Wax Figurine | T. Drake ✔

[31]

Bruce was let in by Vanya just like he had expected. But soon as he stepped into Olivia's bio-dome, he instantly felt that someone had just left the place.

A whiff of cologne hung about the air mingled with the distinct scent of tobacco. He could pick up on those scents very easily because men from his social circle had similar scents surrounding them and he was familiar with the two.

However, it was strange for those scents to be present in a place where a nineteen-year-old girl lived all by herself.

Someone had definitely come to visit the bio-dome and left before he had reached.

He recalled that Tim had told him that he had found Olivia unconscious in the kitchen with her phone fallen beside her. So he went to check but found that her phone was missing.

"Vanya, did someone come here before Tim did to take Olivia to the hospital?" He asked.

"Olivia is not at home. No one came here."

"And did someone come here after Olivia and Tim left?"

"Software reset occurred half an hour ago. There are no records of what happened prior."

He paused in alarm; if Vanya had been reset then that was proof someone was there in Olivia's place after Tim had taken her. And whoever that person was could not only access the biodome but was also familiar enough for Vanya to take orders from.

There were only two people aside from Olivia who could have ordered Vanya like that. And to his knowledge, those two were already dead.

"Can you show me the safe visitor list?" He asked and the LED screen lit up with four names.

Gemma, Ashlar, Bruce, and Tim.

But he couldn't understand how someone other than those four names could access Olivia's house. The security measures around it were far too advanced to be hacked into by an intruder trying to break in.

There was something he was still unable to see.

"And may I watch the recordings from today?"

"You need Olivia's authorization before that," came the automated reply.

There was only one way left that he could use to try and find out what might have happened in Olivia's absence from her house. So he linked Olivia's PC to the Batcomputer and called Barbara to get her help.

Barbara Gordon was just as skilled in hacking and decoding software as Tim was. As he couldn't get Tim to look into it right then, Barbara was the best option.

And also the only option because there seemed no other way to find out than somehow hacking into Vanya's programming to retrieve what had been reset.

"Barbara, I have linked a PC to the Batcomputer," he explained, "that PC has access to Olivia's software and I need you to hack into it and recover the files that were just reset."

"I'll need some time, Bruce," she replied, checking the details of the software that Bruce was sending her through that PC, "it's unlike any I've worked with before... It might take a few hours."

"You must make sure that it doesn't take any longer than today," he told her, "all those files including the recordings will be deep cleaned and deleted permanently once twenty-four hours pass from the reset time. You have twenty-three hours starting now."

She was checking everything and trying to gain access, "I'll try to make it in less than that, just in case... Don't worry, I will see what I can do."

While Barbara worked on hacking into Vanya's programming, Bruce knew it was dangerous for him to stay within the bio-dome lest the software malfunctioned. But he had to look around and check thoroughly for any clues he could have missed.