The only thing in the envelope is a slim book with black covers. It's a softcover, perfect bound, and has the words "Death Note" on the front in white in a kooky-looking font. There are no other markings on the outside: no author, no barcode, nothing. 

Well, no mysterious white powder means it's probably safe. The gloves and the mask stay on for the moment though. She carefully opens up the book to see if there's anything inside.

It appears to be a blank, lined notebook. On the inside cover is more writing in the same white text as the title. 

How To Use

1. The person whose name is written in this book shall die. 

2. The death will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in mind when writing the name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected. 

3. If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the name, it will happen. 

4. After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds. If you want to change the details of death, you can do so during this time limit by drawing two straight lines through the original text and writing in a correction. 

5. You cannot change the time of death, however soon it may be. 

6. You may also write the cause and/or details of death prior to filling in the name of the individual. Be sure to insert the name in front of the written cause of death. You have 19 days to fill in a name.

7. Multiple names can be written for the same cause and details of death so long as they are written within 40 seconds of each other. 

8. The conditions of death will not be realised if they are physically impossible or would require someone to act against their basic nature. 

9. If the cause of death is possible but the situation is not, only the cause of death will take effect for that victim. If both are impossible, that victim will die of a heart attack. 

10. The Death Note can only operate within 23 days. Thus, the time of death cannot be more than 23 days after writing the name. 

11. The Death Note will have no effect on someone who has less than 12 minutes left to live. 

12. The Death Note will have no effect on someone if their name is misspelled four times. 

13. Erasing a name written in this book, or destroying the book, cannot prevent the death from occurring. 

So... someone is having a laugh at her expense, probably. Still it wouldn't hurt to test it. Who absolutely unequivocally deserves to die? On second thought, who unequivocally deserves to die and wouldn't be more useful to blackmail? And... who on that list would she also be likely to hear about the death of. Probably a supervillain of some sort for the first criteria and one in custody for the second.

This calls for some research.

Several hours later she has a name. Jonathan Crane, currently in Arkham Asylum. Known for using psychoactive chemicals on civilians with a thin veneer of research. It's people like him that give science a bad name and slow down actual efforts to make the world better.

There's a picture in a news article taken from a college yearbook. She stares at the photo as she carefully writes his name in the book. It's not clear if she needs to specify the cause of death but just in case she puts it down as stroke. It seems a plausible enough death for someone who plays fast and lose with dangerous chemicals.

The "Death Note" responds to being written in exactly like a regular notebook. The words don't start bleeding or anything else obviously supernatural. 

On a more practical note, there's no magical feedback on whether it worked. 

She stares for a few more seconds just in case and then stuffs the book in a drawer. She sets a reminder to search for news on Monday.

It's a generally unremarkable weekend. She's not dating anyone at the moment so she mostly spends it taking walks and reading. She does take a few notes on what she might do with the Death Note in the extremely unlikely event it's real. It's a mostly harmless fantasy and well, there is a man who flies around in spandex and a few more who use effectively magical green energy to punch things. Who knows what's possible?

Come Monday she carefully checks the news. Even if she doesn't see a story today she'll keep checking for a few days. Who knows what the procedure for reporting deaths at Arkham is.

It doesn't make national headlines, but it's all over the local news in Gotham by Monday morning, and she can easily find it online if she looks.

SCARECROW DIES IN ARKHAM

ARKHAM INMATE DIES OF STROKE

Dr Jonathan Crane, better known by his supervillain alias of "Scarecrow", was found dead in his cell late on Friday evening by Arkham staff. The cause of death has been identified as a stroke, and the time of death is estimated as a few hours earlier, shortly after she wrote the name. There will be an investigation into whether Arkham was negligent for not monitoring its patients closely enough to intervene in a medical emergency like this one. 

The general public sentiment can be summed up as 'good riddance'. 

Well, that changes things doesn't it. Either the Death Note is real or someone absurdly capable is targeting her specifically. Between those two the death magic seems more likely.

Someone has handed her a tool to change the world. Now how should she use it?

