I sighed deeply as I watched my computer monitor. Work is surprisingly boring today, it's sidekick initiation day so all the big guys aren't at the watchtower. All I had to do was watch the sidekicks, I'm kind of like a baby sitter. I snorted at the thought. Here I am, a twelve-year-old girl thinking about babysitting a sixteen-year-old, a thirteen-year-old, and a fifteen-year-old, all with extremely strange abilities, guy with gills, acrobat detective thingy, speedster. I chuckle to myself before plugging my headphones in to monitor the situation. Ha monitor, get it because I don't have a laptop, ha, I make myself laugh. Anyway...
The heroes had just left; some guy, I think his name was Wanton, or Wotan or something was trying to blot out the sun. How stupid, if he did that then he would die, unless, somehow he had created a suit that uses batteries power to keep you warm, you would need like a gazillion batteries to do that if it wasn't solar powered but then for only like two minutes, dang Wanton get your head in the game. I smiled to myself and posted a mental sticky note to remember to change his name into Wanton in the JLA data log. Oh and Speedy kind of stormed out because he didn't think he was getting the R-E-S-P-E-C-T he thinks he deserves. Kid Flash was waving his arms around like a lunatic and speaking fast. I wonder how hard it is, since he is a speedster, to always talk so slow. God that must suck, I wonder if like to him we talk like snails, oh... wait, snails don't talk.
Kid Flash was, Kid Flash is to long I'll just call him K.F.C. "Ready," K.F.C mocked, "how are we supposed to be ready when all they do is treat us like, like..." He didn't even dare utter the word, the title that had cause them so much trouble. "... sidekicks." he muttered sighing.
"My mentor, my king I thought he trusted me." Aqualad sounded like a guardian when their child was caught lying, disappointed. Aqualad sighed and turned to look around. who knew what was going on in that head of his.
"Trust." K.F.C said calmly, but on the verge of panic. "They don't even trust us with the basics, thEY HAVE A SECRET H.Q IN SPACE!" He yelled getting more and more frustrated with each word, his voice rising until the end of they were he stopped shouting and broke into a yell. A couple of tourist was still there, I noticed in the corner of the camera. Can't let this news get out.
"Attention people visiting The Hall of Justice, could you please exit in an orderly fashion." I said into a microphone, placed on my swag desk, in my zeta voice. Zeta voice is basically every single scientist who works with JLA each has their own voice monitor of the same voice, the very same voice gets recorded and some genius decided that the voice would just be the main voice for Zeta. The sidekicks were too preoccupied to even know I spoke. I turned my attention back to the sidekicks in the library.
"What else aren't they telling us?" questioned Aqualad.
"I have a better question," Robin, you, my good man, are a one upper. "Why didn't we leave with Speedy." The sidekicks all gave a moment of silence of their ex comrade and probably to think of the possibilities if they left with Speedy. Thinking it over it would be terrible; their mentors are basically their parents, abandoning their parents for not telling you something majorly important, ugh drama kings.
"What is project Cadmus?" Aqualad asked. Cadmus... Cadmus... Cadddddmuuuusss. Hmm sounds familiar. I minimized the security cam, logged onto the Justice League data base, and searched Cadmus. 1 result. It's just a small town lab close to JLA Headquarters.
"I don't know," just wait for it, "but I can find out." Robin got up from the ugly looking couch he was sitting on and walked up to the control panel search engine thingy. He began to type at a furious pace. No. WHAT? WAIT YOU CAN'T DO THAT! I pressed the deny access button that comes with the sweet desk.
"Access denied." Ha take that sucker.
"Wanna bet." He smirked and pressed three buttons. My computer shut down, I didn't even save anything. Oh crap, crap crappity crap. Wait. I press the access denied button and it didn't light up. That terrible genius. I sneered and began to turn on my computer I waited for it to load. After several minutes of waiting my computer rebooted. And all I saw was an empty library.
"Ugh." I groaned before hitting my head on the table. Those nincompoops are going to ruin everything. My gosh. I backed up the video footage at least five minutes.
"We didn't come for a play date." I stared with my mouth wide open as the three of them ran out of the JLA library. Cadmus, they went to investigate Cadmus because Batman had a feeling. I stood up from my cubicle and on my tip toes.
