Batman Fan Fiction ❯ Second Sight ❯ Burnout ( Chapter 3 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Chapter 3 burnout

Ishikawa sat pondering his display. Togusa who had been on his way to the scene of the attack the night before redirected to the Serano building when the silent alarm went. It was Togusa who brought back the black piece of metal that he now search for an origin.

At a rate of hundreds per minute Net sites and secret documents sped past. His brain calculated categorized and lined up data for his eye input. Several myths and legends came to his attention. Myths of a bat a legend from north America. Nothing concrete nothing worth sending to the major.

One odd image passed his screen and he stopped going back to it. A Team roster shot of the Justice League. Ishikawa laughed to himself, though this team of Meta humans and a few aliens, did police the world once the world seemed to turn on them. Now the team was gone. Odd he thought to himself how Japan never had the influx of Meta's and mutants that other parts of the world did. Though this random gene may have been lost as Japan was the first major nation to cyberize.

Super human was over, maybe never to be heard of again, But every generation needed its myths. He read the caption at the bottom.

Justice league, North American June 15th2000. This classic image of the founding members of the justice league was taken from there fortress known as the watch tower. Over there several years of operation the team stopped at least one alien invasion, and several large incursions by other meta humans. Pictured from right to left, Superman, Jon' Jon, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern.

He wondered to himself why this image had been cached as one he needed to see. Ishikawa was about to pass it when he noticed a fine print at the bottom of the page.

“Not pictured Batman.”

“MAJOR!”

The decent into section nines main building had been simple so far. Like most buildings it was interconnected with subterranean tunnels to several other government buildings. And like most cocky organizations it was unguarded and only had a rudimentary security system. At best.

Batman had been able to hack specs for the interior of the building off of the public works website. Two strikes he thought to himself.

Slowly he crept down a series of corridors, his eyesight overlaid with an out line of the building. It would be very simple to get lost in this building and the several traps he's encountered so far were easy to, walk around, mostly they relied on laser sensors. With his cloak they were useless.

Batman's goal was the main computer room at the center of the building. This would not only be the easiest to access data from but would be the hardest to back track to. A unit that must normally have several attempts to hack would surely trace outside influences first, and he would be done and out before they figured out what was happening.

A slight hum filled the hall, and he was knocked from his feet.

“sorry!” a child's voice rang out as a blue four legged machine decloaked in front of him. Quickly he tested his suit. Still invisible. It turned apparently looking down the hall three sets of what must be optical balls whirred and spun. “Hello? Who, Who is out there? Major? Batou? Oh dear. A GHOST!”

Suddenly its tentacle like arms sprung forward and spun showing two large nasty looking weapons. As if this was not enough dozens of barely visible lasers spun through the hall. He could see several pointed directly pointed in his direction though they did not stay long.

Slowly it began to back off, then turned and spun down the hall. Batman sat for a few moments, taking in that his job might turn out a lot harder than he expected.

Major Kusanagi sat down in section nines debriefing room. Listening to Ishikawa recount what he had learned. Batou and Togusa where on there way the rest of the team had been unreachable, either on assignment or sleeping.

“And what's worse I rechecked the thing we found. Its some new alloy, I am worried it may be usable as some sort of homing beacon.”

“You mean this Bat-thing wanted to come here?”

“Or somewhere else im not sure ive checked reports from this Gotham city and I have found out several interesting facts.” He began the Majors full attention on him. As all the male members of the team had noticed Kusanagi was an amazingly beautiful woman and this was the first time hes ever had her all to his self. He pushed theses thoughts from his head. “Well to start I have reason to believe that interceptors have landed on American soil. Being that they were only ever a Japanese issue no other country bought in on them because of the ease of use and the obvious security issues.”

“So you think its here to track the source of the interceptors?

“That's what it looks like so far. But I have more. The alloy after some hacking ive been able to learn more about it and its ability as a tracking device. The composite is currently in design by Wayne Corp industries, located in Gotham City.” He paused to let this sink in, “Wayne Corp is owned by a Mr. Bruce Wayne a man with enough money to own Japan if he wanted to. And Mr. Wayne currently is in Japan.”

“You think Batman works for Wayne?”

“Possibly I would say its atleast worth checking into.”

Batman had reached the central computer with out any further disturbances. So far this had been to easy he thought to himself. His defenses were at full, almost causing him to attack the ventilation shaft when the air came on.

He took a deep breath to stabilize his nerves. From below the ears on his cowl he removed a small jack that unwound as he pulled on it. With a click it connected with the computer terminal. His HUD display exploded with images from the computer. Unprotected, he smiled.

With his eyes and the muscles in his face he controlled the progress of the screen and he augmented this with a small QWERTY style keyboard built into his left arm.

The directories flew by almost to fast for him to read even with his speed reading abilities. Though he caught small words and clips of words so far he was just burying himself in the system. He tried to find a search option. Nothing in the menus offered this to him. He called up a command prompt and typed : SEARCH. Nothing. He thought to himself and hit the F1 key in his keypad. Bingo.

He began to try possible search topics for interceptors, but he kept getting prompted for passwords. He went back the blank menu screen and tried to access anything other than menus. Nothing. Damn it the machine was protected.

With a sigh he cracked his knuckles and stretched. Batman sat to find a more comfortable position task.

He attempted to supersede the operating shell and break in through the command prompt. This gave him no purchase on the system though he did locate the login program.

He began to attack the login shell and after a few minutes was successful he was in the system. Batman started an internal count down in five minutes he would automatically log out of the system so that he could not be traced. F1 and a search for interceptors began to pull up hits. Pages of data began to flow at him as well as locks on different levels of information.

Batman cursed to himself at the gibberish he was reading especially after his full arsenal of decryption programs failed to produce anything from the data. It was a dummy shell. He had been had.

Shock hit him when he noticed his count down had frozen at 2 minutes. He watched it for a moment. Nothing. He also noticed that the room was starting to get very warm.

He stood up and the image in front of him stayed the same as when he was sitting. Something was wrong his cowl computer was frozen. He tried the automatic reset. The image stayed the same. Panic started to grow in his gut. Why was the room getting so hot? His forehead began to sweat as his internal cooling system failed.

His ears reached red hot and he was forced to remove his cowl. The cool air around his stung at the sweat dripping off of his face. He reached into his hood and removed the battery running his computer system. Then he disconnected from the computer terminal.

He had been reverse hacked. The hacker must be amazing, rarely had he ever been beaten back let alone had his system been damaged. Batman reinserted the battery into his cooling helmet and watched as the restart process began.

Then he saw the camera trained in right on his face.

The major opened her eyes disconnecting from the wired. “Batou, Togusa, we have bats in our belfry.”