Cassandra struggled to take account of the situation between blows and dodges with the Odmience. Stephanie was one floor down, ready to offer backup, Cassandra just hadn't had a chance to contact her. Tim was back in the bunker, operating a remote-controlled speedboat hiding just under the surface of the ocean and trailing the Final Offer. She was still fighting some kind of sensory-attacking neurotoxin alongside her father, whom she hadn't willingly sided with since she was a child. And no matter how hard she focused, Sadie had still left a dull pain in the front of her head.
Lipov remained against the door, observing the exchange of blows with a smirk on his face. Angel and Cain came at the Odmience from multiple sides whenever they could. Every effort was lost to his superior maneuverability. His sword remained in its sheath and he took his time before inflicting a single attack. Despite his age a single strike from Cain could have done some damage, the Odmience treated his attacks with wariness. Angel had enough trouble keeping up in their first battle, but she was slowed by the fight with Cain and the numbing agents still infecting her body. Odmience was a black blur jumping and dodging out her attacks, which she knew were swinging wide. It seemed he was just measuring them up.
Odmience broke his passive behavior with a smash to Cain's side onto his ears, forced a shout out of the old assassin and thrust two fingers into his throat. Cain was forced backwards and gripped at his neck as he gagged. Angel slid in with a kick in the hopes of catching him off guard, but Odmience caught her foot, twisted it and brought her to the ground with a slam. Angel grit her teeth to stifle a shout.
"Time's caught up with you, David," Lipov said. "And I don't know what's wrong with your spawn, but she's not her usual self."
Cain fumbled around the back of the bar until he could wrap his fingers around the throat of a bottle of wine. He ran toward Odmience, bottle lifted over his head and swung for his opponent's face. Odmience released Cassandra's foot, caught the bottle by its body and locked himself and Cain in place. As she pushed past the pain, Angel pushed herself forward and struck the Odmience in the back of his knee. The strike forced him off balance and dropped him to half of a kneel. The Odmience turned to face her with his cold, blue eyes, but Cain smashed the bottle into the back of his head. Shattered glass and wine spilled all over the floor, Odmience's eyes clasped firmly shut, but he didn't make a sound.
"Stay down, boy," Cain said through labored breaths. "I don't have to kill you over the stupidity of that corpse over there."
"Being a corpse isn't so bad," Lipov said. "It's coming back that really hurts. You should spare yourself the agony."
Still fighting the drugs in her veins, Angel's perception was a fraction of its normal power. She was too busy fighting off the ringing in her head to watch Odmience's hand as he grabbed ahold of a shard of glass from the broken bottle. The Odmience whirled upward, tore a slash into Cain's stomach and forced him to shout and grip the wound. With his cry Angel pulled back to her feet and swung her blade at the Odmience, but her foe drew his own sword and parried her strike.
As Angel and the Odmience exchanged blows, Cain scanned the room. The neurotoxins left Angel vulnerable, her armor was forced to take most of the Odmience's strikes and began to show signs of wear and tear. She could block some of his moves, but most made contact, some certainly hard enough to cause bruising beneath the armor. Cain moved toward the sliding glass door that led to the balcony, slow and quiet so as not to attract attention. Despite his efforts, he was acutely aware Lipov hadn't taken his eyes off of him since the battle began.
Angel was facing him, the Odmience was faced away. Even he couldn't dodge what he couldn't see. Cain slipped a finger through the center of the toxic-tipped shurriken, still sitting on the floor, and threw it.
The weapon left a small cut in the back of Odmience's neck, which he threw Angel from a blade lock in order to assess. Seconds later the figure in black was hunched over and clutching his forehead.
The sneer Lipov wore faded away. "What have you done?"
"I poisoned her before we started fighting," Cain said. "If you wanna prove your little monster's better than mine, he's going to have to do it on equal footing."
"Deceitful bastard! Same as always! Odmience—"
The warrior in black did not wait for Lipov to complete his command. The Odmience turned toward Cain, his senses already starting to betray him, rushed and tackled Cain. For a moment there was a deafening shatter as the two bodies flew through the glass door. Cain shouted, bits of glass dug into his back as the Odmience held him to the ground and pounded against his face. Angel followed the two out, forced the Odmience's arms over his head, locked her hands from behind and trapped him atop Cain's body. Cain grasped a piece of the shattered glass and attempted to gut the Odmience before Angel rose and pulled their opponent away.
