Fic: SV/Batverse: Could End Up A Story (6/7)
Title: Could End Up A Story 6/7
Author: fryadvocate
Disclaimer: I own neither any of the characters in SV nor in the DC 'verse.
Summary: Chloe meets Gotham by accident, on her way from one story to the next.
The apartment didn't have a working elevator, so they took the stairwell. They passed a man wearing filthy clothes at the door to the stairs; the smell of homelessness something that Chloe knew from any of her other seedy Metropolis stories.
The guy that they were going to see used to be union, wasn't any more. He wanted back in though, as if the cold of not being in the club was finally taking its toll. In Gotham, unlike in Metropolis, unions seemed like they were still the brass knuckle gangs of the working class.
"Union or nothing," Slam had said, not looking away from the road. "He wants back in, and the bosses will let him if he helps get Luthor out of town. It just takes one business not working union for everyone to start."
"So, we're his ticket back in?" Chloe asked. The weird foreignness of her new story was just starting to get to her. She was the person that other people used, because she'd never come back, she'd never want a favor in return. If they were in Metropolis, no one would have made that mistake.
The guy was on the third floor, past the stain of urine and the black graffiti on the wall. He opened his door with resignation, looked down at the pathetic carpet when he let them in. He didn't offer them anything to drink, not that Chloe would have taken it.
"You're them?" he asked, sitting down on a worn couch.
"Yeah," Slam said.
Chloe pulled out her recorder, turned it on, and said, "So, what's your name?" in a voice that was meant to break the tension, the way it had in so many other interviews.
Chuckling, the guy said, "Well, I used to be Brian McCarthy, but then I got involved in this Luthor shit, and I don't know if I want to be that guy anymore."
"Sure," Slam said, irritated. "You want to be fucking John Doe. Fine. Tell us about Luthor."
"When I took the job, they said it was going to be low key, your average grab and jab. You know, slot a, tab b stuff." He ran a hand through his hair, and pushed a packet of developed photos over towards Chloe. "It wasn't. The first day, we put together some pretty high end metal stuff, but it's like anything, you do your small piece and the guy behind you does his and you don't know what the fuck it's supposed to look like unless you're the last guy on the line."
The pictures were bad - taken with a desperate need not to get caught that bled through with the machinery and fingers obscuring most photos. The most green photographer on The Daily Planet's staff could have done better - but they showed what Chloe needed to see: missiles, what looked like good sized anti-aircraft missiles, but she'd have to ask an expert. She handed the ones she was looking at to Slam. His whole face tightened.
"So, what made you start getting suspicious?" Chloe asked.
The guy twitched, and looked around. "Do you want some coffee?" he asked. "I want some coffee."
Still shaking a little, he walked into his half kitchen, grabbed a mug from the table and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot. The bottle of whiskey was next to the pot and he unscrewed it, poured in more than Chloe would have drunk even at happy hour.
It was afternoon in Gotham, the sun falling yellow orange into his kitchen. It was a desperate hour.
"There was this guy, right, this guy I've known my whole life. He lived down the street from me when I was a kid. He was the first one to get expelled from our high school. He said to me, 'hey, hey get out of the union so you can come work this job. Best money of your life.' and I did because, you know, times aren't great for us down here and it really was the best money I've ever earned." He drank a long swallow of the coffee, set it down on the table and some splashed out. "And one day, he starts getting sick really fast, faster than anything I've ever seen, and I didn't grow up in a neighborhood where sick was a cold. He got these spots, these blotches, and he started throwing up, right there on the line."
He walked back to his couch, slumped down, cradling the coffee between his hands. "And these doctors came out, real fast, in white coats and got him loaded into an ambulance, but when I called his house all there was this message that he and his wife had gone on vacation. So, I figure that they've got him stashed somewhere or Luthor forked over the vacation so he wouldn't sue." He paused again, finished off his coffee. "Only, that wasn't it. Because that was a few weeks ago, and he hasn't come back yet. His apartment's up for rent and it's like they erased him because, other than his old lady, there isn't any family. Union doesn't care because he broke rank."
Chloe had stopped shuffling through the pictures looking for the green of Kryptonite; it wasn't there. The guy was shaking again, shuffled back into the kitchen and poured himself whiskey again, without the pretense of coffee.
