while silently checking to see if she had any appointments. He seemed as though he was treating this whole undercover mission like they were going to meet some business partner of hers and it was his job to make sure she was comfortable. There was no mistaking the look of complete, immature bitterness, though. It was almost as if he were pouting. Okay, he was totally pouting. Hell, he had been pouting since he left the Thanksgiving party and spent the whole night getting drunk and playing video games until he passed out in a beer coma.
When she started to apologize, his expression softened a little as she mentioned not wanting to make Thomas jealous. Roger seemed perfectly fine with it and actually was a little flattered that she would pick him to be her bad boy. Especially considering who Thomas actually was. But, since Max was still in trouble with him, Roger did not admit to that. She didn't deserve the satisfaction. "If it was his idea, then he shouldn't have cared." Roger said flatly. This was not the Batman he was accustomed to. There was no way in hell that the caped crusader would lose his cool over some woman. To be fair, Max wasn't just some woman and this might have been the first time the Bat actually really cared about someone. Even loved? God, this was getting weird.
Roger turned to look at her, stopping dead in his tracks. "Listen," he sighed, his shoulders raising up and down as if they were gathering courage off the courage tree. "I think we make a good team. And, I understand why you didn't tell me everything. You were protecting him. I get it." He turned away from her and kept walking. "But, if you catch me between some lover's quarrel one more time so help me god I will drive your motorcycle into the ocean with a baby vigilante strapped to the back."
Max crossed her arms as soon as he started with the shoulder raising movement. “It isn’t a lover’s quarrel,” she told him, because it wasn’t, not really. “And if you even think of treating me with kid gloves after this I will kick your ass so hard you won’t be able to walk right for days.” She wasn’t kidding about that either. She looked up at his face, this man with so much anger inside him, and she realized she trusted him anyway, despite it. “Things are complicated,” she said. “Sentinel is missing, his communicator crushed, Rorschach is gone, and we can’t find him either,” she said, because it was on her mind, and because she was worried. “The Mask Killer is still out there, plucking the masks off the street one-by-one. Corbinian introduced me to someone I don’t fucking trust as Cipher, and someone who hates vigilantes knows Thomas is the Bat, thanks to some stupid fucking memory,” she said. “He’s worried. He made Luke Henry his heir, because he’s worried he’s going to get outed, and there’s still that damn APB, and he got it in his head it was safer to make people think he and I didn’t give a damn about each other, but it isn’t a lover’s quarrel. It’s not about that. He doesn’t feel that way about me,” she said with certainty. A moment later, she grinned at him. “Do I really strike you as the kind of woman who would hide anything if I didn’t have a good reason to?” she asked.
"Holy shit, Maximilian are you serious." Roger was flabbergasted. There was no way she actually believed Thomas didn't have feelings for her. "Don't insult my intelligence. I know I didn't go to Harvard and I'm just some two-bit, mookass ex-cop. But, I've known him a lot longer than you have." Roger gave her a stern glance as if to say, yes I am pulling that card on you. "And, the look he gave me last night was on par with one I've seen him give some asshole who just assaulted a damsel in distress. He wanted to put me in a choke hold and make me cry for my dead mommy. I don't care if he doesn't light candles for you and throw rose petals at your feet, that man would have punched me out for you. Me! Roger fucking Darman. Boyscout of the fucking year."
He was ranting. Roger typically did not let out his inner monologues, but Max fucking deserved it. "You know how you wanted to prove to me that he actually gives a shit about people? Well achievement unlocked, short stuff. And, you care about him, too. You know how I know that? Because once he pushed me out of the picture you didn't so much as check to see if I had tried to stuff a camera down a paparazzi's throat. Which I did. But, that's a story for another time."
Roger huffed and then waved a single hand as if he were trying to shoo away his little emotional outburst. It embarrassed him to just let loose on people like that, especially someone tough like Max. He clearly had a lot bottled up and honestly, Roger had planned to keep it that way. She just made it difficult.
