What is the canon position on how well Batman, Batwoman, and Batgirl know each other?

"I'd love to, but we have a friend visiting from out of town and we're going to dinner tonight," Julia was saying on her cell phone from the living room.

"Who's that?" Caitlin asked from where she sat across the kitchen table from Beth.

"Terry. I think. He left Jules his number a couple of days ago. They've been texting and talking ever since," Beth replied.

"They've never met in person?"

"Not if you don't count sitting about six feet apart at different tables in a bar."

"So this is the guy you meant before."

Beth's voice and body posture both displayed how empty her tank was, and had been for longer than she could remember.

running on fumes for too long, she thought as she gazed into her glass of Crown Royal Black before answering Caitlin's question.

"Yeah, this is him. They met right before this shitstorm of a mission. Neither of us has had a free minute since."

Saturday afternoon traffic from Long Island to Manhattan in July was almost as bad as weekday rush hour, and if they had waited another couple of hours it would have even been worse as all the beach goers flocked home to wash a ton of sand and tanning lotion off their skin and out of their private parts. But they had made reasonable time, Caitlin hadn't screamed, or prayed not to die, more than a handful of times on the ride, and Beth didn't think Cait's arms, wrapped around Beth in a vise like grip, had broken any of her ribs, though she was still not one-hundred percent sure. The Uber trip from 51st street to 130th was much more relaxing for both women, but for different reasons. Caitlin was no longer anticipating imminent death, and Beth could finally breathe in without the encumbrance of Caitlin's arms.

The three women were enjoying an early cocktail, though Julia had taken hers to the living room to make her call. But she returned finally, and the level of her drink was not substantially higher than that of the other two women when she resumed her seat at the table.

"So, you figured it out, and got away scot-free," Julia said to the two women who took up two of the other three chairs at their round kitchen table.

"Yup. Completely free from scot," Beth answered her best friend.

"What is scot anyway, and why is it good to be free of it?" Caitlin asked.

"Jesus, are we having another one of these fucking conversations?" Beth asked as Julia's face lit up.

"Scot is a variation of the word skat, which is a Scandinavian word meaning tax, or payment," Julia said as she swallowed enough of her drink to bring the three levels even again, "so you got away without paying tax."

"Finally, some good news," Caitlin said, "We needed some after what we found out. Christ."

"Just so you know, Kyle's pissed that I told you what was in the first two canisters."

"Won't he be even more pissed that you told me what was in the third canister?" Julia asked.

"Fuck him," Beth said, as Alice's voice whispered in her ear again.

Gut the rich motherfucker. Rip his heart out, Alice said.

Didn't I tell you to shut the fuck up?

Shut me up, cunt, if you can.

"Beth!"

Beth came to herself with two worried faces staring at her.

"Sorry, what?"

"It's getting worse," Julia said, "don't fucking bullshit me, it's getting worse, I can tell."

Caitlin's face was a model of confusion. "What's getting worse."

"What was it, a flashback, or was it her?"

"Her, as in Alice?" Caitlin asked as her face turned from Julia to Beth, and her look of confusion turned into on of concern.

"I can handle it," Beth said.

Alice was quick to offer an opinion. You can't handle shit.

Fuck you, you psycho bitch.

"BETH!"

The room wasn't quite spinning when Beth came back to it, but she could tell that she was on the raggedy edge.

Caitlin's face was right in front of her, as Doctor Snow looked into Beth's eyes.

"Nystagmus. You can probably feel it, right? That involuntary side to side movement your eyes are making right now? It's called nystagmus."

"I know what it's called," Beth said as she closed her eyes and pressed her temples for thirty seconds. She could hear Julia get up from the table while her eyes were closed. Julia sat back down again a minute later and handed Beth a round green pill.

"Take it, and then go lie down. I knew this would happen. You're fucking exhausted, and this always happens with you push yourself way to far."

"Is that what I think it is?" Caitlin asked.

don't take that fucking pill, Alice ordered.

"It's clozapine," Beth said before she took the pill and washed it down with the rest of her drink.

"Should you be taking that with alcohol?"

"Everything works better when you take it with alcohol," Beth replied with a slight smile before she stood up and went to her bedroom, and the bed that she had never shared with anyone.

alone again, naturally, Beth thought as she lay down on top of the bedspread.

you're not alone, asshole, you have me, Alice said.

yeah, hurray for fucking me. Beth answered.

who the hell else would have you besides me once they got to know the real you? Huh? Nobody, that's who.

you keep talking all you want, sunshine. You're going on mute in a minute, so get it all out of your system now. Fucking nutcase, Beth said.

Fucking ungrateful bitch. You'd be dead if it wasn't for me. Who do you think kept you alive and sane all this time? Alice asked.

Yeah, thanks for that. I feel really fucking sane right now, lying on my bed talking to myself.

It took almost a minute of silence for Beth to realize that the little green pill had started doing it's thing.

Nighty night, bitch.

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

"She'll be fine in a few hours," Julia said to Caitlin, "she's just really tired, and she's had a string of long nights."

"She should have said something," Caitlin said, "I could have done it by myself."

"Never in a million years would she have agreed to that. You know what she's like."

"I didn't know she was still hearing voices, or I would have chained her to, well I don't know what...something that she couldn't escape. I wouldn't have let her work herself into this state."

"It doesn't happen often. It's been over a year since the last time, and that time was a lot like this one. She thinks she has to atone for her sins, and she drives herself too hard in the process."

"She's going to atone herself into the fucking loony bin if she doesn't watch out," Caitlin said.

"She's trying to make up for all the harm she did. And she did a lot of it."

"We all do harm. We all do good. Trust me, I know that better than most. It's part of being human. We're imperfect. All we can do is try to maintain a healthy ratio."

"Like cholesterol?" Julia asked with a laugh.

"Except that they haven't invented a pill yet to help with it."

Both women were quiet for a moment.

"Should we cancel dinner tonight?" Cait asked.

"I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not waking her up just to go out to dinner. If she's still asleep at eight we'll cancel."

"You could see Terry instead," Cait said with a shy smile, "I'll stay with her."

"You know, for a super secret agent sort of person, she can't keep a fucking secret to save her life," Julia said just before her phone rang.

Daddy was superimposed over a picture of Julia and Alfred Pennyworth.

"Hi, Daddy."

"Hi, sweetie. We're just checking in."

"We?" Julia asked.

"We," Bruce's voice said.

Julia set the call to play on speaker and placed the phone in the center of the table.

"Say hello to Caitlin."

"Hello to Caitlin," Said Alfred.

"Hi everyone. How are things in Chicago?"

"Interesting at the moment. How did your day go?"

"We finished. We delivered our findings to Kyle. What he does with them, or the left over material, is a mystery. I'm just glad we're done, and that I don't have to make those decisions," Caitlin answered.

There was a second's worth of silence from the phone on the table.

"Is Beth there?"

"No, she's lying down. She's had a string of long days, and she's pretty worn out."

"How worn out?" Bruce asked, the concern in his voice clearly evident.

"Worn out," was all Julia replied.

A longer period of silence followed.

"Make her rest," Bruce said, "Start watching episode one of The Expanse. That'll keep her glued to the couch for a day at least."

"I'll try it, but we have dinner plans for later tonight. We'll see how she's feeling."

"Dinner plans with who?" Bruce asked.

"Dinner plans with whom," Alfred interjected before Julia could answer, "whom is always the correct choice after a preposition."

"Whatever," Bruce said, "dinner with whom?"

"You remember the woman from the warehouse?" Julia asked.

Julia counted five seconds of silence before Bruce Wayne spoke again.

"Are you serious?"

"What? She's nice. Sort of. In her own way. She and Beth got along well. They could be good for each other."

"I have no idea what to say to that," Bruce said.

"Say that it's nice that Beth made a new friend," Caitlin said, "and that I'm really looking forward to meeting her now. You've got my curiosity piqued."

"Remember what they say about curiosity," Alfred said.

"That it's worth fourteen points in Scrabble?"

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

rain check, Julia texted to Jessica, Beth's exhausted. I put her to bed. Tomorrow?

no problemo. got some stuff I need to finish anyway. tomorrow. be there or be square.

Julia had decided after an hour not to wait any longer to beg off dinner.

"You did the right thing," Caitlin said, "no reason we can't wait a day. We'll do it tomorrow. Meantime, I need to find a room somewhere."

"No you don't. You're staying here," Julia said as she stood up and walked to the small hallway closet.

"You can sleep in my room," she said as she took clean sheets out of the closet, "I'm going to bunk with Beth, to keep an eye on her."

Caitlin had been smiling at the beginning of Julia's offer, but not at the end.

"Oh. For a second I thought you were going to call Terry back, and that you might be planning to sleep somewhere else."

"God. Why is everyone in my life trying to get me laid?" Julia asked as she and Caitlin walked into her bedroom.

"Everyone?" Caitlin asked as her eyebrows came up.

Julia picked up an armload of clothes that she had tossed onto her bed and threw them over the mattress and onto the floor. "OK, not everyone. Besides, Terry and I still haven't actually met yet."

"Beth said you sat near each other in a bar," Caitlin said as she attempted to count the number of stuffed animals and family photos Julia had covering almost every square inch of her dresser.

"Yup. did she tell you anything else about that afternoon?" Julia asked as she began to strip down her mattress.

"No, just that he gave you his number," Caitlin replied as she began helping Julia remake the bed.

"Then sister do I have a story to tell you."

"It's not a fungus," Caitlin said as she continued to look at the sample from the final canister on the monitor that was connected to a microscope that was triple sealed where it sat on the work surface in front of them, "it's way too small, and doesn't have any vacuoles. Too small to be bacterial too. If it's anything, it's a virus."

"I'm not sure whether that should make me feel better or worse," Beth said.

"If you were worried about us all turning into zombies, you should feel better."

Beth was already sweating inside the positive pressure polyamide suit that still smelled like the disinfectant wipes that Beth had used to wipe her sweat off all the inner surfaces the day before.

"You're my hero, you know that?" Beth replied, "You can find the silver lining in anything."

Cait did not take her eyes from the monitor, and the mysterious life form that was displayed there, as she replied.

"That's 'cause I've had lots of practice."

Beth studied her profile, what she could see of it through the clear plastic face piece. What she saw was a beautiful face with deep blue eyes, topped with light brown hair that was currently obscured by an absorbent beanie. Beth knew that Caitlin was on the verge of forty (though she wasn't sure which side of the verge Caitlin was on), but her face looked easily ten years younger.

You've certainly been through more than your fair share of shit, Beth thought, but so have I. Why did it break me, but not you?

"Lots of people have lots of practice. Lots of people fall apart."

"True. But I had lots of support from lots of friends. And in case you forgot, I did fall apart. And I almost killed you in the process," Caitlin said.

We almost killed each other in the process, Beth thought as her mind went briefly back to the bad old days, and a cavernous room filled with poison gas, and ice so thick it took two weeks to melt afterwards.

"I remember. But you put yourself back together again."

