[b]Warwick and Flores LLP Offices, Downtown Gotham City.
[i]9:45 AM.[/i] [/b]

"Good morning. This is a deposition in the matter of Estrella Bertinelli Incorporated v. Science and Technology Advanced Research Labs Group in U.S. District Court for Gotham County and taken at the offices of Warwick and Flores. The court reporter today is Marcia Snow from the firm of Gotham City Reporting. I am Mateo Flores, legal counsel for Ms. Bertinelli. Your names are?"

The stenographer was already busy faintly clicking away in the background, mixed only with the rain drops tapping against the glass windows of the room.

"Helena Bertinelli. B-E-R-T-I-N-E-L-L-I, Helena spelled the usual way." 

Her eyes never moved. It wasn't an attempt at intimidation to any other person seated at the long wooden conference table with it's high glossed surface. Surrounded by glass on three sides, her eyes were stuck on the one non-glass wall in the conference room on the 31st floor of the office building in downtown Gotham City. Most of that wall was glass, too, but at least it was a better view: a corner of another glass and steel tower just off to the right, with historic Gotham City off in the distance, including, if she focused hard, the four story stone building her father had once owned where he operated his empire out of; both legitimate, and illegal. 

"Gabriella Slate. S-L-A-T-E. Gabriella is spelled the usual way."

"Arthur Reeves, legal counsel for Mrs. Slate. R-E-E-V-E-S. Arthur spelled the normal way."

The wheel went back to her lawyer. "Mrs. Slate, what is your occupation?"

Blonde and middle aged; the granddaughter of Garrison Slate. Her pretty features were currently icy, hairline cracks caused by what could be irritation. "Chief Executive Officer for the Science and Technology Advanced Research Labs."

"Just ask the question."

Helena didn't need to move her line of sight to know that every set of eyes in the room were suddenly on her, and her only. She was interrupting the regular flow of the deposition, because she really didn't have the time to waste. 

Her lawyer was the first to twitch. "Helena--"

"--no, no, Mr. Flores, it's fine." Gabriella Slate's hairline cracks widened; her heart rate increased, the woman's posture in her chair changed from leaned back into the seat to leaning just slightly forward. 

"Gabriella," Reeves tried, but it didn't stop the CEO of S.T.A.R. Labs. 

"Mat."

There was a pause in the noise of the room after Helena spoke the demand by saying the name, for everything but the tapping of the court reporter on the stenograph and tapping of rain drops on windows. "Ms. Slate when Estrella Bertinelli Incorporate purchased the Gotham City S.T.A.R. Labs location and assets, the specifics of the deal were that S.T.A.R. Labs would disclose all current experiments, select staff to be selected by Estrella Bertinelli, and Gotham City site historical records going back fifteen years. When Estrella Bertinelli conducted a survey and accounting review of the assets they found inconsistencies. Did Estrella Bertinelli make S.T.A.R. Labs aware of the inconsistencies?"

Gabriella Slate leaned a fraction of an inch closer to the table. "Yes. We reviewed the same data and maintained everything had been transferred upon the conditions of the deal."

Finally Helena moved her attention from the windows, to the room, to the CEO of S.T.A.R. Labs seated across from her at the large table in the conference room of the multi-million dollar lawfirm. "So we're suing you for incompetence instead of fraud?"

"Why don't we take a break," Mateo Flores may have said it first, to let the room cool down, but Reeves was so quick to agree it was as if he had the exact same thought at the exact same time even if they'd just gotten started. Gabriella Slate had iced over once again, leaning all the way back and into her seat. Didn't matter; Helena could see the tell-tale signs of the woman's elevated stress levels. Didn't hurt Helena knew those exact signs from this exact woman up close and personal; very quietly, very briefly, long before taking over for her father and marrying a Silicon Valley tech wiz, Helena and Gabriella Slate had dated.

If you wanted to call it that. 

Helena could all but still feel the woman's neck gripped by her own hand in lustful flashback, seeing those veins flush to the surface. She knew what to look for already; their history just made Gabriella Slate the easiest read Helena ever had to make in a conference room. And the read was telling her that the woman was lying about something, that S.T.A.R. Labs was lying about something. When, not if, she found out what it was...

