October 15th
Gotham City
1900 EST

The Gotham University stadium was full to capacity that night. They were playing Metropolis, and the crowds were rabid. Scores of people had shown up, with the two schools less than a hundred miles apart. This was the first time Gotham had hosted the game in several years, and it looked like Metropolis might not keep their winning streak up.

Halfway up on the seventy five yard line, under a heavy blanket, were two lovebirds, just waiting on the game to start. "It feels weird." Deke said to his girl. "I feel like I'm cheating."

"If that makes you feel like you're cheating, I've got nothing to worry about." Barbara said, amazed it had been that much of a struggle to get him into the sweatshirt of the college he was currently attending. She'd compromised for basketball games, but that was pulling teeth.

"Is Bette okay?" Deke asked, worried about her roommate. She'd not taken being broken up with well at all.

"Yeah, she's fine. We're past the ice cream and Supernatural marathon, so she's on the upswing. Speaking of which, what are doing for Halloween?" Barbara asked. She had a plan.

"From everything I've heard, Halloween in Gotham isn't the safest night out. I heard Blue and Cassie were showing up to help out." Deke said.

"Well yeah, sorry, I meant, what are you doing for the campus Halloween party?" It was a massive tradition at Gotham U, one that almost every sorority and fraternity took more seriously than Batman took the mission.

"I hadn't actually figured that out yet." Deke said with a shrug. He pulled his girl closer to him, which was a plain invitation to snuggle into her boy, and she took it.

"So, there's this guy in my math class, really nice guy, and he and I were talking after class, and he mentioned something he wanted to do for the party, but he didn't have enough friends to pull it off, so, I might have said I'd see if you were interested in doing an easy group costume thing." Barbara said.

"Sure, I'm game." Deke said. "What'm I doing for it then?"

"Well, Jack is looking to dress as Dean, and you're not far off from looking like Sam. I'd be dressed as Charlie." Barbara said. She knew she had everything she needed in her closet, and she was reasonably certain her boy had the right shirt somewhere. If not, they weren't expensive.

"I guess I need to watch that show." Deke said, his familiarity only vague at best.

"Babe, I gave you my Netflix info for a reason." Barbara said, poking him in the stomach. "I watch it on my phone when it's quiet on my patrol nights."

"Speaking of, how'd last night go?" Deke asked, opening a very large thermos and offering it to her.

Barbara carefully took a sip of the hot cider she'd brought, and replaced the lid. "It could have gone better if I'm being honest. Since Penguin made the move to go legit, it's getting harder and harder to pin anything on him. He's not going to be fencing stolen luxury cars any time soon though, so it wasn't a total wash."

"I got a message from my boss," Deke said, taking a sip of cider as well. "He asked me and Aasha to help out here too on Halloween. I hope he cleared it with your boss."

Barbara nodded. "Yeah, he seems to think it's going to be a lot worse than usual this year. He doesn't have enough evidence to say for sure, but something's biting at him. You know everyone but the locals are just going to be doing vandalism control, right?"

"I figured, I don't mind though, it's not like I'd be doing anything else." Deke said with a shrug. "Oh hey, here we go." He added, pointing to the field where the game was set to begin.

"What makes you think Eleven will be here?" Keisha asked Tom as they milled their way through the crowd.

"Every Gotham U student is here. Just look for someone who doesn't seem to be handling the crowd well, and keep thinking our script." Tom said. They'd stopped outside of Newark for a change of clothes, and were currently trying to look like alumnus, though not so well.

"Offsides!" Keisha yelled out several moments later, not pleased with what she perceived to be a lack of officiating. Tom shook his head at her, and just kept up the pretense of looking for seats.

While he did, he sang out in his thoughts, attempting to think loudly, though he had no way of knowing if he was. [I know you're here, and you may be in serious trouble. You can hear thoughts and you're not sure how. I have answers and a warning.]

Keisha was supposed to be doing the same, but the woman suffered from the attention span of a hummingbird. How she got her PhD was a mystery to Tom, but the truth was, she knew her stuff when it came to biology.

"Cowboy, are you okay?" Barbara asked a little before halftime. He'd gotten this paranoid look on his face, his eyes darting across the people in attendance at what promised to be Gotham's first win against Metropolis in quite some time.

"Something's bugging me." Deke said with a frown. He couldn't put his finger on it exactly, but something had him on edge. He pulled Barbara closer to him, all but sitting her on his lap, and just held tight to her. She let him, becoming his safe port in the storm, and to help him more, nuzzled into him and stole a kiss. She knew how much he loved it.

"You sure it's not just the Metropolis fans feeling spanked over there?" She asked, trying to get his focus on something else. "Maybe all that disappointment is getting loud."

