Chapter 10

July 5th, 2017. 6:24 AM.

"We have a serious problem."

Damian stood, hands folded behind his back, before his drowsy teammates on the couch in the livingroom. He hated calling a meeting so late at night, but this was something that needed to be addressed right away.

"Dude…" Jon moaned, rubbing his eyes. "Whatever it is, can't it wait until later? I'm tired…"

"No. It can't…" Damian's eyes shifted over to Raven. Her brow was furrowed in concern; he'd already explained the situation to her. This meeting, in fact, was her idea. Damian was planning on taking care of the problem alone, but he couldn't not consult Raven. She managed to convince him to bring the matter to the group.

"Wait," Garfield groaned, nursing his coffee, "where's Terra…? We can't have a team meeting without–"

"Tara is waiting on the roof. She can't be here this," Damian replied flatly. "This is about her."

Kori walked in and stood behind the couch, crossing her arms as she began to see the urgency in Damian's eyes. "You've learned something about her, haven't you? Something that scares you."

Damian nodded, his gaze stone cold. "The night Tara met Garfield was no coincidence. Her meeting us, coming here, joining the Titans… it was all completely orchestrated."

Garfield cocked an eyebrow. "D, what… what are you saying?"

Damian sighed. "Tara has been acting as a mole. A spy, monitoring our every move, and reporting them to Slade Wilson. Or as you probably know him…"

"Deathstroke…" Starfire's voice was hushed, a sliver of fear showing in her eyes. "This is… how did you…"

"Tara's explained everything to me…" Damian continued. "Wilson captured her long before we found her. Among many other… unspeakable things he did to her, he's outfitted her body with a full set of experimental cybernetic enhancements. Included in this system is a neural implant that acts as both a control override and an overclocking mechanism."

"That…" Jon, now wide awake, scratched his head in confusion. "That sounds bad. What does that mean?"

"It means that, if Terra disobeys any of Deathstroke's orders…" Raven's voice was somber as she explained. "… he'll take control of her body and put it into overdrive. She'll become unbelievably powerful, and he'll likely make her kill us all. But the strain of that much power output would be catastrophic for her upgrades. They would overheat, and destroy her body from the inside."

"So how do we stop it?" Jaime asked, his frustration showing through his tone. "I mean, it might be dangerous, but can't we go in and take the brain bug out ourselves?"

"I thought of that, but no," Damian replied. "Any attempts to remove the implant ourselves would trigger the system to self-destruct. The only way we can save Tara is to bring her directly to Wilson's base, and use his master control to deactivate the implant. Only once it's completely shut down can we remove the implant from her brain.

"Unfortunately, the rest of her cybernetics are spread through her entire body. They're far too extensive to remove, and were likely implemented gradually over the course of several months, maybe even years. Her body has repaired itself around them, adapted to them, and now needs them to function. Any attempts to take them out would kill her."

"The only thing we can do is uninstall the neural implant," Raven continued the thought. "She may never be completely flesh and blood again, but at least her body will be hers and hers alone."

Gar sat unmoving on the couch, his eyes wide in shock. All of this information, all of these secrets. He had no idea about any of it. All this time, he thought…

"Garfield, look at me." Damian stepped forward and put his hands on Beast Boy's shoulders. "I know this a lot to take in, especially for you. But we need you to pull yourself together. We're going to get through this, but we can only do it if all of us work toge–"

Before Damian could finish, Gar jerked out of his seat and bolted for the elevator. Jon stood up to go after him, but Damian put a hand to the Kryptonian's chest and shook his head, and the elevator ascended, taking Garfield up to the roof.

"He'll be there when we need him. For now, we need to come up with a plan to get to Deathstroke's base and shut down that implant." Damian crossed his arms and frowned. "It won't be something we can just throw together and pull off today. Deathstroke is far too good for that. We need to think this all the way through, plan for every possible contingency… we need to be ready to adapt if things go wrong."

"In order to gain access to Slade's main controls, we'll likely need to get to his central console," Kori began brainstorming. "And in all likelihood, we won't be able to do that if he's still there when we try."

"So we'll need to draw him out into the open, way far away, before we get into his hideout," Jaime expanded on Kori's thought. "How do we do that?"

"We can't call the Justice League for help, Damian's dad'll wanna lock Tara up in the Watchtower…" Jon stroked his chin as he pondered on the situation. "As cool as I think they are, we can't let them know what's going on."

"We may have to split into two groups. One group will keep Deathstroke occupied, while the other group breaks into his headquarters," Raven suggested. "But how will we keep him from realizing something's going on? He's bound to notice if we aren't all there…"

"I actually have an idea about that. We can't let my father know about this, which means we can't tell the League, and we also can't tell any of the others in Gotham, which includes all of the other Robins…" a half-smile slowly formed on Damian's face. "… Except for one. And fortunately, this one is particularly gifted when it comes to attracting attention."

For being as young as she was, Tara Markov had lived so much more than most people do their whole lives. She'd crossed entire oceans using a single chunk of stone. She'd slept beneath the shade of the grandest trees of the rainforest, and run with gazelles across the African plains. She'd danced in the streets under the bright lights of Las Vegas, and found tranquility in the sacred mountains of Tibet. She'd tasted delicacies from across the globe, but she found she better savored the taste of fruit that grew in the farthest reaches of the earth, untouched by man.