Neither woman looked at the other. The memories were too painful even now, and Beth knew if she started crying she wouldn't be able to wipe the tears from her eyes or her face.

"So did you," Caitlin said as she removed the sample from the sealed container surrounding the microscope and placed it in the autoclave where she would cook it out of existence.

"Not completely."

That comment got Caitlin Snow's undivided attention.

"You OK?"

It took Beth a couple of seconds to respond, long enough for her to study her encased hands.

"Mostly."

More silence.

"Want to talk about it?"

"Maybe later. When we're done dealing with the potential end of the world."

Caitlin's smile was visible through the plastic face mask of her own suit.

"Deal. Now let's figure out what we are dealing with."

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

"It's called real time polymerase chain reaction," Caitlin was explaining to Kyle Richmond, "there are two types of real time PCR, reverse transcription PCR and quantitative PCR. The lab you found was equipped with qPCR."

"That was a pretty well equipped lab. Do we want to ask where you found it?" Beth asked.

"No," Kyle's voice said from the phone speaker, "but it sounds like it was worth the cost."

It was well after noon, but the storm that had swept through the night before and almost given Cait a heart attack had taken a good chunk of the heat and humidity with it once it left, and the afternoon was pleasant enough that they had left the main door on the hangar building, the building that also contained the multi use office in which the two women now sat, open.

"It made the work a lot easier, and quicker," Caitlin said, "We've cooked all our biological samples, and rendered the others inert. The lab is as clean as it was when it rolled through the gate. What's left of the three canisters are back in the containment cube. You'll have to figure out what to with that, and with our results, but our work here is finished."

"At least some of the results are already out there, but you already know that," Kyle said, "and that's a conversation for later."

Bull fucking shit it is, Beth thought.

"Let's have that convo now, if it's OK with you," Beth said, her temper rising, "what were you gonna do, keep it secret?"

"No, but I was going to take it under advisement first, and not just broadcast it to the world. And since we're talking about this now, I'll remind you of the NDA you signed."

Her temper was still up, which was not a good sign, and it was usually when she began to hear Alice's voice whisper to her.

We may have to kill this rich motherfucker.

Shut the fuck up, Beth replied to her alter ego, nobody's listening to you.

You're listening to me.

"She didn't broadcast it to the world," Beth answered after she had quieted Alice, "she notified the NYPD that they had some seriously deadly shit on their hands, and that was before we finished the third canister."

"Fine. We can come back to this later. For now, can you be any more specific about the contents of the third canister?"

"No," Caitlin said, "It's Influenza, no question about that; and there's no question it's been engineered, it has a spike protein that it shouldn't have, so it could have been spliced somehow with a Coronavirus, our most recent version being a likely candidate. You'd need a much larger facility to know for sure. Maybe one of the CDC National Centers. NCEZID or NCIRD. But from my brief glance, it looks like someone went to a lot of trouble to make it highly infectious, and deadly."

The silence from the other end of the call lasted long enough that Beth and Caitlin looked at each other.

"Are you gonna take that under advisement too?" Beth asked sarcastically.

More silence from Kyle Richmond gave both women a bad feeling.

He must really be pissed at me, Beth thought.

"Ben has just informed me that the NYPD is investigating some 911 calls about heavy truck traffic along Flushing Avenue that they received yesterday and the night before, and I'll give you three guesses which heavy trucks that would be."

"Son of a bitch," Beth said.

"It sounds like they have video footage from someone's security system that captures the traffic as it drives by their property. It won't be long before they put a helicopter in the air."

Beth had not waited for Kyle to finish speaking before she was wiping down any surface in the office she had touched with her bare hands.

"You have fifteen minutes to wipe away any evidence that you were there and then find someplace else to be. The lab will be gone quickly, but the mobile home will have to stay."

"Got it. We're moving now."

"Call me in four hours," Kyle said before ending the call.

"How do you feel about motorcycles?" Beth asked Caitlin as the pair left the office, wiping the European style door handles on their way out.

"I hate them. Why do you ask?"

"No reason."

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

Beth turned the Firebolt right onto Flushing Avenue before opening up the throttle. The twin V engine answered the call immediately, as did Caitlin's hands and arms as they wrapped tighter around Beth's waist and held on for dear life, the strap of her leather travel bag slung over her left shoulder while the bag itself rested on her back.

They had wiped down the mobile home in record time, but it was small, and there wasn't all that much that they had touched. There was nothing Beth could do about the metal case, and the canisters inside it, but Beth could not recall a time, during her time in the warehouse or afterwards, when she had ever touched any of it with her bare hands.

Beth eased up with her right hand and allowed the sound of the motor beneath her to drop several notes. She knew that the mile they had traveled already was all the safety margin they needed, but she still had to fight her instinct to head all the way back to east 51st street without stopping. Commodore Barry Park was coming up on their left, and Beth slowed as she signaled before turning left onto North Elliot Place. They traveled the length of the park at a sedate twenty-five miles an hour before turning left again onto Park Avenue.

"We're heading back?" Caitlin asked

"Not far. Trust me."

It was, indeed, not far before they turned left again onto Washington Avenue, parking across the street from the Brooklyn Roasting Company. Beth and Caitlin had been there twice already during their short residence in Long Island, and the teenager who was working the counter flashed his white teeth at them in the same manner he had used the day before.

The two women took their small black coffees outside and sat at the round table positioned next to the large glass window that had the coffee shop logo emblazoned at the top.

"Mind telling me why we came back?" Caitlin asked.

"Just a little surveillance," Beth explained.

"Not our problem, is it?"

"No, just being nosy."

They had not finished even half their respective cups before the mobile BSL 3 lab that they had spent the better part of two days inside appeared on Washington Avenue, retracing the path that Beth and Cait had just taken as they fled the Brooklyn Navy yard, and the private facility belonging to Kyle Richmond. Beth recognized the man behind the wheel, though she couldn't remember his name, and she was sure he recognized them. He turned right onto Flushing Avenue, headed towards the on ramp for the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, destination unknown, at least to Beth.

"You always pay with cash," Caitlin said, apropos of nothing.

"What?"

"It's the twenty-first century. The world runs on plastic. But whenever we've gone out you've always paid with cash."

"Just an old habit," Beth said as she took a sip from her paper cup, "doesn't leave a trail. And I still don't have any cards under my real name."

"And your real name is currently your only name?"

Beth thought about the new driver's license that sat in her front left pocket, cuddled next to the assortment of bills that now equaled less than fifty dollars. "More or less."

They were both quiet for a short time, each occupied with their own thoughts. They both heard the helicopter at the same time. Beth forced herself not to react, but to keep her eyes on the table top in front of her. She was just finishing her coffee when the noise returned, preceding the aircraft itself be several seconds. Neither Beth nor Cait looked up as the rotary winged aircraft passed over them, cutting a diagonal path across Washington Avenue.

"Time to go," Cait said as she stood up.

"Yup," Beth said. She reached out her hand for Cait's empty cup and deposited it, along with her own, in the trash can by the door before walking across the street and retrieving her helmet, "we'll hit a bit of traffic this time of day."

"Not like we have anywhere to be," Cait replied as she removed her sunglasses and took her own helmet from it's own resting place.

Beth stood outside the large trailer as she held the phone to her ear. A thick layer of clouds painted the early evening sky, a sky that threatened rain. The temperature had dropped ten degrees in the last hour, and Beth wondered if the small substation near her that was providing power to the mobile lab and their temporary home would continue to do so when the storm began in earnest.

"Elsa is suited up already, and I'm about to head in. I just wanted to say hi while I had the chance. Not likely to get another one much before midnight."

Julia resisted the urge to chew her fingernails. She knew that this wasn't Beth's first rodeo. Julia was used to Beth putting herself in danger; it was just the nature of the threat that had Julia sitting on pins and needles. Bullets flying was no new thing. Canisters of stuff that could turn you to goo in less than a minute was something else. And while that sort of threat might not new to Beth, it was pretty fucking new to Julia.

"What's your limit?"

"We'll stop at the eight hour mark, as close as we can get after leaving everything in a safe state," Beth answered as she turned around, replacing the distant view of the hangar with the close up view of the mobile BSL 3 lab. The large trailer like structure had no windows, and the door was closed so Beth could not see whether Caitlin had started without her.

Practically speaking, it was Caitlin that could do the entire job of identifying the contents of the three canisters on her own. Beth could get part way there, but only part way. Getting across the finish line should one of the canisters contain a virus or something really exotic, which Caitlin had begun to suspect was the case after reviewing the video footage from the secret lair on Avenue C, would require a skill that Beth didn't have in her toolbox.

Not yet, at least. Gotta do something about that one of these days.

Beth's mind went back only briefly to the years of training that gave her the skills she did have. The skills. The scars, physical, mental, emotional. The nightmares. Even her name, the name she had used, the name by which she had been known, and feared, for many years. Beth broke that train of thought quickly and returned to the here and now, and the voice of her best friend.

"I can still come out there and keep you company," Julia said as Beth's phone vibrated against her ear.

Beth removed her phone from her ear and read the text message from Jessica.

started yet?

"Don't bother," Beth answered Julia, "you'd be alone most of the time, and we'd be asleep for the rest of it."

just about to. Talking to Jules, she typed back after switching her call with Julia to speaker.

"I'm just worried about you. I don't like being so far away, and not being able to help."

don't fuck up all of Long Island with that shit. There's parts of it that don't totally suck that I like to visit.

"I'm glad you're far away. I don't want you anywhere near whatever this is."

deal. you can play tour guide for me, Jules and Elsa if we're all still alive 24 hours from now.

"What if you go away again?""

well, aren't you the fucking optimist.

"I'll be fine, don't worry."

gotta suit up and get started. Call you later. Probably.

"OK," Julia said, her voice dropping almost to a whisper. Beth could tell she was crying, even though she couldn't hear it, "I love you. Be careful."

The sound of distant rolling thunder preceded Beth's reply only by a second or two. Beth looked up at the lowering sky, and the first drops of rain.

"I love you too. I'll call you tomorrow," Beth said before she ended the call and wiped the raindrops from her face.

Probably.

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

"They're just starting," Julia said to her father, "She'll call tomorrow with an update. They're going to work an eight hour shift tonight."

Alfred Pennyworth could hear the anxiety and worry in his daughter's voice. He was alone for the moment. Bruce was preparing to change into something less comfortable, but more durable and protective, before departing once the sun had cast it's final rays across the Windy City, in about ninety minutes time.

Alfred picked up his cup and drained half of the cold earl gray tea in one gulp. The sound of Louis Armstrong and his band playing Georgia On My Mind filled the otherwise silent study as the fading light from a fading day streamed through the two west facing windows.

"I wish I was closer," Alfred said, "I wish there was some way I could help."

"That's exactly what I said to Beth," Julia said, "she said she didn't want me anywhere near it."

Alfred drained the last of his tea as his eyes traveled to the bottle of Fernet-Branca where it sat next to a set of stemmed glasses on the side board.

Not now. I need a clear head, he thought.

