Inviolate
Chapter 11
by Scriviner
All rights belong to owners, I make no claim to any of these chars.
A/N: I apologize for how long it took to get this chapter up, but life has been very busy. We're not quite done with our tale just yet, although be warned that this is a Lex-free chapter. You've been warned.
The warehouse was dark. There were a few pieces of electronics that were still running that cast a pallid light upon things here and there, but for the most part darkness was the prevalent theme.
It was the way he preferred it.
Since it was a large open plan area, a single light was visible from pretty much anywhere in the place. The plans he'd gotten his hands on indicated that there would be a closed room on the mezzanine. From his research he knew that was where Mercy stayed.
Of the owner of the residence, Lex Luthor himself, there was no sign.
He preferred that as well.
Say what you will about Luthor, but while he was just another normal guy without any superpowers, so was Batman. He didn't relish the idea of having to deal with Luthor, but on the other hand, this was where the trail led. Perhaps interrogating Lex was the only way to go.
He looked around from his shadowed perch on one of the support beams near the ceiling. From his vantage there was no obvious clue. He noted a stairwell near one wall which he suspected led to the basement where the rest of the cars were. The vehicle elevator near the center of the room provided another entrance, but he was certain there would be no way to use that without waking up the inhabitant.
The alarms surrounding the place had been sophisticated. Almost as difficult to disarm as the ones around Oracle's watchtower, but he'd still managed to ghost through them without setting anything off.
He secured one of his jump-lines to the beam he was standing on and jumped off, trusting to the d-cel cord to slow his descent. By the time his feet touched the floor, his downward speed had been reduced to practically zero. He unclipped the cord from it's hard-mount on his belt before it had a chance to snap him back up. It would still be available to him later when he needed a quick exit, but for now it wasn't necessary.
Clean. An hour of careful examination of the place had turned up nothing to indicate that she'd ever been here. He'd switched visuals on his mask lenses several times, confirming nothing in infrared or low-light. Luminol had turned up no traces... except for some possibly disgusting ones on the couch that he preferred not to think about. It wasn't even as though the place had been cleaned. At least not recently. He noted something that looked like the bastard child of a Roomba and a spider wandering around on one wall and realized that that was probably providing the extent of the housekeeping. He switched the lenses off, allowing his eyes to adjust to the low light once more.
This whole trip was a bust. He was going to have to start check her place once more and see if he'd missed anything.
He felt more than heard the change. Someone was about to come out of the mezzanine room. He calmly, but quickly, walked back to the center of the room and took hold of the loose end of D-cel cord. He hooked the loose end back onto the retractor in his hand and was smoothly pulled up and away before the door even finished opening.
In the dim light he could make out a feminine form step out. Her bare legs were slender and pale. She was wearing an oversized man's shirt, but her head was still entirely in shadow. He guessed it was Mercy, but she didn't move quite right. He moved towards her, balancing easily on the overhanging beams until he was able to position himself behind her. She was obviously trying to head downstairs to the kitchenette. Possibly for a glass of water.
He slid down behind her, realizing just a bit too late that this was most definitely not Mercy. Not only was she too short and too slender, she was also far too blonde. With a mass of curly, dirty gold hair that hid her features. Unfortunately, realizing this did not stop him from touching down behind her with a faint swish of his cape.
She started, turned... yup, he thought to himself. That was most definitely not Mercy. Mercy's first reaction from what he'd heard would've been a right hook, then followed up by a backwards thrust-kick. This woman, who looked like she hadn't been sleeping well... screamed. Loud, long and scared.
Well, he couldn't really blame her, he was somewhat startling.
What he hadn't counted on was the appearance of Mercy at the door behind him. She had a sheet strategically draped over her form. On one hand she wore a set of knuckle dusters that crackled with blue sparks. In her other hand was an aluminum baseball bat that he was certain she kept under her pillow. There was that right hook he'd been expecting. He danced back out of the way of the blow, letting his cape disguise exactly where his body was. Her follow-up kick was likewise avoided, but he slapped her leg as she kicked out, slipping his own leg out to tap her planted leg. This disrupted her balance enough for him to surge forward, knocking her entirely off her feet with a palm snapped at her chin. Her grip on the bat loosened and it rolled away from the fight. He didn't want to get into this scuffle, but she didn't seem inclined to talk just yet.
