It was, different, wearing the red. Wally hadn't put on a real costume in two years. Back then it had been his kid flash uniform, which while totally awesome, had the extra padding and armor for when he inevitably lost control and ran into a wall. The Flash uniform was light, that was the first thing he noticed. He knew the fabric was reinforced but it didn't seem to weigh him down the way he thought it would have. It slid over him like a second skin, hell even the boots fit.
Part of his mind knew that his connection with the speed force was subconsciously affecting the way the molecules shaped themselves around him. For the longest time he had been certain that this was a violation of his uncle's memory, but it felt right somehow, and for the moment he wasn't going to question that.
He knew he was out of practice. He knew that there was every chance that this would go horribly terribly wrong. And yet, when the sun crested over his city, the light stretching out over that endless land, it was like the starting gun for a race. He let go. He let go even more than he had the previous night when he had left the party. Speed fell over him and he grabbed it pulling in more and more, as the world froze in a crystal perfection. A moment trapped and held in his hands until he chose to release it.
Wally's heart swelled in his chest and he laughed. He had to; at the absurdity of trying to deny this for so long. He heard the joy in his own voice and marveled at it again, thinking of how Jay and Iris would react if they heard it. Then he remembered that he was already going faster than sound and that set him off again.
He went through Central and Keystone a dozen times each, reveling in the endless morning. People going to work, rush-hour traffic and students on bicycles, coffee shop lines, and paper caught fluttering in the wind, and it was beautiful.
The Twin Cities weren't the same as he remembered them. As a kid he had known every street every corner of every building and alley. In the past two years new buildings had gone up particularly on the outskirts, while old buildings had been renovated, stores had closed while others had opened their doors. He took it all in, memorizing the new layout.
Eventually though his mind focused back on the task at hand. Batman was somewhere in his city, and he had Joan, Iris and Linda. Nightwing had reported that the others were being moved but the women apparently qualified for some special attention. The Flash could search through the entire city in less than a day, but if he didn't want to leave a trail of destruction behind him he would have to keep his speed at a manageable level. Basically, that translated to going slow enough to be seen and therefore be tracked.
Well he didn't mind being seen. When he stumbled over that fact he nearly came to a complete halt. His sudden appearance caused a woman in a gray business suit to gasp and drop her coffee. Wally was back up to his previous speed a minute later grabbing the coffee cup out of the air and lacing her fingers around it before he was gone.
If he had been facing anyone other than Batman he might have ignored the risk and tried searching the city anyway. But it was Batman, and rushing in even with his advantages would probably get him killed. That would be embarrassing. Finally putting on the suit, and telling Nightwing he could handle it like that and then just kaput, dead.
No, this time he would need a different strategy. The problem was, he didn't really have any other strategies. He had just been out of the game for too long. Maybe he shouldn't have asked Nightwing to leave.
Flash let go of the speed he was holding and drifted back down until he was strolling along at the normal walking pace. He was down at the south end of town where the river ran between assorted factories and industrial plants, so he wasn't really worried about being seen. He put the costume away just in case.
That's when he noticed what was off in this picture. The factories out here were automated these days. Mechanical assembly lines and zero emission 0.9 percent accuracy to a hundredth of a degree processes all being overseen by engineers at computer desks. All the old coal industrial factories had been shut down years ago … so why was that chimney smoking?
He had the red back on before he even really thought about it. It took him nine steps to break the sound barrier and another six to find that magic speed where everything fell still. He slipped into the building through a door that had been left ajar, and could feel the vibrations in the air that meant the volume would have been through the roof if he was moving slow enough to hear anything. More vibrations, in a slightly lower range meant that all around him the machinery that looked to be moving so very slowly was actually pounding out at full speed.
Wally dropped his speed enough to see the arcs and sweeps the old assembly line machinery made. Getting caught off guard at this point would be a bad thing. Then the heat started to reach him. Temperatures were one of the few things that affected him no matter how fast he was going. Normally he could run through a patch of heat or cold before it bogged him down too much but that assumed he was already going at a fair pace and aimed to be somewhere else. When the idea was to do some recon in a small area temperatures were just something he had to deal with.
Maybe it wasn't actually surprising that the uniform was helping with that. The molecules of the costume had been designed to react to the speed force; at the speed Wally was going it shifted over his frame rather than clinging to him in uncomfortable places. Even with the uniform he was sweating as he did a parameter sweep and found signs of life heading for the center of the building.