Alfred rested his chin on his palm, his elbow supported by the arm of the chair he sat in, his eyes fixed on the cell phone in front of him, a phone that was currently the source of his daughter's voice.

"I'm with her. I don't want you anywhere near it either."

He knew it was a sore spot with her, being the one always left behind safe and sound. Alfred had lost count of the number of times they had talked about it. Julia had at least recognized that her father shared her perspective, if not her feelings of inadequacy. Alfred didn't need anyone to remind him occasionally how important his role was in keeping Bruce, if not safe, then at least alive long enough to patch up afterwards. Julia still needed reminding.

The most important role I have in my life is being your father, he thought as he stared at the phone. Bruce was like a son to him. It was how Alfred thought of him, and felt about him. Bruce knew it. Julia knew it. But Julia was his daughter. Full stop. As much as Alfred loved Bruce, what he felt for his daughter was unique, and very special. Anyone or anything that threatened her would live what was left of it's short existence screaming in agony and it would be music to Alfred Pennyworth's ears.

"She needs you right where you are. You know how important what you do is."

Alfred counted three seconds of silence before he heard his daughter's voice again. When she spoke, her voice was soft.

"I know. It's just that when she needed help she didn't ask me. She asked Caitlin."

Julia could be jealous, and possessive. It was a common reaction for some people who came from fractured homes, and the shame and guilt that Alfred felt for too many extended absences while he was with the SAS made his face burn.

"Caitlin had the skills she needed for this job. In a few days Caitlin will fly back to St. Louis, and Beth will be home. With you. I know how you feel. Just remember who Beth chose to partner with, and live with. It wasn't Caitlin."

The sound of distant thunder played through his cell phone speaker, mixing with the music of La Vie En Rose.

"I think it's gonna start raining," Julia said, "I should probably go inside."

"Okay, sweetie. I love you. So does Beth. Remember that."

"Bye, Daddy."

Alfred was left alone with his thoughts, and the music of Louis Armstrong, as he continued to stare at his now silent phone before bowing his head.

Heavenly Father, Thank you for answering my prayers and performing miracles in our lives everyday.

Watch over my daughter Julia and my son Bruce. Watch over your children Beth, and Kate, and Caitlin,

and Barbara. Protect them from evil and from harm, for they do righteous works in your name.

Holy Spirit, you make me see everything, and show me the way to reach my ideals, you give me the divine gift to forgive and forget the wrong that is done to me, and you are in all instances of my life with me.

Be with my children and their loved ones, and guide them along the true path so that they may reach their ideals, and return them to me safe and sound.

Alfred sat silently for another moment before wiping his eyes and standing.

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

Beth flopped down onto the bed and did not move for a moment.

"I'm glad I have bad feet. Because the way my feet feel now, if I had good feet I would be worried."

Caitlin reached up with both hands and arms and stretched the muscles in her back before rolling her neck from right to left.

"You don't have bad feet. Your feet are fine."

"Tell that to my feet."

"Shower first or last?" Caitlin asked.

"I'm not moving from this spot. You go first."

It was past midnight, and the short walk from the lab to their short term home would have soaked them through if they had not already been soaked with sweat. But everything in the lab was in a safe state, two canisters down, one to go when they resumed in the morning. The power had stayed on in the lab, but Beth had wished more than once as the lab rocked back and forth that they had pointed it into the wind when they had set it up. And while the buffeting had been only an inconvenience at the beginning, it became a major fucking cause for concern once they had the x-ray diffraction data from the crystals that they had recrystallized from the canister with the green band.

"Fuck," Beth said as she looked at the diffraction pattern displayed on the monitor before swinging the mounting arm around so Caitlin could see it from where she was running column chromatography on the contents of the red banded canister.

"Sorry, I don't recognize that pattern," Caitlin said as she squinted to get a better look.

"That's because it's a superposition of two compounds. Mercuric cyanide and mercury fulminate."

"Mercury fulminate. Also known as fulminate of mercury? The stuff that is..."

"Extremely shock sensitive," Beth replied in the buffeting trailer with a calmness that was a complete lie.

"Fuck," Caitlin said as she looked up at the ceiling of the enclosed space as it moved from the force of the wind.

"You know, if you're gonna just repeat everything I say, this is going to be a long night."

"Why the fuck would they fill canisters with something like that?"

"Because they're assholes? Because fulminate of mercury goes boom in a big way, and mercuric cyanide will give off hydrogen cyanide gas if you decompose it right?"

"Jesus."

"You know, they used to use it as an antiseptic?"

"What, mercuric cyanide?"

"Yup."

"Why'd they stop?"

"Because it killed people. It's pretty toxic."

The trailer made a sudden motion leeward, and it looked to Beth like Caitlin almost died from a heart attack on the spot.

"What the fuck are we going to do?" she asked Beth.

"It survived the car ride here, which was not a smooth ride," Beth said as she looked at the metal case that still held the canisters, the majority of their contents still inside them. They had yet to start on the canister with the blue band, "it's probably fine. how's your thing going?"

"It's purifying now. Maybe another hour."

They had been extra cautious in their initial steps, and half of their eight hour window had been eaten up before the cracked the first canister. Caitlin had insisted on writing a hazardous analysis before hand, which Beth thought was a good idea, though neither of them had considered the storm outside as a possible source of hazard.

Beth moved her head sideways and cracked her neck. "Let it run. I need air. I'm walking our green banded bomb back to the hangar and putting it back in the isolation box."

Caitlin looked up at the ceiling again as sound of the storm outside increased. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I staying right here until you get back empty handed. Don't trip and fall out in the dark stormy night."

"You know, since you put it that way, I think I'm good right where I am. Fresh air is overrated."

Both women were silent for a moment, listening to the sounds of the storm outside, and the running equipment inside.

"Wanna start on the last canister?" Beth asked as they both stood and stared at the display on the chromatograph.

"No, I already beat. Let's tackle it tomorrow."

"It is tomorrow," Beth said as she looked at the time displayed on the computer monitor that said 12:01 AM.

"Fuck."

The two women stared at the monitor in silence for a few more minutes.

"How's Team Flash?" Beth asked.

"You know he's not a fan of people calling us that, right?"

"Why do you think I do it?" Beth said with a smile that was impossible for Caitlin not to copy.

"We're all fine. Thanks for asking. You should come out and visit."

"Last thing you guys need are all the feds that follow me around wherever I go showing up at S.T.A.R. Labs."

"We've had worse show up at our front door. Trust me," Caitlin said just as the results from the running sample were displayed.

As it turned out, Beth's existing set of skills were sufficient for her to recognize the steroid skeleton and the oxazapane ring that was attached to it.

Both women were again silent for a moment.

"Fuck me," Beth said.

"OK, now I need air," Caitlin said.

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

"The first canister was easy. I've used both of them before, but never in combination."

Beth waited patiently and drank her coffee while she heard the sound of typing through her ear buds.

"Poisonous and explosive," Julia said, "two for the price of one."

"Can be used as either a floor wax or a dessert topping," Beth joked.

A moment of bewildered silence preceded Julia's reply.

"What?"

"Never mind. The second canister is no joking matter. Seriously no fucking joking matter."

"Why don't I like the sound of this?"

"Because you're smart. Batrachotoxin."

More sounds of typing, followed by almost fifteen seconds of silence.

"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck. Fuck."

Beth had been nodding her head every time Julia said fuck.

"Well said."

"These people are fucking insane. Jesus."

"Elsa and I are gonna start on the third canister in a few."

"Jesus, at this rate it's probably that fungus from The Last of Us."

"Don't joke. It could actually be that fungus from The Last of Us."

"I'm buying us plane tickets to New Zealand. Stuff like this doesn't happen there. Get Caitlin out of there, and leave it to the police. Just come home, both of you."

"The police have a warehouse full of this shit already. They don't need our three canisters. And none of us needs to try and explain how they came into our possession."

"Sure, they have a warehouse full, but do they know what they have a warehouse full of? Toxic explosives, and weaponized Curare? Have they figured it out yet?"

"If they don't know yet, they will soon."

There was no sound of typing, nothing but silence playing through Beth's earbuds as she drank her coffee.

What the fuck is she doing?

"Julia?"

three seconds of silence.

"What?"

Is she in the bathroom?

"You OK?"

two more seconds of silence.

"No, I'm pretty fucking not OK."

join the fucking club.

tick, tick, tick, the silent seconds continued.

"Want to talk about it?" Beth asked.

tick, tick, tick,

"In a minute. I'm in the middle of something."

She's in the middle of something? So the fuck am I.

"What are you in the middle of?"

"Texting the NYPD."

The private jet slowed to a crawl as it approached the the Range Rover SUV. Beth knew that it was one of a pair that Kyle Richmond owned, just like he owned a pair of private jets, and a pair of space aged helicopters. He seemed to like things in pairs, like a modern day Noah, and Beth wondered if there was a twin to the Buell Firebolt that Kyle had said she could use as long as she needed.

Elizabeth Kane, known as Alice to those lucky few who met her under that name and survived to tell the tale, waited for Dr. Caitlin Snow, sometimes known as Killer Frost, to exit the jet and be halfway down the short flight of steps before executing her plan.

"I can hear you, but I won't
Some look for trouble
While others don't
There's a thousand reasons
I should go about my day"

"Oh, for the love of God," Caitlin said as she lifted her face to the sky and closed her eyes, her feet finally planted on Terra Firma, while the Copilot and cabin steward looked at each other with confused expressions.

"It's an inside joke," Beth explained to them before accepting the black leather travel bag from the steward's hand.

"If I had blocked out your calls, I wouldn't be here." Cait said to her, "and you'd be making fun of someone else right now."

"You know I kid you because I like you," Beth answered as she looked up slightly at the woman who looked back, "otherwise I wouldn't put out the effort."

Caitlin reached out and touched Beth's arm gently and smiled. It was all the gesture that both women needed to confirm the friendship that each felt for the other, a friendship that had survived the early, deadly, enmity that had brought them together originally.

"Come on, princess," Beth said as they walked towards the black vehicle, "your carriage awaits."

"Here we go again," Caitlin said, "into the unknown."

It was a short ride to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and the main vehicle gate in the fence that stood about a mile from the hanger that Beth had slept in so recently.

The private facility was almost completely surrounded by a tall chain link fence, and had obviously be originally intended for industrial use. If Beth and Caitlin had made the short journey by helicopter they could easily have made out which sections of concrete were original and which were more recent. The 4000 foot runway, which stood outside the fence line, and the taxiway to the hanger, which went through the larger of the two gates in the fence, were well maintained, as was the acre or so of concrete that sat around the hanger. It was the older patches, and one patch in particular that sat close to the northern fence line, that Beth had pointed to as they drove past.

"That small building is the substation that'll provide power for the lab. They'll set up right next to it."

"When will the lab get here?" Caitlin asked.

"In about three hours," Beth answered.

"Where are the samples now?"

"In a containment unit in the hangar."

"And how about us? Are we pitching a tent and cooking over a fire?"

