Even beneath the cover of a crisp and quiet December midnight, the Bay rarely got cold enough to see one's breath swell into the sky. Yet, in his confusion, the warm vapor rolling from his lips was the first thing Garfield could focus on when he fell from a sudden rip in space onto the marshy grasses of some tiny seaside park. Though the distant chatter and bells of the city blended with the white noise of waves crashing against a nearby shore, Gar's ears still rang with the muted calm of the sudden absence of loud music.
A lingering ache between his brows from the smell of that spilled drink intensified as Garfield struggled to his feet, hearing the distant echo of Raven's painful outcry somewhere in his mind. His head throbbing from his fight against gravity, Gar quickly pulled his phone from his pocket and called Raven, but it went straight to her voicemail. When he tried a second time, an incoming call from Vic interrupted.
"Cy?" He answered, his voice sounding strange and detached from his mouth.
"B, you alright? You know where you're at?"
"Uh," Gar took the first good scan of his surroundings. Judging by the nearness of the Bay Bridge and his inability to isolate the Tower from the shimmering midnight horizon, Gar knew they couldn't be more than a few blocks from the nightclub. "Not sure, a few blocks over, I think, you?"
"Man, I'm East Bay."
"What?"
"Rae must have lost her grip and spouted us out across the city. Karen's in Chinatown and Star dropped in the Bay, but heading back your way." Garfield began making his way up the road toward the nightclub. "Not sure about Roy he doesn't have his phone. Rae with you?"
"No, you can't trace her?"
"Her phone might be dead. Either way if she makes it back to the Tower before us she'll call."
"Something was wrong," Gar said, remembering the echo of Raven's trembling voice, "if she lost us, she might still be back there. I'm gonna check."
"Alright, I'm headed to Karen. Roy thinks there were at least three of them with eyes on you. I wasn't able to complete a scan."
"Watching me?"
"Both of you. Star said she saw the girl contaminate the drink she threw on Raven."
"The girl? She looked terrified," Gar murmured as he ran the scene through his mind as he turned the corner of 5th near where he and Vic parked the car. "But it did smell like that lab."
"The drink?"
Gar's ears vibrated with a sudden rumble of voices coming from the direction of the nightclub.
"B?"
"Something's up, gotta go."
"Careful, B."
Garfield quickly shed his clothes without much concern until he was down to his nanotech layers and fell to all fours in his cheetah form.
Turning another corner onto the main strip, a rapid current of people pouring from the nightclub's entrance at the end of the block quickened Garfield's pace, his paws scraping against the rough pavement as he ran. And though the sight of a large green cheetah encouraged most people to move out of his way, many were not quick enough, so before he mowed down a line of drunk citizens, Gar leaped into the air above the crowd heads while shifting into a falcon.
The overhead lights were all on when Gar flew through the entrance, which made the nightclub feel like an entirely different world. The mystery of color and shadow were all exposed for the light tricks they were, revealing instead a cluttered and disheveled dance hall littered with glass and rubbish. Above his head, several light fixtures dangled by a wire while the walls were galleries of shattered monitors and cracked metal casings. The soft floodlights glinted off a sea of shiny mirrors shards that decorated the floor around the bar, intermingled with broken bottles and barware.
It didn't take Garfield long to guess what kind of event might cause such damage, but as he searched for her, he instead spotted a wide-eyed girl who cowered in shock from Starfire's fury.
"What did you do?!"
On the far side of the stairwell that led to the booth he had just been transported from, Koriand'r stood the girl with glowing fists as Roy wrapped a tie of sorts around the girl's arms behind her back.
"Easy, Red, lets get her out of here before her friends come back."
"What happened?" Garfield landed on his feet, and the emerald fire around Kori's fists faded. "Where's Raven?"
"I do not know," Koriand'r said as she peered around the devastated room. "But as I returned, moving past the exodus, I overheard talk of the devil."
"That," the woman released a sharp breath as Roy lifted her to her feet. Her eyes appeared completely black save a bright yellow rim, but she wouldn't look up at any of them as her lips trembled, "that wasn't supposed to happen. She told us, I didn't mean to...I–"
"Who told you?" Roy asked with a firm grip on the girl's arm, and Garfield bowed his head to catch her quivering eye line.
"Where did she go?" When a few tears fell down the girl's cheek, Garfield eased his approach. "Okay, easy, take a breath. What's your name?"
"Dy–Dylan," the girl whispered, and Koriand'rs phone buzzed behind him.
"Dylan, okay, I'm Garfield. Listen, can you take a breath for me? We're not gonna–"
"Cy," Koriand'r answered her phone, stealing Garfield's attention. "Yes, he's with us. No. No. I do not know. Just the girl. Yes."
Sensing the girl squirm in Roy's grip, Gar placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Dylan, we're not gonna hurt you, alright? I know I'm kinda freaky lookin' with my big teeth but I won't bite I promise. All I want to do is find out what happened to our friend. Can you tell me what happened?"
"The flask?" Koriand'r gently urged Gar to back away from Dylan so she could reach out for her collar. She hooked her index finger beneath the fabric of her shirt and fished from it a long silver chain. Kori drew the chain free from the girl's neck with one easy tug, catching a small empty vial in between her fingers. Dylan winced but refused to lift her eyes from the ground. "Yes. Understood." Once Koriand'r returned her phone to her pocket, she carefully slipped the empty vial between her breasts. "We are to meet Vic and Karen back at the Tower. The agent is coming with us."
"Agent?"
At Gar's question, Roy promptly pulled the neck of Dylan's tunic down far enough to reveal black ink markings below her ear that appeared to still be healing. With a closer look, Garfield instantly recognized the cluster of seven hexagons as the seal of HIVE, but it was the horned skull within its center that disturbed him.
"Brother Blood?"
Dylan's eyes flickered to his before dropping again to the floor.
"We must go," Kori said and ushered Roy to follow her with Dylan down a side hallway that led to an emergency exit.
"What about Rave?"
"We can run tests on the flask to see what was in the drink, but if Vic cannot detect her signal anywhere in the city or beyond, she could still be between portals."
"Besides, if this girl's really working for Blood, I want my bow for that reunion. I've been saving a few special arrows for that lunatic."