“It isn’t me he cares about, boyscout,” Max insisted, once he was done, her hands moving to her stomach. The outburst didn’t phase her, not in the slightest, and she just let him get it out. She felt like shit for what had happened, and she hadn’t planned it, hadn’t thought it would turn out like that, not in a million years. “I never said I didn’t care about him. I do.” She tilted her head to the side, consideration written all over her face. “Alright,” she said, as if his ranting had unlocked some deep part of his psyche for her. “I’m in love with him. He doesn’t know, doesn’t realize, doesn’t feel the same way. I don’t want him to know, because I don’t think he’d have the slightest fucking idea what to do with that, and I don’t want him parroting words at me, which he might fucking do, if it meant keeping me inside and darning socks. It isn’t me he’s being possessive about.” She fixed him with a serious look. “That stays here, between us, Darman.”
She looked guilty then. “I’m sorry I missed you accosting the paparazzi,” she said, splaying her fingers against his shoulder familiarly, a gesture that said he was going to need to do a hell of a lot more to make her uncomfortable than just spew years worth of hurt back at her. “I know he’s not the best at emotions, and I know he hurts people without even fucking realizing he’s doing it sometimes. Trust me, two days ago, we were never going to talk again, tomorrow we might be there again. He doesn’t know what to do, and he has all these unknowns now, Luke and the rest of us, and all the older vigilantes missing, all except for Corbinian, and Corbinian’s wound so tightly, it’s only a matter of time...” she trailed off, not finishing that thought.
“So, how’d he hurt you?” she asked, because this was more than just Thomas leaving Musings behind. She realized that now. “What am I missing?”
As Roger tilted his head to listen, Max could see him calming down. She was right, of course. Thomas had a family now and balancing that with trying to keep the city safe was an impossible task. On top of that, she made the mistake of falling in love with one of the weirdest, anti-social and frankly damaged men she could find. Roger always knew Batman had been through something terrible that made him act this way and pairing that with the history of the Brandon family made sense. The whole thing was the sort of mess Roger and Bats had tried to avoid back in New York. Professionalism and justice always came first back then. Even at the expense of acting like real human beings.
He smiled at her. The sort of sweet, gentle smile that he didn't like to show but couldn't hide when it wanted to happen. Roger liked that she was in a sort of fucked situation. That she was complicated. That she had the capacity to love someone like the Bat. "My mom and dad were killed when I was a kid. I was always sort of a loner until I teamed up with Batman. And, then, well he was the only family I had." Roger never said it out loud, but Max seemed to be the one person who would understand. He put his hand on top of hers and squeezed it. "Like the big brother you can never impress no matter how hard you try. Nothing I did was ever good enough, so I just stopped trying and started hating him."
She laughed when he was done, but it wasn’t a laugh at him, it was at how much of a bitch life could be. She turned her hand over, and she gripped his fingers, and she looked him in the eye when she responded. “I know the type,” she said. “Father, not brother, never good enough, never smart enough, never strong enough, never any hope in hell of being any of those things. Did everything I could to prove myself, and nothing ever worked. I didn’t just come up short, I came up wrong. I ran a world away to not have to worry about disappointing him again.”
She gave him a fond smile and another squeeze of his fingers. “You impressed him, Darman, he just sucks at showing it. The fact that he put a communicator in your palm, it means he trusts you. The fact that he let you know who he was, just so you’d understand last night, it means he trusts you. It might have not meant something like that in Musings, but it does here.” Her expression sobered a little. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give him fucking shit for leaving you the way he did, not for leaving Musings, for leaving you.” She felt pretty damn strongly that Creations were too strong for the people of Seattle, abusing their abilities to make life hell. In Musings, at least the stakes were even. Here? Hell, no.
“Want my opinion?” she said a moment later, moving back and giving him a slow look over before settling on his face with a warm, teasing grin. “I think you’re pretty fucking fantastic. And I’d take that to press.”
He completely agreed with her that people like them were needed much more here because of the wild abilities that fellow Musings could have. He knew Batman was right to make the jump, but there was deep justification for feeling abandoned. Max understood and he would never stop being grateful for it. Oh hell, he was such a push over sometimes. All she had to do was tell him a story about feeling like a disappointment and she had him in her pocket. But, there was no reason for either of them to lie at this point. Every time they shined a light on some little detail of their lives, it just made it more obvious to him why they worked well together. You couldn't fake mutual understanding.
Roger grinned, punching her shoulder lightly before adjusting his hat. "You're gunna like me a lot better when I got my mouth shut." He kept his gaze on her for a second, all that personality that usually jumped across his features seemed to almost ironically dissolve into something emotionless. Apathetic. They were close to the facility now and they couldn't waltz in all buddy-buddy. "Okay." He punched the palm of his hand. "Let's go make some slightly above minimum wage."
