Part 1 - Chapter 7: Noise and Stealth
Where there is a meeting and then there is another one.
Meanwhile, at that same night.
'You know what, things are actually looking up!', Peter Parker thought to himself, the elevator doors to his private laboratory opening up as he remained seated, a high chair on the side of a cart covered with a white blanket.
"Good morning, Peter, heard you wanted to show me something?", came the now recognized voice of Ted Kord, the man who personally hired him as one of his future technology creators. "Isn't it a little early on the U-molecule fabric?" Of course, Kord's attention was caught by the covered up device.
'That's okay', Peter psyched himself up. 'It's just like being back in middle school again - actually, scratch that, it's worse, because everyone here wants to prove they were worthy of being hired by Kord.'
Peter stepped up, pulling out the blanket of the cart, revealing a semi-spherical metal object, a feet in diameter, along with a rather large air-horn can, which he picked up, made a show of demonstrating it as if in a TV commercial then quickly tossed the party supply to his boss, who caught it with ease.
With Peter's silent suggestion of thumb up and down, Ted Kord pressed the button, making the air horn blare loud and, most importantly, annoyingly.
Before Ted could ask anything, his newest recruit started moving the top of the spherical device still on the cart, akin to a dial, and, suddenly, the obnoxious noise started to go down, until it was as if non-existent, completely muted.
"... how?", Ted wondered out loud, and was surprised that he could hear other things, just not the air-horn anymore.
While Ted Kord still held down the pressure release valve on the can, in amazement, Peter's hand moved the dial part of the device now in the opposite direction. The sound started growing in volume and getting to such a pitch that the rich scientist could have sworn he was feeling pressured away by the blare.
Kord finally released the thumb of the infernal noise maker, tossing back the can to Peter, who, to his surprise, caught it with barely a look. "Nice trick", he said, in awe and pain, still massaging his own ears..
Peter patted the round object, with visible pride. "This is an acoustic vibration manipulator. You can set it to match a specific sound and make it go down or up, making it both a noise-canceller and sound-amplifier. Half a dozen of these together and you can make an entire orchestra go quiet or make it so that you would not have to raise your voice to be heard by a whole stadium."
Ted approached the large device, now giving it a better appraisal and thinking about its potential. Peter, confident, pulled from his lab coat pocket a dark plastic sphere and handed it to the multimillionaire scientist. Ted checked the new object, seeing it as no bigger than a softball, then realizing that he could twist it in the middle.
It split open, two halves popping out to each hand. Each half of the object was padded on the inside, with mini-speakers in the middle of them.
"Still working on the design, but these are better noise-canceling headphones, using the acoustic vibration manipulator design. Put them on, Ted.", Peter offered, remembering the conversation they had at the diner and how he should address his new boss.
Ted did as he was told, and suddenly he realized that the 'ear-shells' actually stuck to his head, almost as if magnetically. "The plastic has a non-toxic, hypoallergenic non-static adhesive polymer treatment, something I've recently developed to react with organic tissue." Peter explained.
('Or rather years ago, to help my spider-tracers stick on any surface', Peter reminisced. 'Nowadays, the newest formula is far stronger than this.')
"It keeps the earphone in place, no matter how much you move but can be easily removed if pulled and it's also hypoallergenic. Perfect to listen to music with no outside noise, or to completely nullify noises while you are still hearing everything else." 'And a big thanks to you, Herman, who inspired me with your vibro-gauntlets tech', Peter mentally thanked his source of inspiration. "I think it could sell well."
Peter could see the gears starting to move in Kord's brain.
"Peter, this sound technology is ahead of anything in development right now, and your polymer, hell! It could revolutionize medical equipment, personal digital devices, even the fashion industry! Like velcro for human skin, I mean, people could easily get this stolen on the street while wearing them, but it's a minor design flaw, we can work around it and…" Ted stopped and saw Peter's smile. "Peter, this could help a lot of people, you know?"
Peter put a hand on top of the acoustic manipulator.
"Ted, I've only just begun."
"We just got confirmation, Ted Kord is actually in the building."
"I thought he was staying in El Paso these days."
"Nothing changed - in fact, this is actually even better."
