Nine: Chat Burglar

Chat stages an overnight break-in at House of Gabriel, prowling for what Lila is says she's after while suspecting there's more to the story. With Spider-Man lending an assist, he begins to piece together what the actual agenda is for his nemesis.

Darkness covers all sorts of sins, including a certain recognizable American superhero who had no business webslinging his way across the skyline of Paris beside Chat Noir; keeping as high as we could above the busy streets, I fervently hoped the moonless evening and the human propensity not to look up would allow us to move somewhat freely without drawing undue notice, though if Alya happened to be out and about, all bets were off. Crossing the city as fast as we could, we landed side-by-side with matching thumps on the rooftop of the building across from House of Gabriel. It took me a moment to register it was the very spot Ladybug and I had used weeks earlier to try and determine if my bodyguard had been moonlighting as Hawkmoth; with a wry smile, I thought how naïve we had been at the time.

Turning, I saw my spider-themed friend in that weird crouch that only he could do, reminding me just how limber he was. Glancing down at my own cat-crouch, I realized I might be the pot calling the kettle black and opted for burying the pun I'd queued up in the back of the litterbox. "That's it," I said, nodding my feline ear-topped mane toward the modern glass-and-steel building Gabriel had built.

Though it was hard to tell with his mask on, it felt to me like he was frowning. "Doesn't really fit in with Paris, does it?"

"Not really my father's style," I sighed. "I was too young at the time, but I believe something historic was knocked over to build our headquarters."

"I'm surprised Paris doesn't have laws against that kind of thing," Spidey replied. "We do in New York."

"Oh, we do," I sighed again. "But when you are a significant donor to the Mayor…"

"Ah."

I turned my feline eyes and their night vision on the windows of the building. "I'm not seeing anything unusual. But this would be a good time to surprise me with one of your techno gizmos that could detect, oh, I dunno, humans wandering around over there."

Spider-Man laughed. "If I'd known I was going to be joining a cat burglar tonight, I would have packed my other utility belt."

"A feline can hope."

"That's not to say I don't have a few arachnid tricks up my sleeve," he continued. I turned back toward him just as he pulled a small cylinder from his belt. "Am I right in remembering you have access to floorplans on your baton?"

"Yeah," I said as I slid it from my back and popped it open. "But I know every square inch over there," I added, slightly confused at his request. "I'm not sure—"

"Pull it up," Spidey prodded gently as he fiddled with the cylinder.

"All right."

Quickly navigating my baton's menu, it took just a few seconds for me to access the construction plans and then the floor map of House of Gabriel; twisting the small screen toward Spider-Man, I raised a masked eyebrow questioningly. "Here you go."

"This is kind of a beta test," he warned me as he turned away from the building. "You might want to lean away for a moment in case it explodes."

"Beta-?" I asked with alarm.

"Hold on," he interrupted as he shook and then gently tossed the device into the air.

I watched in amazement as it slowed and then hovered a few meters above us; a moment later, it dropped down toward me, just fast enough that I was tempted to extend my baton and swat it away. Somehow, that seemed like the wrong response, so instead my feline eyes tracked it all the way to where it stopped a half meter above my baton. My masked eyebrows went up when a light grid appeared over the baton's tiny screen, effectively scanning the displayed map; my jaw dropped when the device managed to trigger the paging function and proceed through every last tidbit of data my trusty baton was able to provide on House of Gabriel.

I looked back at Spider-Man as the light clicked off and the small cylinder spun slightly before shooting across the parking lot. "I am so getting one of those RF-blocking sleeves for my credit card now."

"Wise decision," Spidey laughed. He had a small round monitor in his gloved hands and was somehow getting live video as what I now realized was a micro drone buzzed ever closer to House of Gabriel. "I've been working on these for a while," he said with a trace of pride. "An earlier version saved me from an untimely demise at the hands of Doc Ock a while back."

I felt my masked visage frown. "Doctor who?"

"I wish," Spider-Man laughed. "Now there is a cool science fiction character. No, Doctor Octopus is a rather ugly supervillain with some even uglier robotic arms. He's rather a handful each time I go up against him."

"Well played," I laughed. "Although to be honest, I wouldn't mind getting help from the Doctor with that excessively long scarf. I've never really liked any of the others that came after him."

Spidey turned toward me. "I've got a prototype of the sonic screwdriver," he said excitedly.

"You… you what?"

"It's not quite right," he continued. "As you can imagine, it's a bit complicated creating the technological equivalent of a Swiss Army knife, but I think—"

The little monitor beeped out a warning, and we both looked down. "What is it?" I asked.

"I lost the signal," he replied, the frown evident in his voice. "Looks like your father was pretty consistent about his paranoia," he added as he looked up at me. "The telemetry says as soon as the Spider Drone approached the ventilation shaft it was going to use to enter the building, it encountered a jamming field; the stream ended a millisecond later."

