Fic: Virus (2/7)
Fic: Virus (2/7)
Series: Special Projects
Summary: A stopover at Ellen's is not as restful as the group hoped it would be, thanks to computer-literate Demons.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: Pg-13
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #98 Writers Choice (tech). The table is here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Reconnaissance Satellite footage of sector NEB X-3855 taken 11:30MST
Harvelle’s roadhouse sat at the bend of a road on a windswept Nebraska plain. Although it was technically new, it already showed signs of heavy wear. Paint flecked away from the wooden slating like a bad skin disease. Already a handful of junkers sat in the parking lot, surrounded by weeds and covered in rust. A sapling grew through the engine of one - sheltered from the Nebraska winds by its rusty metal bulk.
The quiet was shattered as a large, black, classic Chevy impala rumbled up to the parking lot - announcing its presence with a horsepower-fueled roar. The engine cut off and three people - two men and a woman -- climbed out of the car. The two men stretched in poses of exhaustion common to persons who had been in a car for a very long time. The woman, however, made no move to duplicate her companions’ exhaustion-fueled motions.
All three seemed to wear a weariness about them that came from carrying the weight of greater purpose on their shoulders.
As they moved toward the roadhouse, the shorter man casually slipped an arm around the short blonde woman. Then they followed the taller man through the door.
Once they were gone, it was as if the world released a collective breath, and resumed its unhurried pace.
***
Ellen Harvelle was wiping down the counter as Sam, Dean, and Chloe walked in. She threw the rag down and leaned against the bar.
“’Bout time you three got here,” she said.
Dean paused to glare at her. He shook his head and sat down on a stool.
Ellen passed him a beer, and then turned to address Chloe. “Your friend from Gotham was here.”
“Really?” Chloe tilted her head and narrowed her eyes.
By way of confirmation, she pulled a pre-programmed cell phone from underneath the bar. “He was pretty adamant that you call him using this.”
Chloe's lip twisted as she gave the phone an odd look. Sam and Dean looked at each other with twin speculative expressions. She picked up the phone, and wandered away to make the call. Dean stood to follow, but Ellen stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Easy there, Dean.”
Dean shot Ellen an annoyed look. But the owner of the roadhouse shook her head. “You don't need to ride shotgun for a phone call. She'll fill you in. 'Sides, I wanted to talk to you two a little bit.”
Sam and Dean shot each other uneasy glances, and then both leaned forward to talk.
Ellen looked back and forth between them. “In the past couple of weeks, demonic activity has been really dropping off. Before that . . . It was getting so's we were hearing about a new demon every week or two. Now . . .” She shook her head. “Nothing for three weeks. I wondered if you two have seen anything.”
Dean and Sam looked at each other. Neither one of them was naive enough to think that all the demons suddenly going quiet could ever be a good thing.
Dean finally spoke. “We had a warning - while we were on that headless horseman job.”
“It was a demon?” Ellen pierced him with a shrewd look.
“Unseelie,” Sam said. “It was escorting . . . a relative of Chloe's.”
“Is there anyone she doesn't know?” A smile tugged at the corner of Ellen's face.
“Not that we can tell,” Dean said. “So according to her intel, the demons will probably strike before this spring. If they're all getting quiet-like, I'd say that they're probably waiting.”
“I wonder for what?” Sam put in.
“Good question,” Ellen shook her head. She poured herself a shot of whiskey, and downed it in a single gulp.
* * *
The bar was mostly quiet. The middle of the day was a time for research or sleeping. Drinking and swapping stories came later. After the hunt.
Which meant that Chloe had a lot of space for privacy. She moved over to a corner table, and dialed the only pre-programmed number in the phone. After a brief moment, Batman's familiar voice came over the line.
“Tower?”
“Speaking,” she confirmed. “Why the Sydney Bristow treatment, B?”
“Personal satellite phone. Hooked up to a Waynetech satellite on a closed circuit. More difficult to access.”
“Paranoid much?” Chloe said.
“Within reason,” Batman said. “There are things that we need to discuss, and I would rather know beyond a shadow of a doubt what ears have access to our conversations.”
A cold feeling of dread crept up Chloe's spine. “What's happened?”
“Quite a lot, actually.” His voice sounded tired. “Where would you like me to start? With Lex or the clone?”
Chloe frowned. Neither one sounded like good news. “What happened to Laney?” She asked.
