The Importance of Secrecy
By: Lunatic with a hero complex
Chapter Nine
Obsession.
Its such a bad sounding word.
Yet great liars would be made of over a third of the population were it to be restricted to villains, lunatics, and murderers.
Obsession is part of everyday life. A goal is identified and hell nor high water will obstruct the obtaining of such goals.
Robin could understand obsession. Perhaps that was why he never fully acknowledged Slade's, because he could identify and he hated having anything in common with the bastard.
Yes, he could understand obsession.
Obsession was to some degree, normal.
But this had leveled up the thermometer at a hot day in hell and surpassed reason.
Arbor Heights Genetics' claim to fame was their recent breakthrough in cloning the first qualifiable, intelligent, human specimen.
The faces of their top scientists had been regular fixtures on all of the news channels. It was the "vogue" conversation of the moment.
The boat so mercilessly attacked had been bringing those scientists and their equipment back to America.
In recent years, economic situations made it cheaper and... simpler to carry on researching and testing overseas. Now that their work had met with so much success, the former economic situations no longer seemed so dire.
This apparently, had been the opportunity Slade was looking for.
In all truth, the opportunity was probably just a bonus. That kind of man would've navigated all the way to Istanbul to achieve satisfaction. This time, he'd only had to go as far as Jump City Docks.
Lucky him.
Though only Raven knew it, Robin had come very close to breaking into hysterics.
Crying.
Screaming.
The loss of something very precious. Something, despite all recent injuries, still intact.
Composure.
But that dangerous time had only lasted about 30 seconds.
Now, composure remained, but something was still wrong.
The past few days had been an experience akin to that of a horror film.
Life and worry were like that.
You start off comfortable. Smiling and holding on to the cord of existence. Life progresses. The cord in your hands starts to kink up. Further and further does your weary wandering progress. The cord now has tangles in it.
And then you reach the final stage of the nightmare, the worst part, the part that Robin's life most closely resembled at the moment. You look down at your cord of existence and you find that the tangles and kinks have found their way around your throat and your wrists. You go to move and the tangles only get tighter. You struggle to breath watching as your skin turns purple. You are helpless to stop it. But it never ends. Death does not come. You just go on strangling until something better comes along.
The plan of course made sense to Robin. The man had his blood, enough to restock a hospital. All he had needed was the equipment. Well, and the people that worked it.
The question now, was why? Now that he had shown he could have the real one so easily, why waste time?
Maybe Slade had learned from his mistakes, but did not want to give up the object of his obsession.
Keep the body, save the look, but please, for the love of Lucifer, do something about that pesky defiance.
Not to mention, how much harder would it be to fight and jail himself than a criminal behind a mask.
Social Confusion.
Inner Hesitation.
Perfect Submission.
The latest model Robin, fresh off of the assembly line.
He would, however, bear a striking difference from pseudo-Robin.
Fake eyes were not an inherited trait. The poor sap would be born with, scratch that, produced with two, big, long lashed, brown eyes.
A curse on the male side of the family.
Now, of all the things he never thought he would think, he was glad he'd shown the group his eyes.
Having to tell the difference between two identical Robins could be potentially difficult, an identifying trait like eye color could be the difference between trust and lynching.
That was he, the Boy Wonder, always planning for the potential betrayal of his friends.
What a wonderful life he led.
Though she had no intention of letting on, Raven had been more horrified than they knew. Petrified even. Only she, out of the entire group, knew what interest Slade really had in Robin. It was not something she would like to think about. Not only was it sickening to think that an obsession had gone this far, but she felt terrible for the human life that would be brought into this world with a clean soul, and the first thing that would happen would be its destruction.
A clean soul with all of the genetic information and opportunities of the real Robin, and yet none of the good moral influence. Unless, of course, they could stop his creation. Which would be harder than it seemed, they couldn't just sneak in a push the off switch on something like this, they would have to find the hideout, find the machine, find the kill button, and push it.
But she would worry about that later.