"No," she said.
"I don't have time for this," Cain said. "He and that Ukranian ghost came here to kill us. I'm not giving them any of your special treatment."
Odmience loosened his arms, pulled his feet off the ground, slipped free of Angel's grip and ran toward Cain. Still reeling for the smash through the window, Cain mustered the strength to catch and throw the Odmience when he'd closed the distance, tossing his small body over the balcony. Angel ran to the edge to see what had happened, Odmience's fall was cut in half by a large awning that extended over the sundeck, but still hit the ground with a crash. The handful of passengers nursing drinks at one of the outdoor bars were staring up at her in confusion.
Angel's senses were slowly returning to normal as her earpiece relayed a message from a floor down. "You guys are making a lot of noise," Stephanie said. "R.R. and me locked all the doors out to the pool, but everybody's looking out there, trying to figure out what's going on."
Angel said, "I know," to confirm she got the message. She jumped over the balcony rail, hit the awning and descended next to Odmience as he pushed to his feet. Whether from the fall or the toxin, the Odmience had lost his eerily still stance. Shakes ran all over his body as he faced Angel again.
Over drunken shouts of gamblers asking what was going on and if they were seeing some kind of performance, Angel locked eyes with the Odmience. "We can stop," she said. "Please… I don't want to hurt you."
The two held their positions, neither moved a muscle for the other save for the little shakes and spasms from the toxin.
The mutual freeze was broken by the screech of gunfire, a bullet bore into the deck of the ship mere feet from where the Odmience stood. Angel and the Odmience looked up to see Cain struggling against Lipov, the bullet only missed the Odmience thanks to Lipov's interference. Angel's opponent in black looked between Angel and the struggle before he turned and ran for the side of the ship. Angel pursued him.
"Security's about to get through the doors," Stephanie said over Angel's headset. "Get off that sundeck, Penguin's thugs aren't going to take kindly to you being here."
Angel was about to reply, but stopped when Odmience pulled himself over the protective rail and jumped off the ship. "No!"
She ran as fast as she could and caught sight of the Odmience as he caught ahold of the protective barrier on a room's patio. He dropped from one to another, further down the spoke as Angel followed his lead. "What was that? What's going on?"
"Retreating. He's going down." Angel said.
"Crap, probably heading for the lifeboats or something. Actually, wait, that should be a good thing. I'll get Red to pull up that drone he's got following the ship. We've got him cornered! I'll be down as soon as I can get changed, I can't descend without my cape."
Angel barely listened. Men and women from the rooms screamed and shouted in confusion and fear as the two descended the cruise liner before Odmience paused on one of the lower decks. A few feet away was the ledge of the boat, the lifeboats hung over the water. Again the Odmience stopped to look between his options.
"Stop!" Angel shouted as loud as she could.
The Odmience took his chance and ran. With a proper boost by jumping off the railing, the jump would have been possible. However, the Odmience's depth-perception was still damaged by the toxins running through his blood. He got a single hand atop one of the many small, orange crafts but failed to get a grip and fell. Angel brought a mouth to her hand in horror as the body in black fell and crashed into the ocean. By the best she could remember, Angel remembered thirty feet could be fatal. Even if that number meant nothing to her in that moment, she was sure the fall had to have been more than that.
"He fell," Angel said into her earpiece. "He's in the water. He could drown."
"God… Don't go after him."
Angel was already strapping her grappling hook to the rail. "I have to."
"It's too dangerous, there's no sense in both of you being in there! Red's got heat sensors on the drone, he can just grab him."
Nothing could convince Angel he could get there quick enough. She pulled off the individual white sections of armor covering her chest, arms and legs and repelled down the side of the ship. Between toxins and desperation, Angel's mind hadn't formed any kind of strategy. She just had to get ahold of the Odmience as fast as possible. Nothing else mattered.
