#and Ballister is built like a brick wall

[walrus150915]

Goldenheart doodle because they're my Lords (haha get it- Lord Blackheart-) and Saviours

[cosmictyto]

One thing about Nimona (the character) I feel like people criminally underplay in the fandom is the realities she’d face as a centuries old being. 1,000 years. That’s, roundabouts, 38 human generations come and gone. Like, yeah, when we meet her she’s this fun, spunky, confident punk teen. But there is SO much time between the Nimona we see in that flashback with Gloreth and the Nimona we meet along with Ballister.

Like, she was around before the kingdom was actually a kingdom. She was around to watch the wall, specifically designed to keep her out, be built brick by brick. She got to live through the canonization of a girl she used to call her friend, watched how their story was further warped by time. As humanity changed, grew, and advanced she was THERE. She’s literally older than punk or metal as a subculture, and was there when it came into existence!

Like, who was Nimona before punk/metal music? What did she like, how did she dress? What did she do for fun? Was she always this little rebel? Did she have times where she tried to conform before giving up on that? How has her identity and philosophy changed over the years? Did her and Gloreth ever meet again? Did she ever come in contact with other Goldenloins? What was growing up for her like? (Because I get the feeling she just ages incredibly slow. So for most of her life she’s been a semi-perma-kid on the streets.) Idk. Feels like there’s a lot of room for headcanons and stories, there.

[toriaurorawriter15]

I can see you: Chapter 9: The seating chart

The patio of the Villa is enormous.

Pen could see countless yards of green grass and a large garden in the center of the many acres filled with vegetables, rose bushes, and orange trees.

In front of the French double doors of the backyard are two yards of red bricks and a wooden pergola gazebo held together by six white wooden poles. On the left side of the patio area is a large wooden twelve by eighteen Oval Cedar Gazebo painted in a light grey stain wood with flower beds on top of each side of the six structural rails. On the right side is a bar set with the latest appliances for cooking, a sink, a mini steel refrigerator, and a lounge area. The floor area is created from the repurposed stones of the previous well that the owner took out, and the bar had six to eight stools with tall backs. The steel stools are painted black with dark cyan cushions and face the pool area.

In front of the lounge area is a pool bean. Behind the pool is another area for grass with an oval picnic table. The table has a built-in lazy boy and has access to a campfire sight.

Far beyond the seven acres of land are groups of small mountains that make the villa look private and make up for the lack of a backyard fence. Along the walls of the property borders are forest trees and more bushes.

"Wow!" Pen hears a teenage girl say from behind her.

"Indeed." Pen comments before facing the baby of the Bridgetion family, Hyacinth.

Long gone are the brown curls on the slim teenager. In their place is wavy gold-brown hair with blonde highlights. The white girl beams with joy as her brown eyes shine with excitement. Like most teens in this stage of life, she is wearing the latest trends from the 90s and has luckily passed on the thinning of her gorgeous eyebrows.

"Hy, how did your finals go at Burkkey?" Pen asks the eighteen-year-old girl.

"Gah, She begins before adding, "No, do not talk to me about it. I don't want to think about school until the next semester begins."

Pen chuckles at how overly dramatic Hyacinth becomes whenever someone talks about a topic she isn't interested in talking about as they wait for the rest of the family members to join them outside.

It is now seven o'clock pm, but for anyone who doesn't know about California time changes, the sun is about to set, and the stars are about to shine.

The patio area has several wooden oval dining sets in a coffee brown stain color. On each set is a gorgeous dinner placement of Lady Violet's oldest china and purple napkins with silver rings holding the fan napkins in place.

It is strange to see a seating chart for a big family, but Lady Bridgeton says," The best way to have harmony is to have everyone surrounded by those with whom you have a strong bond."

Pen always found the sentiment enduring until this moment in time.

Today, the writer's assigned seat for the weekend was to be thrilled and fearful?

Penelope Featherington's name card is between Edwina and the one person she wants to avoid tonight, Colin Christopher Bridgeton.

"No fucking way!" Hyacinth states as she finds herself sitting on Colin's other side. "El is going to go ballistic to know she is on the other table and not next to you."

Pen sighed in relief at Hy's comment before saying something she would later regret, "Well, It is a good thing about your mother's rule."

"Ah, there you are!" They hear a young male teen state from the backyard's main entrance.

Hy and Pen turn around in their seats to find a boyish teen in a black shirt and a pair of blue jeans. His swan-like neck has a set of the newest headphones connected to the latest iPhone, and his thin white fingers are leaning on the door's handle.

"Gregory, close the dam door." They hear Anthony shout from inside the kitchen area.

Both ladies giggle at Anthony's comment while Gregory rolls his eyes in annoyance.

"Oh, brother." He mumbles while making his way towards the center of the patio area.

An LED projector hovers between the two dining tables, and Gregory turns it on with a slick grey remote before setting it up for tonight's entertainment.

"Oh, are we having a movie night!" Hy exclaims in excitement.

Pen was about to ask another question when a gorgeous supermodel lady with dark skin, long curly hair, and brown eyes decided to open the back door.

"Kate, I am setting it up. Don't worry." Gregory yells from behind a projector screen as he gets set up.

Kate, the woman in front of the French double doors responds, "Good, everyone should be down soon."

Pen was about to open her mouth to ask Kate about tonight's events when she sees four Shure microphones on the foldable table beside the project screen, and everything clicked into place.

"Oh shit, we are doing Karaoke night." Hy and Pen state.

One of the two states in excitement while the other wishes for a black hole to appear under their seat.

Previous Chapter

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

hello! bamboo fox anon is back! can i request some whitty hc where he accidentally picks up this loud-mouth, vulgar, semi hot headed stray runaway teen who plays guitar(15-18) and after being grumpy that this “annoying child” keeps following him for a while, gives up and takes care of them? basically being assigned older brother or at the very least, a reluctant dad and the reason why he calms down after ballistic is because he can see that, despite being terrified of his anger and on the verge of a panic attack, they are trying to defend him from keith and cherry, standing in front of him, stuttering lyrics into the cracked mic, while the two are trying to calm them down. - 🎋🦊

Usually Whitty doesn’t care about other people or where they’re going. As long as they mind their business and don’t give him trouble.

But when he ventures back to Blitz Alley, he hears guitar music and is confused as hell, stumbling across a teen just sitting against the graffiti-covered wall.

They had nothing but a small backpack, their clothes, and a guitar which they were strumming. Not to mention a bucket next to them with actual dollar bills.

Whitty was a bit impressed, but wasn’t happy to see someone intruding into the one place that was currently safest to him.

“Hey kid, not to ruin your concert but would you kindly get outta here? I live here.”

His gruff electronic voice startles you, but you were irked because all your focus went out the window the moment he spoke.

“Last time I checked, I didn’t see your fucking name anywhere. So how about you get outta here, TNT-head?”

He’s absolutely baffled by your response. But when faced with an aggressive person, he does what he does best: 

Snap right back.

“TNT-head?!! Look, I asked nicely. No reason to be a jackass. Go play your stupid solo elsewhere.”

Being as stubborn as you are, you simply refused to leave despite the bombhead’s growing irritation. 

Though when you see him clutching his head like he was in pain, you were a little concerned. “Shit, dude, you okay? You need some Tylenol?”

Although Whitty declines, and learns a bit more about you, he sees that you’re just a kid on the streets--like he was. You were both in similar unfortunate situations.

So he reluctantly lets you stay on the basis that you don’t say anything to make him “explode” (or annoy him, which you proceed to do almost every day).

With time and a whole lot of patience, you two actually become close--he’s picked up the habit of calling you “kid”, or “kiddo” on his better days.

“Kiddo? What are you, my dad?” You joke. But he didn’t quite understand since he didn’t have parents, nor were you two blood-related, so you sighed and explained it.

He learns that he does care for you like a dad would (at first it bitterly reminded him of a certain demon who uses “dad” as a stage name, but he didn’t want to think of that anymore).

You show him how to play guitar and he teaches you how to sing. You claim he’s “cheating” because his voice was built to sing without the use of a microphone, but you learn a lot from him.

Aside from music, you teach him slang and other human gestures (such as “high-fives” and “dude”, the latter of which he started to latch onto).

On the day you two meet Keith and Cherry, Whitty seems extremely uncomfortable and wants them to leave immediately.

When they don’t listen, and Keith bests him twice and unintentionally humiliates him in front of you--that’s when you see what he meant by “explode” all those weeks ago.

He breaks the very fabric of reality, eyes flashing symbols as he practically screams at Keith (who, being dumb as bricks, assumes it’s a final rap battle and anxiously tries to keep pace with Whitty’s lyrics).

You’re just as terrified--to the point of panicking--but you didn’t want this. You didn’t want to see Whitty this upset.

So you take the cracked microphone that he threw to the side and stood between them.

“GET. OUT. GET OUT OF MY WAY UNLESS YOU WANNA JOIN THEM!!!” 

Despite his ballistic state, you managed to finish the lyrics yourself, trying to calm him down and help him understand that he wasn’t alone. He didn’t have to keep running away all the time.

He keeps shouting over you but at some point he stops and just listens to you, ignoring the worried couple behind you. And by some miracle he actually calms down enough to make the alley turn back to normal.

Keith awkwardly tries apologizing, but you glare back at him like “we heard enough of your beep-bop bull-shit. Just get outta here.”

Finally Whitty accepts your Tylenol offer, resting for the remainder of the day. He feels like he owes you a lot for helping him out after that incident.

But he learns that..you’re not a total prick. You’re actually a good kid.

[psychovigilantewrites]

Don’t Call Me That (pt. 1)

Pairing: Jason Todd/Reader

Genre: Aftermath of torture, healing, and sex in later chapter hehe

Word count: 9000

Summary:  The new Robin and Batman stumble upon a cell in Arkham Asylum that was occupied by a very much injured, and very much still alive Jason Todd. Bringing him back, Bruce realises that Jason is unstable and keeps him locked in a room in the mean time. Reader helps Jason get used to being around another human being once more, and finds herself falling deeply with the damaged Jason.

A/N:  This was meant to be a one-shot, but I realised that it's a bit too long, so I'm splitting it into two chapters. Here's whatever I wrote so far. Psst, the sex will come later! I think this has got to be the most favourite one-shot I’ve written so far!! I’m addicted to this story, and I hope you guys will like it too! Let me know!

Masterlist

Kofi

Ao3

The light was getting dimmer and dimmer the further you strayed from the main building. The walls cracked, wallpaper peeling back to reveal brick and concrete. The air was getting thin, and the smell.

Rat piss, sewage, and that suffocating damp humid smell that reminded you of dirty laundry- except it filled the whole Old Wing of Arkham Asylum.

“Do youreally think the security breach was sourced from here, Batman?” you voiced out your doubts.

He was walking next to you, his steps hardly making a sound. “We need to make sure. Half of the East Wing’s cells were suddenly opened automatically. There is a main powerframe in the Old Wing that someone could have damaged.”

“Someone, as in..?”

“Not sure. Joker has been in his cell for the past 19 months since he broke out two years ago.”

You ignored the way his voice cracked at the end.

Two years ago, before you were involved with Bruce Wayne and his fight for justice, Joker had broken free, got hold of Jason Todd, your predecessor whom you had never met, kidnapped him, tortured him, and then killed him. After sending a video tape of his Todd’s death to Bruce, he went and created a drug that made people go crazy and kill each other. Bruce caught him then, broke half the bones in his body, and then threw him back in the asylum.

“Why did they stop using this wing?” you asked, your voice echoing back to you.

The two of you were walking down a corridor, with cells on either side. Each cell had a metal door with a rectangular slot at the top of the door to peek inside and another longer slot in the middle for passing inmates food. Some of the doors were opened ajar, nothing inside but old beds and overflowing toilet bowls, some were locked shut.

Your heart was racing. It was like you were in a horror movie. You stepped over the empty gas canisters and toilet paper that was strewn all over the floor of the corridor, walking around a rusty old wheelchair and made sure to follow Batman closely.

“Abandoned when a riot broke out five years ago,” he answered, “Something about hauntings.”

“Hauntings?” you widen your eyes.

“These are superstitious folk,” he explained, “The riot took a dozen lives. Violently. Some nurses got tortured. Rumour has it that this wing is haunted.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” you declared, though you felt chills run down your spine anyway.

“Indeed. Some of the security guards say they’ve heard screams coming from here. None dared to approach.”

“Screams? Please, I’m sure it’s just the-”

A crash came from one of the cells. You jumped so violently in shock that you tripped over a catheter on the ground. You and Batman looked at each other for one second, and then he raised his finger to his lips, making sure you kept quiet.

Nodding, you followed behind him as he investigated the cell the sound came from. He slid open the viewing window of the door, and despite the darkness you saw his expression twist to one you’ve never seen before.

Horror.

He took out a small explosive from his belt and attached it to the door. A small boom, and the door swung open. Batman rushed inside, and you were hit with the worst smell you’ve ever experienced. It made you gag, your eyes tearing up.

It smelled of blood and human feces and urine, and something that was decomposing, like the big trash bins lined up behind one of those dank alleys, overflowing with a week’s worth of disposal.

The cell was bigger than the others, and it didn’t have a bed. Only a toilet and a wooden chair that was toppled. Batman was next to the chair, kneeling on the ground over something, unmoving, as if frozen in spot, his back turned to you.

“B?” you whispered, “What is this place?”

There were scratches on the walls, some in blood. Little bones were tossed in a corner, lying in what looked- and smelled- like dry vomit.

You walked over to him, slowly approaching with caution. As you got nearer, your vision became clearer.

He was kneeling over an unconscious man wearing your Robin uniform.

Now, it was your turn to be horrified.

The uniform was tattered, cape dirty and stained with bodily fluids. The man?

Scars and dried blood littered his face and arms, his dark hair matted and sticky. He was obviously large, his frame almost as big as Bruce’s, yet you could see that he was malnourished, his cheeks slightly hollowed, his skin hanging loosely over the remains of his muscles.

And he was still breathing.

***

Alfred, Bruce, and you stared in silence at the man on the bed, now clean and hooked to an IV. None of you had said a word since you got back. Alfred was rigid the whole time he cleaned and examined him, with Bruce shadowing him closeby. You could do nothing but stand back, waiting for an explanation.

