Chapter 10: A girl's gotta eat
Inspiration image: Selina and a safe. imgur dot com slash cH2BLIQ
VVVVV
Selina notices that some of Bane's men are still discreetly making their way down into the sewers despite having the run of the city. So, of course, she grows curious.
She makes her way down into the sewers in the dead of night when most of the men are asleep. Nothing appears to have changed since she was last down here. She almost gives up on finding anything of interest when her keen ears pick up the sound of a footstep echoing down a forgotten passage. She peers over curiously: Farad is guarding a hallway. Selina wonders if she should pause and speak to him, or sneak past.
She sneaks past. It's more fun that way.
At the end of the passage, a control centre has been set up. Lots of monitors, lots of live feeds of cameras from across the city. Piotr is wandering around here and there, poking at keyboards. There is an armoury of sorts set up at the back with lots of very shiny and very deadly toys. And Bane is seated in the middle of it all, watching the screens.
Does this man ever sleep? Seriously. Selina uses her vantage point to study him. Even here, in the heart of his fortress, surrounded by the men he trusts the most, he is not quite relaxed. Every movement is deliberate, slow, and purposeful. The way he places his arm on the armrest, the way he turns his head from one monitor to the next. The movement of his restless gaze. He doesn't ever casually scratch at an itch, thoughtlessly hum a tune, cough. Everything is so irritatingly on purpose. Programmed. Controlled. Maybe he's actually a robot.
Selina has worked her way into the room in absolute silence, maneuvering her way along the network of pipes that snakes across the ceiling. Humans don't really tend to look up beyond their eye level. It's a trait that she has taken advantage of more times than she can remember.
Selina positions herself above Bane and drops. She lands right beside his chair.
"Evening," she says as her boots hit the floor. (Because, you know, cats always land on their feet.)
Bane, the epitome of control, actually starts from his seat in surprise.
Selina tries not to look too smug. "Thought I'd drop in to say hi."
Having ascertained that she is not a threat, Bane takes a deep breath through the mask, visibly collecting himself. "Ms. Kyle. A pleasure. Will you give me a moment?"
Bane calls to Piotr and Farad in a booming voice. Selina hopes that she never has to hear her name called in that tone. She would hightail it the other way.
But the men in question are obedient puppies and trot over quickly, until they see Selina at Bane's side. Then their faces fall and they slow the hell down.
Bane gestures to Selina. "Gentlemen. Ms. Kyle has been testing your security measures and appears to have found a deficiency."
Selina looks apologetically at the men; she actually didn't mean to get them in trouble.
"Ensure that it does not happen again," says Bane.
Vigorous nods answer this request.
"... as for Ms Kyle," he continues, "since she has found a way in and, no doubt, already taken note of anything worth noting… add her to the whitelist."
The men apologize with dry mouths and promise that there won't be a recurrence of such a breach. Farad is as white as a sheet, Piotr looks like he wants to die.
"Leave us," says Bane, jerking his chin to the door. "I will deal with your ineptitude later."
The two men jog out of the room with their tails tucked between their legs.
"Harsh," says Selina.
Bane looks at her. His breathing, magnified in this concrete chamber, is still a touch more rapid than usual. The fingers of his right hand wiggle rapidly, as though in anticipation of encircling a neck.
"What'll their punishment be?" asks Selina.
Bane is watching a monitor over her shoulder and the distraction seems to be calming him down. When he looks back at her, he is fully in control again.
"I have not decided, Ms. Kyle. Do you have a suggestion?"
Selina smiles an evil smile as a thousand ideas flit in her mind. Bane waits expectantly.
"Nope," she says finally. Because subverting expectations is a game she likes to play.
She turns her back on Bane and begins to wander the room, dragging a finger here and there along some of the machines.
"Nice setup," she says. "This is some serious surveillance you've got going."
"It is adequate," says Bane. He has seated himself back in his chair and is watching her progress through the room. Selina knows that her walk is mildly hypnotic to men and is happy to continue her tour of the place in his sight.
Suddenly, she gasps like a little girl who has found a secret present. Tucked under one of the desks is a black safe.
Bane raises an eyebrow.
"Is this for me?" asks Selina.
"No," says Bane.
Selina scoffs. "All safes are for me."
"Its contents would be of no use to you, I fear."
She looks at him over her shoulder. "It's not always about the contents. Sometimes, it's about the challenge. May I?"
He actually looks a little curious. "By all means. I am informed that it is unbreakable."
