It was a few days after his 1st birthday that Jason manifested his second ability. The discovery was a frightening experience for Felicia as she had initially believed her son was missing, fearful that he was possibly kidnapped by vengeful parties from her past. She remembered searching frantically through every room before finding her son crying upside down from the ceiling of his room. She'd been hopeful that his abilities would manifest closer to when he hit puberty, when he was conscious and more aware, but his mutate biology was not accommodating to that timeframe. Felicia gave a heavy sigh, it was another daunting task she'd need to figure out for her and her son's sake. She thought back to when she and Spiderman were still dating, and recalled inquiring about the nature of his abilities. He told her, in regards to his wall crawling, that his body, particularly around his hands and feet, was able to produce an electro static attraction to the surfaces he touched. By his admission, it took him weeks to figure how to not stick to every surface he touched, a task she knew would be trickier for a mentally developing infant. Spiderman's suit, by his design, permitted him to not only allow his wall crawling abilities, but to further enhance them. She realized any material surrounding her sons hands and feet would inhibit his ability to cling to surfaces. She got to work and quickly developed a pair of gloves made of rubber with an anti cling film around the palms and fingertips. The cover she gave to anyone who asked about her son's gloves was that he had an immunodeficiency and could not risk coming into contact with unclean surfaces. His feet proved a much easier solution: as long as he wore shoes, their material was thick enough to naturally inhibit his wall crawling ability.
It was 7am in the morning and Felicia was in her bathroom prepping herself for the day. She was finishing putting on her makeup before putting on a pair of gold earrings on to compliment the two piece black dress she was wearing. She brushed her hand through her hair, tucking one of her bangs behind her right ear, feeling content on her appearance for the day. She hurried over to her son's room finding him standing at his cribs edge, his left foot raised over the railing. "Oh no you don't mister!" She said as she picked her son up from his crib. She took him to their living room where she sat him down on a sofa while she went through her purse. She peeked at her phone, checking the time, before pulling out a pair of small dark grey gloves. She hurriedly slipped them onto her son's hands. As she finished doing so, a knock came at her door. She picked up her son and answered it to find the young nanny she had hired waiting patiently outside. Her name was Jessica Doiron and she was a young girl fresh out of high school, not particularly bright but not hopelessly dumb. Felicia hired her not just because of her pleasant and outgoing demeanor, but in the event there was incident with Jason, her youth would make her far less credible.
"Hi Ms. Harmon!" The young girl greeted Felicia.
"Ah Jessica! So glad you're here. Here's my little man," Felicia said as she handed her son to the young girl. She pressed a firm kiss on her son's cheek before telling him "Be good okay?" She waved goodbye to the two as she hurriedly headed to the elevator of her apartment building. She made her way outside heading to the train station nearby. Civilian life was an experience still foreign to Felicia, one that continually plagued her with boredom from its monotony. The routine of waking up, going to work and then coming home seemed an almost maddening reality to Felicia. Her son and his well being was the only consolation that encouraged her to continue that lifestyle. Four months earlier, Felicia opened her security business, "Cat's Eye Security," specialising in security consultation and installation. Like New York City, Chicago had its own issues with crime, but unlike New York, it did not have as large of a superhero population. This proved beneficial to Felicia, as the wealthy sector of the City was plagued with repeat burglaries, giving her a significant consumer base eager to resolve their security issues.
Felicia hopped off the train and made her way to Madison and Nth Clark st where her office was located. As she got closer to the building where her office was located she thought about a few clients who had contracted her company recently. This included: a 70 year old heiress looking to upgrade her penthouse security system after having one of her dogs stolen, an investment banker, who Felicia suspected was a money launderer, inquiring about installing a vault, and lastly a businessman who wanted a security consultation after having a break in. Those were the jobs immediately on her current schedule and would likely occupy the bulk of her workday. As she rode the elevator up, she thought about her two employees and the topic of gossip they'd no doubt bring up and inquire on when she arrived. The night previously, Felicia had gone on a date with a man she met at the gym. He was a young handsome businessman, with a slight resemblance to her former lover, though without the reservation and wisecracks. He had taken her to an expensive restaurant near the Chicago Loop and indulged Felicia with all the luxuries his great wealth afforded him. Outside of his slight arrogance, Felicia thought he was quite enjoyable and worth seeing again. He might've held the same sentiment until the reality that Felicia was a mother came to light. They left the restaurant and he had entreated her to come to his residence, which Felicia had to decline as she hadn't hired the nanny to stay overnight and wanted to return to her son. "Oh! I didn't know you had a son," his dejected response gave Felicia all the indication any attraction and interest he had in her vacated immediately at that revelation. They then gave their goodbyes with the man telling her he'd call her later that week. Felicia gave a sigh, shaking her head when she thought back to that night.