Deke shook his head. "No, well, maybe that too."

"You'd been doing a lot better with crowds, but I might have pushed you too hard. Do you want to leave?" Barbara asked. She didn't want him to feel obligated being somewhere he felt uncomfortable.

"It's not the crowd, I've got them filtered enough to be alright. It's more like, it feels like there's someone staring at me." He squeezed Barbara's leg gently and tried running his hand up her thigh, but the strange nervous energy surrounding him prevented him from enjoying it.

"Okay, if you want to leave, I won't be upset." Barbara told him reassuringly, nuzzling into his neck again.

"Do you think they're on the Metropolis side?" Tom asked, feeling like maybe they'd picked the wrong time and place to search for Eleven.

"I can assure you, they're not." Keisha said, handing her colleague, and now partner-in-not-crime a fountain drink and a hot dog. Neither of them had eaten since bailing on the lab, and it was beginning to become problematic, so she nipped that problem in the bud at the concession stand.

"I didn't do sports in college." Tom said with a shrug, desperately wanting a cigarette but unable to have one in the stadium. His hands were beginning to jitter, and he was having a hard time biting back his attitude. He really needed to quit.

"I dated an athlete once." Keisha said. "Of course, I married him, so there's that."

"Does he know you're doing this? If he gets worried and calls the lab, we might be blown." Tom mentioned, wandering through the stands and munching on his hot dog, giving himself a headache at trying to concentrate on his psychic message in a bottle.

"Anthony thinks I'm at a conference here in Gotham." Keisha said, straining her eyes to look for people out of place. "Hey, what about those two?" she said, gesturing towards a couple under a blanket.

Tom shook his head. "How do I put this politely? He's uhm, he's getting a handy." He said. The look on the man's face was clear, as was the bored expression on the girl's face.

"Ew," Keisha said with a frown. "Why didn't we get pictures of the subjects anyway?"

"Faces humanize them." Tom said after a minute, sitting down to take a break. "Makes it harder to do what we had to do."

Keisha sat down next to him, almost on top of another couple. "Makes it harder now too." She grumbled. "Excuse us, sorry." She said to the pretty redheaded girl in glasses.

The boy she was with looked miserable, like he had a migraine. It was bad enough that the girl he was with, had to open their thermos and give him a drink from it. Keisha thought for a moment, and nudged Tom. He glanced over, and immediately, the realization dawned on him. "Hey buddy, you okay?"

The guy, a dishwater blonde with long hair, nodded. "Yeah, I'm alright. Thanks for askin'." He said, wiping his drink from his chin.

Taking a risk, Keisha piped up. "You're not local, where are you from?"

"Well, my girlfriend is local, but I'm from Kentucky." The guy said. His headache was slowly abating on him, but the nervous energy was building up worse.

"What's here that's not in Lexington?" Keisha asked, but she was sitting next to the answer and she knew it.

"I am." The pretty redhead said with a lovely smile. Keisha thought she was adorable, and the lack of arrogance in her response was refreshing. She didn't seem like some sorority girl who thought her booty was God's gift.

That confirmed it. She gave Tom a nod, and the two of them relaxed, certain they'd found who they were looking for.

"Hey," Tom asked a little later. "You two wouldn't want to make a little extra money, would you?"

The redhead immediately got a skeptical look. It was clear she was worried they were being propositioned by a couple of swingers. The boy, who had to be Subject Eleven, just got a curious expression. "How?" He asked simply.

"My wife and I," Tom said, taking Keisha's hand, hoping she'd just go along with it, and hoping Eleven didn't have any lingering country prejudice at a mixed race couple. "We're not from Gotham either, and we're looking for a decent hotel that's not going to break us. If you can show us one nearby, there's a fifty in it for you."

There! That's what he wanted. Eleven took a glance at him full on, almost sizing him up. Tom genuinely hoped that wasn't what was happening. Eleven was apparently a beast of a human being, and Tom, he was not. [You're in danger, you and your girl. It's not impending, but it's coming, and we're here to help.]

Barbara felt Deke's fingertips dig into her thigh. He relaxed them quickly enough, but it was clear he was startled by something. She was worried these two were like some kind of internet porn company, going to offer them money to film them having sex or something. Apparently, that's what her boy thought too. She recognized the telltale look of him focusing on someone's thoughts.

"Yeah, I mean, I'm okay with it, if Yvonne here is." Deke said, making up an alias on the spot for Barbara. That immediately cued her.

"Oh yeah, that'd be fine sweetie." Barbara said, putting it on a little. If he wasn't going to refer to her by name, he had a reason. "My Will is horrible for introductions by the way, sorry."

