Part Five
Billy woke up.
It wasn't morning.
He wasn't in his bed.
In fact, he wasn't in his room.
Below him, beneath the fumes and noxious gases that
separated himself and the large granite object nestled
unfathomably downward, was Gotham City.
Above him, as he tried desperately to wipe the sleep
from his eyes was, well, he wasn't sure.
It was very dark up so high in the sky, and very cold.
His left ear buzzed as his teeth began to chatter.
"Here's the deal," an electronic voice bit into his
inner aural orifice. "Listen as I'll explain just once."
Billy was too cold to do anything else.
"It's possible the figure above may drop you. It's
possible. It all depends on the details you are about to
divulge to me." Billy tried to look up, but his face was
forced back down towards Gotham. "My colleague has a
knack of hearing heart beats. My colleague will know
when you are lying. Do you understand?"
Billy tried to voice a sound that would vaguely resemble
a yes.
"I will take that rasp as a yes. I am sorry Billy. I
don't like to subject any young teenager to such a
predicament, but lives are on the line. People are
dying, and I suspect more will soon die. I think you can
stop this Billy, but you have to be honest and you have
to tell us now."
Billy spluttered another indecipherable noise of
affirmation.
"My colleague will bring you lower, to roof top level.
It will be warmer there. Your head will be kept firmly
fixed forward but my collegaue will hear all you say.
Understand? Good. We will begin."
***
"I don't approve of this Barbara." Leslie hovered beside
Barbara's computer set-up in Leslie's lab. She had been
doing so for the last hour and it was beginning to get
on Barb's nerves. "It's unethical," the doctor grumbled.
"I'm aware of that Leslie, I'm not thrilled with doing
this myself." Barbara adjusted her headset. "However, we
don't have time to play friendly detective, so I'm
borrowing a page out of his book."
Leslie started rummaging through her filing cabinet,
clearly looking for nothing in particular. "And that's
meant to make me feel better?"
"Kara knows what's she's doing. She'll be careful."
Barbara could feel her irritation growing, growing
because she knew Leslie was right. This
was not ethical and this was a kid they were
interrogating. That said, Barbara had seen too many
"plague victims" of late and was not going to be present
for another. This ended now.
"Well I'm sure Bruce would strongly approve," Leslie
remarked bitterly as she stormed from the room, "if that
makes you feel better!"
Barbara hung her head and sighed. It didn't.
***
"Your father works for one of Wayne Enterprises' covert
operations. What do you know about his work?"
Billy's mind raced and words spewed out. His eyes wide,
transfixed by the sight of the sidewalk many stories
below.
"He works with cool secret weapons and stuff. He used to
bring some of it home for us to see which he wasn't
allowed to do but he did so anyway as he was proud of
his work and said he could trust us to keep a secret and
not tell anyone about it!"
"That's good Billy. Keep talking like that. Keep it
honest - or else." Billy couldn't tell if the voice was
a man or a woman. He could feel the cold metal of the
receiver sitting deep in his ear, but the sound of the
voice was electronically masked. The voice spoke up
again. "You went to the GCPD the other day Billy. You
said you knew who was responsible for the spat of
deaths. Tell me Billy, is your dad involved?"
"N-no!"
"I don't believe you Billy." Billy felt the grip of his
captor tighten behind him. Slowly the skyline began to
change as he rose higher, and higher. "Shall we try this
again? Is you father involved?"
"No-no! Oh my god no! My father's out of town, he
doesn't know anything! Honest!! It's not him! It's not
him! It's her! It's her! I borrowed some of my fathers
toys and gave it to her! She took it! She took it! I
know I shouldn't have taken them but she wanted them
when I told her about them! I betrayed his trust, oh my
god It's all my fault those people are dead, all my
fault! He doesn't know! He doesn't know!!!"
***
"Happy?"
Barbara stiffly ignored the doctor who again was at the
filing cabinet and again quite likely for no reason
except to pry.
"I can hear his screams through the headphones." Leslie
slammed the cabinet and walked out of the lab again.
"Bruce would be proud."
Barbara had a feeling that very soon, she was going to
be very sick.
***
Barbara wheeled into Leslie's office. The Doctor refused
to look up as she scribbled furiously at her notes. The
light was set lower. Barbara shivered.
"It seems the boy had a little too much access to his
father's work on Project Seamless. He was directly
involved in some of the medical tests. Same department
as that Fitzgerald guy, if you believe that."
Leslie remained silent and continued to scribble on her
pad.
Barbara continued. "Seems he had a lab at his house for
overtime work, not endorsed by Wayne Enterprises, but
these secret groups have a tendency to write their own
rules."
Still nothing from the Doctor.
"The friend of this kid must be very bright, Leslie.
Kara is checking into it right now. She's confirmed
about the lab on Billy's property and has returned the
boy. We got an address and a name."
Leslie looked up, clearly a name to put against all
those dead faces was too tempting to ignore. "A name?"
"Alice."
Leslie returned to her work and Barbara turned to leave.
She stopped.
"We did good, Doctor Thompkins. We may have stopped more
people from dying."
Leslie once again didn't look up. "I just believed he
didn't own you yet, that there was hope. I was wrong."
Barbara bowed her head and said nothing.
"Look at Richard, Barbara. See what he's becoming. Quite
frankly I wonder if there is hope for any of you."
Barbara left the office and decided now was the
opportune time to be sick.
***
"What's that, Doc?" Old Man Kelly peered suspiciously at
the flashy looking calculator Leslie was waving over
him. Leslie studied the results
with a slight measure of awkwardness. She was never a
fan of gadgets, unlike some she could mention.
"Depends if you want the simple or the complicated
answer."
"Can't I have both?" Old Man Kelly grunted as he shifted
his large unshapely mass up and off the bench.
"The complicated answer even I don't understand. This is
a device left by a fellow scientist which has been tuned
to emit a calling signal on a specific carrier to some
very nasty micro sized machines which have been killing
many of your friends."
"And the simple answer?"
Leslie frowned. "That was the simple answer. As I said,
I don't understand the complicated one myself.
Regardless, you're clean - of the infection and of nasty
micro sized machines."
"Well that sounds like a clean bill of health to me!"
wheezed Old Man Kelly. He doffed his cap. "I'm sure I'll
see you next month, Doctor Thompkins. You know what I'm
like with infections."
"Old Man Kelly and chest infections have been good
friends as long as I can remember," Leslie replied.
"That they have," Old Man Kelly grinned, "that they
have."
There was a knock at the front door. It wasn't what
Leslie expected.
She and Kelly walked together to the door. Leslie opened
the front door to find a teenager standing motionless in
the porch.
The girl looked - to Leslie's estimates - around 14-15
years old. She wore a pink thin casual dress and had her
ginger hair tightly pulled back. She had freckled
chipmunk chubby cheeks and green eyes. Her eyebrows were
a little too thick and one ear was slightly larger than
the other. Her moon eyes made Leslie feel uncomfortable.
They were just too much
white and too little pupil.
The girl wasn't dressed for the cold night. Around her
neck dangled a fairly large crucifix. Against the cold
night and the fiery burn of the Gotham night lights, she
looked fairly out of place. The child's face lit up as
her eyes bore up at Leslie.
"Dr. Thompkins? I'm Alice. God sent me." |
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