2013.05.13 - Snatch and Grab

Questions. Oracle has a lot of them, this evening. One of them sits before her on a cleanroom counter -- an inert silver sphere she just might have had misdirected from the CGPD via a bogus evidence transfer order that, somehow, got rerouted in transit to a dummy corp and, thus, eventually, to her waiting hands. At the moment, she has it under a microscanner, looking for some indication of how she might open it... without actually breaking it. Because, seriously, she wants to know just how the pokeball managed to put out enough energy to drop a mutant like Jocelyn Stream in addition everyone else at the Wayne Foundation Rec Center, yesterday.

There's also the little matter, of course, of Shelby Knox's kidnapping. The GCPD have been pounding the pavement looking for her. Oracle's been tracking their progress (they got nuthin') and chasing down leads of her own. Thus far, she doesn't have a lot to show for her efforts. But, she does have one lead: A low-rise, low-rent industrial office site somewhere in Bludhaven.

By rights, she should call in Tim to look into this. But, she's rather hoping his working other angles -- personal angles, since he knows the Brentwood kids better than she, and has better access to them, naturally. So, it's not the latest Robin she calls. Instead, it's a couple of other operatives -- a pair she hopes can get the job done without undue casualties... though she won't hold her breath on that.

Pushing back from the scanner, letting it do its work, she gives a voice command to open a channel to both the Huntress and the Question. "Gooooooood evening, campers," she says lightly, her digital voice no doubt dampening the sing-song quality of the greeting. "I don't suppose anyone's up for a bit of a caper tonight, hmm? 'Cause I got something for you, if you're interested."

If Oracle's voice coming out of the earpiece that goes wih his watch causes any surprise to The Question you can't see it. Because - no face. The detective of the weird is sitting behing the driver's wheel of his GTO with the engine running, and his left elbow out the open window.

"I think we just became available," he answers, "let me check."

Leaning out the open window, the faceless man in the fedora shouts with no mouth doen the nearby alley where a caped figure is beating up a couple thugs."Hey H! I just got us reservations at a better place? Ditch those two and hop in!"

Huntress hears Oracle's greeting past the crash of aforementioned thug #2 slamming headlong into a dumpster and can't help but grin to herself. The butchered sing-song greeting is amusing this time instead of fucking creepy now that she knows who is behind the computery voice and can mentally remove the modulations.

"Sorry, boys, I just got a better proposition." With one last spin-kick to put thug #1 back on the tarmac for the count, she zipties their hands behing them quickly and none too gently, then jogs toward the GTO. "You gonna call their location in to the cops, Q?" Crossing around the front of the car, she claims 'shotgun' quickly and even manages to not snag her cape in the door.

Rolling back toward her console, Oracle gives a small smile. She had a feeling they wouldn't let her down. "Excellent," she says lightly into her headset. "Your destination is Bludhaven -- an industrial office complex just off the main drag. H, I'm texting the address, now." She taps her fingers across her keyboard and hits enter to SMS it out to the vigilante's burner.

"Yesterday, Shelby Knox, the daughter of the CEO of Knox Enterprises, was kidnapped from the Wayne Foundation Rec Center in broad daylight by a bunch of common street thugs using a very uncommon piece of technology -- a stun grenade of remarkable power. My satellite feeds detected a unique energy signature from the device and the highest concentration of that energy is currently located at DynamTech Electronics... which is where you're going."

Her lips thin as she glances over toward the grenade sitting under her microscanner across the room, now. "You need to be extremely careful. If anyone throws a Tron-styled pokeball at you, get to cover, close your eyes, and make sure your ears are covered. That may protect you from the worst of it. But I want to you find out what else they're making in there. I'll do what I can to hack their systems from here, to get you in, but I can't promise you I'll be able to track you all the way in. So, keep your transceivers open."

Robin's ears are still ringing. It's thrown his equilibrium to hell, so he's foregone the usual grapple gun approach and instead arrives on the Redbird, which, y'know, is only /slightly/ less dangerous than swinging across Gotham's skyline. Eh.

He doesn't announce himself, but he's pretty sure Oracle knows he's here. The security system in the Clocktower makes him kind of weak in the knees, really. Plus, he's coming up the elevator. Hard to miss that.

"You okay?" he asks, first. No "hello", but it's a far bit better than how his mentor usually rolls in. No looming from the shadows or anything.

The Question shifts and drives off sitting eerily still and looking straight ahead. It's hard to tell with the alternating bands of light and dark from the night if he even turns his head to look at the address on Huntress' phone.