“If there’s something I’ve learned about the hero set, it’s that they never keep their mouths shut,” she said with a grin, and she started walking toward the facility, waiting for him to match her pace beside her and settling into an appropriate facades of bored indifference.
The building, when it came into sight, was harmless looking. White with stainless steel handles on the doors and reflective glass on the windows, and Max made an unimpressed sound. She would have commented about the fact that a building like this one should come with warnings, but then he was talking and she looked over at him curiously as she fished a security badge out of her pocket for him.
She’d purchased the badges, and the licenses that came with them, the week before. Grayson Richards was printed across his in block text, along with a perfectly legal ID number. She clipped her own on, Lane Lewiston, and she stopped a few feet from the door. “No matter what the hell we see in there, we keep our heads and we just pretend we want to work at Aceso more than anything in our damn lives,” she said, and she very much sounded like she was trying to convince herself to remember, as much as she was reminding him.
The inside of the Aceso Advancements building looked like the inside of any other industrial skyscraper in Seattle. The floors were a dark, shiny kind of tile, almost like marble, and the main desk in the lobby was stainless steel, with a cherrywood surface. An elaborate, futuristic chandelier that looked more like an art piece than an actual light fixture hung up above. On the walls were flat screen televisions that flashed the Aceso logo, an androgynous figure intertwined with a double helix.
Dr. Helena Amsel stood in front of the desk, and was speaking with the woman behind the counter. The woman was typing on her computer as if her life depended on it, and was blinking rapidly.
“I do not know why it should take this long to check, their names were added only--” Helena stopped and turned her head as she heard the main doors open, and saw Max and Roger come in. She walked over to them, giving their uniforms a once over.
“You are Richards and Lewiston?” she asked. “The new security guards for the genetics department?”
Max who had been looking at every fiber and detail as they entered, looked at the woman in front of her and took her measure. The good doctor looked composed, unconcerned, capable. She was either a very good liar, or very good at hiding what she was feeling. Max had the fleeting thought that the woman should look at espionage as her next career move, but she brushed it away as she nodded. “We are,” she said, looking at Roger as she spoke and not asking questions or offering anything more than that. Security guards wouldn’t exactly chat up someone who looked like she did. So far, this looked like it was going to be harmless. And she really didn’t expect anything more than a lab that made terrible drugs. She clasped her hands behind her back in a show of deference, and she nodded at the woman.
Helena Amsel was a good liar, in fact, and very skilled at hiding her feelings. She knew that her correspondent would send her “security guards” to walk through the facility, but Helena didn’t know what they would look like. All she had were two names: Grayson Richards, and Lane Lewiston. She had spent the past days doing all she could to conceal her anxiety regarding the upcoming operation, and she had nearly throttled the woman behind the desk when she said she didn’t remember if the two new guards had signed in or not.
“I was worried that something might have happened,” she told them, “Our secretary,” she looked sharply at the woman manning the desk, who appeared to shrink two inches under her gaze, “was unsure if you had arrived already or not. Come with me, we have much to go over.” Helena turned abruptly, and walked them over to the elevators at the end of the lobby. She led them into one, and pressed a button that closed the elevator doors.
“Tell me, during the interviews,” Helena asked, “how much did they tell you about this particular job?”
This sort of work had been Max’s bread and butter in Musings. Being someone she wasn’t and taking on that persona to exclusion of all else. Her shoulders were slightly hunched, hands shoved deep into her pocket, and she seemed too eager to please despite it all. “Not a whole lot,” she said, because the key of recon was to let other people talk. She nudged Roger with her shoulder, waited for him to agree with her, and then let him lapse back into a silence that was all about looking at things and transmitting data to Oracle without the interference of additional sound.
“I see.” Helena took out a thin, white unlabeled card from her lab coat pocket, and slid into a slot at the top of the elevator panel. The elevator started to go down. On the screen where there should have been numbers, there were only two dashes.
“Aceso Advancements, as you know, is dedicated to the study and development of pharmaceuticals, as well as genetic research. We do much of our work on site, and as such require a great deal of security for our building and it’s laboratories. You have been hired to protect one of our most valuable genetic research programs. What you are about to see has only been seen by a select few of Aceso’s employees. The information that you will gain today during this walk through must be kept to yourselves.” Helena spoke in even, cold tones. She had given this speech many times before, and knew what to say in order to intimidate Aceso recruits. She turned to Max and Roger, studying them closely.
