Max entered the cave at a run. She'd been trying to coordinate with Terry from the car but this far underground the only way to get a signal was by connecting to the cave network and while her car was self-driving it wasn't the batmobile.
She skidded to a stop when she saw Wayne already in the main chair.
"Your meeting?" she panted.
"Postponed, I just arrived."
"Shway, I was helping Terry get into the dome." She pointed to the relevant portion of the screen where Terry had made it inside. His visor cam showed him talking to some kid. Max's gut clenched. Was that the meta? He couldn't be older than Matt. She didn't like it. the whole situation was a mess, but it was out of her hands now. She had to trust Wayne and Terry.
"Matthew McGuinnis what do you think you're doing?" Wayne growled out of nowhere.
Max searched the screens, trying to figure out what he'd seen. There was a second blip on the map, marking an agent in the field. Why was Matt connecting to the network? She'd told him she wouldn't help him. Max bit her lip. Matt had said that Wayne already knew that he knew the secret but Wayne's tone wasn't exactly supportive.
Moreover, Matt's beacon wasn't at the hospital.
"Is he hacked in through a police car?" Max asked without really believing it.
"A police car sitting outside the filtration plant." Wayne growled.
"No wait, look I totally have a good reason." Matt's voice came through the speakers even as Wayne started typing. "The poison, the same poison that got me. it got the commissioner too and we realized that it was the dome. That's where the poison is coming from. Officer Hawk is helping me. We just need to shut down the lines connected to the dome. That's it, nothing dangerous."
Wayne was growling something under his breath but the information he was coming up with all said Matt was right.
"Fine," Wayne barked, "I'm taking control of the link with Officer Hawk, you're done."
"But-" Matt whined.
"Don't push it. We are going to have a serious conversation when this is done."
On a seperate channel Officer Ian Hawk said, "looks like it needs a login."
With two short commands Wayne had the channel with Matt minimized and a voice filter over his own response. "Username: SisAdmin, password: 84tm4nl1v3s"
Mr Wayne pulled up a map of the filtration system. From what Max could tell he could have hacked in and done it all himself but have a man on the inside was always faster and easier. Wayne noticed her looking and paused in his instructions.
"Keep an eye on Terry," He said, and she nodded.
Bringing her attention back to Batman, she watched Terry exchange blows with some kind of vine, or no it was grass.
She knew by now that speaking while he was fighting was as likely to distract him as it was to help, so Max bit her lip and took to the air, kicking out with his jets when seeds started sprouting on his legs.
"Last chance to give up piecefully. Ten seconds." Terry said. He had a detonator. Max realized what was about to happen slapping at the controls to speak to him. She took a breath, but it was too late. The detonator fell.
The view from Terry's visor whited out. Max elt numb but her fingers were apparently still working since she could pull up Terry's vitals He was alive. His pulse was elevated which was to be expected. The suit was reporting a lot of minor failures, mostly heat but pressure damage too. No broken bones. Nothing that signaled a major injury.
Max took a breath, ready to yell at him and demand to know exactly what he'd thought he was doing, but Wayne spoke first.
"It's the dome. It's too late."
"What do you mean?" Hawk asked.
Max took in what had happened on Wayne's side of the terminal, in mute horror, Wayne was typing madly, but like he'd said, it was too late.
"The dome is gone. There's going to be infections in the area, there's no getting around that. But the pressure also blasted through half the major channels we were trying to close. The only thing we can do now is mitigate the damage. You'll need to pull the master override on the main floor. That will lock down the whole system." Wayne spoke quickly but without even a hint of panic in his tone. Max wasn't sure if she envied that or if it made her even more nervous.
"Okay I-" Hawk cursed something from the other end of the radio. "I'm locked in. some kind of override I think, a safety measure."
It was true. Max watched as Wayne tried to override it, but the safety procedures were locked behind an extra level of security.
"I can do it," Matt said out of nowhere.
"No," Wayne growled immediately, but the old man was still focused on getting past the security, and didn't see the dot representing Matt's location shift.
"He's going in," Max reported.
"I can do this." Matt said again. I just go and flip the switch, easy. Besides I'm the only one here."
Wayne clenched a fist, then slowly let it go. "Fine."
He slid the program that connected to Hawk's screen over to Max's side of the terminal, "Shut down all auxiliary processes and reroute everything you can back to the main lines." then he pulled up a map of the building and started directing Matt down the appropriate corridors.
Max turned to her own task. She adjusted the voice filters so Hawk would know a new person was speaking and said, "Are you there? I'm going to walk you through the shutdown sequence. You should still have access. Here's what you need to do..."
Robin ran through the corridors, with nothing but his mask and Wayne's voice in his ear. The place was deserted, and didn't look like many people hung around even when it was at full capacity. The walls were that professional off-white of all government buildings, at least until he hit the main floor. there all pretence at this being any other government building ceiced, leaving only harsh industrial metal and concrete.
The space was huge, there were tanks of slowly swirling sludge and tanks of compressed gases. Pipes crisscrossed the space, painted different colors at intervals to mark what they contained and which way the contents should be flowing.
"It should be a large yellow and black switch on the east wall." Wayne said.
Robin nodded and spun around in the right direction. The switch was obvious when he saw it. There wasn't any piping to crawl through or obvious obstacles in his way. The switch was under a glass case, but even that only had a flip-switch keeping it closed not a real lock.
Robin grabbed the leaver and tugged it down into place.
The air shuddered as a low background hum he had barely even registered hearing, ground to a stop. There were three, then four seconds where all Robin could hear was his own panting breath. then there was a ping as something metal snapped. Something else let out a low grone.
"Did it work?" Matt asked frantically eyeing the switch and the door.
"Yes, but there's pressure in the valves, get out of there."
Robin ran for it.