"Hmm," he ponders in his flat voice. "I wasn't especially concerned," he admits about the tied up thugs. "If you want to go ahead. Otherwise if it's their lucky night, so be it. I'm sure we'll round them up again another time." How typically Zen of him.

"Knox Enterprises has a regular history of underbidding DynamTech," The Question says into his watch, driving with one hand momentarily. "This could be about revenge."

Huntress digs her burner phone out of a pocket on her belt and flips it open to read the texted data. Yes, a flip phone. Shut up. She tilts the screen so Q can read the address as she answers Oracle. "You sure?" she asks the faceless man quietly, then shrugs. If those thugs manage to get out of those zipties before some beat cop happens past them, their lucky day.

"DynamTech, huh. Not sure I've ever heard of them." If they don't ping on the mafia radar, she likely hasn't bothered to learn anything about them. At the mention of a Tron-like pokeball, she grins. "I dunno, HAL," even though she's using the same nickname she originally dubbed Oracle with in a fit of foul temper, it's clear that she's now using the moniker in a much more light-hearted fashion. "I might just opt to knock the thing back at its owners with a cricket bat."

The Question deadpans, "There's one in the tunk." and keeps oin driving.

Babs glances over her shoulder as the elevator opens, already alerted by the in-house system as to just who it was that invaded her sanctuary. "More or less," she says, giving Robin a wry smile, her com off for the moment. "My ears have mostly stopped ringing. You?"

Q's voice sounds in her earpiece and she lifts a couple of fingers to it as she listens. "They do," she agrees. "And it could be. But, according to my sources, Knox has yet to receive a ransom demand of any sort. And that was some flashy technology used to nab his daughter."

She glances to Robin again and adds to him, "I've got Huntress and Question checking into a lead at DynamTech out in Bludhaven." She gestures to the clean suite where her microscanner is running. "And I managed to get my hands on the stun grenade. Take a look, if you want. You find anything?"

Again, she keys her com, answering Huntress. "If you can knock it back, more power to you. But, whatever you do, don't get caught in its blast without covering your eyes and ears. Trust me on this." She's lived through it, though she doesn't tell them that. "I've hacked into their surveillance system, but there are areas that the cameras don't see. I'm looking at blueprints of the building. There's a whole section that's offline to me. It's small, but who knows what it conceals."

Catching Robin with his fingers pressed to the bridge of his nose might be enough answer for Barbara, but he wiggles his hand in a so-so gesture anyway. Yeah, not feeling too hot. Shrug it off, R, shrug it off. "Bludhaven," he says, a touch sourely. "I don't have much. Talked to her father, but he's distraught. Hard to get anything out of him. GCPD is handling that angle for now."

He wanders over to where the grenade is currently being processed. It's tech. Tech that knocked him on his ass for a while, but tech, and anything capable of taking him down is enough to have his interest. "Did some snooping at Knox HQ. Nothing suspicious, not even a death threat letter. Which is weird. I'm just an intern at Wayne Corp and I've already received two. Mr. Knox has enemies out there somewhere, obviously. There has to be some evidence of them."

"Places camera don't go, I do," The Question says as he pulls into a parking lot near the warehouse. He parks the GTO behind a shipping container and kills the lights and the engine. He turns his blsnk face at the building across the way for a minute. "The are chimneys and air vents on the roof in a an area where there arent any windows." he observes. The Question gets out of the car. Putting his hands in his pockets he walks toward the warehouse.%rWhat kind of man sees missing windows without eyes? That's The Queston.

Huntress climbs out of the GTO at the same time as Question and squints toward the building as she follows the faceless man. Really, her eyesight is fine. It's habit. "That's an awful lot of air handling equipment for that small an area of building." Said like a true roof-hopper. "Might be something like a kind of cleanroom set up in there. Which sucks for sneaking about. Q, you want me to take the high road, or do we go in using your awesome lock-picking skills?"

Barbara arches a brow at Tim's info. "Nothing? Every CEO I know has a threat file buried somewhere." Her lips purse and then she frowns. "No threats. No ransom. I assumed when the thugs said they were picking her up for her father they were being smart, not honest. And, if he's as distraught as you say--" and she doesn't doubt Tim at all-- "then there's nothing to say my assumption is wrong." She turns to her computer and starts keying in a database search to find out more about the Knox family history -- civic records public and sealed.

She also pulls up the HVAC schematics for the DynamTech building. "There's an AC unit over a shaft I think may be large enough to accommodate you," she tells Question and Huntress. "I'd prefer you didn't set off their alarms right off the bat."

