A/N: Sorry again for the long wait. But updating today makes this chapter a New Year's present for all of you guys))))
Happy Holidays! Don't forget to review!
"What about the gas?" Nightwing calls out looking down at the timer, it read 31 seconds left and he didn't know if even Bart was fast enough to find and disable all of them or even how many of them are the figure turns looks at the bird then back to the female soldier.
"Lieutenant...hit the failsafe on the gas...incinerate it that way it can't harm anyone." he tells her in an even voice, the lieutenant stops and hands the girl over to one of the men.
"But sir our orders were to detonate the gas when we got far enough away, we will be diso-" Nightwing saw the man level his gaze at the woman and he could see her posture and demeanor immediately change under his gaze.
"Yes sir." she responds as she pulls out a device and hits the button, Nightwing looks down and sees the timer stop at 2 seconds and he breathes a sigh of relief, he watches as Roxy boards the stealth helicopter they arrived in and felt an uneasy pain creep its way into his heart as the doors shut and the vehicle took off to an unknown destination.
"We just are going to let them take her?" Bart exclaims coming and standing next to Nightwing, Nightwing looks down at Superboy and Cassie - both starting to come to after being knocked unconscious by the intruder.
"We didn't have the firepower to take him, plus doing so would have resulted in the gas being released so we really didn't have an alternative." Nightwing explains, Bart didn't like it one bit but his leader did have a point. Superboy rose to his feet and rubbed the back of his head
"Anyone catch the number on that train that hit us?" he asks, Nightwing offers a small smile and helps Cassie to stand, she wobbles a bit and puts a hand on her head as if to check if its still there.
"That guy hits harder than Wonder Woman...who is he?" she asks.
"I don't know, but if were going to get Roxy back then we need to bring in the league." but then he thinks about it, bringing in the league could cause problems so he decided to hold off until he had substantial evidence on what needed to be done.
~XXX~
Roxy boarded the chopper and sat where she was for lack of a better word placed and stared at the intruder, something told her she knew this person but she would never associate with bad guys so she dismissed that idea and continued to bore her gaze into him. The figure looked to her and she could feel a cold chill ride up her spine at the way his eyes glowed red but she shoved it aside and gave him her best glare.
"I don't like you." she says finally speaking, the figure snorts.
"Thanks for the input princess but you liking me isn't part of the job, now sit there and be quite or I'll wrap a rubber restraint around your head and melt it there." he says letting his eyes grow bright, Roxy huffed and tried to cross her arms but realized they were still bound so she opted for just ignoring him and turning her head to face the back of the helicopter. "Asshole." she muttered.
"I heard that." the figure said as he leaned back and rested his head.
"Then you'll love this...fuck you!" she gritted out the last words and turned back.
"Same ole Roxy." he says, his mind catches up with what he said and wondered where the hell it came from as he looks up and moves his eyes to her.
Roxy looks at him from her rubber restraints and bores her gaze to where she assumed his eyes were.
"I don't know you asshole and I don't want to you try to play nice with me, it I'll give you a lightning bolt where it will hurt." she growls at the figure, but she is surprised when the guy doesn't move or even flinch at her words and just continues to study her.
~XXX~
Meanwhile in the cave.
Nightwing was sitting in his room sifting through the files the crystal provided, data folders, photos, experiments records, reports, videos. He decided to watch them all over again; maybe something in there will help to understand what was going on with Scar. He obviously wasn't himself, something or someone was controlling him, but who?
He pushed the play button and watched how Scar's being experimented. He was held tight in some pod, lab assistants moving back and forth around him making notes. One of them leaned to computer to register changes in Scar's system and something caught Nightwing's eye. He stopped the video, zoomed the picture and, he saw a logo that said 'Project Blizzard' on the monitor next to where lab guy was working at. He zoomed even more and cleared the picture. There was some kind of a report or a piece of data base on the screen. He saw words 'Russian', '5'4'', 'electrical field unstable', 'programming hasn't started yet'.
"Programming?" he whispered under his breath. He typed some words and saw a file list of everything that included words 'project Blizzard'.
There was a news report made like 3 years ago.
It said 'Lex Luthor claims his new Project Blizzard a very useful improvement of a weather forecasting system. Several meteostations will be built in a year and a half. New scientific research will help to forecast hurricanes, storms, floods and earthquakes much quicker that will help to save more lives of innocent people suffering from weather rampage'.
"Lex.." Nightwing said through greeted teeth.
~XXX~
They finally managed to get the brunette to her cell. Scar was left with the girl to undo her restraints; he pulled them off and tossed them to the side before walking out towards the door.
"What do you plan on doing with me?" Roxy asks bitterly, she knew she didn't have a chance to escape not with the guy in front of her watching her cell; he turns and looks at her as if trying to study her again.
