Tempest: Chapter Twenty-Seven: Regarded Curiosities
"I'm not giving it back, I earned all that fair and square."
Amara was too agitated to sit down, and it was much easier to get her point across when she was standing and waving her arms for good measure.
There weren't a lot of things that she fought with her parents about, but this definitely had taken the cake. Of course, she'd been expecting it; Masquerade had made a lot of money on stealing from others, and it wasn't exactly an honest way of living.
"Amy, thievery is not fair and square!" Iris reproached.
Amara's green eyes flashed. "Some of those items were incredibly difficult to procure, I will have you know! Besides, most of them were already stolen, so really what I was doing was reacquisition! And that's about as fair and square as it gets!"
"Amara!" Barry warned and Amara positively bristled.
It was times like these that Amara really missed being on her own with no one to depend on herself. Of course, she loved her parents and she loved being home, but between the three of them, Amara had a very different view on right and wrong compared to them.
"I want to be a doctor!" she burst out finally and both of them stared at her, with Barry a bit more stunned than his wife, for reasons Amara couldn't even begin to fathom. And Amara was sure she looked a picture; cheeks pink with frustration, fists balled and shoulders tensed.
None of them could see the trail of vines creeping up the side of the house to where her room was, curling around the edges of the window and the thick branches of the tree perched outside it.
"I want to be a doctor and being a doctor costs a lot!" Amara continued, emboldened by their surprise. "College is expensive and I want to pay my way through it; I don't want you guys to pay for me."
"College is still years away, though," Iris mentioned, surprised at Amara's response, surprised at her thinking so far ahead, but why else would Amara had convinced her father to let her actually work at the flower shop as opposed to just volunteering.
Barry, on the other hand, had known he was treading a very thin by allowing her to work at that flower shop, knowing he was putting her so close to her mother's chosen skill. There had always been the chance that one day she was going to come home and show him a potted plant that she'd made grow all on her own. Pamela Isley had been a doctor of botany and toxicology, but he hadn't expected Amara to want to follow a similar path.
"And you want to pay for it with money you've obtained illegally?" he demanded and Amara's teeth snapped together, grinding as she clenched her hands into tight fists.
It was like screaming underwater; no one could hear a thing you were saying. Amara's frustration was leaping to new heights and that wasn't helping anything.
"It's my money," she insisted, her worlds hissing out from her clenched teeth, "I can do whatever I want with it."
And with that she grabbed her keys and left the house before they could call her back, the door slamming behind her on the way out as she gave an aggravated huff, storming towards the edge of the sidewalk, feeling the tips of her fingers charged with electricity and wanting nothing more than to zap something, but she couldn't very well do that in full view of the neighborhood.
Amara growled under her breath, leaning against the mailbox, making the door fly open and expel the contents onto the grass and the road and that only made her agitation grow, despite it probably coming about because of her agitation.
She rubbed at her forehead with a sigh before stooping to collect the mail, her eyes lingering on a postcard with her name on it.
Now that was odd.
Amara didn't exactly get a lot of mail. The kind she tended to get were records of completed year grades from the program that she submitted her school assignments through. Apart from that, getting mail was a rarity, unless it was from the Garricks or the Wests.
Amara pulled herself upright, frowning as held up the postcard. It had no return address, nor any markings to prove it had gone through the postal system, it was like it had just been dropped off in her mailbox a few moments ago.
Her name was written in a curly script that Amara was sure she'd seen somewhere before, but she couldn't quite recall.
The postcard itself was shaped in the likeness of a rose and when Amara turned it over, she could read the few words there: If I was looking for answers, I'd start with Cadmus.
Amara's brow furrowed. Cadmus? The genetics lab in DC?
She chewed on her lip thoughtfully. She had always focused a bit more on the people than the place, but she supposed that in order to make someone like her would take substantial resources and the Cadmus labs were rather good, not as good as STAR Labs, obviously, but still rather good and not affiliated with the Justice League. If she was planning on growing a baby from others DNA that would be the place she'd start with.
The other mail was shoved back into the mailbox, but Amara kept the postcard, turning back around to head into the house and grab her laptop in her room when she froze.
Going back inside when she'd just had a rather loud fight with her parents would not end well…it was better to climb the tree back into her room than go through the front door any day.