Now you were in the infirmary, the steady beat of vital signs machinery annoyed you.

“How is he alive?” Alfred broke the tension with a small whisper.

“There were small animal bones in his cell,” Bruce said with a strained voice. You knew he was doing his all to keep it together.

“Goodness,” Alfred responded, “But- the video-”

“Must have been a fake,” Bruce said, his voice now cracking, “I should have known. I should have- I- oh, God.”

Without warning, Bruce crumpled to his feet. You have never seen him like this. He was always strong, stoic, and he never let his emotions show.

The sight of him burying his face in his hands in anguish- it scared you.

“It’s not your fault, Master Bruce,” Alfred put a hand on his shoulder, “You couldn’t have-”

A grunt came from Jason Todd as he stirred awake. All three of you snapped your heads to him. You saw the way he opened his eyes, blinking at his surroundings as he tried to register where he was. Bruce rushed to his side.

That was his mistake.

Jason Todd started screaming.

“STAY AWAY FROM ME!” he roared, sitting up and crawling out of bed, ripping the IV from his hand.

“Jason-”

“NO!” he yelled, “YOU’RE NOT REAL. STAY AWAY!”

His voice was deep and hoarse, like someone who had been screaming his whole life.

“Jason, it’s me,” Bruce tried to slowly approach him. He was on his feet now, though he stumbled getting there. His expression was wild, his mouth downturned into a scowl, his eyes darting from Bruce, to Alfred, to you, to the bed, to the whole room, like a wild animal cornered.

“This is real?” he growled a question.

“Yes, son,” Bruce assured, “This is real. We found you. Please, lie back down. You’re hurt.”

“You’re… real?” his voice broke halfway.

“Yes, I’m real,” Bruce’s voice was the same.

Then, Jason let out a laugh. A loud, haunting, hysterical laugh that was absent of humor.

“Good.”

He jumped at Bruce and tackled him to the ground, his fingers around Bruce’s neck. You reacted quickly, rushing over and kneeing him in the face so that he let go of your Bruce and stumbled backwards. He recovered quickly and set his eyes on you.

He proceeded to attack you, but before anything, Bruce had him restrained, wrestling him to the ground.

“Jason! Calm down!”

“NO!” he shouted, “NO! NO! IT’S YOUR FAULT. IT’S YOUR FUCKING FAULT. DIE! DIE!”

He trashed about with surprising power, trying to get Bruce off him. Bruce got his arm around Jason’s neck, and you saw him clawing at his arm, attempting to break free. The younger man’s movements got slower, weaker, as Bruce cut his oxygen supply and eventually knocked him out.

Bruce carried his son to the bed.

“Alfred, please sedate him,” he instructed. “We’ll move him to the cell downstairs. He’s too unstable to be here.”

“Are you okay?” you reached out to your adoptive father.

“Yes,” he nodded, “He’s surprisingly strong.”

“He’s a survivor, Bruce,” you smiled at an attempt to comfort him, “I can’t imagine what he’s been through, but he’ll get through this.”

“I hope so.”

***

The cell Bruce had in the Batcave was less like a cell, and more like a room. It was a large square box with four walls and a roof on one side of the Cave, with high end security. It had double doors, each requiring a registered thumbprint to enter. Bruce had built it in case he needed to hold someone hostage there. The outer layer was made out of lead, and you wondered what had gone through Bruce’s mind when he added that feature. The cell even had a small bathroom with a shower, toilet, and a sink.

This time, though, he made sure the room with white interiors looked more comfortable for Jason. He put in a double single bed with fluffy sheets and pillows, a whole bookshelf full of classic literature, a cupboard, a desk and chair complete with a table lamp.

Jason was still sedated when all of you moved him to the cell. He had been sedated for a while so he wouldn’t wake up and rip off his IV. You helped lift him up, and found that he was heavy, heavier than you had expected him to be.

Then, Bruce went to the Batcomputer and switched on the security camera inside the cell and watched as he slowly regained consciousness and went all ballistic again. He toppled over the shelf, the chair, the desk. Threw the books around, ripped out the pages, punched the walls, and was screaming.

“Let me go!” “Fuck you!” “I’m going to fucking kill you!” were some amongst the many extremities he shouted at the camera.

And you watched as Bruce stared into the screen showing his broken, damaged son.

***

“He’s quiet,” you pointed out when you walked over to Bruce at the computers. It had been a week of watching Jason scream and thrash about in the room- which was a complete mess.

“Yes, he has been that way for a few hours now,” Bruce frowned.

You saw from the screen. Jason was just sitting down in one corner of the room, staring into space.

“Well, at least he didn’t throw the food down the toilet bowl this time,” you shrugged and sat down next to him. Alfred would bring a tray of warm soft foods and set it on the tray of the rectangular food delivery hole of the second, internal door.

Out of spite, Jason would take the food and throw it down the toilet before returning it empty. This time, you saw that it just sat there on the tray, untouched.

“I was thinking,” Bruce mentioned, “Of bringing in Dr. Leslie or Dinah. He is familiar with both of them. They could help with putting him on medication and giving him psychotherapy.”

“Yeah, for some reason,” you began, “I don’t think he’ll take that so well.”

“I… don’t know what to do.”

You stayed silent for a few moments. The past week, you saw Bruce in a light you had never seen before. Emotional, vulnerable, helpless. You appreciated that he trusted you enough to reveal that side of himself in front of you.

“Let him calm down a bit,” you suggested, “And maybe… Maybe I can help.”

“How?” he frowned.

“If you bring in Leslie or Dinah, he’ll know in an instant what you’re up to,” you explained. “And maybe it’s too soon for therapy. I think right now he just needs to get used to being around another human being.”

“Hmm,” Bruce considered, “Okay. We’ll go with your idea. How will you do it?”

Your heart swelled with joy. You loved it when he acknowledged you.

You waited a couple of days before trying it out. The whole while, Jason was just sitting down in his corner, silent and unmoving.

Nervously, you approached the first door on the external side of the box, pressing your thumb to the digital square on the wall and hearing it beep in approval. You opened the door and closed it behind you before approaching the second door.

You took a deep breath, felt for the taser on your belt, and then pressed your thumb on the second door.

The first thing you saw when you opened the door was Jason scrambling to his feet in surprise, his eyes vigilant. You lift both your hands up in surrender.

“Not here to hurt you,” you said slowly, “Just here to chill.”

He narrowed his eyes at you in suspicion.

To prove it to him, you sat down on the floor by the door, and took out your book. Heart beating in your chest, you tried to calmly open the book and stared intensely at the words, not reading anything.

In your peripheral vision, he just stood there, stiff and still like a statue, staring at you, analysing you. You had expected him to attack, but ten minutes passed, and he was still there.

Then-

“What do you want?” he croaked, voice harsh and gritty.

“Nothing,” you shrugged, eyes not leaving your book, “Just chilling.”

A momentary pause.

“Leave.”

“No,” you simply said, turning a page.

“Why are you here? Did he send you?” he demanded.

“No. I just want to read in silence, if you don’t mind,” you rolled your eyes.

You wished you could see his expression.

Another five minutes passed, and he didn’t say anything else, or do anything else, but stare at you in caution.

After an hour, you got up and left, leaving a very confused Jason Todd in his cell.

***

You continued that routine for the next three days without exchanging a word with Jason. He would just stand there and glare at you for an hour while you pretended to read. On the fourth day, however, there were more than just a few words exchanged.

“You again,” he growled at you as you entered.

“Hello,” you smiled warmly.

“What do you want from me?” he barked.

“Nothing,” you repeated, “I just want to-”

“Chill?” he cut you off, “I don’t fucking believe you. I don’t trust you. What is he planning? Is he trying to mock me?”

“Mock you?” you responded, taken aback, “Why would he do that?”

“Why wouldn’t he?” Jason grit, “He’s done worse. He just wants to see me suffer.”

“What?” you frowned, “No. He just wants to help you.”

“Well, he’s too late for that,” he spat.

“Look-”

“Get the fuck out. Don’t come back.”

“He thought you died,” you tried to explain, “Jok- He got sent a video. Of you getting shot. Dying. He didn’t know.”

“I don’t care,” he fumed.

“He loves you, Jason,” you said softly.

Then, a light flickered in his eye. “What did you call me?”

“Uh, Jas-”

You choked on your words when Jason suddenly had his hands around your neck, squeezing the air from your lungs. You didn’t have time to react, scratching away at his arm helplessly.

“Don’t call me that,” he growled.

You were going to reach for your taser, but then he let you go and went back to his corner. You sucked in a deep breath, eyes watering.

You ran out-

-and closed the door behind you to lean against it, trying to get your breath back.

“Are you okay?” Bruce worried, approaching you fast, “I’m sorry. I should have waited out here instead of at the computers.”

“I’m fine,” you panted, “He didn’t hurt me. Just scared me a bit, that’s all.”

“This was a bad idea,” he frowned, “We should stop-”

“No!” you hurriedly denied, “No. It was my fault. I didn’t know. I said his name. He didn’t like it and reacted to it, that’s all. I won’t say his name next time.”

“No, it’s too dangerous.”

“Bruce, please,” you insisted, “I want to help him. Please, let me continue.”

You looked at your father’s blue eyes, full of concern. “Okay.”

***

Despite the scare he gave you, you were ready to enter again the next day. There was something about Jason Todd that made you feel like you owed it to him to help. Maybe it was plain pity, or maybe it was the way that his eyes had a flicker of hope when he realised he wasn’t imagining things.

The digital screen beeped in approval as it registered your thumbprint, and you pushed open the door. Jason was already standing, muscles taut, ready to spring at the first sense of danger.

You didn’t say a word, but just smiled at him and sat down where you usually did, pushing over the fallen books and torn paper on the floor to create a little space for yourself.

Trying your best not to look nervous, you opened your book and stared at the words again.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” he grit.

“Yeah, well. You’re going to have to try a lot harder if you want to get rid of me, my dude.”

“I’m not your dude,” he said in disgust.

You looked over to him and smirked. “Whatever you say.”

And you continued to pretend to read.

After several minutes, you heard a heavy sigh coming from Jason. Out of the corners of your eye, you saw him give up and slump back onto the ground, his knees up to his chest. He leaned his head back against the wardrobe and closed his eyes.

And for the first time in his presence, you found that you were actually reading.

***

You continued for a month. Entering and sitting down for a couple of hours to read before going back out. Sometimes with few exchanges of “Good morning” or “Miss me?”, mostly going unresponded. Sometimes he would sit down and glare at you, or stand up and glare at you, or sit down and rest his head and close his eyes. Always from a distance.

The first time you started picking up the books and rearranging them back onto the bookshelf, he looked like he was about to burst a vein in his temple.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he growled.

“I’m cleaning up,” you replied nonchalantly.

“Don’t.”

“What are you gonna do, choke me again?” you rolled your eyes.

You could almost hear him seething in his corner, vibrating in anger.

The next day you came back, the books were back on the floor, strewn everywhere.

But every time before you left, you would still rearrange them back.

Sometimes you would bring in food with you, simply leaving the tray on the desk. He did eat a little, but never when you were around, and never more than a few bites. He ate only to survive. In fact, the more you went to see him, the more you started to notice the little things.

His bed was unmade, the sheets pulled back and covers thrown about. But you knew he had never once slept in it. He never changed his clothes either. It had started to bother you, because he never showered, and his body odour was getting quite distinct.

His eyes were sunken and dark, his hair was greasy and messy, his facial hair overgrown. You wondered if Bruce left a razor in there for him. It was probably a bad idea.

One day while you were sitting down and reading, Jason was in his corner, curled up and eyes closed, Alfred entered the first door and slid in a tray of food from the compartment of the second door. You got up to take it, feeling Jason’s eyes on you as you walked. But instead of setting the tray on the desk like you usually did, you put it on the ground next to you as you sat and read again.

That day, the menu was pumpkin soup with toast. Alfred had always kept the food light and easy to digest. You picked up a piece of toast from the plate, dipped it in the soup, and ate it while reading.

“Are you eating my fucking food?” Jason fumed from the distance.

“Someone should,” you bit back, dipping the toast back in the soup and continued to eat.

“Stop it.”

You looked over at him with challenging eyes. “Why should I?”

“It’s my food,” he insisted.

Jason hardly ever talked to you. In fact, that was the most words you’ve heard him say in a couple of weeks. He was possessive over his food, apparently, which didn’t make sense because he hardly ever ate.

“But it’s not like you eat it,” you argued, curious as to where this would take you, “I’m making sure it doesn’t go to waste.”

He narrowed his eyes at you, and then shifted slightly closer, leaning in towards you. “Give it to me.”

You pretended to consider it for awhile. “No.”

He growled.

“Come and take it if you want it so badly,” you challenged.

Immediately, you regretted it. Because he got up, and walked slowly towards you, looming over you like a predator watching its prey. Your heart started to beat faster in your chest, your palms started beading with sweat.

He then crouched down and snatched the piece of toast from your hands, taking the tray away and walked back towards his spot on the floor. Setting the tray down, he immediately started to ravish the soup and toast, his eyes never leaving yours the whole time.

It was the most he’d eaten ever since he arrived.

“You shouldn’t eat too fast,” you warned, “Your stomach’s not used to that amount of food yet.”

“Watch me.”

He cleaned the bowl in three minutes as you stared in shock.

***

“Who are you?” Jason asked out of the blue.

It was your sixth week there. Six weeks of sitting down in silence and hardly ever talking. Occasionally cleaning up after him, just to see the room messy again. Occasionally trying to spark up conversation, only to be greeted by silence. But that time, it was him who started it first.

You told him your name, still pleasantly surprised at his engagement.

“I don’t give a fuck what you’re called,” he spat, “It doesn’t explain to me who you are.”

Frowning, you closed the book. You wondered if it was a good idea to tell him that you were Bruce’s newly adopted daughter. Would he feel betrayed? Jealous? But if you didn’t and he found out, wouldn’t that be worse? Plus, you didn’t want to lie to him.

After all, you were trying to help.

“Bruce adopted me a year ago,” you explained, “I’m officially his adopted daughter. I’ve only recently been Robin. When we found you, it was just my second month.”

Anger flashed in his eyes, his jaw clenched. “Typical. Lose one toy, find another one to play with.”

