Summary:Spoiler drops round at GIRL to snoop and finds out more than she was expecting. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Sitting just far enough outside New York for the science and retail parks but within walking distance for the train the G.I.R.L building looks fairly unremarkable from the outside. Moderately sized the building has the insect winged logo above double glass doors that lead into a little reception area that's currently empty and has a single sturdy looking double internal door leading out.
Despite the late hour the outer reception door is unlocked to allow walk in visiters to get inside the building, although the inner door that leads to the lab is locked. Although there's obvious security cameras in place to discourage anyone from trying to steal anything.
The inside is perhaps unlike any science lab most people typically imagine. Two floors of open plan space with the logo proudly painted on the far back wall. Each side wall is lined with college dorm style bedrooms. The nearby corners have a break area with couches and a big tv plus a little kitchen that has an empty box that used to contain donuts and a hastily cobbled together coffee machine made almost entirely out of things from a chemistry lab.
But it's the middle that looks the most impressive. A huge scifi doorway dominates the middle of the room. While a dozen workbenches are covered in various projects ranging from biotech to robotics.
The only sign of life is a slightly ajar dorm room door from which light streams out and the faint sound of Tchaikovsky can be heard playing.
Taking the easy way in is sometimes the best way to get into a building. Spoiler had been given her assignment over a week ago. She spent the time doing her homework, casing the place, learning as much as she couold about the building, the organization, the people within. Having learned of the 'open door policy' for potential new recruits, Spoiler uses that as the opportunity to let herself in. It's after that that Spoiler slips from shadow to shadow, moving swiftly but quietly, in a way meant to not draw attention to herself.
Spoiler gives herself the tour, using her HUD's display to continually update and feed her new information about her surroundings. Finding the dorm room door, the batling slides over for a listen.
The lock on the inner door will have proven unexpectedly challenging for Spoiler, although not impossible, and the security cameras while recording don't seem to automatically fire off any alarms. Security is intentionally discreet after all so that potential members don't feel intimidated.
The only dorm room that seems occupied at this hour has the word 'Nadia' on the door in glittery lettering. "Log entry, I've been considering the notion that if dark matter is the term for the hard to detect matter which fills in the gaps in… well.. everything then does the same apply to time? The existence of some sort of temporal anomoly might go towards explaining the temporal phenomina which are encountered when shrinking matter by extreme amounts. When this current business with mystery assassins is done I'll have to devote some time, no pun intended, towards building a dimensional probe to test the theory."
The difficulty of the lock was of some slight surprise. The uptick of her brow undetectable behind her cowl. Listening to the music from that open dorm room labeled in glittery letters, Spoilers brows again lift at the topic of the log entry she's hearing. While science and tech aren't her strong points, the sound of a dimensional probe because of temporal anomolies is concerning. Just as concerning as mystery assassins. SPoiler steps into the doorway where she can be seen.
"Mystery assassins?" she chimes her question. "Sound mysterious."
Nadia Van Dyne doesn't get up from her desk, back facing the door without any apparent concern. "Oh hi there," she says, tapping a button to pause the recording. "I thought we had a vistor. Are you here for the tour?" She gestures at a screen nearby which is displaying a warning message, caused by the drop in ambient temperature from when Spoiler opened the doors. "Oh and may I ask who I'm speaking to?"
She spins round on her chair. "I really hope you don't plan on saying something cheesy like 'The last person you'll ever see'. I've got so much work to do you wouldn't believe it."
Spoiler's eyes track to the display that alerted the woman to her presence, reading that warning message. Drop in temperature. Smart. Not something that Spoiler could have easily disabled without tripping some other alarm. She tilts her chin up a quarter inch in recognition of having been 'spotted' early on, but otherwise doesn't let the annoyance with herself over that failulre seep outward past the light press of lips.
"I hadn't planned on saying htat no. But I can, if it'd make you feel better? I'm not here to kill you. I'm not even here to hurt you. I was here for the tour, but I already gave that to myself, so unless you're going to let me into the more hyper secure areas of your building that I went past this time, there's no need to worry yourself over it. I'm Spoiler. And you're Nadia. It's nice to meet you." a pause and Spoiler's head tilts.
"Mystery assassins?" she repeats.
