7562/Close the Circuit

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Close the Circuit
Date of Scene: 26 August 2021
Location: Sheldon Park Generating Station, Gotham
Synopsis: Returning to the scene of a hostage crisis previously foiled by several Gotham vigilantes, Red Robin finally finds the needle in the haystack he's been looking for thanks in no small part to the timely assistance of Harper Row.
Cast of Characters: Tim Drake, Harper Row




Tim Drake has posed:
    It's Harv and Mary in the control room of the Sheldon Park Generating Station again tonight. They're old-hat at this, been part of the night guard since forever even though they're the two best employees at this posting. Exemplary records. Hardly ever call out. Legitimately love their jobs.

    They're just both night owls, and have grown too comfortable with each other's presence, to ever accept a posting during the daylight hours.

    Besides, it's Gotham. Nothing exciting ever happens during the day.

    And both because they're here to supervise and also because the dead of night is when Gotham's summer power demand is at its lowest, Harv and Mary are overseeing some much-needed maintenance. Like many cities in America, the infrastructure is kind of a mess. There are more people on-site than usual, swarming here and there, multimeters in their hands and lengths of new wiring draped over their shoulders.

    "At least they brought in security for us this time around," Mary jokes as she flips through papers on her clipboard.

    Nearby, Harv looks up from the console he's sat at. "What, you mean the GCPD officers outside? That's for all the copper we've brought in--easy target for thieves otherwise."

    Mary shakes her head. "No, I mean--." She gestures over her shoulder, and they have a moment of silent, expression-based communication. Harv says nothing more, but he nods slowly in understanding.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Down in the depths of the station, Red Robin prowls through a conduit tunnel. "Come on, Mr. Baker. What were you up to during those 74 minutes you were missing?" he asks himself, clicking his tongue thoughtfully as he scans another junction box. No sign of tampering.

    Dang.

    He slips out from the tunnel and carefully lowers himself to the ground, breath forcibly even. After he's standing again, he presses his hand to his left side, just about mid-chest, and takes a wheezing inhale. No, he's fine, he's okay. He stands at the meeting of two empty, shadowed cooridors as he consults the blueprints of the station overlaid in the corner of his HUD.

    There's little maintenance to be done this far down in the station's basement, a lucky thing for anyone scared of cobwebs and creepy crawlies (which Tim does not count himself a member of, despite the fact he is fairly coated in dust and has more than once been forced to crawl around on his hands and knees during his search), but they still have to check the wiring. With the river adjacent to the station and the likelihood of dampness inherent to any kind of basement, corrosion is always possible.

Harper Row has posed:
Late nights working aren't normal for Harper but she's pulling one tonight. Having takenn the day off from work since her boss knew she'd be putting in the hours tonight she grabbed an extremely welcomed nap between lunch and Cullen getting home from school and then she fixed dinner for herself and her sibling while he did his homework.

The boss actually let her check out a vehicle from the carpool since she'd be travelling from home and back again during hours that the busses don't run so Harper actually got to drive herself to the Sheldon Park Generating Station where she began her evening by explaining to the maintenance team the irregularity she's looking for and then subtly sabotaging their ability to find it by directing them away from the equipment that she actually thinks it is coming from as she specifically thinks is causing the unusual resonance signal she's found burried in the current leaving the station.

Talking softly to herself, Harper says, "Glad to see Harv and Mary seem to have gotten over what happened for the most part, but they still seem a bit jumpy," as she descends into the lower levels of the station, pulling out a multimeter of her own after sliding down the ladder so that she can begin looking for the pesky irregularity.

Tim Drake has posed:
    The unusual signal is buried deep. Hard to detect, unless this is the sort of thing you live and breathe in your daily life. That the station's output has a frequency to speak of at all is a red flag, sure, but it's one that easily disguises a much more subtle, insidious undercurrent.

    How can you detect a transformation to a signal that is already throwing off strange readings? Only noticeable if the observer is anticipating one kind of strange and instead encounters something just slightly off their expectations.

    So Red Robin is, to pardon a pun, flying blind here. Not to say he's unfamiliar with the general topic, but at the same time two semesters of circuits do not make an electrical engineer. So it has less to do with any outright evidence that leads him in the same direction that Harper is conducting her search in than it does with sheer, dogged determination.