The other woman, continued screaming, but now she'd picked up the dropped bat and was rushing him. Instinct and training took over. He jinked to one side, thrusting out a stiff fingered hand to strike a nerve cluster in her wrist, forcing her to drop the bat. His cape swirled around him as he turned the blow into a grip, then he moved and gently, or at least as gently as possible, twisting her arm up behind her back. He brought an arm around her throat and whispered harshly into her ear, "Quiet." She was taller than he was by a few inches, so that action had her bending down.
He raised his voice and rasped at Mercy who was coming back to her feet and looked like she was ready for another round. "Try it and you'll fry her, and I'll still knock you down."
Mercy snarled, "You're Robin." She held up the still crackling knuckledusters. "Let Eve go, and I might not cripple you too badly."
The woman in his arms had stopped screaming and seemed to have calmed down considerably. She spoke suddenly. "Wait, Mercy!" She turned her head, trying to face the much younger man, her hair tickling his nose as she moved. "Do you know what happened to Lex?"
"What're you-?" He blurted out, puzzled. He caught himself before he said more, but whatever aura of intimidation he might've been able to manifest was severely hampered by the fact that first of all, he was shorter and slighter than both women. Worse, now that the lights were on, they had a clear view of those facts.
The blonde struggled against him. Since Mercy looked disinclined to continue trying to beat up on him, he let the woman go with a slight shove, pushing her into Mercy's arms. Mercy dropped the sparking weapon from her hand and held onto the woman. She started to fuss, trying to make certain that she was alright, but the woman shrugged her off. "Where is Lex?"
"I don't know." He replied, straightening up to his full height. "Where's Batgirl?"
"What're you talking about?" Mercy continued to hold the woman, Eve. "Why are you here?"
"I'm looking for someone." He said.
The blonde asked sharply, "But you're not looking for Lex?"
"I didn't even realize he was missing." He replied. "He hosted SNL last night. That was live."
"That was a Lex impersonator." She said, distantly. "He's been working for us since they took the bomb out of him."
Mercy snapped at Eve. "Don't tell him that!"
He frowned under his mask. "How long has Lex been missing?"
"None of your business." Mercy said, pulling Eve closer to her and away from him.
Eve slapped Mercy's shoulder. "I can't stand it anymore. We need to have someone look for him. We've had no leads. There was no body. I'm not going to accept that he's dead. You told me he got out of almost the exact same situation just a couple of months ago. If anyone could survive that, it'll be Lex." She
Robin could see that Mercy's anger was a pose. Well, not much of one, but she looked more fragile than he'd realized. Neither of the women looked like they'd had any sleep. The body language. The way they carried themselves spoke of closeness. Possibly a relationship. More than that though. Stress. The indicators were all over the place. They were both on the ragged edge. Perhaps comforting one another through... something? Lex disappeared. He wondered what that meant. He wondered if it tied in with his own investigation. He was certain it did.
Robin flicked his eyes towards the still open bedroom door and noted that the room only had a single queen sized bed with very rumpled sheets. The blush at the implication of what he might have inadvertently wandered into was beyond his control.
Mercy frowned at his blush, then realized what he was blushing at and almost laughed out loud. She subtly adjusted her bed sheet to better effect on her vastly feminine frame. The boy scout types always blushed. The boy... and boy he was, she thought. If he were over sixteen, she'd eat her chauffeur hat... seemed a little uncomfortable suddenly.
Eve didn't even seem to notice that. "It's been a week," she said wearily. The adrenaline high was wearing off. She sagged against Mercy. "He went to Cadmus."
"The facility just out of Metropolis." He spoke. It wasn't a question.
"Yes," the blonde replied. She nudged Mercy, "Tell him. He's a superhero..." she finally seemed to notice exactly what the young man looked like. "Even if he looks like he kind of shrunk in the wash."
Robin winced slightly and Mercy was unable to keep a weak smile from flitting across her face. "Lex found a conspiracy. One that was catching smart people when they were young and crippling them."
He frowned. "That sounds paranoid."
