8027/Follow White Rabbit

Follow White Rabbit
Date of Scene:	28 September 2021
Location:	Gotham City
Synopsis:	When Oracle discovers with barely an hour on the clock that a gang war has put the lives of illegal immigrants in danger and she needs a hacker, she enlists the help of a new player in town - Bluebird - but doesn't have the time to introduce her to the Birds of Prey, or Oracle, the right way.
Cast of Characters:	Barbara Gordon, Harper Row

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Barbara Gordon has posed:
    It's raining outside. That's Gotham for you. Somehow it absorbs all the bad weather that Metropolis should get. Metropolis should be thanking us but instead they bask in the sunny skies while Gotham attracts the gloom. There's a knock on the door.

    A delivery man, so the cap says. He's carrying a small package and has a clipboard, "Delivery for Ms Row." His clothes are soaked from being outside in the rain, but that's part of the job. Part and parcel, excuse the pun.

Harper Row has posed:
Harper, who had already started cooking dinner for herself and her brother after getting home from work, calls out to Cullen as she heads to the door: "I know you're doing homework but watch dinner while I check on this!"

At the door she accepts the package cautiously after looking over the delivery person for a moment and then looking at the package for a moment. "Wasn't accepting anything but thank you," she says to him biting back the "It's Miss," that she starts to reflexively say to the delivery man who she is unlikely to ever see again anyway.

After closing the door she says, "I'll be back out soon," and heads towards the bathroom, examining the outside of the package as she slowly walks, making sure to not jostle it durinig the examination.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
    A close examination of the box identifies zero traps. It looks legit. All the paperwork stuck on it looks genuine. The delivery address is yours. The name is yours. The source, though, is bogus.

    Inside there are two ear pieces, nearly transparent and very well designed. They're wrapped in black velvet. You can tell someone could wear them and they'd be nearly undetectable. Whoever made them is using next generation manufacturing techniques.

    There is also a note that simple says:

    Wear me.

Harper Row has posed:
A simple note like that with a package that may as well have been unlabeled has Harper nervous. Before putting /one/ of them in she sends a message to the Outsiders: <<If I don't reply in 5 minutes I'm in deep trouble.>> She hits send as she puts the one ear piece in and then waits for a potential blasting sound to assault her thinking ("He'd chastize me... but what if it /is/ him... please let this not be a trap...")

Barbara Gordon has posed:
    A voice plays gently in her ears. It sounds a little artificial. Clearly scrambled and gender neutral. "Gear up, your ride arrives in 25 minutes."

    There's plenty of good reasons to be nervous about all of this. It's mysterious and playing right in to the hands of whoever sent it. But on the other hand, no threats have been made.

    It could be -him-. Whoever is behind this knew you put them in your ears. May be they're sending a signal out as well as receiving a signal in. or may be you're being watched.

    The Gotham ride share app on your phone buzzes indicating your ride is 'on its way' and is '24 minutes out'. A ride you didn't order. It seems the ride has been paid for, but there's no account connected to the order. Just a blank space where a name would normally be.

Harper Row has posed:
Harper firmly says, "No. Identify yourself or these get submerged and taken to someone who has the resources to find out who you are."

She then plugs the tub and begins filling it with water which can clearly be heard over the mikes in the device.

Harper is new at this but she's learned some caution apparently.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
    There's a moment of silence, similar to all the other silence surrounding the first command. Is the voice on the other end contemplating yielding to the answer.. or are they indifferent to your threat.

    When an answer comes, it is not quite the one you were looking for. "Gheno Beatruce has declared war on his rival and locked an incoming ship cargo with 16384 bit ciphers effectively making the cargo worthless. Unfortunately for the cargo inside, illegal immigrants. You have 45 minutes to extract the ciphers from Gheno Beatruce's computer or the occupants of the cargo containers will die. Gear up, your ride arrives in 23 minutes."

Harper Row has posed:
From outside the bathroom, Cullen says, "Dinner's Ready!"

In the bathroom, Harper groans. She leaves the other earpiece in the box and drains the tub after turning off the water. She calls out, "Don't server any for me, I have a work emergency to get to," and then runs to her bedroom and grabs her kit.