She thinks for a few minutes, the most important part of successfully changing the world is going to be anonymity. She doesn't have any personal powers and even if she limits herself to killing monsters the so called heroes won't like that.

So she puts the thoughts of the Death Note aside as best as she can and spends her day as normal, doing programming work for a visual effects company.

It's definitely harder to focus than usual but she manages, she is very good at what she does after all.

Now, what's her plan. No, more important than that what's her goal. This world is an absurd broken mess. How can it be better and how can she make it happen?

She forces herself to actually think about it for a few hours, going over all the things wrong with the world: political corruption, morally bankrupt dictators, massive amounts of pollution, greed, supervillains, the stupid way the world seems to trust in a tiny group of people to save them from all these supervillain plots. They're all bad they're just not particularly solvable with death or extortion.

In the end, she settles on schizo-tech, there's so much incredible technology that's only used for supervillain plots or for stopping them. If only some of that could be used to actually improve the world.

There's no particular need to rush so she plans very carefully from there.

She makes a list of board members and CEOs of major companies that could make something happen. She makes an order for which of them she'll kill first based on eliminating people who seem likely to be opposed to her goals and those accused of other crimes they've gotten away with due to their immense wealth. Politicians listed on the same basis.

 She plots out a mix of digital and physical means to conceal her identity, she finds print shops that fully automate their processes and uses a couple of them to mail her letters for her.

Her demands are simple, these companies should begin very public efforts to make better power generators, better farming equipment, less polluting factories, and more advanced and widely available medical technology. The government should support these efforts and ensure they actually go towards helping people not just making these companies richer.

She retrospectively claims credit for Crane's death and as further proof she schedules the death of one Alex Venquist, recently convicted of killing at least fifteen people in the Bay Area in California. He's not as prominent as she might like but he's far from Gotham and it's actually really hard to find supervillains with public identities and high kill counts. Maybe the Justice League is more competent than she thought.

She isn't sure what to put down as the cause of death because surely they'll have people standing by to try to save him. Eventually she settles on aneurysm. It sets up a fake pattern of her only being able to effect brains and it's unlikely he can be saved.

With all that decided she composes her villain speech and sends it off to major media outlets and some of the people on her list.

People of the world, for too long the powerful have hoarded their advanced technologies and capabilities. Either to use them in pointless crimes like the supervillains or out of simple greed. I have found myself with the unusual and unasked for metahuman ability of killing at a distance. I could simply choose not to use this power but instead I've decided to get creative with my hammer. My full list of demands are attached but in short I demand that the advanced technologies and magics that the powerful people of this world already have in their possession are used for the common good. Also attached is a list of leaders in government and industry. If they do not take public actions towards my demands I will kill one person on this list each week. I've already tested my ability on Jonathan Crane also known as Scarecrow and as further proof I'll kill Alex Venquist, the recently convicted serial killer in two days.

May tomorrow be better for us all.

It doesn't make headlines the next day. The day after that, the Daily Planet runs a small column on page 10 about an interview with Lex Luthor, who claims that he's received a "threatening letter" from an unidentified metahuman. Most of the wordcount is dedicated to Luthor's impassioned speech about how this proves that all metahumans are untrustworthy and dangerous, etcetera, something something, Superman delenda est. 

Alex Venquist dies of a brain aneurism that afternoon, on schedule. 

The day after that, the headlines are full of "NEW SUPERVILLAIN THREATENS GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS" and "METAHUMAN KILLER AT LARGE". 

She should have predicted that angle, she regrets the backlash metahumans might face but she steels herself and prepares for the next step. She won't kill Luthor himself quite yet but he gets bumped up a few places on the list.

The day after news of Alex Venquist's death breaks, the Gotham Gazette publishes an interview with Bruce Wayne, owner and CEO of Wayne Enterprises. 

V. Vale: "So, is it true that the metahuman who killed Scarecrow and Alex Venquist has threatened to kill you? Are you afraid for your life?" 

