2793/On Krypton, it is a High Crime

On Krypton, it is a High Crime
Date of Scene:	05 August 2020
Location:	Labs - Titan's Tower
Synopsis:	Kara and Caitlin hug it out. Clones are a difficult topic.
Cast of Characters:	Caitlin Fairchild, Kara Danvers

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Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Though the Brainiac threat has passed, there's still work to be done. Caitlin's down in the Titans' lab with some of the salvage. The task of investing, cataloguing, and storing the tech has required a pretty substantial amount of labor. Security cautions abound including keeping the tech in a Faraday cage and doing all work on a charged electromagnetic plate-- just in case something decides to tick into function while it's being disassembled.

She's working on a drone leg, cutting at it with a diamond-tipped blade in one hand and a probe in the other. A series of cables almost resembling a muscle group flop out of the chassis. "Huh," Caitlin says. "Lab notes continued: leg actuators look like memory cloth, but made of a dense metal mesh. Will experiment with electrical stimulation later."

The actuator's set aside in a special bowl. Caitlin's dressed in her usual athleisure attire, with grey calf-length leggings and a close fitting cotton blue tee shirt. A rough canvas shop apron hangs from her neck, and her hair's bound up with two pencils and a hastily applied scrunchy to keep it out of her face while she works.

Kara Danvers has posed:
The first evidence of Kara's arrival is the sound of her boots touching the floor. She has been mentally brooding toward this conversation for a while now, with arms folded tightly over her chest and a concerned look upon her face. Ever since Caitlin told her she was involved in cloning Kal's DNA to create Conner.

She clears her throat to announce herself, though she almost has that look she gives criminals, chin ever so slightly down and a broad posture. Almost, but not quite. "Caitlin, do you have a moment to talk?," she asks in as calm a manner as she can muster considering what she wants to talk about.

This whole cloning thing is just 'something going on' that is a 'little disturbing' for Kal, but he didn't grow up in a society where cloning someone was televised because it was such a rare and heinous crime.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin away from her microscope and beams a smile at Kara. "Hey Kara. C'mon in," she beckons. "I think you'll find this interesting. Look! It's a synthetic muscle fiber," she tells the Kryptonian. Enthusiasm for her latest discovery seems to have overriden her read of Kara's tension. "It's a synthetic alloyed myomer. Metal muscles," she explains. "It acts like memory cloth. See, when I apply a low voltage to it?" Probes from a battery are touched to the muscle and it contracts sharply, then relaxes. "I still don't quite know what the alloy is," she admits, "but it's incredible stuff. This will have huge applications for tech work in robotics and cybernetics here on Earth. I mean, assumingany of this ever sees the light of day," she adds, and gestures at the dissected Brainiac drone bits scattered around the lab.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara's eyes roam over the lab and she momentarily forgets what she came here to talk about as her curiosity is piqued. She begins to walk forward to the microscope, then stops and holds out a hand, "No. Not just yet. There's something very important we need to talk about. About //the clone// and your involvement with it."

She folds her arms once more and takes in a deep breath, realising she's being far too unrealistic about her approach to talking to Caitlin. She is a team mate, not a criminal .. on Earth any way. "You crossed a line that on Krypton is a High Crime, punishable by exile to the Phantom Zone. It's not a nice place. It's a very not nice place."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin's smile falters and falls at Kara's tone. The threat of arrest and exile prompts a slow, steadying breath; she sets her tools aside and stands to face Kara. One hand remains resting loosely on the counter to help offset any appearance of towering over the blonde Kryptonian.

"It's a good thing we're not on Krypton, then," she says, finally. "Kal mentioned something about it, but that was a few months ago. I'd forgotten completely about it. Did you talk to him about the Conner situation?"

Kara Danvers has posed:
"We discussed briefly that Kon-El existed. We will talk about it further soon no doubt, but. Well, you are my team mate here in the Titans and this is something that I cannot continue to not talk to you about. Not.. not." She pauses recounting her nots. The way she says 'Kon-El' suggests that there is a deeper meaning to the name, for the one known as Conner. In Kryptonian it is a slur meaning Abomination.

She brings one hand to her forehead and the other rests on a counter top as she looks at Caitlin with concern. "I really need to understand what happened. Why you would do something like that. I need to know how much of a danger it is to Earth," she says with the same level of concern she had of Brainiac, as if clones were simply that dangerous.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin purses her lips in a grimace and turns half-away so she can rest her hips on the bench. Arms fold across her stomach a little defensively, then drop so her fingertips rest on the countertop near her hips.

"This was three years ago," Caitlin points out. "So I know it feels a little more immediate for you, but it's been behind me for a while now."