    Maybe a little obsession. What else would get him out of his sickbed? That's just the way it is, with the Bats.

    His feet are silent on the concrete floor as he hears Harper's comment to herself as she approaches. Tim is already tapped into the station's security feeds, so he knew that she was headed towards the sub-basement, but he wasn't quite expecting to meet her head on.

    He's slow tonight. And while he could duck away, leave and come back later, Red Robin... doesn't want to. He wants to stay. Find something. Anything.

    So he's still standing there, scanning another junction box, when she arrives. "Evening," Red Robin says mildly, as if encountering a costumed vigilante in the depths of a power station is an everyday occurrence.

Harper Row has posed:
Late at night, in the bowels of a power generation station, all the workers intentionally sent in directions where they'll be able to do the maintenance they are officially here for but will also stay out of the nineteen-year-old engineer's blue colored hair (the purple is only visible when the hair is brushed up and she's wearing it down in an asymmetrical page-boy style tonight)... Harper honestly thought she was alone in the cooridor before she's spoken to. She manages to not screech in surprise but she visibly jumps in surprise and then, obviously a tad bit awkwardly, takes a stance from self-defense training that screams "not quite still a novice kickboxer" to the experienced eyes of Red Robin.

"Woah," she says as she relaxes a bit recognizing the costume for what it represents, "You... you're Red Robin," she says with the certainty of someone who's researched the publicly available information on Batman and his flock of followers.

Security footage doesn't show a lot of details, nor are this building's cameras color pickup. In addition to the hair color there's more to this young woman then would have been noticed before. Work boots, likely with steel toes, and blue jeans are worn with a light jacket over a t-shirt. A backpack bulge shows under the loose jacket and a city ID bearing her picture and name (if it can be read at this distance) complete the young professional(?)'s attire.

Tim Drake has posed:
    Briefly, the white lenses of Red Robin's domino mask seem to focus on Harper. He nods to her once, makes note of her stance and ID, which he zooms in on just long enough to capture the details.

    A quick, automated search confirms her employment. You can never be too careful, after all.

    "Don't worry, Ms. Row. I'm not going to disturb the maintenance you and your coworkers are doing. Just here to follow-up on the incident that happened on July 18th." As he speaks, Red Robin flips open another junction box and steps in close to examine its innards, his touch precise as he shifts things out of the way without dislodging them. He has a healthy amount of respect for the amount of voltage flowing through the wires surrounding them at this very moment, and it shows.

    The scan in his HUD completes and pops up a notification of NO ANOMALOUS READINGS.

    His sigh is a barely there thing as he closes the junction box and steps away. "Nothing," he says, to himself, and he tucks his arm a little more tightly against his side. Though there's no sign of it in his face (at least, what can be seen around the mask), his posture is guarded, partially curled inwards, like he's protecting an injury. But his movements are perfectly even as he steps away. "Don't mind me. Please," and then he gestures her onwards as his gaze moves past, looking further down the corridor.

Harper Row has posed:
(He knows my name just from looking at me... wow.) "Its Miss," Harper says in a polite but totally not offended tone, adding, "If I'm older then you are it can't be by much," about the title that was used. She also nods about his explination of why he's there. "You were here that night, right," she says, obviously having had access to the reports one way or another.

She glances around as if looking to see if she should just get back to her own investigation but then decides to ask: "You seem like you shouldn't be out and about... um... Robin?" she says, that hesitation being over how to address the costumed hero. Despite this, she's still scanning the conduits with her customized multimeter, occasionally tapping its screen to store information into the device's memory and nodding as she moves along closing the distance toward Red Robin. She is carrying herself in this encounter as if this is her place and he's the guest, but anyone able to read into her body language also would see that there's an undercurrent of "fan girl near a celebrity" that Tim's training under Batman's "wing" could easily detect if he isn't too distracted by the pain.

Tim Drake has posed:
    Red Robin's head tips in acknowledgment of the correction. "This is your home turf," he replies. "And I'm a guest, is all. Some of us," and that seems to be some sort of inside joke to him, judging by the way one corner of his mouth curls upwards, "Have manners, I promise."

    Headed down the tunnel, he glances back over his shoulder to add, "I was. Do you happen to know anything about a Kevin Baker, who was briefly employed here until shortly after the incident? He was given a leave of absence by the psychiatric response team and then terminated his employment."