I rolled my eyes. "I should have anticipated that." I glanced back at the building. "Well, it would have been nice to have had air cover—"

"It may still work once we get inside," Spidey interrupted. "The signal blocker is interrupting transmissions from the building. Not from within."

"Oh," I smiled. "Well, in that case, let's go break in."

"Front door?" Spidey asked as he slipped the small monitor back into his belt. "That seems a bit too obvious, even if you do want Lila to see your progress."

"Agreed. No, I had my eyes on the seventh-floor men's room."

Spidey did his version of staring, dumbfounded. "I expected you to say something like 'loading dock' or 'secret lab entrance.'"

"Sorry to disappoint," I chuckled. "And while I now wonder if there is, indeed, a secret lab over there, the loading dock is one of the more highly guarded parts of the building. Even with our combined talents, I'm not sure we could get past the security there." I extended my baton slightly for helicopter mode. "If the massive number of windows in that building over there hadn't been a clue, Gabriel believed natural lighting was conducive to the creative process. As a result, there is a handy set of functioning windows – frosted, of course – in every restroom."

"What on earth did he think happened in the bathroom?"

"Who knows," I laughed as I leapt out into the night. "Follow me."

I helicoptered across the parking lot, and then landed on one of the decorative granite pillars that hid some of the steel superstructure required as a result of so much glass. Driving my claws into the stone, I crawled up slightly toward a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows that were, indeed, frosted; with his ability to cling to any surface, Spidey actually one-upped me and alighted on the glass itself, mocking me perhaps by doing so upside down. Reaching over, I snuck a claw beneath a slight opening and popped the window out; running my paw under the edge, I pulled it outward until it locked.

That made me frown, for the opening was barely more than a half-meter, purposefully designed for safety reasons not to open any wider. "This might be tight," I said.

"Maybe not," Spidey replied thoughtfully. "If you give me a moment, I think I can get this off the hinges…"

"Do what-?"

I'd barely asked the question before Spider-Man had moved around and below the window, crawling faster than I thought possible. Carefully reaching his gloved hands beneath the opening I'd made, he grunted for a moment as he pushed the window upward and was rewarded with a slight metallic clunk. Unfortunately, the window immediately started to fall forward, and he grunted again as he tried to balance it.

"A little… help…" he gasped.

Instantly, I gripped the side of the window with a free paw, keeping the other firmly planted in the granite. Unlike certain spider-themed heroes, my boots had to press themselves into the stone to try and keep myself from slipping beneath the impressive weight of the glass. "Whatever you are thinking…" I said through teeth gritted with the effort of keeping the window steady, "please… hurry…"

I heard his webshooters sing out, and caught a strand as it glistened in what little light we had; they sung again, and again, and after the fourth cycle, I felt the glass shift slightly. "Can you reach it another half meter?" Spider-Man asked. "To the right?"

"Yes," I said as I slowly slid the window in the direction he's asked. I felt it move, and then hit something soft yet resilient.

"That's got it, you can let go now," Spider-Man said with relief. "It's my version of suction cups," he explained. "The webbing will hold for about ninety minutes."

"Should be long enough," I said as I flipped around the edge of the window frame and landed in a crouch on the tile of the bathroom. Spidey joined me a moment later. "Unless it isn't."

"Isn't that the truth," he laughed as he retrieved his small monitor once again. "There it is… yep. I can connect to it from inside no problem. Scanning the floors now…"

In what felt like a long ten minutes, Spider-Man's drone quickly zipped through all eight floors of the building, carefully cataloging any activity before finding a network closet that it could access from the air vent. A moment later, we knew where the night guards where and had gained access to the security feeds throughout the building. My respect for the teenager beneath the mask crouched next to me grew an order of magnitude. "You designed this on the side?"

"Yeah," he replied a bit sheepishly. "I don't have much of a social life, as you might imagine."

"Being a superhero can do that." I felt myself arching a masked eyebrow at Spider-Man. "I can't believe there isn't someone you might want to get to know better?"

"Well, I don't have a Ladybug in my life, if that's what you're asking," he replied wistfully. "I did come close to asking someone out a few weeks ago, though."

"What happened?"

Spidey shifted slightly, which I'd learned was what he did when he was uncomfortable. "I… uh… can we not talk about this right now?"

"You can't leave me hanging like that," I teased as I crept to the door. "But yes, we can circle back. Gabriel's office is up on eight, but I think we might have better luck accessing the network down on five."

"Five?" Spidey asked as we slipped into the darkened corridor. The wall sconces my father had favored were on low, barely providing any illumination. Certainly not enough to see the tiny pattern of the company logo in the wallpaper.

"It's the pattern design and prototyping department," I explained as we reached the stairwell and quickly entered. Taking the steps three at a time with each vault, I tried not to groan as Spidey slipped down beside me on a line of webbing. "We call it the 'design studio.' There are workstations at each table for the designers, and I suspect less likely to be where Lila expects me to go."

Landing on his feet beside me and the door to the fifth floor, he nodded. "You think she's here? Watching?"

