Tempest: Chapter Ninety-Five: Investigations

Amara Isley-Allen was a notoriously hard person to pin down, Lex Luthor was coming to realize. He'd collected so many meta-humans in the past few months, some of which had out-served their purpose and whose bodies would soon be discovered.

But Amara was his crowning jewel. The blood that had been taken from her during her accident in the chaos of New Year's had been enough to prove to Lex that, at the very least, she could further so many medical projects LexCorps had been cooking up over the years but had never been able to bring to fruition. Premier access to her blood would certainly change that and undoubtedly make LexCorps millions.

The biggest issue was that she never seemed to go anywhere alone, at least, not that Lex could see. Her mother lived in Gotham and shared custody with her father in Central City but Lex could never seem to catch her on a train between the two and he was starting to wonder how she got from her mother's to her father's.

He looked at the most recent picture taken of her, his expression souring. And, of course, she was friends with Bruce Wayne's brat. In the picture she was holding her phone and sipping what might've been tea, her arm looped through his as they walked, very unconcerned about the world.

Ugh. Children.

Lex was just biding his time, waiting for the right moment.

"Okay, gotta say, I love the hair."

Amara ran a hand through the newly dyed hair she was sporting. It was definitely something new; a melding ombre of pinks and purples that grew lighter at the tips. "Not usually my kind of thing, but Artemis tells me I look good in all colors so I should just embrace it."

"I mean, if Artemis says it, it must be true," Sabine laughed.

No one was bringing up the elephant in the room; any talk about Superboy and how Amara was now single had been immediately shelved. Amara's friends, at least, had some tact.

"I dunno, you've met her boyfriend, right?" Amara's eyes were actually twinkling.

"Railing on your cousin now?" Adara giggled. "I bet that makes family dinners great."

Amara shrugged her shoulders. "All my parents like Artemis and she likes showing up at Wally's school because, obviously she's hot and he's a nerd and she likes shoving it in people's faces that Wally's who she's with."

"I mean…what's not to love about that?" Nadira asked, to which everyone gave her a look. "What?"

"Uh-huh," Sofia coughed, hiding a snort.

Nadira had made front page news when someone had snapped a picture of her and Aqualad -in his uniform, making it clear who he was, but it wasn't like he really had a secret identity- with their arms around each other, lips locked.

"How is Kaldur?" Amara asked suddenly. "I haven't heard from him."

"You haven't?" Nadira asked in surprise.

Amara's mouth thinned into a line. "The only one who really keeps in contact with me is Robin and he's my best friend."

"What about Dick Grayson?" Sabine waggled her eyebrows at Amara.

"What about Dick?" Amara asked bemused.

"Isn't he your best friend, too?"

"A girl can have as many best friends as she wants," Amara rolled her eyes.

"But it must help that he's nice on the eyes and clearly your type," Adara pointed out with a wide grin. She was carefully straying into dangerous territory.

Amara scoffed. "I do not have a type."

"Uh, Zatanna, black hair, blue eyes, freaking Wonder Woman, black hair, blue eyes," Sabine ticked them off on her fingers while Sofia giggled into her hands. Sabine had boldly stuck her foot on a landmine and was lifting up again to see if it would go off without a care in the world; she was lucky she was Amara's favorite. "Dick Grayson, black hair, blue eyes…dare I say there's a pattern there."

"Okay, first of all," Amara jabbed a finger, flustered, "Zatanna literally blew up in my face, Diana is too old for me and she's dating someone, and Grayson, I mean, he'd be the first to tell you he's a total dick—"

"Talking about me?"

Amara yelped, twisting around to see Dick and Artemis walking past the café they were eating outside of, both still wearing their school uniforms, but they only had another week before Summer vacation started. Dick was grinning widely and Artemis was snorting while Amara's friends guffawed loudly.

"Oh, shut up!" she growled at her friends before leaning against the wrought-iron gate separating her from them on the sidewalk beyond. "Listen, Dick, don't believe anything these assholes say, they're completely deluded!"

Dick arched an eyebrow, slipping his sunglasses so that Amara could see just how blue his eyes were. "So, you were talking about me?"

"Nothing you'd get me to repeat, babe," Amara returned, just this side of saucy, more than slightly miffed when he didn't so much as pink, only laughing as he and Artemis walked away.

"By the way!" Artemis called back over her shoulder. "The Bossman's gonna call you later! Sounded important!" The girls missed how Dick winked at Amara. Clearly it was from him, but he couldn't very well cop to knowing who Batman was in front of Amara's friends; Robin's identity was still hidden.