Something was wrong here. This didn't seem like a trap or at least not a trap for him. Even with the factory floor going full tilt there was plenty of room for him to move and every time he glanced back, the way he had come was still clear for an exit. The signs he was following were clear as well. Whoever had come through earlier hadn't bothered covering their tracks. It was nothing too obvious but snapped padlocks and a greasy hand print were enough to tell him he was going in the right direction.
Maybe he was jumping to conclusions. Maybe there was a perfectly innocent reason for this place to be up and running, even though it wasn't actually making anything, and no one was around. Right, because in his life things turned out to be false alarms so very often.
Wally ended up heading down. The boiler rooms were under the main factory floor and that seemed to be where the trail was leading. Wally had slowed his pace again, compensating for the dark and the noise by taking extra care every time he turned a corner. At least that was the plan until he heard the scream.
This scream was from pain more than anything else but there was fear laced through it as well. The voice belonged to a man, someone who spent his days working in rough conditions rather than an office where smooth vocals were a benefit. It was also a scream that said he was fighting, or at least trying to.
Wally spun through the last corridor, his sudden movement spinning a burst of air into motion around him. Visions of the situation danced behind his eyes. The man, a security guard maybe, at the mercy of Batman or one of the Rogues, trying to stop them because he was the only one there to do it. Then Wally was there, and he came to a stop at the sight of the situation before him.
Batman had Heatwave pressed against the wall his black clad figure outlined in red from the heat of the furnace. The situation wasn't completely one sided. Heatwave was fighting back scrambling at Batman's armor with fingers that seared leather and charred fabric. Even as Batman pushed Heatwave farther up the wall, his grip cutting off Heatwave's air supply, Heatwave was doing his best to burn Batman alive inside his own armor.
The gust of wind Wally's sudden movement had created swept over the two figures. Two sets of eyes turned in Wally's direction, and he couldn't decide which frightened him more.
Nightwing had been quietly tracking the movements of the Martian for a week now. They had mind blowing security levels and the Martian himself was almost impossible to track given that he could fly, turn invisible and pass through solid objects. His prisoners on the other hand were not as gifted, or at least not gifted in those ways.
The transport vehicles might have been converted from old tanks considering how much outer shielding they had, and since they're using a system that had no connections to the outside world trying to hack in would take too long to be useful. At first Nightwing thought they were heading to Bell Reeve, but they veered around it and continued heading north. He had heard plenty of rumors in the past about secret prisons and torture centers, but since no one ever seemed to know anything solid he had never given the theories much credit.
He was starting to change his mind with all the strange course changes and back roads and sudden security checks surrounding the convoy. Anyone else would have certainly been lost in the maze they established. When Dick finally tracked them to their destination he wasn't sure he hadn't been thrown off as well.
Dick didn't know what he was looking at, at first. This place, a collection of buildings that look appealing on the surface even if some of the buildings clearly have the security setup for technical and medical facilities. It seemed to be self-sustaining given how large it was and the relative distance from any city large enough to support it. At first security seemed to be minimal with the large exterior wall and shaped hedges more for show than anything else, but come on, no one puts a place like this out in the middle of nowhere for no reason.
Rechecking his path and assuming this was the right place, he broke a cardinal rule of detective work and started looking for what should be there rather than just going over what was in front of him.
Cameras were the first thing he found, there were enough signals in the air that it was hard to miss, and video took up a lot of bandwidth. He set an algorithm to find blind spots and trace the locations while he set up a scanning program using the local weather satellite. Reading water drainage patterns indicated that the structures extended below ground as well. The satellite he had borrowed didn't have the equipment to see anything more detailed and nothing else was in the area, so Nightwing set that task on the back burner and pulled out his binoculars.
It took him almost five hours to circle the complex, taking pictures of the buildings and getting as many readings as possible while staying at least a half mile from the walls. When he finally pulled back it was quarter to eleven at night and the only buildings with lights still on were in the buildings he had picked out as on site dormitories. He pulled back, using a small cluster of trees as cover while he sent his information to Oracle.
Dick had been planning on catching a few hours sleep while waiting for her reply, but it was less than ten minutes before she had a message back to him. It was short and sweet when he read it: just a frequency number and the encryption key he would need to use it.
Nightwing returned to his headset and was back on his feet before Oracle had finished her greeting.
"You got something for me Babs?"
"In a way. You've managed to stumble on one of my active cases. I need your skill set to help one of my people. You up for a little rescue mission?"
"Fine by me, walk me through it."