"You can if you want, but they're bringing in temporary housing. It'll sit next to the lab."

"Temporary housing?"

"I interpreted that to mean they a trailer or an RV."

Caitlin leaned forward and spoke to the man behind the wheel of the SUV.

"Take me back to the airport."

"Come on, it'll be fun," Beth said, "it'll be like we're having a sleepover. We can braid each other's hair."

Cait looked at Beth, and the bleach blond wig that she knew was not Beth's natural hair.

"Maybe we can just make s'mores instead."

"Does this place have a bar?"

"It's a standard NDA," said the middle aged woman named Sandra who was Kyle's personal assistant, "everyone employed by the Richmond Research is require to sign one."

Beth and Caitlin both continued to read the several documents that sat in their laps, versions of which Cait had signed for Star Labs. But Barry had never required her to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

"No one you told would believe one word of what you told them, and most of them would think you're crazy," he had said.

"I am crazy. I wouldn't work here if I wasn't crazy," she had answered.

'I'm ordering t-shirts for all of us," Cisco had added, "S.T.A.R. Labs - I wouldn't work here if I wasn't crazy."

"Any color, as long as it's not red," Barry had said.

"Do we get health insurance?" Beth asked Sandra.

"With what we are working with, the only health coverage you will need is a six foot deep hole someplace far away from people," Cait answered before looking at Sandra, "I'm assuming that Richmond Research will at least provide the shovel."

From the look on Sandra's face, it was the wrong thing to say.

"Just a little joke," Caitlin said as she signed her copy of the forms.

"Uh-huh," Sandra replied as she looked at Caitlin over the top of her glasses.

"Holy shit, this didn't come from IKEA, did it?" Caitlin asked the foreman Fred as Beth stood with her mouth slightly open as she watched the prefabbed house being assembled.

"No," Fred answered as he smiled, "it's a Danish company Vipp that manufactures these. It's supposed to take a couple of days to set up, but we made some modifications since Kyle bought it a few years ago, and we can get it done in about three hours."

Caitlin took out her phone and started texting.

"What are you doing," Beth asked.

"Letting Barry know what I want for Christmas."

"He's not buying you a fucking house for Christmas."

"That's what he thinks."

There were two large flatbeds and one larger crane taking up most of the space on the north side of private facility. Fred was adamant that all the men were employee's of Richmond Engineering. All had been vetted, and all could be trusted with the task of setting up both the their temporary home and the mobile lab, but that none of them should, or would, be allowed near the hangar; and in case any of them forgot, the armed men stationed at the hangar entrance and perimeter would he happy to remind them.

"What's the ETA on the lab?" Caitlin asked hm.

"On 95 North, just passed Baltimore. It'll be tight, but we'll be done and the heavy equipment will be out of the way when it gets here."

Beth's phone vibrated in her back pocket.

"Hey," she said to Julia as she answered.

"Are you near a television?"

"No, we're watching our temporary home being set up, why?"

"This is why," Julia replied just as Beth received a text message with a link to The New York Times.

Four People Killed in Manhattan Hotel

"Jesus," Beth said as she read the news that the flight crew that had brought Annelie Bodin from Stockholm to New York had been murdered in their hotel rooms.

"That's why she was crying when we saw her last night," Julia said while Beth continued to read, he voice still clearly audible.

"What is it?" Caitlin asked Beth.

"Tell you in a sec," Beth answered.

"What has Kyle gotten you into?" Julia asked, "a dead flight crew, a bunch of mysterious shit in canisters, who the fuck knows what else?"

"I don't know but I'm going to find out. I need to fill Elsa in. I'll get back to you."

"I'm calling my father," Julia said, "he needs to know about this."

"You really think Bruce doesn't know about this?" Beth asked her best friend, "he can read a newspaper as well as you can, and he was getting your video feed last night, wasn't he?"

It took Julia a moment to admit what Beth had guessed, that Julia had shared their secure connection with Bruce Wayne when she had called him for help.

"Yes," Julia said quietly.

"So he'll put it together, just like you did. Give him some time in case he wants to look into it himself."

"OK. Be safe. I don't like where this is heading."

"Me neither, but I don't know how to steer this train wreck yet, so it's either hold on or jump off."

"Figure out what is in those canisters and then delta the fuck out of there," Julia said, using a phrase that she had learned from a computer game she liked.

"You need to stop playing that game, you spend too much time sitting in front of a computer as it is," Beth said.

"I like it, it relaxes me."

"Driving around a cyberpunk, dystopian, future California relaxes you," Beth said in amazement.

"You beat the shit out of people for real, I only get to do it in a computer game."

"Fair point," Beth said, "I'll call you later."

"Fill me in on what?" Caitlin asked after Beth had removed the phone from her ear.

"Shit," she said after reading the headline still displayed on Beth's phone.

"She was here last night when I got here with the case that now sits in the big green cube. She was crying. We didn't know why at the time."

"Who would do this? And are these two things connected?"

"They're connected in the sense that they both landed on Kyle fucking Richmond's doorstep."

"We landed on his doorstep too."

"Bad things always come in threes."

"Wow," was all Caitlin said after she had watched the entire recording that Beth had made of her visit to the warehouse the day before.

Beth had told her the timestamp to look for that would show the lab set up.

"Got it," Caitlin said as she pressed play and began watching it from the beginning. She watched quietly as Beth's journey progressed to the parking garage and finally to the warehouse.

"Beth. BETH. For fuck sake, BETH!"

"What?"

"You went away again."

Caitlin's face became a mask as she listened to Julia's voice pleading for her friend to respond. Her face stayed like that until the first clear image of the laboratory equipment and the people working there. She moved closer to the laptop display as she began to scan the details. She paused and replayed the recording several times before letting it continue to the point where Jessica Jones first came into view.

"Who's that?" she asked just as Jessica used the security guard to make a very large hole in the drywall behind him.

"That's Jess," Beth said simply as the recording continued.

"She's a Meta?"

"We have no idea what she is."

Caitlin watched the recording until the end without commenting.

There was a neatly folded pile of Trisoft aircraft covers in one corner of the hangar, and it had not taken long once Beth had laid down on them and wrapped her arms around the metal case, and it's almost certainly deadly contents, before she was sound asleep. She had not been asleep for long, but she slept deeply enough that the sound of the truck with the containment unit arriving had not waken her.

"Wakey, wakey, sleepy head," said a woman's voice near her, "you can finally let go of that fucking case."

Beth came awake abruptly, but still had the presence of mind not to jostle the case.

Jesus.

"You OK?" Jessica asked her.

"Yeah, peachy," Beth replied, "I crashed."

"You did."

Beth looked at the woman sitting on the soft covers next to her.

"You sleep?"

"No, but it's not quite my bedtime yet. And I'm way too sober to sleep."

"What time is it?" Beth asked.

"Late. Or early, depending on your life choices," Jessica answered.

"Sound like you've used that line before."

"Perfectly good line, no sense in it going to waste."

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

One of the men who had delivered the containment crate walked towards Beth and Jessica and gave them the thumb's up sign.

"Looks like they're ready," Jessica said.

"Okay. Lets get this road on the show," Beth said.

"Sounds like you've used that line before," Jessica said.

Beth smiled.

"Perfectly good line, no sense in it going to waste."

"How are we gonna do this?" Beth asked.

"The limo will take you both home," Kyle said.

"No offense, but I'm not wild about you knowing where I live."

"It can drop you off somewhere else, but it's 1 AM, and if the NYPD sees you walking alone at this time of night your going to be stopped."

"I'll be fine."

"They'll take one look in that bag and you'll end up in a cell," Jessica said.

She was right, and Beth knew it. What she didn't know was how to get back home or back to their base of operation without giving the location of either away to these people who she only just met.

Neither Julia nor Beth had a car. Julia had a mountain bike, which was no help at all.

The temperature had dropped considerably, and Beth began to wish she had brought something other than shorts, flip flops and a t-shirt. Her link with Julia was still dormant. All her electronics were still charging, and Beth hoped that Julia was taking the opportunity to get some sleep; she had been up just as long as Beth, and Beth had taken a nap right before the op, which Julia never did, and there was no way Beth was going to risk waking her up by calling on her cell phone.

"Fuck," Beth said. She was sure that Bruce would keep her identity secret, and there was no way she would ever give up anything that could put Julia in a bind, but she couldn't stay here forever.

"Think about it," Kyle said, "right now I need to track down an expert in toxicology or pathogens. And I need to call in a mobile lab. We need to know what's in that case."

"Why don't you just hand it over to the NYPD or the FBI?" Jessica asked.

"Neither Bruce nor I want to do that just yet, and they have everything that is still in the warehouse, including everyone who was working there."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because they'll never share the information with us, neither Bruce Wayne nor I has that kind of juice. If I want answers then I need to find them myself, and I want answers."

Shit, this is a bad idea, Beth thought right before she opened her mouth.

"I'm an expert in toxicology," Beth said.

No one spoke for a moment.

"You're an expert in toxicology," Kyle said.

"And chemistry, and explosives, and poisons, and hallucinogens," Beth said, "but not pathogens, at least not type 4 pathogens, which is what I think these might be."

"Fuck me," Jessica said.

"Are you willing to take on the job of finding out what these substances are?" Kyle asked.

It sounded comical to Beth's ear, almost like he was offering her a job.

"You sound like you're offering me a job."

"I am. Are you qualified to do it?"

Beth could not believe what she was hearing.

"With my fucking eyes closed."

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

Traffic on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway was light as Beth eased up on the hand throttle of the Buell XB12R Firebolt that she had borrowed from the private hangar on the private plot of land on the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

"It needs gas, but the registration is current, and if anyone runs the plate it will come back to the Governor's mansion with a code in the notes that'll get them to back off, no questions asked."

Jesus, what private citizen has a covered license plate on his fucking motorcycle? Beth thought.

"No shit," Jessica said as Beth was inspecting the black full face helmet that had been under the same vinyl cover as the black motorcycle with red rims, and wondering if it would pull off her blonde wig when she pulled it onto her head. Beth was once again wearing her leather jump suit, gloves and boots, the duster, the still damp inner liner, and her assortment of gadgets safe the nylon bag that was tied down on the seat just behind where she would be sitting.

"Five minutes to print your new driver's license, pull the tracker off the bike, and fill the tank, and you can be on your way," Kyle said.

It had taken a bit more time than that, But Alice Remington of 230 E51st Street Apt 220, New York NY 10022 was now slowing for the exit onto the Brooklyn Bridge, eventually turning onto FDR Drive for the slower ride up to Midtown East, and the parking garage next to the building that housed their makeshift headquarters. Her fake address was not the address of their operations center, though it was only one block away from the building that Beth was entering now. It was not that Beth had not believed Kyle Richmond when he said that all trackers and tags had been removed from Beth's borrowed ride, it was just that she wasn't ready to bet the entire bank on it.

The lobby of the building was deserted except for the man at the concierge station.

"You're up late," he said to her with a smile. The clock on the wall behind him said 1:45.