“I’m not a toy,” you defended heatedly, “He… saved me. I owe him.”

He didn’t ask, but you knew he wanted to, so you continued anyway. “He found me at a bid. A human trafficking bid. After my parents died, I ran away from the orphanage. I got kidnapped. After finding out I was a virgin, they organised an event to see who would bid the highest to own me.”

It seemed like Jason’s expression didn’t change, his mouth still in a scowl. But you saw the way his eyes softened. It was a good idea to explain, after all. He must have drawn conclusions that Bruce had replaced him with you shortly after his death.

“Batman crashed the party right before I was about to get sold off for… Five thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars,” you scoffed, “I guess that was how much I was worth. Could you even buy a car with that? I’m not sure. Maybe a used one.”

“Anyway, I was quite shaken up. He took pity on me, I guess. Maybe it was my puppy dog eyes that made me look so pathetic that he decided to take me in. Mom always said I had a pathetic look,” you shrugged, “That’s who I am I guess. Now I’m in my last year of highschool. I turn seventeen in two months! I'm only a year or so younger than you. You don’t have to get me anything, of course. It’s cool. I never really cared much for birthdays anyway.”

You tried to lighten the mood, but all you saw was Jason’s unchanging expression. You guessed that was as much as he was willing to say that day, so you got up and started cleaning again despite knowing he was going to just mess it up.

***

He did mess it up again, but what shocked you that day was not the mess, but the fact that he was actually on the bed. The bed was still unmade, and he was sitting unnaturally upright, but still. It was progress.

You sat down on the floor and read your book. After five minutes, he asked, “What’s the book about?”

Trying your hardest not to look surprised in case he took it the wrong way, you answered, “A brief history of mankind. From evolution, to the agricultural revolution, to the current day.”

He just blinked at you in response, and you wondered when was the day that he had stopped glaring at you.

You tried to break the ice. “Bruce put all the books he thought you might like on the shelf. I’ve noticed that they’re mostly classic literary novels. You like those, huh?”

Not a word.

“I never really could get into those. I tried, but it’s not my thing, you know? Or maybe I started with the wrong book.”

He closed his eyes instead of answering you.

Sighing, you decided not to push it, and went back to your book.

About fifteen minutes passed. And then-

“You like science and shit?” he spoke up, his eyes boring into yours.

“Uh, yeah,” you said, taken aback by the sudden question.

“Start with Jules Verne. Twenty thousand leagues,” he told you, then closed his eyes again.

“Thank you,” you smiled.

Silence.

***

“Why do you sit there?” Jason asked you two days later.

“Huh?”

“Why do you sit on the floor when there's a desk?” he repeated in annoyance, like an underpaid customer service worker at the mall.

“Well, I didn't want to intrude on your space,” you told him.

“You being here already intrudes my space,” he rolled his eyes.

Jason was more relaxed now. He was actually leaning against a propped pillow on the bed, one knee brought to his chest, the other leg crossed over it.

And he was reading a fucking book.

“...so you can sit anywhere you like. Doesn't make a difference,” he continued.

“Then can I sit on the bed next to you?” you teased lightly.

You had expected him to glare at you in contempt, to tell you to fuck off or get out, or even not respond to you at all. So you were very much surprised when he said what he did.

“Whatever,” he mumbled.

Despite trying your best to act neutral, your jaw dropped. You quickly recovered, and cleared your throat nervously, standing up and slowly walking towards him. Jason shuffled a bit, going upwards against the wall at the head of the bed.

You slowly sat down at the foot of it, still maintaining some distance from him for his sake. Bringing your bare feet up, you crossed them and leaned against the wall the bed was pushed against.

Getting comfortable, you opened your book and started reading. For two hours, you and Jason Todd sat on the bed next to each other, reading with no other sounds except the occasional rustling of a page being turned.

You closed your book once you were done, but before you could get up, he asked in a small voice. “How long was I… There?”

The way his voice was shaky, the way it came out in a harsh whisper, and the fact that it had taken him seven weeks to ask- it tugged at your heart.

“Two years,” you said objectively, making sure no emotions leaked into your voice.

“And he thought I was dead the whole time?” he grumbled.

“Yes.”

“That's why he never came?” he choked out.

Fuck, you tried not to let your tears fall.

“Yes,” you whispered back.

“World's greatest detective, my ass,” he snorted.

“He's killing himself over this,” you told him softly, “I’ve never seen him like that before.”

“Like what?” he demanded, looking at you with anger, with red eyes pooling with tears.

“Vulnerable. Clueless. Breaking down and crying next to you while you slept,” you elaborated. “You may not forgive him for now, and that's understandable. But Bruce? He’ll never forgive himself. Not in a million years.”

“Please leave.”

You didn't argue. You didn't hang around to clean up. You left immediately, because of the way he said his please, like someone who was tired, so tired. It was the way he told you to leave, it wasn't out of anger or spite. It was out of desperation. Because he was looking away when he told you, refusing to let you see the tear that fell on his face that you saw anyway.

***

“What are you looking at?” he grunted. “Close your mouth. You look like an idiot.”

You snapped your mouth close, not even aware that it was ajar.

The room was exceptionally clean- cleaner than when you cleaned it yourself. Jason had properly made the bed, fitted the sheets and folded the covers. The torn pages of paper were gone, and on his shelf were all his books, neatly arranged.

In alphabetical order.

Yet, Jason was still smelly, and he still hadn’t changed his clothes despite the wardrobe full of fresh t-shirts and pants.

“You clean up better than I do,” you grumbled, sitting at the foot of his bed carefully.

“That’s because you’re useless,” he snapped.

You tried not to smile despite his insult. The bickering was fun, and it showed that he was more familiar with you now.

Trying to push it a little further, you narrowed your eyes at him and started sniffing the air loudly.

“You smell,” you told him.

“If you don’t like it, leave,” he bit back.

“There’s hot water in the shower you know,” you reminded him, “You could go shower. I’ll wait right outside.”

“What for?” he eyed you suspiciously.

“For moral support!” you grinned, holding two thumbs up.

And whaddaya know?

He snorted a laugh, and rolled his eyes.

“Oh, come on,” you whined, “You really stink. You’d give Killer Croc a run for his money with that stench.”

“If you don’t like it,” he leaned closer towards you, “Leave.”

“Ugh,” you grunted. And then, you had an idea. Probably a bad idea. He would probably murder you.

You stood up and announced, “I’ll be right back.”

After ten minutes of running around the mansion looking for items, you finally came back with a bucket, a sponge, and a fluffy towel.

“What the hell are you up to?” Jason demanded, sitting upright.

“If you won’t go to the shower, then I’ll bring the shower to you,” you grinned triumphantly and went to fill the bucket with warm water from the shower. You set down the filled bucket on the floor and motioned to Jason.

“Well, get on the floor.”

“What?”

“I’m going to give you a bath, and if you stay on the bed, it’s going to get all wet,” you explained, “So get on the floor and take off your shirt.”

He stared at you with bewilderment in his eyes, and then suddenly let out a bark of laughter. “Why on Earth would I listen to you?”

“Because if you don’t, I’m going to splash all this water on you, and you’re going to have to sleep in a wet bed,” you threatened.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” he bickered.

“Fine, I’ll bargain with you,” you said, “If you listen to me, I’ll tell him to turn that off.”

You pointed to the single security camera at the top corner of the room, always switched on, watching and recording.

He clenched his jaw, contemplating your tempting offer.

“Fine,” he conceded, and slid to the floor, taking off his shirt.

You smirked.

“If you wanted to see me shirtless, you could have just asked,” he smirked back.

You really didn’t expect him to mess with you like that, and in result, you felt your cheeks heat up.

“N-no,” you denied, “I- you just stink.”

He raised an eyebrow.

Rolling your eyes, you kneeled in front of him, bringing the bucket of water closer. You took the sponge and soaked it, but before you pressed it on his skin, you just realised the situation you put yourself in.

That close to Jason, with him looking up at you and waiting, you gulped. Because his body wasn’t as bad as you thought two years of starvation would have caused. Sure, he was definitely skinnier than he should ever be, and his muscles were barely there, but his overall frame, the structure of his body was still large.

You finally pressed the sponge against his rising and falling chest, not meeting his eyes. The warm water spilled from the sponge and trickled down his chest, onto his stomach. You moved your hand in a wiping motion, cleaning the sweat off the surface of his skin.

Scars littered his body, healed cuts of various sizes. Some were burns, some were bullet wounds, and some were the crescent shapes of bites.

You moved the sponge to his arms, wiping down the contour of the remaining biceps he had left, going under to wash his pits, then going down to his forearms, which you noticed had long rough scars running down from his wrists to the crook of his elbows.

Your chest tightened.

Despite the hell he went through, you still thought he was beautiful.

You felt your breathing start to quicken.

Moving to his stomach next, you noticed that the water had seeped into the fabric of his grey sweatpants, making it turn dark, making it stick to his skin, stick to the long cylindrical shape of his-

“Your pupils are dilated,” he pointed out.

Your eyes snapped back to his.

“Wh-what- I wasn’t- they’re not!” you sputtered angrily.

He looked at you with an odd expression. Well, any expression that wasn’t a hateful glare was odd, you supposed. But his eyelids were droopy, the corners of his mouth relaxed and not tight.

It looked like he was actually enjoying it.

“You don’t find me disgusting?” he whispered.

You frowned at him in question, bringing the sponge up to wash his neck. “Well, you smell a bit gross. But by the time I’m done with you, that’ll be gone.”

“No. I meant by me. My body. My face. You don’t think I’m disgusting?” he said in a voice so small, you could barely make out the words.

His body made you think things, but none of them were disgusting. In fact, if he looked like that now, you wondered how his body must have looked like before, when he was healthy. You glanced at his face.

He had scars there too. One at the corner of his upper lip that made him seem like he was permanently smirking, one across the bridge of his nose, another long one that cut from his temple down to his brow, barely missing his eye. And you didn’t even count the smaller ones, silver little lines that were scattered all over his skin.

His cold blue eyes had scars in them as well. Not physically, not literally. But when you stared deep into them, you could almost see how truly scarred he was, and that scar had nothing on the ones you could actually see.

“There is no way that I could ever find you disgusting,” you told him earnestly.

He stared at you for a while, and then looked away to the side. You soaked the sponge and wiped his face, pressing it to his cheek. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath as he allowed you to travel up to his hair, wetting it, going behind his ears, and back to his nape.

With a plunk, you dumped the sponge in the water and then opened the cap of the soap you had brought.

In an instant, Jason recoiled from you, “No. No soap.”

“Just a little bit?” you pressed.

“No soap,” he insisted, pushing your hand away, “It smells too strong. Makes me sick.”

And suddenly, it clicked.

The reason why he left his room in a mess, the reason why he didn’t sleep on the bed, the reason why he never showered or changed.

Because it was all too much.

The sudden change from a disgusting, smelly, rat-infested torture room to a clean, proper, neat environment with a warm bed. It was too much for him, and he wasn’t used to it yet.

He wasn’t used to being clean.

And the smell of a perfumed body wash would most definitely be too much for him.

“Okay,” you nodded, setting the soap down. “Then I’ll wash you up one more time, is that okay?”

He nodded, still not looking at you.

You were back at his face again for the second time, and then you cupped his cheek, using your thumb to feel the roughness of his overgrown facial hair.

“Do you want me to help shave you?” you asked.

“No way in hell would I ever let you come near my fucking face with a razor,” he scoffed.

“Fair enough,” you mumbled back a reply.

Once you were done, you took the towel and wiped him dry, trying your best to avoid looking at his crotch because you knew his pants were absolutely soaked through. You got up and went to the wardrobe to take a fresh pair of pants- a black sweatpants this time- and a white t-shirt. You set them on the bed, and took the bucket to the bathroom to throw away the contents.

Once you were done, Jason was already changed into his new pants, and had just finished putting on his t-shirt. He looked much better, fresher, and-

“You smell way better now,” you chuckled.

“I did what you asked,” he said, “You better make that happen.”

He gestured to the camera with his thumb.

“I will. Promise,” you smiled, picking up his stinky shirt and wet pants before heading out.

***

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Bruce grumbled.

“He’s not an experiment, or a criminal, Bruce,” you argued, “There’s no reason for you to keep surveillance on him that way. He deserves his privacy.”

“It’s about safety. His and yours,” he explained, “I wouldn’t know what’s going on in there while you’re inside if the camera is deactivated. I wouldn’t know if he’s- if he’s hurting himself.”

“I trust him, Bruce,” you insisted, “And he trusts me too! Look at what happened! He let me give him a freaking sponge bath!”

Bruce frowned in contemplation.

“He’s finishing his meals, he’s reading, he’s actually having conversations with me,” you listed, “He’s improving. Fast. Next thing you know, he and I could be best friends.”

“Fine,” he sighed, “But next time you go in, you’re bringing a panic button with you.”

The panic button you kept whenever you went for patrol was so that you could trigger a silent alarm to Bruce if you were in trouble.

“Okay, that’s fair!” you nodded your head excitedly, watching him as he pressed a button on the keyboard, switching off the camera in Jason’s room. The last thing you saw on the screen was Jason lying down on the bed, sleeping soundly.

***

“Okay, so,” you announced, standing up while you opened the plastic bag, “I got you a few things.”

Jason was on the bed, but proceeded to get up on his feet and tower over you. For some reason, he had started sitting or standing closer to you.

“I got you unscented shampoo and body wash,” you looked into the bag, naming the items you got, “Unscented shaving cream, and an electric shaver! You can’t hurt yourself with this, so Bruce agreed to-”

You looked up and gasped slightly at the closeness of his face to yours. You didn’t realise that he had stepped over so close to you that you could almost feel his warm breath on your face. Almost.

He took the plastic bag from your hands, his skin brushing against yours, and for a brief moment, it gave you goosebumps. He turned around with the plastic bag now in his hands, leaving you in shock.

That is, until he started taking off his shirt.

“W-woah!” you called out, “What are you doing?”

“Taking off my clothes,” he simply said, now not wearing a shirt.

“Why?”

“Because I want to shower,” he looked over his shoulder to give you a smirk. “Why? Wanna join?”

“Wh-wh-j-join?” you stuttered, “Uh, no thanks. I’ll just. Leave you to it, then.”