"Yeah, sorry about that. I'm Will, this is Yvonne." Deke said to the couple sitting next to them. He wasn't entirely certain what they knew about him, but they knew enough to know he could read minds, and they didn't have any other obvious motivations.

"I'm Tom, this is Keisha." Tom said, intentionally being honest. Eleven likely knew a lie the moment it was told to him, so honesty seemed the best policy. "Some game, huh?"

"The halftime show was great. I love dueling drumlines." Barbara said, reaching under the blanket to grab their thermos. She also palmed something from beneath her sweatshirt, and when she opened the lid, she expertly slipped that into the drink.

"Cider? It's homemade, not from a packet." She said, handing the thing over. Tom took a drink, but Keisha refused it politely. Not that it mattered, only one of them needed to ingest the nanotrackers.

They bantered idly throughout the rest of the game, which turned into a very tight win for Gotham. The entire time, there was thick tension between the two couples. Deke telepathically informed Barbara what he'd seen and heard from the guy named Tom, which only made Barbara more on-edge. She almost texted Dick, but held off until she knew they needed help. Even if she'd said things didn't warrant him showing up, he would absolutely show up.

At the conclusion, the four of them left the stadium, just another pair of couples leaving the game. They'd agreed to meet at the Falafel House a few blocks away, but Barbara wanted to be a little better prepared, and more properly dressed. She didn't like sending her boy in alone, but she had faith in him, and if that failed, she was well certain he'd leave an easy to follow trail of destruction.

The two scientists were sitting on one side of the booth when Deke walked into the small Israeli diner. He'd chosen this place after Babs had once told him the owner was rumored to belong to the Mossad back in the eighties. If trouble was going down, having someone with a vested interest in the location didn't hurt.

"You're alone." Tom said, gesturing towards the empty booth seat, welcoming Deke to join them. The boy, couldn't be twenty yet, seemed tense but not nervous. It gave both he and Keisha a moment to pause. If Eleven had spent enough time developing his powers, one wrong word could spell their quick end.

"I wanted to keep my girlfriend out of this." Deke said, sitting down across from them. "It's not something she needs to hear."

[I'm glad you don't act like that for real.] Barbara said across their telepathic link. She was perched on top of the Falafel House, her cold weather cape wrapped around her for warmth. She'd fed a borescope camera through the ventilation system and was recording the entire exchange.

"Look," Tom said, trying to be disarming. They were here to help, but it didn't take a PhD in psychology to know that their pitch and approach weren't trustworthy. "You've got questions, big ones I'm sure. This flash drive will answer a lot of them."

Tom slid the small thumb drive across the table. Deke pocketed the thing without another glance, and returned his stare to the two scientists. Barbara had coached him on how to handle the situation. Keep neutral and let them volunteer information.

"But that doesn't cover why we're here now." Keisha said, taking over for Tom. It was clear she was distressed, like she didn't want to admit what she was about to. "You, and many more, were experiments, the flash drive will explain that, but the people financing the experiments are trying to cut ties and distance themselves from it. A team of people are working out how to track you down using the same technique we used, and once they've got you, it's hard telling what they'll try and do."

Deke nodded, still keeping his poker face. Babs was in his head, offering kind, reassuring words, helping him keep calm. She could feel the emotions in her boy boiling up, not so much angry, but definitely hurt. He'd been looking for someone to blame for his mother's accidental death, and he was looking at two candidates.

"We found you with the turbulence you generate when you fly, it's quite unique." Tom said, hoping to stroke Eleven's ego. "The people looking for you know you're a student here, but our last picture of you was taken in 2007, so they'll have trouble locating you if you keep yourself grounded."

"So, that's it?" Deke said, finally ending his silence.

"Yeah," Tom said. "That's it. We can't find any of the others, so it's up to you, if you're interested. Odds are good we're never going to see you again, so, good luck. Before we go though, you were just Subject Eleven to us. If this all works out, make a real name for yourself, okay?"

"Sure." Deke said. "Tell me why you showed up."

Tom fielded that one. "That team, coming to get you, if they find you, it's going to go badly for them. And then it's going to avalanche. We couldn't not say something."

[That team they keep talking about, I think they're here.] Deke heard in his head. Barbara's tone was calm, but it was always calm when things got heated. [Stealth chopper's inbound. Maybe a minute out.]

"Give me your phones." Deke said, suddenly as far as Tom and Keisha were aware. "Now!"

The two scientists dropped their phones on the table. In an instant, they were slammed together and crushed into a tiny ball. "Get to safety." Deke said, already heading to the door.