"Yeah, late date. Quiet night?" Beth asked as she smiled back, the helmet swinging gently in her left hand as she gripped it by the chin strap.

"Pretty much. Usual stuff. Mets beat the Cubs, 8 - 0."

"That's great."

"Unless you're a Cubs fan."

"Come on, aren't they used to it by now?" Beth asked.

He has a nice laugh. And a nice smile.

"Well, I'm off to bed. Have a good night," she said as she began to head towards the elevator.

"Sweet dreams," he said.

"Thanks," Beth answered.

Anything just as long as it's not the nightmares.

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

"You're okay. You're sure," Julia asked.

"I'm fine. Slept like a log."

"I'll be there soon."

"No, stay there, I'm coming home. I'm out of clean clothes here. And I'm starving."

"Okay. I'll make breakfast," Julia said.

"No fucking kippers," Beth said.

"They're traditional, and they're healthy."

"They're oily, they're unnatural, and I'm not British. Normal people eat bacon for breakfast."

"Fine. See you soon."

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

"So you're really going to do it," Julia asked as she took a sip of tea.

"I'm really gonna do it," Beth answered as she chewed on a slice of bacon, "someone has to, and this way we keep ownership of our ill gotten gains."

"So you'll tell them exactly what's in that case? No fibbing?"

"Not sure yet," Beth said, "Need to have a convo with Bruce. And Cait."

"Why involve Cait?" Julia said, the tone of hurt clear in her voice.

"Don't be like that," Beth said as she took Julia's hand, "this is what she knows. I wouldn't in a million years trust her to do what you do. I can't come up to speed fast enough on my own, and it's either her or some asshole that Kyle finds who we don't know from Adam."

"I understand," Julia said before falling silent and sipping her tea.

Fuck

"Hey," Beth said as she stood up, only to kneel down again next to friend, "You're my best friend. You know I love you. If it had been Cait running the op last night, I would have been truly fucked. Right?"

"Right," Julia said finally, though quietly.

"I just need her brainiac mind working on this asap. That mobile unit roles into that hangar pretty goddamn soon. We need a body who know pathology and virology."

"It's worth a conversation anyway," Julia said.

Beth stood up and kissed her friend on the forehead.

"It's still the two of us, in it together; we just need a little help."

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

"He's recruiting you, you know that, right?" Bruce asked.

"He's not recruiting me," Beth said into the iPhone that sat in the center of the kitchen table as both the radio and the television ensured that they could not be overheard.

"Yes he is, this is what he does. He's rich. He thinks the rules don't apply to him. He finds talent, and pads his bench."

"Sounds like Manchester City," Julia said.

"You're pretty fucking rich yourself. In fact, I think you're richer than he is, and since when have the fucking rules applied to you?" Beth said, "And Manchester City? What the fuck?"

"I don't have a giant office building in Manhattan with a secret floor crawling with clandestine operatives."

"Well, why the hell not? At least he's learned not to put his life at risk all the time."

"No, he puts other people's lives at risk, which is worse."

"Can we focus on the immediate problem?" Caitlin Snow's voice said through the phone speaker.

"Hello Elsa," Beth said in a sing song voice.

"God."

"Do you want to build a snowman?"

"Oh for fuck sake."

"Hey, Cait," Julia said.

"Hey, Jules. How's life in the big city?"

"Complicated at the moment, big WMD and all."

"Yeah, they tend to do that," answered Dr. Caitlin Snow, "I hate big things that blow up right next door."

"When does the mobile lab arrive?" Bruce asked.

"The closest mobile BSL-3 lab he could get his hands on was in Florida. They're driving it up now. It'll be some time tomorrow. He wants me there when it arrives."

"That gives us some time. I have it mapped out in my head already, but there are a couple of details to work out." Cait said.

"Like what?" Julia asked.

"I'm assuming that a portable lab won't have an electron microscope."

"I doubt it, but who the hell knows what he has access to."

"I'll put EM lower on the list. PCR I can do in my sleep. That, and LC/MS, and some advanced filtration techniques, and we should have most of it covered. I can deal with anything that comes up in real time on the fly."

"You're sure you're okay with this?" Beth asked.

"You're sure everyone else is okay with this?" Julia asked.

"If you're asking me if the Ice Queen is okay with this, then the answer is who the hell knows," Cait said, "we have an understanding. She doesn't push me, and I don't push her."

"That's not what I meant," Julia said, "I meant you have a life of your own that you're dropping to fly cross country and help us."

"They'll understand. It's not exactly unusual behavior for any of them. But Barry doesn't have a private jet to get me from St. Louis to New York."

"That's because Barry can run it in about an hour with time to stop for lunch along the way," Bruce said.

"I'll book you a jet out of Lambert Field tomorrow," Julia said. "and a limo to pick you up around 10 AM. I'll text you the code word. You'll be wheels up ten minutes after they close the cabin door. You'll be wheels down at LaGuardia two hours later. I'll be there to meet you."

"No, I'll be there to meet you," Beth said, "Jules needs to stay totally anonymous. We're already risking enough, I'm not risking her too."

"But you're fine risking Caitlin," Julia said in that tone of voice that Beth knew well.

"Caitlin can take care of herself if it comes to that," Beth said, "which I don't think it will. But I'll chuck this whole thing in the fucking garbage before I risk you," she said the the woman sitting next to her.

There were several seconds of silence on both ends of the call as Beth drank her coffee and Julia drank her tea.

"Daddy, I don't hear you or Bruce saying anything," Julia said.

"That's because neither one of us has any idea what to say to stop the three of you from doing this."

"You could say No," Beth said.

"Like that would make the slightest difference," Bruce said.

"What would you do in our position?" Beth asked him.

"Fly to Cozumel for a few weeks," Bruce replied, "dive the reefs, grab a mojito on the east side of the island, work on my tan."

"What tan, your as white a corpse," Alfred said, "that's what you get for only going out at night."

"Cozumel in July? Are you insane? It's four-hundred degrees in the shade, and there's no shade," Beth said.

"They have air conditioning on the island," Cait said.

"Mostly," Alfred said.

"That's not what you would do, and everybody here knows it," Beth said, "you'd dive in head first. Julia and I have come this far, we're not walking away now. Caitlin and I can do the grunt work on this, then you and Kyle can do your whole super rich guy pow-wow thing and decide what to do with the results."

"Assuming we tell Kyle the truth about what we find," Julia said.

"Why would you not tell him the truth?" Caitlin asked.

"Because he might not have told us the truth," Beth said.

"Mind telling me where we're going?" Beth asked the cars occupants in general as she sub-vocalized the emergency code that told Julia that Beth thought she might be in serious fucking trouble.

"Seriously, you beat me by, like, five seconds," Jessica said.

"A private airfield at the Brooklyn Navy Yard," Ben Anderson answered without turning around.

"Don't worry," Bruce's voice said in her ear, "you're safe. You're going to meet an acquaintance of mine. Just protect that case until we find out what you are carrying."

Beth's heart rate began to setting, but her mind was still very much working overtime.

"You and I are going to have a conversation at some point," Beth had said as she was scrambling one-handed to get through the warehouse window and to the SUV that was waiting in front of the building she was vacating as quickly as possible.

"Would you have rather both of you got arrested?" Julia had replied.

"This discussion is not over," Beth said as she sprinted towards the waiting open car door.

They were traveling at a more sedate speed now, and Beth had stopped worrying that something in the case would break and kill them all before they knew what was happening. But she was still worried, and both Julia and Beth had to admit that they had no fucking idea what to do with the canisters that Beth was protecting.

"Jesus, that's what's in that case?" Jessica had said as she moved as far away from Beth and the case as she could when Beth had told them all.

"Yeah, that's what's in this case that I was carrying as you were chasing me all over that fucking warehouse," Beth answered as Ben and the driver of the SUV looked at each other.

"Why didn't you say something?!"

"What the fuck was I supposed to say?" Beth asked, "stop chasing me, or we're both dead?"

"Yeah, something like that would have done it," Jessica answered as her eyes stayed riveted on the case in Beth's lap.

"This bother you?" Beth asked her, tilting her head to indicate the case.

"Why," Jessica answered, her eyes wide as she tried to press herself further into the car door, and away from Beth and the case, "am I looking at it like it bothers me?"

"Christ," Ben said as he put his phone up to his ear.

"We can't take this anywhere that there are people around," Beth said to anyone in the car that was listening.

"No shit, really?" Jessica said.

"Where were you planning on taking it?" Ben asked, his head turning only slightly towards Beth as he continued to hold his cell phone to his left ear.

"We hadn't gotten that far in our plan yet," Beth said, still not believing that she was in an SUV with three people she didn't know at all, and a case containing six canisters that would likely kill them all if they were unlucky enough to get into a car accident on the way to their private airfield.

"You were just going to take that fucking thing home, weren't you?" Jessica asked, her voice equal parts disbelief and accusation.

"No. Yes. I don't know!" Beth said, the mixture of excess emotion she had been holding in spilling out finally, as her heart rate elevated again, "we weren't expecting a bio-weapon the size of a Winnebago! Our intel said large shipment of weapons, not, large weapon of mass destruction!

"So it was intelligence that the building was storing weapons that brought you there?" Ben asked.

"Was that what that big ass thing was in the middle of the building?" Jessica asked, "a WMD?"

"Yes, and Yes," Beth answered, "they were manufacturing something, putting it into canisters, and loading the canisters into whatever that thing was," Beth said, "you didn't get a good look at it?" she asked Jessica.

"No," Jessica said, "I didn't get that far into the building. I guess I didn't fit in as well as you did. What'd you do, use some sort of Mak'Tar Stealth Haze?"

"No, I just didn't look like I had recently stepped off a Harley 883 Hugger," Beth said.

"Hey, that's a nice bike, I used to have one, don't knock it. By the way, you're still wearing blue gloves and plastic glasses."

"Shit," Beth said as she removed the nitrile gloves and safety glasses, "thanks."

"And we should talk later about whatever the fuck that stuff was that you were going to shoot me with."

"It's a derivative of Jimson weed, Ketamine, and Psilocybin."

"Holy shit, you were going to inject me with that shit?!"

"Sorry, I just didn't want you to get your hands on me."

Jessica's expression changed as she looked at Beth.

"Have we met before?"

"Not officially."

"We have a place we can take it," Ben said finally before looking at the driver and saying, "Williamsburg Bridge."

He spent the next few minutes texting on his phone.

"I'm hopping cell towers," Julia said, "and I'm going to hop to a new server, just as soon as I find one I like. Too much shit has been traded back and forth on this one. I'm not risking it. Be back in a jiffy."

"Copy," Beth simply replied in the silence that had settled inside the SUV, which got her a look from Jessica.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing. She's just making sure I'm OK."

"I'd say OK is a stretch for any of us with that fucking case in the car with us."

"Relatively OK."

"Copy that," Jessica said.

Everyone was silent again for a few minutes.

"Sorry I chased you," Jessica said, her eyes still looking ahead.

"I'd have chased you," Beth said as she looked out the tinted window next to her, "so it's only fair."