"He wasn't faking it," Robin says, with absolute certainty. He knows that look. He's seen that look. It wasn't fake. He stares at the grenade a little while longer before stepping back towards Barbara. "Her mother died when she was young. Cancer. She and her father do charity walks and events all the time for it. Everything I saw in that house said loving father and adoring daughter." He crosses his arms over his chest and frowns. That's his thinking frown.

He's quiet for a moment as Oracle does her thing, and then pulls out his PDA to start some investigating of his own. Generally, he trusts Babs to be able to run down every bit of info available through her computer, but never bad to have a second set of eyes, right. "DynamTech." Robin's heard of it, of course. He works in Gotham's business sector, and he pays attention. His fingers start typing. "Inside job, maybe? Got rid of any evidence of threats as a cover up?"

"I see it," The Question answers Oracle about the AC unit. At The Huntress' inquiry he stops, tilting his head one way, then the other - the brim of his fedora seesawing. "My lockpick skills will have to wait," he says. Changing course, he walks up fire escapes, leaping from one to the other. When there isn't one he impossibly wedges the toes of his loafers in between bricks and one window sills to not-quite walk up the wall to the roof. He almost doesn't use his hands.

Once on the roof, The Question kneels in front of the AC unit, his coat spreading out around him. He shakes and flexes his gloved fingers and runs hid hands along it. "Perhaps, the reason, no can find anything online," he intones on the comm, "is that both companies keep indriminating evidence off the internet, but rather in hidden rooms that detecxtives have been finding the hard way since long beforethey put on capes andnamed themselves after flying creatures of the night." Sarcasm is the one intonation Psuederm does really well.

Huntress follows Question to the rooftop of the building, though she's feeling a bit taunty today. While Q is using the fire escape and free-climbing the wall, she simply loads a grappling line kind of bolt into her crossbow, fires it at the top of the building, gives it a couple of sharp tugs to make sure it found a secure purchase, then takes the fast track up there. And, of course, she has to blow a kiss at the trenchcoated man as she zips past him. But, hey, at least she's already on the roof to offer him a hand up that last foot or two.

"Maybe." Babs notes to Tim. "On paper, DynamTech is an electronics outfit -- usually communications technology. But, my sat-feeds clearly say the energy signature from that amped up pokeball can be traced to that building. So, I'm running a check on Marcus Balcourt, too." The head of DynamTech, of course. Babs trusts Tim's assessment of Knox, however. "So, if Knox wasn't faking it, and those mooks weren't lying, then..." Her head rises as she finds something interesting. "Check it out," she says, now, flipping a file over to his PDA with ease. "Lydia Knox is the one with a secret, not Christian."

She smiles sharply at Q's response. "Hence the reason I hired you, Q," she replies into her com. "Since DynamTech's a comtech firm, do me a favour. Steal a modem and hook it into the mainframe for me. Or at least rip out the harddrives and drop 'em off, will you, H?"

Well, that is some appropriately Gotham-esque drama, right there. Robin flips through the info that pops up on his PDA and then frowns. And no, /not/ his thinking frown. "Damn," he mutters to himself. Then clears his throat. "Someone wanted this info buried deep. Does Mr. Knox even-" He stops, and his frown deepens.

On his PDA is a picture of Christian and Lydia Knox. "I've seen her before," he says, squinting behind the domino mask. Give him a second. It'll come to him. "Christmas ball. 200- 2? I want to say 2002. I went with my parents. These two," and he motions to his screen, "Were really friendly with Balcourt. Heavy on the /really/. I was 7, it didn't mean anything to me at the time, but I think you're definitely onto something here."

If The Question had any reaction to Huntress blowing him a kiss, or beating him to the roof it was again lost due to his lack of expression. Although when she gave him a hand up there was a muffled 'hehe' that sounded amused. As he listens to Robin and Oracle talk about data he and Huntress can't see, he looks up and gives his partner a blank look that from anyone else would be an eyeroll. Turning his attention back to the the air conditioning unit, he reaches into his coat and retrives a letter opener. With it The Question pries off the shaft cover.

"So, we are looking at a deal gone bad." He puts both his long legs into the shaft and slides in up to his waist. "Oh, and by the way, Balcourt is Shelby Knox's real father."

After he drops that bomb, The Question slides doen the shaft out of sight.