"Great!" Amara fired back in a drawl. "Tell him I'm single and not ready to mingle!"

Dick and Artemis howled with laughter.

"I'm not into Dick," Amara added, sounding more like she was reassuring herself than them, like they hadn't just been interrupted, "besides!" She stressed the word. "I just got out of a toxic relationship like a week ago…I need me time."

"That's fair, isn't it, Sabine?" Sofia shot towards their friend, who acquiesced.

"Fucking Batman," Amara muttered under her breath, running through her contacts on her phone.

"Wait, you've got Batman's number?" Adara hissed, which Amara promptly ignored, hitting the call button.

"Word on the grapevine is you want to see me?" Amara asked when he picked up on the other end.

"Yes, something new has come up with the meta-human kidnappings," Bruce returned easily.

"Really?" Doubt colored her voice. "We came to a dead-end with that investigation months ago. I told you my theory on it."

"Yes," Bruce agreed, "but like I said, something new."

And probably something he didn't want to tell her over the phone.

"Okay…do you want me to head to your workplace or your hideaway?" Amara asked dryly, well aware her friends were listening in.

"The latter."

Amara sighed. "Gimme like…fifteen minutes," she said after checking her watch.

"Sorry," she told the girls, tucking her phone back into her pocket and dropping some cash onto the table, "duty calls."

"Yeah, yeah, have fun," Nadira waved her off and Amara laughed, grasping the wrought-iron gate and easily swinging herself over it, taking off running for the nearest cab.

"Can't believe she knows where Batman lives and works," Sabine grumbled. "And she didn't tell me!"

"Your daddy kink needs to be stopped," Sofia told her seriously and Sabine burned bright red.

"You've gotta get out more, Bruce," Amara said to him when she met him in the Bat Cave, sliding down a railing to reach the bottom where he was with all his computers.

"I do get out." He gave her a look. "On patrol."

Amara sighed, her hands on her hips in exasperation. "Bruce, come on."

Bruce arched an eyebrow. "Anyone ever tell you that you sound and look just like your father?"

"It's been brought up before." Her mouth twitched. She always liked when people told her she was a lot like Barry, it made her feel less like Mardon's spawn. "What's this lead you've found?"

"Corpses."

Amara gave him a look. "You realize that you might be called 'the Dark Knight' but you don't always have to be so…bleak, for lack of a better word."

Bruce ignored her.

"All right, I'll bite." Amara leaned against the table, crossing her arms. "What kind of corpses?"

"Kids…specifically kids that had been missing for several months," Bruce told her, handing her a file.

Amara frowned, flipping through it. "How'd they die?"

"Looks like several different ways, the most recent was some kind of toxin, Star Labs is still trying to figure out just what it is," he said, typing away on his computer.

"Hm," Amara hummed thoughtfully, "How many?"

"Twelve."

"Twelve?" Amara demanded startled. "That's most of the missing!" That only left around five or six, if Amara's calculations were correct. "What's the point of kidnapping them if they were just going to kill them later?"

"Maybe it had to do with their meta-human abilities?" Bruce turned his chair towards her, interlocking his fingers. "Not all meta-human abilities have their uses. Perhaps these ones didn't make the cut."

Amara's frown deepened, but she couldn't deny that.

"You and Wally need to be careful, in case these people are still looking for meta-human children," Bruce added imploringly, looking more like the father he was.

Amara pursed her lips. "You and Dad, ugh, yes, fine, we'll be careful."

Bruce gave her an unimpressed look.

"Scouts honor," Amara promised before holding up the files, "I'm gonna keep these." Then she headed back up towards the secret passage into the manor.

She wasn't quite far enough away to miss him mutter "I don't believe that child has ever been a scout."

A devilish smirk crossed her face that was identical to Poison Ivy's.

Later, Bruce would later find a flash drive left by his uniform with a note.

All I've got on Savage, I've hit another dead end, but maybe you won't, was all it said and Bruce arched an eyebrow in consideration. It was hard for Amara to admit when she'd hit a dead end, especially with Roy, but sometimes there were just no leads, even on someone as prolific as Vandal Savage, who'd been keeping his head down since the attack on New Year's.

Knowing about your enemy only helped you so much when you couldn't find him. Bruce understood that better than most.

He pocketed the flash-drive.

