For Traught Week
Prompt: Someday
Note: The beginning is set between Infiltrator and Denial.
Chapter 1
Artemis ducked as a laser beam blasted over her head. Covered by metal machinery, she drew her bow sideways, notching an arrow in its string and lifting her head for a second to aim and release. Her arrow speared a robot straight through the eye, and the ugly thing fizzled and sparked before falling to the ground.
M'gann and Wally were backed into a corner, and Kaldur and Conner were doing their usual powerhouse routine, smashing enemy robots and throwing black-wearing human guards to the ground. The iron enemy bunker was riddled with crazy robots, moving floors, and gadgets even Wally couldn't name. Robin had mentioned his suspicions that this operation might be run by an affiliate of Cadmus, but some of the robots had a design that reminded Artemis of Red Tornado.
Why are we here again? she thought at Robin, who had taken his customary position at her side.
When he didn't seem to respond and kept his eyes trained on the enemy, she guessed she hadn't thought loudly enough. She mentally sighed. Sometimes this mental link was an annoyingly cumbersome way to communicate.
Raising her inner voice to the volume of a psychic yell, she considered, Batman's instructions were vague. Well…vaguer than usual, and even though he told us where to be and that we should look for something, he never said what we were looking for. Then he pulled you over and said something to you, so I was wondering whether…
Artemis. Dick lowered his infrared binoculars to look at her. I heard you. I don't know what it is either. Batman got a tip from a reliable source that some U.S. military secrets were smuggled to this location, but he didn't know how those secrets were transported. They could be in a laptop, a microchip, a flash drive, or some information-carrying device.
Maybe a briefcase? Did the source say anything about briefcases?
Artemis heard a hint of a weary sigh and a flash of a grimace through their mental link. Usually Dick's mental "voice" betrayed nothing about what he was feeling, unlike some of her other teammates. Every emotion connected to Wally's thoughts could be heard when he "talked." Artemis tended to ramble. M'gann and Kaldur's inner voices had a pleasant and comforting tone, and Conner's usually had an underlying hum of frustration.
Dick's way of "thinking" was almost like having a chat with a talking GPS, with every word sounded out but none of the facial expressions or emotion of a normal conversation. His serious and to-the-point mind formed a jarring contrast with the way he laughed and joked out loud.
Artemis frowned. Since she had plenty of things to hide, she knew a secret-keeper when she saw one.
Then she realized that she had been thinking about Robin for the past few seconds, and he had probably "heard" every word.
Robin interrupted her flustered mental state with a even-toned reply, I know you're new to this, but right now isn't really the time to have a psychic chat. Can you save your thoughts for later maybe? Try to concentrate on staying alive.
Forgetting her brief embarrassment, Artemis angrily thought, I'm asking because a guy in the back just handed a briefcase to another guy, and in this line of business, black briefcases usually mean A.) A bomb B.) Unreal amounts of money C.) An evil device designed to destroy the world. So maybe you should be paying more attention!"
A flash of a shocked expression shone in Artemis' brain even though Dick's real face remained nearly expressionless (besides raised eyebrows behind his mask, a movement Artemis couldn't see). His mental surprise was followed by a bombardment of their other teammates' thoughts.
A briefcase?
Where?
I'm a little busy. Can't get it now…call back later!
Guys, you're cluttering the mental link! Slow it down a little…
"Just forget it. I'll take care of it myself." Artemis said aloud, annoyed by the psychic blabbering.
Her irritation crackled like static over their mental connection, and palpable emotion formed on Dick's face as he watched "new girl" jump over the steel barricade shielding them from enemy fire.
Artemis weaved past the lasers and gunfire as if the barrage was nothing more than a nasty hailstorm. Her feet barely touched the ground as she crossed the floor to the other side of the room.
She'd seen the briefcase exchanged between two (she assumed) human guards near the far back wall. Catching sight of a man with the case in hand, she followed the lackey around a corner and through a sliding door, too irritated and angry to hide the fact she was tailing him.
On the other side of the room, Dick's reaction time was embarrassingly slow (in no small part because the sight of a certain attractive archer vaulting over a web of laser beams and writhing through gunfire with the athletic grace of a dancer had him slack-jawed and almost drooling).
Then he blinked and mentally yelled, Artemis! You can't go without backup!
Instead of some sort of reply, he only received anger and emotional static. Worried about his teammate, he tried his best to follow her by attaching a grappling hook to a support beam, allowing the cord to pull him into the air, jumping from beam to beam out of the lasers' range, and remotely hacking the entrance Artemis has slipped behind.
Finally, he cracked the code and the door slid open again. He dropped inside just as it began to close, using the metal as a shield against the volley of bullets now aimed his way. The lead clacked against the door, and the impact left deep indentations in the steel entryway. Robin ran down the hallway, hacking into the security cameras as he went to track where Artemis had gone.
Unaware of Robin's pursuit, Artemis chased after the minion with a renewed ferocity. At first, she would stop every hundred strides, aim an arrow, and try to pin some of his clothing to the floor, or she would launch a foam arrow to land right in front of his next step, hoping to trap his feet in the hardening red material. But as if he anticipated each move she would make, he dodged nimbly out of harm's way.