You turned to leave. Then-

“Wait.”

You stopped in your tracks, turning back around to look at him, trying your best to maintain eye contact.

“Is that… diner in Gotham Village still around?” he asked quietly.

“The corner one on Vincent Street? Sure, it is,” you tilted your head in curiosity, “Would you… like anything from there?”

“The burger,” he said gruffly.

Your mouth widen into a smile. It was the first time he ever asked for anything, more so food. “Fries?”

“Sure.”

“Milkshake?”

“Yeah.”

“Chocolate?”

“Strawberry!” he looked at you as if you were crazy, and then disappeared into the toilet.

“I’ll be back in an hour!” you announced, skipping out in joy.

Vibrating with excitement, you opened the door to Jason’s room, not expecting to see a totally different man in his bed.

No, it was still Jason, but fuck.

Fuck.

He cleaned up well.

Finally showering after eight weeks, Jason Todd had transformed into an almost different person. His uncut hair that poked his eyes was no longer greasy. In fact, it had a slight bounce to it now.

He changed his shirt into a light blue V-neck, and most significantly of all, he shaved

Now you could see the way his angular jawline was cut into a shape as if some Greek artist sculpted it, the way his pink lips stood out against his milky skin - lack of tan from being kept indoors for so long, the way his cheekbones highlighted his facial structure.

And as if you didn’t think of it before, you thought about it again.

Jason Todd was a freaking hottie.

“Uhh, uhmm, uhhh,” you said, stunned and fully aware of the way your face was probably flushing.

He let out a chuckle, and walked towards you, reaching out to take the bags of food from your hand. All the while you were stunned in silence, unsure of how to react to the changed man.

“Anyone home?” he snapped his fingers in front of you.

“Uh, yes, sorry,” you shook your head, “I, uh, didn’t expect it, that’s all.”

“Expect what?” he set the bags on his desk, reaching in to take a fry. “Me to look so good?”

You were sure your ears were burning. “N-no! Not at all. Not that you don’t look good, but- uh- I mean- fuck!”

“I don’t understand you,” he took out the food and arranged them on the table. “My scars are more obvious like this.”

“I think your scars are sexy,” you blurted out.

He blinked.

“Uh, I mean!” you tried to backtrack, “Ugh, fuck it, let’s just eat!”

You took your own burger and went to sit on the bed.

“No food on the bed!” he barked.

“Okay, dad,” you rolled your eyes, settling with sitting on the floor.

To your surprise, Jason took all the food and put it on the floor in front of you, and then sat down opposite you.

Discreetly, you watched as he took the first bite.

He closed his eyes, chewing slowly, savouring the taste in his mouth. It was as though he was passionately making out with his burger, caressing the bun with love.

Smiling to yourself, you ate yours in silence, letting him appreciate the intimate moment he had with his food that he must have thought about while being forced to live on rats.

***

“What’s that?” Bruce asked curiously.

Ever since he switched off the camera in Jason’s room, he had been more agitated- or as agitated as he could get. He kept on asking you what you did, having you report back to him, demanding every little detail on his son’s wellbeing.

“My laptop,” you answered, “I was thinking we could do something different today. Maybe watch a movie. He’s missed out on so many.”

“A laptop,” Bruce hummed, “Do you think he would like one? To occupy his time? Or a television? Or a phone? Or- a tablet? Or-”

“Woah there, cowboy,” you chuckled. Bruce seemed desperate to provide Jason with anything he wanted. Maybe as a way to push the guilt away, maybe as a way to reconcile.

Or maybe he was just being a father who wanted to spoil his son.

Whatever the reason was, you thought it was extremely sweet.

“He’s only now just getting used to being in a clean environment,” you explained, “All of that may overstimulate him, and I don’t want him to revert back to how he was.”

“I see.”

“But I’ll ask, okay?” you said, heading to the room. “We’ll see how he handles a movie.”

You opened the door to see Jason sitting on his bed with his legs spread in front of him, reading a book.

“Hello,” you greeted.

“What’s that,” he narrowed his eyes at you.

“My laptop!” you told him excitedly, “I thought maybe we could watch a movie today.”

“Movie?” he frowned, crossing his legs to make space for you on the bed.

“Yeah,” you sat down in front of him, “I’ve got a whole terabyte of illegally downloaded movies and shows. We can choose one together and watch, if you’d like?”

He contemplated for a while, eyebrows drawn together while you opened your laptop. “Fine.”

“Yay!” you cheered, “Okay, so what do you like to watch? Action? Drama? Thriller? Comedy? Or… Romance?”

“Put on your favourite movie,” he stated.

“What? Nah, you can choose something you’d like to watch,” you declined, “I’m cool with anything.”

“I want to watch your favourite movie,” he deadpanned.

You purse your lips. “Okay, sure. Scoot over.”

He propped two pillows up against the headboard of his bed and moved to the side so you can squeeze in between him and the wall. At first, you were not used to being in close proximity with him, and you wanted to give him personal space.

But after a while, Jason himself had sat next to you closely, stood in front of you or behind you closely- so close that the skin of your arms would brush against each other, or in this case, the heat of his thigh against yours as you balanced the laptop on each of your thighs.

The next surprising thing that happened, though, was when he put his arm behind your shoulder so casually, that anyone would have guessed it was a thing he did on the regular.

You were taken aback by his advances, but appreciated that he felt comfortable with you. It was such an accomplishment considering everything that happened, so you leaned into him snuggly.

You clicked play.

And then, he came in close to you, brushing his lips against your ear and said in the lowest whisper that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand.

“If this movie sucks, I’ll kill you.”

It wasn’t a threat, you knew it wasn’t.

But the heat on your neck from his breath when he whispered to you, the low tone of his voice-

You couldn’t help but clench your thighs together in arousal.

***

“I wonder if he’ll be okay,” you thought out loud.

“I’m so jealous that you’re the only one who gets to see him. When can I go?” Dick whined.

“Two weeks is a long time,” you ignored Dick, “Bruce, is the phone offer still available?”

“Of course,” Bruce said, cutting his steak as silently as he walked. “I already have one. It’s on my desk.”

“That’s great!” you scooped up mashed potatoes.

“Seriously, though,” Dick pressed, “It’s been like what, five months? I want to see him.”

You looked across the dining table to meet your older brother in the eye. It was rare that Dick came over and had dinner with everyone, but his visits had been increasing ever since Jason got back.

“We can’t risk overstimulation, Dick. The only reason why he probably accepted me so easily is because I wasn’t part of his old life. He hasn’t even mentioned anything about… you know. And he hasn’t brought you or anyone else up.”

“Yeah, I know,” he sighed, “It’s just- he’s my brother.”

Those last three words spoke volumes. A simple fact that carried so many emotions. Sadness, relief, longing, regret.

Dick was really special. You got the younger sibling treatment from Dick as well, and you only knew him for a little over a year. Even then you had formed such a bond with Dick Grayson you knew you wouldn’t have with anyone else in the world.

You couldn’t even begin to imagine his relationship with Jason, and how painful it must be to find out his little brother is alive but not allowed to see him.

“He just needs more time and space,” you said, “But he’s getting better, Dick. Much better. Even making jokes and teasing me. You’ll know once he’s ready. And I don’t think it’ll take too much longer.”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with him, haven’t you?” Dick narrowed his eyes at you. “Like, every single day.”

“Well, yeah, he’s probably bored,” you shrugged. “It’s the least I can do.”

“A little birdie told me that you gave him a sponge bath a few months ago,” he wiggled his eyebrows.

You looked at Bruce accusingly, in which he responded with a simple, “Alfred.”

“He wasn’t showering at the time, and he stank like hell,” you explained.

“Sure, use that as an excuse,” he grinned, “Have you seen him shirtless since then?”

“Why?” you asked a little too defensively, feeling your cheeks heat up.

“Nothing,” Dick laughed, “I wanted to ask about his progress. Health wise.”

“Oh,” you calmed down, “Well, Alfred has him on a high protein diet now. He’s definitely filled up since then.”

“Filled up,” Dick winked.

“Grow up, Dick!” you snapped.

After dinner, you went to Bruce’s desk to pick up the smartphone and brought it downstairs to Jason’s room.

“Two visits in a day. A late one, too. What’s the occasion?” Jason mused when you came in.

“I have something for you,” you sat at the foot of his bed.

“Is it my birthday?” he teased.

“Shut up,” you rolled your eyes, “We got you a smartphone. It has internet access and my number. You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to. In fact, it’s switched off. I’m gonna leave it here on the shelf. And if you don’t want it, just ignore it.”

“Why all of a sudden?” he eyed you suspiciously from where he was sitting at the top of the bed.

“Well,” you started, “I’m going to be away for a couple of weeks. On a trip with my friends. Sort of a post-graduation celebration. And I thought that since I won’t be here to keep you company, you might like to… you know…”

He raised an eyebrow at you.

“Talk? Text? Call?” you winced at your own awkwardness. Why were you even nervous? “I mean. You’d be bored so at least you have internet. If you want, of course.”

“Are you implying that I’d miss you while you’re gone?” his lips turned into a smirk, “Or are you the one who will miss me?”

“Neither!” you huffed, “I just thought that you might want some other form of entertainment besides books.”

“I was locked away in a cell for two years without food, water, books, or the internet,” he scoffed.

“And look how great you turned out,” you bit back sarcastically, before realising what you had said. “Oh, no. I didn’t mean- I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have-”

“Jesus, calm the fuck down,” he complained, “It’s fine. You don’t have to be careful with me, I’m not a fucking baby.”

You knew that, but at the same time, you still couldn’t call him by his own name.

“Okay,” you nodded, “Well. I’m leaving in the morning. I’ll be back on the tenth.”

You glanced at the digital clock on Jason’s desk. It was one of the most important things in his room. It allowed him to keep track of the time and day- imperative to keeping one’s sanity in check.

“Tenth, twentieth, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

“You’re not a prisoner,” you reminded him, “You do know that we’ve unlocked the door a couple of weeks ago, right? You’re free to go anywhere you want.”

Everyone had deemed him more or less stable. He wasn’t going to hurt himself or anyone else unless provoked or triggered, so Bruce decided to leave his doors unlocked, but Jason has yet to step outside.

“Doesn’t make a difference,” he mumbled, lying back down to face the ceiling.

Deep down, you knew what he meant.

It didn’t make a difference if you left the door unlocked, or threw him out of the room. Because at the end of the day, Jason was still being imprisoned by himself.

[tinimera]

> Aodhan: Abide fate.

> You’re straightening up your little office when the call to arms rings out. The ship has pulled level with the cargo vessel the crew had been chasing and before long, there’s chaos above deck, with Barron’s booming voice like thunder amid the storm of stomping feet. The small crew you had been looking after scrambles to their positions, excited for a fight you have no doubt, and you yourself are preparing for the battle ahead. Knives in their sheaths, rifle slung across your back, nerves steeled; you hate that this has become second nature, but you don’t have time to linger on your guilt.

> You stay low as you join the others on deck, eye scanning the smaller ship and the crew aboard it. You’ve seen the glow in their eyes before, but there’s no way to tell which of them is or isn’t an old imperialist, and you learned a long time ago that showing mercy to the wrong person can have disastrous results. You won’t risk this crew. As the wicked faithful begin to board, white paint gleaming like sun-bleached bones in the moonlight, you find cover and take aim. Breathe in...

> The first round blows a young congregationer’s head apart as he surges up behind Chef with a set of scimitars ready to liberate the old man’s cranium clean from his neck. The second pierces a woman’s chest, but it takes another round to the kneecap to put her down, and you bolt from cover as you reload. You’ve never faced combat on a ship before, and even those few brief training sessions hadn’t quite prepared you for the challenge. The ship was rocking with the waves and with the chaos; it was hard to get a clean shot before a familiar face blocked your view or was flung away.

> You slide into place behind a stack of crates secured with heavy netting. Most of the fight is concentrated at center deck. You count the crew; Chef and Rigeti hurling someone overboard, Pontic is still standing, Korwyn is holding off a handful of the faithful pretty well, and Barron doesn’t seem to be struggling at all. You take aim, managing another clean headshot to scatter the group around Korwyn and give her room to breathe -- she nods her thanks in your direction before disappearing into the fray again -- and you peer down the length of your rifle, ready to fire again until someone grabs you.

> You hadn’t even heard her coming. Nearly the size of Barron himself and built like a brick shithouse, the width of the arm that snapped around your waist alone was enough to shock you out of focus, and she hurled you effortlessly across the deck. You tumbled ass over teakettle into the rail and the only thing that stopped you from sliding overboard was the wood that pounded roughly against the back of your head. You were still seeing stars when she was on you again grabbing you by the neck like you were little more than a lawn ring fowl and the fact that she didn’t snap it clean in half when she whipped you over her shoulder and into the deck would be a miracle you’d have to think about later.

> As she pulled her arm back again, probably to pop your skull like an egg, you jabbed her in the ribs with a knife and swiped a second across her forearm in a clumsy attack on her tendons. You could hold your own in a fight against almost any troll your size or smaller, but this one in particular was a beast you hadn’t quite managed to encounter yet in all your travels. She snarled in rage, not pain, as her right hand became nearly useless and indigo blood sprayed across your face. Unfortunately for you, it turned out she wasn’t right-handed.

> It only took a few minutes but somehow the blades of your knives ended up buried to the hilt in your body. You took one of them to the shoulder, another just barely missed your jugular but still nicked you, and the third made pretty solid contact with your stomach a few times before you could escape from her. She seemed especially enraged when you showed her you still had a few tricks left as you pulled a long hunting knife from its sheath at your back and nearly carved the imperial symbol off her bicep in one swift motion. You were losing a lot of blood, though. More than seemed to be coming from the open vein in her arm, at least, and your options seemed to amount to either tactical retreat or having your head ripped off and crammed somewhere rather terrible.

> So you ran. You grabbed your rifle and booked it across the deck, only stopping once when you heard her footsteps and a jeering taunt about Pontic and -- damn your predictable verdant nature --  you fired your last round, one handed, bad shoulder, god damn fool, and the pain was immense but it had nearly crippled her. Only nearly, because after taking that shot like a wall of ballistic glass, she barrelled toward you with a wild laugh that chilled you to your bones. You dropped your rifle and scrambled away, at least for a few steps until she caught you by the hair and your face met the wall, where she then pinned you firmly. She had more than a few unpleasant ideas in mind for you, which you knew, because she told you, all snarling voice in your ear as she applied crushing pressure to your back and head until you almost started to hope you’d pass out from the lack of breath before she did any more damage.

