A quiet Sunday morning, and Doug's apartment looks empty, save the kittens that wander through the living room looking left and right for /someone/ to come and give them breakfast. The living room is darkened, except for the glow of a laptop on the coffee table, hooked by a couple of cables to a bright-red iPhone. The remnants of a pizza (with meat, as opposed to eggplant) lie in an open pizza box nearby. All evidence points to a nerd's all-nighter. Doug himself is nowhere to be seen; presumably, he's crashed out in the bedroom beyond the open door in the hallway. The only thing that seems really /unusual/ is the piece of paper taped to the window that opens on the fire escape. Clearly printed, in actual handwriting and not a computer font, it reads:
Spider-Kid --
I wasn't kidding about not answering windows. Go around and come to the door. DO NOT break into my apartment. I'm serious.
D.
P.S. If you /do/ break into my apartment, your cover is blown.
There's a smiley face with spider-goggles drawn at the bottom. In red marker.
What is the sound of an 'almost knock'? Whatever the answer, that's precisely what Doug hears at his window. It's soon followed by a dull rattle of the fire escape--followed, several minutes later, by a slow, steady rapping at the door.
When Doug checks to see who it is... there's a kid in a ski-mask with bright yellow goggles standing out in front of his apartment door, shuffling about and looking *very* nervous. He adjusts the backpack behind him, and--the moment the door is opened--*immediately* darts in. "I have to make a call on my phone," he immediately blurts out.
Doug is slow to answer the door, emerging from the bedroom in a pair of sweatpants and not much else. He yawns as he pads to the door, looking accusatorily at the clock, because it's /totally/ its fault that morning comes so early. He gets to the door, and swings it open, jumping back as the kid pushes his way in. "Whoa. Good morning to you, too," he says, swinging the door shut. "Did Jackson feed you breakfast?" He moves through the living room, snagging up Peter's phone. and detaching the cables before handing it over. "Interesting information on that phone, dude."
Peter immediately snatches the phone up. In an instant, his thumbs are twiddling with it, flipping through to the dial display, punching in one key after the other. A moment later, and... he's shoved the phone up against the side of his head, talking.
"Yeah hey it's--" A look at Doug. "--me! Anyway, yeah, um, I'm okay, just kind of slept in and I know I said I'd call you first thing in the morning but I'm *totally* sorry about that and yeah I'll be home soon don't worry..." Vaguely, Doug can hear the sound of a muted voice on the other line. Peter continues:
"Uh... yeah, we had--lots of fun. There was--huh? Ohright, yeah, I'll tell you about it when I get back. Um... bye!" Peter immediately shoves the phone into his jacket pocket--then peers up at Doug.
"You saw the avi file?" he says, and then he adds: "The green flying things. *Those* are the murder-drones."
Doug listens, his lips pursing as if holding back some remark or commentary as the kid speaks to whoever it is. He sniffs, and heads into the kitchen, pulling a couple of boxes of sugary cereal and a carton of milk out and setting them on the counter. "I saw them," he says, glancing over as he pulls bowls out of a cabinet. "I had a little trouble believing it wasn't CGI, but that video was clean." He grimaces as he looks at Peter, and waves a hand at the kid. "You're gonna have to take that off, man," he says of the ski mask and goggles. "Sitting here talking about murderdrones with a guy in a mask feels a /little/ too much like I'm living in a comic book." He takes some of the sting out of it by smiling. "I promise that I will not out you as the Spider-Kid to anyone." He makes an intricate geometric design over the center of his bare chest with one finger. "Nerds' honor."
"I... I'm kinda comfortable with the mask," Peter responds, before saying: "Wait, 'outing me'? You're serious? What do you..." His hand fishes back into his pocket, touching the phone--beneath the mask, his eyebrows knit together, putting together dots and jagged lines. "It... doesn't matter," and now Peter's jumping, landing in a crouch on the nearest chair--he likes perching on things. Like a frog. Particularly when he's nervous. "Those were MAVs--UAVs. The military's been experimenting them for like *EVER*," Peter adds, although for a teenager, '*EVER*' could be as long as two or three years. "But not as weapons--as things like... devices to deal with hazardous materials--bomb disarmanent. Survelliance in urban war-zones... stuff like that. But these were--these were *weaponized*," he adds. "They explode! And--then there's the big one. But I don't think that big one works yet. I didn't read a lot of the emails, but the few I read--I don't think it's gonna work for a *while*. If at all."
The fact that Peter's fully knowledgeable about MAVs/UAVs might come to some surprise, until you consider the fact that Peter is a *NERD*, and MAVs are a type of *ROBOT*, and therefore they occupy the subset of AWESOME THINGS WHICH PETER CONSTANTLY READS ABOUT.