The Chrysalis - Lobby
A black-haired man, dressed in a non-descriptive business suit entered through the front door, a black suitcase in one hand while he talked to a smartphone in the other. One of the only two security officers at the time spotted him and gave a small signal in his earphone, alerting the colleague manning the desk at the moment. She gave a slight head nod of confirmation and, hand discreetly set over her taser-gun, welcomed the unscheduled arrival.
The business man did not stop, as he got nearer the second security officer, the first one he had passed by now turning towards the unannounced late visitor, when -
The female security officer was sinking into the floor.
The male officer felt a rope around his neck tighten.
She tried to reach the table with the security panel.
He couldn't feel the ground anymore, as he was lifted off by his neck.
She yelled for help, now feeling the grainy mass reaching her neck.
His sight was going dark, he could not breathe!
Her head was being swallowed down, she could not breathe!
Both guards fell down, unconscious. A woman with bright pink hair in a punk cut stood at the door, wearing a shocking pink jacket, over her black clothes, and black shades, even though it was already dark outside. The business suit man quickly vanished into thin air, like a vaporous mirage.
"And this is how you make an entrance. Area clear.", the woman, Fay Moffit, declared, three other men coming inside soon after, this time wearing just as colorful clothes.
"Good work, Lady Spellbinder.", came the congratulations from the red-haired man in green spandex and several purple pieces of equipment, including a purple hockey-style mask. "Disruptor, deal with the security system."
Said man sped forward, cladding red spandex suit with the several golden lines criss crossing it, full mask except for the eyes and mouth. "The secret to these kinds of things-", said Michael Beldon, or 'The Disruptor', as he pushed the fainted woman to the side while pressing his golden glove on the console, all the locked password screens were skipped, the entire security system now open for them. "- is having the Touch!"
"It's not the time for bad jokes, Disruptor.", the red-haired leader declared, then turned to the last member, the large muscled man with red bushy hair, combed back, brown uniform and dark boots, tanned skin and large nails on both hands. "Lionmane, grab the two guards and drop them inside the cleaning supply closet. Spellbinder, keep an eye on things here."
"Sure will, 'Overflow', sir", she replied, not caring much about being left behind.
"The name is OVERTHROW!", the man yelled, in annoyance. "Hmph! You two, follow me.", ordered the leader to the other half of his team. "It's time to go to the root of this evil."
The three invaders got inside the elevator, Disruptor pressing the console and sudden access to the lowest basement floor was authorized.
The last thing Lady Spellbinder heard from them, before the doors closed off, was Disruptor's voice.
"Sure, I can't make bad jokes, but when you make them…"
Overthrow's 'Shut up!' had been muffled, but still comprehensible.
Ted Kord's wristwatch started beeping, and it was the tritonal signal he set for Security Alert - the one that told him someone was going to an area they were not supposed to be.
Ted had programmed every facility of Kord Industries to set out a signal to inform him about someone reaching any unauthorized areas, such as his public known 'private' offices, his actual secret offices and the several hidden tech caches that he kept safely hidden for an emergency.
"Just a moment, Peter", he said, turning around and quickly reaching into his pocket to check the feed and, as he feared, one of his secret locations was about to be breached.
'Of course, it had to be this building's micro power plant', a non-nuclear generator capable of producing around 5,000 megawatts of energy per hour, enough to light up Gotham City for around thirty minutes or to power up the energy shield he had installed for the Chrysalis. Whoever was riding the elevator at the moment had authorized access to reach that sub-level in particular, which was both impressive and terrifying for two big reasons.
First, because only him and Jaime Reyes had this kind of access.
Second, he never told Jaime Reyes about the place.
'Oh, also, third reason, it is not even possible to reach the level with the console.' So, whoever was going down at this very moment was smart enough to find out about it and clever enough to trick the security systems to let them through.
"Peter, something came up and… are you ok?", Ted asked in worry, as Mr. Parker seemed to be suffering from some sort of headache.
"No worries, low blood sugar, I forgot to eat a granola bar.", he replied.
"You definitely should do that. And rest.", Ted advised, trying to leave the place as fast and as unassuming as possible. "I… have this thing to do."
(Ted Kord could have sworn he was smarter than that.)
"Yeah, you should, go do the thing you have to do, I'm… staying here. In my lab.", Peter assured him, a little distressed.