Huntress grins at Question as he makes it onto the roof, and he's got a letter opener prying the air shaft grille open before she can even pull something from her belt for the same purpose. Damn. Where can she find a trenchcoat like that? "Wait, what?" Q's last comment about Shelby startles her, and he's gone. " Damnit, Q," she mutters, then sends her grappling line after him so they have a way back out of the building before sliding out of sight as well.

"Ten to one, Knox doesn't have a clue," the redhead tells the boy wonder, her tone echoing his. "Not about Lydia, at least." She nods to Tim's recollection. "2002, huh? I'll start there." She starts inputting parameters around Balcourt, the Knoxes, and their two companies. Of course, in 2002, Shelby was likely 7 or so, too.

As Q drops his bomb, Oracle glances back to her display. "Yeah," she says shortly. "Looks like it."

She zooms in on the DynamTech site. "According to the schematics I've got here -- if they're remotely accurate," she won't swear to it, "You should be able to access the main corridor in that area via a horizontal shaft heading north." Providing, of course, they have a sense of direction.

"Wouldn't surprise me in this town," Robin mutters as he leans over to peer at the schematics Babs has pulled up. Not much does surprise him, any more.

He's got places to be, though, so he's turning to go. "I'll let you know if I find anything else," he says. "I'm supposed to be on patrol, though. See you later, O." The elevator doors shut behind him, and he reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose again. Headache's just getting worse.

Crawling through the shaft, The Question looks back and forth in each direction when he comes to a junction. He points with this left hand to the right, and with his right hand with his left. When Oracle mentions north, he tips on to his side and presses his back against the wall, making room fir Huntress to pass him.

"Unless you want to help me fish out a cork and a magnet," he says, "finding our way is your department." It's accademic as niether one of them likely have a bowl of water.

Huntress stops and looks at Q impatiently. "Seriously? You don't have a compass or something somewhere in that coat of yours? No, 'go-go Gadget lodestone' or something?" She scoffs then scoots past the man toward the intersection before digging a tiny compass out of her belt. Tiny. Like, the size of four quarters stacked up. It could very well be one of those science museum gift shop toys. She holds it flat on her palm, watches it waver for a moment, the points. "THis way."

"I'll be in touch," Oracle tells Robin as he disappears into the elevator. She then turns her attention back to the heist in progress. "About 14 feet along there's a grate that should drop you into the corridor. Just watch out for security. I don't know what's in there." And it's killing her. She hates not having control over the environment. And no idea if the schematics she has are actually accurate, or not.

The Question just stares blankly at The Huntress - as if he could do anything else. Sometimes she asks him things that redefine rhetorical. And he should know. When she out the tiny compass he looks down at it as she does. His hat brim gets in her way. He looks back up at her when she looks up. He does it teo more times like a Harpo Marz pantomime. After she gets the bearing he holds out his gloved hand.

"May I?," he asks. Once it is in his hand he puts it close to his blank face, turning it around and around as if he's never seen a compass. "Well imagine that," he says. And then puts the compass in his pocket and crawls in the indicated direction.

Huntress huffs out a sigh at Question, as if tolerating his goofball behavior is such a TOTAL imposition on her VERY limited patience. She lets him abscond with the compass though and doesn't seem at all bothered by it.

As Oracle directs them on where to go next, she leads the way now, finding the grate quickly enough and listening carefully at it for a few moments to make sure no one is walking by before popping it loose and setting it further down the air vent out of the way. "Ready, Q?" Before he can answer though, she slips out of the air vent and drops to the floor of the corridor below, bending her knees to land in a crouch and mitigate as much noise as possible. Turn about is fair play, dude. Deal.

The corridor they drop into is empty. For the moment. But voices can be heard faintly from a room at the far end of the hallway. In fact, it's the only place with lights on. The sign on the door indicates it's a clean room. And the voices sound somewhat heated.

"What do you see?" Oracle asks, suppressing her anxiousness with a slow breath.

Dropping down into the corridor after Huntress, The Question straightens tie, and adjusts his gloves and hat. What does he see? People wonder that about him but mean something far less literal. "Clean room," he confirms into his watch, the Psuedoderm muffling his voice. "Occupied."

Huntress immediately moves to one side of the corridor even though she's still as obvious as a black cat in a room full of white paint. Her crossbow is in hand and instead of letting it snap open like normal she uses her free hand to very gingerly open its arms and load a pack of wooden bolts. Each tiny click and clack from the weapon makes her wince, and hope that the people arguing down the way are too busy being buttheads to listen for the small noises. "Not for long," she tells Oracle then steps toward the cleanroom door quickly and quietly until she either has a chance to take a peek at what's beyond the door of simply has to open it to go through. She looks at Q, holds up three fingers, then sounds down silently. 3. 2. 1.

