ArchivedLogs:The Playing Field

The Playing Field
Dramatis Personae Alice Lambton & one of her government handlers.
In Absentia	2013-04-18 '
Location Alice's Office
High atop a Manhattan skyscraper is a rooftop office. Three walls are made of floor-to-ceiling glass; the fourth is granite embedded with a single elevator door. The decor has a strong Japanese influence, all gleaming floors and low furniture. To the left, two steps lead up to a dais with a desk. To the right, a sideboard with a potted orchid and brandy decanters, with glasses. A sitting area claims the center of the office, made up of a set of soft green couches facing each other over a table decorated with an English silver tea service. A small indoor fountain burbles in the corner, and double-doors lead out onto a rooftop patio that has been turned into a sky garden. The view is exquisite. A call was made two days ago on a secure line. It lasted for exactly sixteen seconds and consisted of Alice saying, "I request a meeting, I have information pertinent to your interests. I will be in my office Friday at noon." Then she hung up. The die was cast. Come Friday, her staff has been prepped. A lone young woman remains at the reception desk to greet their visitors and direct them into the office. The phones have been unplugged, the computers shut off, the remainder of the staff sent off with a rare and precious day off. Alice, in a suit of dark blue silk, is in the final stages of preparing tea. Behind her, the windows show the sun-swept heights of Manhattan, glistening with glass and reflecting the gleeful blue of the sky. The woman who arrives, one minute before noon, is coincidentally in blue as well. Perhaps it is a blue kind of day; hers is a few shades lighter than Alice's, an elegant neat skirt suit paired with sensible flat shoes, a dark attache case held in one hand. Her dark hair is in short-cropped tight curls, thick and natural, and the crows feet beginning to creep in at her eyes are the first signs of age setting in to her dark face. She greets the receptionist with a small smile, a small nod, and the smile remains in place as she is shown into the office. "Ms. Lambton," she greets. "Maxine Wilson." "Ms. Wilson." Alice, who had taken a seat on one of the couches to tidy the arrangement of cream and sugar, rises again to greet her visitor. "It's a pleasure, thank you for coming. Would you care for some tea?" It is, of course, important that all of the attendant rituals are observed before business is engaged in. Her smile is warm, open, pleasant, the way she gestures to the couches graceful. But her eyes remain reserved, the thoughts behind them no doubt still caught up with the information that prompted her to make the call. "I wish I could say that this will be a pleasant meeting, we might be here for some time." Maxine nods, heading to take a seat on one side of the couch, brushing her skirt neat and smooth as she sits. "You have my time for the rest of the afternoon. One sugar, please. No cream." She sets the case down by her feet, ankles crossing. "New York has been quite full of news, lately. We're interested to hear your take on events." "Unfortunately, the news I have is less than positive." Alice sinks down onto the opposite couch, neatly crossing her ankles and leaning forward to prepare the tea. As she pours, she says, "Of all of the news I have to share, that concerned Mr. Osborn is the most pressing. He has made threats that concern the Project. Threats that, at any other time, would lead me to recommend that he be removed from the playing field." Maxine's expression doesn't change, regarding Alice with a quiet thoughtfulness and a single tip of her head. "Mr. Osborn has been a concern of ours, as well. This new project of his --" Her lips press together, and she watches the tea preparations. "Any other time? What is diferent about this time?" "This time it might arouse suspicion," Alice says with a thin blade of a smile. "He has demanded we award him the contracts that were denied because of this new project of his, and his recent behavior. If we do not award him these contracts, he intends to release information about the Project. Names, addresses, data. If he disappears, the same will happen. He intends to use his association with us as leverage to get what he wants. Namely, the funding necessary to build his school." "His type always is arrogant," Maxine doesn't smile; one finger taps lightly against her knee, though past this she is just still. "Do we /know/ how much he knows and how much he is bluffing? I suppose that is a place to start. If you do not know, learn. We'll make sure you have the resources to investigate, in funding and personnell. The doctors at the Project have access to some more unconventional means of acquiring information." "He knows enough to be a threat. He has met with Dr. Toure and myself on several occasions, and has claimed to have recorded those conversations. I believe him to be paranoid enough to have done so. He provided tech security to the facility we recently lost, and has received information in