"I'd've said so too, except he had proof." She gestured vaguely down at the computer equipment below. "He's got tons of data. Waller believed him."
"Amanda Waller." He said flatly. His voice still doubtful.
"Yes." Mercy snarled.
"Why would it have mattered to hi-" his eyes grew wide behind his mask as he realized what that meant. "It was done to him."
She nodded. "He figured it out and he figured out that the people who were doing it were running Cadmus."
"I heard something about several Cadmus facilities being shut down around a month ago."
"He managed to shut down almost all of them." Mercy replied with a trace of pride in her voice. "We mopped up the ones that survived."
"But he's been missing since then." Eve finished softly.
He said coolly, "Show me the data he showed Waller. I'll look into it."
Mercy continued to look doubtful, but Eve nodded. "You'll get it."
"So who did you say you were looking for?" Mercy asked.
"Batgirl." The young man replied.
Eve ducked away, moving quickly down to the floor where she worked the computers with practiced ease. Mercy looked thoughtful. "Not the redheaded one, right?"
"No. She retired a while back."
Mercy shook her head. "Well, if you mean the one in the fetish leather, no. We never saw her"
"Her notes said she was keeping Lex under surveillance." He said distantly.
"Well, if she was doing it properly, we really wouldn't've seen her, huh?" Mercy sneered. "So why was she watching us?"
"Lex was already acting odd for several weeks prior to his disappearance." He said slowly. "She was... curious, I think. Lex already knew that far back," He said once he'd realized. "Lex knew about this conspiracy during that time. That's why he started acting odd. Leaving the public eye, putting the LexCorp tech database on open source, it's tied to this conspiracy, isn't it?"
Mercy nodded reluctantly.
Eve came back up breathless. She'd taken the stairs two at a time. She held a flash drive between thumb and forefinger. "This is the data. The same stuff he sent to Waller, at least that's what his records said." She turned, eyes swimming in tears, towards the young man in the black cloak. "Find Lex for us."
"I'll..." He found himself staring at the lovely young woman's hopeful expression and Mercy's face with it's angrier, though no less hopeful expression. "I'll do my best." He felt her hand brush his arm for a moment before he took a step back, twitching his cloak to cover himself once more. It amazed him how much devotion Lex had managed to create in these women. In anyone. Given his track record, Robin was amazed anyone was even still willing to work for him. Instead, he asked, "So the last time you'd seen him was right before Cadmus was shut down?"
Eve turned to Mercy as though to confirm that fact and he took the opportunity to pull a trick his mentor had mastered years ago. In that split second of inattention, he retracted his d-cel line once more, making it as though he'd vanished into thin air. He was already up and out of the unsecured window he'd come in through before the women even fully registered that he'd left.
This information gave him another direction to take his investigation. Batgirl had been following Lex. Lex had vanished. Batgirl had vanished. Simple logic suggested that if he found Lex, he'd find Batgirl. He arced his body in midair, shooting out another jump line to allow him to swing down to street level, right next to his car.
It was time to head back to Bludhaven and start over.
O-O-O-O
He was back in Bludhaven. Back in the satellite Batcave that had been set up for her. He pretty much had to manage from his apartment and a closet. Technically they were both supposed to use the facilities, but she actually got to live there.
Frankly, it showed. There were piles of discarded clothes here and there. Almost all of which were black, except for the underwear which tended towards plain white. There was a small mound of discarded coffee cups, pizza boxes and Chinese takeout containers in their own mouldering corner. She was an indifferent housekeeper at best, he mused. Alfred normally came out to straighten up at least once a week, but he'd asked him not to come out yet to preserve the place as close to how it was when she'd last been here.
He'd shucked off the cape and body armor, wearing just his tights and a singlet as he sprawled in what he tended to think of as "his" chair. It was the one in front of the keyboard that she never used. Well, she couldn't really use it. She was much more effective on the voice recognition software when she bothered to use the computer at all. When she did, she tended to prowl around the room while she talked.
He massaged his temples as he closed up the file that held her last nightly log. He'd combed through her logs trying to find clues to where she'd gotten off to. The procedure was greatly slowed down by the fact that she tended to be very... succinct... when it came to her logs. Worse, they were all audio recordings and his search software wasn't as good as he could hope when it came to audio files.
