Justin was busy cataloguing as much of the cadaver as he could with his scanners, especially concentrating on the dead man’s face so he could attempt a reconstruction in the future, when he suddenly realised he was picking up movement in the hallway. He couldn't tell from this distance who it was, but decided it probably meant his time was up.

He felt his non-existent heart stutter as the drawer refused to close, but after a couple of seconds, whatever was catching gave way, throwing Justin off-guard enough that the drawer slid shut with clang. He realised that whoever had been coming down the corridor had to have heard the noise, and was proved right as he became aware of someone outside the door, fumbling with their ID against the reader.

A quick burst of his rotors and the Phantom settled underneath the autopsy table and powered down, cutting the motors and shifting back to its basic white colouring, all the better to blend in to the white and chrome of the room.

He heard the door open as someone stuck their head inside.

"Keith?" A confused voice called out, and when there was no reply, there was a huff, and the door shut as the attendant headed off, apparently unconcerned that a zombie uprising could be starting right this minute in his morgue. Justin supposed that apocalyptic concerns probably didn't survive a week on the night shift, or perhaps they just increased the appeal. Another Stealth notification popped up, and Justin toggled them off, like with combat and Awareness notifications, if he was gaining Stealth skill, it was probably a bad time to be notified about it.

He waited until his sensors had not-Keith heading into the break room, before restarting his rotors and coming out of hiding. A quick jab at the door release button, and the Phantom was swooping back down the corridors to the fire exit. The small drone struggled with the bar for longer than he was happy with, before getting it pressed down far enough that the door finally swung open, and Justin was off into the night.

He was on his way back to the workshop when Shade called in to report his success, apparently he'd managed to copy the drive just in time, since the feds were now on the scene, pushing to get access to the security systems. Justin rerouted his flight to include picking up the copied drive.

Once the drone was back home, he had it settle into its cradle to recharge, and put the drive aside to decrypt later.

Now he was less worried about the fate of Barrows, it was time to divvy up his ill-gotten gains from earlier.

First he siphoned off half the money, sending it as an anonymous donation to PACH, the Michigan-based 'Post Accident and Crisis Housing' charity, that helped repair and rebuild after natural disasters and villain attacks. He'd heard a lot of heroes donated their time to similar charities as a way to make up for the destruction caused by their fights. and the good PR it received probably didn't hurt either. He should suggest it to Division later, community restoration projects would be a good way for a hero like Revenant to start removing some of the stigma his appearance brought.

Getting back to the distribution of loot, he couldn't think of a way to directly transfer the money to his new solar business without raising all sorts of red flags once someone asked to see the books. It was fine for his Detroit-based enterprise to be a little opaque, it was more of a research and development lab than a company that would need to deal with investment audits and profit shares.

Luckily, thinking about PACH had brought charities to mind. As non-profits, they were under a lot less scrutiny than businesses, and had a number of protections in place to shield donor information. If he established an international charity focused on promoting clean energy, he could put the stolen money to good use, and should be able to route some of it into his own venture as part of an innovation grant.

In fact, now that he thought about it, he should really see if there were any actual grants available to apply for. Or even better, he could make his currently-theoretical future partner do it for him!

He considered the data drive as he wondered what to focus on next. He'd honestly been feeling a little ambivalent about it since he'd discovered it was likely Barrows hadn't actually died in the explosion. He'd been intending to step back from heroing for a few days to get his shit together, but there was just too many reasons for him to get further involved.

To start with, it was likely Barrows was involved with whoever set the bomb, and so Justin was already caught up in the situation, and with Shade present for the attack, his team were likely to want to go after whoever was responsible. Could he really not help when he knew he was the only one capable of cracking the drive.

On a more self-interested note, it would help him level his Coder skills, and there was a good chance it would let him get familiar enough with Michigan's system architecture and protocols, that he might finally be able to gain access to some of the more useful state databases and systems.

Decided, Justin had a manipulator plug in the drive, mentally cracked his knuckles, and settled in to begin decrypting.

He was more than a little surprised when a section of code immediately broke away from the data and attacked him. It reared up to strike, rather reminding Justin of when he'd played in a rock pool as a child, and a little crab no bigger than his fingernail had scuttled at him, claws 'snapping' in the air. The small section of code evoked the exact same feeling of startlement and incredulous humour, and like that day so many years ago, Justin reeled back, caught between shock and laughter as the aggressive little code snipped and spat at him.

It was strangely put together, the language complex and different from any human code he'd seen before now. He sent a small analysis packet at it, and watched in amusement as it 'sniffed' at the section of code before tearing it to pieces and consuming the remnants. It was obviously a system defence program of some sort, meant to strip intrusive code, and yet it was simple enough that his device had copied it over along with all the data.

He quickly built up a cage of more resilient, structured code, and prodded the little program inside. It would probably be dangerous to keep it on his system for too long, but he wanted to give it a closer look later, to see if he could figure out the strange code and perhaps replicate its function.

It looked so forlorn inside its digital cage that Justin gave it some code packets to chew through, and since ERA was still busy looking for a business partner for him, he assigned IRA to keep an eye on it.

It was taking him a lot longer than he would have expected to crack open any of the data, and Justin once again entertained the idea that the state systems were under another super’s influence. It would certainly explain the strange, aggressive piece of code that had attacked him earlier.

He was coming up with a plan to find out who it was, when a notification interrupted him.

Hidden Quest Completed!

How Firm a Foundation

Type: Hidden, Hero, Organization, Chain

Description: Build bridges not walls.

Goal: Found a Hero Team.

Difficulty: Difficult

Rewards: 600 xp

Hidden Quest Completed!

Unity is Strength

Type: Hidden, Hero, Organization, Chain

Description: A true team requires trust, commitment, and for each member to put aside their own need to be invulnerable.

Goal: Join a Hero Team.

Difficulty: Average

Rewards: 400 xp

See the Team page for more details.

Congratulations!

You are now Level 5

Rewards: +1 Attribute Point, +2 Character Points.

You currently have 1 unspent Attribute Point, and 5 unspent Character Points.

He ruminated on the strange timing for a few seconds, before realising that it had been exactly a week since he'd accepted the team name after the ambush. It seemed so long ago in his timeframe that he almost didn't make the connection.

There must be requirements to gaining an official team tag within the game's system, obviously to separate the temporary, spur of the moment teams from the established, longterm ones. Why that distinction was necessary, he really wasn't sure, but he was happy to take the rewards all the same.

He accessed the team page, and got his answer. Apparently 'official' teams were given a lot more options.