Chapter Thirty-Nine:
"Another one down and one more to go."
Alex could not be happier to say this if she tried about the numerous Cadmus facilities that she had been knocking off of the map. The truth was that they had been making even more headway now that Lillain was off of the map. The facilities were like ghost towns now, with pretty much everyone cleared out. Other than a stray guard or two, but really, they were no big problems, at least as far as Alex was concerned.
Lucy stepped in behind her. She looked from one side, to the other on the facility. They almost half expected something to come out, but nothing did. Stacks and stacks of crates lined the walls. More weapons, and Lucy shuddered at the amount of weapons they created.
"They really did have enough to overthrow a small country," Lucy commented a few seconds later.
"Yeah, they really did," Alex replied as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Or to take down an alien invasion force that wasn't coming. Although, I don't even want to know how many humans would have gotten caught up in the crossfire."
Way too many, and it was not worth it in Alex's opinion. She examined the blaster. There was only a small part of her who would have wanted a weapon like this in her hand. An even larger part of her would have understood that this was a slippery slope.
She moved around the corner and found boxes and boxes full of drives. If Alex had to hazard a guess, they contained a good chunk more research that Cadmus done. The means that they performed this research, it would be enough to make someone's stomach turn. However, Alex held a fair amount of confidence it would work. She brushed a finger against the edge of her mouth and broke out into a soft sigh.
"Well, Cadmus had many issues, but their research was spot on," Alex said.
"Almost insane," Lucy said.
Given the woman who ran it, Alex was not arguing about that fact at all. She checked the wall for any secret switches that would lead them to any more surprises. Most surprisingly, Alex did not find a single one, which made her raise her eyebrow. That was very curious for a number of reasons.
"Nothing on the lower floor," Alex said.
"No, Agent Danvers," the agent said checking in. "Nothing other than cleaning equipment."
"Well, double check it, because you never can be too careful," Alex said.
Was she paranoid by having the DEO agents check out cleaning equipment? Maybe a little bit, but with an organization like Cadmus, you can never be too careful.
"You're going to have to see this one!"
Lucy's statement caused Alex to walk down into the room which she slipped into. Alex put her hand on the side of the door and broke out into one of those expressions. She very lightly brushed her finger down the side chamber pod and leaned in. The pod was, well it was some kind of stasis tube.
Although what was inside the stasis tube, it was not there anymore. And the Cadmus records had pretty much no research, although perhaps Alex would have to dig deeper.
"What was in here?" Lucy asked.
"That's a good question," Alex said. "And I really wish I would have had an answer."
Unfortunately, the more questions Cadmus raised, the few answers they received. Lillian would be the only one that might be able to clue them in now, and even if she was in sound mind, Alex found herself skeptical that the woman would divulge any kind of useful information. Which made her feel like they were grasping at straws.
Alex felt around behind the stasis tube, as if trying to find any kind of clue what they were looking for. However, there was nothing on the other end. Alex withdrew her hands and returned to square one, to step one. She broke out into a very frustrated breath.
"Nothing," Alex said.
She would have to run this one by Lena, because right now, Alex was very much stumped.
"And today, the last questions of whether or not the L-Corp and OsCorp merger would go through was answered by this groundbreaking announcement that the two super powers would merge. When asked what she would do with former key members of OsCorp's team, Lena Luthor had this to say."
The camera shifted to Lena.
"I am confident that this will be a brand new era for both of our companies as we work together," Lena said. "Everyone is going to get an opportunity. Everyone will be given a chance to succeed. I'm not going to go as far to say that this will be a completely clean slate. But, there will be options for the future of this company. Where everyone and anyone will rise up and take advantage of this brand new world."
Lena leaned back for a second and there were several people murmuring in the crowd.
"What about the rumors that Norman Osborn is alive?" one of the reporters asked. "How will this affect things?"
"Rumors are just that, rumors, "Lena said. "And I cannot legally comment about the investigation regarding Norman Osborn at this time. I do think that many of the people that he has hired, they do have plenty of potential."
Lena watched herself in one of the conference rooms. She had gotten very good at deflecting some very dangerous questions, at least in her mind. But, really, Osborn just scratched the surface. She poured over the information with two of her more trusted advises, Gwen and Kara. Both of them looked intrigued to see where this one would go, going forward.
"So, we've got a lot of work to do," Gwen said.
"No one should fear a little bit of work," Lena said.
"Yeah, but there are still a few people in OsCorp that are shady," Kara said. "Although some of them are missing."
"Yeah, that barely scratches the surface."
Barbara stepped into the conference room. The three of them greeted her with a smile as Barbara sat herself down on the table behind them.
"What do you have?" Lena asked.
"Cloning research," Barbara said. "Spearheaded here at OsCorp and some of the principles were found in the data that the DEO uncovered at Cadmus. I should know, because they contracted me to crack the more encyrpted systems. And you know those encrypted systems."