B. Wayne: "Not particularly, no." 

V. Vale: "So you haven't received threats?" 

B. Wayne: "Oh, no, Wayne Enterprises got a letter, just like LexCorp and Queen and STAR and everyone else. But the thing is, this metahuman's list of demands...have you read the full list? It's quite ambitious, isn't it? But most of it is things Wayne Enterprises is already involved in, through Wayne Tech and other subsidiaries. Granted, we could publicise our efforts a little more, but—I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, Vicki—it's hard to make exciting press releases out of 'we can't figure out how to mass-produce this cutting-edge technology yet, either'!" 

V. Vale: "You're not wrong there. So you feel that you're safe from this mysterious killer because you're already meeting their demands?"

 B. Wayne: "That's right! Obviously the details of the tech itself are hush-hush, and I don't have the head for that kind of thing anyway, but it's not exactly a secret that Wayne Tech works on reverse-engineering alien technology, supervillains' gadgets, and so on. Most of it doesn't go anywhere, of course, and most of the rest isn't cost-effective at scale, but there are a few things in the pipeline that the big brains tell me might just pan out into something we can market to consumers."

V. Vale: "Exciting stuff! If it does pan out, that is." 

B. Wayne: "That's the idea! So—sorry, have you lot decided what you're calling them yet? Saying 'the metahuman who claims credit for killing Scarecrow' gets a bit clunky." 

V. Vale: "I don't think anyone's settled on a particular codename yet. Why, do you have a suggestion?"

B. Wayne: "No, no, I'm terrible at coming up with names, at least according to my son. But then, he's contractually obligated to think I'm uncool; he's a teenager." (He laughs.) "Anyway, to the person who sent those letters, if you're reading this: we're working on it. And if you want a way to be a part of making the future happen—that doesn't involve blackmailing CEOs—Wayne Tech and the Wayne Research Institute are always hiring!" 

Batman is not having a good week. 

Whoever wrote the 'Tomorrow Letter', as the media has started calling it, either killed Alex Venquist (or is working with whoever did) or had some other means of predicting—down to the day—a fatal brain aneurism in a previously healthy man. In the first scenario, either the killer can kill at a distance, as the letter claims, or they made it in and out of the highest-security unit of the San Francisco County Jail undetected, which isn't all that much less impressive. (Batman could do it. But most people aren't Batman.)

There isn't, actually, particularly strong evidence that whoever killed Alex Venquist also killed Dr Jonathan Crane. A supervillain is a higher-profile target than a mundane serial killer; they might simply have been waiting for one to die of natural causes so they could claim credit and launch their plan. But if they did—if a metahuman killed someone in his city—then they've made themselves his responsibility to deal with. 

What can he find out about where those letters came from? 

The letters all came from print shops, specifically one brand known for their discretion. If he can get access to their systems they were routed through an elaborate network of proxies and if he can back track those sent from a public library in Columbus Ohio while it was closed.

Of course he can hack their systems and dig through the layered proxies, he's Batman. 

"B, isn't this a bit unethical? Invasion of privacy, and all that?"

"They've killed at least one person already this week, and they're planning to do it again."

Has the mystery letter-writer gone to equal pains to disguise who paid for the letters to be printed, or can he get their credit card number?

They paid using prepaid credit cards bought in a convenience store in Dayton Ohio without any surveillance cameras using cash.

Alright, so they're less of an idiot than most supervillains. Good to know, if inconvenient.

He'll flag the cards and set up a program to alert him if they're used again, although he suspects they won't be. While he's at it, he sets up another alert to let him know if any new orders are sent to the print shop containing any of the keywords 'Wayne', 'Luthor', 'LexCorp', or any variation on the name of STAR Labs or its board members. He'll get a lot of false positives, but it's worth it if he can get advance warning of threats to himself and his allies. And Lex Luthor. 

The article about Wayne Enterprises is interesting. It's possible it's a trap, that seems a little indirect though. And it's not very consistent of her to content herself working on frivolities while there are opportunities to do more. What sort of positions do they have available for programmers?