> As a last ditch effort, you blindly jammed a needle into her side. Its contents sprung from its container, propelled by a spring, and she laughed nastily at the fairly weak attempt. A bit of quick math... she’d probably be feeling that in a few minutes. A dose of toxins potent enough to drop Barron himself, though perhaps not a subjugglator rendered nearly unstoppable by a troll immensely more powerful than she herself was.

> Your vision was fading, but you knew this ship would not be where you died. You’d be fine, eventually... Knowing that, your claws slip free of the wood against your face, and you let the world go dark.

> Things would be fine... eventually...

[sciencespies]

In a Tunnel Beneath Alaska, Scientists Race to Understand Disappearing Permafrost

https://sciencespies.com/nature/in-a-tunnel-beneath-alaska-scientists-race-to-understand-disappearing-permafrost/

In a Tunnel Beneath Alaska, Scientists Race to Understand Disappearing Permafrost

To enter the Fox permafrost tunnel—one of the only places in the world dedicated to the firsthand scientific study of the mix of dirt and ice that covers much of the planet’s far northern latitudes—you must don a hard-hat then walk into the side of a hill. The hill stands in the rural area of Fox, Alaska, 16 miles north of Fairbanks. The entrance is in a metal wall that’s like a partially dissected Quonset hut, or an enlarged hobbit hole. A tangle of skinny birches and black spruce adorn the top of the hill, and a giant refrigeration unit roars like a jet engine outside the door—to prevent the contents of the tunnel from warping or thawing.

On a mild, damp day in September, Thomas Douglas, a research chemist, escorts visitors through the tunnel door. Douglas works for a project of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers called the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL), which has its fingers in everything from snowmelt modeling and wetlands plant inventories to research on stealth aircraft. But his own work focuses on several aspects of permafrost, and he leads occasional tours here.

Inside, the permafrost tunnel itself is even stranger than its exterior. A metal boardwalk crosses a floor thick with fine, loose, cocoa-colored dust. Fluorescent lights and electrical wires dangle above us. The walls are embedded with roots suspended in a masonry of ice and silt, with a significant content of old bacteria and never-rotted bits of plant and animal tissue. Because of this, the tunnel smells peculiar and fetid, like a malodorous cheese (think Stilton or Limburger) but with an earthy finish and notes of sweaty socks and horse manure.

A trim person in a light jacket, Douglas strolls down the boardwalk with an amiable half-grin on his face, narrating the surroundings with the kind of glib enthusiasm of a museum docent or a mountain guide. “This part of the tunnel here is about 18,000 years old. We’ve had it carbon-14 dated. This is kind of a bone-rich area right here,” he says. He gestures to what look like gopher holes in the silt—the gaps left behind by cores drilled by science teams. The bone of a steppe bison, a large Arctic ungulate that went extinct about 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, rests in the hard peat. A little further along: a mammoth bone. We have stepped both underground and back in time.

The earthen walls look like they could be soft, like mud, but he raps the end of a long metal flashlight against one of them, and it makes a clinking sound. “You can see this is hard as a rock,” he says.

Permafrost is one the weirder concoctions of the Earth’s Ice Ages. In the abstract, it sounds like a simple substance—any earth material that stays frozen for two or more years. In reality, it is a shape-shifting material that underlies about 24 percent of land in the Northern Hemisphere—from the Tibetan Plateau to Siberia and parts of Arctic and sub-Arctic North America. Now many such areas are becoming both volatile and fragile. Permafrost can be hard as bedrock, but when it thaws, if it’s rich in ice and silt, it can morph into something like glue or chocolate milk or wet cement. In its frozen state, it can hoard materials for thousands of years without allowing them to decay. It can suspend bacteria in a kind of cryo-sleep—still alive for millennia.

Research chemist Thomas Douglas stands at the entrance to the Fox tunnel.

(Whitney McLaren / Undark)

Much of the scientific research on permafrost has been done from above or afar, via remote sensing equipment and computer models, or through happenstance in old mining tunnels or places where a river bluff has fallen apart and exposed millennia-old ice. Sometimes it’s done via the laborious process of hand-sampling and boring a hole deep into the ground. “Really most of us are studying permafrost from the surface, and we’re imagining what it looks like underneath,” says Kimberly Wickland, a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist who studies carbon emissions from lakes and wetlands. The Fox tunnel is one of only two underground facilities dedicated exclusively to the scientific study of permafrost where a visitor can actually walk around inside the frozen earth. (The other is in Siberia.) When Wickland stepped into the tunnel for the first time in 2001, it was like a revelation she says—the moment she truly grasped what permafrost was.

Here, people like Wickland collaborate with Douglas, his colleagues, and researchers from all over the world. Collectively, they have studied everything from the utility of ground-penetrating radar in space exploration—the tunnel is thought to be an analog for Mars—to isotopes in steppe bison bones that might suggest something about the migration habits of these creatures before they went extinct. Here you can see the stuff in three dimensions, and easily retrieve 18,000 to 43,000-year-old specimens of it for research. You can reckon with how complex permafrost is, how much of it remains hidden, and how much scientists still need to learn. You can study and decode the vast amounts of information it potentially holds about the Earth’s history, and you can test the ways its disappearance might influence the planet’s future.

Indeed, permafrost is discussed most often these days in a global context and, increasingly, it is a subject of alarm. In December, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration revealed that the world’s permafrost—which used to capture and store carbon—is instead collapsing and setting loose things that it had long ago entombed. Some scientists worry its thaw could liberate microbes wholly foreign to the modern world (a threat whose significance seems even more disturbing in light of the damage wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic). Meanwhile, the NOAA analysis suggests that the globe’s unraveling permafrost is already releasing as much as 300 to 600 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon into the atmosphere annually, about as much as the myriad industrial and transport activities of France or Canada. The finding is a warning signal—possibly the beginning of a feedback loop in which natural processes in the Arctic may make the impacts of climate change far worse.

As climate change warms soil temperatures across Alaska, too, the Fox tunnel probably contains some of the most protected and coldest permafrost in the area. How long that will remain true is hard to predict. A visitor to the tunnel can’t help but wonder just how much will ultimately be lost biologically, ecologically, and scientifically—as the planet’s permafrost collapses.

Early on, permafrost was mostly an engineer’s concern, and it was often a nuisance. Around Fairbanks in the early 20tth century, permafrost was an obstacle lying between prospectors and the gold beneath. So miners would blast through or thaw it with devices called steam points, turning the frozen earth into muck, then haul it out to get to the gold. (The younger, front part of the hill in which the Fox Tunnel now stands was dredged and hauled away by gold miners, which is why the tunnel features mainly ancient permafrost.)

Elsewhere, permafrost was a construction problem. In 1942, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sent more than 10,000 soldiers and civilians to carve the Alaska Highway through eastern Alaska and into Canada, engineers discovered that one could not build directly on top of the stuff without thawing it—a hard lesson that involved broken equipment and trucks stuck in unyielding mud. The construction challenges helped identify “cold regions research requirements” that would later lead to the formation of CRREL, according to a history published by the Corps.

Only in the Cold War did the frozen ground begin to seem like a possible asset, and a thing worthy of scientific inquiry. The Department of Defense wanted to see whether icy terrain could offer a secure location for military bases and operations. In 1959 and 1960, the U.S. Army built what amounted to a city under the snow in Greenland, called Camp Century, with labs, a dormitory, a gymnasium, a barbershop, and a nuclear reactor to supply heat and power. Here, they studied the properties of snow and drilled to the bottom of the Greenland Ice Sheet for the first time. The camp was also intended to house “Project Iceworm,” which aimed to build thousands of miles of tunnel inside the ice sheet and use them for storing ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads. But after a few years, it became clear that Greenland glaciers were too dynamic and unstable to support such a network, and the project was canceled. The camp was abandoned in 1966.

The Fox permafrost tunnel had a more modest purpose. In 1963, when it was first dug, it was simply designed to test whether frozen ground could be an adequate bunker or smaller-scale military storage facility. Permafrost is naturally shock-absorbent and could theoretically handle shelling and bombing. George Swinzow, a geologist in the Experimental Engineering Division of CRREL, one of the first builders and stewards of the tunnel, had also attempted to create his own synthetic version of permafrost, called “permacrete,” which he used to build columns, bricks, and other underground supports and masonry inside another newly excavated tunnel near Camp Tuto in Greenland. (Swinzow would also later write a tome titled “On Winter Warfare,” about the technical problems of combat in cold places.)

In 1968 and 1969, the U.S. Bureau of Mines borrowed the tunnel and tested some blasting and drilling techniques in a gently sloping side channel called a winze. At the end, the tunnel looked like a lopsided letter “V.” For the next two decades, the main research carried out here still focused on engineering — permafrost as a physical thing rather than a biological one, a substrate that would affect the construction of buildings and pipelines. The engineers soon discovered that permafrost would warp and bend as it approached about 30 degrees Fahrenheit (or -1 degrees Celsius). So CRREL installed the first refrigeration unit at the entrance and a set of fans to send the cold air back through the earthen passageways. The chiller now keeps the facility at about 25 degrees (or about -4 degrees Celsius).

After turning down the winze, the boardwalk ends, and Douglas instructs his visitors to “walk daintily,” or to “walk like ninjas.” The ceiling of the tunnel lowers, and he implores them to avoid kicking up the dust, also called loess, a type of delicate dirt carried miles by the wind and collected in this hill. When the tunnel was first dug, the ice held the loess in place. But when exposed to frigid air, ice will convert directly to water vapor, a process called sublimation. When the ice departed, it released the particles of dust onto the floor. Dig through the dust—as Fairbanks paleontologists sometimes do—and you can find ground squirrel bones, millennia-old leaves still tinged with green, ancient seeds and fruits, and beetle carapaces that look like they might have recently died on your windowsill.

By the early 2000s, the dusty surface of the tunnel also made it seem like a good analog for Mars, which has cold dirt and layers of its own permafrost. Researchers began running prototype rovers through the tunnel and using ground-penetrating radar to find novel ways to look for the water and ice—or even extraterrestrial life—on Mars. Around the same time, NASA became interested in whether ice-dwelling microbes might hold clues about the form and function of life on other planets. In 1999 and 2000, a NASA astrobiologist named Richard Hoover sampled microscopic filaments that he thought might belong to bacteria frozen into a 32,000-year-old section of the permafrost tunnel. In 2005, he announced his findings from those samples—the first species ever discovered to be still alive in ancient ice, an extremophile called Carnobacterium pleistocenium.

Thomas Douglas points to an image showing the layout of the Fox permafrost tunnel.

(Whitney McLaren / Undark)

The discovery heralded a new understanding of permafrost. It was proof that life could exist in extreme places. But more ominously, it suggested that the thawing happening all over the planet could awaken both ecological processes and long-dormant organisms, and not all of them might be benign.

Emerging from the winze, the permafrost tunnel opens into a high-ceilinged gallery of water-ice patterns, each one as beautiful as an abstract sculpture. This is the newer part of the tunnel, a section burrowed out between 2011 and 2018. The drilling here exposed these massive cross-sections of ice and earth, called “ice wedges.” Some are as wide as 15 feet across. (Unusually, some of the academic scientists at CRREL dug this part of the tunnel themselves, driving heavy machinery into the earth. Douglas was not involved, but snow researcher Matthew Sturm, who holds a post at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, described driving a skid steer, like a small bulldozer, and a research engineer manned a device called a rotary cutter, attached to an excavator.)

Ice wedges are giant spears that form when water trickles into cracks in the silty parts of the permafrost. The new ice carves out gaps where water can percolate every summer season, so the wedges gather more ice and expand over time. Here, they spread across the walls in dark, glossy, marbled forms. “Isn’t this a wild shape? It reminds me of, like, a Da Vinci sketch,” exclaims Douglas. “Doesn’t it look like an eagle, like a man becoming an eagle?” He pauses before a sheet of ice that curiously resembles a figure—a head with pointed ears, arms spread like wings atop a glassy body, and feet shaped like tree roots. The formation is accidental, frozen in place here about 25,000 years ago, but such fantastical shapes abound. A few feet away from the eagle-man is a horizontal ice-tube that looks like a diorama, with grassy bits and roots and air bubbles suspended in it. This plant matter is around the same age but looks like someone picked it yesterday and stuck it inside a glass case.

The eagle-man and every ice formation in this gallery is a slice of a wedge. By capillary action, water can also collect into lenses and chunks in the soil. Some become enormous; some remain microscopic. Most of these bits of ice are about 99 percent frozen water, with little silt mixed in. But salts in the permafrost can lick the edges of the ice and form unfrozen bits. Here, in what are called brine channels, live other microbes. Today, these microbes are an increasingly active areas of study in the tunnel—and in permafrost research elsewhere in the world—for good reason.

In the popular imagination, microbes in permafrost are like tiny undead monsters—superbugs that awaken and spread pandemics. In 2016, the Yamal Peninsula of Siberia had its first anthrax outbreak in 75 years, likely triggered when a heatwave thawed the region’s permafrost and released anthrax spores from a long-dead reindeer carcass. At least 20 people were infected, and one 12-year-old boy died. Such risks have given scientists enough pause that, in November, an international group in gathered in Hanover, Germany to discuss them.

And microbes may have an even more disturbing role in shaping the fate of the atmosphere: It is the microbes that will determine how much of the permafrost’s carbon escapes into the air and how much can be stored again in the dirt. In 2013, Wickland and a group of her collaborators came to the tunnel to gather bits of 35,000-year-old permafrost that had been carved out of the walls during the recent excavation. They collected these scrapings in several coolers packed with dry ice then flew with them to their laboratory in Colorado. They suspended the samples in water, then strained them, like tea, and measured how much carbon dioxide leached from the water.

The thawed, awakened bacteria in the tea began breaking down the organic carbon in the sample; in less than a week, about half of it was emitted into the air as carbon dioxide. It was a disturbing finding. Scientists had long debated how quickly or gradually the thawing of permafrost would affect the global climate. But this study suggested the warming of ancient soils could produce a giant burst of emissions into the atmosphere in a short period of time—one more reason to be wary of the stuff.