“I had her stashed in one of the Wayne summer bungalows in the Adirondacks. Under the care of a convalescent nurse. But last night it was hit.”
“Hit?” Chloe echoed incredulously. “Are we talking The Italian Job hit or Independence Day hit?”
Batman sighed. “More like something out of The Vanished. It's like they just decided to - get up and walk out. They left behind everything - clothes, money and the nurse's vehicle.”
“Security footage?” Chloe asked.
“Wiped clean.”
“Working theory?”
“I found traces of sulfur in the Nurse's room, and more in the clone's.”
Chloe sucked in her breath. “Demon then,” she said. “I take it you took precautions?”
“For all the good it did,” Batman said. Judging by the tone of his voice, Chloe guessed that he'd taken her clone's abrupt vanishing act personally. “They were both wearing the appropriate charms. The beds were ringed in salt. I had those designs painted over the clone's bed, as well, just like your contact in South Dakota suggested I use. I conjecture that the nurse was careless with his charm.”
“Great,” Chloe raked her fingers through her hair in an exasperated motion. “Let me guess . . . the nurse got possessed, and probably tore up the devil's trap and the salt line. Then he or one of his buddies took Laney.”
“I'm assuming,” Batman confirmed.
“Any idea why?” Chloe asked.
“My theory - you're not going to like it.”
“When have I liked anything about this whole mess?” Chloe chuckled mirthlessly.
“I think they're after your mother.”
The air seemed to leave Chloe's lungs in a rush. She leaned forward and gripped the edge of the table. “Mom?”
“My assumption is that there was some kind of tracking device hidden in the clone. Something not unlike what they had implanted in you during your brief stay in Lex's lab.”
“How do you figure?”
“Our enemies aren't stupid. They more-than-likely could guess how you would feel about seeing . . . someone with your features in a catatonic state. More than likely they expected you to place her in the same facility that your mother was staying in.”
“The thought crossed my mind,” Chloe muttered.
“Mine as well,” Batman said. “Which is why I put her up in one of my private residences, with a former Navy-seal hired as her caregiver.”
“You should have clued me in,” Chloe rebuked him.
“You've got enough on your mind as it is, Tower,” Batman said mildly. “Your mother is safe, and the clone - if she surfaces again, we'll know.”
“We'll see her again,” Chloe said. “She keeps turning up like the proverbial bad penny.” She paused to collect her thoughts. “What I'd really like to know - is what the interest in my mother is.”
“I don't think you need me to point that out, Tower,” Batman said.
“No, I don't,” Chloe said. “Lex has always wanted to be able to control the Smallville metas. But I hoped I was wrong.”
“Which brings me to my other bad news,” Batman said.
Chloe sighed. “Lex.”
“I was able to get a mole into Luthorcorp. He's not Lex anymore.”
“I hoped we were wrong,” Chloe said.
“So did I,” Batman said.
“You know, times like this are when I wish we could just turn him into a rat - the way they did Amy the witch on Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Chloe said. “Nice, humane. I'd even spring for one of those deluxe three story habitrail with a wheel he could run in all day and a supply of Ty Nant.”
The line was silent. Chloe figured that, once again, Batman just didn't get her sense of humor.
“It would solve everything, really.” Chloe said.
“I'm tracking shipments of equipment from Luthorcorp in an attempt to locate his cloning facilities, but in light of your Lilly 31 story, things are a little more difficult.”
With the speed that Batman segued, Chloe assumed that he'd mentally gone back in time and edited his memory, so that the whole Lex/rat/habitrail segment of the conversation never happened in his mind.
How typically Bat of him. She grinned, in spite of herself. “Whatever is wearing Lex like a cheap suit is not going to be stupid. Sadistic? Yes. Subtle? That depends on the demon. It seems like this demon is, anyway. But I would expect it to act completely through subsidiary companies that are nearly impossible to trace back to LexCorp.”
“Which is going to make finding the cloning facilities tougher.” Batman had his thoughtful, detective's voice engaged. “I may have more luck by tracking the flow of raw materials, Amino Acids, and the other building blocks of life that Lex would have to have to build a human being.”
“Other than building a secret demon clone army, what is our favorite follically-challenged demon suit doing?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Batman sounded frustrated by that. “It's like he's waiting on something.”