Working there would also give her a sense as to whether the article is true or just hot air. For the moment, she takes Wayne Industries off her list.

Wayne Tech is recruiting programmers at all levels of experience in software development! The pay is competitive and the employee benefits are better.

The catch is that their closest office is in Philadelphia. She could also move to New York, Gotham, or LA.

Ugh, it's software why don't they offer remote work options? She'll peek at real estate listings for Philadelphia but also send a short email asking about remote work options. It doesn't hurt to ask.

She gets an email back explaining that they don't advertise remote jobs by default, but they're happy for her to work remotely full-time if she gets the job. (They understand not wanting to live in Gotham, ha ha except it's not a joke.)

She'll have to attend training in person for the first month, and a couple of weeks out of every year. She can claim hotels as a work expense. If she gets to be a little more senior, she might sometimes be asked to fly out to attend a conference somewhere. 

Excellent, she likes her little house it would have hurt to leave it behind. She naturally applies for the job. She only has five years of experience but she's been been promoted three times in those years.

Her references, if contacted say that she's a bit reclusive but very good at solving problems quickly and that they'll regret losing her.

Wayne Tech will take a few days to get back to her.

Meanwhile, it's been a week since she killed Alex Venquist and nobody other than Wayne Enterprises has responded positively to her letter. Various government bodies whose members are on her list have issued statements to the effect that blackmailing government officials is a federal crime/the US government does not negotiate with terrorists/etc. 

Besides the initial acknowledgement that Lex Luthor received the letter, LexCorp has done nothing. 

A board member for Lexcorp dies of a stroke.

SCARECROW'S KILLER STRIKES AGAIN

She makes national headlines for the second time in as many weeks. 

LEXCORP TARGETED BY MYSTERY METAHUMAN

The Daily Planet runs an obituary for Justin Brant, the LexCorp board member. He was a Metropolis native, a keen golfer, and a dog lover. He's survived by his wife, three children (two from his first marriage), and their pet beagle. 

Lex Luthor releases a public statement saying that he's deeply saddened by the loss of a valued board member and calling for a nationwide manhunt for the metahuman serial killer. 

A nation wide manhunt... hopefully her precautions are up to that. She knew this would be dangerous when she started though. There's a reason she hasn't sent any additional messages. It's more real though, having it in newspaper headlines than just imagining it. She had difficulty falling asleep that night.

Over the next week, three things of interest happen.

1. STAR Labs finally releases a public statement saying that much of its research is tied up in NDAs but the directors can confirm that they work on reverse-engineering alien tech and are in talks with some of their business partners about patents. 

2. A few other corporations who got letters issue press releases to the effect that schizo-tech isn't an area they work on and it would take significant expenditure for them to pivot into it. A representative for Queen Industries (which hasn't been owned by the titular Queen family for several years) jokes that the Qphone is "100% homegrown human technology". 

3. Wayne Tech would like to offer Daisy an interview. Is she able to travel to one of their offices to meet in person? 

She'll do some more research, are all these press releases credible?

As for Wayne Tech she's happy to travel for an interview in Philadelphia if that works, if not she can go to Gotham.

There is, indeed, no evidence that Queen Industries makes use of reverse-engineered alien technology or super-tech in its electronics. Their futuristic aesthetic is purely for marketing purposes. Most of the others seem plausible, too, but the Sunderland Corporation, which has ties to the US military, is definitely at least involved in smuggling schizo-tech if she does some hacking. 

She can have an interview at Wayne Tech's Philadelphia office! There's some more back and forth to settle on a day and time, but they seem happy to accommodate her schedule and even offer to reimburse her for travel expenses.

She will take the risk of some light hacking. And she'll adjust her lists accordingly.

Of course they'll be reimbursing her travel expenses that's just standard practice or it should be anyway. She politely doesn't point that out though.

It looks like she'll have an interview next week.

Given that LexCorp is not even trying to pay lip service to her Lex Luthor is scheduled to die of a multiple aneurysm while sleeping.

There's no announcement of Lex Luthor's death the following day. 