"Where'd you get the intel that sent you there?" Jess asked.

"Where'd you get the intel that sent you there?" Beth asked in return.

"I guess we're not at the sharing point of our relationship yet," Jessica said after both women remained silent for a moment.

"I've been told by more than one boyfriend that I am a terrible communicator," Beth said.

"Right there with you, Blondie," Jessica replied.

You seem to do alright with your bartender, Beth thought.

I wonder if that's her real hair? Jessica thought.

The car continued on in silence, both women lost in their own thoughts.

It was not a large hangar, as hangars went, but it was more than large enough for the two Bombardier Global 8000s, the two large black SUVs, and the small army of heavily armed men that, when combined, took up only about half the smooth concrete floor space. There was a two story structure at one end. The ground floor was clearly office space. The windows from the second floor emitted a warmer light than the office, but Beth couldn't tell anything else about it.

Beth had no expectations what they would find at their destination, not really; but she did not expect arguably the world's most famous actress, or one of the wealthiest men in the United States.

"Something's wrong," Julia said as Beth's lenses caught a direct look at the actress's face, "she's been crying. She's still crying."

Annelie Bodin had clearly been expecting someone else to exit the vehicle, and her reaction was only one indication of her disappointment.

"Is that who I think it is?" Beth asked as she walked towards the other group of people.

"98% confidence interval on facial recognition that it is Kyle Richmond in the flesh," Julia answered.

"Jesus, Kyle, what the fuck did you drop me into?" Jessica asked him, removing all doubt about his identity, "where's Trish?" she asked after looking around.

"Who's Trish?" Julia asked.

"Busy," the man said as Ben Anderson walked up to him and talked quietly in his ear. Kyle's eyes immediately went to Beth, and the case she was holding, but his expression did not change.

"What do we have for containment?" Kyle asked Ben quietly while his eyes stayed on Beth.

"Here? Nothing," Ben replied, "we can have high level containment here in a hour."

"Good. Put a rush on it," he replied before walking towards Beth where she stood.

"My name is Kyle Richmond," he said to her just as if he were a waiter introducing himself, "an associate of yours called an acquaintance of mine."

"So I've been informed," Beth said, feeling like a rabbit standing in front of a python, "thank you for the help."

"Not at all. We have a containment unit en route. Would you prefer to hold on to that until it gets here, or are your arm's getting tired? One of my men can take custody of it."

Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

"Can I have a minute to talk in private?" Beth asked.

"Certainly," said the man in the $1200 Louis Vuitton loafers, "we'll wait for you in the office."

"One more thing," Beth said as Kyle stopped in mid-turn, "where's the little girl's room?"

It was a small unisex restroom, but it was better than being wedged between an SUV and a concrete wall in a parking garage.

The closed metal case sat on the floor next to the sink. Beth's now full gym bag sat on the countertop as Beth pulled the t-shirt over her head. The air conditioned bathroom was downright cold now that she wasn't wearing her suit, and Beth was anxious to get back out into the warm, humid air of the open hangar.

"You're as safe with him as you would be with me," Bruce said, "but you may be there a while, so you may as well get comfortable."

"You realize that you're not always the safest person to be around, right?" Julia said.

"They want to put the case in some sort of containment," Beth said, "and once it goes in I don't think they are going to let it out again just because I ask them to."

"It's not like we have a place to store it, or any way to analyze what we have," Julia said, "our laboratory resources being currently nonexistent."

"All true, but I put my ass on the line to get it, and I don't like just giving it away," Beth said.

"I understand entirely," Bruce said in that voice that made parts of Beth's anatomy warmer, cousin or no, "and if you were closer to home, I would argue the point, but we have limited resources in New York, and I won't risk transporting it back to Chicago without knowing how dangerous it is. Don't think of it as giving it away. Think of it more along the lines of leaving it in self storage for a short time. Kyle and I will come to an agreement on how to proceed."

"Makes sense," Beth said with a long sigh, "but don't leave us out of that conversation."

"You will be involved, I promise," Bruce said.

That sounded ominous, Beth thought.

"You're at fifteen percent," Julia said, "you could probably last another hour, but you might want to put everything in the charger. Not like we are going to get anything useful from your location. Everything around you is encrypted up the ass."

"I'll wait for the containment unit, then I'll shut down," Beth said, as she unzipped the gym bag and rummaged around until she found the small charging case for her lenses and earbuds, "it shouldn't be long now. They are putting a rush on it."

"We heard," Bruce said, "trust Kyle, but keep your cards close to your chest. I said he's an acquaintance, not a friend. In our line of work, friends are hard to come by, and very rare."

Beth thought of the woman at the other end of the encrypted link, who was one of the only real friends that Beth had, and the best of the bunch.

Beth's mind went next to the woman who had sat next to her on the drive here, the same woman who had chased her through the warehouse on Avenue C.

As acquaintances go, I could do worse, she thought.

The guard lay where he fell, but the reinforcements that Jessica had expected never arrived. All the workers that had witnessed what had occurred were still stunned and Jessica took advantage of the situation and began to move farther into the building before stopping to look at the woman in the lab coat who was carrying a metal case and staring back at her like she recognized Jessica.

Who the fuck are you?

It was at that point that the woman reached out with her right hand and pulled the fire alarm.

What the fuck?

Everyone in the building began to look up in the universal what the fuck is going on reaction to a fire alarm. But some of the workers had come out of labs and were wearing equipment that Jessica had only seen in movies.

Shit, this is not good.

Everyone began to walk or run towards the only exit; everyone, that is, except the woman with the case.

"Hey, can I talk to you for a second?" Jessica asked the woman as she approached her slowly.

The woman set the case down slowly, and removed her lab coat, letting it drop to the floor behind her.

What the fuck is she wearing?

"No," the woman said as she picked up the case in her left hand and used the thumb of her right hand to flip something small up into the air between them.

The something burst and released a cloud that began to expand and became opaque before cycling through several different colors.

"God dammit," Jessica said as she ran through the cloud only to find when she came out the other side that the woman was gone.

"Fuck."

Jess turned around and headed back through the dissipating cloud towards the door, catching a glimpse of a figure clad in a long leather coat and carrying a metal case in her left hand.

"Stop, asshole!"

The woman kept running.

Why does that never work?

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

"Hey, can I talk to you for a second?" the woman asked as she approached Beth slowly.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck," Julia said.

Beth set the case down on the floor and shed the lab coat, picked up the case, and took a cloudburst pellet from the dispenser on her right hip.

"No," she said as she squeezed the pellet before flicking it into the air.

She was in motion as soon as the initial burst generated a white cloud that rapidly expanded. Her left foot found the outer window frame of the laboratory near her and her right hand grabbed the upper edge of the wall and she used her legs to perform a one-handed kip up to the roof of the single room laboratory before quickly finding her feet and running along the roof and then dropping back to the main floor behind the woman blocking her path.

"Stop, asshole!" came from the woman behind her.

Like fucking hell, Beth thought as she ran for the smaller door, hitting the OPEN button on the large roll up door with her left hand as she was just about to exit into the large exterior building.

"Turn right, and try and lose her," Julia said.

Beth heard the door open behind her as she ran back the way she had originally come.

"It's not a fucking car chase," Beth said.

"Stealth, not speed, dammit," Julia said, "there's enough shit in here to hide an army."

"I don't have all fucking night. That sound that you hear is a fucking fire alarm. This place will be swarming with uniforms in a minute. I need to get the fuck out of here."

"Fifty meters on the left. Open window," Julia said.

"Copy," Beth said as her breath began to become uneven.

Less talking, more running.

She saw it. It wasn't perfect. There were crates nearby, but nothing directly underneath.

"One to the left, one to the right," Beth said, "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe."

"That's racist," Julia said, "one potato, two potato."

"Fuck," Beth said as she scrambled up the right hand crate.

"Close, but no cigar," said a woman's voice as Beth stood up to see the woman from the bar standing on the other crate.

Beth looked at the woman, who seemed to be a couple inches taller than her, and the woman looked back.

"Jesus, she looks even more like a biker up close," Julia said.

Beth's breathing had almost returned to normal, but the woman in front of her did not seem winded at all.

"You could at least pretend that it was an effort to catch up to me," Beth said.

"I don't throw up in front of strangers," the woman replied, "OK, that's a lie, but there's usually a bar involved. I'll puke later."

"We need to go!" Julia said.

"We need to go," Beth said to the woman.

"Just hand over the case and be on your way."

"No can do, doll face," Beth replied as she switched the case to her right hand and drew the dart gun with her left.

"That what you used on that guy's buddies?"

"Yup," Beth answered before thinking for a second, "I think."

"You think?"

"You Need to GO!" Julia yelled in Beth's ear.

"I think the next two doses might be freaky doses," Beth said to the woman.

"Freaky doses?"

"You ever do acid, or mushrooms, or any other psychedelic?"

"No fucking way."

"Then this is really going to suck for you," Beth said as she pointed the gun with her left hand.

"Sure you can hit me from there?"

"One way to find out."

"How about you don't try and turn me into an acid head, and I don't try to break you in half."

The sound of sirens grew closer, and the woman from the bar seemed just as worried about them as Beth was.

Shit, Beth thought as her phone vibrated in her pocket and Julia said in her ear, "answer your phone."

"This might sound odd, but I need to take a call."

"You're right, it does sound odd."

Beth kept her dart gun pointed at the woman as she put the case down and pulled her phone from her duster pocket and answered the call.

"Put your phone on speaker," said a voice.

It was a man's voice, but one she did not recognize.

Beth did as he asked.

"You're on speaker."

"Jess, extraction inbound, both of you. Move now," the man's voice said.

The woman's eyes had gotten wider, and her jaw had dropped slightly as the man was talking.

"Kyle?"

"Right fucking now," said the voice before the call ended.

"Shit," the woman said before turning and leaping up to the window frame in one jump.

fucking show off

"You coming?"

"Apparently," Beth said.

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

The black SUV stopped at the crosswalk just as Jessica made it there, the blonde woman with the case several steps behind her. The back door opened just as Jess was about to reach out for the door handle.

"MOVE!" Kyle's chief of clandestine operations yelled from the front seat.

"Come ON!" Jess yelled at the woman who had somehow managed to get to, and then through, the window while still holding the case.

The door slammed closed, and the SUV started to move.

"Left!" the woman called to the driver, "Stop here!" she yelled right outside a parking garage as she started to open the SUV door.

She was out of the SUV in a flash, only to return a second later with what looked like a heavy nylon bag wrapped tightly with a strap.

"OK, GO!"

"What the fuck?" Jess asked as the driver gunned the engine and they were all pressed back into their seats.

"I paid fifteen bucks for that t-shirt," the woman said as she leaned back against the seat to catch her breath, the case and the bag stacked in her lap.

"I'm Ben Anderson," Kyle's chief spook introduced himself as he turned to look at the two women in the back seat, "we'll leave my title out for now. I was ordered to extract you both, but I didn't get your name."

