Part Three
EXTRACT: The Journal Of Doctor Leslie Tompkins
It’s been a busy week. Replete with trials and
hardships, these last five days have brought me close to
utter exhaustion. However, I believe wholeheartedly that
we may have had a breakthrough.
To my surprise the answer came in the form of Barbara’s
dear friend Kara.
The girl had ingested some potentially infected food at
a refuge that she and Barbara had been investigating. I
must confess I hadn’t been following their detective
exploits too closely, and was mildly surprised to see
their work bring such results. Maybe I was
underestimating Barbara. One couldn't help but
understand her need to cling to her past identity as
Batgirl as a method of coping with her future. I suppose
I treated her need to play detective as a therapeutic
device rather than a practical one. Again, I
underestimated her.
To cut a long story short, Barbara had surmised that the
infection may have been artificial in origin rather than
natural. She further hypothesized that this infection
was systematic, not random in it's occurrence. Seems she
was right, but at first I was finding no proof that Kara
had been infected. It wasn’t until Barbara suggested
that the Plague might not even be biological that we
really got results.
EXTRACT: The Diary Of Barbara Gordon
…That’s not to say Doctor Thompkins hadn’t made progress
since we returned from the refuge a few days back. On
the assumption that the plague was actually some form of
poison and that Kara had ingested it at the refuge, the
Doctor reluctantly agreed to put our Kryptonian friend
through seven hundred very nasty tests.
Kara’s inquisitive taste buds lured her to the refuge
food and while they may have brought on some
discomforting medical trials, based on my guess that she
might be living evidence of this contaminant, she did
give Leslie the perfect case study - and one devoid of
fleas. That in itself made a nice change from some of
our normal clientele.
The tests had at first been as unsuccessful as the ones
Leslie had issued on some of the dead plague victims.
All looked grim until I received another unusual note.
You may recall I found a similar note earlier on in this
case. Its advice had directly led to my treating this
mystery as one with human design, rather than a freak of
nature.
“Biological?” was all the note said.
It was all it needed to say. A prod in the right
direction.
I spoke to Leslie about the possibility of a contaminant
being non-biological, sort of like nanotechnology and
she admitted to not having the equipment to deal with
such an issue. However, she did admit to knowing a man
who did….
EXTRACT: The Journal Of Doctor Leslie Tompkins
I readily admit I wasn’t sure whether we were heading
into the realms of science fiction when Barbara said the
culprit may be high technology. However, she’d proved to
me her intuition was indeed sound of late and
considering how little headway I was making on my own,
it seemed prudent to listen to another possibility. We
needed desperately to identify this illness. It had been
a while since the last set of deaths, so as merciless as
it sounds, I felt this might be a good time toexplore a
new avenue.
In the meantime, Barbara had spent her time trying to
trace her mystery helper - the person who had left the
note that had jumpstarted this realm of thought. Her
first guess was Bruce, not that he responded to the name
anymore. Her attempt to contact him had been cut off
with a brisk snort. Typical Bruce, short and to the
point, particularly if he has no interest in speaking to
you.
Young Dick Grayson remained out of contact, which I
could see was really beginning to irritate Barbara. So
who else could it be?
On my request, Barbara had spent the next day hunting
down another colleague of similar circles. A fairly low
key, yet open scientist under the name of John Cage.
Kara and Barbara were surprised I would have ties to
other superheroes, but I had met John at several
lectures he had given in Gotham over the years. I had
followed his papers with interest and had even managed
to attend a couple of private parties where mutual
doctorate circles had brought us into conversation. A
lovely young man and the one person I felt who could
deal with the issue of nanotechnology.
For if this was indeed NON-biological, we needed to know
sooner rather than later. If there were tiny machines
being ingested into the body, we needed as much time as
possible to work out their function. An intentional use
of technology used to murder people is on an entirely
different level than medical containment of a virus.
Despite the desperate nature of our work, Barbara seemed
happier than ever. I must confess that despite my
initial reservations at having Kara help out here at my
work, her presence has been a welcome one. Barbara needs
friends her own age and someone other than an old lady
like myself to spend time with, and Kara is perfect.
She’s bright, cheery and helpful.