Instead, Luthor abruptly disappears from the public eye. The official story is that he's on holiday in the Caribbean, but an anonymous source leaks to the press that he's seriously ill and has been flown to an exclusive private treatment centre. This prompts speculation about whether he was the mystery killer's latest target. 

That's unexpected. Actually, it's more than unexpected it's extremely problematic. Either they're pretending he didn't die or her magic book isn't as absolute as it claimed.

This... strongly undermines her agenda.

She writes down a few more deaths for Luthor spaced apart by an hour a piece.

Heart attack, organ failure, fell down the stairs and broke his neck, stabbed, shot, meteor strike. Hopefully one or all of those will work. The rules don't really clarify what happens if a particular death is impossible.

Over the next few days she'll keep writing down more as she thinks of them: car accident, drowned, burned alive, weapons test gone wrong.

There are no further updates on Lex Luthor's status over the next few days. No meteors large enough to make it through the atmosphere intact strike the Caribbean, or anywhere else for that matter. 

In the meantime, Daisy has a job interview for a software developer role at Wayne Tech. 

Daisy agonizes over whether to bring the Death Note with her or leave it. Ultimately for such a short trip she decides the risk of it being stolen is lower than the risk of it being noticed while she's carrying it.

She writes down a sequence of deaths for Luthor that'll keep up the pace just in case, a repeated pattern of organ failure, stroke, aneurysm and falling down stairs. Then she stashes the notebook in a pile of old papers and notebooks from college.

After that it's off to Philadelphia.

Her interviewer is a smiling South Asian woman who introduces herself as Maryam Shah. They have a coding problem for Daisy to try her hand at, and a couple of interesting lateral thinking puzzles. In between those, Ms Shah asks the standard interview questions like "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" and "What would you say is your greatest weakness?" and "If you could have any one superpower, what would you pick?" 

She does very well at the coding and lateral thinking puzzles. A bit better on the coding than the lateral thinking.

As for where she sees herself in five years:

"I see myself as having helped launch at least one product or helped finish one project that makes the world a measurably better place. That's why I want to work here because I think it gives me a chance at doing that."

As for her greatest weakness:

"I don't always understand other people, I try but I grew up pretty sheltered and despite my efforts I haven't ever fully grown beyond that. Maybe it's just something that will improve with time I'm still pretty young."

As for what superpower she'd have:

"I would love to have an analysis superpower something that lets me touch something and understand how it works and if I have the materials how to make another one like it."

When they're done, Ms Shah shakes Daisy's hand, thanks her for her time, and says they'll let her know one way or the other by the end of next week. 

A few days later, about when Daisy would be thinking of killing the next person on her list, news of Lex Luthor's death in a "scuba-diving accident" hits the headlines. 

She thanks Ms. Shah politely.

... so that's how they're playing it. At least she got him in the end. She'll hold off on targeting LexCorp for the moment maybe the next CEO will be more receptive. She kills a board member of that military contractor that probably lied in their press release.

LexCorp presumably appreciates their stay of execution. The Sunderland Corporation presumably does not. 

Luthor's sister Lena inherits LexCorp. She's young, strawberry-blonde, and shows up to her first press conference as CEO in a wheelchair. She smiles at the reporters and wipes away a few artful tears as she talks about continuing her brother's legacy. 

The media speculates about whether it means anything that the "Phantom Killer", as somebody named her at some point, appears to have deviated from the one-death-a-week schedule outlined in the Tomorrow Letter. Nobody last week, and now two deaths this week. Was Lex Luthor meant to die sooner? Or was one of the deaths a genuine accident?

Huh, people aren't speculating that Luthor's sudden vacation was him dying. That's probably just the power of having the money to influence the media. She's not sure though.

Well phantom killer is a pretty good name even if it does de-emphasize her goals.

Is Lena at all specific on what her brother's legacy is? What's publicly known about her?

She really wants to set the record straight but well... one maybe she really didn't kill him that first time and two operational security is paramount.