The transcripts that were auto-produced by the system tended to be of dubious quality and he couldn't afford to miss anything.
One file in particular, the last one, was particularly enlightening. It had been uploaded to the computer remotely and hadn't been an actual part of the chain of log files. It was still in a recently received sub-directory and had clearly been sent just before she had completely disappeared.
Unfortunately, the file had been of such poor quality and compressed so much that even after multiple run-throughs with audio enhancement software, he'd only just barely been able to make out what was being said. In conjunction with the information Eve had given him, it made more sense.
It had been Lex speaking to Amanda Waller. The sound had been terrible. It sounded like someone had been trying to record the conversation from some distance without the benefit of a directional mic at a bad angle. The strange little echoes in the sound had made him suspect she'd made the recording from a closed in space. Perhaps from under a car. What he could make out confirmed what he'd understood from the data.
Lex had sent the same information to Waller. The information that had driven him to Cadmus. Where, he suspected, Batgirl had followed him to.
Between those audio files, the data Eve Teschmacher (he found her last name out from a search of LexTech's employee database) had given him and the information he'd pulled out on his own, he'd begun to develop an idea of what had happened.
He tapped a control on the computer and grinned slightly as a heavily computer altered female voice spoke to him. "What's up, Current Boy Wonder?" On the display, a feminine green lined mask appeared.
He tried to speak lightly, but the tension in his voice was difficult to hide. "Babs, I'm working on Cass's disappearance."
"How can I help?"
"I need someone to bounce ideas off of, right now. Bruce is... incommunicado. This whole thing got weird and big really fast."
The voice switched from the filtered computer voice to a more natural feminine one. The mask on the display changed to a webcam shot of an attractive redhead wearing a sweater and a headset. "What've you found?"
"I've got a rough time line." He began. "Two weeks ago, Lex dropped in on Bruce Wayne, offering him a large and fairly juicy portion of the LexCorp database. During the visit, Lex was acting very strangely. Cass saw him on the monitors during that visit."
On the screen, the woman nodded. "I remember. Bruce told me before he dumped the data on me to check out."
"Did you find anything wrong with it?" He asked.
"It was all flat files. Bitmaps and text files. Nothing fancy, no viruses, no Trojans, nothing hidden in the flash drive, physically or digitally. All the data bore out. It was exactly what Luthor said it was."
He replied. "I guess that fits what Cass said about it. She said Luthor was telling the truth."
"Interestingly enough," Babs continued, "Wayne Enterprises wasn't the only recipient of Luthor's largess. The rest of that week, he parceled out other sections of his tech database to Apple, Boeing Aerospace, STAR Labs, Sony, Kordtronics, Cisco, Steel Works, Microsoft, Intel... maybe another dozen or so of the top tech companies. He pretty much gave the information away and requested only that they find ways of exploiting the technology in ways that would 'benefit the human race'."
Robin shook his head, "Not exactly the sort of behavior people associate with Luthor."
"I saw the tapes. He really was acting... odd. Almost like someone told him he was dying and he was trying to make up for his life." Babs said thoughtfully.
"That's what I thought at first, too." Robin conceded, "But I turned up some more info that made me reconsider that theory."
"What would that be?" She asked, intrigued.
He raised a hand and shook his head. "I'll get to that, Babs. But let me get through this in the order that it looks like it happened. In any case, because of the weird behavior, Cass began surveillance on Lex at his place in Metropolis."
She frowned. "I didn't know."
"She didn't tell anyone. Not even Bruce." He shook his head. "Things get really complicated on the day she disappeared. Last week."
"The same day Lex went open source with the LexCorp tech database." Babs replied.
"And also the day Lex got his fifteen minutes of internet fame by ending up on a viral YouTube video standing up to Chemo in Metropolis." Robin said. "Which was ironic since the Secret Service listed 'Cueball' as being in Prague at the timestamp of Chemo's attack."
"Which Lex was Cass watching?"
"The one in Metropolis. It turns out she wasn't alone. A few members of Suicide Squad were keeping an eye on him. That van Lex was standing next to in the video? Turns out that was their listening post."
