"I provided the trance. Alex provided the suggestions. I don’t particularly like it, but it was a bit of a difficult situation, and her way of convincing him would have been messier." Was it justification? No, not really. He had done what he had done, no more or less, and would be exactly as bad a person as he was. Walter would understand that as well as anyone, and he didn’t care about his opinion past that.
"Drake is risky. It’s always difficult doing this sort of thing with metahumans, particularly young ones; their abilities have a habit of going haywire under stress, and the only worse thing than him hurting us would be him hurting himself. I don’t want every moralistic meta in the country out for us… I’ll do it. But if anything goes wrong, the both of you are getting your memories wiped."
Walter understood, but that didn’t mean he liked it much. That whistleblower was dealing with somebody every bit as slippery and corrupt as Powers himself, and he paid the ultimate price. Another would-be whistleblower met a similar fate in the Wayne-Powers R&D a few years back.
One of their computer scientists, a slightly older redheaded gentleman who made Walter feel a bit more welcome after Shreeve Sound was bought out by the company, met a similar fate. That man left two sons behind. The whistleblower for the Orpheus rig left his high school sweetheart and grade school aged daughter behind. Collateral damage, they said in the business. Didn’t make it any less depressing. The less he thought about it, the better he slept at night.
“I’m well aware. Black Canary and Green Arrow both are on part-time status. They haven’t retired, but they’re preoccupied.” Calling in a favor like that never came cheap, but someone was willing to do it for him. Someone owed him.
“I guess you have experience working with a metahuman before?” Walter asked, unsure. “And of course—provided we’re talking about an event-only memory wipe charged by your technology and not your new partner’s sordid chemicals.”
"And you're sure their 'preoccupation' will be sufficient?" Ira demanded, already resolving to program some the the more violent youths on his blacklist for backup.
"I do. I also have experience being in a metahuman prison, and don't wish to fall into either predicament ever again." At the mention of Sabine's drugs, his face twitched in an involuntary wince. "Nothing so crude. Her drugs are powerful, and fascinating, but unpredictable, indelicate. If I destroy Drake's mind, it will be worse than had I killed him. And you would be significantly less interesting as a vegetable."