The pressure Kara put on Barbara to let her move into
her apartment is ironically like the pressure Barbara
put on me to let her work with me. Kara does the odd
jobs around Barbara’s apartment in return for free
lodgings and she’s been an asset as Supergirl in getting
me the supplies for emergency treatments way before
anyone else could. She’s truly established herself here
in Gotham and in Barbara’s life.
But I digress…. Barbara did finally locate Mr. Cage and
with little persuading and in record time he agreed to
come to Gotham. His methods were scientifically
unorthodox. Not many scientists would shrink themselves
to a level where they could traverse the bloodstream.
That was the reason the media dubbed him “The Atom” I
believe.
His search of Kara’s body - much to the young lady’s
disdain - brought forth some interesting information.
Not all of it was good. In fact, none of it at all.
EXTRACT: The Diary Of Barbara Gordon
It was odd meeting the "Atom". John seems a bright
enthusiastic kind of guy. He makes a change from the
dark nature of Dick and Bruce. You just can’t help
warming to him. I must admit, despite all the larger
than life things I’ve seen in the last few years, I was
certainly in awe seeing him shrink. Almost as taken
aback as Kara was to find out that the Atom was about to
be swimming around her intestines….
EXTRACT: DAY PLANNER - KARA KENT - Monday.
I hate it when people lodge themselves in my intestinal
tract. Even when they are cute.
EXTRACT: The Diary Of Barbara Gordon
SUCCESS!!!! A BREAKTHROUGH!
I’m getting ahead of myself…. Let me go back a bit.
John had brought his own equipment that made the process
pretty straightforward. He’d even brought an assistant
who made the task even simpler. Nice girl.
He managed to confirm it was indeed nanites. High
technology, according to John, but still Earth based.
They responded to an activation signal and then the
nanites would start stimulating changes in acidity
levels within the body - particularly in the intestines
- sorta like enzymes in a catalyst. The result was that
the body simply ate itself away.
The next piece of information was both useful and
disconcerting. The serial numbers on the nanites were
traceable to components bought by… Wayne Enterprises.
I have to guess Project Seamless. That’s Bruce’s black
operation in which his secret department acquires and
tests alien and high tech items floating on the black
market. Yeah, top secret with a capital "T". But darn,
if you read this you already know about Batman, Batgirl
and every other secret in Gotham City so what's one
more, huh? Anyhow, Project Seamless' mandate was to
prevent such high tech secrets from falling into the
wrong hands and then test them to see if they were of
any benefit to mankind. Most were locked up in secret
warehouses across the world.
So someone has managed to get hold of these nanites and
it looks like it was someone with access to Wayne
Enterprises.
And that’s where the trail went cold.
Bruce isn’t answering my calls at all anymore, and
Lucius Fox wasn’t exactly forthcoming with information
on “Project Seamless”. I have no idea where “Project
Seamless” is based to even send Kara, and even if she
did go - what would she look for?
John said before he left that he couldn’t trace the
signal if it was activated. Its likely a blanket
broadcast and with such high tech equipment, it would be
hard to trace. Not impossible, but hard. Furthermore, we
didn’t want to wait till it did activate.
In the end, it was that dumb luck which provided the
clue.
That was five minutes ago.
Yep, the breakthrough came not from medical experiments
or detective skills. Plain, ordinary luck. Not something
a detective likes to admit…. But here you are, I’m
admitting it.
A random call to the Police Department - simply a social
call I was making to old Jack, Central’s desk sergeant.
He’s been there for as long as I can remember and I've
spent many hours chatting to him while waiting for dad.
On the phone he’d brought up a bizarre incident when he
had a kid coming in trying to spill the beans on "the
guy who killed them homeless people". The kid said an
acquaintance was responsible for the homeless killings.
Naturally Ol’ Jack laughed off the kid’s comments. After
all, this was a plague, not a murder. However, with
physical proof extracted from Kara’s body that it was
indeed manmade and my gut screaming to me that this was
a clue, I just had to go with it.
A quick investigation into the surname and address that
Jack had taken from the kid as a matter of protocol and
guess what? The kid’s father just so happens to work for
Wayne Enterprises!
Bingo. |
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