Angel hit the water in less than a minute, it was cold and clung to her suit from the first contact. She swam in the opposite direction of the cruise ship, pushed aside by waves of water the boat displaced. Though she tried desperately, she couldn't make out a black body in the dark of the night in the ocean. He had to be there, she knew he did.
Salt water slapped her face. For all Angel knew, she was barely holding surface over hundreds of feet of water a thousand miles from the shore. Still she pushed and kicked. She had to find her opponent. She couldn't leave him behind.
Please… please—
A pair of overpowering lights overtook Cassandra's vision on her left side. With fizzles and gurgling, a structure rose out of the water. Cassandra swam toward it and recognized Tim's drone as it slowly converted from undersea to boat mode, the top of the vehicle in the middle of opening like a convertible car. To one side Cassandra found a ladder and pulled herself onto the ship. In the center, laying deathly still, was the Odmience.
"Angel—hey! Angel!"
Cassandra turned and saw a radio near the driver's seat and pulled it from its place. She looked between it and the Odmience and decided to answer. "I'm here."
"Thank God. Thermal on this thing picked up two bodies fresh off that ship. Is the other one that Odmience guy?"
"Yes," she said. "He's hurt. Badly." Cassandra examined him for a moment and her heart began to race anew. "Not breathing."
"No? Damn it. I'm pulling up to pick up Batgirl, she knows CPR—"
"No time," Cassandra said. "No time. What do I do?"
Tim didn't respond at first, as if in consideration before he said, "Get the mask off and uncover his chest."
Cassandra set the radio aside and pulled the Odmience closer before she tugged at his mask, but it wouldn't come free. His entire costume seemed to be a single piece. She felt around on his back, came to a zipper, pulled it down and peeled the costume from his skin. From the first sight of flesh Cassandra cringed. The Odmience's back was overwhelmed with scars, both fresh and faded. With enough pulling she separated the mask from his face. He was nearly bald, the first of blonde stubble just pricked through his scalp. The scars followed through to his face, which Cassandra lingered on for a moment. Despite all the marks, she could see he was young. Younger than her, maybe. If he looked that way in spite of the scars, she could only imagine how he would look without them. The thought made her even sicker before she resumed pulling at his costume.
The most prominent of all his scars was one directly over his throat, which his costume had traced. It ran deep, Cassandra was sure of it, though she couldn't tell how far. With a last pull she revealed his bare chest, covered in the same marks and positioned two hands over his heart.
"Ready."
"Okay," Tim said. "One. Two. Three. Four."
Cassandra pushed with every count, her mind raced in fear at the thought of breaking his ribs with too much pressure. Some compressions were lighter than others, some were deeper to compensate.
"Fifteen. Two rescue breaths now."
Cassandra held Odmience by his forehead and chin and pressed her mouth against his. The lips felt so cold, she had to keep going.
"One. Two. Three. Four."
Please. Cassandra pleaded internally. Everything is so wrong. Sadie is gone. Lipov has David. Not this too. Please, not this too.
"Two more breaths."
His lips were still ice. Cassandra did a third for good measure and lost her place when Tim chanted the compressions again.
Is this punishment? Is that what today is? Have I failed you?
"Five. Six. Seven."
Cold. Cold.
Please don't test me. I know I ran once, I won't again. I promise.
"Eight. Nine. Ten."
Cold. Cold. Cold. Cold.
Please, let me save him… Isn't that what you want?
"Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen—"
The Odmience rose he was undead, mouth and eyes wide open as he vomited up bile and seawater before collapsing back onto the floor of the boat, unconscious but breathing. Cassandra breathed a sigh and grabbed the radio. "He is breathing again."
"Good." Tim said. "Steph should be with you in a few minutes, we'll get the ship back in and run some tests, he's going to need some more treatment, I'm sure of it. What about David and Lipov?"
Cassandra looked down at the floor. "I don't know."
"Don't linger on it then," Tim said. "We have his assassin. Maybe now we can finally get some answers.
Cassandra looked up and down the Odmience's scarred body. There would be answers, she was sure. It was a matter of what horrors they would reveal. She practically collapsed into one of the seats. She'd have to cuff Odmience before he woke up, she had no idea how far they were from Gotham. But she had both captured and saved someone that night. She had earned a brief reprieve.