Lena poured herself a cup of coffee and offered them around the table. She just pondered the situation.
"That goes without saying," Lena said. "I suspected that there was a connection between certain people in OsCorp and certai projects that they were running at Cadmus."
Barbara feverishly nodded as she took the cup of coffee and downed a couple of swigs.
"The rabbit hole runs pretty deep and ends at a controversial scientist named Miles Warren," Barbara said. She caught Gwen's very obvious shudder out of the corner of her eye. "I trust you've heard of him."
"Oh, I've heard of Warren alright," Barbara responded. "He's not exactly someone that….well he's not exactly someone who was well liked around OsCorp when he was here. Osborn hired him and then he fired him when...well I didn't ask. No one asked. We were just glad that he was gone."
Lena found that very interesting. She would have to delve in anything. The problem is, while she had heard of Warren, she had not heard of anything about him in the past year, maybe eighteen months.
The best place for someone to disappear off of the face of the Earth was to go into Cadmus. They turned up a few missing people. Although many others were very much dead, once their usefulness had expired. And finding the bodies would be next to impossible.
"So, how do we find him?" Kara asked. "Because, he wasn't at any of the Cadmus facilities."
"Someone like Warren would have seen the writing on the wall a long time ago," Lena offered. "And he would have made his own plans."
The trouble was, they had no idea what those plans might have been. They had ideas, but no clear motive. And that was very troubling for many reasons.
Still, the women had some research to pour over, as Lena figured out who could be trustworthy in this new world. She thanked her good fortune of having Gwen, Kara, and Barbara there to help her out. They did not have to be in costume to be extremely useful and that made Lena just smile.
And now, one of the Cadmus trucks went missing, and it was the job of three heroines to bring it down. Spider-Girl perched on the gargoyle and overlooked the last known street corner where the truck had been found. Supergirl hovered in the sky across the street.
Batgirl searched the street for clues, her cowl being able to lock onto any number of promising leads. The entire street pavement shined with clues. She could not be happier if she tried for chasing down these leads. Where Barbara walked completely over the street and left no stone unturned.
"Remember, the weapons on this truck are to disrupt communications," Lena said. "And even if they weren't used against aliens, they could still be very dangerous against humans."
"I've got something," Kara said.
The Girl of Steel dove down to come across a very weedy looking man. He looked pretty suspicious. Even more so when he whipped out a miniature cannon and fired a series of blasts at Supergirl. The golden energy cut through the air. Supergirl ducked it and made a signal.
Spider-Girl swooped in and tore the weapon out of the hands of the goon. She repelled down and kicked him in the face to send him down.
"There's going to be more of those!" Kara said. "The walls are lined with lead. They're hiding something."
"Stand back."
Barbara put several explosive devices on the wall and rigged them for detonation. The big bang which followed rocked them all over. Barbara could not help and break out into a smile thanks to the caved in walls and the dust just going all over the place. They were one step closer to achieving their goals.
Several punks moved into place. They all grabbed their weapons and one of them still fumbled with a communication tower.
A figure swooped down from the shadows and disarmed them with several yanks of her web tendrils. Alex turned up and motioned for them to go.
Barbara turned around and knocked out the goon fumbling with the communication tower. Assured that Alex, Gwen, and Kara all had her back, Barbara went to work in disabling the tower.
One of the final goons threw a grenade in the air. Kara caught it and with lighting fast speed hurled it high into the air out of an open window. The grenade stopped high above and exploded harmlessly over National City.
"So, you followed the same lead?" Kara asked.
"Yeah," Alex said. "Learned about the truck, figured that I would follow up. Those Intergang punks really are scavengers for alien technology."
"I know, tell me about it."
One of the walls fell down and a tank had been unleashed. Alex created a whirling drill with her suit and smashed through the plates of the tank. Said tank launched several feet off of the ground and Kara was able to pry the occupant inside off of the tank.
"You're not going to stop us!" he yelled. "We're going to finish what they started."
That made Alex think that the Cadmus people on the outside willingly gave the truck to Intergang. That would have not been outside of the realm of possibility. She hurled one of the goons down to the ground. Another moved towards her until Alex trapped him in a cage.
"You're really working that suit a lot better," Kara said. "Not that you didn't have some sweet moves with it before, but…."
"Cadmus did their share of research and I read a lot of it," Alex said. "They were trying to make their own suit...calling it the Carnage model. Thankfully, the research never got off of the ground."
Alex and Kara teamed up to smash their way through the tank. Barbara finished disabling the tower
"Good work," Lena said. "I've brought up an invitatory list, so we can find out if everything is present and accounted for."
The team scrambled to get to work to do a head check of the alien items. If one piece of technology was on the street, that would create some serious problems. It was an extremely long process and extremely worth it to get done.
To Be Continued.