But there are other scientists who are trying to find redeeming value in the newly awakened microbial community. Some have continued Hoover’s work, but brought more powerful DNA analysis into the search for live microbes in ice that might yield insights about interplanetary life. Robyn Barbato, a soil microbiologist at the CRREL lab in New Hampshire, also has plans to gather samples from the tunnel for the purpose of bioprospecting. This is the term used to describe the search for microbes that might help with the design of things like super-cold glue, bio-bricks, sustainable road materials, and antifreeze. “I consider the Far North and the Far South to be kind of the new Amazon. There’s all this biodiversity,” Barbato says. “We could really encounter interesting and useful processes that we can adapt to make things more sustainable.”

At least three times in the past 27 years, flooding from a combination of engineering troubles and heavy spring and summer rains has threatened the tunnel. In 1993, the floodwaters collected at the rear of the old tunnel, warped the ceiling, and brought down large chunks of silt. In 2014, water flowed into the tunnel from a nearby hillslope, and frozen puddles collected inside. In 2016, “we nearly lost the tunnel,” recalls Sturm. The rains altered the drainage above, and water infiltrated an ice wedge adjacent to the tunnel. “By the time anything could get done, it had eroded a house-sized piece of ice wedge.” The main pulse of the floodwaters ultimately drained away from the tunnel, but the close call reminded CRREL staff of the potential for catastrophe. Patches of ice from the various floods still linger in the tunnel.

“To me, that’s one of the most salient things we learned from the tunnel,” Sturm says. When permafrost collapses or erodes, the landscape left behind is called thermokarst. The word evokes limestone karst — a type of belowground terrain that is like Swiss cheese, full of caves, rock pools, springs, and streams formed by dissolving and eroding limestone. But thermokarst is far more unstable than limestone karst. Within a few years, a puddle left by permafrost thaw can turn into a lake, then collapse into a ravine. Permafrost won’t decay because of warm temperatures alone. Water will play a destructive role. Fires have also raged in recent years across Alaska and Siberia. Inside the tunnel, near a second entrance, is a thin black band along the wall, a line of charcoal from what was probably a fire. In the Anthropocene climate, if flames laid bare the hillside above the tunnel, heat might radiate into the ice inside and help thaw it.

Douglas leads the group out this second door and past another loud cooling fan into the damp air and daylight. He walks up the hill onto what is effectively the tunnel’s roof and then into the forest behind it, following an old footpath behind a fence through clusters of dwarf birches, willows, black spruce, and fragrant Labrador tea. It is a picture of collapsing permafrost and another active area of research. CRREL researchers have set up various meters and cameras to track snowfall and melt throughout the forest. His tour crosses several areas of sunken, flooded ground, and then a long gully with spruce trees curved toward it, as if they are bowing. Tea-colored water trickles through the center. This is the top of a collapsed ice wedge.

“Who knows how far out that ice wedge has melted?” Douglas says. “There is this sense that the underground is not stable.”

That sense of collapse extends far beyond here. The mean temperature of Fairbanks over the entire 2019 year was 32.6 degrees Fahrenheit, just above freezing, and permafrost cannot survive many more years like it. What lies inside the tunnel seems more and more like a captive, rare animal, an Earth form that might soon be lost. In a time of climate change, the Fox tunnel becomes a project for reckoning, on a grand scale, with that loss and its cascading effects. “Sometimes we’ll kind of joke about, at one point, we’ll have the only permafrost in the Fairbanks area,” Douglas says. This year, he and his colleagues will experiment with other means to extend the tunnel’s longevity, such as using solar panels to power its chillers. They will complete an expansion project begun this winter by the end of 2021, doubling the size of the tunnel. This will allow them to see permafrost from many angles above (with radar) and below (with the human eye) and develop means to scan frozen ground on a large scale.

At its essence, it’s an effort to study and visualize the remaking of large parts of the Earth.

In the next 80 years, in just one lifetime, most of Alaska’s near-surface permafrost will fall apart, Douglas explains. “That will fundamentally alter hydrology, vegetation, the snowpack, the timing of spring melt, heat exchange, habitats for animals, and it’ll basically completely change the landscape.” The work ahead at Fox, he adds, is to understand the staggering ramifications of this loss. Alaska and all of the far North, he says, are “just going to be a fundamentally different place.”

UPDATE: A previous version of the piece incorrectly stated that the planet’s permafrost could be releasing as much as 300 to 600 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. The amount is 300 to 600 million metric tons. The piece also wrongly stated that Thomas Douglas set up meters and cameras to track snowfall and melt throughout the forest behind the permafrost tunnel. The work was conducted by various CRREL researchers.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

#Nature

[thecoroutfitters]

Written by R. Ann Parris on The Prepper Journal.

It doesn’t take long to start hearing about shipping containers once you’re in the preparedness world. They commonly get brought up as buried bunkers and cellars, although there are some factors to consider on that front. Shipping containers also feature in the tiny house movement, as well as portable and resilient homes and recycling-minded markets. They have structural uses beyond homes, though, and some aspects that can make them especially attractive to preppers.

The most common sizes are 8’ and 9.5’ tall standard and high cubes, and 20’ and 40’ lengths, although seacans come in one-third and half heights and run from 8’ square cubes all the way out to 53’.

The strength in a shipping container comes from the corners and edges – the frame. Just like a cardboard box is more likely to puncture, bulge, and buckle along the flat sides than the edges and corners, the actual roof and walls of a shipping container aren’t as robust. They’re still mostly made from good steel, so we’re not talking fragile here, but they’re not load bearing.

Bulletproof Buildings (Not)

One of the things that gets passed around about shipping containers is their resistance to small arms fire. Yea and nay on that front. They are made more to be weather resistant than bullet resistant.

A .223/5.56 green tip and FMJ will pass through, as will penetrator .308/7.62 and .357 at ranges of 50 and 100 yards. None of our tests went through both sides, but the green tips did put some significant dings on the opposite wall. The connexes did stop soft tip, JHP, and round nose .45 ACP, .38 Special, .22WMR (rifle & revolver), and .30 Carbine at 50 and 100 yard ranges.

Steel T goose loads with an IM choke and #2 buck had some serious bulges at 25-30 and 50 yards, and a couple of shots had cracks around the bottom rim of the dings. It could have been the container or the specific manufacturer loads, but I wouldn’t feel real comfy saying a connex would stop them.

It was a spur-of-the-moment opportunity, so we were limited to the ammo and platforms immediately on hand. Sadly, in our universal giddiness, not even grandpa or the teenagers thought about pictures.

(Bonus: Should it ever become relevant, shovels are near-useless armor, even a trenching scoop. Total bunk. However, surprisingly lightweight backhoe buckets and snow plow blades will completely stop or divert even high-velocity green-tip rifle rounds. Cover behind those.)

If you want to test something specific see if any of the connex or metal scrap dealers near you have chunks or doors – it’s way cheaper than buying and moving a whole shipping container. Otherwise, aim for the sections you plan to cut out anyway.

There’s lots that can be done to reinforce – both bulky like sandbags, water barrels, and filled-in old tires, and less bulky like taking apart another container for the sheets. Still, if protection is the deciding factor between connexes and something else, make sure to add the associated costs of that when you weigh it out.

Buried Bunkers & Cellars

There’s a few things to consider about burying a shipping container. One, it’s going to most likely need ventilation, but they’re not air tight. Two, it requires serious reinforcing. Remember, the sides and roof don’t actually contribute to their weight-bearing capacity. Three, connexes are designed to be ocean-going and exposed, but not to be constantly inundated.

Soils hold enough moisture for that to require some additional work. Know the wet-season water table where you’re digging, for sure (for anything). It’ll affect soil movement, which can slowly twist whatever’s buried. As the soil and any pad shifts over time, the angles of pressure will change, too. Snow loads, tree roots, and the potential of somebody driving over it also have to be considered.

There’s some information about burying without enough precautions here https://containerauction.com/read-news/what-happens-when-you-bury-a-shipping-container and some steps that can prevent water and load damage in the video at the bottom here http://www.goodshomedesign.com/shipping-container-as-an-underground-shelter/2/.

Depending on the purpose and size you’re going for, getting something that’s already built to be moisture tight, that’s meant to be buried and designed to take all kinds of loads and conditions, may be a more cost and labor effective option. Steel and concrete cisterns, box culverts, and round culvert have some of the same ready-to-drop aspects. Building with CMU and pouring a slab ceiling is also an option.

You’ll also want to check the hauling prices in your area – for containers and their alternatives – and make sure you have access for crane works as well as the truck if you’re hoisting (you’re probably hoisting for a bunker, but compare options). If you have to clear space, factor that into your project costs.

Housing

People of all walks are already using shipping containers for housing. While comfort may not be the driving factor in some preppers’ planning, it’s something that bears some consideration. Most connexes aren’t insulated particularly well. That drives up the real costs of owning a container home, both in today’s world and in the world(s) we’re preparing to face.

With some care in placement to increase shade and some decent ventilation, some of the heat issues can be mitigated, but heating in winter is pretty expensive. While each makes for a small area to heat, unless we insulate them – which eats up space, usually on the interior – or use something like a rocket stove connected to a thermal mass heater for a bedding or seating shelf – which is also going to eat up space – we’re going to have to heat more to keep the container warm.

One of the solutions I see proposed due to temperature are refrigerated containers. They cost about half again to twice as much as standard connexes the same size. Fridge boxes are already insulated and there’s already some venting in place that can help with cooling and warming the space, which saves labor and finding parts later. You do have to deal with their specialty flooring and the factory insulation is still eating up space. You also still have to heat or cool them to maintain comfort.

People manage with crappy, drafty cabins even in Siberia, but if you don’t have the funds for a good tent/cabin stove and enough natural resources to fuel it, even temperate areas can get downright chilly.

If you’re willing to live in camping conditions for the duration of a disaster (and potentially leading up to it) heat and cold can absolutely be countered. Still, it’s definitely something to consider if you’ve never lived in an RV, Airstream, plywood camping/trapper shack, GI tent, or older mobile home without climate control.

Maximized Storage

All of that isn’t to say I don’t like shipping containers. I actually love them. They’re more expensive than a prefab plywood or OSB shed, but they have their benefits and in my area, it’s not much more than trucking in a prefab shed with similar square footage.

They offer sturdy storage that does have ballistic resistance and strength against sudden-force hits from falling limbs and trees. They weigh enough to not get tossed around or lose roofs as often as lighter aluminum trailers or panel sheds. I’ve yet to see somebody bust a connex door with a kick or body slam, or the few good jerks I applied to a padlock latch out of frustration once (my key got stuck in the shed lock).

The strength of the frames means they can readily support roof spans. That lets us reap the storage space not only within the connexes, but also the area between two of them, or we can use a seacan for one side and only be supporting the other. Prefab roof trusses, roofing, and carports can make the expansions faster and easier or we can DIY it at a more budget-friendly price.

The other sides can be enclosed with fencing or with solid siding, be partly built up in block or brick, or be left entirely open. That inner area makes a shaded, more secure, and somewhat protected space depending on what we choose.

We can increase protection by aligning the connex(es) so they face winter winds and common summer storm directions broadside or quartered. Or, we can arrange them to maximize summer breezes to combat heat and dampness issues.

Livestock Sheds

People have successfully converted connexes into goat, cattle and donkey sheds and poultry coops. Several animal rescues and training facilities have converted them into kennels using gravel, pea stone, or concrete pads.

The non-insulated drawbacks of shipping containers also applies to livestock, though, and may limit options or require buffers. Another thing to consider is the flooring. Many have wood slat or plank floors. If wastes can’t be cleaned from those or if they stay too damp, they’ll rot. It’s not only a health risk from ammonia, mold, and mildew, but also possible injury busting through the floor.

Still, because the sheathing and slats aren’t structurally bearing, we can cut pretty much any holes we want in them. That means we can capitalize on sub-grade connexes (and their lower prices) if the damaged areas align with what we’d remove anyway.

Connex Compounds

A bunch of shipping containers make for a mighty expensive fence. Still, they’re pretty economical as a little inner castle wall. Even just one tier high they offer a somewhat elevated vantage point and they do have some ballistic protection – especially a shipping container that’s intact on the outer side, with storage on that exterior side and doors and windows on the interior.

Rooftops can be outfitted for water catchment and solar or wind collectors and easily accessed with step ladders. With some reinforcement they’re options for rooftop gardens that won’t face as much predation, and surface area for water storage. Those tanks offer increased passive drip range thanks to the elevation (water will reach further without pumps).

An inner courtyard might only be creating a safer recreation space and the mental health from being able to get outdoors during a lockdown scenario, only to increase our privacy, or increase protection for tools and equipment. The added protection also applies to fresh food sources. Even with 20’ containers that only leave a 12’ square inside, options include espalier or columnar fruit trees or shrubs, container or in-ground gardens (vertical to maximize space and production), a few rabbits and-or ducks, or an aquaponics setup.

Our inner courtyard might be surrounded entirely by containers, or containers might abut preexisting buildings. We can finish other sides or corner gaps with fencing, or we can plan to drag heavy vehicles to block them and create 360-degree cover. Other options for completing our walls include hugel mounds, raised beds, and water barrels. Small interior spaces can also be easily netted or roofed for more shade, weather protection, or privacy.

Shipping Containers

When we weigh the pros and cons of shipping containers, DIY construction, and other options like prefab sheds, RVs, and box culverts, we need to factor in not only the installation costs but also costs to provide access for the trucks that will be coming in and anything we need or want to add so it suits our purpose, such as ventilation, sump pumps, reinforcements, doors, or windows. Unless condition truly doesn’t matter, find a local-enough source that you can get your eyes on the exact shipping container you’re buying to avoid any potential problems.

A shipping container isn’t the right choice for everybody. However, standalone, roofed, or combined with each other or other structures, as-is, minor modifications, or subject to major renovation, they are a good choice for some – for far more than buried bunkers and cellars.

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[exfrenchdorsl4p0a1]

Spending Millions to Keep a Home Safe

Joe Schmelzer for The Wall Street Journal

In the Hollywood Hills, where musician and studio owner Jed Leiber lives, his imposing 12,000-square-foot house is known by some locals as “the Fortress.”