Whatever had happened didn't sound like any Kryptonite poisoning Chloe had ever heard of, but it sounded a lot like nuclear radiation poisoning. She shuddered.
"I don't have any family except for this brother in LA, and he wouldn't notice if I was gone. I want back in the union, because they'd notice, you know?"
Nodding, Chloe watched him swallow down the whiskey, put the mug in the sink and return to his seat. "Have you ever seen anything glow green around the plant? Any rocks? Anything special that they want you to be careful handling?"
"That was the thing, this guy, Craig, worked farther on from me and when he left I started handling his section. They told me I had to be very careful when I put my tab a in slot b. Basically it's just a bunch of these... Here, let me show you." He stood, a little unsteady and went into the only other room, came back out with a capsule the size of his hand wrapped in a plastic zip lock bag. "I got it out because I thought it would help. Here."
Chloe took it in her hands, it felt warm, and sloshed a little, like there was liquid inside. Confused, she looked at Slam, whose face was blank and cold. He took it from her. "You don't know what it is?" He growled, nearly snarling.
Brian shook his head, a jerky gesture, like a frightened animal.
"You don't know what it is and you took it outside where it could hurt people?" Slam put it down on the table, carefully.
"It can't be that bad, they don't have us wear practically any protective gear-"
"Because you're expendable," Slam said, again, really furious.
Looking between the two, Chloe said, "What happens to the finished product?"
"They're storing it there, everything we make gets put on these shelves in the other room. It's... a lot of them." He was shaking again, like Slam cut whatever bravery had led him to call the union in the first place. "Sometimes, these foreign guys come through, look at the finished missiles, we're supposed to pretend we don't see them, but how're you supposed to miss 'em?"
Foreigners interested in the weaponry, Chloe jotted it down, traced it back. Lexcorp only did legal work with outsourcing, but she knew it wouldn't be the first time that Lex had sold things to nations that couldn't make it on their own. The military issue bazookas found in Somalia weren't coincidence, not when Lex had been staying in Kenya to "look into donating to charities."
Her mind jumped, worst case scenario, but so likely it made something burn in the back of her throat. If Lex started selling anti-Superman missiles to the countries who wanted to keep Superman out, he'd make more than a little money and he'd keep his hands clean when Superman got hit with one of the things.
"Are you getting sick?" Chloe asked, watched for a reaction.
"No," he said, jerking his head again. "I don't think so, or not like he did. Sometimes, I have trouble, though with moving my left hand." He clenched and unclenched it as an example.
"What happens to people who quit?" Chloe asked.
"Well, only one person did, right after, this guy that wasn't in the union in the first place. And he just didn't show up one day, none of us called because he never talked, wasn't really social." He wrapped his right hand nearly all the way around his left. "He probably went on 'vacation', too."
Slam stood, picked up the capsule carefully, sliding the pictures into one of his pockets. "We're taking these, but Morgan says that you're back in and they better see you at the next meeting."
"Yeah, yeah," Brian's relief was palpable. He looked at Slam as though he'd just promised him back into heaven.
Pushing Chloe in front of him, Slam walked out, closed the door behind him. Out in the street, he took off his coat, handed Chloe the pictures and wrapped the capsule carefully in it, put the bundle carefully onto the backseat floor.
"What are you going to do with it?" She asked.
Without his coat, there wasn't anything covering the holster on his side, a heavy gun, a cop gun. He looked comfortable with it, and she realized he must have put it on before he went to see the union people. It hit her again, what a dangerous game she was playing at, in foreign waters. Now, he looked her straight in the eye, made her forget it because he was making her decide again.
"What do you think we should do with it?"
Chloe wanted to know how she'd become so jaded that she wasn't even surprised that, like almost every story she wrote about Lex, this one had led to her carrying nuclear materials in a dilapidated Chevy with a man who used to be a cop.
"We need to get it to a lab, find someone who could tell us what it is," she said. "I don't know anyone like that in Gotham."
"Get in," Slam said, opening his door and leaning over to unlock hers. "I know a couple people who could help us out, but we'd have to go through... different channels."
"You mean superheroes," Chloe said. Clark's AI might be one of the most weird things that she'd ever heard of, but it could do research faster than anything she'd ever seen.
"Yeah. It might not be a lab that you can use in print," he said.