So Amara circled around the house, keeping out of sight from the windows –because she knew that Iris would drag her back inside the first chance she got– before finding the winding oak tree. Personally, Amara would have liked the tree better if it had a bit more footholds or forking branches, but it would have to do for now.
She grasped the branches, using a subtle manipulation of the air around her to make pulling herself up into the branches a bit easier, weaving up through the leaves until she was balancing just outside her window.
It would have been much easier, in retrospect, to simply walk through the front door and traipse up the stairs to grab her laptop, but Amara was far too stubborn a creature to resort to that.
And, luckily for her, she'd left the window open after her mother had locked her in her room the day before as a way to force her to clean out all the things that she didn't have any use for (Amara hadn't bothered to point out she could easily pick her way out of the room, and the window wasn't exactly hard to leave out of) so getting in was rather simple, but moving quiet enough that her parents wouldn't be able to hear her downstairs was far more tricky.
Well, it would be trickier if Amara hadn't perfected the art of standing on clouds, which she had.
So Amara hovered in the air, shutting her laptop where it was open on her desk, the screen black from not being used for several minutes, before shoving it in her bag and looping it over her shoulder, pausing at her window when she heard her name mentioned downstairs.
She floated as close to the balcony that overlooked the first floor as she dared, close to hear the muffled conversation but far enough not to be seen.
"Amy's not going to budge, Barry, maybe we should let it go, besides its better for her to spend that money on education rather than something else, wouldn't you agree?"
"That's not the point, Iris," her father sighed, "it's how she got the money in the first place that bothers me."
"I know," Iris placated, "but Amy doesn't have the money on her and it's not in her bank account, so I really think you're out of luck trying to get her to return it…what is it that's really bothering you? I know it's not the money."
But he said nothing and Amara ducked out of sight when came into view of the second landing, moving back to the window with a deeper frown than before. If it wasn't the money that bothered Barry, then what was it?
Cadmus… Now there was something of interest.
Amara had found herself in the Cave in a matter of minutes, and it took her even less time to plug her laptop into the Cave's supercomputer and begin researching Project Cadmus, or, as some called it, Cadmus Labs.
Their research was top notch, Amara found as she surfed her way through their online records. The type of genetics research they were doing was astounding, definitely on par with STAR Labs, but there was also something about it that seemed a bit off to her, like there was something those in charge of Project Cadmus were trying very hard to hide, and that was more than enough to pique Amara's interest.
But there wasn't a hint of what it was online so it was likely that she'd actually have to break into the building in order to get some answers, because there was something very familiar about the genetics lab's logo that had her looking through her old things late into that night.
She hadn't kept her old things from before she was a part of Barry and Iris' family out of sentiment, more of she wasn't really sure what to do with it, so she'd packed her things into a box and shoved it into the darkest corner of her closet, not intending to open it again, yet here she was, pulling the box free and looking through it for one thing in particular.
It didn't take her long to find what she looking for, the identification bracelet might have been small, but it would have easily fit a child.
Amara Isley was printed on the side next to a barcode and on the opposite side read Project Amara.
She frowned at that. Project Amara? She must not have noticed it before. But there was definitely something fishy about it, because next to that was a simple 'c' with an outline of a bull behind it that was the logo of Project Cadmus.
Yeah, Storm Chaser was definitely going to pay them a visit.
The fourth of July was a menace with red, white, and blue in every direction possible, it hurt Amara's eyes more than anything, which was why she'd settled on wearing more muted greens while children ran around dressed like the American flag. She stood out like a sore thumb, but she didn't really care as she made her way up a familiar driveway in Keystone City to stand on the porch and rap sharply on the door with her knuckles.
It only took a moment for the door to be opened, and framed in the doorway stood a woman with a kindly smile.
"Hi, Aunt Mary," Amara said with an unnecessary wave, "is Wally around?"
"Amy! We weren't expecting you!" Mary's eyebrows furrowed briefly. "Were we expecting you?"
"No," Amara laughed, "I just wanted to see Wally. Is he in his room?"
She didn't even wait for her aunt to agree before darting past her and up the stairs to where Wally's bedroom was, opening the door without even knocking.
