Batman ordered Robin gone. Robin had considered disobeying but not seriously. This whole thing was getting a bit over his head. Reading files and hearing the stories were one thing but living it had swept Robin up and turned him around like nothing he had been able to comprehend. Having someone give him orders was almost something of a comfort at that point. Besides Ian did need a hospital and disobeying at that point would have just been contrary.

First rule of Robin: follow Batman's orders, or at least be smart about when you decide not to.

Robin tried to avoid traffic. Mostly he accomplished this by flying above the normal lanes and pulling crazy stunts that normal cars just couldn't handle. Half, hell most, of it wasn't intentional, but there it was, and he did manage to get to the hospital without doing more then scratch the paint.

The landing was another matter. Robin had been to this hospital before. He knew the layout better then most since his mom worked there. The six heli-pads the hospital sported weren't on his usual rounds though. They were scattered around the complex, most likely so that a patient that had been air lifted in didn't have as far to go once they were on the ground, but from the air Robin couldn't really guess which one was connected to which department.

He made his decision based on the fact that one of the platforms was apparently being guarded, and he was already on his way to crashing into it in any case. Landing was a lot harder then it looked. The fact that he was forced to maneuver the peddles with only one foot didn't help. It felt like the bandage he had hastily tied around his right leg was either slipping or had bled through, since he could feel the trickle of blood down his ankle and into his shoe.

The sudden jarring and short screech as the car came down and was forced to a stop, managed to knock most of the coherent thoughts from his head. He couldn't remember if the camouflage was still on or even still working, but the hatch opened easily enough.

The guard on the roof turned out to be a full officer, not just part of hospital security, which made sense since Gordon was somewhere in the building. He did seem a bit surprised when the Batmobeal crashed into the roof though, so maybe he was new.

"I've got an officer in need of medical." Robin's voice was steady but not as loud or strong as he would have liked it. He couldn't even properly stand up in the cockpit.

The officer on guard knew enough of his job to nod and radio for assistance. When Robin heard the confirmation he slumped in the front seat, only moving enough to see Ian, tucked into the space behind him. The man looked like hell, but his chest was still raising and falling in a more or less regular rhythm.

Robin let his eyes close, just for a moment, just to clear his head.

The hand brushing his arm made him jump, curling into the corner of the seat. He must have looked like a terrified cat, backed into a corner and ready to bite because the hand was slowly withdrawn. Robin followed it with his eyes back to the person it was attached to.

The man was in costume which was surprising, and not one commonly recognizable. The stranger obviously wouldn't have been from Gotham but Robin didn't recognize him from any of the League press photos or Titan interviews. Still Robin could have sworn he knew that black cowl and red vest from somewhere. He picked out the crescent moon emblem in various places but still couldn't find a name to go with the persona. Only then did Robin notice the others, officers and paramedics, who were standing back, glancing between him and Ian. Robin glanced back at the man. Really that was all it took to see he was slipping. When he turned back to the costumed figure the fight had slipped out of his limbs.

The hero waved the others forward when he saw Robin wasn't going to attack anyone.

The man leaned forward again offering his hand. Robin looked at it but didn't take it yet, still weary.

"It's alright, my name is Doctor Mid-night. I was called it to help the commissioner. When she was told about your little landing here I thought it best to come myself and see what I could do since I've already done what I can for her."

Robin raked through his mental records of everything he had gleaned out of the bat computer and various articles he had read. Yes he did know of a doctor Mid-Night he wasn't someone who was seen much on the front lines but he was the only, or nearly only, surgeon to the superhero community. He had a longstanding bond of trust with the Justice Society of America which was his primary contact for anything big but he would and had treated everyone from Batman on down when things got dicy. He was also the premier authority on meta-human science and was known for assisting even STAR labs. Robin must have read an article on him somewhere. or even heard his mom talking, it wasn't out of the question. Having him here also made sense since Barbara Gordon was a former member of the bat family as well as the commissioner. Robin wondered who had called him in.

"Right," Robin finally answered. "I'm Robin."

Doctor midnight nodded, "Yes I am familiar with the persona." He seemed to be looking at the symbol on Robin's chest and again Robin had to think about the dynamic he had been put in. People knew who Robin was and he had certainly used that to his advantage so far, but it also had a lot of other things riding on it. He hadn't considered how the rest of the superhero community was going to take the announcement that he had taken the mantle. When he had stolen the suit he had barely considered Batman's response, his brother not Bruce, Bruce Wayne was always someone to consider and really anyone who didn't was worse off by far. Still, the other heroes would find out sooner rather then later. Best to try and seem like he knew what he was doing right from the start. Robin was expected to be good at this, hell, Robin was expected to be good at everything.