Another message to the Outsiders (<<Dealing with this. If you don't hear from me in an hour investigate Gheno Beatruce's rival and the man himself. You'll find a box under my pillow, check out its contents.>>) before she slips the package into that location and then hopping out of the window to climb up to the roof where there's a tool shed she uses to change into her gear.

As she changes she says, "So... 'Spook' where is this ride coming and how will I identify it as being 'trustworthy'?" she's obviously dubbed the mystery voice and the tone she uses to spin the last word shows that she's not feeling that way towards the voice or the whole situation.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
    The ride app dings in your phone once you're geared up. A person down on the street pulls up and the number plate matches the expected number plate on the bike. 'Your ride has arrived' dings on your phone.

    Babs can appreciate the distrust from Harper. She's not doing this the easy way after all. She adjusts her posture on the perch where she currently rests. The rain is falling over her cowl and running down her back. Her eyes glow as she watches multiple feeds at once.

    Time is running out. A camera on the docks looks over the illegal cargo, locked away like a vault behind modern day encryption. Cameras in Gheno's night club. Cameras watching Aims Jet his rival, gearing up with body armor and M16s.

    Relying on a stranger to help her out is a risk - but Harper fits the profile of what she needs right now. She's a hacker and smart and motivated. She also seems to like a mystery, eg: her turning up at the Riddler murder site. She might make a good bird.. this is a bit of trial by fire.

Harper Row has posed:
In her Bluebird getup (jeans, steeltoed boots, a blue leather jacket over an armored vest, tinted shooting goggles and her hair done up in a fauxhawk with purple coloration normally hidden as under highlights showing with streaks of blue), Harper strambles down to the street (saying, "You back stab me and I've started a process where you're gonna regret it" under her breath as she does) and approaches the bike with her stun gun held out towards the rider. After a brief interrogatogation at the end of the stun gun to satisfy her that he's just a ride share operator she climbs onto the bike saying, "You're going to get the most amazing tip out of this, I promise," to him and then, "Spook, you heard me, you make this worth this guy's while," as she pockets her stun gun and then grabs the guy tight to ride off to the destiation.

After being dropped off she hoofs it to the proximity of the problem area as directed by the mystery voice (muttering things about leaving her apartment and family out of this... she still has no trust for the spook at this point) so as to find a good vantage on the situation.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
    The guy is wearing a helmet and riding jacket and the rain is pouring down. But the stun gun is more than enough to get his attention. He's Pakistani, you learn, immigrated eight years ago and was is honestly just doing his job he swears.

    Babs narrows her eyes a moment at the veiled threats. Communications from Harper to the Outsiders. Should she contact Tim? No, no time for that. The drive through the rainy city casts surreal neon shadows on in the sky and on puddles on the ground. From Narrows to Lincoln street downtown. The destination, it seems, is some sort of night club.

    The thump of music can be heard inside. People are queued to get in to the place. There's no easy way through that front door without waiting your turn. On the plus side - your get up fits the look. It seems people are a mix between dark gothic and cyberpunk at this venue.

    As you assess your options, a shadow cuts the rain away. A small shadow.. a drone with the wings of the bat. It's a bat drone. It zips off down the ally way and then rises up to the top of the building and fires a grappling line in to the brickwork. A long line unwinds down to the alleyway with an ascender already attached.

    "Follow the bat," says the voice in your ear. Babs swoops down off the roof top and in to the shipping yard. The goons of Aims Jet have spread out and now they're going to be easier to pick off. She lands on a crate and fires a line to either side which wraps around two goon feet and yanks them up in to the air with cries. Alerted, their guns raise and they begin looking up at the crates trying to see their enemy.

Harper Row has posed:
At the words "Follow the bat" Harper relaxes a bit and quietly asks, "Couldn't have mentioned something like that at the start?" with a hint of more trust in her voice... still veiled but there's more than the total lack before.

She slinks though the shadows while working to keepat least one eye on the bat drone while paying attention to where she's going.

"You didn't tell me you'd be contacting me this way last time we spoke so... you said to trust nobody," are the words she mutters almost like a mantra, speaking softly enough for a good earbud to pick up (she's assuming) or just for her own benefit maybe.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
    The ascender takes you up to the roof of the building quickly. The drone flies over to the maintainance door and with a little zzzZap blows the lock off. The drone peels off in to the sky and the voice responds to you again. "We have a very tight deadline and you are unvetted. This isn't the" .. there's a pause.