The Cave 2.0 (which, they really should've just stuck to calling it the Cave, it was kind of redundant at this point) was cold and empty when Amara flicked on the lights. It was definitely eerie without any of the Team there.

Amara didn't bother heading upstairs to look at Conner's room, it was only going to depress her. She took the stairs that led down to the Oracle Cave, untouched since she'd been grounded.

She booted the computers up before moving onto the whiteboards with names upon names written across them and opened each file and struck each name from the board.

Amara sighed, erasing the board with the deceased to scrawl 'Killed By' across the top and started with the first name on the pile.

"Wendy Jones…" Amara muttered to herself as she wrote the name before making a line to "—asphyxiation."

She left space between each person that had been kidnapped in case she wanted to add more.

"Sigrid Nansen...hypothermia..."

Amara stepped back once she'd finished, twisting her marker between her fingers.

"Okay," she said to herself, "say someone purposefully kidnapped a bunch of meta-teens, because obviously you can't get all of them and kill all their parents by accident—" She rolled her eyes at herself. "I mean, kids with powers could be worth a lot, are worth a lot," she had to correct herself with a gag.

There was an open bid on the capture of Storm Chaser, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Superboy, and Miss Martian somewhere deep into BlackNet, just for being kids with superpowers. Oddly enough, nobody wanted to try their hand at taking any of them on, probably because their mentors were all pretty terrifying on a bad day.

"I mean…if they were being trafficked then you wouldn't want to kill prospective merchandise," Amara tapped her marker against her lips before blinking. "Unless it's not about selling them…it's about their abilities."

Amara knew all about human experimentation, being the product of it. She could remember the stress tests, the breaking of bones…it had been hell for her for years, before she understood that what was being done to her was wrong, and these kids had dealt with that for months…maybe that was why they were all dying in different ways. Maybe whoever had them was testing them to the limit, to see just what their bodies could handle.

Survival of the fittest.

It was horrifying.

"…gruesome stuff, huh?"

Amara must've drifted off while compiling the reports because she blinked at the unfamiliar voice.

"Usually when I see you down here, I have to bring you some of that raspberry tea because you've maxed out on coffee."

That made Amara frown. The only that had ever done that was— "Conner?" she asked, turning quickly to stare at the boy behind her.

It was a boy, certainly, with dark hair, but that was where the likeness ended. This boy was slighter, not bulky like Conner and his voice -a near replica of Clark's- wasn't nearly as deep. His eyes were a far lighter blue and his jawline sharper, less of Clark's square. He looked more like Lex Luthor, actually.

"What's with that look?" Not-Conner asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Amara scowled, poking his chest. "You're not Conner."

"Are you sure?" the boy countered. "I can prove it! You asked me which guy on the Team I was crushing on, Wally, by the way—"

"Gah!" Amara fell over her chair. "You can't be Conner! You don't even look like him!"

"You had to get this look from somewhere," Not-Conner snorted, making a gesture towards himself, "besides, it's a mystery that'll clear your head of the meta-human kidnappings for a while." He dangled the hard drive she'd once entrusted to Conner in front of her face.

"Hey! Gimme that!" She leapt up, snatching it away. "Where'd you get that?"

"It's your dream," Not-Conner said. "You tell me."

Amara glowered. "Stop distracting me! I have a job to do!"

"You've turned up dry for leads," Not-Conner pointed out and Amara blinked, looking over at the whiteboards, staring at the scrawlings that she didn't quite remember writing. "Take a break. You're just a kid and you've got so many different mysteries to occupy your time."

He smiled and it was all Conner. Tears pricked her eyes.

"Conner?" she whispered, reaching a tentative hand out to brush the shoulder that wasn't as muscled as she remembered. He raised a hand over hers and squeezed. "Oh, Conner…I'm so—"

"Don't be," Conner cut across her quickly, "you're my friend, one of my best friends, you're the one who knows what it's like to be me—" ("We didn't ask to be made!" Amara sobbed to Clark.) "—I wanted to save you, and I did, that's what a hero does." His eyes were so soft. "Just promise me one thing."

"Anything," Amara said quickly.

"Don't forget me," Conner's whisper was the last thing Amara heard before she opened her eyes to the sensation of a blanket being dropped over her shoulders. She didn't move, just lay there, head against the desk in front of the computers as Wally stepped to the side, getting a look at her white boards, looking over the names and noticing the new board with names from the missing list.

"You really need to sleep more," he commented and Amara huffed at him being able to notice that she was awake. She sat up, pulling the blanket around her. "Dick didn't think you were sleeping much after what happened."