turn from Dr. Toure and one of our subjects on how to improve /his/ tech. The man is a menace. I also believe he is either insane or some sort of...mutant," Alice says, with the sort of polite disdain appropriate to teatime. She lifts her own cup of tea to sip from it. Maxine does smile, here, small and thin. "The two are hardly mutually exclusive." She leans forward to pick up her tea, fingers curling around it. She rests the cup on her knee, glancing down at the steam and then back up at Alice. "I feel he might be overestimating the amount of leverage he holds. There have been three separate proposals introduced in the legislature at various times for projects very similar to ours. They tend to be shot down on considerations of funding and feasibility, not on any matter of moral outrage." Alice inclines her head towards the other woman to acknowledge the point. "It is less a matter of how able he is to damage our work, and more an issue of him being willing to /try/. The man is impossible to control and all too willing to attempt to harm our interests in order to further his own. I would be much more comfortable with the situation if he were neutralized in some fashion," she says with a soft, gentle sigh. "A heart attack, perhaps. Or a stroke." "Yes, certainly having someone as reckless as Osborn loose is not likely to end well." Maxine lifts her cup, takes a slow sip of tea. "We had come to tell you to work on insinuating some of our own people into his planned Institute, but, given his behavior I don't feel it's wise for his plans to go ahead at all. For now, we'll ensure that his sources of funding dry up. I'd like you to make sure this Institute of his his as many roadblocks as possible. I don't imagine it should be too hard to convince people they do not want a mutant army training in their backyard. And in the meantime --" Her lips press together again. "In the meantime, we have ways of making sure he forgets what he knows. There are /some/ places metahuman abilities come in handy, so long as they can be controlled." "Mm, quite." Alice gracefully accepts the less fatal solution to the Osborn problem, though another sigh marks her reluctance to do so. "The idea /itself/ is not a bad one. Given enough time, and with the proper people in charge. I'll make certain the city planners are on board to prevent any progress and contact some of my friends at the Post and Bugle, to work up some opinion pieces." "The idea itself is not a bad one, with the right people spearheading it. The idea of Mr. Osborn leading a mutant army, though, is not one to inspire confidence." Maxine lowers her cup to her lap again. "If the man were less of a chaotic element it could be useful to let the project develop and see how it could be used. Somewhat like this Mendel Clinic business. Still. Registration," she says, almost pensively, "is soon on the horizon, and efforts there will bring their own crop of subjects to consider." Alice settles back, lightly balancing the teacup in the saucer and looking towards the window as she considers. "True enough," she muses. "Are there any plans to reestablish our own facility? Perhaps closer to the city? I've made a list of suggestions that should do a great deal to help tighten security response, in the event of another terrorist raid. And with that Clinic running, we will need a facility of our own should the crop be a good one." "For the moment, the resources and records from the lost facility have been dispersed to other ones farther away, but reopening a location near the city would come in handy in the coming months. I do not predict the Clinic opening for quite some months, though it should take near that long to establish a new locale. Finding a suitable /site/," Maxine pauses to take another sip of tea, small, "is one of the biggest hurdles. Security concerns rule out most available spaces. Although," she says, continuing in the same quiet-neutral tone, "going public on our own some time after registration has passed would mitigate at least some of the need for /secrecy/, if not security." "No, it would require long-term planning," Alice agrees, "though given the times involved, it might be prudent to begin that planning now." She slips back into her own thoughtful silence, sipping tea and studying the skyline. Then her smile appears again as her gaze shifts back to Maxine. "It would certainly simplify /dealing/ with these activists. Public attacks on public government research facilities that have received the public's approval is far more risky than doing the same in secret." "The tide of public opinion could carry them straight from being activists to being terrorists. New York does not -- have a high opinion of terrorists. Perhaps you could lean on some of your contacts in the press to smooth the way for these announcements. Registration, as well, though from the looks of things that will pass a good deal more smoothly." Maxine doesn't smile, not quite, but there's a hint of it lingering around her eyes. "There are a lot of changes on the horizon," she says, evenly, "We have a lot to discuss."