'I didn't know he had such a medical condition', Kord reckoned but shrugged it off. With a hasty 'goodbye, we'll talk later', the multimillionaire went straight to the elevator, going down to the lowest level of the 'think tank' section of the Chrysalis - the fraction of the building tower separate from the main office area, with its own elevators, lab floors and dormitories, just to give his very well paid developers their own privacy and security just to get the creative juices flowing.
At the Atrium, the owner of the building went straight into the VIP Elevator, the one that only a few people in his organization could use, already pressing and holding a button, not the one for the lobby, but to reach his own private floor.
The fingerprint scanner and a micro-needle for blood sample collection, cleverly hidden in the button, proved his identity and gave him access.
Ted Kord promptly started stripping as the doors opened, declaring "I Heart Azure Scarab". The elevator doors promptly locked up behind the millionaire, bookshelves to his right moved sideways, covering up a painting of a man holding the Globe and revealing a hero suit and a variety of personally created gadgets. The suit, in various shades of blue, with the stylized top of a beetle dividing the top shoulder area from the torso, was a marvel of bullet-resistant mesh and malleable circuitry.
The scientist suited up, closing the belt with a large round buckle for last, the golden lenses' HUD already streaming lots of information, including the secondary security system that the intruders hadn't been aware of. Three profiles were listed, including aliases, powers and weaknesses, except from the supposed leader, Overthrow.
'I hate new guys, especially new guys that act like they are big shots.', Ted wondered, as he grabbed his trusty 'BB gun', a pistol with the top part shaped like a can, and his Beetle-rappel gun ('Which was much cooler than a normal grapple gun').
A minute later and the now recognizable hero Blue Beetle could be seen running down the side of the building, the rappel gun attached to his belt, constantly releasing a long stream of strong microfilament connected to the small blue beetle-shaped device that latched itself to the top of the tower.
Reaching the last few yards, the Blue Beetle jumped off, mental calculations allowing him to stop the microfilament production enough to allow the hero to swing back, crashing through glass doors and into the lobby, like a wrecking ball, a quick trigger press releasing him from the cable and, after rolling to a stop, he quickly drew his BB Gun towards where he expected the illusionist was supposed to be…
… only to find Lady Spellbinder wrapped up into a cocoon of silk-like material, hanging from the ceiling, as a hero was observing him from said ceiling, upside-down.
"Wow, this is awkward.", the red and blue hero admitted. "Cool entrance, though. Very 'Mission Impossible'."
Few moments earlier.
Peter had to hide the wince, as he felt the usual warning signs of his Spider-sense washing over him. Something bad was about to happen, and the general direction of danger pointed him not to the guy in front of him who actually gave him a job, thankfully, but to under them, many floors below.
"Just a moment, Peter", Mr. Kord told him as he turned away, probably checking some text message from his phone.
"That's okay," the hero said, but apparently Ted was too focused on whatever he had received to acknowledge him. 'I have to get him out of here, or I have to find a way to leave myself without Mr. Kord following me!', Peter worried, as the danger he sensed started spiking.
"Peter, something came up and… are you ok?", Ted Kord asked, visibly worried, as he must have caught Peter's wince. The hero rubbed his forehead, the old excuse of low blood sugar coming into play - which wasn't a total lie, Peter had to eat meals with high levels of calories just to keep himself from falling down at the end of the day, though his metabolism might have been one of the most efficient he had ever seen.
Ted told him to rest and something else, but Peter was now distracted with the possible out Ted was giving him. 'I don't want to make things awkward, but whatever is needed to get rid of my boss, I suppose.'
Kord took a step back, eyeing the elevator. "I… have this thing to do.", his boss said. 'Aaaaand I made things awkward, must be Parker's Luck in full effect, I had hoped I left you back home, old buddy', Peter wondered.
"Yeah, you should, go do the thing you have to do, I'm… staying here. In my lab.", Peter said in his best assuring voice, easily hiding the distress he was feeling. 'Sometimes I wonder if my clever quips can only come when I am dressed up in a ridiculous outfit', Peter questioned himself.