Amara scowled. "Dick needs to stop carrying tales about me."

Wally's mouth twisted in amusement, which Amara didn't really understand. "Are you? Sleeping?"

She looked away. "I'll be fine."

Wally gave her a look and Amara became more focused on keeping the blanket tight around her body; it was a little chilly in the house. "Artemis told me what Zatanna said…about your pheromones."

Amara flinched hard.

"Why didn't you tell me you were having problems?" Wally's eyes were big and imploring and it didn't help things. "Or Dick? We would've said something."

"I know." And she did. "I just didn't want to make a big deal out of it, but then everything just kept piling up and…it took Raquel telling me to realize how bad it really was." She sighed. "But it was good and fun and happy…until it wasn't."

"Sometimes relationships don't work out," Wally shrugged, "I've still got friends at school that go through, like ten girlfriends and boyfriends in a year."

"Sounds like a lot of work." Amara wrinkled her nose. "I think I'm just gonna take a break from, um, relationship-ing for a little while."

Wally, who had grown up with Dick's 'un-words' didn't blink at the weirdness of 'relationship-ing'. "You do you." He turned his attention back to the boards. "Are the missing kids turning up dead?"

"Looks like." Amara frowned. "You don't think we could be next to be grabbed, do you? I mean, Mom and Dad think so, but we've had our powers way longer…"

Wally almost said yes, thinking about the dart that had knocked Amara out during the reception after the funeral. "No," he said instead, hoping it was the right one, "we should be safe."

Amara hummed softly. "I had a dream about Conner," she said, drawing Wally up short.

"Yeah?" His voice wavered slightly.

"He was…off," Amara decided, her eyebrows creasing together. "Like it was him…but different. It was like he was goading me to figure out why."

"That doesn't really sound like Conner." Wally was frowning too.

"He said I had to get his look somewhere." Amara shook her head. "It looked familiar, you know, distantly, like I'd seen it once…but I can't remember where…he told me to promise not to forget him."

Wally couldn't help but scoff at that. "Well, that's not gonna happen. Why would we ever forget about him?"

"Maybe we should make him videos every week to let him know what's going on?" Amara offered helpfully. "So, he can watch them when he wakes up and doesn't feel left behind!"

It wasn't a bad idea, Wally had to admit, and it would distract the remaining members of the Team from feeling so terribly about everything that had happened. And there was a bright shine to her eyes that he hadn't seen in years, a childlike innocence that he'd thought she'd lost after everything she'd gone through. It made Wally feel old, thinking that, but he knew it was true.

"Yeah, that's a good idea," he said quickly, before she noticed he was staring at her too long. "Get the Team together to record a video…well, maybe not M'gann, since she'll probably be in Qurac for a while."

"Oh, yeah," Amara remembered with a wince, returning to her desk to connect the hard drive from her bag. "And I think the only one Kaldur's keeping up with right now is Nadira." She gave Wally a saucy wink, holding out a picture on her phone while he sniggered. It was a cute one. Nadira was stunning, her dark hair in expertly kinked curls, framing her face like a halo, wearing blue lipstick and eyeliner that made her eyes pop. She was sealing a kiss against Kaldur's cheek while he smiled widely.

He looked lighter than Wally had seen him in a long time.

"They look cute," he said, closing out of the picture to see Amara's background was still her and Roy, her arms around his shoulders, grinning widely into the camera, like she was piggybacking on him, and even Roy had a smile. He'd only smile on camera for her.

Wally handed it back quickly, trying not to dwell on it. "You know someone's going to notice that you're not at Pam and Harley's like you said you'd be…eventually."

"I've got some time," Amara grinned. "Besides, I want to look into Project Kr and see what was really going on with Conner."

Wally arched an eyebrow before acquiescing and dragging a chair over to sit next to her. "Okay, how shady was Cadmus?"

Amara snorted. "I mean, they've always been shady, look at what they did to me."

Wally didn't like being reminded that Cadmus used to break her limbs to see how quickly she would heal or force her underwater to see how long she would last on her own. The second one pissed him off more. She'd almost drowned when they'd broken Conner out, she'd almost drowned when the Reds attacked the Cave, she'd almost drowned when Cheshire tied her up and dropped her in the sewer. Wally would really like people to stop trying to drown his cousin; he liked her alive.