A rush of hereditary Crock rage spurred her forward. Giving up on using arrows to stop him, she concentrated on moving faster. Her feet slapped heavily against the steel-enforced floor.
At first, Artemis was sure she was gaining on him, but he always stayed ten steps ahead of her. Sometimes he would let her get close enough to touch, and then in a burst of speed, he was off again. She was certain he was baiting her, and each taunt made her madder and madder.
By the time they wove through the maze of hallways and reached a large domed room at the end of a passageway, Artemis was absolutely fed up with the guy. She had been at a full sprint and still couldn't catch him!
Looking back with his mask-covered face to check if she was still behind him, the figure ducked into a machine in the center of the room.
Illuminated by the circular sunroof in the middle of the ceiling, a cube-shaped device stood before Artemis. Metal sheets covered in beeping monitors and strange levers and buttons formed the left and right walls of the machine, and transparent glass panels lined the front, back, floor and top of the cube.
The door the stranger had gone under reminded Artemis of a high-tech version of the metal detectors in Gotham High, with a numbered keyboard in the left side of it and a flashing screen set in the top of it.
Even though the sight of the machine set off every warning signal in Artemis' brain, she was sick and tired of playing cat and mouse. With this stupid mission and drama at home after her dad had left a threatening phone message for her mom yesterday, today had been a drawn-out ordeal. She wanted to finish things now. This weirdo had royally ticked her off, and she wasn't about to think twice about following him inside a glass cube.
"No place to run now." She smirked self-importantly, striding forward until she had cornered him back against the far wall.
She aimed and released a net-arrow over his torso, arms, and face. The briefcase was strategically left outside the net clasped in one of the man's gloved hands, which he couldn't move since the netting had pinned him by the wrist.
Holding her bow in both hands, Artemis pressed her bowstring against his neck through the net in a choke-hold and whispered, "Now give me the briefcase, and maybe I won't strangle you."
Rather than struggle, he just stood there. She saw his Adam's apple bob beneath the black fabric of his uniform as he swallowed. Then, in a surrendering movement, he dropped the briefcase to the floor with a clatter, and his steel-toed boot nudged it towards her.
Keeping her eyes on him and moving one hand to pressing against his esophagus and one hand toward the case, she leaned over to pick it up. As soon as she bent down, two things happened at once.
First, the guy broke out of her choke-hold like her fingers were made of jello. Using a hidden knife, he cut himself free of the net. Then, with almost no running start, he turned, ran up the side of the back wall, flipped over her head, and sprinted out the door before she could think to follow him.
As soon as she did consider chasing him, she realized she couldn't. The briefcase had bolted itself to the floor. She pulled and tugged to try to lift it, but it wouldn't budge! When she tried to let go, but she couldn't unwrap her fingers from the handle as if the case was covered in invisible superglue. Her eyes widened in fear.
Robin entered the room just in time to see the lackey push a button on the door of the cube, causing a glass panel to drop down over the entrance and sealing Artemis inside. The walls weren't soundproof, so Dick could hear Artemis scream and struggle against the briefcase in her hands.
"What did you do to my teammate?" he bellowed and rushed forward.
The masked man didn't even turn his head, rapidly moving to the right outside wall of the cube and calmly typing a complicated algorithm and sequence of codes into a monitor.
Robin jumped and aimed a kick towards the man's stomach, but the stranger moved fluidly in answer to every one of Robin's attacks. If Robin hadn't been in the room jumping like a monkey and raising a storm of batarangs, the man would have looked like he was simply doing a routine adjustment of the different levers and settings of the machine.
As a last resort, Robin pulled out one of his explosive batarangs, but the man said, "Don't do it. This machine is not shock-proof, and you might end up skewering the girl with a piece of flying glass or blasting her in the explosion."
Before Robin could open his mouth to answer him, the device whirled into gear. The glass walls shone with ethereal patterns of moving yellow light, and the monitors thrummed with a pulse like an electronic heart. Artemis stopped thrashing to gape at the sight in horror and awe.
Ignoring the man in black brushing past him and escaping out the door, Robin ran forward to bang against the glass shielding the entrance.
"Artemis!" he yelled. "Can you hear me? I'm going to try and get you out!"
He almost considered using a batarang to blow her out of the machine, but then he remembered what the stranger had said. As desperate and loath to admit it as he was, Dick knew the guy was right. He didn't want to find out what the impact of a detonated explosive would have on a girl in a sealed box.
While he reached for his utility belt and fumbled around for the glass-cutting laser in the pouch on his left hip, Artemis began to pulse with yellow light like the walls of the machine.
Her body glowed with energy, and underneath his growing blind panic, Dick felt a small sense of wonder. She looked like an angel.
Eyes wide and gleaming yellow, Artemis mouthed, "Robin?"
The outline of her figure wavered like the edge of a candle flame. To his horror, Dick found he could see through her body. Her image flickered, and the edges of her fingers, feet, and head began to dissolve like sand. In a matter of seconds, her whole body turned into a vibrating cloud of particles, pulsing once more before they began to shine with an intensity of a star.
Dick shielded his eyes as the light erupted, filling the room with a searing yellow flash.
When he removed his hand from his face, Artemis was gone.