Through everything she'd done in all her days, she held fast to two truths: she was hers and hers alone, and every decision she made was to bring good to all life she touched. As long as she knew that these two truths remained intact, Tara was able to find peace wherever she roamed. But now…

From where she sat on the edge of the rooftop, Tara looked down at the bare skin of her stomach, which curved just enough to adhere to her toned abdominal muscles underneath. She pulled her shirt higher up, looking at the faintest shape of her ribs low on either side of her chest. As she gently pressed a finger into them, she could feel the presence of hard titanium intermingled with solid bone. She moved her hand down to her leg, and feeling the muscles in her thigh revealed wires wrapped around the firm flesh. Slowly, she brought her other hand over to the first, and ran her thumb across her knuckles, feeling the hard metal plating under her skin. Even just moving her arms, Tara could feel the mechanisms in her joints, all designed to make her a weapon, gliding in accordance with her will. She knew, of course, the day might very well come that they would not. Thus, the first of her truths had shattered.

Tara's mind turned to the events of the past 104 days. Every fiber of her being screamed out against the deed she was ordered to carry out by the man… no. This was no man, at least not now. This was a monster that Tara thought once may have been something resembling a man. After the things he'd done… the way he'd defiled her body… and not just tearing her apart and putting her back together with this disgusting mechanical abomination inside of her, but… the things he'd done to her before… Tara was certain that whatever man once lived in that vile creature died long ago. But no matter how much she wanted to refuse, no matter how badly she wanted to spit right in his one good eye and tell him to piss off, it was no use. If she didn't do it herself, he'd just seize control of her body and make her do it anyway. So for 103 days she lied to the closest friends she'd ever known. Even to the first person she ever really, truly loved. She kept tabs on everything they'd done, everything they were, and fed their lives directly to that one-eyed freak. She took their trust, their love, their kindness, and she crushed it all to bits. Cast it into the wind. And so the second of her truths had been torn asunder.

Tara Markov had lived a life of joy and good will for fourteen years. But two years ago, everything had come crashing down. And now, Tara Markov had done terrible things.

A single tear rolled down her face. She'd played along for as long as her broken heart could bear it, but somehow she let her guard down. Somehow, one of her targets… no, one of her friends had discovered her secret. She loved Damian dearly, she did. He was like a little brother to her. But when he found the tracer on her neck… her first instinct was not to come clean and ask for his help. Her first thought was that may have to… oh god, she was about to kill him. She had immediately planned to whip around, grab the boy's neck, and crush it right there. If he didn't asphyxiate with his larynx crumpled, the shattering of his spine would paralyze him from the neck down, stopping his heart. It didn't matter that he was basically a kid Batman, killing him would be easy. But instead, her heart cried out, and she broke down. Threw her around him and wept for all the evil she'd been apart of. For all the deception she'd performed at her friends' expense, for the flesh-and-blood life she'd never get back, for the sick memory of the one-eyed creature's hands all over her… the thick wine of her pain burst the fragile wineskin that had been her facade, and she couldn't keep her anguish down any longer.

And now? Now she had no idea what they'd do. For all she knew, the one-eyed freak already knew what she had done, and today would be the day she would be forced to commit her last, most paramount evil before the metal monstrosity inside her burned her away to nothing. Or perhaps her only friends in the world would simply cast her out before she had the chance to destroy them. Or maybe they would just kill her now before she could do any further harm… part of her deep down hoped that they would.

Her train of thought interrupted by the feeling of arms wrapping themselves around her, and the familiar scratch of stubble against her cheek as a kiss was pressed gently into her neck.

"Tara… I get why you didn't tell me," Garfield said, his voice a half-whisper into her ear. "We're gonna figure this out. We're gonna beat him. I promise, I won't let him hurt you anymore."

Tara sat motionless, completely blown away. After everything she'd done, after how she'd betrayed all of them… more tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She whipped around, throwing herself onto the Changeling and wrapping her arms around his neck. As the two Titans embraced, and weak sobs came up out of her chest, Tara made a choice. No matter what it cost her, no matter how brief it may be, this was home. For the first time in her life, she had a home. Jump City, Titans Tower, Garfield Logan… that was her home.

Park Row, Gotham City…

The young man's eyes opened to the sound of vibrations against his nightstand. Last night had been a… particularly difficult night for him. He'd been tailing these chumps hiding out in the Industrial District for months now, after he heard they were smuggling weapons into Gotham for Cobblepot. Not just your standard street-tough peashooters, either; the crap these idiots were hauling was heavy-duty, military-grade stuff. It seemed like Penguin was winding up to take a shot at one of the other big-time gangs in the city, expand his territory. Unfortunately, that almost always meant civilian casualties, which he wasn't okay with. So he decided to do some bud-nipping, see if he could stop this turf war before it started. Unfortunately, he didn't take into account that these punks had said military-grade stuff, and apparently were competent enough to use it. It was a miracle he didn't have to pull any rounds out of himself when he back at 2:30 this morning.

Either way, the big guy was here when he got back– told him he'd take care of the rest. Normally he'd put up a fight, tell the old man to stay out of his business, but frankly, he was just exhausted. He agreed, and he wasn't gonna go back on his word to the guy. Not after everything he'd done for him.

But exactly none of that had anything to do with the incoming call on his cell phone that had jolted him awake. He took a quick look at the screen, chuckling as he read the words BABY BRUCE on the display, before picking up the phone.

"Thanks for the wake-up call, kid," he said in a groggy voice before letting out a long grunt as he stretched. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"You'll forgive me if I dispense with the pleasantries and skip straight to the point." Damian's voice on the other end was just as dry as his old man's. "We need your help with something pretty urgent. How would you like a trip out to California?"

Wow. The brat's actually asking for help? He really has grown up.

"Well, little brother, it turns out you're actually in luck." A wry smile appeared across Jason Todd's face. "My schedule just cleared up."