"Okay…Superboy's genome…fifty percent Lex Luthor, fifty percent Superman, we already knew that…looks like they had a bunch of failed attempts before they realized they could stabilize his DNA with human DNA." Amara frowned suddenly, continuing to scroll. "Huh."

"Huh?" Wally repeated curiously, "what is it?"

"There's some notes between various doctors on the project, including Spence, talking about how physically, Superboy looks barely anything like Superman, yet possesses flight and heat vision…"

That caught Wally's attention. "Well, that can't be right. Conner was pretty identical to Superman, and he couldn't do either of those things…it really annoyed him."

"…Yeah," Amara cupped her chin thoughtfully, "but what if that's wrong?"

"Wrong how?" Wally frowned.

"Like…Conner said Luthor was trying to get on his good side so he gave him these…inhibitors to suppress his human side, he used them on that secret mission he went on with Dick, Roy, Artemis, and M'gann, it was how the Parasite stole those powers from him." Amara shot up. "Hang on, I think he said there was one left!" Then she raced out of the room.

Wally shook his head; he would've been faster.

She returned just as quickly, moving over to the area of the room made for analysis, removing the last shield suppressor from its container and scanning it. "No, wait, this can't be right," she said, looking at the results beeping on the screen. "The shield doesn't suppress his human DNA, no sticker can do that, let's be perfectly honest…it's like a…" She snapped her fingers trying to come up with the right word. "Like a neuro-inhibitor, it just temporarily blocks whatever's suppressing his Kryptonian DNA." She twisted to share a startled look with Wally.

"He's already on a suppressant?" Wally asked dubiously. "No way."

"That's what I'm saying!" Amara drew up her legs, sitting in the air as she cupped her chin thoughtfully and Wally tried hard not to stare…but he hadn't seen her use her powers in months, in fact, he was pretty sure the last time she'd tried to use her powers, she'd fallen flat on her face.

And he'd never seen her float like M'gann before, seeming to hang in the air. She'd always needed something somewhat solid to sit or stand on, hence the clouds.

She uncrossed her legs, landing lightly on her feet and not even noticing. "There's gotta be something in the records about this…" And then she returned to her computers to resume her scrolling. Wally had to give himself a mental shake to sit down beside her again. "Okay, here it is…he was considered a failure because they were looking to create something identical to Superman, to replace him when the need arose…and look what he looked like before!"

She pulled up an image of a boy in a tube of fluid, an oxygen mask to his face and various other tubes secured to his body. "That's the Conner I had a dream about, I thought he looked familiar!"

"From where? Cadmus?" Wally scrutinized the face intently. It was so…young. Conner had never really looked sixteen, if he was being perfectly honest, he was just shorter and a little smaller than Superman. This kid actually looked sixteen, like the kind of kid who would glare hotly at Superman and Lex Luthor because it wasn't his fault he was made.

"Yeah, I think I walked past him and tried to get a second look, but Spence told me to keep walking," Amara shrugged. "I barely remember him; I was more preoccupied with trying not to burn alive that day."

Wally really hated how cavalier she was about her life.

"It looks like they figured out how to make it work, Conner not looking like Superman…it's some kind of implant that Luthor pawned it off the Witch Boy, it throws off low level psychic waves, so subtle you wouldn't notice it…these guys are really intent on getting people to think Conner's identical to Superman, huh?"

Wally hummed in agreement. "But how does that make him not have heat vision or flight?"

"It sounds like human DNA is more compatible with Kryptonian that they originally thought…like, consider Superman's parents. They were both from Krypton, full Kryptonians, so his DNA is fully Kryptonian from two sources and is fully stable…but he told me awhile back when I was doing a lot of genetics research that his people procreated through merging their genetics with science. He was the first natural birth in eons. I think Kryptonians need two different sources of DNA to actually create a baby. Trying to exclusively clone Superman was no good, but merging his DNA with Lex Luthor's stabilized it, but made him less of a clone. By suppressing his human DNA, it made his Kryptonian side weaker by default."

"Dude, that is so much worse than I thought it would be," Wally told her in a horrified voice.

"Who wants to tell Super-dad how Super-bad it is? You or me?"

AN: Its unfortunate that I watched Reign of the Supermen after I'd already introduced Conner as YJ's nearly identical to Superman, but I'm using a cookie cutter on canon and we've already talked about magic being used to alter perception so, its not too far of a reach, but the lengths Luthor and Cadmus went to to convince people that Superboy is a suitable replacement for Superman were great.

Amy needs to sleep more or else she's gonna have to get used to the weird-ass dreams lmao