“If you choose to discuss what you see today to anyone outside of those few employees, there will be consequences. I trust your interviewers told of you those consequences?”
“Not afraid of consequences,” Max said, playing the part. “Not going to do anything but collect a paycheck.” Her eyes, however, were sharp, intelligent brown. This wasn’t about guarding drugs, she realized, even as the elevator’s movement made her queasy. She noted the key card, and she asked in a lazy voice. “We going to be locked down here?” It was almost a joke, or at least it sounded like one. She wanted to know if that key card was necessary to go up, as well as down. That would be important in the end. “Not that I got a problem with that,” she added. “This is the best paid job offer I’ve had in months.” Another nudge to the silent Roger, and her intelligent eyes settled on Helena again.
Helena looked closely at Max. She sounded as if she was only interested in the money the job offered, but there was something in her eyes that suggested hidden depths. Helena’s contact had to have sent her.
“Like I said,” Helena explained, “The ADAM project is one of our most valuable programs here at Aceso. We like to keep it as secure as possible.” The elevator doors slid open, revealing a long white corridor. Helena stepped out of the elevator, and beckoned for Max and Roger to follow her. Further down the corridor was a steel, automatic door. On one side of it was a computer screen, and a retina scanner above it. Helena stepped up to the retina scanner, and a red beam of light passed over her eyes.
“Voice activation code, please.” An computerized voice spoke from the screen underneath the scanner.
“This is Dr. Helena Amsel speaking, accompanied by Lane Lewiston and Grayson Richards,” said Helena. The doors slid open, and Helena walked through them with Max and Roger.
“That was our security for the entrance. Inside, we have security cameras at every corner and end of the halls. Do not bother trying to look for them all, chances are you will miss at least one.” Helena said. She spoke quickly, and walked fast. For her, this was as routine as taking out the trash, or doing the laundry. Helena stopped in front of a clear glass window. Behind the glass was a vast laboratory, all white panels and stainless steel, just like the hallways. Farthest from Helena, Max, and Roger were fifteen large vats, filled with a dark green fluid. They went from the ceiling to the floor, and were encircled by control panels with various buttons and slots on them. Adjacent to that wall was a large tank filled with water. It almost looked like the type you would see at an aquarium.
“This is the laboratory,” Helena explained, “Here is where we produce the ADAM cells. The ADAM is withdrawn from the slugs, and placed into the vats before being shipped out with our hypodermic needles. The tank you see to the left is where we hold the ADAM slugs when they are...not being used. Do you have any questions at this point?”
Max shook her head, and she just looked at Roger to make sure he was capturing everything that needed capturing. Hidden cameras would be an issue, and one of them would need to be involved, thanks to that retina scan. Transporting whatever this woman wanted to transport, it was getting harder with every damn step they took. This was going to take weeks of work to set up, and she gave Roger a look that said they were going to get really familiar with being security guards for awhile. “What are our hours?” she asked, belatedly. For her, keeping her paying job was important, which meant a night shift for this temporary assignment would work best. She suspected the opposite shift would work best for Roger. Well, the Bat wanted her off the streets. It looked like he was going to get that, at least for awhile.
“Mostly night shifts,” Helena said. “If you do come in during the day, you won’t be in the Facility--we have a security room for the guards in a different area of the building, you’ll see it after the tour. Although I do speak with the head of our security team at the beginning of each week, I don’t usually keep track of which guard goes on which shift.” This was a something of a half lie; Helena wasn’t supposed to know when the guards would come on and off their shifts at night, thanks to the security breach that had happened four years ago. Ever since talking with her vigilante contact, however, Helena had been keeping track of the guards when she was in the Facility in the evening, making mental notes of who was there at six o’clock, at eight, at ten, and so on and so forth. There were still some gaps in her mental time chart, and Helena suspected that her contact was going to find out the full time chart anyways, but it made Helena feel a little more prepared for what was going to happen by keeping track.
She began to walk down the hall, and motioned for Max and Roger to follow her. “As members of the security team down here, the ADAM itself is not all that you will be guarding,” Helena explained, “but what hosts the ADAM slug.” They had reached the end of the hall by this point, and were now on the other side of the Facility. They now stood in front of a series of large, blacked out windows, each one with a numbered panel and card slot next to them. Helena punched in a series of numbers, and the windows lightened, revealing a series of bedrooms, each with a young girl lying fast asleep in their beds.