Felicia got off the elevator and made her way towards her office. When she opened the door, she found her two employees in the midst of going over contracts they had for the day. When Felicia first opened her business she hired two women as her first employees: Veronica Bier, a 32 year old with years of experience as an accountant and secretary and Diana Misra, a 21 year old UIC dropout who impressed Felicia with her engineering expertise. Admittedly, Felicia saw something of herself in the girl. Veronica handled calls, the company's finances, and contacted subcontractors when needed. Diana split the duties of handling subcontractors as well as reviewing equipment from a variety of Security Tech Companies. Her eventual role would be their chief field agent, a role that Felicia currently occupied. Felicia over the past weeks imparted her the skills she had honed over the years as "The Black Cat." Felicia taught her how to lock pick a variety of locks, opening safes, bypassing wifi security and harvesting RFID signals. Diana had actually managed to improve the base tech Felicia used for her RFID harvesting. She commented that by wirelessly linking the harvesters together they could greatly boost their signal, allowing them to bypass the strongest cybersecurity defense. The suggestion impressed Felicia, and she felt Diana would soon be ready to take over Felicia's responsibilities. Her duties would be meeting clients for security consultations, identifying flaws in their security, and installing security tech when necessary. Felicia had recently tasked her with writing a program to manage a series of motion sensors she ordered.
"Hi girls!," Felicia waved as she made her way to her personal office. She stopped by Veronica's desk and inquired on the jobs for the day. "So, what do we have today?" Felicia inquired. "Oh Mrs. Cooper called asked if you could come sooner and Mr. Jones rescheduled for Friday at noon, so you only have Mr. Granderson afterwards. Oh and I forwarded you a few emails from some prospective clients asking about vaults and other stuff," Veronica answered her. "Oh" Diana suddenly answered," those new sensors came in. I left them on your desk." Once they had informed their boss of the days workload, the work seriousness on Veronica's face broke as a curious smile took it's place. "Sooo," she asked, "how'd it go last night?"
Felicia drew her right hand to her face before motioning downward in a thumbs down gesture as she blew a raspberry. Not wanting to indulge her employees with details of last night's disappointment, Felicia walked towards her personal office. Inside she found a box labelled "Hammer industries," atop her desk. Inside the box were a collection of military grade motion sensors. Felicia had the idea of creating a secondary security measure for vaults that would involve installing sensors independent of the vault's own security system. In her experience in dealing with some of the most secure vaults, she often found that the countermeasures built within the vault would be linked together and managed by one master security system. By bypassing this system, all other securities could be shutdown and circumvented. The secondary system would act as a redundancy against any prospective thief who managed to disable the main system. Felicia got the idea a week before after meeting a client who had been robbed after thieves hacked into his security system and shut down his whole system. Had there been a secondary system, the thieves would've tripped the secondary alarm once they had entered the vault and possibly not gotten away.
Felicia sat down at her desk, peering at a framed photo of her son that she kept beside her desktop. He was dressed in a small black onesie and looking at the camera smiling. Seeing the photo always inspired Felicia's entire being, giving her the energy to take on whatever her workday had in store for her. She took out one of the motion sensors and examined it. It was very small, about the size of 9 volt battery, with a hard, grey metal shell that shielded it from foreign signals trying to hack it. It had a 2 year battery life and could supposedly detect motion within 40 feet of wherever it was placed. Working in unison with other motion detectors ,as part of a network, it could cover a substantial area. In this case, they'd only need to cover the area occupied by most vaults. Felicia had ordered 30 of them and planned to have Diana go over and inspect each one before testing them on the software she wrote. She went over the emails Veronica forwarded, pinning the ones she planned to respond to later before calling out to Diana who then came in quickly with her laptop in hand.