"Hey, nerd," she said with a grin, "want pasta for lunch?"
Wally dropped his AP Chemistry book ("You have schoolwork in the summer?" Dick laughed while Wally scowled. "It's just an essay, all the AP classes have those, besides, when isn't Amy doing schoolwork?" They both looked to Amara, sipping her cup of cider. "Who's graduating a year early? Oh yeah, that's me." They both rolled their eyes.) and beamed at her. "Amy!"
"Pasta?" Amara prompted, and Wally was on his feet less than the time it took Amara to blink, and that was undoubtedly due to his super-speed than Amara blinking very slowly.
"Yes! Let's go!"
And then he was tugging her out of the room and the house entirely to the first pasta-house, and it was only once they'd ordered that Wally had turned a bit serious.
"All right, spill," he said.
Amara's face twisted in surprise.
"It's not like you to show up out of the blue," Wally said, drumming his fingers against the table as he considered her. "You look…bothered."
Amara shook her head, running a hand through her dark curls. Wally knew her far too well. "Do you remember," she said after a moment, "when we were younger and I told you that I was grown in an artificial womb?"
A red eyebrow was arched. Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't that. "I remember you saying something like that, yeah."
She crossed her arms, leaning them against the table. "I've always known who my father was, biologically speaking, but I've never known who my mother is, or why I was created, but I've always wanted to…but maybe I've been a bit afraid."
Wally was far more understanding and kind than many gave him credit for, but Amara had known him the longest of their friends and he was her family.
"You've never met her," he said matter-of-factly, "of course you're scared, I'd be scared about meeting my mom if I'd never known her."
Amara took a long sip of her water.
"What do you remember from when you were younger?" he asked her. "Before you met Uncle Barry, I mean."
Her green eyes grew distant with thought. "The rooms all looked the same," she said finally, "the same color, the same equipment…there were always tests, kind of like what STAR Labs has me do, nothing really invasive, except for that time they broke my arm to test my healing and pain tolerance…"
Wally winced at that.
"Mostly it was really boring and the doctors considered me to be a sort of experiment, so most of it was watching to see how I responded to different types of stimuli, how I dealt with stress, you know, the usual."
"Your usual and my usual are two very different things," Wally decided when their pasts was slid in front of them, the pair thanking the waitress before she left to take another customer's order.
"There was one doctor who was always really nice to me," Amara said, ignoring that brief mutter from Wally, "I can't remember her name, but she was the one that actually took me out of wherever I being held, she's the one who gave me to Mardon."
"Talk about a big mistake," Wally uttered around a mouthful of spaghetti.
Amara shrugged, but she couldn't disagree. "I think she thought I'd be better off with my family than studied in a laboratory…it's too bad that he never was much of the fathering type." Her expression grew morose as she chewed her chicken fettuccini before swallowing thickly.
"Anyways, so here I have been looking for my mother for awhile now, and someone drops me a hint to look into the place that actually created me," Amara continued with a bit more enthusiasm than she'd previously possessed.
"I thought you didn't know what that place was," Wally remarked, chewing aggressively on a meatball.
"I didn't," Amara said cheerfully, "but Project Cadmus is the best choice, it's got the best equipment apart from STAR Labs and it isn't affiliated with the Justice League, so it's actually pretty brilliant, and its logo was on my ID bracelet, so that's got to be it."
To someone else, it would have been a bit difficult to follow, but this was Wally who knew from experience just how much she had researched genetics when it had first garnered her interest.
"Don't tell me you hacked them," he said narrowing his eyes suddenly.
There was a knowing glint in Amara's eyes that he didn't like in the slightest. "You know me far too well."
Wally rolled his eyes. "Maybe that's the problem."
"Of course, I didn't come up with anything, so I might have to sneak into the building to get some answers…"
One of these days Amara was going to get caught doing something illegal, and then she was going to be screwed, but he knew from experience how foolhardy her stubbornness made her.
"This is highly irregular," the current warden of Belle Reve, Amanda Waller, spoke with clear disdain as Storm Chaser walked beside her, step for step. It wasn't like she didn't paint an impressive picture; many had seen Storm Chaser's sudden reappearance in the attack against Weather Wizard. Several inmates had veered away as they'd walked past, once they'd caught a glance of some static electricity rolling off her.