The walls are made of concrete. High-resolution security cameras monitor activity. Each room requires a key fob for access. And the master-bedroom suite includes a safe room, built into one of two dressing areas and hidden by a bulletproof plate that slides down from the ceiling.

Mr. Leiber, son of the late songwriter Jerry Leiber and owner of NightBird Recording Studios in West Hollywood, bought the house in 2012 for $7.2 million, primarily for its Bauhaus-style architecture and a sweeping view of Los Angeles, which has moved him to call it “Sky Castle.” Since then, he has also come to value the property’s strong security and has further upgraded it.

“I just want to make sure that anyone is safe within the walls of my home, Sky Castle,” says Mr. Leiber, who wants to spend more time traveling and touring and is seeking $50 million for the seven-bedroom, 12-bathroom house. He also owns a penthouse apartment in West Hollywood.

High-end homeowners are increasingly taking James Bond-esque security measures to manage threats ranging from burglars and kidnappers to terror attacks and civil unrest. Such precautions can cost millions, but as prices for home technology come down, sophisticated security systems are showing up in middle-class homes as well.

Home-security companies are seeing an uptick in sales. For example, Gaffco Ballistics, a Londonderry, Vt.-based security firm, says the number of residential projects it completed in 2015 grew by 60%, to 52 homes, from the year before.

“There is a higher level of perceived threat out there, and it’s growing every year,” says Tom Gaffney, chief executive of the company, which sells bullet-resistant doors, safe rooms and ventilation systems to deal with the effects of nuclear, chemical or biological attacks.

In the high-end housing market, protection is increasingly a selling point. Sotheby’s International Realty, which is launching an international marketing campaign for Mr. Leiber’s Hollywood Hills home, starting in China, is emphasizing its state-of-the-art security features. At a minimum, real-estate agents say, discerning buyers expect a so-called smart home, where security systems, lighting, climate control and energy consumption are all managed with a phone or computer app. Video surveillance is in particular demand in the residential market, says Tim McKinney, director of custom home services for ADT Security Services in North America.

“If someone is doing small household work, I can let them in, turn off the alarm, unlock the door, follow them through the house with cameras and then lock the door and reset the alarm, all without leaving work,” says ADT customer Jeffrey Starkman, a periodontist in Parkland, Fla., who lives in a six-bedroom house with his wife, pediatric dentist Sharlene Starkman, kids Mia, Maxwell and Mason, and their schnoodle Ponyo. Mr. Starkman, 42, also receives an alert when a visitor sets foot in the wrong room. The 5,000-square-foot house, which the Starkmans bought in a gated community for $950,000 in 2008, has keypads at the doors, cameras in the garden and smoke detectors that tell the air-conditioning system to stop circulating air in case of fire.

ADT says the cost of installing its Pulse wireless home-security system varies with complexity, but for a 4,000-square-foot house, installation costs between $1,800 and $4,500. Monthly monitoring fees range from $60 to $80.

Scott and Maria Jensen’s home in Arizona has a safe room hidden behind a fireplace. A secret switch on the mantel opens the door.

Steve Humble of Creative Home Engineering

At their home near Portland, Ore., Andy and Laurie Teich are taking video surveillance to a higher level. Of the 16 security cameras installed around their six-bedroom house, three are thermal cameras that detect the body heat of humans and animals—avoiding false alarms triggered by sun, rain or leaves swirling around the backyard.

“You know it’s real activity and not just bugs flying in front of the camera at night,” says Mr. Teich, chief executive officer of Flir Systems Inc., a Wilsonville, Ore., manufacturer of thermal-imaging technology that started in the military but is finding its way into residential security.

Mr. Teich, who is 56 and recently announced plans to retire, initially installed the cameras to test them for work but found that they make his wife and kids, Alec, Carter and Taylor, feel safer during his frequent business trips.

“If my wife calls in the middle of the night because she heard a noise, I can immediately put eyes on that house and pretty much understand what’s going on around the property,” says Mr. Teich.

The Teichs bought their house, which sits on a 5-acre lot that was formerly a Christmas tree farm, for $930,000 in 1999 and remodeled it for $1.5 million in 2012, enlarging the home to 10,000 square feet.

Mr. Teich says the property has several layers of security: a safe neighborhood, a conventional alarm system, the cameras—and what he calls “the Labrador layer”—dogs Fenway and Laci. So far, the cameras have triggered one alarm—but the unannounced visitor turned out to be a coyote.

At Andy and Laurie Teich’s six-bedroom house near Portland, Ore., Fenway and Laci are among the security measures.

Bill Purcell for The Wall Street Journal

When David and Barbara Miller bought their house in Wainscott, N.Y., for $1.7 million in 2002, it came with a garden, pool and poolhouse, but it lacked a place to safely store Mr. Miller’s collection of antique guns and other firearms. So as part of a $2 million renovation, the couple enlarged the property and added a fortified vault in the basement. With 6-inch-thick concrete walls and a steel door by firearms maker Browning Arms Co., the room is big enough for the guns—and for Mr. Miller, who is 6-feet tall, to comfortably move around in. Mr. Miller, 51, equipped the door with two locks: an electronic lock with a keypad and a combination lock, like the one typically found on a safe. The room, completed in 2011 and slightly larger than a closet, has air conditioning and could shelter several people if they needed a hiding place for a limited time.

“It could work in that manner but, thank God, we’ve never had to use it that way,” says Ms. Miller, 50. In late 2013, the couple, now both farmers, moved into an 1852 farmhouse in Barboursville, Va., to live in the country. The six-bedroom, 6,000-square-foot home in the Hamptons is on the market for $3.39 million, and security is a selling point. The property includes an alarm system and cameras that monitor the 1.2-acre lot.

Safe rooms, also called panic rooms, are evolving as well.

Increasingly, they aren’t separate rooms with one function, since families dislike giving up space for a room they never want to use. These homeowners reinforce existing rooms with fortified walls and doors, install secure communication systems and connect independent power sources. Those features blend in with the décor, as to avoid detection or scaring the kids.

“Every client should have several places in their home that are going to protect them for the length of time that it takes for the police to get there,” says Christopher Falkenberg, president of New York firm Insite Security.

At Scott and Maria Jensen’s 4,500-square-foot, five-bedroom house in Arizona—the exact location has been withheld at their request—the safe room is hidden behind a fireplace. Mr. Jensen, 47, said a series of break-ins in the neighborhood and the experience of a colleague whose safe was stolen contributed to his decision. Creative Home Engineering, a Gilbert, Ariz.-based security company, installed a secret switch on the mantel that, when touched with a magnet, opens a door to a concealed space. The cost: $15,000.

The company also builds bookcases, brick walls and staircases that can open to reveal secret spaces. The Jensens’ safe room is big enough for two adults standing in it, but they primarily wanted a hiding place for valuables, not for themselves. If they felt personally threatened, Mr. Jensen says, “we would rather just go outside.”

The post Spending Millions to Keep a Home Safe appeared first on Real Estate News & Advice | realtor.com®.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mNreO8

[realestate63141]

Spending Millions to Keep a Home Safe

Joe Schmelzer for The Wall Street Journal

In the Hollywood Hills, where musician and studio owner Jed Leiber lives, his imposing 12,000-square-foot house is known by some locals as “the Fortress.”

The walls are made of concrete. High-resolution security cameras monitor activity. Each room requires a key fob for access. And the master-bedroom suite includes a safe room, built into one of two dressing areas and hidden by a bulletproof plate that slides down from the ceiling.

Mr. Leiber, son of the late songwriter Jerry Leiber and owner of NightBird Recording Studios in West Hollywood, bought the house in 2012 for $7.2 million, primarily for its Bauhaus-style architecture and a sweeping view of Los Angeles, which has moved him to call it “Sky Castle.” Since then, he has also come to value the property’s strong security and has further upgraded it.

“I just want to make sure that anyone is safe within the walls of my home, Sky Castle,” says Mr. Leiber, who wants to spend more time traveling and touring and is seeking $50 million for the seven-bedroom, 12-bathroom house. He also owns a penthouse apartment in West Hollywood.

High-end homeowners are increasingly taking James Bond-esque security measures to manage threats ranging from burglars and kidnappers to terror attacks and civil unrest. Such precautions can cost millions, but as prices for home technology come down, sophisticated security systems are showing up in middle-class homes as well.

Home-security companies are seeing an uptick in sales. For example, Gaffco Ballistics, a Londonderry, Vt.-based security firm, says the number of residential projects it completed in 2015 grew by 60%, to 52 homes, from the year before.

“There is a higher level of perceived threat out there, and it’s growing every year,” says Tom Gaffney, chief executive of the company, which sells bullet-resistant doors, safe rooms and ventilation systems to deal with the effects of nuclear, chemical or biological attacks.

In the high-end housing market, protection is increasingly a selling point. Sotheby’s International Realty, which is launching an international marketing campaign for Mr. Leiber’s Hollywood Hills home, starting in China, is emphasizing its state-of-the-art security features. At a minimum, real-estate agents say, discerning buyers expect a so-called smart home, where security systems, lighting, climate control and energy consumption are all managed with a phone or computer app. Video surveillance is in particular demand in the residential market, says Tim McKinney, director of custom home services for ADT Security Services in North America.

“If someone is doing small household work, I can let them in, turn off the alarm, unlock the door, follow them through the house with cameras and then lock the door and reset the alarm, all without leaving work,” says ADT customer Jeffrey Starkman, a periodontist in Parkland, Fla., who lives in a six-bedroom house with his wife, pediatric dentist Sharlene Starkman, kids Mia, Maxwell and Mason, and their schnoodle Ponyo. Mr. Starkman, 42, also receives an alert when a visitor sets foot in the wrong room. The 5,000-square-foot house, which the Starkmans bought in a gated community for $950,000 in 2008, has keypads at the doors, cameras in the garden and smoke detectors that tell the air-conditioning system to stop circulating air in case of fire.

ADT says the cost of installing its Pulse wireless home-security system varies with complexity, but for a 4,000-square-foot house, installation costs between $1,800 and $4,500. Monthly monitoring fees range from $60 to $80.

Scott and Maria Jensen’s home in Arizona has a safe room hidden behind a fireplace. A secret switch on the mantel opens the door.

Steve Humble of Creative Home Engineering

At their home near Portland, Ore., Andy and Laurie Teich are taking video surveillance to a higher level. Of the 16 security cameras installed around their six-bedroom house, three are thermal cameras that detect the body heat of humans and animals—avoiding false alarms triggered by sun, rain or leaves swirling around the backyard.

“You know it’s real activity and not just bugs flying in front of the camera at night,” says Mr. Teich, chief executive officer of Flir Systems Inc., a Wilsonville, Ore., manufacturer of thermal-imaging technology that started in the military but is finding its way into residential security.

Mr. Teich, who is 56 and recently announced plans to retire, initially installed the cameras to test them for work but found that they make his wife and kids, Alec, Carter and Taylor, feel safer during his frequent business trips.

“If my wife calls in the middle of the night because she heard a noise, I can immediately put eyes on that house and pretty much understand what’s going on around the property,” says Mr. Teich.

The Teichs bought their house, which sits on a 5-acre lot that was formerly a Christmas tree farm, for $930,000 in 1999 and remodeled it for $1.5 million in 2012, enlarging the home to 10,000 square feet.

Mr. Teich says the property has several layers of security: a safe neighborhood, a conventional alarm system, the cameras—and what he calls “the Labrador layer”—dogs Fenway and Laci. So far, the cameras have triggered one alarm—but the unannounced visitor turned out to be a coyote.

At Andy and Laurie Teich’s six-bedroom house near Portland, Ore., Fenway and Laci are among the security measures.

Bill Purcell for The Wall Street Journal

When David and Barbara Miller bought their house in Wainscott, N.Y., for $1.7 million in 2002, it came with a garden, pool and poolhouse, but it lacked a place to safely store Mr. Miller’s collection of antique guns and other firearms. So as part of a $2 million renovation, the couple enlarged the property and added a fortified vault in the basement. With 6-inch-thick concrete walls and a steel door by firearms maker Browning Arms Co., the room is big enough for the guns—and for Mr. Miller, who is 6-feet tall, to comfortably move around in. Mr. Miller, 51, equipped the door with two locks: an electronic lock with a keypad and a combination lock, like the one typically found on a safe. The room, completed in 2011 and slightly larger than a closet, has air conditioning and could shelter several people if they needed a hiding place for a limited time.

“It could work in that manner but, thank God, we’ve never had to use it that way,” says Ms. Miller, 50. In late 2013, the couple, now both farmers, moved into an 1852 farmhouse in Barboursville, Va., to live in the country. The six-bedroom, 6,000-square-foot home in the Hamptons is on the market for $3.39 million, and security is a selling point. The property includes an alarm system and cameras that monitor the 1.2-acre lot.

Safe rooms, also called panic rooms, are evolving as well.

Increasingly, they aren’t separate rooms with one function, since families dislike giving up space for a room they never want to use. These homeowners reinforce existing rooms with fortified walls and doors, install secure communication systems and connect independent power sources. Those features blend in with the décor, as to avoid detection or scaring the kids.

“Every client should have several places in their home that are going to protect them for the length of time that it takes for the police to get there,” says Christopher Falkenberg, president of New York firm Insite Security.

At Scott and Maria Jensen’s 4,500-square-foot, five-bedroom house in Arizona—the exact location has been withheld at their request—the safe room is hidden behind a fireplace. Mr. Jensen, 47, said a series of break-ins in the neighborhood and the experience of a colleague whose safe was stolen contributed to his decision. Creative Home Engineering, a Gilbert, Ariz.-based security company, installed a secret switch on the mantel that, when touched with a magnet, opens a door to a concealed space. The cost: $15,000.

The company also builds bookcases, brick walls and staircases that can open to reveal secret spaces. The Jensens’ safe room is big enough for two adults standing in it, but they primarily wanted a hiding place for valuables, not for themselves. If they felt personally threatened, Mr. Jensen says, “we would rather just go outside.”