Shoulders rise and fall with a steadying breath and she looks up, trying to get the details straight in her head. "It didn't start out with Conner. It started out with organ farming. Human organs fail a lot. Kidneys and livers, pancreas, that sort of thing. We were growing them in nutri-baths. It was work that was meant to save lives," she explains, and looks to Kara. "I don't know if I can express what a huge deal this would have been if it worked the way they told me it would. Organ transplants can cost tens of thousands of dollars and there's a black market for stolen body parts on top of it. Being able to grow replacement hearts and lungs in a lab is just... well, it would be a major step forward for humanity."

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara notices the impression she's making on the table top and lets go. She pulls over a chair and sits down, slumped over slightly as she listens to what Caitlin is saying. She is no law maker or sentence giver. Heck, she was just about to join the science guild before her entire civilisation was ripped away from her. But now she has been dealing justice on an almost daily basis simply because she can and the DEO needs her to.

She can't help but take in the beat of Caitlin's heart and the posture of her body as she nods slowly. Her thinned lips loosening just a touch. "Why do the worst crimes always seem to start with noble intentions," she says softly, empathising with the desire to help people. Kara certainly has a prejudice about clones. She is normally a very understanding person, this isn't the Kara most people see.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"Because it's not a crime *here," Caitlin says exasperatedly. "I'm a good person, Kara. I don't go out and rub it in everyone's face but I try *really* hard to do the right thing. Conner was-- it was one of those things where it *sounded* like a good idea, and then the deeper I got, the harder it was to pull back and see what was happening. I was already getting both barrels from my priest over participating in cloning-- it's not something the Church really approves of, but it was going to save lives," she says with frustration evident in her voice.

A few beats pass. "Anyway. It just kept... the project kept growing. They'd hand me weird DNA samples. Said it was synthetic DNA from another part of the lab, but I never found out who. I started seeing these little ... irregularities. Stuff that didn't add up. That's when I learned it was Kryptonian DNA sequences being spliced into human genomes. It took me a while to figure out who the source was. I think it was Conner-- 'Kon-El'," she amends.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Arms cross over her chest once more, lips thinning a touch. "I see. I can't speak for human cloning, like you say this isn't Krypton. But it sounds like you didn't know they were cloning a Kryptonian." Her posture loosens a little again and she folds one ankle over the other as she appraises how uncomfortable she's making Caitlin.

"I'm sorry, I am coming on a little strong. I should explain myself. On Krypton clones. Well I've heard the term 'boogey man' here in Earth. They are the monsters told to kids about the evils of the science guild running amok. It's not just a cautionary tale though, since scientists did from time to time clone themselves. There was a kind of elitist culture, a striving for perfection. Some scientists believed themselves to be that perfection. But, as the religious guild would say, clones have no soul, they have no empathy, they are monsters."

So much for trying to put Caitlin at ease with that explanation. "What happened then, once you found out about it," she says looking to Caitlin as if her words should have consoled her.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin's face falls at Kara's explanation. Those words hit home, digging deep at old scars and setting hooks in. The redhead flinches as if Kara's taken to physically punching her and looks away briefly while she's harangued.

But she takes it in stride, staying quiet until Kara asks her next question. "It took me a while to put it all together. They had handlers. Cutouts. They did a lot to make sure I didn't have all the facts. At first I thought we were growing new organs for the subj-- for Conner. Even I could see some genetic aberrations in his DNA. Chromosomal stuff, maybe incompatibilities with his Kryptonian DNA and whatever else was in there. We were trying to fix it."

"Then I found the clone banks. Fully grown and in maturation chambers. They were using *my* research, taking it from growing single organs to full body replication. I felt... I felt sick, and I knew something was wrong, but they kept at me. Kept promising me that it was all part of the plan to get Conner better, to repair him and make him healthy."

Caitlin shivers and rubs her hands along her biceps as if cold. "I guess the final straw was when I found neuro-induction simulators. VR training. It's, uh, it's used to rapidly train people or implant memories. Deep-consciousness learning. I-I wasn't sure how healthy Conner was. Or if any of the clones were ready to decant. I just knew that whatever they had planned was gonna be something bad."

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara starts to get concerned that this topic is far more sensitive to Caitlin than she realised. That odd tugging inside of her, of being stern on such a delicate topic.. but also empathy for her now friend. Though, at the mention of the neuro-induction she looks rather alarmed. "That's wh.. so. Uh." She hms and frowns a touch more. "Those criminals considered redeemable would be put in cryogenic sleep and retrained to be good citizens of Kryptonian society. It is not something you do to any old person."

Now she's starting to get a feeling that Caitlin was being used, rather than being an evil scientist creating clones. How many of this 'Conner' were there on Earth now? this could be far worse than she realised, especially if they were being programmed for something.

"This is awful. I'm.. what happened then?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"The military used it here for behavioural conditioning." Caitlin's tone is quiet and a little hollow. "Making better soldiers. I managed to get a look at the data files. They were making soldiers, I think. Or assassins. I don't really know which."