"What about Euro-Lex?"
"Surgically altered impostor with a bomb in his gut. My guess is he was some sort of misdirection for everyone else while the Chemo attack got carried out."
"Except Lex survives the attack." Babs said brightly.
"Precisely. And in the process inadvertently lets Cass into his warehouse. My best guess, she ducked into the place while the door was open when Lex brought the Suicide Squad van into. That or she was clinging to the bottom of the thing when it was driven in. One way or another, she found herself inside Luthor's lair."
"So is she still there?" She asked with a grin.
Robin shook his head grimly, "I was just there earlier tonight. She's not there and neither is Lex. In fact Lex went missing that same day."
She sighed and took a sip from coffee cup that she'd picked up from offscreen. "You weren't kidding about this being complicated."
"It's about to get worse. While Cass was there, Lex called Waller and sent her some information that sheds light on his behavior from the week prior. We know this because Cass was able to get one transmission of this conversation out. I'm sending you a copy of the cleaned up version and the data that Lex is talking about. Luthor's home is shielded against most radio signals, but from the time stamps, I'm guessing she was able to send out a transmission while Lex had the door open to talk to Superman who was looking into the Chemo attack."
He tapped a few commands into his terminal and leaned back thoughtfully while she looked over what he had sent. He watched her expression grow progressively more grim as she read quickly through his transcript. "He's got to be lying."
"That's what I thought too." He said morosely. "But I think it's true." Now he looked nervous... he almost looked his age, if not younger. Babs momentarily looked like she wanted to reach through the screen and hug him. He met her gaze. "We- all of us have had head trauma of some sort during he course of our careers."
She frowned, but gestured for him to continue.
"MRI's, CAT scans. We've all had them done as some point." He was almost mumbling. "We've got copies of those images on the servers. I looked at my own head. I've got the damage exactly as Lex describes it."
Babs opened her mouth to speak, but then shut it with a snap. "You didn't just check yours, did you?"
"No."
"Mine?"
He nodded.
"Bruce? Dick?"
He nodded once more.
"Even Jason has those exact lesions on the amygdalla."
She leaned back in her seat then said quietly. "We've all faced Scarecrow's fear toxin. That 'damage' as you call it could be from that."
He shook his head. "Regardless of whether or not we believe Lex's conspiracy theory, he believed it. Not only that, he managed to convince Amanda Waller that it was real."
"What time was that?"
"Around eight in the morning." He replied. "I'm sure you can see for yourself what happened to their communications logs right after that time."
She squinted at something on the screen in front of her for a moment. "Bell Reeve went into communications shut down at 8:06 AM. They remain dark until 9:09 AM when an encrypted message is sent to the DEO. The DEO head office then shuts down all communications until Director Bones contacts the State Department, EPA, the FBI and the CIA simultaneously at 9:15 AM. Normal communications resume about an hour later, but then almost every single Cadmus facility goes into some sort of critical meltdown. Local responders and FBI specialists just 'happen' to be suspiciously available at all of them."
Robin nodded. "Lex carried out some sort of attack against Cadmus, with the tacit complicity of the US government. Or at least select parts of it. He specifically went to what he believed to be the main office. The one right outside Metropolis, accompanied by Deadshot and Metallo."
Babs steepled her fingers in front of her. "You think Cass, having overheard all of this, decided to follow them there."
"I'm certain of it." He replied. "Unfortunately, that's what makes finding out what happened next almost impossible."
"Because the entire facility was leveled by explosions at noon that same day." She said.
"Because it went kablooie and there's nothing left there but rubble." He settled deeper into his chair and sighed heavily. "I just... I'm sure she's still alive, but that place is pancaked."
"Any luck finding Metallo and Deadshot to see what they might know?"
"Deadshot's back in Belle Reeve." He replied. "He claims Luthor separated from them early and they didn't see what happened to him. Floyd thinks Lex was still in there when the bombs went off. He was surprised when he heard Lex was alive, except that's just a double Mercy hired to keep people thinking Lex is around. Floyd never even saw Cass. Meanwhile, Metallo is trying to sell off the info he picked up from Cadmus to the highest bidder tomorrow. I've got the location for the auction he's holding in Metropolis and I'm going to see if he knows anything that Deadshot didn't. But that's for tomorrow."
