Robin' the Freezer

[Robin Stanton]

Robin sits on a roof a block or so away from the 'Freezer'. She'd pulled up what info she could at an 'Internet Cafe', a place that she felt could not possibly be for anything but anonymously accessing information you didn't want traced back to you. She'd even printed some things out, making her feel even more like some kind of old-timey gangster. Not that it gave her that much more to work with than what she'd already gotten from Giancarlo other than a very rough building footprint. It was some kind of fancy storage facility reinforced against mutant entry by some kind of sub-zero passage. The CCTV she wasn't too worried about, but extreme cold was one of those things that didn't play well with Stanton-Clay and it implied the potential of other anti-mutant measures. Especially considering that it apparently kept Ryan from doing so. There was no way they hadn't asked the mutant who could phase through walls and worked for them.

The obvious play to get in would be to find a fresh crime-scene, get herself bagged as evidence and filed away in the Freezer. Getting out was a much bigger hurdle, even if she was willing to trip alarms on her way out, which wouldn't be ideal but hey. And that's ignoring the obvious issue. She'd be actively destroying evidence, going against what she was setting out to do here, which was bringing down the Glooze dealers. Right? But this sounded like it mainly concerned some goon, not anything that would seriously endanger the whole operation. And if it was she could always change her mind and leave without taking the evidence.

She's borderline tempted to just wing it. Learn about the procedures on her way in and then improvise. But if she gets busted she wouldn't have a lot of good options. Sure, she's got an identity that's good enough for most things but too much scrutiny would surely have it come apart. And possibly implicate Ashlie. So she'd have to hope that her Dad would figure out she's missing and she absolutely does not want to get her ass pulled out of the fire like that.

What then? Impersonate a cop? Doable but also very detectable and doesn't actually give her the right to pull random evidence. She could try to get herself plugged into a computer as an USB stick and put in a phoney request to retrieve the right evidence; let them hand deliver it out. Maybe, but she's not at good as being a compatible piece of electronics as Dad. Even if she takes over a computer with her power she'd struggle to produce workable network commands, even if she knew how to spoof an email or something. She needed someone or something that could get out reliably and without being scrutinized. Something they wouldn't have thought of in their mutant paranoia...

[Narrator]

There were three entrances where a normal human being might be able to enter The Freezer.

The front door is, well, a front door. It was protected by badge access, and led directly into the intake hall -- where confiscated items are logged, bagged and barcoded. It was, from what Robin could tell, always staffed, no exceptions. And yes, plenty of CCTV was pointed in that direction; whoever or whatever went through that door would be recorded.

There was a loading bay in the back, also staff-only, with keypad and badge entry as well. If Robin could overcome the need to actually enter a code and have a badge, that might be less physically watched, but the camera system may still be an issue.

On the roof was a high-mounted ventilation louver, protected by mesh. That was something it'd be easier to slink through for someone who had only a tangential relationship to physicality. And the ventilation system was important for a building with a sub-zero corridor -- hence 'The Freezer'.

From what Robin could tell on the map, this was a long, refrigerated hallway with sealed metal doors. Insulated, with orthogonal piping running overhead. (Piping to what? Some sort of coolant? A security measure? And at least that piping had to be running through some sort of space.) Access to this corridor was, again, triggered from the outside -- entering without authorization would trigger...well, it wasn't immediately clear what, at least, not without taking a look.

The other end of the corridor led to the evidence vault -- sliding steel racks, temperature controlled lockers, acid-resistant bins, a foam sprinkler system, and a drain system leading to a catch basin below -- this was a place used to dealing with potentially dangerous substances and the like, so a chemical-resistant draining system was a plus. And, also on that end of the sub-zero corridor, the overwatch annex -- a security room where feeds from the cameras looped, with sensors triggering for temperature spikes, tampering, unauthorized access, the works. Being on the far end of the sub-zero chamber made it hard to reach that room directly -- but it also meant that any response time from there would be theoretically delayed...