"I'm between names at the moment," the woman said still breathing unevenly.

"Come again?" Jess said.

"Just call me Alice," the woman said.

"Is that your real name?" Ben asked her.

"Is Ben Anderson your real name?" Alice asked him.

"Fair point," he said.

Alice looked at Jess and waited.

"Why does everyone have a fucking secret identity except me?"

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

"You're clear. Nothing on the air except for the fire alarm. Nothing about either of you, or the SUV."

"We're clear," Beth repeated to everyone in the SUV, "nothing about either of us or the SUV, just the alarm."

There was a moment's silence.

"You have a handler," Jessica said, "you're in contact with someone right now."

Beth was about to answer when a huge light bulb went on in her mind.

"Shit," Beth said to the world in general, but specifically to Julia, "Get word to them not to go inside that fucking bunker. They need HAZMAT, or bomb disposal, or bio-hazard teams, somebody who won't kill half of New York because they don't know what the fuck they are looking at."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Jessica asked her.

"I can see to that," Bruce's voice said in her ear.

It was Beth's eyes that grew wide now, as her jaw dropped.

"Bruce?"

"Yes. We'll explain later."

"Who's Bruce?" Jessica asked.

The guy who just saved our asses, Beth thought.

"Bobby, are you and Susan doing anything special this weekend?" a woman wearing a coat like Beth was wearing asked one of the guards without taking her eyes off of the large, curved, computer monitor in front of her.

"It's our six month anniversary, and we are heading to the Catskills for a few days," the man answered, his eyes still on his phone, "supposed to be nice weather."

"Lucky you, I have to work all weekend."

"Ouch."

Neither the guard or the worker looked up at Beth, and she kept walking, taking the opportunity to grab a clipboard from a nearby plastic wall holder and used it as a shield for her face, inclining her head towards the clipboard so her fake hair came forward slightly to cover part of her face.

She was not sure which labs Dr. Rasmussen's card would access, and she did not want to take a chance of setting off an alarm. Besides, she really didn't want to step into one of the working labs and breath in whatever shit they were working with.

"There," Julia said as Beth's contact lenses caught sight of a lab that had no workers, but lots and lots of clear canisters, each about half a liter in size.

"Jackpot," Beth whispered as she tried to look closer without drawing too much attention, "those canisters are color coded. Looks like three different colors."

Julia was silent for a moment before she spoke.

"There has to be six-hundred canisters in there."

"Holy shit."

"Scan left again."

"God," Beth said as she turned her head slowly and saw what Julia must have seen at the other end of the building, "empty racks for twice that many."

"Jesus," Julia said, "OK, we need to wrap this up. Can you..."

"Miss, can I see your identification?" a man's voice asked from behind Beth.

Fuck.

"Fuck," Julia said.

Beth turned around slowly and smiled at the man dressed all in black and carrying an H&K MP5.

"Absolutely," Beth said as she fumbled with the ID badge before dropping it on the floor.

"Is this really necessary?" She asked as she dropped the clipboard and scattered the papers on the floor, "I just had this conversation with Bobby two minutes ago."

"You know Bobby?" he asked as Beth reached for some of the scattered papers and turned off the safety on her left glove with a quick motion.

"Yes, I'm a friend of his girlfriend Susan. He's taking her to the Catskills this weekend."

"Sorry, but I didn't recognize you."

"I'm filling for Dan Rasmussen. He came down with Strep."

"That sucks. My daughter had it last year."

"Sorry for the mess," Beth said as she began to stand before losing her balance and grabbing the man's left leg just above his boot with her left hand and injecting him with the dose from her index finger syringe.

"Sorry, I got a little light headed," she said.

"No prob..."

"Are you OK, you look a little pale?" Beth asked him.

"I dnt fll wll..."

"Maybe you are coming down with strep," Beth said as she took his badge and opened the door to the lab that was storing all the canisters, come in here and lie down for a minute."

"thks," he said as she helped him lay down.

Beth looked around quickly, before spotting several small cases underneath a bench-top work surface. They were all labeled "MEDICAL SAMPLES" and were lined with foam, clearly designed to hold six canisters.

"We need to hurry," Beth said, "this guy is about to have a bad trip, and I don't want to be here when it happens."

"What? Why?"

"That was a hallucinogen I injected him with."

"A WHAT?"

"A freaky dose. He's going to be tripping in a minute. Not everyone enjoys the experience."

"Fuck," Julia said as Beth reengaged the safety on her glove before moving to the full rack and beginning to transfer canisters to the case.

"OK," Beth said as she looked around for a fire alarm pull station, "escape time."

"YOU!" Beth and Julia both heard, "STOP RIGHT THERE!"

"Fuck me," Beth said.

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

Jessica used her key card to open the door and step into the giant secret lair that was anything but secret.

Jesus, Jessica thought as she took one look around the corner before taking her phone out of her pocket and start snapping pictures.

Huh, she thought as she looked at the lab coats hanging in the cubbys before taking one and putting it on, and stepped around the corner.

She had not gone very far before a man dressed all in black and carrying a familiar looking machine gun looked up from his phone and saw her.

"YOU!" the man said as he pointed at Jessica, "STOP RIGHT THERE!"

Fuck me, Jessica thought.

"Hiiii," she said in a sing-song bimbo voice, "I'm here to fix your printer?"

"What?" the man asked, his weapon at the ready but not pointed at Jess.

"I'm here to fix your printer? Someone called in and said you're having a problem with your printer?"

"Station 1, security breach," the man said as he placed his left hand to his left ear.

"My name is Sara?" Jess said in her best dim wit up-speak, "I'm from TIG IT Services?"

"Base?" the man asked.

He's taking a nap, asshole.

"Any station, respond," he said as his eyes stayed on Jess.

"Sorry," Jess said as she batted her eyes at the bewildered guard, "I only know printers, I can't fix comm headsets."

His face did not lose it's confused look as Jessica quickly stepped forward, placed her hand on his chest and thrust him backwards hard enough for him to leave a considerable dent in the drywall where he struck it before sliding down to the floor and not moving.

"Have a nice daaaay," Jessica said.

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

"It's not me," Beth said as she looked out the lab window, "he's yelling at someone else."

Beth took her dart gun from it's holster and charged the chamber before opening the lab door.

"Only three guards now," Julia said as two guards passed Beth and moved quickly towards the door that was the only way out.

Beth held the case in her left hand and the gun in her right, the gun that made two quiet popping noises as she shot the two retreating guards in the neck. It was a very fast acting combination of drugs that Beth herself had invented and created. The first portion would immobilize them almost instantly, but would only last about fifteen seconds. The second portion would knock them out.

"Only one guard between us and the door," Beth said as she re-holstered her dart gun, right before the scene in front of her stopped her in her tracks.

"Fuck," Julia said.

"Well said," Beth replied just as the dark haired woman stepped forward and shoved the remaining guard in the chest and sent him flying backwards before impacting the wall behind him and sliding to the floor.

"Son of a bitch," Beth said.

"Don't let her get anywhere near you," Julia said.

"No shit," Beth said as the woman's eyes and hers met.

Almost without thinking Beth reached for the nearby fire alarm pull station and set off the alarm.

Remember that this is a crossover fic, and the "Jessica" in this clip is Jessica Jones. This is leading up to the point when DC and Marvel collide in a warehouse in NYC.

---------

In the end, saner heads prevailed and Jessica chose a less risky method of entering 18 Avenue C, though she still chose a point of entry that was less likely to be observed.

People never think to look up, she thought after jumping up onto a landing halfway up the structure before her second leap placed her on the roof.

The roof access on this building was not marked, and proved to be a hatch that was locked from the inside with a simple padlock. It was designed to open and latch in place, probably as a safety precaution so no one got trapped on the roof. The latching mechanism was now just a twisted arrangement of metal, as was most of the hatch, the results of Jessica gripping the external handle and pulling enough to work her other hand underneath the hatch and tearing it almost completely off the hinges.

Not my quietest entrance, she thought as she stepped down onto the ladder and began her descent.

Her leather boots came to rest finally on a metal catwalk that ran clockwise around the exterior wall. Her slow progress passed several locked cages that seemed to be intended for storage and maintenance work. It took Jess only a moment to force the cage doors open on the first two cages but, finding them very similar and very unhelpful, she left the second two alone and proceeded to the metal stairs that led down to the next level catwalk. There was an elevator adjacent to the stair access that must be used to move equipment to the different cages, but it was equipped with an RFID reader.

The second tier of cages were just like the first, but it was as she was about to make her way to the stairs going down that she noticed two doors, one open and one closed. There was sound coming from the open door that was positioned at the end of a short hallway, with the closed door on the right hand wall only a short distance from the open door, which was about two-thirds open, and would hide Jessica from view as long as she hugged the left hand wall. Jessica continued her silent approach towards the open door when the sound of a flushing toilet came from behind the closed door.

Fuck me

Jess was directly opposite the door as it began to open so she simply stepped across the short distance and slammed the door with her right hand just as the occupant was exiting. The double impact of the door hitting him and him hitting the door jam did the trick and Jess caught him as he crumpled to the floor before she caught a whiff of the bathroom.

Dude, what the fuck have you been eating?

She positioned him on the toilet, leaned him against the wall, took the Glock 23 from his holster, and closed the door from the outside before exhaling her breath to fill her lungs with clean air.

Jesus Christ

Jess stuck her head into the other room just long enough to see security camera monitors at a workstation, a short refrigerator, and an automatic weapon in a wall rack.

Guess I am in the right place.

Jess placed the .40 caliber pistol on the workstation counter and was about to leave the room when she saw the card sitting next to a cell phone, and the RFID chip located at one end. It looked just like a credit card, but had nothing other than the number 0012 printed on it. Jessica smiled as she placed the card in the back pocket of her jeans.

Open sesame, assholes

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

"It's an RFID tap scan reader," Julia said as Beth stared at the small black box with a red indicator light at one end, "put your lock pick up to it and give me a minute."

"Copy," Beth said as she took the small device that was about half the size of her cell phone out of a belt pouch and held it next to the reader.

It took less than thirty seconds before the red light flashed green and Beth heard the door lock click.

"I'm in," Beth said as she slowly opened the door and looked inside.

Directly in front of her was a wall with a chemical shower and eyewash station. To her left was a set of cubbyholes that held various sizes of white lab coats. It took Beth only a moment to find one lab coat that still had an ID badge attached.

"Calling Doctor Howard, Doctor Fine, Doctor Howard," Beth said as she slipped the lab coat on and buttoned the front and took a pair of safety glasses from the cubby.

"Do they really not have any cameras in here?" Julia asked.

"If they had them, they'd be on me already," Beth whispered.

Beth peeked around the corner of the short wall to look into the building-within-the-building.

"Traffic."

"Yup," Julia said, "send a drone up. Just one."

"Wilco," Beth whispered before picking one of the tiny drones and tossing it in a arc into the air.

"I love it when you talk dirty," Julia replied.