"I won't be doing anything, someone named Antonov is coming to check up on you." he says but the way the girls face falls and fear replaces the snarky attitude she had before he regrets telling her this.
"No...no, please you can't let him take me, please." Roxy whispers hurriedly and rushes to the figure and completely forgets that he is the bad guy as she pleads to him, he can see the fear in her eyes and it tugs on something inside of him but he just can't place it.
"I'm sorry I have my orders, the doctor won't be here for a couple more days so I'll bring you food every few hours." He says punching the code in and walking out the door, he can hear the girl whimper as he walks down the corridor to his room and he can feel his heart breaking.
"Argh! What is wrong with me!" he yells in at no one in particular and rubs his face with his palms in frustration.
Scar sat looking at the wall, more specifically through the wall at a certain brunette girl who was now sitting on her bed facing the glass windows; he glanced over and saw that they were still blacked out so he knew she was thinking. 'Was she trying to escape?' he thought, he snorted at the idea 'I know I would' he thought but it was short lived as he clutched his head in pain. Memories of a dark past came through as he saw a little blonde girl and blood, lots of it. He could hear various voices and screams and then as quickly as the memories came, they left.
~XXX~
Nightwing was still looking through Scar's crystal; the device had given him more than enough information on the experiments used to create Scar. If he was reading it right Scar was the only one of his kind 'Thank God' Nightwing thought to himself, he thought highly of Scar and would gladly go into battle with him but the thought of another perfect kryptonian had his skin crawling with anxiety, he could only imagine how his mentor felt learning that Scar was basically a weapon created by scientists far superior to their own.
He continued to look through them for what seemed like hours on end but even the crystal only had so much data so he took it from his stand and hide it back behind the wall and went to the central computer in the main area and searched for anything connecting Lex to Scar or any other projects that have failed in the last few years from Lex corp. Finding nothing he pinched the bridge of his nose until it hit him, the story Roxy had told them about Scar, when the charges were set off it leveled the mountain and something of that size and magnitude had to register on a Richter scale somewhere, he did a search for 4 years back and kept the search to the US. After a few minutes the computer pulled up a few results, he then narrowed the search even further by cross referencing the results with aftershocks of the same or stronger magnitude than the original quake and it came up with only one result, an anomaly in the western united states where an entire mountain had collapsed with no nearby fault line.
He smirked but the problem was that place was under a ton of stone and rubble, he could take Miss Martian since she could phase through now but he would also need someone who had been there before and since Scar was currently he needed the only other person there, he sighed internally, if Superman knew he was taking his cousin back to the place she was captured and tortured he would throw him into the sun, but he was out of alternatives so be pulled up his wrist computer and plugs it into the main one and searches for Supergirl's communicator and when he finds it he calls it. To his surprise she answers it.
"This is Supergirl is something wrong?" he hears her voice.
"Um no Supergirl this is Nightwing...listen I need a favor…" he trails off not knowing how to ask this.
Later...
"I can't believe you talked me into this." Kara says currently standing in the middle of the Cave staring at Batman's protégé, her eyes threatening to burn a hole in his head.
"I escaped that place and now you want to take me back there. Have you lost your mind..." her rant was cut off by Nightwing piping up.
"He's alive." is all he says; Kara stops and blinks a couple times.
"Who's alive?" she asks.
"Scar...or as you know him Subject 1." he says, Kara's eyes glow bright red and she picks Nightwing up by his collar.
"Don't you dare say that name again..." she trails off thinking about that boy that had saved her so long ago, her eyes drift elsewhere as her mind drifts but she is quickly brought back to the present and looks back at Nightwing.
"I swear if this is some sort of trick…" she warns dangerously and sets Nightwing down.
"It's not I promise, but we need to get there as quickly as possible, we may not have a lot of time left." he states as he heads towards the garage, not really knowing just how little time Roxy has left.
~XXX~
Scar looked around regaining his bearings as he tuned his senses back to his surroundings, he looked around for a few seconds and when he realized they were just in his head he pressed the palms into his eyes and tried to rub the images away but some of them stuck with him. He looked over at the clock and realized it was feeding time so he put on a burst of speed and was in the cafeteria in a millisecond. The men gave him a wide berth as he picked up two trays, he looked at them through the mask from his armor and couldn't figure out why they respected him so. It was either out of fear of his powers or awe at how powerful he really was, either one will work he thought as he shrugged and stepped through the line and received his food. The good thing about being so feared is that you always got the good stuff, he nodded at the serving lady and proceeded down the hall to the girl's cell, he could hear the whispers of the others but he usually just tuned them out as he continued down the hall. He hadn't checked up on her but when he heard signs of a struggle he used his vision and behold the girl was trying to push away one of the guards he had really come to hate, he put on another burst of speed and set the trays down just outside the room and entered the door.
"I said back off asshole." Roxy said angrily, she tried her best to summon lightning but the room kept her powers at bay so all she could do was move around the room, Scar had taught her hand to hand but this guy was much too big for her to even attempt throwing a punch his way.