Babs tapped a few buttons on her own keyboard and blueprints appeared on Robin's screen. "The Cadmus facility that they went to has a couple of other exits. Deadshot couldn't have known for sure if Lex... or Cass had managed to get out of one of those."
He nodded. "I agree, but the area he said Lex was heading towards is close to the center of the facility. The absolute worst spot to evacuate himself from. Also, if they had managed to escape." He paused, "Why hasn't she contacted us? And why hasn't Lex contacted Mercy or Miss Teschmacher?"
Her eyes hardened, "We proceed on the assumption that they're still alive. It's been a week. Assuming they managed to get out... somehow... why wouldn't they get in touch with us?"
"Lex could be hiding from his conspiracy." He suggested.
"But Cass would have our protocols for situations involving compromised agents. She would at least have tried for a message drop." Babs pointed out.
Robin continued, "She could be too injured. Or still unconscious. As tough as she is, she's only human."
Babs nodded. "I keep thinking we missed something."
"Like how exactly they would've gotten out in the first place?" he asked, looking the blue prints over once more time. He checked a timer on the display, then checked it against his notes. "If he was in the middle of the structure and as deep down as Deadshot said he was... unless there were more secret tunnels down there, I can't figure any way Lex could've made it to the exits in time."
Babs slapped her forehead. "It's always the obvious thing we forget. Teleportation. Lex loves using it for his emergency exits."
Robin picked up on her enthusiasm. "No one's bothered to check for that sort of trace on the debris, because Lex was supposed to have gotten out, but that was the Lex-a-like Mercy hired!"
Babs nodded as she bent over a different keyboard to one side of her. "I'm retasking one of Uncle Sam's satellites to give us a better view of the site." Her fingers working smoothly across the controls, making a rapid-fire click-clack noise in the process. "It's got an ionization display filter that should hopefully still give us some teleport traces even after all this time."
She frowned at whatever her display was showing her for a long moment, before she tapped something that transferred what she was looking at to Robin's display. He nodded. "That's a definite teleport trace... kind of faint though, even if it is a week later. Almost looks like it wouldn't have been enough to port out a cat much less two adults, if we're going with the assumption that Cass escaped with Lex."
"The trace is coming from pretty deep underground. At that depth, it would have been next to impossible to get a lock for transport. That's why the trace is so faint," Babs shook her head. "But it's not just that. That's a Justice League transporter trace."
He seemed surprised, "You're kidding."
"No joke. Definitely a JLA trace. Let me pull up the transporter logs..." she stopped talking as she went through some high speed typing. "Strange."
Robin had pulled the same information up from his station. "Nothing on the logs for that time... except for- Hold on." He got up from the workstation and stalked over to one secured locker that every batcave was equipped with. Bruce, in his more jocular moments (few as they were), tended to refer to as the sci-fi closet.
Robin keyed in the unlock code and swung it open. Most of the more esoteric weapons were still in their cradles, but the specific item he was looking for was not where it was supposed to be. He rushed back to the station and spoke hurriedly. "The ID code in the log for that time is the emergency JLA transporter we have from the sci-fi closet, but the system logged the transport user as Flash and civilian passengers."
She nodded, "It's not Flash's access code. Except the basic log is convinced that Flash was part of the transport. The code for the transporter is the one Cass would have. The auto-return settings should have sent her and any passengers to the Batcave you're in. "
"Except she didn't end up here." He said, thoughtfully. He pulled up the programming and error logs of the transporter system for the time that they believed she... and most likely, Luthor... had been transported. "The mass readings are about right for Cass and one male passenger, approximately one hundred seventy pounds, which would be about right for Lex. The timestamp is right and the destination coordinates look correct, but there's something hinky about the origination coordinates."
She scrolled through the records and nodded. "The transport computer registered the teleport request as a dopplered signal. That's why it thinks it was Flash who requested the transport." She cross referenced another log file and then added. "There was an initial teleport request thirty seconds earlier that was too faint for the system to get a lock on. That came from the Cadmus facility. The second request showed up as dopplered. The designated 'old' signal is also from the Cadmus location, but the 'new' signal is from the waterfront in New Jersey..."