Even without the drone Beth could see an assortment of people sitting at workstations, monitoring instruments, or walking back and forth with tablets. Some were even standing around drinking from Styrofoam cups. But Beth could also see into smaller rooms that were clearly laboratories, the people inside wearing PPE.

No coffee for them. Whatever they are working with looks dangerous.

Her drone returned on it's own, Julia must have sent it the run home signal.

"Sixteen people total, four of them armed with automatic weapons," Julia said.

"Four soldier ants, twelve worker ants."

"But what is that big thing in the center of the room that they are working on?"

Beth checked the doses in the finger syringes of her left hand glove but left the piezoelectric safety on. She took a moment to study the map that Julia popped up on her lenses and showed the positions of the four soldier ants.

"What are you thinking?" Julia asked.

"I'm working backwards from our escape plan, which is pretty simple," Beth said as she looked at the Fire Alarm Pull Station on the wall next to her, "two of the guards are pretty straight forward. The other two will be a problem."

"You're forgetting the bigger problem."

"Which is?"

"You are walking around a facility with only twelve worker ants. Someone is going to realize you don't belong there."

Beth thought about it for a moment before glancing down at the badge on her coat.

"What can you find on Daniel Rasmussen?" Beth asked before turning the badge around so the name and picture was not showing.

"Hang on."

"Not like I have anywhere else to be."

"He has a PhD in microbiology from the University of Winnipeg, and publications focusing on bacteriology and virology."

"Why do I not like the sound of that?"

"Because they have a big ass device in the center of the room, and he specializes in stuff that kills lots of people, and two plus two equals a shitload of trouble?"

"Yeah, that's probably it," Beth said as she checked the indicator on the compressed air cartridge in the hand held dart gun on her left hip.

"How far backwards have you worked?" Julia asked as Beth pulled an extra large pair of light blue nitrile gloves on over her leather gloves.

"Far enough," Beth answered as she stepped around the corner and began to walk slowly towards what was most likely a big fucking virus and toxin filled bomb, her eyes level and her face painted with a friendly, if false, smile.

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

The lowest level of catwalks lead to the roof of a large concrete cube in the center of the building. She could not see any sort or door or entrance on the roof except for duct work that rose straight up at least fifteen feet before meeting a larger section that ran the length of the building.

I am not crawling through any fucking air duct.

Jessica was confident that if anyone was going to spot her they would not be using the security feed that led to the room upstairs, the door to that room now being closed and damaged to the point that only someone as strong as Jessica could open it again. But it seemed that the main structure was totally unoccupied. Not unusual this time of night for any legitimate import/export company, but legitimate import/export companies did not employ lactose intolerant security guards armed with automatic weapons.

May as well see what this card is worth, she thought as she took the card from her pocket. The rectangular black box next to the elevator was only a bit larger than the card she held in her hand. At one end was a steady red light, but there was no slot to insert the card, so Jessica simply held the card next to the flat black surface long enough for the box to emit a beep and for the light to momentarily change to green. The sound of the elevator starting was enough evidence that the card was not totally fucking worthless. It took less than thirty seconds for the doors to open.

Ground floor, sporting goods, household appliances, Jess thought as she pressed the button labeled G and the doors closed, only to open again on the main floor that was cluttered with crates, boxes and equipment of all sorts.

What was that dickhead with the machine gun guarding? Jess thought, as she looked at a few of the invoices, not this crap. Some of these are fucking auto parts.

Jess shook her head as she looked around.

Something is not making sense, she thought after walking three quarters of the outer perimeter before her eyes finally settled on the concrete block structure in the middle of the building, and the door that had a small rectangular black box next to it.

As secret lairs went, this one stood out like a sore thumb.

another excerpt from Hell Hath No Fury.

​

​

"She is not even half of what we require," Barra said to a woman Beth had never seen before, her voice dripping with contempt, "you may do as you wish with her, Lilith, but I doubt that she will survive. Her sister is the strong one. This one is weak in both mind and body."

The woman approached Beth and forced Beth's chin upwards so that their eyes met. Beth's eyes were open, a steady stream of tears flowing from them following the well marked paths down her cheeks, and her ears remained alert and took in all the sounds in the small, concrete walled, room in which they stood, but her mind was elsewhere.

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end? " I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?" she said aloud. "I must be getting somewhere near the center of the earth."

The woman's eyes inspected Beth for a few moments longer before shifting to the tall woman who had just spoken.

"She's about Safiya's age, isn't she?" Lilith asked.

"It is the only thing they have in common," Barra said, "Safiya is nothing like this broken creature."

"I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downwards!"

"You began training Safiya when she was six years old," Lilith said as her eyes returned to Beth, "don't compare your daughter to…which one did you say this one is?"

"Elizabeth."

"And the other one?"

"Katherine. She eluded us. Many men guard her now. There is no practical way for us to obtain her now. This one is useless to us."

Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up onto her feet in a moment: she looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before her was another long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it.

"Well," Mother Lilith said gently as she looked down at Elizabeth Kane and smiled, "we will see what we can make of her."

Beth's face automatically smiled in response to the friendly appearance of the woman in front of her, but her mind remained elsewhere.

"BETH!" Julia shouted in her ear, had probably been shouting for several seconds, while Beth''s mind had wandered back more than two decades.

"What?"

"You went away again."

fuck

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not. Get the fuck out of there."

"I said I'm fine. But we have another problem."

Everything had started well enough. Beth had leapt upwards, left foot and right foot finding purchase points in alternation until her hands gripped the bottom sash of the open window frame that she used to pull herself up until, her arms straight and her waist was pressed against the frame, and she could simply tilt her upper body downwards to initiate the controlled somersault that ended with her hands gripping the frame behind her head as her feet dangled ten feet above the floor below.

"There's a crate just a few feet beneath you," Julia said as the image from Beth's lenses appeared on her monitor.

"You know, I can see that for myself, right?" Beth whispered as she simply let go of the window frame and bent her knees slightly to absorb the minor impact of the silent landing.

"Still no camera signals," Julia said.

"Wouldn't you have cameras in a place like this?"

"Yes, but I would have them on a secure feed."

"Let's hope none of them are as smart as you are."

"So few people are."

"I said smart, not smartass."

"Toss your drones," Julia said.

"Fucking mother hen," Beth mumbled as she took the four drones from what she still refused to call her utility belt, and cast them into the air.

She was standing in an industrial high bay which stood easily forty feet from floor to ceiling. In the center of the building was a large concrete structure, which was surrounded by floor space, floor space that was about half filled with crates, boxes, shrink wrapped pallets and equipment. Along one section of the outer wall was a series of offices, their interiors dark, and their doors closed. Beth looked upwards to see a series of catwalks at the uppermost levels, the lowest of which led from the top of the center structure to smaller caged-in work areas cluttered with storage cabinets and workbenches.

Beth knew that the micro drones would not stray more than a hundred feet from the receiver on Beth's belt, so it was going to take time to scan the whole interior, and Beth was going to have to change locations frequently.

"Dad was right, this is too big for one person," Julia said as the wireframe scan began to be filled in with interior details.

"Let's just focus on the job," Beth said as she looked at the crate that had cushioned her landing.

SING3-STS-107050-8701-00190A2031400

"Very helpful," Beth said as she removed the bill of lading from the plastic sleeve.

"A company called MTF GmbH, located in Frankfurt, Germany is listed as the shipper. Brock Industries is listed as the exporting carrier. Sandia National Laboratory is the receiver. Albuquerque, New Mexico."

Beth could hear Julia typing.

"Sounds legit," Julia said as Beth folded the sheets of paper and replaced them in the plastic sleeve, "time to move."

"Copy that," Beth said as she began to walk slowly, keeping the drones to her front as she began what would eventually be a counter clockwise circuit around the exterior wall of the building.

"Brock Industries has only existed for two years," Julia said as Beth stopped at the door to a locked office, "so has the company that completely owns it."

"Shell game."

"Looks like."

"So, not entirely legit."

"Nope. Hide your illegal shit in the middle of a bunch of legal shit. Great camouflage."

"Let's see just how good they are at hiding their illegal shit," Beth said.

Beth could not identify a doorway of any kind in the center structure until she was halfway around the exterior wall. It was at that point that a familiar smell triggered a cascade of memories, memories that for the span of ten to fifteen seconds became her entire world.

"Coordination polymers can be synthesized from Hg(CN)2 building blocks," Brother Zohar's voice droned on monotonously to five sets of glassy eyes, "large single crystals of [(tmeda)Cu-[Hg(CN)2]2][HgCl4] form upon treating CuCl2, the soft Lewis acid Hg(CN)2, and N,N,N',N'-tetramethylethylenediamine (TMEDA). The migration of two labile chloride ligands from harder Cu(II) to softer Hg(II) drives the formation of the crystal."

"You have strength in you, girl," Master Gao said in his calm tones tinged with Mandarin as he allowed Beth a moment to rest, rub the spot on her chest where his last palm strike had landed, and catch her breath, "but you must learn to master your anger and your pain, and to mold both into something that serves you rather than hinders you."

"Filiae matris devotae sorores," Mother Lilith, her arms outstretched, said to the five women, clad in white robes, who had survived to take their places as Daughters of Lilith.

"Domus nostra unam matrem et multas sorores habet," five voices replied, the last step in their rebirth completed.

"BETH!"

"What problem?" Julia asked.

"There is a chemical lab somewhere close," Beth answered, the smell of hydrochloric acid still clearly present, "my guess is it's in that center structure."

"Why would there be a chemical lab in a warehouse?"

"There wouldn't be," Beth answered, her voice still unsteady from the memories, and from the effort it required to keep Alice in her place.

"Shake it off, sweetie. Finish your sweep," Julia said evenly.

"Yes, momma," Beth answered.

It was on the far end of the building that Beth found what she was looking for.

"That is one big ass roll up door." Julia said as she looked at the image on her monitor.

"That fucking thing is as tall as the building," Beth said as she stared at the metal roll up door that took up a good portion of the exterior wall of the building before turning around.

"There is a roll up door in the center structure on this side too."

they line up perfectly, Beth thought as she looked back and forth between the two extra large doors, why are the doors so fucking tall?

"So, open both doors, and roll your illegal shit right into the center structure, and close them again. Easy Peasy, lemon squeezy," Julia said.

"If they did all their work after hours, and kept that inner building closed and locked during the day, The legit workers out here would never know what was going on."

It took Beth a moment to plot a path between the crates and equipment that placed her near enough to the center-line of the two doors.

"Tire tracks. Wide tires. Double sets."

"Heavy, whatever they were moving."

"I'm calling the drones back," Beth said as she eyed the roll up door in the center structure, and the more modest steel door next to it to accommodate the traffic of mere mortals.

"You don't want to finish scanning the building first?"

"No, your Dad is right, it's too big. And besides, I think we can narrow down our search a bit, don't you?" Beth asked as she pressed the button on the receiver on her belt that told the drones to run home and dock.

The drone images went dark and Julia looked at the final percentage of the building interior that had been mapped before looking at the clock on her computer monitor.

Jesus

"Yes, I do."