Chloe closed her eyes, rubbed them. Because, for all the research the AI could do, she always had to go and make tracks herself, so it didn't look like she'd pulled the numbers or facts from air. "No," she said. "We need a real lab. Can't give it to the cops, because I don't know anyone in the department."
She waited. Slam didn't answer, if he knew any ins with the Gotham crime lab, he wasn't sharing. Slam didn't start the car, they sat in silence and watched the shadows move slightly as the sun set.
"Bruce Wayne," Chloe said, slowly. The pieces were still coming together, but she'd never been above using a friend, and Bruce definitely wasn't a friend, but his enemy was her enemy. "Bruce must have labs that aren't really associated with Wayne Enterprises? Something he outsources?"
Shrugging, Slam said, "Do you have his number?"
Automatically, Chloe rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right next to Rosie O'Donnell's. I could try calling his company."
Because she did have some contact information, the secretary that had made the appointment, who turned out to work for the PR rep, but could transfer her to Bruce's direct secretary when she made it clear that no, she couldn't talk with the press rep. Only Bruce's direct secretary said that he was in a meeting and could she take a message and that led to no, she wouldn't leave a message, and a half an hour of hold, while Slam drove them aimlessly into a better section of Gotham, towards Wayne Tower.
Finally, there was a pause and she heard someone click on the speakerphone, the voices muted in the distance. An office, then. "Yes?" Bruce asked. "Miss Sullivan?"
"Mister Wayne," Chloe said, automatically polite. "I have some material I need analyzed, and I was wondering if you could have one of your labs look at it."
If Lex had Cadmus, she was willing to bet that he wasn't the only businessman who thought it was a good idea to keep scientists on hand.
"I'm sorry, Miss Sullivan, I don't understand." There was a soft click again, and Bruce's voice suddenly came that much closer, he must have turned off the speakerphone. "What do you want from me? I was told that there was some follow up questions."
"I can get Lex Luthor out of your city if you help me with this," Chloe said. "He's using the Waterfront property to make something bad, but unless I can get the material analyzed by a reputable lab, I can't publish anything other than rumors and grainy photos."
She was exaggerating, but she thought it got her point across: Help me help you.
"What is it?" Bruce asked, slowly. "What do you think it is?"
"Something nuclear or Kryptonite," Chloe said. "Or something else just as bad. He wouldn't be making it here if he thought he could get away with it in Metropolis."
The Bruce she heard breathing into the phone wasn't the polished Bruce of press conferences, but the man in Washington, who risked public humiliation to try and save his city. The man who cared about it, more than he appeared to care about anything else.
"You need it analyzed?" Bruce asked.
"By a reputable lab," Chloe said.
"Alright," Bruce said. "I have a lab that does outsource work for other Gotham companies. Let me give you the address. I'll call my scientists and let them know you're coming."
Copying down the address onto her notepad, Chloe said, "Thanks."
"This is not a favor," Bruce said. "I'll be charging The Daily Planet for the cost."
"Good," she said. It made everything more above ground to have a professional lab looking at it, with a charge to the Planet as evidence that it wasn't her selling her journalistic integrity for the bigger prize of Lex Luthor.
Bruce hung up without a goodbye and she gave the directions to Slam, closed her eyes when he started driving. It was almost over, she almost had enough to take him down. Two Lex articles in one week, and with this one, there wasn't even the chance that she'd get scooped.
As soon as Slam pulled up to the entrance of the lab, a flat, low building in the middle of Gotham's factory district, scientists came out, wearing biohazard suits. They took the material carefully from Slam, walked back inside slowly. Bruce Wayne had warned them well, then.
One of the scientists came out afterwards, clipboard and pen clicking as he walked. Slam glanced up and down, once, clearly dismissing him. Even if she wasn't learning to speak Slam's language of motion rather than speech, she was familiar enough with the motion for dismissed.
"I'm Doctor Cain, I'm in charge of Magnus Labs. Mr. Wayne said that you need this as soon as possible, for a Daily Planet article?" he asked. He had the tight edge of intelligence when faced with utter stupidity, as though her taking time away from his usual work was the worst tragedy of his week.
"Yes," Chloe said. She handed him her card, watched him clip it to the clipboard. "Call me as soon as it's done."
"Of course," he said, irritatingly superior. "I'll get to work right now."