"Not physically, yet; but she will be – just as soon as she discovers Adrien's not at the mansion. My first guess is she has staked out the corner suite Gabriel used – electronically, most likely, or some sort of magic her Miraculous allows. My second guess is that she's monitoring where his assistant would have worked. Both spots would have been the obvious go-to points for Adrien to have told 'Chat' about." I sighed. "To be honest, I'm hoping she comes here. If she does, it means she's either left Marinette unguarded—"

"Which isn't likely."

"—agreed—or, she'd have brought Marinette here."

"Why?"

"Leverage," I shrugged. "At the end of the day, Lila knows how I feel about Marinette. She'll twist it if she can in order to suit her purposes." I felt a Chat smile appear. "What she doesn't realize is bringing Marinette here is part of my devious plan."

"Clever. And clear," he said as I pulled the door open and confirmed what his small monitor indicated. "But that can't be your only guesses."

"No, but those are the most likely. My hunch is hacking from the design studio isn't exactly on her radar." I paused at an intersection before scampering across the hallway and pressing myself against the relative safety of the glass wall outside the design studio. Dropping to all fours, I skulked to the glass double doors marking the entrance to the studio, but paused as Spidey put a glove to my shoulder.

"How closely do you think she's working with your father?"

"Closer than I realized," I replied.

I unzipped my costume pocket and retrieved Adrien's identity badge; waving it over the keypad, the light went from red to flashing amber. Tapping my personal code into the keypad with a claw, the light went green and the double doors mechanically slid open with a sigh. Scampering around them and into the far larger studio, I paused to take my bearings; two dozen long tables were set about the space, with small workstations beside each, their flatscreen monitors dark. Pattern dummies were everywhere, showcasing some of the outfits I knew were planned for next summer or fall, and oddly, my feline nose picked up the fact that a coffee pot had been left on in the far corner of the room. The massive windows were facing the Seine, giving the area a unique view that was only topped by the one from Gabriel's office up on eight.

My masked feline eyes caught the security camera in the corners of the room, then glanced to Spider-Man. "Disabled already," he replied to my unanswered question. "Or, more accurately, replaying the loop of the five minutes before we entered."

"Nice."

Randomly choosing a station, I flipped my tail over the seat of the chair and settled in, jiggling the mouse to activate the monitor. The irony of a cat using a mouse wasn't lost on me, bringing a smile to my face as the network login appeared and I entered my credentials. It took a few moments for the station to come to life, but in short order I was looking at my corporate desktop. I spent as little time as I could at House of Gabriel – I was still in school, after all – so I wasn't entirely familiar with the layout of the network. I could feel the clock ticking as I sorted through the network shares, but ultimately found the folder Lila had mentioned.

And discovered even my level of access wouldn't open it.

"Fils de pute," I breathed.

"Since you reverted to French, can I assume it's bad?"

"Sorry," I sighed as I pushed back from the keyboard. "Apparently even the CEO of the company can't access that folder," I explained as I looked at Spidey. "If it were daytime, I could call someone from IT."

Spidey cocked his head. "Would Lila have known you couldn't get in?"

"It goes to your earlier question," I replied as I pinched the bridge of my masked nose. Something of a headache was threatening to appear, a throbbing warning behind my feline eyes. "Gabriel or Nathalie would have set the security on that folder. If he's the one that asked her to get the contents, he would have known Adrien can't get to it – unless Nathalie did on her own."

"So, if she did know, does this prove it was a feint to get Adrien?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "And if she doesn't, it tells me that Gabriel is using her for his own purposes. I have to admit, that feels more like the Hawkmoth I know and love."

"Holy," Spider-Man straightened. "This all some sort of wild misdirection, isn't it?"

"Welcome to my universe," I sighed. "Your multi-armed villain is sounding better and better. Want to swap?"

"Not really, no," he laughed.

"Any chance your hacking skills are better than mine?" I asked. "I kind of want to know what is in those files, but I'm not sure I'm up to the task." I smiled slightly. "Assuming curiosity won't kill this cat."

"Or his spider friend. Let me give it a shot," he said as we swapped places.

Being a cat and all, I leapt to the flat design table and perched to watch but had barely folded myself into my patient cat stance when my baton buzzed. Sliding it from the small of my back, I popped it open and nodded. "Well, that answers that question."

"Which was?" Spidey asked, partially distracted as he searched for a slot to insert a small USB-sized gizmo into the side of the monitor. I wondered for the millionth time if his utility belt had magical storage properties – or if his muscles were more due having to carry the extra weight of all his gadgets than webslinging across New York.

"Whether Lila would go after Adrien," I replied as I tapped to silence the alarm at the mansion. "If I read this right, all of the windows to my bedroom have been breached, and the sprinkler system has engaged." I looked at the multiplying warnings scrolling up the baton's tiny screen and laughed ruefully. "Glad I got what I wanted from the closet earlier. But I suspect once she's done burning down the mansion, she'll be on her way here."

"Then I'd better hurry."