There was impatience and there was Gabriel Reyes levels of impatience. Perhaps that was what made the Commander so formidable a leader during the Crisis. A decision once made was immediately acted upon. The end result nevermore than the actions it took to reach it away. Angela had admired that about him, more so she envied him. Research was never quite so cut and dried. False starts. Fizzled leads. Bad data. Restarts and refreshes for the smallest bits of progresses. That was to say unless you got very, very lucky.
Her head shook at his disheveled form. The storm had turned grey asphalt black, making every street light (or every one not shot out or otherwise put out of commission) throw stars across the defunct parking lot. Where her life not tied to the equipment grumbling behind her, Angela would have taken the time to walk in it. Let the water wash out memories and turn curls into ropes of blonde plastered to her shoulders. A moment, just that to be silly before work pulled her.
“I wasn’t expecting you to be back so soon.” Head tilted back, it was blue eyes on a white mask. Clean cotton lab coat a stark contrast to black leather. “Hang your jacket if you would, the floor will get wet otherwise.”
Coffee, not sweet but splashed with nondairy creamer until it turned the color of cardboard sat half full and still steaming on the desk. Paperwork, both the holographic diodes Angela rarely used since her days in Overwatch and hard copy paper made piles across the rest of the surface. The same article she linked to him earlier taking up the screen of a monitor, side by side with something much more technical in nature.
“It’s the seizure that does it, not the shock itself.” Angela told him. “That’s just the vehicle for delivering the grand mal. The current isn’t enough to cause damage to brain tissue, and you’ll be under, so there’s no pain.”
Disorientation directly after. Nausea from the meds used. Memory loss, which no doubt will be aggravated from whatever Talon had done to him along with the therapy. Her nanos, at least the ones Angela was in the process of incubating using clones of Reyes own stem cells would (hopefully) fix that.
“Were this for depression or persistent mania, it would be a series of treatments. One a day for a week or so and then general upkeep as needed. Since it’s not… I am hopeful this can be done in a single treatment.”
That was of course, barring abject failure or the side effects causing him to lose control and attack her.
Angela reached a hand out for the forgotten coffee. It had gone tepid. She made a face but drank it anyway. Caffeine a drug of choice.
“I don’t have the machine to do this. This lab, state of art if a bit old as it is… Overwatch wasn’t one to insource this sort of thing. I’ve been looking for one to buy. The internet is a marvel about having things no nonprofessional should ever touch. But so far I’ve not had luck. A few manufactures – but they only sale to other companies not individuals.”
She grinned despite herself.
“Hard to incorporate when one of you is presumed dead and the other… well the UN would take too close an interest in me being part of any private organization, even one I started as a front.”
Jacket hung close to the door, he felt exposed. All the tubing and wiring leading up the back of his neck slightly exposed where the practically skin tight shirt he bore didn’t reach. He was sure to pull the cotton beanie down over his head, something hidden under his hood and usually never seen, yet now it’d be seen to cover the obvious oxygen conductors traveling to his mask,
He busied himself with pacing, slowly. Walking back and forth considerably casual along the length of the lab, nodding occasionally as she spoke. However, he stopped at her final words, head slowly turning to give her what would have been an incredulous look, could she see his face.
Immediately, three words came to mind that had him looking up to the ceiling in practical defeat.
“The Black Market.” He muttered in disdain, flipping his phone around in his fingers.
“Black Market criminals have been a problem lately ... Killing innocents with cybernetics to be more specific. Like their cybernetics are spare parts to be taken ... Naturally a byproduct of watching a group of criminals involved in the Black Market though...” He glanced up with a shrug, “You learn a lot about it.” He paused again as he scrolled through a list of names, sources he’d gathered. People’s organizations he’d overheard.
“The Black Market along with full access to the Internet, beyond its surface level of social platforms and media normalcy, you’d be surprised what you can find ... How many every day people are involved in such dirty work ... Like ... This guy.” He stopped, turning his phone screen to face her, showing the photo of a bald man with silver wire-rimmed glasses, smiling rather brightly with a broad grin that reached a pair of brilliant blue eyes.
“Doesn’t look like the type of guy who’d be caught up in a Black Market scheme, does he?” He turned his phone back for his own eyes, scrolling down with a slight head tilt and shrug.
“Married, kids. Two of them. This is Lambert Norris, just your run-of-the-mill IT tech who has a part-time job in making ‘mistakes’ in medical equipment shipments for people who want MRI, X-Ray, CT, and our lovely ECT machines, for whatever reasons, sending all sorts of stuff to ... Looks like a bunch of fake companies with legit looking names. Likely buyers who have firms under a false name, fake organizations, what have you, and has the equipment sent off to storage facilities for pickup. So ... We intercept an invoice. I can do that from Talon’s communications, redirect it to an abandoned site somewhere, and we pick it up there.” He stopped and shrugged.
“Or we could do it from here, there’s always a risk it’ll be traced back here. But I run the same, if not a bigger risk running it from Talon’s comm’s.”
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