“The ADAM slug requires a human host in order to produce ADAM,” Helena said, “a very young host at that. The hosts are monitored twenty four hours a day. They are removed from their rooms at specific times during the days, for reasons ranging from physical check-up to cognitive stimulation sessions. If one of our team needs to remove them from their rooms outside of those times, they must do so with approval from one of the higher ups in Aceso, and be supervised by one of the security team, possibly one of you. Everything in these rooms is monitored very closely; if they are taken from their rooms without pre-approval, the security team will be alerted immediately. Do you have any questions?”
Max was sure her heart had just stopped beating in her chest. The girls in the beds were young, so very young, and they were what? Being kept here to... she didn’t even want to think about how they served as hosts, and all she could think about was that they were just kids, just fucking kids, and they were locked up and referred to as hosts and. It almost made her lose what was in her stomach, and she had to put her hand on the wall a moment to get herself under to control, to pull it together. She turned to Helena, and she didn’t look at Roger, not wanting to see whatever was lurking in his eyes at that moment. “Huh,” she said, as if it was mildly interesting, but not at all disconcerting. “They born here? If we’re going to have parents looking with cops and guns, then maybe we need raises.” It was a flippant, stupid comment, but she was interested in the answer, and she nudged Roger’s shoulder without looking at him.
Helena watched Max’s reaction closely, though her face gave away none of her inner feelings. Very few of the security guards that Helena had taken through the Facility had the reaction that Max just showed, touching the wall like that. For Helena, it settled her inner turmoil somewhat; these two had to be part of the team that her contact was going to give her.
“Their origins,” Helena said coldly to Max and Roger, “are none of your concern. Your concern is to make sure that the hosts are never removed from the Facility.” Helena pressed the button on the wall again, and the windows darkened, obscuring their view of the children. She began to walk down the hall.
“Now come,” Helena went on, “I need to show you the rest of the Facility.” The rest of the walk-through took an hour or so. Helena showed them the staff room, the “cognitive stimulation room” (basically, a playpen for the girls), one of the doctor’s offices, and other places in the Facility. At the end of it, Helena brought them back up to the lobby of Aceso Advancements, told them they could expect to receive their schedules by this evening, and left them to their own devices, going back down to the Facility once she found a free elevator. Secret rebel or not, Helena was still the director of the ADAM project, and had work to do down below.
During the remainder of the tour, Max couldn’t stop thinking about those girls, no matter how she tried. Did they belong to parents? Had they been kidnapped? Had they been born to this hell? The concept of being a host sickened her, and she was grateful to get outside the facility and into the morning sun. She was perfectly quiet until she and Roger reached her truck, and she climbed inside and threw her badge on the dashboard as she turned the engine over. She stared ahead a moment, and then she turned to look at Roger beside her. “It’s going to be fucking impossible to get them out. Even with us working inside, even with an in, that’s going to be fucking impossible. The security measures-” She shook her head. “God, how the fuck does something like that even happen?” she asked, looking as horrified as she felt.
Roger had been a very good boy through the entire walk through. His role today was to make sure Oracle could see everything that she needed to make this infiltration business easier on all of them. Plus, Max was a better charmer than he was. Yes, Roger could admit that. In fact, he only made small murmuring noises of agreement accompanied with a nod of understanding even when faced with one of the most unimaginable horrors he couldn't even dream up. It took every ounce of his self control not to bust through, grab one of those poor girls and start running like a fugitive to safety. For every ounce that Max was frightened, Roger was pissed.
Once in the truck he took his hat off and ran his hands through his hair. "I don't care what it takes." His voice shook a little with bubbling rage. He inhaled deeply, trying to keep his cool and then finally looked up at her. Max hadn't known Roger for very long, but he had always been very earnest with her. She knew he was the sort of guy who tried to keep the situation light, even in the face of impending doom. This was different, though. This wasn't his life on the line. These were just kids. "We're going to have to get them all out at once in a very short amount of time. And, then I want to burn the place to the ground."
Roger's eyes lit up. He wasn't sure if he was serious about that last part, but it would feel really good.
"I'll light the fucking match," Max said, and she meant it.