Here we off again with another chapter, no reviews so far but I appriciate the follows and favs. We've got four days before Christmas so these might come as more than one a day, maybe.
She was zooming through the air over the waters in her jet. Dialing up her butler to inform him of some new intel.
"Zwei, I got-"
"I'm tracking it too, it appears the control towers you use for your auto-nav-systems are pulling out a jamming signal."
"Storm damage?" She asked
"You'll have to go down there and find out for yourself, ma'am"
"Got it. I'm close to one now."
Flying over a large raadio tower on top of a building, she jumped out the cockpit and gilded through a window into said building. She scanned the area quickly, nobody was here. It seemed she landed into a small dirty old room. Wallpaper was peeling, furniture broken, scattered, dust everywhere, made for a good hiding place. She walked through a slightly thinner hallway that lead to some double doors, through it, she heard a voice.
"I swear, we're the only ones here. Look, This town's optics gets a call that the tower's acting funny right? So they send a guy over. But he never shows."
"Probably went home for the night, lucky bastard... Anyway, when he doesn't report in, they send us over. There's no secret plan here fellas, we're just doing our jobs."
She pushed them open and walked in, as she did, she saw she was on a small platfom with stairs leading down to a lower ground area where the men where. She would've sneaked by but there was a large light behind her on the wall, casting a massive shadow over the men. They were instantly startled to see her standing there as they pointed their guns.
"What the? Grab the hostages!" As soon as the gangster said that, another one pulled a hostage to the corner of the room and aimed a gun at his head.
"Y-you seein this?!" A younger criminal asked fearfully.
"What the hell is it?"
"I'll pull this trigger on you lady, I ain't playin!"
'I can drop smoke pellets to conceal my movements. They can't shoot what they can't see'
Her hand was behind her back and hidden by her cape, they didn't see her reach into the back of one of her various pockets to find the little pellet and squeeze it, causing a massive explosion of smoke. She then pulled out her zip claw to go up top onto a leverage nobody could see. The smoked cleared out and all they saw was empty space where she was standing.
Using her newly gained height as an advantage, she scanned the room and found the gangster with hostage.
'Attacking head on is a good way to get shot, and probably the hostage too. But they won't expect an attack from above, nobody ever does'
She swung from one leverage point to another, right until she was above the man with the hostage. Both looked equally terrified.
"Is that red freak with you?" The gunner said
"Are you crazy? We were answering a service call, that's it!"
She tied herself with a rope onto the leverage pont to swoop down and grab the gunman and bring him back. He screamed while the hostage ran free, and the last this he saw before getting dropped and swinging by his legs, was just her scowl.
After freeing the hostage and finding where she needed to go, she was closer to the control room faster than she thought she'd get there. However, when she saw the door leading to it, the opposite side wall had a hole blown through into the next room with a dead man inside.
'I don't think this tower malfunction is from storm damage. I need to set up a crime scene and find out what happened. I should start by identifying the victim'
She pulled her hood over her face and switched it to detective mode, she scanned the facial area of the body to see if it matched anything.
'Victim's name is Gambit Grey, an optics employee sent here to repair a faulty network error. But what killed him? Scanning the DNA on the wall should provide the answer.'
She scanned the blood on the wall and traced how this outcome could've happened.
'Impact analysis indicates the victim was killed by some kind of explosion. Originating at that access panel. I should scan it for additional clues.'
She went over to the panel screen to inspect it, it showed residue from a hand print was on it.
'It looks like the panel was rigged to explode as soon as it was swiped with a keycad. Someone really didn't want this tower repaired. And it looks like that same person left some finger prints behind.'
She activated her radio for contact.
"Zwei, I'm uploading some prints for analysis. Lett me know what comes back"
"Certainly ma'am, searching now... And here we are, they belong to one John F. Baker. He's a rather unremarkable criminal. Small jobs mostly, only... That's curious.." He replied through the radio
"What is it?"
"Mr Baker is dead ma'am.. His body was recovered from the Crystal District just under an hour ago"
"Looks like someone's tying loose ends" She ended the call.
'I can bypass the booby-trapped access panel with my Cryptographic Sequencer. But I'll need the codes from the victim's access card. Reviewing the crime scene will show me where it is.'
Scanning the room, she noticed the card had flew into a vent duct on the wall. She walked over to it and grabed it by the sides, pulling on it harder and harder hoping to rip it off the wall from its hinges. And she did just that, it tore off as she threw it behind her scattering onto the floor.
She bent down to pick up the card and inspect it, still in shape. She scanned it with her detective vision hood and within seconds it was in her system, ready to access the panel.
'This card has the codes I need to hack in any of the network towers access panels.'
She pulled out her sequencer and saw it was already updated with the card information. It was now ready to hack. All she needed to do was find the security password, she scrolled through the many lines of letters on her screen and found it.
"Unfortunate"
The password was accepted and the door opened.
Inside was just a small room with a ladder leading upwards, she climbed it and went through the opening to see the coventry. She finally found the jamming signal.
"Zwei, contact the police department. Let them know about the body, send the data from my analysis too."
"Certainly ma'am. Does this mean you've found the source of the disturbance?"
"I think so."
She walked to a large metal vault-like door with many warning signs, this must be it. There wasn't much of a handle, but something that looked like a bar connected to the door itself. Just not sticking out like a regular handle, just on the side. Looked hard to pull on.
She placed both hands on it and started pushing it one way, hoping it would budge and unlock. Just like the vents. Eventually it moved and the door clicked, meaning it was open. She threw open the doormultiple routers, computers, and another panel to hack with her Sequencer. She pulled it out but saw she was the one that had been hacked, the screen was silver as a transmission came on surrounded by question marks.
There was the top half of a man sitting and looking into a a web cam, must be a call. He was dressed in a vest and white undershirt, but his face had no light on it.
"Well well. if it isn't the King Thug himself. Figured it was only a matter of time before you showed up. Sorry about the mess downstairs."
Even though this seemed live and he was talking... He was oddly not moving at all on the screen.
"Who is this?" She asked, not in the mood for tricks.
"Think of me as a great big mystery! One you're never going to solve."
"Enigma then"
"Oh ho ho. You must think you're so clever. Well how's this for clever: I've taken control of all the towers all over the city. As long as they're active, your litle plane is useless. And it looks like it's going to stay that way. I mean, this one's practically BEGGING to be taken offline and you still can't hack it. Pun intended of course."
He cut offline and she was brought back to the password game again.
Switching through the many words and possible phrases, she found it
"No fly zone"
He came back online as soon as the password was accepted.
"Hmmm... Lantern's not going to like this."
"What are you talking about?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" He cut off for good without a trace behind.
'With the jammer offline I can travel here with the Rosewing. But the other relays are a part of a distributed security system. I wonder what they're protecting...'
She pulled down her hood over her face to look at the screen, opening up a map of the town to view each tower location and possibly track down Nigma.
'That must be where he set up shop, I'll have to pay him a visit.'
"I feel regained control of the Rosewing ma'am. I suppose it's the Jezebel Plaza, then?" Came Zwei over the comm.
"That's the plan. But then... I've also got a good lead on Nigma."
"You mean Mr. Black? The hacking fellow who claims he's 'Poisonous like Mercury'?"
"That's him"
"Don't overthink it too much ma'am. we both know you'll eventually get him."
"Eventually."