Clean room, huh? Oracle focuses on that. "Sounds like a good place to start," she notes. The Army satellite she's been tracking finally moves into position and she hitches a link to it, zooming it in on the DynamTech building. A mess of heat signatures appears on one of her monitors. It's a somewhat confusing readout, since there's not a lot to differentiate human signatures from the bigger heat sources in the building, aside from size. And picking out her two operatives from them all? She makes an educated guess. "I'm counting 4 heat signatures in the room ahead of you," she says, as H makes her countdown. "And there's a patrol coming up behind you, moving tangentially. I think they're in the cross corridor at the opposite end to you."

Nodding once as Huntress counts down, The Question steps to the outer side of the door. He turns his head back down the hall when Oracle mentions the patrol. He would rather not be here when they come to the junction. If they see nothing they are likely to walk on by. But the keycard lock is not going to surrender to a kick no matter who much chi he focuses behind it.

Reaching into his pockets, The Question pulls out an 8-track music tape. He pulls a handful of celluloid out of whats probably now a collector's item and runs it through the card reader like dental floss. The reader clicks and the light flips from red to green.

Shouldering his way through the door, The Question ducks behind it to imediately slam it shut again once Huntress comes through. "Housekeeping!" he shouts at the rooms occupants and hurls the tape at one.

Huntress looks at Q incredulously when he uses an EIGHT TRACK TAPE to hack the magstrip lock on the door, but then when he throws the door open she immediately rushes through, snapping off at anyone that appears to be armed or potentially dangerous while still charging toward another person. Hopefully a hockey-style body check will be good enough.

The people in the room -- one woman and three men -- are largely unarmed. Well. Okay. Three of them are. Effectively, there's a mid-level exec, a data tech, the project manager, and the security shift leader. So, the security guy has a weapon, but the others don't. He reaches for his weapon as the detective and the vigilante storm in. The data tech dives under the desk, however, squeaking in surprise as he goes. "What the hell?" That comes from the project manager -- the woman. She retreats toward a large bank of servers. The exec, however, stands there with his mouth open a moment before he charges forward, yelling at the security guard, "Call for back up, you idiot!"

This is the part Oracle hates the most -- when her people are fighting and she can't see what the hell is going on. "Patrol inbound," she tells them as the heat signatures down the hall turn down the corridor heading to the clean room. Their red and yellow forms pick up speed. "Two in the corridor."

The Question has a moment of optimism when he sees that only one of the four people is likely to put up a fight, and Huntress will undoubtedly take care of him first. And then Oracle tells them that two of the patrol are inbound. "Naturally," he says.

The Question waits until the first of the two is in the doorway and them slams it in his face. He opens it again, and grabs the man by the shirtfront, taking off his hat with the other. "Get out! Quarantine!" he yells giving the man an eyeful of a man in a suit WITH NO FACE. "It burns! It burns!" The he shoves the man out of the room and slams the door again.

Steping back facing the door, the Question puts his hat back on and assmes a kung fu stance. "We're going to have company," he tells Huntress in a voice much calmer then the screaming act.

Huntress puts her crossbow away as the room is really too small to be firing projectiles around willy nilly. And hopefully, for the other side to be tossing Tron-esque pokeball things. What IS a pokeball, anyway? She aims a kick at the security guard's midsection to keep him from either pulling his pistol OR calling for help, then tries to turn the exec's momentum against him by snagging one of the mans's arms and twisting him around to flip him over onto his back. How successful she is... well, that's up to the dice.

And, today, the Dice Gods are kind. The security guard doubles over as the wind is knocked out of him. His gun goes clattering across the room. The exec lands on his back, again with the wind knocked out of him. He coughs and struggles to right himself. From the beyond the servers, the sound of breaking glass can be heard, which probably doesn't bode well for anyone. Under the desk, the tech pulls out his cell phone and starts dialing.

The pair of guards in the hallway look justifiably confused. Quarantine? One of them grabs his buddy's shoulder to keep him from rushing headlong inside. "They're trapped in there," he says. "There's no other way out." He reaches for his radio. "We gotta call it in."

Oracle's console starts beeping and she swears softly. "My sensors are detecting an energy build up in your location. Get outta there!"

