2013.05.14 - Information Channel (Part I)

Mid-afternoon on a cool Monday in Spring sees Barbara Gordon, the all-seeing Oracle, leaning back in her wheelchair, staring pensively at a 3D holographic turnaround of the silver energy grenade used in the Shelby Knox kidnapping. Between her own analysis of the original grenade (artfully redirected from GCPD evidence lock-up) and what blueprints she was able to lift from DynamTech, thanks to the work of The Question and Huntress, she's now got a fairly good idea of how the thing should work. What's she's not so sure on is the why it works that way. She feels like she's missing something. And, for a super-genius with an eidetic memory who's been trained by the World's Greatest Detective, himself, that's an extremely irritating place to be.

There's also the concern that DynamTech's Bludhaven offices were neither the origin nor the current location of the technology source. The deeper she digs, the further down the rabbit hole she feels she's falling. Also not a happy feeling to someone such as Oracle. Flicking her fingers through the display, she causes it to spin and burst apart in a shower of pixels before she swivels her seat around and looks instead to her console readouts. Since the heist in Bludhaven, her sat-net has recorded periodic, if random, spikes in energy signatures matching, at least loosely, those she recorded from the grenade. Not exactly, mind, but there's an echo of it.

She's traced the latest pop to a rough-and-tumble neighbourhood in Brooklyn, to what looks on the surface to be a youth drop-in center. Its clientèle is young -- most of them in the 15 to 20 age-range -- and street savvy. This is not a place that most of her operatives can go. Tim, maybe, if he dressed down, but Barbara isn't entirely certain he can pull off the right street-kid vibe for it.

She's loathe to involve yet another new operative. But, her urchin network has made it pretty clear that, whatever's going down at the drop-in center, it's not something any of them can comfortably handle. Which means bringing in someone new, whether she wants to or not.

Fortunately, after a bit of research, she's determined that it's quite possible the young MMA fighter she met at the library that one day, Jocelyn Stream, may be the woman for the job. She is, Oracle has determined, not just street savvy, but she's also a mutant with a head for energy signatures.

The best of both worlds. Awesome. Now, of course, she just needs to track the girl down...

Of course, that would be easier if Jocelyn was registered under a codename with the same set of powers that Oracle was looking for. Unfortunately, Jocelyn was one of those unregistered mutants who was currently holed up in the Xavier Institute at a boarding school, of all places. More than likely some of her funds from her MMA days were being used to pay for it, if Oracle tracked it down, which would account for her relative lack of money. Of course, that also meant that she had a phone registered at the school, and if Oracle got into the phone, she might find the YAL app installed on it as well.

Not only did it serve to let her communicate with her teammates, but it provided a cover for the institute, if someone ever identified her. Jocelyn had thought of that when she got the application installed by Hawkeye about a month ago.

Today, Jocelyn has finished with her classes, and has decided to switch her routine up a little bit. She's out running by the lake near the mansion at the moment. She's figured out how to get the music from her CDs onto her phone, and so she's got it plugged in, headphones belting out some rock as she runs along the lake. She figured she'd get some of that running in, and then she'd go back to hitting the books. That test was coming up soon, and she wasn't entirely prepared for it yet, though really, who could say they were perfectly prepared for such a big test?

Still, some of the events from that kidnapping bothered her. First off, the energy signatures were something she hadn't seen before, but she hadn't really had time to go digging into them yet. She needed to talk to some of her more techie friends about that, and see if there was some form of energy she was missing from her list of things to look out for. She was interested in energy, obviously, but she was still young and didn't have the greatest education growing up, so she had some work to do to catch up.

Tracking the phone down through public records is child's play for someone like Oracle. And it's not hard to piggyback its radio signal to snoop around its data chip while she's at it. The YAL app is actually pretty damned helpful, since it also tips her off to the handle Channel. How appropriate. Isolating the phone's location, then, Oracle waits for a satellite passing overhead to come into good position and then zooms down on that signal to see just what the girl is up to.

Running. Around the school's private lake.

Well, damn it, that's not convenient. Oracle needs the girl in the city. It's much easier to redirect her from there. Redirecting her off Institute grounds? Much harder. Westchester's 50 miles outside of NYC... at the complete opposite side of the city to Brooklyn. And Oracle's not entirely sure what the school's loaner-car policy might be. Most boarding schools don't give their students free use of the keys. Crap. It's not like she can just send Zinda down with the jet to pick the kid up. (Not, mind, that she doesn't consider it for half a second.)

Alright, fine. That will delay things, but it's not necessarily untenable. First things first. Let's see if the girl's even willing to take the risk.

Oracle engages her scrambling software, puts on her headset, and dials the girl's number.

Oracle will see Jocelyn pause in her running as her phone rings. She pulls it up and looks at the number. Unknown. Well then, that was interesting. Jocelyn figured she might have just not programmed someone's number into her phone, however, and clicks the answer button on her phone. The music pauses when the phone is answered.