He turned, without a goodbye, walked back into the building.
On to Part 7
Author: fryadvocate
Disclaimer: I own neither any of the characters in SV nor in the DC 'verse.
Summary: Chloe meets Gotham by accident, on her way from one story to the next.
The apartment didn't have a working elevator, so they took the stairwell. They passed a man wearing filthy clothes at the door to the stairs; the smell of homelessness something that Chloe knew from any of her other seedy Metropolis stories.
The guy that they were going to see used to be union, wasn't any more. He wanted back in though, as if the cold of not being in the club was finally taking its toll. In Gotham, unlike in Metropolis, unions seemed like they were still the brass knuckle gangs of the working class.
"Union or nothing," Slam had said, not looking away from the road. "He wants back in, and the bosses will let him if he helps get Luthor out of town. It just takes one business not working union for everyone to start."
"So, we're his ticket back in?" Chloe asked. The weird foreignness of her new story was just starting to get to her. She was the person that other people used, because she'd never come back, she'd never want a favor in return. If they were in Metropolis, no one would have made that mistake.
The guy was on the third floor, past the stain of urine and the black graffiti on the wall. He opened his door with resignation, looked down at the pathetic carpet when he let them in. He didn't offer them anything to drink, not that Chloe would have taken it.
"You're them?" he asked, sitting down on a worn couch.
"Yeah," Slam said.
Chloe pulled out her recorder, turned it on, and said, "So, what's your name?" in a voice that was meant to break the tension, the way it had in so many other interviews.
Chuckling, the guy said, "Well, I used to be Brian McCarthy, but then I got involved in this Luthor shit, and I don't know if I want to be that guy anymore."
"Sure," Slam said, irritated. "You want to be fucking John Doe. Fine. Tell us about Luthor."
"When I took the job, they said it was going to be low key, your average grab and jab. You know, slot a, tab b stuff." He ran a hand through his hair, and pushed a packet of developed photos over towards Chloe. "It wasn't. The first day, we put together some pretty high end metal stuff, but it's like anything, you do your small piece and the guy behind you does his and you don't know what the fuck it's supposed to look like unless you're the last guy on the line."
The pictures were bad - taken with a desperate need not to get caught that bled through with the machinery and fingers obscuring most photos. The most green photographer on The Daily Planet's staff could have done better - but they showed what Chloe needed to see: missiles, what looked like good sized anti-aircraft missiles, but she'd have to ask an expert. She handed the ones she was looking at to Slam. His whole face tightened.
"So, what made you start getting suspicious?" Chloe asked.
The guy twitched, and looked around. "Do you want some coffee?" he asked. "I want some coffee."
Still shaking a little, he walked into his half kitchen, grabbed a mug from the table and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot. The bottle of whiskey was next to the pot and he unscrewed it, poured in more than Chloe would have drunk even at happy hour.
It was afternoon in Gotham, the sun falling yellow orange into his kitchen. It was a desperate hour.
"There was this guy, right, this guy I've known my whole life. He lived down the street from me when I was a kid. He was the first one to get expelled from our high school. He said to me, 'hey, hey get out of the union so you can come work this job. Best money of your life.' and I did because, you know, times aren't great for us down here and it really was the best money I've ever earned." He drank a long swallow of the coffee, set it down on the table and some splashed out. "And one day, he starts getting sick really fast, faster than anything I've ever seen, and I didn't grow up in a neighborhood where sick was a cold. He got these spots, these blotches, and he started throwing up, right there on the line."
He walked back to his couch, slumped down, cradling the coffee between his hands. "And these doctors came out, real fast, in white coats and got him loaded into an ambulance, but when I called his house all there was this message that he and his wife had gone on vacation. So, I figure that they've got him stashed somewhere or Luthor forked over the vacation so he wouldn't sue." He paused again, finished off his coffee. "Only, that wasn't it. Because that was a few weeks ago, and he hasn't come back yet. His apartment's up for rent and it's like they erased him because, other than his old lady, there isn't any family. Union doesn't care because he broke rank."
Chloe had stopped shuffling through the pictures looking for the green of Kryptonite; it wasn't there. The guy was shaking again, shuffled back into the kitchen and poured himself whiskey again, without the pretense of coffee.