"So the system picked up two of almost exactly the same signal, it assumed the fainter signal was a transmission echo left behind by a speedster moving at close to lightspeed." Robin said.
"It's a reasonable assumption for the computers to make," She agreed. "They're sophisticated and smart, but they're not really good at dealing with the unexpected."
"GIGO," Robin said idly as he scrolled through the error logs and the programming information. An idea was forming based on how the JLA transport system dealt with speed differences. Normally the system had to make automatic adjustments to account for the difference in angular momentum in teleporting North to South, but it also needed to be able to cope with men and women who could move at extreme speeds on their own. The Flash was ridiculous enough, but even the Green Lantern could move at supersonic speeds when he needed to. "Babs... I know this is Luthor we're talking about... but how likely do you think it would be that he could whip up some sort of teleportation signal repeater?"
"You're thinking he was able to get some sort of signal repeater in Jersey that let them transport out?" Babs asked.
"Some sort of signal repeater that really confused the transport system's computer." He looked up at her, his voice had gone cold as he considered the possibilities. "If it thought it was transporting a speedster at full tilt heading roughly north-west... The inertial compensators would try to kick in a kinetic correction with the same speed impulse in a south-eastern direction."
"But the transport tube sensors would-" Babs began, but stopped herself as she realized what he had. "Your satellite cave doesn't have a transport tube, does it?"
"No. Just a cleared spot of floor designated the emergency landing area." He began frantically working out calculations on his terminal. "With the velocity adjustments and their mass... that puts them about a hundred miles west off the Florida coast."
Babs shook her head and said weakly, "Well, I guess that explains why we hadn't heard from Cass in a week then."
Robin ducked his head back down and overlayed a number of maps over his projected landing site. "With the currents and local shipping lines..." he mumbled, then trailed off as he checked. "The first place they're liable to land is here." He marked a section of his map and sent the image to Babs.
She eyed it dubiously. "Kooeykooeykooey?"
"It's only three miles from the assumed landing spot and the local currents in the area would take them to it, assuming they follow it." He said.
"I'll check the Coast Guard records for the past week and see if anyone's picked them up yet." She said with brisk efficiency. "I don't have any satellites I can point there right now, but maybe in... hmm... half an hour."
He shook his head. "It'll be faster if I just go. I'll borrow a bat wing and see if they are there." He rose to his feet and nodded curtly to her, "Thanks, Babs."
"This gives us a start." She said and switched off the video display. "I'll keep in touch." Her now electronically filtered voice came to him..
O-O-O-O
It took Robin fifteen minutes to get himself over to the rooftop hanger where they kept the fully fueled Batwing. He was sure Babs would have a satellite image of the island while he was still en route. Perhaps the time would be better spent further refining his calculations for where the transporter may have dumped them, but he needed to move. It shamed him that it took days before he even realized that Cass had vanished. He was familiar with using guilt and fear to fuel himself to keep working well past his physical limits.
The action also kept him from dwelling on his other discoveries. They'd mutilated his brain. This Cadmus Conspiracy Lex had discovered had chemically altered his personality. It made him wonder. Would he be in the mask and cape if they hadn't done that? Would he have simply ended up as just another high school student, concerned with just girls, prom and all the day to day minutiae that he never thought about as a costumed vigilante. He clenched a fist. He could see where Lex was coming from on this.
What scared him even more, though... was the fact that it had also been done to Bruce. He was glad that the Batman was pulling another extended absence from Gotham to deal with Ra's. He didn't know if he could face Batman with the knowledge. The damage was clearest of all on older brains. Bruce's amygdalla scarring dated back to roughly age six. He was certain that if they could get more precise dating on the fear toxin exposure it would date to the day his parents were killed.
It seemed to be a common theme. The exposure was almost always linked to trauma. His scars dated to his mother's death. Dick's was from his parents' death. With Jason, he wasn't absolutely certain, but it was the same year the second Robin had started living on the streets. Babs, ironically enough, one of the smartest of them all, was exposed late. It had happened the same year she had been crippled.
He shook his head to clear it. He was in a hurry. He had no time for woolgathering. He was about to finally board the sleek supersonic jet when a message chime from Oracle sounded in his communicator.
