Three months ago.

A young girl walked alone and silent in the hallways of a Chinese style fortress. Through torn partitions and violently cleared doorways, she could see straight through the windows of the small rooms and into the mountains the base was nestled in. Most of the rooms were empty as her cold, bright blue eyes scanned each one. Occasionally, she would come upon a body, a young child or newly teenaged child lying unnaturally on the floor or hanging from a light fixture or simply cast about in pieces, but only occasionally. There were only twenty of them to start with, and she was the last standing. Nineteen dead children in a huge house, so she only found one occasionally. Each of them clad in bright red and yellow, deep black, an R standing in relief on their left breasts. Some boys, some girls, all of various sizes and skin colors and hair types, but all with their hair tamed and dyed black if necessary. Dark skin was powdered light. Alabaster skin was powdered browner. Some had their eyes closed. Most had them wide open, all of them staring with the same bright, bright blue eyes. Contacts. Nineteen dead Robins - uniforms savaged, bodies savaged - and one left standing. She herself was perfectly clean. Her bright uniform and dark cape bore not a scratch. Her boy-cut, black hair was barely mussed. She bled from no place. She walked with sure, measured steps. And sometimes when she came upon the dead, she remembered how they had come to be that way. She had taken five. Five she remembered. The rest were not hard to guess. When they had killed each other, they had not been trying to be subtle. One, she noted, had been left dead in much the same way the real Robin had been found early in his career when Two Face had done with him. Another, one of the five she remembered, lay crushed on the floor. Six stories down. Where she had dropped him over the railing of the center courtyard. Well, more than dropped him, to ensure he did not find a way to recover himself during the drop, but he had still been alive if incapacitated when he fell. The point was he had fallen. "Don't fall." She blinked, feeling a dull surge of anger and urgency. But turning about she saw nothing. She had heard those words in her own mind. A grim reminder. A bloody command. Don't fall. She kept looking. She kept walking the halls, checking the rooms, until she came to the bottom level. Walking quietly past the fallen Robin she made her slow way to the front entryway where she finally found a soul alive. A beautiful young woman clad all in black leather, brown hair brushing past her shoulders, stood waiting for her. And she knew it was done. She truly was the last one standing. Her master had come to meet her.

"Well done," Talia al Ghul greeted her. "Now go clean up."

The girl was clean. She nodded and left anyway. She chose to take a route that wouldn't take her past the fallen Robin again. A short, grim-faced man standing next to Talia al Ghul stared at the fallen Robin. He had been that Robin's master.

"Two were meant to be left alive. One, and a second to replace that one if necessary," he said, eyes still trained on his student, already in quiet acceptance. He had watched the carnage from afar as all the masters had. He knew what Talia would say.

"She did well. She killed too quickly for us to spare a second best." Talia turned, walking away in the opposite direction of her student. "So it seems a second best won't be needed."

Sinking

On the bio-ship, the full team waited in the dark of night for Aqualad's order to move.

"Miss Martian, please establish the mind link," Aqualad said. After a moment, he asked, "Is everyone linked?"

The team simply nodded, Robin doing so while staring intently at his wrist-computer.

"And you all have your instructions. Then let's move," Aqualad said, standing aside as M'gann opened an exit. One by one each member jumped through the hole she had made in the bottom of the hull, some pausing just briefly to switch their uniforms into stealth. Aqualad waited until everyone but M'gann had jumped before he jumped. M'gann went last, closing the exit behind her.