Robin considered: he had already acted like he was going to kill the doctor and there was at least one Robin who had threatened to kill people fairly often so he seemed off to a good start as far at the legacy was concerned. He leaned forward and nodded at the doctor in a silent apology

"Right, sorry, he needs help." Robin nodded back at Ian. "Shriek went over him pretty bad and I only got there at the end. I'm fairly certain there's some internal bleeding and that's probably not the worst of it."

The officers had hurried forward. The young one Robin had almost crashed into was nearly gaping but at his words they moved to get Ian out of the back. The man's breath immediately caught and a cry was torn from him.

Frag, hadn't they heard him just say that he was in bad shape? Robin boosted himself up over the side of the car already opening his mouth to tell them exactly what he thought about that.

Then he landed. On his bad leg.

Robin crumpled, his eyes going white as the ground was suddenly a lot closer then it had been. The pain came as a second wave, making it impossible to do anything but try to fight it back. He wanted to stand up. He was stronger then this, he had to be he was Robin, but he couldn't.

Somewhere above him Doctor Mid-Night was giving orders. Robin couldn't understand all of it, every third word seemed to get lost. Robin saw that someone had been smart enough to bring a stretcher. Good that meant that Ian would be ok, or at least Robin had done his job and now it was up to the doctors.

He wondered what he should do now. Get back to the cave probably, except he wasn't sure he wanted to try driving again so soon. His leg still hurt.

"Robin, stay with me. Damn, I need a second bed prepared, and a unit of AB positive! Robin, you've lost a lot of blood, you need a transfusion. Stay with me."

Robin tried to nod but he wasn't sure that the effect got across because someone was picking him up. They were good, better then the rookies, they didn't his his leg, just held him close and tried not to jostle him as they started off at a fast walk.

Barbara watched as the call came in and officers started moving in a controlled panic outside her door. She waited, fully expecting someone to come in and inform her of the change in situation. When no one came in she got pissed.

Doctor Mid-Night had left to talk to Weaver, so she was currently alone in the comparatively large room. She crossed her arms and seriously considered getting up and going to find out for herself despite doctors orders. Except she didn't know where they had put her cloths. She knew she could look plenty intimidating in a hospital gown but that would start all kinds of stories in the younger ranks. Most of the younger officers already thought she was a dragon, better not to give them any more ideas.

Doctor Mid-Night luckily didn't take long to return. She was about to start barking out questions when she saw what he was pulling behind him. The gurney was just one of a few hundred used in the hospital, it was the boy on it that caught her eye.

Robin, she knew by now that was what he called himself. His costume stood out in sharp contrast to his pale skin and the IV attached to his arm didn't seem to be a good sign.

"What the hell is going on?" Her voice was fairly soft considering the harshness of her words.

The doctor answered without turning away from his new patient. "Robin just brought in your missing officer. Your man was worked over fairly throughly, luckily though the injuries appear fairly straightforward. He's being prepped for surgery now. Robin here managed to acquire a stab wound in his leg. It nicked an artery and he's lost a lot of blood." as he spoke his hands were moving, preparing needle and thread, then carefully closing the wound. At last the doctor looked up at Barbara. "Only four of your officers and the two of us know Robin is here so far. I think it's safer it stay that way."

That made her change gears. "You think he'll, be a target?"

"Injured Heroes are always a target." Doctor Mid-Night finished with Robin's leg and began to pull off his gloves. "I would appreciate it if you looked after him until I can find Batman."

"Excuse me?" Barbara made the words into something approaching a sneer.

Mid-Night didn't react to her tone, he just tilted his head slightly as he looked at her. "It must be the memory loss. I'm sorry Barbara, but if you could remember you would understand. If Robin is injured then it's a likelihood that Batman couldn't prevent it only because he is even worse off." he started for the door.

"And My officer?" It was a snarl as much as a question.

"Is in a hospital full of doctors who are eager to impress." He stopped at her door and looked back for a brief moment. Then closed it without any further comment.

"Damn you." Barbara murmured under her breath, but there wasn't any real venom in it.

Bruce had everything set up by the time his car returned with Terry. It probably said something that the process was almost entirely automated. Getting Terry from the car onto the gurney was the hardest part, after that his systems took over. The boy had been unconscious before Wayne opened the door and waking him would have been crueler then any single thing that had happened that evening.

The boy was drawn into the medical area and scanned down to the cellular level. The results weren't surprising but that didn't make it any easier to face.

It was bad.

The suit had managed to mitigate some of the damage, mostly by spreading out the impact area. Instead of debilitating bleeding wounds Terry was left with bruising across most of his body a set of nicely broken and cracked ribs, and internal organs that looked like they had all been slightly squished. The boy certainly had a concussion, which couldn't be good considering his already damaged mind. There were lacerations where Shriek had managed to get through the armor on his chest and down one arm, luckily none of them deep. The final touch were how his eardrums had been popped, though popped didn't seem a harsh enough word to describe the damage. Before the scans had finished Terry had blood dripping from his nostrils as well as his ears and his breath came ragged and red.