    Babs blocks one punch, kneels the man in the guts as his gun fires, then tosses his momentum past her in to another guy coming around the corner. As they both recover she is gone once more.

    "the way I normally do things. But I need to know you can focus. A lot of peoples lives depend on it. Once you enter that building you're on your own. Find the server room, find the cipher keys. You have 9 minutes 13 seconds."

    You could swear you hear the sound of a man crying out, the doppler suggesting he's moving upwards fast. You also suddenly realise why there were two ear pieces.. the music in the building is LOUD and the ear piece protects you ear from the sound.

    Inside there are very well built men, broad shouders, emphasis on the chin and the MP90s they're carrying. They aren't guarding against people coming from the roof, but people coming from down below where the party rages on. Some of them have fixed positions, others are moving about. But, they all have blind spots.

    The last thing the voice in your ear says, "We've never spoken before."

Harper Row has posed:
"Crap," Harper mutters under her breath at those last four words. She creeps up to the entry door on the otherwise empty roof (guards on rooftops look suspcious to police helicopter patrols so there are none).

As she pulls out her lockpick gun and beings to apply it to the door she thinks a one word question to herself: ("Oracle?")

And click, the door's unlocked. A quick visual scan of the door shows an alarm sensor so out comes the tool kit and an impromptu bypass is put in place.

"Eight minutes, twenty-five seconds remaining.

A moment taken to spray the hinges to keep them from squeeking isn't wasted time. Then she begins to descend the stairs after quietly closing the door behind her. The door on the top floor landing is propted open so she stops and watches as a guard walks by it before she sneaks up to the door.

Only one guard is seen so she steps into the hall and slinks up behind him, pulling her stungun back out as she approaches. His first hint of problem is the momentary cold chill of the unlaunched probe prongs touching his neck before *zap* and he collapses into her arms.

Bluebird struggles with the man's weight as she drags him to a clearly labeled supply closet door and dumps him in after taking his walkie-talkie from him. She turns the volume down extremely low before cliping it to a spare space on her belt (so she can hear internal communications) and she hugs a wall as she walks down the hall looking for a door labled server room ("hey, I could be lucky here right?").

Even though there is a charge on the current gun it goes to her belt and she retrieves her second, fully charged one. There's a door labled keep out and temperature controlled. ("Good enough,") she thinks to herself as she opens the door and finds she has reached the server room.

"Six minutes, remaining."

Harper Row has posed:
The server room is kept at a temperature of twenty degrees celsius (68 for those not comfortable with metric). Not cold enough to cause fog to escape but sufficient for a cool breeze as Bluebird slips in and closes the door behind her.

Rows of computers, way more than a typical shipping company would need, fill the room other than a small area up front with a desk and terminal for monitoring the banks of electronics. There's so much in here that the opening of the door can't be felt, heard or seen except by someone up front. Thus the man pacing in the back muttering about needing his smoke break soon is unaware of the tresspass on his assigned territory.

Crouching, Bluebird creeps along the ends of the server rows, glancing around corners to see if anything can be seen when she notices the guard, standing with his back to the front of the room at the end of a six foot long corridor between two banks of computers.

Counting on the room to insulate the noise she risks running toward the man. He begins to turn toward her upon hearing her but she tucks down and extends a leg to sweep him off his feet while reaching up with her stungun to apply its charge to the walkie-talkie at his waist first.

Acrid smoke waifs up from the now burnt out communications device as the guard flops to the ground. Before he can react fully Bluebird punches the heel of her hand into his forehead, slaming his cranium back against the floor. She holds a threatening hand above his head for a moment while she watches his eyes roll backwards as he looses consciousness.

"Four minutes, thirty seconds."

Dashing back to the front of the room, Bluebird finds the terminal on but secured. Glancing across the desk there's a cup of coffee (slowing cooling to room temperature, bleh), a book (huh, big burly guy like that reading a Harlequine romance... that's a secure sense of masculinity) and... paydirt, there's an RSA fob.

And there's a prompt asking for a password and a token. Token's easy, the fob will provide that when it's time but the password...

"Three minutes remaining."

A good hack will take longer. Harper trys a guess and hopes...

She types in Fabio and then thinks for half a moment then types 1987. Her fingers fly across the numbers as she types the current token and then.... System Unlocked!