"Hello?" is what Oracle will hear over the line. Jocelyn doesn't identify herself immediately, however. That may or may not seem odd, it really depends on what you grew up doing. Still, with an unknown number, Jocelyn wanted to know who was at the other end, and if it was a wrong number, they'd be less likely to identify themselves if she gave her name immediately.

Plus there were times she could be paranoid still. It was an excellent X-trait to have.

It's not so unusual that the girl doesn't immediately identify herself. Few people do. Oracle rarely does. In this case, however...

"Channel." The voice that Jocelyn hears is digitized and androgynous. "My name is Oracle. I'm sorry to interrupt your run, but I need a moment of your time, if you don't mind."

Channel doesn't answer right away. The teen instead looks all around herself, including down and up. Not sensing anything unusual, however, she frowns a little bit before she turns to look out over the lake.

"Alright. You've got my attention, using that name. Have we met, because if we have, your voice doesn't sound familiar over the phone," the teenager says. There's caution in her voice, but there is also a limited amount Channel can actually do in conversation with someone over the phone. Threats can be issued, but Channel isn't really one who is big into that sort of thing.

There was no harm in listening to this person on the phone however. It wasn't like Channel herself hadn't broken into a few phone lines in her time.

"You were present at the Wayne Foundation Recreation Center three days ago when Shelby Knox was abducted by members of the District Kings street gang." It's not a question. The digital voice sounds quite confident. "I expect you'll recall they used a highly unusual piece of technology to effect Miss Knox's capture. A piece of technology that is considerably beyond the resources of one might expect of common street thugs." Understatement much?

"I've recently traced several energy signatures closely matching the discharge at the rec center to a drop-in center frequented by members of the Kings. Unless my information is wrong, and it seldom is," Oracle continues, "you possess unique abilities and a personal background that makes you particularly well-suited to helping me follow up on this lead. I should warn you, of course, the danger level on this operation will be high, so you may wish to bring back-up with you. However, if you do, they will need to be someone who, like you, is young, but can handle themselves on the streets, regardless of any metahuman or mutant abilities they may also have."

Oracle smiles slightly, figuring she's put enough out there to bait the hook. "Are you interested?"

This causes Channel to start running through her head the rather large list of individuals who she knows who might be useful for something like this. Small, covert operation. Extraction needed. Channel considers that. Numbers could be bad, in this case, and the ones she'd bring with weren't available at this time.

"If it was to go belly-up, I can have back-up to me very quickly. They're flashy, but if I'm at a point I need help, then that doesn't matter much," Channel responds after a minute. She had at least two individuals she could call at a moments notice to show up. She sort of collected these things. In fact, Oracle could get quite the collection of contact information, if she scrolled through Channel's phone.

"I've got some interest in pursuing these individuals. What's the mission?" Channel asks, finding a tree to lean up against now. Details were important, and knowing who her adversaries were was rather important. Just a smidge more important than knowing who her allies and, in this case, employer were.

"Reconnaissance," Oracle says shortly, "at the moment, with the potential for infiltration. It will depend on what we find behind the façade. The location in question is a youth drop-in center. It particularly caters to young people your age, with backgrounds similar to your experiences in Detroit." Yep. The spooky cybervoice knows about that, too. "I believe it's effectively a recruiting center for the Kings. There's nothing on the surface to indicate that, but the visitor patterns I'm seeing suggest it. Too, there's the little matter of the energy signatures that have been popping up in that vicinity."

"What sort of signatures?" Channel asks as she starts taking notes in her head. Recon was simple enough to do, and was something she was good at. The fact that the Voice in the Phone knows about Detroit does give Channel a little bit of pause, however. This voice knew she was out running, and that meant that she could be seen. It knew her codename and phone number, and it knew about her past. That was a little disturbing.

"I take it when I get out, you'll contact me in a similar manner as this". A statement and not a question from the teenager. She also started going through what she knew of the Kings. They were way more organized than she'd expected at the Rec Center. That wasn't normal for these sorts of gangs. That didn't track with Jocelyn.

"I won't let you go in without micro transceiver so that we can maintain contact," Oracle notes. She opens a file in the YAL database and scans its contents quickly. "I'll be relying on your facility with energy absorption to mask its energy output, should they employ any sort of electronic counter measures." That and the fact her transceivers are a lot more secure and harder to detect than most government and law enforcement issue. The woman Tinkers with things. All the time. "But, yes. I will also use this method of contacting, should it be more appropriate."

Seemed straightforward enough to Channel. Which meant there would be at least one or two twists along the way, but that was alright. "Alright," Channel says. "Where do I pick up the transceiver?" she asks. "I can be there fairly quickly," The teenager assures Oracle. Though how she was going to do that, Channel doesn't actually say. She had her means, and hey, maybe Oracle didn't know everything about her. Not everything was in every file, after all.

Oracle isn't really too concerned how Channel gets there, just as long as she does. "Dress in street clothes," she advises. "There is a pizzeria called Angelo's, in Brooklyn. I will send someone to meet you there and forward you the intel you need to locate the drop-in center, once you arrive."