Chloe frowned at that. “Well, that's a cheerful thought.”
Series: Special Projects
Summary: A stopover at Ellen's is not as restful as the group hoped it would be, thanks to computer-literate Demons.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: Pg-13
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #98 Writers Choice (tech). The table is here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Reconnaissance Satellite footage of sector NEB X-3855 taken 11:30MST
Harvelle’s roadhouse sat at the bend of a road on a windswept Nebraska plain. Although it was technically new, it already showed signs of heavy wear. Paint flecked away from the wooden slating like a bad skin disease. Already a handful of junkers sat in the parking lot, surrounded by weeds and covered in rust. A sapling grew through the engine of one - sheltered from the Nebraska winds by its rusty metal bulk.
The quiet was shattered as a large, black, classic Chevy impala rumbled up to the parking lot - announcing its presence with a horsepower-fueled roar. The engine cut off and three people - two men and a woman -- climbed out of the car. The two men stretched in poses of exhaustion common to persons who had been in a car for a very long time. The woman, however, made no move to duplicate her companions’ exhaustion-fueled motions.
All three seemed to wear a weariness about them that came from carrying the weight of greater purpose on their shoulders.
As they moved toward the roadhouse, the shorter man casually slipped an arm around the short blonde woman. Then they followed the taller man through the door.
Once they were gone, it was as if the world released a collective breath, and resumed its unhurried pace.
***
Ellen Harvelle was wiping down the counter as Sam, Dean, and Chloe walked in. She threw the rag down and leaned against the bar.
“’Bout time you three got here,” she said.
Dean paused to glare at her. He shook his head and sat down on a stool.
Ellen passed him a beer, and then turned to address Chloe. “Your friend from Gotham was here.”
“Really?” Chloe tilted her head and narrowed her eyes.
By way of confirmation, she pulled a pre-programmed cell phone from underneath the bar. “He was pretty adamant that you call him using this.”
Chloe's lip twisted as she gave the phone an odd look. Sam and Dean looked at each other with twin speculative expressions. She picked up the phone, and wandered away to make the call. Dean stood to follow, but Ellen stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Easy there, Dean.”
Dean shot Ellen an annoyed look. But the owner of the roadhouse shook her head. “You don't need to ride shotgun for a phone call. She'll fill you in. 'Sides, I wanted to talk to you two a little bit.”
Sam and Dean shot each other uneasy glances, and then both leaned forward to talk.
Ellen looked back and forth between them. “In the past couple of weeks, demonic activity has been really dropping off. Before that . . . It was getting so's we were hearing about a new demon every week or two. Now . . .” She shook her head. “Nothing for three weeks. I wondered if you two have seen anything.”
Dean and Sam looked at each other. Neither one of them was naive enough to think that all the demons suddenly going quiet could ever be a good thing.
Dean finally spoke. “We had a warning - while we were on that headless horseman job.”
“It was a demon?” Ellen pierced him with a shrewd look.
“Unseelie,” Sam said. “It was escorting . . . a relative of Chloe's.”
“Is there anyone she doesn't know?” A smile tugged at the corner of Ellen's face.
“Not that we can tell,” Dean said. “So according to her intel, the demons will probably strike before this spring. If they're all getting quiet-like, I'd say that they're probably waiting.”
“I wonder for what?” Sam put in.
“Good question,” Ellen shook her head. She poured herself a shot of whiskey, and downed it in a single gulp.
* * *
The bar was mostly quiet. The middle of the day was a time for research or sleeping. Drinking and swapping stories came later. After the hunt.
Which meant that Chloe had a lot of space for privacy. She moved over to a corner table, and dialed the only pre-programmed number in the phone. After a brief moment, Batman's familiar voice came over the line.
“Tower?”
“Speaking,” she confirmed. “Why the Sydney Bristow treatment, B?”
“Personal satellite phone. Hooked up to a Waynetech satellite on a closed circuit. More difficult to access.”
“Paranoid much?” Chloe said.
“Within reason,” Batman said. “There are things that we need to discuss, and I would rather know beyond a shadow of a doubt what ears have access to our conversations.”
A cold feeling of dread crept up Chloe's spine. “What's happened?”
“Quite a lot, actually.” His voice sounded tired. “Where would you like me to start? With Lex or the clone?”
Chloe frowned. Neither one sounded like good news. “What happened to Laney?” She asked.