"Glen." I whispered. "Do you know who has the camera passcode for the Cadmus building?" Glen sighed before writing on his little wipe board. 'ME' "Could you give me the code?" He wrote the code on his wipe board and I typed it on my computer and looked 'round on the access cameras. I saw the guys trifling through some papers and a couple computers. This camera sucked, it had no audio, wouldn't focus, and only had 65 hundred pixels.
Aqualad for some strange reason had left I switched my view to the camera out in the hallway and using a little joystick I changed the security cameras direction to face him. Wait what was that. Some weird dude with horns had just... what, what is this life? Well whatever it was it had a face only a mother could love. They are in so much trouble, what could I do I'm just weird girl who got an internship with bosses that trust me way too much. Cadmus is only one block from here, I could just walk.
"Glen," I whispered, "I'm going on break."
I had finally arrived at Cadmus. No one was there and it was eerily like a ghost town. There was some police tape and I kind of just stared at it. This tape was telling me not to cross and if I did I would be a fugitive. I guess it was time to be a bit impulsive. I ducked under the tape and walked calmly along. No one even noticed me. I smiled happy with my work and opened the door. No one was in the lobby of the two story building. I shrugged to myself and walked to the elevator and turned to were the buttons were. Up and down, but I'm on the bottom floor. Huh I guess those idiots in tights are right to check this place out.
I pressed the down button and waited. I wasn't on the top floor I was on the bottom, two stories. It shouldn't even have a down button. The elevator dinged and its wonderful doors opened. NO elevator music, that's strange. I looked at the buttons. Way too many of them 60 of them. I closed my eyes and sighed. At least I have nowhere important to go I thought as I pressed my hand to all of the buttons. Exploring, I thought with a snort. I got down to level ten before the door barely opened it shot down at least ten levels. The door opened with me on the floor in a ball. And someone trips over me in their rush to get in the elevator
"Why are you on the floor?" He questioned.
I glared at him before biting back a response, "Why are you running into elevators. Don't you think that's a bit dangerous." I got up off the floor and brushed myself off. Robin then kind of looked back from where he came from and awkwardly looked at me.
"You work here?" He asked. I tilted my head in confusion, I am a little girl, I get made fun of on several websites by older kids and sometimes adults.
"No I don't work here but I work at JLA, paperwork and such." I said brushing the dust off of my shoulders and then pulling at my curly hair making it frizz.
"So you're a glorified secretary." I glared at the boy covered in red, yellow, and black before swatting him on the shoulder before a blur of red and yellow completely crashed in the middle of where we were standing, hitting the back of the elevator.
"Way to be a team player, Rob." The blur said sarcastically in his red haired green eyed glory, with a snarl on his face that turned into a smile as he saw me. "Winifred, how are you here? Why are you even here? What's with the pharmacist coat?" He asked with the rapid fire questions. "When you coming to the next family reun- "He was cut off by a laugh from Robin and the thunderous leap into the escalator by Aqualad who was followed by several beasty looking things that snarled with ferocity.
"Who are you?" Aqualad asked after Robin closed the doors and pressed the last number on the long list of buttons.
"Uh... Catherine. And I have a question for the three of you." I stated while they nodded, "Why didn't you stay at the hall and be good guys and just make my job easy? But noooooooo you three idiots had to go and save the gosh diddly darn day and ruin mine do you think I want to be here, I would much rather be in my cubicle coding or binge watching crap on Netflix…" I ranted while pacing as each of the boys had a different expression on their face. Aqualad winced each time my voice rose but remained calm, K.F.C looked scared and visibly flinch with each word, while Robin, my new Arch Nemeses, I've decided as he looked bored and was playing mind sweep on this hologram thingy watch.
"You done?" Questioned Arch Nemeses. I remained silent and just looked at this rude… rude… uh nincompoop?
"Why are we heading down, dude, out is up?" K.F.C asked actually looking confused.
"Excuse me, project Kr is down, on sublevel 52." Robin answered like it was the most obvious thing ever. I let out an exasperated sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose and slid down to the floor of the elevator. Above Aqualad did about the same thing I did.