Their landing was a wet one. They were currently landing in the massive home of a very wealthy businessman settled in the French Alps, and they had chosen their point of entry above the man's proportionately massive swimming pool. Kaldur made the water receive them silently, enveloping them in the water as they entered instead of letting them create a splash. This was why he had gone second to last. M'gann would not need his help slipping silently into the blue, but he hadn't trusted any of the others to drop in as silently as he could. They wouldn't have chosen the pool at all, except it was the only part of the house open to sky and with the kind of technology operating in this home's security system they couldn't risk landing the bio-ship or themselves anywhere outside to try to work their way in on foot. Kaldur didn't mind. This kind of entry and this much accessible water made him feel quite good about this mission, but he quickly put that comfort out of his mind as he and his teammates moved to their positions. He couldn't afford to start feeling comfortable, even if this did seem like an easy mission gathering intel from a civilian home. His team was depending on him to stay…what was it Robin called it? Well, to stay alert anyway. He watched as Robin snuck into a ventilation shaft and the rest of the team ran across the shining white marble tiles to their positions at the various archways leading away from the courtyard and pool and into the home. The only wrinkle in this mission was that they didn't know where to find their intel or even what it was. This was essentially a search and discovery mission, and although they had several possible locations to check for any useful information, the simple truth was this guy, Pierre DuLacque, was either good at covering his bases or too civilian for anyone to care about him. Judging by the security they'd met so far – none that was human – he guessed the latter. Even so, the full team had been launched at Batman's command. After the complete hostile take-over of the League had gone down just a few months ago, no one was willing to take risky chances, and there was so little to be known about what could happen here or what they might find. Also because of this, the team had split up. Right now, Artemis and Superboy, Kid Flash and Zatanna, and M'gann on her own were each heading into a different entryway to hit different possible intel locations. Aqualad remained in the water to provide support from a central location if necessary; one thing they did know about this property was that it contained a lot of water, and he'd decided he'd be most useful if he stayed in it. Robin was in the vents because it was likely they'd need his hacking skills and he'd need to be able to drop in anywhere when the others found something.

Kaldur slipped down into the water and against one of the pool walls, breathing through his gills in case any security should come to check the courtyard. From there he noticed what he hadn't before. This businessman had a fascination for the ocean depths, it seemed. The walls of the pool were actually fish tanks full of brightly colored specimens. The tanks had lights in them to illuminate those colors not visible by human eyes at depth, but luckily for him they were off right now. He could see the fish clearly in any case. Curiously, at the bottom of the deep end was an underwater tunnel which would only be accessible by a diver. Peering through the transparent walls of the pool and tanks, he could just make out massive shadows swimming deep in the distance. There must be another, larger tank the tunnel led to, and whatever was in it was large. Kaldur simply watched and waited for communication. He didn't have to wait long. M'gann was the first to reach her destination.

"Aqualad, I'm in the library," she reported, "but if there's anything here we're never going to find it. It's all books, no electronics, and all the books are on shelves. There's no evidence of anything having been pulled out and looked at recently. It's quite dusty in here, actually."

"Understood," Aqualad replied. "Please move on to the living area, then, and be careful. Just because we have not seen anyone yet does not mean we will not."

"Right," she said, and all was quiet again. Kaldur was only in silence a few minutes before Robin's voice sounded in his mind.

"Just fyi, guys," he said, "it's going to take me some time to get anywhere in these. Security was smart enough to make the shafts tight. Hey, Aqualad, you have got a surplus of water to work with here. It looks like this guy owns his own aquarium."

Kaldur frowned. "Robin, where are you? You are supposed to be in the vents and not moving yet, tight or not."

"I'm still in the vents," Robin assured him. "I just moved because I thought I'd be less likely to be discovered by anyone if I were over the pools. Did you know there are multiple pools? Because there are."

Kaldur smiled. The pool they'd landed in was under the open sky, so if Robin had known he could position himself in the vents over a pool he must have noticed the large fish tanks in the few moments he'd had after landing. Naturally. "I had noticed there are smaller pools for containment of sea creatures, yes. And a larger one farther away."

"And more pools. At least two more of them. But, yeah, about that larger tank. Are you seeing what's in it?" Robin asked.

"It is too far away, my friend, but they are large."

"No kidding. It's a shark tank," Robin said. "The Great White variety. This guy's definitely got a screw loose."

"Hey, can you guys keep it down, please? Some of us are trying to focus!" Artemis interrupted as she crept down a crimson-carpeted hallway nervously. Stealth was not exactly her current partner's forte, and it was putting her on edge.

They could practically hear Rob's smirk over the link. "Sorry. But any info is good info. Our map of this place has more dark spots than map. Found anything?"

"No," she replied crossly. "We aren't to our spot yet."

"Well, I am," M'gann offered. "There's nothing in the living room either. I'm comi-wait! I saw someone!"

"Did they see you?" Kaldur asked, immediately alert.

"I think so somehow," the Martian said apologetically. "But they ran away. I'm following now." She flew after the fleeing figure, not sure how he had spotted her while she was camouflaged.