"Nice to meet you Spoiler. So you've done the tour? Out of costume perhaps? Don't worry I won't try match your biometrics with previous visitors or anything," Nadia assures cheerfully. "Or do you mean you had a peek around just now? If so that's not /really/ the tour. It doesn't even cover the basement labs or our assorted range of college scholarship programs for STEM fields. I'd be happy to show you round the building though if you want?"
She frowns and shrugs. "Yeah mystery is unfortunately the operative word. I ran into a two person sniper team working alongside a ground based wetwork team. No clue on the targets just yet. They spoke Russian and had very high tech gear. Sonic weapons, non-lethal foam sprays and much better gear than you'd expect from a mercenary team. Could have been a black-ops or Red Room team."
"Hmm," Spoiler hums softly, uncurling from the arms-folded shoulder-leaned against the door frame. Her arms come down to her sides, letting her cape fall closed around her.
"I wouldn't decline a full tour," she replies, not commenting about the mentioned scholarships. Stephanie could use the extra money, but not the extra commitment and certainly not in a field she doesn't know anything about. Spoiler doesn't need college life.
"If you have any footage I can have a copy off to study, I'll see what I can do," is offered.
Nadia Van Dyne springs to her feet. She's dressed rather casually in an oversized sweater than hangs down to her knees and fluffy bunny slippers. "Well lets get to it then," she offers. "In the main room we have communal projects and things too large for the basement labs. The doorway is a prototype space folding gateway for long distance transport, still very much a work in progress but theoretically sound.."
She then proceeds to lead Spoiler around the large open lab area. There's a transforming buggy/robotic mobility suit. Boards full of equations for anti-cancer drugs. Planets which can 'communicate' in a limited fashion. All sorts of marvels and wonders although virtually everything is years from widespread adoption.
"I have some footage of the incident. From my point of view anyway. I have yet to locate anything definitive on the main hit squad. But it shows some of the tactics and gear the snipers were using. They certainly seemed prepared for superhero involvement, so should be considered a high threat even if they didn't display obvious super powers."
Spoiler follows the bunny-slipper clad woman. her own foot falls whisper soft on the tiled floors. Cloak closed over her frame, it's hard to say what her hands are doing, but it's easy to assume they are tucked behind her back to keep herself from reaching out and touching anything. Most of the equations are beyond her, but with her HUD grabbing stills from her eye pieces, Spoiler knows she'll be able to study it later. Right after she takes in that gown she's working on for Spring. She had not planned for a new model, and now she has to resize the waistline. By hand because of the beadwork.
"Do you have an address where the incident took place?" Maybe Spoiler can find some footage from a CCTV or traffic camera that can add anything.
"My suit recordings are geo-tagged. But happened in Mutant Town and the team was good enough to have rapid extraction routes pre-planned, so I don't know how much luck you'll have finding other footage. I'm hoping at least one local resident has a cellphone recording they'll post online," Nadia says with a nod. "Everything we work on here is intended for open source release once it's finished. Here at GIRL we're working for the benefit of the planet, not for personal profit. Although we do have legal protections in place to prevent anyone copying the work and trying to profit from it."
She begins moving over towards the stairs leading down into the basement. "You might lose any communications links you have downstairs. There is substantial shielding in place in case of attacks as well as our anti-surveillance gear."
Geo-tagged is good. A well-excused extraction plan and high tech weapons without super powers definitely sounds like something her and the Family would run. Looking at social media is a good idea also. Spoiler makes a mental note as she pull sout her black phone to set it to 'going dark' mode.
"A sound idea. I'm rather impressedwith secruity measures I've seen so far," she comments, phone being slid back into her thigh pocket.
"Thanks! I built them all myself," Nadia notes as she heads down an unusually long staircase. "I also reworked some of the building itself. We have a few secure panic rooms that should be able to withstand sustained bombardment or superhuman attacks. And when you're down here I'm fairly confident that a conventional plane-dropped bomb wouldn't do more than spill your coffee."
"Anyway the basement is where all the private labs are. Not private as in restricted to a specific person just.. Sometimes you need to run someone through a medical procedure and you don't want them walking about in a hospital gown in the open space. It's also where the more expensive lab equipment is kept." The lower levels aren't as visually exciting as the ground floor. Mostly small rooms with shiny new hardware courtesy of the RESCUE funding. "We're kitted out for everything from xenobiology to industrial robotics. If you can imagine it we can probably make or design it here."