The Question turns his head hround and looks at the tableau. "That wasn't us," he says in reference to the breaking glass. Lunging for the desk, he takes the tech's laptop and tucks it under one arm like a football. He grabs a fistful of whatever he can off the table and stuffs it into his pocket. Stepping on the exec on the way out, he tips his hat to the project manager. "Thanks for the tour."

The Question elbows the gurd between the shoulder blades as he puts his hat back on. "But we really have to run." He opens the door again. "After you, H."

Huntress turns toward the source of the breaking glass, then at Oracle's warning mutters a curse that would make any Italian within earshot cringe. She reaches down and yanks the exec's cell phone off of his belt then charges out of the door opened by Q, expecting the guards still outside to maybe put up a bit of a fight. If either of them is close enough by, they'll get a punch aimed at their throat.

All of which means that the guards in the hallway are put down pretty damned quick, choking as they do. The corridor is open and a straight run out of the area. The pair have about 10 seconds to clear it, as indicated by the steadily rising tone from back behind the servers, and get around the corner and thus out of the direct line of fire. The tech under the desk has enough time to say into his phone, "Mary? I'm gonna be late coming ho--"

FOOOOOM!

The detonation is pretty much the world's biggest flashbang grenade. All light and sound. Even around the corner, the sound is stunning... though perhaps not deafening, since the door of the clean room, having swung closed behind the fleeing pair, helps to muffle both sound and light.

As her monitor indicates the energy discharge, Oracle leans forward, hand on her earpiece. "Q? Huntress? Are you there? What's your status? Please, tell me you got out in time..."

Huntress BOLTED for the far end of that hallway, so when the flashbang from hell goes off she's safely around the corner with her hands over her ears and her eyes squeezed shut. When she hears Oracle asking if they're okay, she replies only a little breathlessly, "Yeah, I'm fine. Q?" She looks at the faceless man to see if he was affected by the strange non-explosion.

The Question is nearby, with his fingers in his ears and his down over his missing face. Under his mask his eyes are shut. He nods vigourously, still with the hat pulled low. Obviously doesn't want to take his finger out of his ear to put his watch in front of where his mouth should be. After a minye he decides it's safe. "I think I'm good. That must have been a bigger one. Or several. We coinfiscated a laptop."

Oracle's laughter can be heard, dry and telling. "No. That wasn't several. That was one. I can confirm the same readings as yesterday at the rec center. And, judging by the fact you're still transmitting, I think there's hope the EM pulse the thing puts out didn't fry that laptop. Good work. Thank you." A beat, as she does a quick scan of the area she can see through the surveillance. "I suggest you find a back way out of there, pronto. The front of the building is swarming with bodies headed your way. But if you hurry, you should avoid the crowds."

Huntress says, "If that's the kind of flashbang they're making now, I want a dozen snack-size versions. Come on, Q, we'd better go before this place starts swarming." She leads the way back to their friend the air vent and looks up at the opening for a moment before jumping up and catching the edge of the vent with her fingers and pulling herself up and into the ductwork. She then reaches a hand down to Q. "Hand up the laptop, then I'll pull you up."

The Question does so, and once he's inside he puts the grate back in place. "When I tell this story," he says as the crawl back through the tunnels and out on roof, "I left wit my customary vanishing act in a cloud of yellow smoke." Assuing the meet no resistance, he retraces his path to the car.

Huntress rolls her eyes. "Oh, yeah, sure. Yellow smoke. Whatever." She leads the way back to the building's rooftop, but then lets Q lead them back to his car so she can make sure no one's following them. "I think we made it out without being noticed."

All in all, it's an uneventful egress, the guards preoccupied with the five unconscious people in and about the clean room. (Only the PM managed not to collapse on account of the grenade's knockout power, thanks to a special piece counter-tech available alongside the unit she set off.) What guards do think to give chase are unable to follow the vigilantes through the vents, and can't be certain which way they went. Thus, the pair should be able to get to the car and out of the parking lot before anyone's the wiser.

"Excellent work," Oracle congratulates them. "H, if you can drop that laptop off to me before the night's out, I'd appreciate it. Q, let me know if there's anything you need; I'll be happy to make arrangements. With any luck, there'll be something on that machine to give me some sort of lead on Shelby's whereabouts." Time is of the essence, after all. The longer it takes to find a kidnapping victim, the lower the chances are they'll be found alive.

Except, of course, in this case Oracle's betting it's highly unlikely Mr. Balcourt wants to see his daughter harmed. So, that buys them some time. Even so... there's no point wasting any of it.

After all, the night's still young.