The post Spending Millions to Keep a Home Safe appeared first on Real Estate News & Advice | realtor.com®.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mNreO8

[realtor10036]

Spending Millions to Keep a Home Safe

Joe Schmelzer for The Wall Street Journal

In the Hollywood Hills, where musician and studio owner Jed Leiber lives, his imposing 12,000-square-foot house is known by some locals as “the Fortress.”

The walls are made of concrete. High-resolution security cameras monitor activity. Each room requires a key fob for access. And the master-bedroom suite includes a safe room, built into one of two dressing areas and hidden by a bulletproof plate that slides down from the ceiling.

Mr. Leiber, son of the late songwriter Jerry Leiber and owner of NightBird Recording Studios in West Hollywood, bought the house in 2012 for $7.2 million, primarily for its Bauhaus-style architecture and a sweeping view of Los Angeles, which has moved him to call it “Sky Castle.” Since then, he has also come to value the property’s strong security and has further upgraded it.

“I just want to make sure that anyone is safe within the walls of my home, Sky Castle,” says Mr. Leiber, who wants to spend more time traveling and touring and is seeking $50 million for the seven-bedroom, 12-bathroom house. He also owns a penthouse apartment in West Hollywood.

High-end homeowners are increasingly taking James Bond-esque security measures to manage threats ranging from burglars and kidnappers to terror attacks and civil unrest. Such precautions can cost millions, but as prices for home technology come down, sophisticated security systems are showing up in middle-class homes as well.

Home-security companies are seeing an uptick in sales. For example, Gaffco Ballistics, a Londonderry, Vt.-based security firm, says the number of residential projects it completed in 2015 grew by 60%, to 52 homes, from the year before.

“There is a higher level of perceived threat out there, and it’s growing every year,” says Tom Gaffney, chief executive of the company, which sells bullet-resistant doors, safe rooms and ventilation systems to deal with the effects of nuclear, chemical or biological attacks.

In the high-end housing market, protection is increasingly a selling point. Sotheby’s International Realty, which is launching an international marketing campaign for Mr. Leiber’s Hollywood Hills home, starting in China, is emphasizing its state-of-the-art security features. At a minimum, real-estate agents say, discerning buyers expect a so-called smart home, where security systems, lighting, climate control and energy consumption are all managed with a phone or computer app. Video surveillance is in particular demand in the residential market, says Tim McKinney, director of custom home services for ADT Security Services in North America.

“If someone is doing small household work, I can let them in, turn off the alarm, unlock the door, follow them through the house with cameras and then lock the door and reset the alarm, all without leaving work,” says ADT customer Jeffrey Starkman, a periodontist in Parkland, Fla., who lives in a six-bedroom house with his wife, pediatric dentist Sharlene Starkman, kids Mia, Maxwell and Mason, and their schnoodle Ponyo. Mr. Starkman, 42, also receives an alert when a visitor sets foot in the wrong room. The 5,000-square-foot house, which the Starkmans bought in a gated community for $950,000 in 2008, has keypads at the doors, cameras in the garden and smoke detectors that tell the air-conditioning system to stop circulating air in case of fire.

ADT says the cost of installing its Pulse wireless home-security system varies with complexity, but for a 4,000-square-foot house, installation costs between $1,800 and $4,500. Monthly monitoring fees range from $60 to $80.

Scott and Maria Jensen’s home in Arizona has a safe room hidden behind a fireplace. A secret switch on the mantel opens the door.

Steve Humble of Creative Home Engineering

At their home near Portland, Ore., Andy and Laurie Teich are taking video surveillance to a higher level. Of the 16 security cameras installed around their six-bedroom house, three are thermal cameras that detect the body heat of humans and animals—avoiding false alarms triggered by sun, rain or leaves swirling around the backyard.

“You know it’s real activity and not just bugs flying in front of the camera at night,” says Mr. Teich, chief executive officer of Flir Systems Inc., a Wilsonville, Ore., manufacturer of thermal-imaging technology that started in the military but is finding its way into residential security.

Mr. Teich, who is 56 and recently announced plans to retire, initially installed the cameras to test them for work but found that they make his wife and kids, Alec, Carter and Taylor, feel safer during his frequent business trips.

“If my wife calls in the middle of the night because she heard a noise, I can immediately put eyes on that house and pretty much understand what’s going on around the property,” says Mr. Teich.

The Teichs bought their house, which sits on a 5-acre lot that was formerly a Christmas tree farm, for $930,000 in 1999 and remodeled it for $1.5 million in 2012, enlarging the home to 10,000 square feet.

Mr. Teich says the property has several layers of security: a safe neighborhood, a conventional alarm system, the cameras—and what he calls “the Labrador layer”—dogs Fenway and Laci. So far, the cameras have triggered one alarm—but the unannounced visitor turned out to be a coyote.

At Andy and Laurie Teich’s six-bedroom house near Portland, Ore., Fenway and Laci are among the security measures.

Bill Purcell for The Wall Street Journal

When David and Barbara Miller bought their house in Wainscott, N.Y., for $1.7 million in 2002, it came with a garden, pool and poolhouse, but it lacked a place to safely store Mr. Miller’s collection of antique guns and other firearms. So as part of a $2 million renovation, the couple enlarged the property and added a fortified vault in the basement. With 6-inch-thick concrete walls and a steel door by firearms maker Browning Arms Co., the room is big enough for the guns—and for Mr. Miller, who is 6-feet tall, to comfortably move around in. Mr. Miller, 51, equipped the door with two locks: an electronic lock with a keypad and a combination lock, like the one typically found on a safe. The room, completed in 2011 and slightly larger than a closet, has air conditioning and could shelter several people if they needed a hiding place for a limited time.

“It could work in that manner but, thank God, we’ve never had to use it that way,” says Ms. Miller, 50. In late 2013, the couple, now both farmers, moved into an 1852 farmhouse in Barboursville, Va., to live in the country. The six-bedroom, 6,000-square-foot home in the Hamptons is on the market for $3.39 million, and security is a selling point. The property includes an alarm system and cameras that monitor the 1.2-acre lot.

Safe rooms, also called panic rooms, are evolving as well.

Increasingly, they aren’t separate rooms with one function, since families dislike giving up space for a room they never want to use. These homeowners reinforce existing rooms with fortified walls and doors, install secure communication systems and connect independent power sources. Those features blend in with the décor, as to avoid detection or scaring the kids.

“Every client should have several places in their home that are going to protect them for the length of time that it takes for the police to get there,” says Christopher Falkenberg, president of New York firm Insite Security.

At Scott and Maria Jensen’s 4,500-square-foot, five-bedroom house in Arizona—the exact location has been withheld at their request—the safe room is hidden behind a fireplace. Mr. Jensen, 47, said a series of break-ins in the neighborhood and the experience of a colleague whose safe was stolen contributed to his decision. Creative Home Engineering, a Gilbert, Ariz.-based security company, installed a secret switch on the mantel that, when touched with a magnet, opens a door to a concealed space. The cost: $15,000.

The company also builds bookcases, brick walls and staircases that can open to reveal secret spaces. The Jensens’ safe room is big enough for two adults standing in it, but they primarily wanted a hiding place for valuables, not for themselves. If they felt personally threatened, Mr. Jensen says, “we would rather just go outside.”

The post Spending Millions to Keep a Home Safe appeared first on Real Estate News & Advice | realtor.com®.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mNreO8

[gillespialfredoe01806ld]

Spending Millions to Keep a Home Safe

Joe Schmelzer for The Wall Street Journal

In the Hollywood Hills, where musician and studio owner Jed Leiber lives, his imposing 12,000-square-foot house is known by some locals as “the Fortress.”

The walls are made of concrete. High-resolution security cameras monitor activity. Each room requires a key fob for access. And the master-bedroom suite includes a safe room, built into one of two dressing areas and hidden by a bulletproof plate that slides down from the ceiling.

Mr. Leiber, son of the late songwriter Jerry Leiber and owner of NightBird Recording Studios in West Hollywood, bought the house in 2012 for $7.2 million, primarily for its Bauhaus-style architecture and a sweeping view of Los Angeles, which has moved him to call it “Sky Castle.” Since then, he has also come to value the property’s strong security and has further upgraded it.

“I just want to make sure that anyone is safe within the walls of my home, Sky Castle,” says Mr. Leiber, who wants to spend more time traveling and touring and is seeking $50 million for the seven-bedroom, 12-bathroom house. He also owns a penthouse apartment in West Hollywood.

High-end homeowners are increasingly taking James Bond-esque security measures to manage threats ranging from burglars and kidnappers to terror attacks and civil unrest. Such precautions can cost millions, but as prices for home technology come down, sophisticated security systems are showing up in middle-class homes as well.

Home-security companies are seeing an uptick in sales. For example, Gaffco Ballistics, a Londonderry, Vt.-based security firm, says the number of residential projects it completed in 2015 grew by 60%, to 52 homes, from the year before.

“There is a higher level of perceived threat out there, and it’s growing every year,” says Tom Gaffney, chief executive of the company, which sells bullet-resistant doors, safe rooms and ventilation systems to deal with the effects of nuclear, chemical or biological attacks.

In the high-end housing market, protection is increasingly a selling point. Sotheby’s International Realty, which is launching an international marketing campaign for Mr. Leiber’s Hollywood Hills home, starting in China, is emphasizing its state-of-the-art security features. At a minimum, real-estate agents say, discerning buyers expect a so-called smart home, where security systems, lighting, climate control and energy consumption are all managed with a phone or computer app. Video surveillance is in particular demand in the residential market, says Tim McKinney, director of custom home services for ADT Security Services in North America.

“If someone is doing small household work, I can let them in, turn off the alarm, unlock the door, follow them through the house with cameras and then lock the door and reset the alarm, all without leaving work,” says ADT customer Jeffrey Starkman, a periodontist in Parkland, Fla., who lives in a six-bedroom house with his wife, pediatric dentist Sharlene Starkman, kids Mia, Maxwell and Mason, and their schnoodle Ponyo. Mr. Starkman, 42, also receives an alert when a visitor sets foot in the wrong room. The 5,000-square-foot house, which the Starkmans bought in a gated community for $950,000 in 2008, has keypads at the doors, cameras in the garden and smoke detectors that tell the air-conditioning system to stop circulating air in case of fire.

ADT says the cost of installing its Pulse wireless home-security system varies with complexity, but for a 4,000-square-foot house, installation costs between $1,800 and $4,500. Monthly monitoring fees range from $60 to $80.

Scott and Maria Jensen’s home in Arizona has a safe room hidden behind a fireplace. A secret switch on the mantel opens the door.

Steve Humble of Creative Home Engineering

At their home near Portland, Ore., Andy and Laurie Teich are taking video surveillance to a higher level. Of the 16 security cameras installed around their six-bedroom house, three are thermal cameras that detect the body heat of humans and animals—avoiding false alarms triggered by sun, rain or leaves swirling around the backyard.

“You know it’s real activity and not just bugs flying in front of the camera at night,” says Mr. Teich, chief executive officer of Flir Systems Inc., a Wilsonville, Ore., manufacturer of thermal-imaging technology that started in the military but is finding its way into residential security.

Mr. Teich, who is 56 and recently announced plans to retire, initially installed the cameras to test them for work but found that they make his wife and kids, Alec, Carter and Taylor, feel safer during his frequent business trips.

“If my wife calls in the middle of the night because she heard a noise, I can immediately put eyes on that house and pretty much understand what’s going on around the property,” says Mr. Teich.

The Teichs bought their house, which sits on a 5-acre lot that was formerly a Christmas tree farm, for $930,000 in 1999 and remodeled it for $1.5 million in 2012, enlarging the home to 10,000 square feet.

Mr. Teich says the property has several layers of security: a safe neighborhood, a conventional alarm system, the cameras—and what he calls “the Labrador layer”—dogs Fenway and Laci. So far, the cameras have triggered one alarm—but the unannounced visitor turned out to be a coyote.

At Andy and Laurie Teich’s six-bedroom house near Portland, Ore., Fenway and Laci are among the security measures.

Bill Purcell for The Wall Street Journal

When David and Barbara Miller bought their house in Wainscott, N.Y., for $1.7 million in 2002, it came with a garden, pool and poolhouse, but it lacked a place to safely store Mr. Miller’s collection of antique guns and other firearms. So as part of a $2 million renovation, the couple enlarged the property and added a fortified vault in the basement. With 6-inch-thick concrete walls and a steel door by firearms maker Browning Arms Co., the room is big enough for the guns—and for Mr. Miller, who is 6-feet tall, to comfortably move around in. Mr. Miller, 51, equipped the door with two locks: an electronic lock with a keypad and a combination lock, like the one typically found on a safe. The room, completed in 2011 and slightly larger than a closet, has air conditioning and could shelter several people if they needed a hiding place for a limited time.

“It could work in that manner but, thank God, we’ve never had to use it that way,” says Ms. Miller, 50. In late 2013, the couple, now both farmers, moved into an 1852 farmhouse in Barboursville, Va., to live in the country. The six-bedroom, 6,000-square-foot home in the Hamptons is on the market for $3.39 million, and security is a selling point. The property includes an alarm system and cameras that monitor the 1.2-acre lot.

Safe rooms, also called panic rooms, are evolving as well.

Increasingly, they aren’t separate rooms with one function, since families dislike giving up space for a room they never want to use. These homeowners reinforce existing rooms with fortified walls and doors, install secure communication systems and connect independent power sources. Those features blend in with the décor, as to avoid detection or scaring the kids.

“Every client should have several places in their home that are going to protect them for the length of time that it takes for the police to get there,” says Christopher Falkenberg, president of New York firm Insite Security.

At Scott and Maria Jensen’s 4,500-square-foot, five-bedroom house in Arizona—the exact location has been withheld at their request—the safe room is hidden behind a fireplace. Mr. Jensen, 47, said a series of break-ins in the neighborhood and the experience of a colleague whose safe was stolen contributed to his decision. Creative Home Engineering, a Gilbert, Ariz.-based security company, installed a secret switch on the mantel that, when touched with a magnet, opens a door to a concealed space. The cost: $15,000.

The company also builds bookcases, brick walls and staircases that can open to reveal secret spaces. The Jensens’ safe room is big enough for two adults standing in it, but they primarily wanted a hiding place for valuables, not for themselves. If they felt personally threatened, Mr. Jensen says, “we would rather just go outside.”

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