Selina rolls her eyes; she has heard that line many times before. "Unbreakable is meaningless to me. I don't break safes. I play with them."
She kneels in front of the safe and examines it carefully. There is no brand, but to her practiced eye it looks Japanese made.
"This is completely custom," she says. "It must have cost you."
"It did," says Bane.
It's a tricky little safe. Its primary lock pad is a very well done fake that would sound an alarm as soon as it is touched, and its secondary one is hidden in a well-camouflaged panel tucked into its right side. Even opening that panel to reveal the pad takes Selina some careful prying to avoid setting off another alarm; there is a combination of pressure points to unlock.
Bane gets up and leans against the desk under which the safe is hidden, watching Selina with interest. She hums to herself as she works, enjoying the puzzle. It's a nice change to not be under a tight timeline to open a safe – she can't get caught because, well, the one who could catch her all but invited her to try to open it.
Selina works patiently on the panel for ten minutes, an ear occasionally pressed against the safe. The room is filled only with the sound of Bane's breathing, and Selina's occasional absent humming. Then there is a soft click, and the secondary lock pad is revealed.
"Ah," says Bane. "Now this gets interesting."
Selina studies the lock pad carefully. "Yes, it does. I assume that I have only one try to get it right, or all hell is rained down on me."
She sees Bane's eyes smiling at her from where he towers above. "Yes."
"Trapped? Explosives?"
"Correct again, Ms. Kyle," says Bane.
Selina looks up at him. "You must trust my skills a little bit – you're standing pretty close yourself."
"Perhaps," says Bane. "Or perhaps a little pain will not bother me."
Selina spends some time observing the lock pad with her flashlight and doesn't even bother to touch it.
She slides herself out from under the desk and regains her feet gracefully. Then, to Bane's (fairly well-hidden) astonishment, she takes his hand.
"You're a lefty," she says, flipping the hand in question over and examining his palm and fingertips. "You weren't before, but you are now. Something happened to your right wrist and now you don't use your right hand as much. You press hard with your left."
She runs her small fingers down his large ones, feeling telltale bumps and unique spots on each, reading the patterns in his prints that will match those she saw on the lock pad.
As she touches him, Bane's breathing slows to the point where she wonders if he has fallen asleep with his eyes open.
She flicks lightly at his index, his middle, and his ring finger, trying to see which has the better reflexes, which would be the dominant ones in putting in the numbers, and in what kind of order of precedence.
"You have a bit of nerve damage," she says as she brushes the top of his palm. "This is normally pretty ticklish."
He says nothing; just that slow breathing, the trance-like stare at her hands touching his.
Selina counts to ten and stops touching him.
"...anybody home?"
Bane snaps out of it, even shakes his head slightly. It is like petting a dozing wolf who just decided to wake up. Selina takes a step back. He crosses his arms – an unconscious, slightly defensive motion. He had a moment of weakness.
"I know the code," says Selina.
Bane narrows his eyes at her. "How?"
They always ask how. There is no how, not really. There is only gut, instinct, and the thousand thousand attempts and failures that inform all of her newest attempts and (now rarer) failures…
"Mindreading," says Selina drily.
"I think you would not stand so near me, if you could read my mind," says Bane.
Well now. That is an interesting comment. Threat? Compliment? Both? Selina sets it aside for further thought later. She looks around. "Can anyone hear us right now?"
Bane's gaze rakes the perimeter of the room and settles back onto Selina. "There are always listeners."
"Come here, then," says Selina, gesturing him to bend towards her. His breathing stops completely when she leans into him on her tiptoes and hooks a hand into his crossed arms to pull herself closer. (Holy shit, he is big.)
She whispers into his ear. "2-3-8-8-7-2-8-5. And you don't hit the green OK button. You hit cancel. Twice."
She pulls away from him. Bane is looking at her with a new look, a mixture of surprise, annoyance, respect. He is impressed. She knows that he likes competence. She just gave him a competence boner.
Admittedly, having him there so she can examine his fingerprints was kind of cheating. If this had been a real thieving scenario, she would have had a lot more trouble with the safe. She would have had to drug or kill the safe's owner to achieve the same result in the same amount of time; neither of those are things that the Cat has the time or inclination to do, unless it's for big, big bucks.
"Are you certain that you are correct?" asks Bane.
"Yes."
"Then try," he says, gesturing to the safe.
"Really?" asks Selina. "You'll let me open it?"