"I'm aware," Amara said, keeping any inflection out of her tone.
Amanda gave a huff of annoyance. "Still, you're the only one that he'd asked for, so you are well within your rights to speak with your father."
Amara's eyes narrowed for good measure at the mention of her relation, but she didn't comment, instead grasping the door's handle and wrenching it open to step inside.
Mark Mardon looked half the man he used to be, and she supposed Belle Reve did that to you. His grey hair –so like her own– hung around his face, contrasting with the orange of his prison uniform and the red glow from the inhibitor collar locked around his throat.
"I must say, Weather Wizard," she spoke coolly, "the orange doesn't do you justice."
He sneered at her. "Well, well, well, if it isn't my little bastard, come to see your father, have you?"
Storm Chaser didn't even blink. She'd grown far too used to him referring to her as such (which was a whole different set of problems). "I'm here to speak with Mark Mardon aka Weather Wizard," she countered, "my father isn't even in this room."
There was a malevolent glint in his eye as he gave her an open-palmed gesture as if to say "get on with it."
"I want to know who my mother is," Storm Chaser said shortly, "I don't suppose you were given that information, were you?"
She could see something in him that wanted to lie to her; he loathed telling her the truth, that much she could remember quite clearly.
But then he surprised her. "It was never of interest to me, I don't believe the woman who handed you to me actually knew who your mother was, barring that she was a villain."
The winding tension inside of her broke suddenly and Amara had to force herself not to sigh, but while she had been expecting as much, she had hoped for some scrap of information. But Amara was never that lucky.
So she stood and made her way out of the room without even a thank you or a farewell, he had never been deserving of such things from her.
Really, Amara couldn't understand why so many ice-based villains decided to attack on a day like the fourth of July, maybe they had a problem with the color scheme. Aquaman and Aqualad were dealing with Killer Frost, Flash and Kid Flash had Captain Cold, and Batman and Robin had Mr. Freeze.
"Are you sure you don't need any help?" Amara asked Roy as she took to the stairs, rushing up them speedily, making for the rooftop.
"GA and I've got it handled," he assured her before she could hear the distinct sounds of arrows firing.
Amara had been ungrounded for some time now, and usually she would have joined Speedy by now, but Black Canary was out of town helping Wonder Woman with something, and she'd given Amara the option of taking the night off.
"Are you meeting us at the Hall of Justice later?" he asked her and Amara scowled. All the sidekicks were being recognized at the Hall of Justice rather soon but Amara couldn't understand the appeal; people already knew who the sidekicks were (what they were known as, not their secret identities, obviously), the further recognition had just sounded like a bit of an ego boost.
"No thanks," she said, fixing the goggles over her eyes and twisting the lenses to look into the next building, "Mom has me helping her out, we're having a big potluck tonight so we've got to bring a lot of food with three speedsters in the family."
"Lucky you." There was a hiss on the other end that sounded an awful lot like Roy had just missed getting nabbed with some ice. "Talk later?"
"Later," Amara agreed, clicking off her comlink as she looked for an entry point to allow her inside Project Cadmus. Their security appeared to be top-notch, which didn't come as much of a surprise, but Amara had broken into more secured facilities before, so she wasn't too concerned.
It was more of an issue finding the best way to make her way in…she couldn't very well investigate when there were researchers and doctors around, and security was upped at night…unless she wanted to start a fire and force the building to be evacuated…
Her eyes lit up, now that was definitely a solid plan, but she would have to make it look a bit more like an accident than the manner of which she was concocting in her mind. She couldn't very well throw a lit cigarette inside and how it would catch fire, that was just poor planning.
Then she focused her goggles on a Bunsen burner on which a flask full of some kind of blue solution had been placed by a man in a white lab coat before he moved away to focus on other things.
Now wouldn't it just be terrible if the gas was turned up and the flame caught on the items around it? But manipulating the air from farther away was a bit more difficult, so it was going to take just a bit more time than she'd anticipated, but, luckily, there was no one looking for her; Barry thought she was with Roy, Roy thought she was with Iris, and Wally thought she was with Dinah.
So Amara extended her hand and focused hard.