"Found something?" He asked.
Her voice was digitally filtered in his ear. "The satellite's not yet in place for a real-time peek, but I found some recent shots of Kooeykooeykooey from the past few days. The navy had war games in the vicinity and they were testing out their own surveillance capabilities when they scanned the island. No one actually looked at the shots which explains why they completely missed this..." As she spoke an image threw itself up on the heads up display of his mask. It showed the island, which he presumed was Kooeykooeykooey. At the beach, well above the tide line, but before the jungle line was a word spelled out in white rocks on the brown sandy beach. From the original perspective of the photo, it was upside down and at an angle, but Oracle obligingly rotated it to make it easier for him to read. The word was "HELP".
His face broke into a grin, "They're there."
"This was from four days ago." Oracle replied. "Shipping records show at least a half dozen ships passed that island heading in various directions. I'm still trying to track them all down and figure out if any of them might have picked up our lost souls." Even with the distortion her voice sounded relieved. "I doubt they're still on the island, but if you want to check while I try to track them down with what I have-"
"I'll go see if Cass is on the island." He cut her off. Babs obviously was going to say something in reply, but Robin suddenly sensed another presence on the rooftop with him. He spun, pulling a shuriken from one of the compartments on his belt.
There was a rush of wind as he found himself pinned to the side of the bat wing. Steely fingers closed around his wrist, crushing it painfully and forcing him to drop the shuriken.
His body was already about to automatically go into one of the possible options he had to break free, in this instance a head butt, when he was pulled short by realizing who was pinning him. He breathed out, "Cass?"
Her lovely Eurasian face broke into a delighted smile. She'd gone nut brown, obviously from exposure to the sun and the color suited her. "Tim." She said simply. She had not let go of his wrist and seemed to be delighting in keeping him pinned against the plane. A tiny flicker of a thought ran through his head and he wondered if he'd be enjoying this more if he hadn't been wearing body armor. The tanktop... no, that was a sports bra... that was all she was wearing as a top and it seemed awfully thin. He hoped... he sincerely hoped that she wouldn't pick up on that in his body language, but it was futile.
Her smile turned into a laugh as she let him go, then gave him a warm and friendly (oh so surprisingly friendly) hug.
"What happened to you?" He asked, sputtering. A thousand questions were suddenly running through his mind. He could distantly hear Babs asking him what was going on.
She fished something out of her belt... and he noted idly that she was still wearing her utility belt, despite having lost her top. She held up what he recognized as the teleporter unit, but it had seen better days. The plastic was scuffed. Someone had pried it open at some point and there were still wires sticking out of one of the grooves. She waggled it under his nose and said. "This sucks."
"Really?" He asked, helpless to think of anything else he could say. He did note idly that they were still holding each other and she didn't seem inclined to let go.
"Yes. Was supposed to go home. Lex was hurt bad. Went to beach, not home." She gave the much abused teleporter another glare. "Stuck on beach. Beach sucks. Lex was sick, but called ship. Hitched ride."
She flashed another brilliant smile at him. "Just dropped Lex off. Wanted to come home. Sleep for a week. Cookie binge."
"You have been busy." Tim said weakly, not sure how else to respond. They could do a proper debrief in the morning. Her too bright smile and the slight jitteriness in her shoulders told him she was pretty much on the edge of a collapsing. He could faintly smell the java-mint frappucino on her breath. Probably all that was keeping her upright.
"Take me home." She finished, then leaned forward and just fell asleep in his arms.
Oracle, who had become frustrated that Tim had been ignoring her, had taken control of the hangar's security camera and had been watching. She smiled broadly, though no one was there to see it. Cass was safe, although she looked like she needed a good long rest. The whole Luthor situation had grown and gotten a higher priority on her threat meters, but that would be for tomorrow. For now, it was enough for her that Cass was okay... although, Babs noted, watching the now very confused Robin, help the sleeping Cassandra back to the elevator... Cass did seem a bit more... affectionate towards Tim than she'd ever been before. Then again, perhaps she was reading too much into it. Obviously Cass had missed Tim during her island adventure.
She hoped that was all it was.