"You have earned the right to have your troublesome curiosity satiated."
"Is it my million dollars?" asks Selina as she crouches back down in front of the safe.
"Why are you so thirsty for money, Ms. Kyle? It cannot buy happiness, or so I am told."
"It can't buy you happiness, but it can buy you options," says Selina.
Bane gives her an inscrutable look. "As I told you before, Ms. Kyle, the contents will not be of use to you."
And indeed they are not. Selina opens the thing with only the slightest moment of hesitation (she is 99.9 percent sure you hit cancel twice; very unorthodox and counterintuitive, very clever) and the door pops smoothly open.
The safe is full of neatly-arranged rows of little cartridges of liquid. Selina tilts her head as she studies them. They don't look like the cartridges for tear gas, or any other chemical warfare component that she is familiar with. They look pharmaceutical, actually.
Bane's slow breathing echoes around her.
Oh my. The anaesthetic.
"Cool," says Selina, holding one of the small ampoules up to the light. Though she is feigning casual interest, she is not sure what to make of Bane's decision to show her this. What is his motive? What does he gain? It feels like he has exposed his weakness to her. It's weird.
"I assume you have more of these stockpiled," says Selina. "In case this place blows up, or whatever…"
"Of course," says Bane. "Everywhere."
The smell that Selina has come to associate with Bane – that fluctuating mix of medicinal camphor, menthol, and wintergreen – lingers on the cartridge. She places it back in the safe slowly, showing Bane that there is no sleight of hand here – she has no intention of stealing any.
"But you don't carry any on you," remarks Selina pensively.
"Don't I?" asks Bane.
Selina gives him a look. "Really. We've been through this. I'm the best pickpocket in this hemisphere. I think I would have found them by now. Unless you've hidden them under your balls."
The unexpected suggestion takes him off guard; he looks amused. There is a beat of silence where he looks at her dead in the eyes and Selina thinks that he is actually going to invite her to find out, but, mercifully, he does not.
"So… do you want to change the passcode?" asks Selina with only the slightest smirk as she closes the safe.
"Is there a point in doing so, with you around?"
"Not really," says Selina, trying not to sound too cocky. "I was just being polite."
She carefully wipes her own prints off of the safe. Force of habit.
"So that formula I found when we first – um – met. That's what makes this stuff?"
"Yes."
Selina perches herself on the desk beside Bane. "So you put those into your mask and what… breathe them in?"
Bane contemplates her a while before speaking. "Yes. A powerful painkiller, vaporized in the mask."
"For chronic pain?"
"Obviously."
"Face?"
"Spine."
Selina winces sympathetically. But this is interesting. She thought the mask was holding together broken pieces of his face; apparently it is a conduit for pain management of his spinal issue. Her eyes travel down the front of Bane's armoured vest to the buckles of the wide back brace lashed tightly around him.
Bane watches her process this new data.
"That is enough information mongering from you," he says. "Thief."
The way he says "thief" makes it sound kind of like a term of endearment.
"It's not stolen if it was willingly given," says Selina with a charming smile. She leans towards him and her face grows serious as she examines the mask critically.
"So… you don't feel pain with that thing on. So basically, your weakness gives you the power to take just about any hit and keep on going. You don't fear pain like everyone else. It doesn't distract you."
"An accurate analysis." Bane looks steadily at her, waiting for her to make her point.
"I wouldn't want to fight you," says Selina.
"That is wise," says Bane.
Yeah, no. Selina's favoured weapon, her whip, is all about pain compliance and fear of pain. It is not that lethal in and of itself; it wounds and distracts but does not kill unless she goes for the throat. Selina gives Bane's muscular bullneck a sidelong glance. Eh. Not so sure about that one. And anyway, how do you fight someone who doesn't even feel your blows, who can keep his mental cool even if his arm was just lopped off, even if he was peppered with gunshots, until he either kills you or bleeds out and dies trying, one of the two…
Selina shudders unconsciously and is exceptionally glad that she was never foolhardy enough to engage Bane in a fight, before she really knew what she was dealing with.
If she has to deal with him now, she knows that the mask must be her target above all else.
Selina gets up and stretches casually. Hopefully that day never comes.
"Your curiosity has been satisfied, however temporarily, and you will now disappear," says Bane as he watches her.
"Yep! Don't want to overstay my welcome," says Selina.
She smiles at him over her shoulder as she sways her way out of the room. "Don't be too hard on the boys. It's not their fault I'm good."
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