Whatever had happened didn't sound like any Kryptonite poisoning Chloe had ever heard of, but it sounded a lot like nuclear radiation poisoning. She shuddered.
"I don't have any family except for this brother in LA, and he wouldn't notice if I was gone. I want back in the union, because they'd notice, you know?"
Nodding, Chloe watched him swallow down the whiskey, put the mug in the sink and return to his seat. "Have you ever seen anything glow green around the plant? Any rocks? Anything special that they want you to be careful handling?"
"That was the thing, this guy, Craig, worked farther on from me and when he left I started handling his section. They told me I had to be very careful when I put my tab a in slot b. Basically it's just a bunch of these... Here, let me show you." He stood, a little unsteady and went into the only other room, came back out with a capsule the size of his hand wrapped in a plastic zip lock bag. "I got it out because I thought it would help. Here."
Chloe took it in her hands, it felt warm, and sloshed a little, like there was liquid inside. Confused, she looked at Slam, whose face was blank and cold. He took it from her. "You don't know what it is?" He growled, nearly snarling.
Brian shook his head, a jerky gesture, like a frightened animal.
"You don't know what it is and you took it outside where it could hurt people?" Slam put it down on the table, carefully.
"It can't be that bad, they don't have us wear practically any protective gear-"
"Because you're expendable," Slam said, again, really furious.
Looking between the two, Chloe said, "What happens to the finished product?"
"They're storing it there, everything we make gets put on these shelves in the other room. It's... a lot of them." He was shaking again, like Slam cut whatever bravery had led him to call the union in the first place. "Sometimes, these foreign guys come through, look at the finished missiles, we're supposed to pretend we don't see them, but how're you supposed to miss 'em?"
Foreigners interested in the weaponry, Chloe jotted it down, traced it back. Lexcorp only did legal work with outsourcing, but she knew it wouldn't be the first time that Lex had sold things to nations that couldn't make it on their own. The military issue bazookas found in Somalia weren't coincidence, not when Lex had been staying in Kenya to "look into donating to charities."
Her mind jumped, worst case scenario, but so likely it made something burn in the back of her throat. If Lex started selling anti-Superman missiles to the countries who wanted to keep Superman out, he'd make more than a little money and he'd keep his hands clean when Superman got hit with one of the things.
"Are you getting sick?" Chloe asked, watched for a reaction.
"No," he said, jerking his head again. "I don't think so, or not like he did. Sometimes, I have trouble, though with moving my left hand." He clenched and unclenched it as an example.
"What happens to people who quit?" Chloe asked.
"Well, only one person did, right after, this guy that wasn't in the union in the first place. And he just didn't show up one day, none of us called because he never talked, wasn't really social." He wrapped his right hand nearly all the way around his left. "He probably went on 'vacation', too."
Slam stood, picked up the capsule carefully, sliding the pictures into one of his pockets. "We're taking these, but Morgan says that you're back in and they better see you at the next meeting."
"Yeah, yeah," Brian's relief was palpable. He looked at Slam as though he'd just promised him back into heaven.
Pushing Chloe in front of him, Slam walked out, closed the door behind him. Out in the street, he took off his coat, handed Chloe the pictures and wrapped the capsule carefully in it, put the bundle carefully onto the backseat floor.
"What are you going to do with it?" She asked.
Without his coat, there wasn't anything covering the holster on his side, a heavy gun, a cop gun. He looked comfortable with it, and she realized he must have put it on before he went to see the union people. It hit her again, what a dangerous game she was playing at, in foreign waters. Now, he looked her straight in the eye, made her forget it because he was making her decide again.
"What do you think we should do with it?"
Chloe wanted to know how she'd become so jaded that she wasn't even surprised that, like almost every story she wrote about Lex, this one had led to her carrying nuclear materials in a dilapidated Chevy with a man who used to be a cop.
"We need to get it to a lab, find someone who could tell us what it is," she said. "I don't know anyone like that in Gotham."
"Get in," Slam said, opening his door and leaning over to unlock hers. "I know a couple people who could help us out, but we'd have to go through... different channels."
"You mean superheroes," Chloe said. Clark's AI might be one of the most weird things that she'd ever heard of, but it could do research faster than anything she'd ever seen.
"Yeah. It might not be a lab that you can use in print," he said.