"Good, do not let them alert anyone else," Kaldur said anxiously. Suddenly the lights in the fish tanks glared on, making Kaldur shield his eyes. Looking down, he saw the shadow he now cast on the pool's bottom. "You may be too late, Miss Martian. I think they are onto us. Everyone continue as planned. I have to leave this pool, but Robin says there are others and there is a tunnel leading from this pool to somewhere." He swam down and into the tunnel quickly, hoping the other pools would be dark. Immediately, he saw that this was not so. Everywhere he looked there were lit up pools, three of them on a lower level than the pool he'd just left. He'd have to stay in the tunnel if he wanted to stay away from lights. Halfway through the tunnel he could see what Robin had been saying – the three pools were connected by tunnels, and the tank through which the tunnels ran indeed contained two Great White sharks. "Robin, can you see me from where you are?"

"Yeah, but you're just a shadow moving. I can't make you out," Robin replied.

"Good. Let us hope anyone seeing me mistakes me for a shark." He ignored the obvious size difference and hoped anyone who spotted him would too. "Has anyone else been discovered? Miss Martian, report."

"I lost him," M'gann replied. "Completely. I'm not even sure which direction he went. I'm searching for him mentally now."

"We haven't been seen," Artemis said.

"Us neither," said Zatanna, "although not for lack of opportunity. The walls in this wing of the house are made of glass! I've cast a spell to make me invisible, but I can't get rid of my shadow and the lights were motion detecting when we entered. Kid Flash is trying to avoid being seen by running between blind spots."

"Can you get into the vents like Robin?" M'gann asked.

"Sure," Kid Flash chipped in, "but we won't be able to see anything from there."

"Do it anyway," Aqualad ordered, "Hide in the vents and wait to see if anyone comes to look for you. In three minutes if no one has come, continue your search."

"You think that's smart?" Artemis asked. "It'll slow us down."

"It is a risk I will take," Kaldur replied. If they were too slow to actually get the intel, maybe they could at least leave without anyone knowing precisely who had been here, but if they got caught… "Robin. You are being very quiet. I am guessing that you have been trying to hack the security system?"

"Yeah, but no luck. Security's not just tight; someone must be manually working it. It's literally trying to hack me back. Sorry, gotta concentrate." And with that, Robin went silent. As did everyone else. Things had just gone from not good to very bad and very mind-boggling.

"Artemis, Superboy, you are still on course?" Kaldur asked after a moment.

"Yes," they answered together.

"Good. Continue until I tell you otherwise. Miss Martian, do not continue searching for the man who saw you. Head toward Kid Flash and Zatanna and check their location for them." Connor and Artemis gave their affirmation.

"I am not so sure it was a man," M'gann said. "The person was small and very slight."

Kaldur reflected on that but dared not hope that the person had actually been just a child and hadn't alerted anyone. It was too odd that the child had been able to spot M'gann in the first place. Kaldur was also concerned about Robin. He knew the boy was a skilled hacker, but if anyone got anything off his wrist-computer it certainly wouldn't be anything the League or Batman wanted anyone to have. Not only that, but the success of this mission would likely be contingent on Robin's ability to hack in and download any information they found. Could he do that while fending off a hacker himself? A few minutes later, Connor reported in.

"We're in the office, and there's nothing here," Superboy said curtly.

"Yeah, literally nothing," Artemis offered. "Like I'm-not-sure-this-has-ever-even-been-used kind of nothing. Nothing to hack, nothing to take. This is weird. The place is way too clean."

Kaldur frowned, thinking. "Make your way back to the rendezvous." At this point, he was almost hoping M'gann didn't find anything either. Wally and Zatanna had been checking the security offices on the north side, the farthest location from the pools, him, and Robin. "Miss Martian, report."

"Sorry, Aqualad, just got here, but I think this is our best bet," she said urgently. "There's a massive computer system in here. We've found nothing else! Whatever we're looking for is here or we're not finding it!"

Kaldur grimaced. "Robin, did you hear that?"

"Heard it," Robin replied shortly. "But I'm still-…wait, they stopped. They stopped hacking me. Ok, I'm headed to KF and them now. It'll take me a few minutes." He started crawling laboriously northward through the shafts.

"Understood," Kaldur said, relieved. "Kid Flash, Zatanna, stay where you are in the vents. Miss Martian, head back and prep the bio-ship. I want us to be ready to leave as soon as we have what we came for."

"Which is?" Artemis asked crossly. She and Superboy were on their way back the way they'd come. Their point of entry was also their rendezvous to leave. Softly in their minds they could hear Wally grumbling about how they couldn't go anywhere anyway with how tight the squeeze in the vents was.