"Hey-o! What's up?" Diana inquired. "I need you to test each of these sensors. Take them in the back and make sure they're in working order. Afterwards we can test that program you wrote. Did you finish it?" Felicia replied. Diana raised her laptop, "Yup! Finished it last night." Felicia grabbed her purse and put it in a messenger bag she had beside her desk. "Ugh! I can't believe I have to help this lady find her dog!" Felicia bemoaned to Diana. Along with contracting Felicia's company to install a new security , the Heiress had also given her the notice that if she helped her locate and recover her dog she'd compensate her with an additional 100 thousand dollars. Felicia only told her she'd consider it, she was after all thinking about adding investigative services to her company in the future. "The Heiress?" Diana answered. "She seemed a little nutty, but Veronica checked her out. She's one of the richest people in this state!" "So long as her money is green," Felicia answered. "So what happened with Prince Charming?" Diana looked at Felicia interestedly. Felicia drew her eyes up as a slight smile drew across her face. "God! It was honestly pretty great until…" She drew out her response as Diana earnestly waited to hear the end. "Until he found out I had a son." "Doesn't like baggage huh?" Any elation Felicia had at the moment immediately deflated at that response. She looked at Diana slightly annoyed. Diana got the message: it was time to stop with the gossip and get to work. "I'll uhh get started on testing those sensors," Diana said as she picked up the box on Felicia's. "Great. I should be back around 1 and we can test that program of yours." Felicia made her way out of her office before waving goodbye to Veronica. She quickly exited the building and headed for the train station. The good thing about her clientele was that most of them lived downtown, close to the train station, thus not necessitating the need for a vehicle although Felicia still planned to get one down the line.
It was 20 minutes later that Felicia arrived on the North Side of Chicago. She made her way to Michigan Avenue, near the Chicago Water Tower, which her client's penthouse overlooked. She reached her client's address not long after and made her way inside, greeting the main floor attendant.
"Hi, I'm with Cat's Eye Security. Here to see Mrs. Cooper," Felicia told the attendant. "Mrs. Cooper? Let me check," the attendant peered through his computer as he went through his resident database. "Ah yes here you are! Ok it's going to be the last elevator down on the right. It's the penthouse so just press 'P'." Felicia nodded as she headed in the direction the attendant pointed. "Geez, that was easy. 75 million dollar penthouse and didn't even check my ID or anything," Felicia reflected as she thought about the lack of security in the buildings check in process. Had she been an antagonistic party with nefarious intentions she could have easily taken advantage of the lapse of security. It became almost second nature for Felicia to examine the security of a building, even if they didn't directly hire her. As she rode the elevator up, she figured she'd drop a suggestion to her client once their current business was done. The elevator opened after reaching the top floor and Felicia quickly made her way out. The hallway leading to the entrance reminded Felicia of her former residence back in New York, although she could tell her client's residence was significantly larger and more decadent. "Mrs. Amber Cooper," Felicia's current client, was a 70 year old woman with business interests ranging from mining precious metals to owning stock in number of restaurant franchises. A widower ,her wealth was 2nd generational, having inherited it from her father who had worked tirelessly to build it from meager beginnings. Mrs. Cooper had very little input in the management of her business interests, as her wealth was maintained and built up by the strength of the still living CEOs and managers her father had appointed prior to his death. Mrs. Cooper had children, two boys and one girl, whom she hadn't seen in several months as, like her, had no input in the family businesses and simply spent their days spending the fortune built by their grandfather. Likewise, Mrs. Cooper did the same in her youth ,but with her husband's passing and old age, she simply resided herself to the boundaries of her home city and gave herself purpose by expending her fortune in luxurious goods. Felicia thought back to her days as the Black Cat and realized would fall in line with the class of individuals she normally robbed: individuals with more money than sense. However, she wasn't here to scout for a future robbery, but to prevent future ones.
Felicia knocked on the door and was answered by a man who addressed himself as Mrs. Cooper's personal assistant.
"Hi are you here from Cat's Eye?" The man inquired. "Yup that's me," Felicia answered. The assistant led Felicia inside to the Penthouse's living room, before divulging that Mrs. Cooper was currently locked away in her room with her only remaining dog, too distraught to answer anyone.