Terry should have been in a hospital. The internal bleeding alone dictated a round of surgeries, and the time it would take to heal properly could be counted in months rather then weeks.

Physically the boy was exhausted. Not just tired, but the bone deep weariness that only days of sleep could fix. It made him more susceptible to infection, and made recovery of any kind tricky even without complication. With the extra damage and the was his ribs were threatening to puncture a lung, there would be no easy fix.

The real problem was that he should have known what to do in this situation. He would have a plan for it, such an obvious outcome would probably have several plans. Right now, he didn't know any of them though, and he just didn't have the time to look. He had already spent hours going over his files and more then a few plans had been in evidence, but not this one. Maybe it was just too obvious, something he used or went over so often he had never perceived a need to write it down. Foolish, so foolish. It was said that we only see our faults when we crash into them. Well, he certainly had done that.

There was only one possibility that presented it's self. Terry's life was in danger but he was dieing by inches. Now that he was hooked up to the cave's systems he wasn't going to parish in the next hour or few. If Bruce could find the encryption key to the signal that had blocked out their memories he could reverse the process. Then with his own memories he could help Terry and terry would have one less thing threatening his life.

Terry had managed to recover the hard drive. He retrieved it from the car and set to work with a will that could not be matched.

Computer work, especially computer forensics was not flashy work. The immaterial data had to not just be recovered, but preserver in it's original form without changes so that future tests could be run. Then even if you managed to preserve everything correctly you still had to sift through an enormous amount of data, possibly encrypted, possibly damaged, possibly referencing deleted files.

People made a lot of commotion about cop shows these days but Bruce had never seen what the point was. He had studied every aspect of forensics and evidence suggested that he had put that knowledge to good use. Most of the time detective work wasn't full of eureka moments and finding the one little clue the perp had left behind. More often it was like one of those puzzles with incredibly tiny pieces, the completely blank ones; and even then you never knew if the pieces of some other puzzle hadn't gotten mixed in. everything had to be checked. Everything had to be verified. No part of the process was quick or simple, just steady work that taxed the mind while leaving the body restless.

When he finally came to and verified his conclusion it was hours later; Wayne nearly threw something through the screen.

Matt woke to a soft beeping and the humm of an air conditioner. He opened his eyes to walls that were a neutral off-white, and the smell of disinfectant and lemons registered a moment later. He didn't have to ask where he was, it was obvious he was at the hospital. The real question was, who knew he was there. Just the idea that his mom had found out sent shivers through him. He looked down at himself and then reached up, feeling the mask on his face. He was still wearing the Robin uniform, minus one leg which had been cut open revealing a carefully wrapped bandage. Funny he could have sworn the bandage had bled through when he had brought Ian in. He wondered who had redone it.

"Look at that. The boy's awake."

Robin looked up at the sound and found Barbara Gordon tucked into a bed across the room. She was sitting up, or rather her bed was propped up and she had been reading from a data-pad. Now she set it aside and softly removed the glasses from the end of her nose.

"You forgot the 'wonder'."

She slowly picked up one eyebrow.

"The boy wonder is awake. You know, 'cuse I'm Robin, the boy wonder." she showed no signs of recognition. "Well, trust me, the wonder is important."

"Kid, I don't care what you're called. I am quite prepared to strip you of that costume and lock you up until child services can sort out why a child has inserted himself into two active investigations; but you did help one of my officers. You get one chance, one warning, once you leave this room if I ever see that costume again you will find out just how much trouble I can drop on your shoulders. Do we have an understanding?"

Robin was quite certain that they did, but that didn't mean he hadn't spotted to loop holes in her words. "Once I leave here, you said. You're not turning me in this time?"

"Like I said. You helped one of my officers; and, someone I respect asked me to keep your location quiet."

"Mid-night?"

Barbara nodded.

"And have you? Kept it quiet, I mean."

"Only doctor Mid-night a handful of my people and two nurses with level five clearance know you are here."

Robin tried to remember his mom's clearance level. It was made harder by the fact that he wasn't certain if he had ever learned it in the first place. Robin nodded once and tried to look as if it was acceptable, if only barely. Barbara didn't seem convinced.

Now that they have that settled Robin took another chance to look around. The room was a pretty good size for a hospital room. It was one of the nicer, private rooms with a couple of chairs for guests and solid walls rather then curtain dividers. Babara's bed was the only one without wheels though three were currently in the room. The room's last occupant was asleep, with about a million wires and tubes hooked up to him. It was the main source of the beeping in the room.

And it was Ian.

Robin found himself staring. When he tried to talk his voice was suddenly gone, lost to a dry throat. Eventually he managed something along the lines of, "Is he?"