"This is out of control. Perhaps..." Aqualad commentated, the paused as if testing out the word, "Perhaps we should contact league. None of us said anything after that until a couple seconds later when Robin broke the silence.
"So how are you and kid related?" He asked.
"Adoption, his uncle adopted me, so we're cousins." I answer looking at my ugly sneakers coated in mud that I honestly would keep until I died or something like that. The dingy elevator grew silent before the elevator dinged opening up to some all new world where the walls looked like living beings with a bad case of blisters, boils, and pimples.
"We are already here." Kid told Aqualad who just sighed as if defeated. Kid and Robin both took off running down into the belly of the beast. Aqualad and I looked at each other and shrugged before running after the two so they don't get lost or something like that. We ran until we reach a fork in the path.
"So…" I said waiting for one of the to ask the question I didn't want to.
"Which way? Bizarre looking hallway one or bizarre looking hallway two?" He asked not to long after something called-
"Hold!" There was a creature there that almost resembled a man, except it had horns on the top of his head and was blue; he didn't really have perfect human proportions, arms too long, legs to short, ears to big, and some weird skin coming down from the side of his big blue head, almost ape like except it would have been the scrawniest ape ever. Then I looked at its eyes, red just like those things that attacked justice league jr. It eyes began to glow as it lifted it hand, Barrels around the blue skinned being began to float. His hand twitched in our direction and the barrels came flying towards us. Oh no. The crashed into the cave wall behind us and two of the nerds jumped into action while I crouched down behind some boxes. After milliseconds a hand grabbed my arm roughly and basically kid threw me on my back.
"Hold on." He commanded as I clung to his back. I nearly fell off as that… thing threw barrels at us. I guess we're going down bizarre looking hallway two. We kept going until we reached a door. Kid stopped and I fell off of his canary yellow back. He pushed aside a scientist women and then plugged the door with this weird silver thingy. He pulled me up and, quite roughly I might add, pushed me through. I rolled to the side as Robin and Aqualad came through with Aqualad pushing the silver thingy out of the way with his foot. I continued to sit as I gazed in aww and fear of the boy in the pod.
"Guys," I whispered, almost ready to cry. I couldn't handle this, this hero lifestyle. I almost died, twice! The boys shushed me as Robin began to hack. I care to much about myself to be a hero. I wouldn't cry. I refused to cry in front of these dinguses. Instead of crying, I pushed myself up and walked over to where the boy in the pod was. "Guys." I said louder than before, they turned their heads to look at me. "Is this project Kr? I never thought they would start cloning, how'd they get the technology to do this?" I asked not turning my head to look away from the boy. He was a kid and biologically he couldn't be more than 18, at least.
"Robin, hack!" came the authoritative voice of Aqualad, who like Kid and I couldn't tear his eyes away from the scene.
"OH… yeah," Robin said jumping at the order. He couldn't take his eyes away from the clone either. Robin began to type rapidly and then spouted information like a textbook. "Weapon designation Superboy, a clone force grown in sixteen weeks! With DNA acquired from Superman." Robin finishes.
"Stolen, there's no way the big guy knows about this." Kid announces, his eyes still glued to the pod keeping Superboy untouchable.
"What the fu- "I start for Kid to be broken from the staring and flick me with rapid speed that
"Don't curse." He hisses in my ear.
"Solar suit allows him to absorb solar radiation twenty-four seven." Robin continues as if I hadn't cursed.
We all just stared at him, yeah staring is rude, but I think there's an exception to some things, this is that exception. He looked so calm and peaceful, "Robin," I turn to look at him breaking the sacred silence, "you said weapon, but he is a kid. Sure little to no social interaction, but he's still a kid." Robin and the others nod before Kid breaks the next silence.
"This is wrong; we can't leave him here." Kid announced, we were still staring at the boy, even when Robin pressed a single button to release the boy. He opened his eyes, clenched his fist, then leaped out and talked Aqualad. I stood there shocked, I'm Ninety Six percent sure my mouth dropped open and my eyes were as wide as saucers. Kid and Robin moved to help Aqualad, I took a step forward, seeing as I was already by Aqualad, but I was already being backhanded into a wall. I let out a shriek before slipping away. So, this is what dying feels like.
"Time runs short…"
"You must awaken."
"You must awaken now."