"Oh yes! She's been a wreck since her dog was stolen," the man told Felicia. "And you're sure it was stolen?" Felicia answered back. "That what she tells me. I mean I'm only here four times a week, but she says she came home and couldn't find her." "Stolen from here? Was anything else taken?" "No just the dog." Felicia furrowed her brow as she expressed a measure of skepticism. Just from a brief scan, she could tell the contents of the room were worth considerably more than any dog breed. She considered possible ransom, but the dog was supposedly stolen more than 3 days ago, any ransomer would have given their demands already. "I don't know, seems like a stretch to think someone would've broke in to steal a dog," Felicia said. "We'll she's worth $40000, so I don't think it's too crazy," the assistant answered back. Felicia merely shrugged, and decided to put her focus on the initial service she'd been contracted for. She asked the assistant to give a thorough tour of the penthouse and they then proceeded to go through each room as Felicia tediously examined them for flaws in security. It always amazed Felicia that in spite their great wealth, most wealthy individuals she had previously robbed, would invest in the most basic security. She'd often find the windows of the second floor unlocked, security cameras with terrible image quality, dial safes she could crack in less than a minute among other things. In her experience, it was criminals who invested the most effort into protecting wealth. Likewise, Felicia got the greatest thrill from robbing them.
The examination took just over an hour and a half, during which Felicia passed by a collection of fine goods ranging from: a number of expensive paintings, statues, fine carpets, and enough jewelry to open a jewelry store. The cumulative cost of all those goods would probably come close to the value of the entire penthouse itself. "I could've cleaned this lady out in one night," Felicia thought as she finished her examination of the penthouse. The thought often recurred when she would finish her security examination of previous clients, a residual temptation from her days as the "Black Cat." As they walked towards the living room stopped before what looked to be an access panel for the penthouse's ac unit. Her experience with finding hidden goods gave her intuition to know this was a fake wall. The assistant noticed Felicia looking curiously over the segment before the sudden realization had hit him what Felicia had discovered.
"Oh! That's the old wine cellar. Mrs. Cooper had it covered up years ago," the assistant answered. He had overlooked examining the room because by his employers admission, the owner had quit drinking and had not entered since she had the room covered up. Felicia noticed the the panel had no hinges and could not be opened like a traditional door. More likely the panel would slide into the adjacent wall, but how to unlock it? Felicia noticed a small vent beside the panel, stationed about four feet above the floor, an unusual place to put a vent. She pressed into it and found the vent give way before sliding to the side revealing a keypad hidden behind the false vent. She looked closely at the keypad and could see only see the faintest film of dust on the buttons and realized someone had entered recently.
"May I enter?" She asked the assistant. "Um sure. I just need to ask Mrs. Cooper for the code." "1126," Felicia answered back quickly. She had worked out the combination from looking at the condition of the buttons on the keypad. "Sure, okay," he trailed off as he looked at Felicia with bewilderment as he realized the code was quite probable as it was the exact date of the owner's late husband's birthday. Felicia entered the code whereupon the panel pressed in and slid into the sidewall.
"Rich people and their things," Felicia thought to herself as she entered the room. Inside, she found a well stocked cellar, a chair and small table holding a glass and a few empty bottles. It was when she reached the corner of the room did she find a small emaciated dog whimpering. The ensuing commotion included Mrs. Cooper making her sudden appearance, alerted by her assistant of the recent discovery, and then the frantic scramble to head to the vet as soon as possible. Before Mrs. Cooper could depart, Felicia reminded her of the obligation she had made prior. Mrs. Cooper wrote the check quickly, although with a slight measure of bitterness at being asked to fulfill a financial duty while she was going through such emotional turmoil.
During the whole sudden upheaval, Felicia made her conclusions on the events prior: Mrs. Cooper was closet drinker. Feeling the sudden urge to drink, possible in part to missing her late husband, Mrs. Cooper went to her hideaway becoming too inebriated to remember she had left her dog in the room when she left. Felicia didn't share the intimate details of her conclusion with Mrs. Cooper, but did drop a suggestion to her assistant about talking to her about her closet drinking. Mrs. Cooper departed leaving her assistant to conclude her business with Felicia.
"Um, thank you. We'll followup with you about your security recommendations," he said as he took a report Felicia had made up with her assessment of the buildings security. Felicia took it that they would not likely followup ,but was happy to have made a quick 100 thousand in the process. They gave their goodbyes as Felicia departed the residence. She made her way out of the building quickly, before reaching for her phone and dialing her office line. "Hi Veronica, I'm done here. I'm going to need you to make a deposit when I get back. I'm heading to see Mr. Granderson now," Felicia said as she concluded her conversation with Veronica. As she tucked her phone back into her purse, she hurried to the train station, heading off to her next job for the day.