Kaldur sighed, blowing bubbles underwater and hastily stopping before someone noticed. "Whatever we can get," he said, responding to Artemis' question.

As M'gann was working her way back to the courtyard to reach the bio-ship, Robin was making slow progress through the vents to the security control rooms. Everything was eerily quiet again. Eerily, because Kaldur felt sure that they truly had been discovered. An alert had to have been sounded. Since no one had entered the pool, the lights must have been turned on for some other reason than the owner of this house wanting an evening swim, and not just any security system tried to hack back. Something was very wrong. These small setbacks didn't make sense, and things that didn't make sense made missions dangerous. Robin rounded a corner, passed over a vent, and noted that he had left the pools behind, but he was still going so slowly. Passing over another vent nearby, he looked down just as he made to veer left in the shafts. His eyes widened behind his mask. He'd found the security. Row upon row of people dressed entirely in black, swords sheathed on their backs; nothing on them was identifiable, but the amount of strange trouble they'd been facing ever since they dropped in, the oddly disappearing person M'gann saw, and now this…he knew exactly what this was. He probably could have told just by looking at them.

"Aqualad, we need to leave now!" Robin yelled over the mind link, backing slowly away from the vent opening.

"Robin, what is wrong?" Kaldur asked.

"We have to leave! They know we're here, and we don't want to mess with this! We're in deep in a League of Shadows trap, and we need to leave now. We need Batman." He managed to use a juncture of ventilation shafts to get turned around, but as he turned the corner to go back the way he'd come he stopped short, coughing and covering his face in his cape. "Tear gas in the vents! They're flushing me out!" And not just that. He now realized that the hacker giving up on hacking his wrist-computer had been timed to drive him here at just the right time. Reaching for his belt, he pressed the emergency alert. Batman and the League wouldn't be here soon enough to help, but it was something.

"Try to stay in the vents, Robin," Aqualad ordered, knowing it was a useless order. "Miss Martian, we are changing plans. Track Robin's coordinates and get the bio-ship to the point of entry nearest him, never mind the security systems. Everyone else, Robin is the new rendezvous. Get to him now!"

Robin cut over everyone's assent. "No! Pick everyone up where we planned!" Only M'gann and Connor could possibly find him; everyone else would just get lost. Even as he said that, he could hear Superboy hammering through the walls straight for him. Aqualad seemed to have reached the same conclusion.

"Everyone follow Superboy!" Kaldur said. "He'll lead us straight to Robin."

Robin cursed to himself, tunneling recklessly forward in the vents. He'd decided on forward and through the gas. Gas was better than assassins. He couldn't see, though, his cape was no longer protecting his breathing air, and he couldn't pause long enough to wriggle around in the small shaft and pull out his gas mask. He was just holding his breath, and he was going to have to give up and drop through the next available vent at this rate. Feeling along blindly, he crawled some distance before finally finding one. Kicking it open, he dropped straight out and down an entire story into one of the basement pools. Forcing himself to open his burning eyes and not shoot straight for air, he swam straight forward under the water. His teammates' voices were echoing in his head, but he hadn't had clean air in a few minutes and had to concentrate just to keep swimming forward. He had no idea what they were saying. Suddenly, he struck a wall. Squinting at it, he realized it wasn't a wall at all. Kaldur was looking at him in horror straight through the rounded glass, and then he realized his mistake. He was looking at the outside of a tunnel. He wasn't in a pool. He was in the shark tank. He knew Aqualad was saying something through the mind-link, and out loud by the looks of it, but he still couldn't hear anything properly. His hands were up in the universal gesture for "stay calm", though, and Robin understood that. But he needed air. He swam for the surface, trying to part the water as gently as possible and not splash too much as he reached the surface and gasped desperately for air. A crash sounded somewhere behind and to the right of him. No doubt Superboy had finally broken through. He knew it for a fact when he heard the cries of his teammates yelling to each other a split second later. They'd come through the hole, and the assassins had likely engaged them. He shook his head and scanned the water quickly for surfacing sharks, but the plain truth was his eyes were burning too badly to see moving shadows underwater. He needed Kaldur.

"Aqualad, are you there? Where are the sharks?" he asked, peering around and up for an escape route.

"Robin!" Kaldur cried in relief, "They are circling but far below you. I am trying to break through the tunnel. Do not move!"