Chloe closed her eyes, rubbed them. Because, for all the research the AI could do, she always had to go and make tracks herself, so it didn't look like she'd pulled the numbers or facts from air. "No," she said. "We need a real lab. Can't give it to the cops, because I don't know anyone in the department."
She waited. Slam didn't answer, if he knew any ins with the Gotham crime lab, he wasn't sharing. Slam didn't start the car, they sat in silence and watched the shadows move slightly as the sun set.
"Bruce Wayne," Chloe said, slowly. The pieces were still coming together, but she'd never been above using a friend, and Bruce definitely wasn't a friend, but his enemy was her enemy. "Bruce must have labs that aren't really associated with Wayne Enterprises? Something he outsources?"
Shrugging, Slam said, "Do you have his number?"
Automatically, Chloe rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right next to Rosie O'Donnell's. I could try calling his company."
Because she did have some contact information, the secretary that had made the appointment, who turned out to work for the PR rep, but could transfer her to Bruce's direct secretary when she made it clear that no, she couldn't talk with the press rep. Only Bruce's direct secretary said that he was in a meeting and could she take a message and that led to no, she wouldn't leave a message, and a half an hour of hold, while Slam drove them aimlessly into a better section of Gotham, towards Wayne Tower.
Finally, there was a pause and she heard someone click on the speakerphone, the voices muted in the distance. An office, then. "Yes?" Bruce asked. "Miss Sullivan?"
"Mister Wayne," Chloe said, automatically polite. "I have some material I need analyzed, and I was wondering if you could have one of your labs look at it."
If Lex had Cadmus, she was willing to bet that he wasn't the only businessman who thought it was a good idea to keep scientists on hand.
"I'm sorry, Miss Sullivan, I don't understand." There was a soft click again, and Bruce's voice suddenly came that much closer, he must have turned off the speakerphone. "What do you want from me? I was told that there was some follow up questions."
"I can get Lex Luthor out of your city if you help me with this," Chloe said. "He's using the Waterfront property to make something bad, but unless I can get the material analyzed by a reputable lab, I can't publish anything other than rumors and grainy photos."
She was exaggerating, but she thought it got her point across: Help me help you.
"What is it?" Bruce asked, slowly. "What do you think it is?"
"Something nuclear or Kryptonite," Chloe said. "Or something else just as bad. He wouldn't be making it here if he thought he could get away with it in Metropolis."
The Bruce she heard breathing into the phone wasn't the polished Bruce of press conferences, but the man in Washington, who risked public humiliation to try and save his city. The man who cared about it, more than he appeared to care about anything else.
"You need it analyzed?" Bruce asked.
"By a reputable lab," Chloe said.
"Alright," Bruce said. "I have a lab that does outsource work for other Gotham companies. Let me give you the address. I'll call my scientists and let them know you're coming."
Copying down the address onto her notepad, Chloe said, "Thanks."
"This is not a favor," Bruce said. "I'll be charging The Daily Planet for the cost."
"Good," she said. It made everything more above ground to have a professional lab looking at it, with a charge to the Planet as evidence that it wasn't her selling her journalistic integrity for the bigger prize of Lex Luthor.
Bruce hung up without a goodbye and she gave the directions to Slam, closed her eyes when he started driving. It was almost over, she almost had enough to take him down. Two Lex articles in one week, and with this one, there wasn't even the chance that she'd get scooped.
As soon as Slam pulled up to the entrance of the lab, a flat, low building in the middle of Gotham's factory district, scientists came out, wearing biohazard suits. They took the material carefully from Slam, walked back inside slowly. Bruce Wayne had warned them well, then.
One of the scientists came out afterwards, clipboard and pen clicking as he walked. Slam glanced up and down, once, clearly dismissing him. Even if she wasn't learning to speak Slam's language of motion rather than speech, she was familiar enough with the motion for dismissed.
"I'm Doctor Cain, I'm in charge of Magnus Labs. Mr. Wayne said that you need this as soon as possible, for a Daily Planet article?" he asked. He had the tight edge of intelligence when faced with utter stupidity, as though her taking time away from his usual work was the worst tragedy of his week.
"Yes," Chloe said. She handed him her card, watched him clip it to the clipboard. "Call me as soon as it's done."
"Of course," he said, irritatingly superior. "I'll get to work right now."
He turned, without a goodbye, walked back into the building.
On to Part 7