Hawkgirl could feel her wings. She knew they were gone but logic couldn't override the phantom sensations. Thanagarian lifespans were longer than humans. The math was difficult due to planetary calendars and orbital variations for the different planets. still, Shiera Hol knew she had been an officer in the Thanagarian armada for over 70 earth years before her haphazard arrival. Of those 70 years she had had her wings for over 50 of them.
It was something you got used to.
Most humans believed Thanagarians were born with wings. That wasn't actually the case. The Thanagarian culture revolved around wings and flying. It had for millennia, but the biological components, the wings themselves, were not organic, not usually. The average thanagarian, a civilian, would have a pair of wings made of Nth metal and a special bio-polycarbonate that earth was still decades away from creating. Just because they weren't organic however, didn't mean that they weren't necessary. Thanagarians needed their wings in the same way some humans needed glasses. To be deprived of wings was a physical handicap.
Organic wings like her own were a relatively new creation. The technology had only been around for a century or so, and it was still too expensive for most of the population. She had only earned her wings through her military connections. The armada had handled the rest. It hadn't been an easy process. There had been a dozen tests to make sure she was compatible before they had even started. Then excruciating surgeries that implanted the artificial limbs and months of medications so her body wouldn't reject them, but it had all been worth it.
The first time she had flown under her own power, able to feel the wind through her feathers, would be one of her brightest memories until the day she died. Every time she flew she relived that moment.
And they had taken that from her. These primitive apes from a backwater corner of the galaxy had taken it away from her.
All her doubts about this assignment were brushed aside. She had come here and thought that they had potential, that maybe if given a guiding hand they could one day make something of themselves. Superman had certainly thought so, and he had observed them longer than she had. So she had followed his lead. They were cute, in the way a child was cute, not really good for much and constantly needing to be watched but occasionally managing something worthwhile. Except they weren't children, they were animals, and even if a monkey managed to type Shakespeare that didn't make it anything more than an ape.
No, she had indulged in this planet long enough.
Shiera pushed herself up from her bed. While ripping out her wings the doctors had damaged the muscles in her shoulders and her arms were weak and shaking because of it. When she managed to make it to her feet, she was off balance, and had to catch herself on the bedside table before she could get her legs under her.
She knew where she was on the watchtower, and she knew exactly how far away her goal was. It should have taken her a few short minutes to traverse the distance; instead it loomed in front of her like an impossible gulf. Shiera had to close her eyes for a moment to center herself. One step at a time. First, get out of the hospital gown. She didn't have her uniform but a simple pair of sweatpants and a loose T-shirt had been left in the dresser. She had to sit down to put them on and she very nearly couldn't stand up again. Not the most impressive start.
The fabric of the shirt felt wrong against the skin of her back and she used the feeling as pure motivation. It got her through the door at least, and a few feet down the hall, until she stumbled into the nurses' station, collapsing onto a counter and scattering a jar of tongue depressors over the floor.
If she could just get her balance, that was the worst of it, more than her weakness. The cool metal of the wall was a single soft note against the skin of her forehead. She tried to breathe deeply, pooling all the strength she had left for the next push.
The words stenciled out on the cabinets of the nurses' station finally filtered through her brain, listing out the supplies within in alphabetical order. First on the list was Adrenalin.
Adrenalin... one of only four chemicals that Thanagarians and Humans reacted exactly the same to. Her body would probably hate her later but that didn't stop her from pressing her palm to the scanner and grabbing a handful of the double-syringes used in emergency aid work.
The first shot of adrenalin went into her arm about three inches below her shoulder. With her heart rate already elevated, the chemical spread quickly. With one more deep breath she pushed forward again.
No one questioned her presence in the corridors, not that she met more than a handful of technicians. One of them even offered to help her. She brushed him off, not because she was too proud to accept the help but because at some point he would start asking questions and at that point she couldn't lie to save her life.
It took her over half an hour to go from the medical room she had been stashed in, to the hanger bay. Commandeering a quinjet was easy enough. Yet another perk of having the highest security level on the station. Flying the ship herself was out of the question, but autopilot would serve for the first step of her trip. She used her emergency codes to get clearance for takeoff, then cut the connection to Watchtower systems.
No one on the command deck realized she wasn't heading for the planet below them.
Okay, this chapter was a pain. the whole thing just didn't want to flow and i was trying to get another section done but I swear I've written the start of it like four times so it can just go with the next chapter.
As always reviews are greatly appreciated and thank you to Ernest Wright who actually reviewed chapter 20.