“I had her stashed in one of the Wayne summer bungalows in the Adirondacks. Under the care of a convalescent nurse. But last night it was hit.”
“Hit?” Chloe echoed incredulously. “Are we talking The Italian Job hit or Independence Day hit?”
Batman sighed. “More like something out of The Vanished. It's like they just decided to - get up and walk out. They left behind everything - clothes, money and the nurse's vehicle.”
“Security footage?” Chloe asked.
“Wiped clean.”
“Working theory?”
“I found traces of sulfur in the Nurse's room, and more in the clone's.”
Chloe sucked in her breath. “Demon then,” she said. “I take it you took precautions?”
“For all the good it did,” Batman said. Judging by the tone of his voice, Chloe guessed that he'd taken her clone's abrupt vanishing act personally. “They were both wearing the appropriate charms. The beds were ringed in salt. I had those designs painted over the clone's bed, as well, just like your contact in South Dakota suggested I use. I conjecture that the nurse was careless with his charm.”
“Great,” Chloe raked her fingers through her hair in an exasperated motion. “Let me guess . . . the nurse got possessed, and probably tore up the devil's trap and the salt line. Then he or one of his buddies took Laney.”
“I'm assuming,” Batman confirmed.
“Any idea why?” Chloe asked.
“My theory - you're not going to like it.”
“When have I liked anything about this whole mess?” Chloe chuckled mirthlessly.
“I think they're after your mother.”
The air seemed to leave Chloe's lungs in a rush. She leaned forward and gripped the edge of the table. “Mom?”
“My assumption is that there was some kind of tracking device hidden in the clone. Something not unlike what they had implanted in you during your brief stay in Lex's lab.”
“How do you figure?”
“Our enemies aren't stupid. They more-than-likely could guess how you would feel about seeing . . . someone with your features in a catatonic state. More than likely they expected you to place her in the same facility that your mother was staying in.”
“The thought crossed my mind,” Chloe muttered.
“Mine as well,” Batman said. “Which is why I put her up in one of my private residences, with a former Navy-seal hired as her caregiver.”
“You should have clued me in,” Chloe rebuked him.
“You've got enough on your mind as it is, Tower,” Batman said mildly. “Your mother is safe, and the clone - if she surfaces again, we'll know.”
“We'll see her again,” Chloe said. “She keeps turning up like the proverbial bad penny.” She paused to collect her thoughts. “What I'd really like to know - is what the interest in my mother is.”
“I don't think you need me to point that out, Tower,” Batman said.
“No, I don't,” Chloe said. “Lex has always wanted to be able to control the Smallville metas. But I hoped I was wrong.”
“Which brings me to my other bad news,” Batman said.
Chloe sighed. “Lex.”
“I was able to get a mole into Luthorcorp. He's not Lex anymore.”
“I hoped we were wrong,” Chloe said.
“So did I,” Batman said.
“You know, times like this are when I wish we could just turn him into a rat - the way they did Amy the witch on Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Chloe said. “Nice, humane. I'd even spring for one of those deluxe three story habitrail with a wheel he could run in all day and a supply of Ty Nant.”
The line was silent. Chloe figured that, once again, Batman just didn't get her sense of humor.
“It would solve everything, really.” Chloe said.
“I'm tracking shipments of equipment from Luthorcorp in an attempt to locate his cloning facilities, but in light of your Lilly 31 story, things are a little more difficult.”
With the speed that Batman segued, Chloe assumed that he'd mentally gone back in time and edited his memory, so that the whole Lex/rat/habitrail segment of the conversation never happened in his mind.
How typically Bat of him. She grinned, in spite of herself. “Whatever is wearing Lex like a cheap suit is not going to be stupid. Sadistic? Yes. Subtle? That depends on the demon. It seems like this demon is, anyway. But I would expect it to act completely through subsidiary companies that are nearly impossible to trace back to LexCorp.”
“Which is going to make finding the cloning facilities tougher.” Batman had his thoughtful, detective's voice engaged. “I may have more luck by tracking the flow of raw materials, Amino Acids, and the other building blocks of life that Lex would have to have to build a human being.”
“Other than building a secret demon clone army, what is our favorite follically-challenged demon suit doing?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Batman sounded frustrated by that. “It's like he's waiting on something.”
Chloe frowned at that. “Well, that's a cheerful thought.”