    Something brings him to a stop, something only he--or perhaps his lenses--can see. In the fluorescent light of the corridor, his jaw tenses as he picks up a pair of wire strippers that have been abandoned on top of an insulated HDPE conduit bracketed to the wall.

    "Huh," Red Robin breathes out.

    He's still staring down at them when Harper speaks again, and slowly he raises his chin to look at her. "That obvious?" There's something vaguely amused to the look he shoots her, mouth quirked, though it's mostly tight with restrained effort. "Well, you know how it is. Duty calls. And sick days aren't really a thing in my line of work."

    A pause.

    "I hope your government contract is kinder to you," he adds, and he is actually smiling now, if a touch awkwardly.

Harper Row has posed:
"Well, its not like you can apply a staff to every problem you encounter, right?" Harper quips reflexively in a friendly fashion at Red Robin before she even thinks of it. She flushes slightly in response to her own presumptiveness while continuing to scan the conduits herself.

"Heard he ran off but other than that and his habit of bringing the flavor of the week rather than anyone's preferred coffee flavors when it was his turn I don't know anything about him really," she explains about Kevin and then says, "My little brother had a broken rib once before... he move around like you are when it was nearly healed and I have to assume you are actually toughter than him," and then stops.

The multimeter has started beeping. Harper obviosuly understands this as it doesn't surprise her, just is something she's focusing on, but the abruptness of this might startle Red Robin as this is not a standard function of this type of device.

Bending down to look back into the cabling, Harper says, "There's something in there that's not standard equipment, Robin. And this is where the irregularity is coming from." She sounds absolutely certain of this.

Tim Drake has posed:
    In response to the quip, Red Robin holds his right hand out parallel to the ground and gives it a bit of a shake in a 'ehhhh' sort of gesture. He doesn't seem bothered by Harper's presumptiveness at all. "Sometimes percussive maintenance does work, though."

    The lack of information on Mr. Baker seems expected, at least judging by the slight nod and otherwise lack of reply.

    He huffs out a breath through his nose, which is maybe the start of a snort, though he goes suddenly still and his next inhale is extremely slow. "I'm really not that tough," he says after a moment, and there's something vaguely uncomfortable in his tone, but he's saved by Harper's multimeter. It prompts him to take a few careful steps forward, leaning in slightly as if to steal a peek at its screen.

    "Here?" he asks for confirmation just before he reaches in, parting wires, and the readings she's taking prove true. Tucked as far back as possible, obviously with the intent to hide it, is a strange device that has been connected into the station's power lines. The shape of it is vaguely geometric, and now that it's exposed, carvings along the surface glow faintly with some sort of internal power based on how it continues to do so after Red Robin has managed to disconnect it.

    Even now with it sitting, otherwise inert in the palm of his glove, the thing continues to hum with some sort of signal it's broadcasting. "Another one of these things?"

    He turns it around in his hand. "And Kevin Baker's fingerprints all over it." Red Robin's shoulders bunch up slightly, and even through the pain, he's smiling. "Finally," he hisses under his breath.

    And then he looks up, at Harper. "Congratulations, Miss Row. You may have just cracked my case for me."

Harper Row has posed:
Harper laughs at the response to her quip and nods in agreement to it as well. She's able to hide it but she's also somewhat relived at being saved by the beeping of her multimeter as now she doesn't have to put to voice how poorly her brother takes to physical pain.

Looking at the multimeter there are frequency waves being displayed and a pattern displayed that the frequency is matching. While the beeping was stopped by the press of a button the pulse on the screen everytime the frequency crosses the matching pattern makes it an extremely easy guess as to what the beeping indicated also, so much so that even a remedial dective could deduce it, let alone a protege of the Greatest Detective in the world.

She nods in confirmation to the question and then watches, almost as if prepared to move to Red Robin's aid if an accident happens, while the costumed hero reaches into the conduits. She looks over the device in Tim's gloved hand with curiosity and idly asks, "I'm not going to get to know what that thing was doing other than it being the cause of the irregular fluxuations showing up on the power reports, am I?" before saying, "Sure thing, Robin," while grinning about the implied thanks as Red Robin departs, heading down the tunnel away from the station proper.