Oh, some people are definitely speculating that Lex Luthor died a week earlier and even the leaked story about his illness was a coverup. They're mostly dismissed as conspiracy theorists. 

Publicly known information about Lena Luthor is very sparse. She hasn't been in the public eye before now, and Lex didn't talk about his family much in interviews. About the only noteworthy information Daisy can find is that she's a geneticist who's published a few papers related to stem cell research. Nothing in the last few years, though. 

Alright, Lena isn't exactly promising there but she will give her a chance.

A few days later, there's live TV coverage of a supervillain attack on Columbus, Ohio. 

Atomic Skull, a skeletally-thin figure in a yellow and green costume, is wreaking havoc in the city centre, blasting people with beams of powerful radiation as they scream and collapse. A news anchor breathlessly reports that Superman, who usually deals with him, was last seen in India rescuing people from a flash flood. 

People have been known to die of radiation poisoning from Atomic Skull's attacks. Not Superman, of course, because he's Superman. Just ordinary people. 

Daisy gets an alert on her phone checks the news and then does some research but it doesn't seem like his identity is public knowledge and while she might be an okay hacker she's not up for hacking the Justice League or government databases more likely to have that information.

Her fingers bite into her palms and she indulges in a small scream of frustration. She tells her boss about the attack and takes the rest of the day off to try doing more in depth research in the sources she does feel safe accessing.

The attack is long over by the time she gets his name and picture but Albert Michaels is slotted to die, to distance it a little from her other actions she puts down the cause of death as radiation poisoning with a follow up of organ failure if that doesn't work. Also to muddy the waters a bit and because he's not an active threat she schedules it for three days from now.

LexCorp seems to be doing some restructuring. There are indications that they're pivoting away from aerospace engineering and weapons manufacture, downsizing those divisions in favour of expanding their work in genetically modified crops. 

An anonymous source on the internet publishes an exposé of the Sunderland Corporation, including their contract with the DoD. It looks like they're buried under NDAs and exclusivity clauses to the point where trying to sell the results of their bioengineering research to anyone else, or even revealing it exists, could practically get them tried for treason. The direction of the research itself seems surprisingly harmless for that level of security: they're working on a way to alter plants to grow better in hostile and barren terrain. Reading between the lines of the paper trails, though, as this person has done, it's possible to work out that they've done some highly unethical human experimentation, which is probably what the DoD is trying to cover up. 

She's running out of companies on her list. On the one hand what's been done so far is pretty anemic but on the other hand it doesn't help at all for her to appear unreasonable. The question now is if she really wants to go through with killing government officials.

If she hadn't made the sort of progress she has it wouldn't be a question. But she has, and killing government officials was always less likely to be effective and more likely to provoke backlash.

Just stopping without a message is an option but it feels like weakness. She can't repeat the same way to send a message either though.

Without the protective barrier of the print shop sending a physical letter is too risky so it'll need to be an email. The public library is out too if anyone managed to backtrack to there they'll have exploited the same vulnerabilities she did to setup monitoring.

Maybe a different library would work though...

It takes a couple days but she manages to get remote access to the network of a library in a small town in California and plants a variant on her previous program there. She erases her footprints as best she can and just in case she does all the actual network work on a second hand laptop she bought with cash. And she uses the internet of a few different cafes. It's... still way too risky but there's only so far she can go, so many precautions she's capable of taking.

Eventually an email makes it's way into a few publications' inboxes a day before she would have killed.

To whom it may concern,

I am the individual responsible for the Tomorrow Letter. I am glad to say that the companies on my list have all at least paid lip service to my demands. The governments have not but I am not unreasonable and I understand that any actions they take must be more covert so as to not appear weak.

For the moment, I am pausing my killings but please know that I will be watching. If those who made public statements renege on those commitments I will once more take up my grim task.

May tomorrow be better for us all.

The letter is published. The public is cautiously relieved. Government spokespeople try to spin this as a victory for their 'no negotiating with terrorists' policy. 