Robin had spotted a catwalk, though. Well, he thought it was a catwalk, but his pained eyes couldn't be sure. "I think I can grapple out." Kaldur didn't answer. Probably still hammering away at a foot's width of glass below him. He pulled out his grappling hook, aimed where the presumed catwalk was, and shot for it. A second later, he was yanked from the water and up to what was indeed a catwalk, but he landed badly, banging his hip on the railing. He realized very quickly the landing was the least of his worries. He'd been anticipated. He had a brief, confused moment to realize that Aqualad didn't have a grappling hook and hope he could handle sharks before two assassins were on him. He flipped over the catwalk's railing and into an assassin, striking out with his left foot at what he hoped was a head. He missed. His foot connected with the railing on the opposite side of the catwalk, and he leapt again, carefully. He was flying blind, and if he overshot he knew he'd end up right back in the shark tank. Being careful was not going to win him a match against two league assassins, though. He closed his eyes, shutting himself into the kind of darkness he was well used to fighting in, and struck out hard and with as much accuracy as he could muster against skilled opponents. It was about this time that he realized that one of the voices he'd been ignoring was not actually in his head, but in his ear. Batman was trying to get him to respond. He retreated backward a ways until he found one of the thick wires holding the catwalk up. He leapt upward for it, pulling himself up on it to try and gain enough momentary space to press his earpiece and respond to Batman. He heard rather than saw a shuriken flying toward him and leapt straight out for the next closest wire. Taking a risk, he touched his earpiece to allow his response, and then he was hit. The force of a mastiff slammed into his chest at a downward angle and ripped him from the wire. He was falling, no, flying. He realized he still hadn't responded and opened his mouth to do so, but he hit the water. Then he hit something hard, slamming out his breath. He experienced all of this before he finally registered the pain he was in. He gasped, gulping down salt water. He didn't know it, but just as he blacked out Batman gave up on trying to get a response.

Superboy, Kid Flash, Artemis, and Zatanna were fighting to break through to the far side of the room where M'gann had brought the bio-ship to rest just on the other side of the outer wall. Superboy would have to break through the wall. Kaldur was climbing out of the tank. None of them saw Robin fall, but they all heard M'gann's scream as she felt his pain slam into her mind. The team faltered, then recovered. Kaldur registered that the Martian was screaming Robin's name, felt him fall off the mind link, and swung around looking for him. He saw the streak of red heading from the surface at an angle and stopping at the far wall, a blood trail. He swam for it, feeling the rest of his teammates fall off the mind link one by one as M'gann lost control of the link. Kaldur felt the disturbance in the water before he could see it, and he knew he was racing the sharks. A few moments later and he was losing the race. He could see them now, hulking masses of grey stretching out in front of him. From where he was, he could see the face of one of them. Its eyes were already closed for the final attack. Suddenly a rush of sound passed by his left ear, then another on his right. The sharks below him veered and gushed red. If he had been paying attention to them, he would have seen the harpoons embedded in their thick bodies. Instead he looked forward and saw a third harpoon, the one pinning his friend and teammate to the tank wall. He saw that it had sunk into the wall and prepared himself to do what Connor ought to be doing instead. When he was close, he tucked and rolled in the water, planted his feet on the tank wall grasping the harpoon, and pushed off with all the strength he had in his legs and his ability to propel himself in the water. The harpoon broke free, and he shot for the surface, an arm around Robin's waist. As he burst out of the water near the tank's edge, he was yanked clear by Superboy who carried both of them toward the bio-ship, charging through without pause. No one barred their way. M'gann closed the hull behind them and immediately took off. Kaldur brought the water out of Robin's lungs, but he still wasn't going to breathe and he knew it. He would die if he wasn't dead already. Grasping at any idea of what could be done, he dimly noted the strange buzzing coming from Robin's ear. His comm. Batman. He was just reaching to remove the earpiece when the bio-ship started to speed up impossibly and he and Robin were relentlessly pushed to the back of the ship by the force. Kaldur's last thought before some hard object made contact with his head and concussed him into oblivion was to curl himself around Robin – Batman would kill him if he let Robin suffer whiplash on top of everything.

The rest of the team were pressed against their seats, confused and panicked and stunned. No one noticed the small figure bracing against the force of flight in the back of the ship. No one noticed that figure reach laboriously over and snatch the comm from Robin's ear.