"They don't know. He's had two surgeries so far. They're letting him rest before the next round. The damage is extensive."

Robin just nodded, than his mouth started moving on its own. "I could hear him on the radio. It took me ages to find him, too long. That when I did find him… he was still awake. He told me to run, like I was the one in trouble. He couldn't do anything and he was still worried about me."

Barbara just nodded.

"I should go." Robin said when the silence had stretched to a strain.

Barbara looked over at him and there was a spark of something in her eyes. "Assuming you can walk out of this room, how were you planning on doing that? Doctor Mid-Night moved your car."

"He did? Oh, well, guess I'll have to call for a ride then."

Wayne answered when he called the cave. "Yes?" his voice was wrong and Robin took a moment to place why. He sounded old. Not just Wayne, I've been around for decades and know more then you will ever learn so shut it and do as you're told, age either. He sounded tired. Robin tried to imagine what that could mean and may have started panicking.

"T – Batman, is he ok? What happened?" he gasped, trying to control the rising panic long enough to get an answer.

"He made it back here. He's unconscious but I'm monitoring him."

"Then?"

Silence through the line and Robin bit down on his lip to keep from covering the static with questions.

"He managed to get the hard drive out after the building came down, but the files we needed were gone. They were deleted less than two hours before you got there."

The words were spoken to the air as Robin's arm went limp and landed on the bedspread. Barbara looked at the radio. Her forehead creased, then she was clenching her teeth and rubbing at one temple as she breathed in a regular rhythm.

"Spellbinder took 'em." The words were slurred and spoken in a low tone.

Both Barbara and Robin swung around to look at the other occupant of the room. Ian had managed to twist his head to one side. He wasn't so much looking at the room as fluttering his lashes in that direction. He might have been talking in his sleep, except that his hands were clenched in the sheets and there was a rigidity in his body. Barbara shifted and it was clear that if she had been able she would have gotten out of bed and checked on him, despite doctor's orders.

"Robin?" Wayne's voice came through the forgotten radio and Robin rushed to pick it up.

"Ian, that's the officer we rescued. He says Spellbinder took the files."

"I see. Is there anything else?"

Robin looked over at Ian and waited but the man seemed to have already given all he had.

"Umm, I think that's it." Robin didn't put any particular emphasis on the words. He looked down at the radio and flipped the dial to headphones like he should have done from the start. "Does that help?"

Wayne hesitated. "No, I don't think it does. We're out of time, and Terry's out of action. It's been hours, if Spellbinder hasn't escaped by now then he's a fool."

"And we need those files?"

"There's an encryption key in them, A sting of data 1064 million characters long. Without that exact string decrypting the sequence will take months." He left the fact that they would be lucky to have even a week unsaid.

"Could Max Help? She's good with computers."

"Maybe."

It was an, I'm humoring you, maybe, but Matt resolved to make sure someone called her. If Terry really was out of action they would need the extra hands.

"Well, maybe there's another computer, or a backup. He would have to have a backup right? I mean what if something went wrong? He'd have to have a backup. All we have to do is find it right? … right?" Robin was really trying to look on the bright side. He knew this couldn't be the end. Batman had gotten through too much for things to just end there. They had won. They had beaten Shriek, right? Spellbinder might have gotten away but they would get him too and everyone would know that it was Batman who had saved everybody. They would know, and they would know that he'd do it again next time too, so there had to be a Batman around for the next time and the one after that. Wayne should know that. He shouldn't just give up like that, it not how it works. Why wasn't he saying anything? Wayne should say something at least, something.

Through the comm Robin heard a sharp 'Ha' and the sound of crashing mettle and glass. The line cut out.

Robin stared into the middle distance waiting for the punchline until he realized the commissioner was looking at him as if she thought he was crazy, well crazier, a different kind of crazy. He decided to call Max, they needed a bit more sane in this group.

Hey all,

I didn't expect to post this chapter until early december since Nanowrimo is all consuming, but when I finished that last bit I figured, why not. Though, that does mean that this chapter has not been betaed. I've tried to look things over but, well, I probably missed something or other.

On another note I am trying to finish Partners during Nano, ok I've been working more on afterimage, but Partners is getting a lot of attention too so I think it's time I start asking the important questions.

Are any of you interested in reading an author's commentary? I've been thinking of putting together something like that at the end with a couple paragraphs on each chapter and maybe notes on what I was trying to do, or how things changed along the way. I don't want to bore any of you, but if you're interested in that kind of thing or have any lingering questions regarding anything at all, please leave a comment or send me a note.

Thank you to Desasaphira, kitsune foxfire, Jimmy candlestick, V, lenorathetrekkie, Harm Marie, and one guest, who did not leave a name, for reviewing the last chapter. Seriously Mr. Guest, leave a name next time so I can thank you properly.