"Come on sweetie we only have a little time to ourselves before the warden comes back and makes his rounds." the man said as he tried his best to corner Roxy, she tried to move over the bed and keep away but her foot caught on the covers and tangled up causing her to fall, she managed to turn letting her shoulder taking the brunt of the fall but it was enough time to the man to pick her up and pin her to the bed.
"I knew you couldn't resist me." the man said as his foul breath entered her nostrils, Roxy jerked and wriggled to try and get out of the man's grasp but he was much to strong, she turned her head and closed her eyes as the man leaned down and stuck out his tongue, she could feel his tongue just about to reach her then a sickening crack came followed by a muffled yell. Roxy quickly shot up in bed and saw her attacker pinned up against the wall by his throat, Roxy could see the mans arm was dangling and she realized that snap was his forearm being snapped like a twig by the man who now had her attacker about a foot of the ground by the throat.
"Sergeant Morrison, this girl is under my watch, she is off limits except for me and Lieutenant Annette. Is that clear?" the figure says in a low and warning voice, when the man doesn't respond the figure grabs his freshly broken arm and squeezes. Morrison tries to yell out but is cut off when the masked man squeezes his throat tighter.
"I said...Is...that...clear." the man speaks slowly and dangerously, Morrison nods feverishly before the man tosses him down the hall towards the medic room.
Roxy watched as the man bent over and picked up the trays and set them on the table before helping Roxy off the bed so she could eat.
"Sorry about that...if it happens again just hit that button on the wall...or scream and I'll come straighten them out." the figure offers as he hands her the tray of food and sets down with his own. Roxy looks down at the food, she eyes it for a moment wondering if it's poisoned but when she sees the figure begin to eat her stomach growls and eventually wins over as she digs in as well.
She didn't know what to think of this whole situation. This masked man saved her from the one who tried to rape her. But at the same time, he said she was off limits for anyone except for him and some Annette. What is that supposed to mean? That only he has a right to 'play' with her? Her stomach squeezed into knots as she realized she has no chances against this guy. She suddenly wasn't that hungry anymore. What the hell is going on? Where's Nightwing? Is he even trying to find Scar and help her?
She's not safe here. She felt so scared, so small, so lonely... and knowing Antonov's gonna come soon didn't make her feel any better. She used to have this snarky attitude and almost believed that it was her natural self, but there was one man who could remind her, what she really was - A scared little girl, who was insecure and shy. Who was stupid enough to believe she was smart enough to work as an assistant in scientific lab. Memories of those days came rushing to her and she turned away from her tray of food.
'No, please, don't do this! Let me go!' she remembered that day so vividly as if it happened just yesterday. She's in a pod that's filling with liquid, she's scared, it's hard to breath, the liquid fills her nostrils, she's choking...
And it's gonna happened again, she's gonna face the only man who can make her fear come to the surface again. The one man whose name is Grigoriy Antonov...
Scar continued to eat until he saw the pale expression on the girls face.
"You okay?" he asks, it takes a second for the blood to make its way back to her face before she answered.
"Why the fuck would you care." she tries to reply angrily but the thought of Antonov still was with her and caused it to come out shaky.
Scar put the tray aside and started to study the girl, it didn't take a scientist to figure out that she was worried about Antonov. He had never had the unpleasantness of meeting the doctor before but he had heard stories about the brutal experiments the man had run on human subjects, when he looked at her eyes he knew she must have been one of the lucky ones.
"Hey, I know you may not like me much but I was in the same boat you are now." Scar starts, Roxy turns just enough to see the masked mans head dipped and looking at the floor. He did save her so she felt like she ought to listen to his sob story at least once.
"What do you mean?" she asks.
The figure looks up at her and she could almost feel the sorrow coming from his hidden eyes.
"This..." he gestures all around him. "When I was a kid they captured me and put me in a facility like this a bred me into a weapon, I tried to escape once but they manage to stop me and killed the girl I tried to help." he says as he brings his hand up to his temple, memories began to flash across his eyes as he saw an alley way full of men beating on a little girl, Roxy could see the mans fists clench into balls and wondered if she was about to have the fight of her live on her hands but she sighed mentally when they unclenched and moved to the back of the figures mask. He slowly pulled it off and rubbed his hair a few times before showing her his face, Roxy gasped as her mind reeled at the face before her. She couldn't even muster words as she just sat their staring at the man in front of her, he turned his head to look at the door and pulled his mask back over his head as he picked up his tray and headed to the door.
She heard him say something about coming back but her mind was still in shock as he walked out, only when the door slammed did it snap her out of the trance she was in. She placed her hand on her trembling lips as a name passed her lips "Sam...?" she whispered softly to herself…
A/N: Ooohh, suspense again))) PLEASE REVIEW!