Her arms unfold and Caitlin looks at her hands as if examining them for stains. Or blood. "Anyway, once I put it together, I decided to go blow the whistle. I stole all the data I could get my hands on. Tried to... scramble some of the inductors, make it so the indoctrination didn't work. Or didn't take hold. The last thing I did was install malware with a command-kill executable in it. Hid it where they wouldn't find it. Once it activated, all the indoc programs would activate the whole bank at once. Regardless of who was fully developed or ... healthy."

"That was the last I ever saw of it. I came back a few days later with a Department of Justice escort to shut it down, but they'd pulled everything. Clones were gone, server banks were wiped, they even set fire to a lot of the building and sublevels. That was the last I heard about it for almost a year, until I saw Conner on the news."

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara nods her head slowly at the tail of Conner. She frowns and fidgets with the corners of her cape, "Then who is responsible for creating the abomination?" She doesn't mince words this one. "They could still be at it."

She pauses a moment and looks to Caitlin, "I'm sorry. I came in here ready to blame you for something that wasn't your fault. I guess I feel an injustice has been done to my people and a few weeks ago I'd have felt like I had to uphold the memory of Krypton. But now with Kandor in that bottle, well now I don't know what to think. I guess I really do need to talk to Kal about this more. Caitlin, please forgive me, I shouldn't have been so rash to think the worst. You are a good person."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"No, I'm sorry," Caitlin says, automatically. "I should have realized what Conner was-- what was being done to him-- way before I did. I was just so... enthusiastic about the work that I didn't see it. Maybe I didn't *want* to see it," she admits. A little damp appears under her eye; she brushes it away with the edge of her thumb and looks skyward to keep the tears from flowing.

"I wanted to tell Kal. I really did. But I just couldn't... The words, I tried to.." Fingers clench the air with inarticulate frustration.

"And then Doomsday showed up, and ... I guess it was kind of a moot point after that."

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara grimaces at her club footed approach. Subtly is not something she's ever been accused of. She slips off of the stool and approaches her tall colleague and wraps her in a hug. A slightly too tight hug, that's how you know it's a genuine heart felt Kara hug. "It's okay. You didn't know and you were trying to do the right thing... and in the end, you did the right thing. Please, forgive me for bringing tears to your eyes Caitlin."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin returns the embrace willingly, hugging Kara back just as hard. Not a lot of people can make a Kryptonian's ribs creak, but Caitlin's got the arms for it.

"It's okay. You had a right to be worried. There aren't a lot of Kryptonians left who aren't model-train sized. I'd have been upset if I were in your shoes, too."

Caitlin's the sort who wears her heart on her sleeve, and it takes a little tissue paper and a few moments to compose her emotions again. "I wish I could do more to help. I don't even know who was in charge of the project. Some rogue agency, some black-bag job that disappeared into a bottomless budget report. I just hope Conner smashed the place up good on his way out."

A wry smile crosses her face. "On the plus side, if you ever get sick or something, I'm just a phone call away. I coulda done a doctoral dissertation on Kryptonian anatomy, but there isn't any xenobiology degree plan I'm aware of."

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara can't help but tear up a little too. She lets the hug subside after a moment and grabs a tissue herself. "Uh yeah. I just shouldn't assume so many things. Clones.. worse than a Daxamite." She sighs and and wipes at her nose, then looks to the microscope, "Weird memory cloth alloy did you say?" She leans forward to look in to the microscope and watch it adjust with the current. She chuckles and says, "That is pretty neat. And medical, well, that could be extremely useful if something does harm me."

She stands back up and says to Caitlin, "I do trust you Caitlin. You don't have to worry about that. This team is a really weird mix of people, but I have your back, their backs, I'm here for you all. You don't have to fear that."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Kara's not looking at Caitlin when she makes the comment about clones. It's a good thing, too, because Caitlin's total lack of a poker face translates into an expression of immense hurt and shame.

She gets it wrestled down before Kara looks back, though, and smiles at the Kryptonian with a wan expression. "Something like it. It tenses when it recieves an electrical signal. Now I just need a couple years and a billion dollar material sciences lab to replicate it, I'm sure. Assuming it's not made of some rare alloy only obtainable in Kori's neck of the woods."

"Um... is Kal mad at me still? About the clone thing?" she hesitates. "I thought we were all squaresies on it but ... I mean, I know he doesn't like to stir things up. I don't want to make things awkward with you and him."

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara peers at Caitlin directly and tilts her head, "Ah. Look, what Kal and I discuss is family business. Any disagreements we have aren't going to be your fault. I don't think he harbours any ill will toward you, not like he does toward the DEO. I can't imagine how he feels about knowing there is a clone of him out there though. I would be shaken to my core. The world we're trying to help, betraying him like that..." she shakes her head slowly and says, "But you, don't worry. We will deal with it the way House of El always deals with things: vehement disagreement, silence, then hugs... not that he understands that tradition yet, it's in his blood."