Doug frowns, and lifts a shoulder. "Suit yourself," he says. "But I hate playing Commissioner Gordon." He pulls out spoons, and sets them on the counter. "I know enough to put some shit together," he says frankly, and lifting his eyebrows. "It's a phone; it's not the CIA mainframe. You futzed stuff up pretty good in there, though. He couldn't tell me anything, at first." He grins, and holds up the boxes, shaking them inquisitively. "Sugar Frosted Iron-Os, or Wacky Wakandanuts?" He sets them down, content to let Peter serve himself, it seems, as he pours out some Iron-Os for himself. "Those may be why my dad was called in to consult," he says, with a wrinkle of his nose. "His lab specializes in genetics, and genetic research. I just didn't think it was so mad scientist." He grimaces, reaching for the milk. "I'm going to crack his systems tonight, and see if he has anything in his files that might shed some light on the 'Sentinel' project."
"I would *think* they'd keep the *really* sensitive stuff off the internal network," Peter starts to babble, "though I remember reading about Chinese hackers getting into the Pentagon's system a while back and--focus," he says, catching himself. "The important thing--the thing that I really want to know--the address you got. For Prometheus. It looks like it's the right one?" Peter asks, before adding: "The one with... the cages?" That last bit is added with just a hint of dread; like he doesn't want to go any further down that line of discussion.
Peter doesn't move for any cereal. Not *yet*, anyway. The boy seems content to feast on nothing more than nervous energy. Where the hell does he *get* all that energy, anyway? He's fidgeting a mile a minute.
"Weellll..." Doug drags out the word as he pours milk into his bowl. "They might, and they might not. WIthout actually getting into their systems -- which, you got lucky that the files were so broken. Your phone would have been a nice paperweight if some of them had been intact." He twirls his spoon in the air. "But, without getting directly into their systems, I can't tell if they're working a shadow net under the internal network. It's the kind of thing that would make sense, dealing with ultra-sensitive military stuff." The spoon plunges into the cereal, giving it a stir. "I don't /know/ that it's the same place as you're looking for. It could just be a clearing house for equipment. A lot of those addresses I found likely are." Then he's being quiet, shoveling a spoonful of Sugar Frosted Iron-Os into his mouth and chewing thoughtfully.
Peter starts to rock, back and forth, steady-but-slow. "I don't think Project Sentinel is the dangerous bit," Peter begins. "I mean--uh, I'm not a scientist, but--what they're trying to do sounds kind of *impossible*." He's leaving out the fact that he's basically doing six impossible things every day before breakfast. And that he's currently talking to a guy who talks with computers (who talk back). And that the person who's couch he crashed on can command *LIGHT* to do his bidding.
"The drones are what worries me, because even if you do find out that this is the place with... the cages, those drones are gonna be there. And--uh, it was *really* hard for me to dodge those things," Peter says. "And... it's usually not really hard for me to dodge *anything*."
Doug chews slowly, swallowing with a precise jerk of his larynx. "The drones are an off-shoot of the Sentinel project," he says. "Or a predecessor. And, I'm thinking that the use of the word 'terminate' in their operations description leads me to think that they /are/ a threat." He points at Peter with a spoon. "It's all tied together, with my dad's greasy fingerprints all over it." He regards the twitchy teenager. "If we could get one that was largely undamaged, or one that was out of commission, I can figure out if they're acting with individual AI or working on a network signal. If it's the second, it can likely be shut off."
He wrinkles his nose. "That's probably going to be a hard trick to pull off, though. Unless we had some sort of net, or cable...."
"Oh that's easy," Peter says, and suddenly, he's thrown his backpack right on top of the table--popped it open--and started rummaging inside. Shift, clunk, clank, shuffle... in the next instant, he's pulled out an odd looking device--it resembles a mix between a miniature super-soaker and a caulking gun. He points it at Doug's cereal bowl, and...
...*SPLRCH*. Suddenly, Doug's cereal bowl has a big lump of white-ish gray goo splatted to its side--about the width of a fist. Should Doug try to move it, he finds the material gives *slightly*... stretching like an elastic band... but refuses, quite thoroughly, to allow either the bowl or the table to be dislodged from one another.
"I nicked it while I was in there," Peter says. "Gums up just about *anything*. There were a bunch of emails about it--it's one of the anti-mutant weapons."
"Ew. Did your gun just spooge on my breakfast?" Doug seems a bit concerned by this fact, and he pulls at his bowl experimentally. "Oh, I read about this stuff," he says. "But it's not like I pictured. I thought it was more...silly-stringy." He FROWNS as the bowl refuses to move. "I can see where it would be effective, though." He takes his spoon, breakfast forgotten as he pokes the substance with the handle. "If you could figure out a way to narrow the point of emission and increase the pressure, it would be more string-like and less like you were throwing glue at someone." He starts to bounce, thumping his spoon against his thigh. "I am having a really Bad Idea that could be sort of awesome."
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