Also, Wayne Tech would like to offer her the job! They want her to do her initial training in person, so they'd like her to come to Philadelphia for three weeks (again, all expenses paid), but after that, they can get her set up to work remotely from anywhere in the US. When can she start? 

... That's because it is a win for those policies. There's no real denying that much as it rankles.

As for the job offer she would love to take it. She's going to need another week to finish some knowledge transfer but she can start after that.

Excellent! Wayne Tech will expect her in Philadelphia on Monday. 

LexCorp continues its restructuring. The Sunderland Corporation and the DoD are bombarded with human rights lawsuits and protestors. Wayne Tech and STAR Labs haven't put out any further updates yet, but it's only been a few weeks. Queen Industries announces its latest model of Q-pod on schedule. 

This time she takes the Death Note with her. She goes to a craft store and covers over the rules and the cover to make it less obtrusive. She also gets a small piece of leather and pastes it so you need to undo a button to open it. Finally she covers over what she's written so far with some pasted in photos and similar.

Then on Monday she's a bit early, much better than risking being late on the first day.

The Death Note does not protest being disguised as a mundane diary. It travels along inconspicuously in her luggage to a nice hotel in Philadelphia. 

Onboarding at Wayne Tech ensues! They take a picture for her ID badge, make her sign some paperwork, get her set up with an account on the computer systems, etc.

There's a series of only mildly patronising Employee Safety videos she has to watch, the tedium of which is mitigated by the fact that someone in every video—never the same person twice—is dressed in a cheap Batman costume instead of regular office wear, and this is never remarked on. 

"Oh, we can skip this one," her training supervisor, a guy called Dave, says when the next title card says Supervillain Attack and Environmental Hazard Drills. "I keep telling HR to take that one off the list for employees based outside of Gotham. You're not gonna need to worry about a fear gas attack in Ohio, are you? I mean, especially not now Scarecrow's kicked it, but you know what I mean." 

"There was that attack by Atomic Skull recently. I hope it's an isolated incident but maybe Ohio is getting more dangerous. Though admittedly these videos aren't the most helpful. The Batman costume is a nice touch."

"Oh, sorry, I hadn't heard about the Atomic Skull thing. Hope everyone you know is okay."

He rolls with the change of subject. "And, yeah, looking out for Batman makes them a bit less boring to sit through, doesn't it? You know, someone said they got Mr Wayne himself to wear the suit for one of them! ...I'm pretty sure they were bullshitting me. It can be hard to tell with Gothamites sometimes." 

"That's cool if it's true, it's hard to tell from the outside how involved Mr. Wayne is with what goes on."

"I mean, he's not exactly a whiz with the programming side, but he likes to, you know, get a tour of all the offices when he comes for a site visit, shake everybody's hand and ask what they're working on... The Gotham office sees a lot more of him, for obvious reasons."

Dave shrugs.

"I think he's due to come next week, actually, so you'll get to meet him. He's a nice guy, knows enough about computers to know how much he doesn't know, sort of thing." 

She stomps on the part of her worried about the coincidence. 

"I wouldn't expect him to be a coder. even if he was an expert at one part of the company it would be a heck of a coincidence for it to be this one. And he isn't one of those CEO's who plays at being a polymath."

"It'll be interesting to see what he's like in person... a little intimidating too, seeing the CEO in my first few weeks."

"I mean, on the bright side, working from home you're not likely to meet him ever again?" Dave offers.

"But, seriously, he's a pretty chill dude, you don't need to worry too much about it." 

"I suppose that's true. I guess I'll just have to accomplish something really impressive if I want to meet him again. And thanks for the reassurance."

"No problem, it's what I'm here for." 

More onboarding things! At lunch, Daisy can meet the other people in her team, all of whom seem to be reasonably friendly—if introverted—and to like their jobs. There's a little more diversity than at her old job, including several immigrants, and the cafeteria has neatly labelled halal, kosher, and vegetarian options. 

Neat, she'll do her best to make a good impression and ask people about what they're working on. She'll go with a vegetarian option if it looks good and not like an afterthought.