Ted Kord left with a quick 'Goodbye, we'll talk', the doors closing the multimillionaire off, and Peter quickly crossed the lab - his body moving much faster than normal people could hope to follow with their eyesight.
Checking his Kord-Pad, issued to every employee - Peter had taken less than an hour to dismantle, reprogram, improve and reassemble it as a tool to keep track of the security system set-up inside the Chrysalis, including the other one hidden in hard to spot locations.
'Ted Kord might be a scientist, but he's also a multimillionaire. Of course he would have every scientist on his payroll under surveillance', Peter admitted with some sadness, while activating his secret new subroutine, setting all the secret sensors and cameras into a loop.
Ten seconds from Ted's departure, Peter had already opened up his personal safe - also another piece of technology he had reprogrammed to make it three times harder to access, partly from the new encryption software he coded and installed to prevent hacking, partly because his password had thirty characters and had to be typed in in three seconds to be valid -, pulled out his clothes and equipment and started suiting up.
His looks kept the same from his original one, except the fabric was much lighter and now tear-resistant ('Nothing much sharper than kitchen knives, but every little bit helps, thank you, Wayne Enterprises!').
No, the biggest improvements, made in the last two weeks thanks to his much welcome salary and Kord Industries' equipment, was all under the hood, as the white lenses gave out a light glow, his proto-HUD activated inside the malleable screen.
As Spider-Man made his way to the door, the lines of code changed inside display to the Environment scanner.
"Activate G.O.O.B.E.R.", he spoke out loud, as the acronym appeared at the corner of his vision, and a small progression bar filled out. The hacking app he installed in his suit was still in its infancy, but it was enough to break through most of Kord Industries' encryption barriers - Peter would have to update it with more data to actually make it useful in the field, but right now, the Good-Old-Objective-Breaching-Engine-Resource would do, as it completed its task and the elevator doors opened, revealing the empty shaft.
The hero barely looked, as he leapt inside and started falling, webbing open a vent tall enough for him to crawl through (one of the many he had found in the first days of getting to know the building and mapping the security's blind spot) and stopping for self-adjustment and getting inside of it.
Barely ten seconds and Spider-Man had crossed the Chrysalis' Atrium and had reached the other elevator shafts, these ones containing far more sensors and alarms than the ones restricted to the scientists. Undetained, Spider-Man just pulled himself out and started free-falling, nimbly avoiding many laser 'trip-wires' with his acrobatics, while G.O.O.B.E.R dealt with temporarily pausing any motion sensors that the spider-hero came close to.
Now there were two warnings happening at the back of his head. One, still strong, coming from down below. The other, much weaker but not less dangerous, was coming from the doors that led to the Building's Lobby.
"G.O.O.B.E.R., access security cameras, lobby.", Spider-Man commanded, and saw the two guards dutifully keeping their position. Curious, the hero tilted his head and decided to put his ear against the metal wall, realizing that, despite the live footage, there were three sets of heart beats in his general vicinity, two coming from off the side, and only one barely ten meters in front of him.
Risking that this was not, in fact, someone from the cleaning crew on their route and that the highly sophisticated security system of one of the richest and smartest men in the World was suddenly glitching, Spider-Man decided to use an upper vent to get a better look.
'Looks like I was right', he thought, as he saw the clearly evil bad girl just hanging about at the security desk.
Deciding not to waste anymore time, the hero carefully opened the ceiling vent and quickly swung down, now crawling upside down and almost directly over the pink-haired criminal. Two quick shots, one to wrap her torso up, the other to pull back her legs - making her bump her forehead on the desk - and the criminal had been quickly hoisted to the ceiling, restrained and out of commission.
And that was the moment when another colorful superhero suddenly crashed into the front glass doors, made an admittedly cool air twist while swinging inside, then rolled onto the ground and pulled a strange sci-fi gun towards him.
'I just had to ruin someone else's 'big darn entrance'. Of course I did, and knowing the fame of the vigilantes of Gotham, this guy is probably deciding if he should deal with me as well'
"Wow, this is awkward.", Spider-Man said, trying to sound as harmless as possible. "Cool entrance, though. Very 'Mission Impossible'."
To be Continued!
Author's notes:
Spider-Man to Blue Beetle: "Welcome To The Party, Pal!"
Next Chapter: "Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Beetle