"Two minutes, thirty seconds remaining."

Harper Row has posed:
Now that she's in the computer, Harper goes into the command prompt and types out a manual search string from memory for specific file types. First search gets scanned and cleared. Second search... nothing yet.

"Two minutes remaining."

"Gotcha!" Harper exclaims while scanning the fourth search results. "So... Oracle?" There, she's testing her theory as she also asks what to do next: "How do I get these to you?"

Barbara Gordon has posed:
    How many goons does this guy have? the war between the two crime families has boiled over at this point. They locked the cargo then laid a trap, waiting in ambush for those who came to pick it up. But by the time they do arrive, all the guys from Aims Jet's crew are unconscious.

    As they stalk between the cargo containers with guns at the ready, they are met with resistance. The former Batgirl, Oracle, moves out of the shadows and yanks the first of the gunmen in to the darkness with barely a squeak.

    Babs' eyes narrow a moment as she spies the container. The men are trying to open it and are getting a red light with the swipe of their card. She tosses a flash bang at the container, it bounces off the door and blinds three of them.

    Rushing out she sweeps the leg of one, strikes the solarplexes of another, and attaches a line to the third sending him flying along the ground and around in to a dark corner where he collides with a container.

    One minute, twelve seconds remaining. She touches a hidden button on the underside of her gauntlet. "Use your phone," comes the reply.. an almost tacit admission that this is Oracle you're working for tonight.

    Bluebird's phone vibrates on her belt and its screen glitches for a moment before the Bat symbol appears dark gray on a black screen. In its center, golden numbers begin counting down.

Harper Row has posed:
"Next time ask, there's a better option then /my/ phone," Harper mutters angrily as she grabs her phone and connects it to the computer. She's assuming the device Red Robin would do but this is a personal device. "I hope there will be no trace of this data having touched my phone when we're done here, Mystery Person," as she connects it to the server and begins the transfer of the files.

Once the transfer starts there's little she can do about the situation and so she starts lightly tapping out the rhythm of a They Might Be Giants song ('Particle Man') with her fingers on the table top on either side of the keyboard with her gloved fingers. As the seconds pass it is reaching half a minute when the data is transferred to her phone fully.

"Done," she says before asking, "Can I get moving back to the roof now?"

Barbara Gordon has posed:
    Her phone finishes the process and then the screen changes to all black with the text, "Decrypting..." and individual dots on the screen start to fill with gold. It happens fast, very fast. When the whole screen is gold the phone restarts and there's no trace of whatever it was Oracle did.

    Babs spins and slams the last of the goons head in to the side of the container and then rushes over to the lock. With key card retrieved and the updated cipher keys decrypted, she swipes the card and the doors open.

    "31 seconds....," you hear from the voice in your ear. The people inside are slumped over but breathing. They begin to stir when fresh air makes it in to the container. "They're alive. Police are enroute. Exfil."

    She pauses for a moment as her eyes wander over the immigrants, then sends off a special message to someone she knows in immigration. Their illegal status is not going to stick when they were almost murdered getting here.

    Oracle turns and with a grappling gun shot she is launched up in to the top of a crane where she can crouch and watch. "You complain too much," is what she says. "But you saved lives. Figure out your priorities.. Bluebird. This life doesn't run on a schedule. We do what needs to be done and it's never convenient."

    A small smile betrays in her tone of voice, "Oracle out." The ear piece goes silent. There's no drone waiting outside. The line back down the side of the building is still there thankfully.

Harper Row has posed:
"Exfil?" Harper says the moment she hears it, while there is a pause. However, she decides enough is enough and she goes to the door and peeks a look out into the hallway. Seeing its clear she starts back toward the stairwell.

Passing though the door she begins to go up the stairs two at a time grumbling under her breath as she does. "Demanding my help... playing the mystery game this way... and have the gall to critique me as well?"

Reaching the roof Harper starts to just yank the bypass out of place but stops herself and takes a moment to close the door fully before carefully disconnecting the bypass and only then continue the rush to the line to descend to the ground.

As she dashes away from the building she realizes something and mutters a curse under her breath before saying, "And now I'm left on the wrong side of town. Guess I could call Red Robin for a ride, /he/ seems reliable after all..." as much to herself as to anyone else who might still be listening.