Gamma has pointed a tripod-mounted video camera at the park in Old Town, near the apartment of the woman the New Sentinels interviewed yesterday. What was her name? thinks Leo to himself. Tiffany. The memories of yesterday are blurred by battle and the confusion of childhood crystallizing itself into berserk fury.
The drafting board on his desk is covered with notes. Leo studies them carefully. Not everything he put down makes immediate sense. Some of it seems incomplete. But he gets the gist of it, with the help of coffee.
He looks up at the video feed of the park, watching his robots diligently weed and hoe. He's still watching it, letting the calming repetition of motion relax his mind, when Pneuma peeks into the office area.
"Leo, I want to talk to you about that speeding ticket."
He snaps his head around, an automatic reaction to that you're-in-trouble tone of voice he recognizes. The urge to make excuses surges. He suppresses it with one of the few clear memories he has of yesterday: I swear I'll make this right. "Alright. Let's talk."
"That was pretty reckless. You were street racing a guy connected to a bank robbery. Sure, one step removed. Sure, you got information. Was the cost worth it?"
Leo smiles and sips his coffee. "Niki was happy, but that's not the real benefit. I could have shaken him down, sure. I think Quorum was too smart for him. I was the right level of stupid." Pneuma's glare puts a stop to the humorous self-deprecation, so he grows more serious.
"The fact is that Ice Pirate hired a bunch of guys. They could have been hurt during the robbery. They could have hurt a lot of other people. What I was thinking was, what if that wasn't an option? What if there weren't so many people willing to knock over a bank for a supervillain?"
"And you decided to solve that problem with a street race." Pneuma isn't buying it, but Leo's not done.
"No. I decided to start solving it by establishing trust. Trust takes time. Relationships take time. A decade ago, when I was building you, Agent Waters came to visit me. I would have done anything to get him out of the house. Yesterday I made a phone call to him and got some good information."
Pneuma takes a seat in the spare office chair. "So you were trying to build a rapport with this 'Rip' fellow."
"Solar Girl sort of spooked them, and I'm not too subtle myself," Leo admits. He gestures with the coffee mug at the screen. "But ... just think. That park could be a garden. All it takes is some effort to take out the real weeds, and some time to plant the right seeds."
No comments:
Post a Comment