"I hope you're as smart as you think you are, Helena." 

Helena only smiled as the woman walked off. [i]You and me both.[/i]

[hr]

[b]S.T.A.R. Labs Gotham City Site. 
[i]12:21 AM.[/i] [/b]

Shadows within shadows, slipping past the barely concious in silence; so the Huntress stalked through the darkened vaults of a building closed for transition. Swift and silent she moved. The security firm hired by Estrella Bertinelli was one of the best in Gotham City, and that was no low bar. They were trained, they were armed. The two on duty were former US Army; both had served two tours in Anbar. Both young men lived the 17/5/2 life. Neither knew when the Huntress was mere feet away from them in the building they were assigned to guard. 

On their best day they couldn't catch her a mediocre day. Today was one of her better days. The building was empty, said the naked eye, and the paperwork caught up in a legal battle between S.T.A.R. Labs and Estrella Bertinelli. The latter had shared instrumental readings stating an outsized energy presence in the building. Either there was something hidden in the walls, or there was some sort of lingering affects caused by...[i]something[/i]. The readings, tested and repeated five times at various times of day and on differing days, spawned the very legal battle that took up most of her morning. During the time she usually gets the majority of her sleep--little of it that she normally got. 

Gabriella Slate's body told her what scientific instrumental readouts could not; that S.T.A.R. Labs were hiding something. As both the guards starting to make a second round and talk about some American sport, the Huntress slipped past for the first time, and up the stairs of the three story building. The readouts were the same on the second floor as they had been on the first floor. And on the third floor they were the same as they had been on the second and first floors. It was enough to make the woman to arch an eyebrow, and re-consider. 

The basement was concrete and a vast landscape of nothingness cloaked in blackness; she needed only to past the two guards one more time on the stairs from second to first floor to reach it. The drip-drip-drip of a leaky pipe off in the distance, doors shrouded in ghostly green emergency light that didn't extend more than a foot in either direction past the door. And then the detector on her wrist spiked. Wild, sudden, past the limits of the digital readout. Few things made a predator in the dark blink in confusion--this did. 

[i]"Do you really know what side of the glass you're on, Ms. Bertinelli?"[/i] 

Her heart stopped. Her head darted, her body tensed, every hair on body stood on end. Few were better at detecting from which direction a sound had come than a hunter in silence, but what training and instinct were telling her could not be. No sound came from every direction at the same time. Who? What? The moment her secret was known was the moment Helena Bertinelli was buried and dead. Bruce Wayne could survive outed, the Waynes could survive it even if Bruce might not. But the Cosa Nostra would bring every Bertinelli line to extinction in every country it was found the world over. 

The thought terrified. Yet the Huntress wasn't scared. The Huntress didn't scare in the dark. 

Only one sound cut through darkness and silence in that moment; the sound of a pistol crossbow being pulled from it's holster, and her thumb switching the smartbolt in the crossbow to explosive and scatter. The guards would hear; the Huntress didn't care. If they were wise they'd call it in and investigate. If they weren't...it wasn't her concern. Her cape snapped in the room as she circled the spot where the readings were highest. Gotham City was an old city; the kind of city that was built upon the decaying bones of it's past lives. The secret of S.T.A.R. Labs, she became convinced, wasn't hidden in the walls--it was hidden under the fucking floors. Enough distance was put between her and her aim point, and the crossbow came to life. A half dozen little red dots illuminated once, twice--[b]BANG.[/b] 

Something roared, rumbled, and howled. Ground crumbled away from the Huntress, her body stumbled and her perfect balance was betrayed by the structure in which she felt so suddenly trapped.  Her beloved darkness replaced by blinding light; a crimson glare that [i]saw[/i] her as steel came rushing up to meet her falling body with a crushing crash. The world froze, and then one tiny spark hit her shoulder, then the back of her neck, then upper body. One spark became a dozen, a dozen became countless in seconds. She was burning, the Huntress realized before it was too late, before she couldn't escape, couldn't move, couldn't even breath. 

All she could do was scream.