Chapter One

She was a remarkably bright girl. That was the reason he'd noticed her, because Slade never took notice of anyone unless they displayed some sort of defining characteristic that deserved his attention. He would have never crossed paths with the Birmingham, Alabama native under normal circumstances, and he counted it as a stroke of luck (and careful research) that they had crossed paths. She was an ordinary little thing, a tall, thin wisp of a girl with straw-colored hair and strange, somber eyes. But the wonderful about her was that she always did what he said. He'd never expected Robin or any other apprentice he picked up off the street to be loyal to him, but this one needed to be. She didn't have anything substantial to go back to and he exploited that as much as was humanly possible. He let her lean on him and in return he gave her a purpose, saving her from the soul-crushing tedium of the 9 to 5 desk job that would have surely awaited her after college.

"Diana."

His slow, unhurried voice hit the computer screen in the foreground, echoing back into the silence of the underground cavern until it reached the ears of the girl standing a few yards behind him. Slade stood and pushed back his computer chair, turning on one heel and hitting the escape key on his keyboard without looking at it. The screen displaying a picture of a frail blond faded to black. The girl in question stood before him, her face unreadable. She was thin and looked cold, standing in the drafty cavern wearing black shorts and a black tank top, and she was almost the spitting image of his current target. When his gaze became more scrutinizing her jaw tightened. Diana pulled her long, blond braid forward and began tugging the end of it. The unconscious motion was a nervous habit that he had made a note of on day one of her employment.

"Why do you have a file about Terra?"

The question was measured and polite, but his ears picked up the barest trace of edgy aggression. She looked up at him, her large eyes flickering warily over his smooth copper mask. It showed her no trace of humanity, not even the barest hint that he was anything but a soulless robot. He liked to keep it that way. Diana's face, on the other hand, was wonderfully expressive, and was currently filled to the brim with confusion.

"She's dangerous. And she might be trying to find you…we certainly can't have that, can we?"

Slade watched her expression soften as she silently pondered the information he'd given her. The lie wasn't easy to sell. From what he had gathered Terra wasn't looking for her half-sister, she was simply trying to run away—far away, from all of the mistakes she had managed to make in a scant thirteen years. Diana never contacted her little sister or other relatives, which was one of the many conditions of her employment. She was estranged from the family anyway. This had been icing on the cake when he'd taken an interest in her.

"Of course not," the twenty-two-year-old responded, giving Slade a sharp nod that brought a Cheshire grin to his masked face.

The lie as it stood was going to be impossible to maintain. He wanted Terra, coveted the awesome power that she possessed, and for months had been planning to lure the girl in. However, getting Terra's older sister to accept and embrace that idea would be difficult at best. The worst-case scenario would occur if Diana simply tried to walk out on him for his new choice. He trusted his abilities to bring her down with no problems, but what would he do with his former second-in-command? Could he bring himself to simply put a bullet in her head? Obviously he could, but dealing with the regret over the loss of his living, breathing investment, his best work, would take months to get over. In an ideal situation Slade could have both of them, but the one-eyed man knew that situations like these usually turned out to be less-than-ideal.

"Walk with me."

Slade's voice echoed off of the cavernous walls around them as he moved toward Diana, placing a guiding hand at her back as she walked out of the raw, unstructured cave and into the hallway of their compound. She instinctively knew where they were going and led the way out, past the reinforced doors and into the calm, cool night air. Diana's black ballet flats were silent on the hard red dirt of the desert, and the wind blowing did nothing to detract from her ramrod-straight posture as she looked up at the stars. They had their routine. If something important needed to be said it was said here, with the mesas at their backs and the protective darkness that blanketed the both. On occasion the pair of them would simply sit and look up at the stars. He had taught her the constellations, their names, and how they changed with the seasons. But now was not the time for idle star-gazing.

"Terra could pose a problem for us," Slade began, turning to observe the faint outline of her features set in twilight.

"I know she could. How long has she been in the region?"

"Eight days."

"Have there been any incidents?"

"Two. None close enough to population centers for anyone to take particular note."

Diana fell silent. He could barely see her biting her lip, mulling over the information as her green eyes flickered over the ground in front of them. Diana had been seventeen when she left home for good. Terra, at the time, was merely eight. The information Slade had gathered revealed that Terra's power had manifested itself when she was four.

"What would you have me do?" Slade asked finally, acting as if he didn't know, as if Diana had any say in the matter whatsoever.

Ordinarily, she would have. He trusted her completely, or at least as completely as a man in his position could trust another person. Though she wasn't his equal intellectually, the girl came damn near close and he tended to ask her input on more than a few things. This was different.

"You should bring her in," she said finally, breathing out a sigh, "Bring her here."

"I agree," Slade replied, the cold copper mask hiding his wicked grin.

Author's Note: So, obviously I am re-doing The Ties That Bind. Same characters, but I re-named my main character. I'm going for a more realistic flair here, and I think it will be better than the original. We'll see!