I wasn't quite ready to "make a move" this chapter, so you're going to have to wait a little longer to find out what actually happens, but whilst this isn't exactly filler, this one's going to be a little... different.
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When Wally woke, Artemis was gone.
He lay in a tangle of blankets, silent, for a long while. It felt like everything he had left to give had spilled out onto the floor around him. It felt like he was empty. He didn't dare look at the cell door, and when he did, he could not tear his eyes away. There was nothing he could do but wait with his heart in his mouth and his pulse between his fingertips, praying that he would have just one extra minute of life before the guards came in and took it from him.
This was worse than what Sportsmaster had done to him, this waiting and not knowing. Wally half hoped someone would burst in and put a bullet between his eyes. That way it would be over sooner, but the thought made him sick to his stomach. Eventually he sat up, pulling blankets over his shoulders, and hugged himself.
A piece of paper on the cell floor caught his eye.
Slowly, Wally reached out and picked it up. Not paper- the Chance card from the monopoly game, the one he and Artemis had laughed over. It all felt so long ago now. He turned it in his hands, and found something scrawled on the other side in spidery handwriting. Wally's heart soared.
"TRUST ME." It read.
He clutched it like a lifeline.
But what was Artemis doing? She should be here, with him, not wandering the base doing... whatever it was she was up to. And what did she mean, why did she need him to trust her? What for?
If she'd left something a little more specific, that would've helped. A map, maybe? Or a cell phone? Maybe not the phone- the distinct lack of windows in the base gave Wally the impression that he was underground. If only he could get that stupid inhibitor collar off; he was low on energy but there was enough for a mad dash to an exit, he would be gone before they knew it. Even better, if his friends burst through the door.
But Wally knew by now that wishful thinking only made the disappointment harder to bear.
And so he waited.
-o-
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-TWENTY FOUR DAYS EARLIER-
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Gunfire crackled in Robin's ears, but he was too used to it to flinch. He had been the first to recover from the explosion and was currently soaring through the air, about to rain terror on a cluster of gun wielding idiots who had not bothered to look up. Their mistake.
Four well placed punches and a scissor kick later, the men were down and Robin was leaping across steel walkways like he'd been practising all his life. Below him, Kaldur and Conner had teamed up in the centre of the warehouse and were fending off attackers, left and right. A dark streak took out a whole chain of armed men and Robin grinned, then winced when the blur ran headlong into a wall.
Third time this week, he thought to himself, absent mindedly disarming two men and ducking when a third raised a gun and fired where his head had been. The bullets streaked past, harmless, until his head split wide open and the team's screams filled it- over there, M'gann had materialised and was falling, her green skin interrupted by a shock of red. Conner leapt and caught her before she hit the ground, but the telepathic field had been broken. Robin heard Kaldur shout something to Wally:
"-find a way out."
And then his friend was gone, disappearing through a doorway in a flash of red and black.
Robin snapped back into action. To his left, Kaldur swiped his water bearers at Sportsmaster- the man who was probably behind this entire situation. A roar of anguish caught his attention and Robin was running towards it, finding Conner standing over an unconscious M'gann, knocking the advancing mercenaries down with great sweeps of his arms.
"Manoeuvre six!" Robin shouted. Conner turned, saw his teammate sprinting towards him, and held out an arm. The masked boy grabbed it, and Conner used Robin's momentum and his own inhuman strength to spin the pair of them around like a completely non-Olympic approved version of the hammer throw, Robin's legs taking out any nearby goons with guns. Then, just like the hammer throw, he was released.
Robin shot into the air feet first, his trajectory sending him careening straight towards Sportsmaster. Unfortunately, the man in the hockey mask managed to dodge out of the way and Robin rolled on impact, grabbed a couple of explosives from his belt, dropped them, then got as far away as possible. The explosion hit him in the back and propelled him forward another few feet, but Robin managed to stay on his feet and spun around, finding a disappointingly non-blown up Sportsmaster in front of him.
He had just opened his mouth to say something witty when Kaldur appeared from behind the man and knocked him down with a swing of his water bearers. Sportsmaster was back up in an instant, abandoning his knife- was that blood on the blade?- for a heavy looking metal ball attached to a chain. Robin leapt to avoid it taking his head clean off, throwing a volley of batarangs that were either dodged or batted aside with a sharp clang. Behind Sportsmaster, Kaldur lost his balance avoiding a stray projectile and missed an opening to strike.
This wasn't working, Robin thought. Without M'gann's telepathic field they could not communicate effectively, and with Wally momentarily gone they were not strong enough to take out the remaining men, let alone Sportsmaster.
"We need to- get out!" He cried, backflipping away to knock out another armed idiot who had gotten a little too trigger happy.
"Kid Flash is searching for an exit." The Atlantean replied, a wave of water shooting from his hands to hit Sportsmaster squarely in the chest. Robin spared a glance back at Conner and M'gann. They were rapidly being overrun by the mercenaries, despite the Kryptonian's best efforts.
"Well, he's taking too damn long!" Robin shouted as he grabbed the heads of two men and slammed them together. "Miss Martian's not looking good, we need to get out. Now."
"Very well then."
With one final blow from his water bearers, Kaldur knocked Sportsmaster back and called out to Conner.
"Superboy! I will take Miss Martian, you must make an exit."
"Make one?" Robin heard the Kryptonian mumble.
"That is correct."
Superboy stopped attacking the waves of armed men long enough to sprint to the nearest wall and -crash- run straight through it. Robin covered Kaldur while the Atlantean picked up M'gann, who was still unconscious and bleeding profusely.
"We shall reconvene at the bioship." Kaldur told him, running towards the hole Conner had made.
"What about KF?" Robin shouted.
"We will search for Kid Flash when we reach the bioship. He is probably merely disoriented and cannot find his way back."
Robin slowed his pace. He wasn't leaving until he knew a Wally was okay- he had to go back. He left Kaldur, ducking behind stacks of crates to avoid the increasing amount of gunfire. The Atlantean shouted something after him, but there was no way he would follow, he was still holding the injured Martian.
Robin saw the doorway Wally had disappeared into and made a beeline for it. He was almost there when a familiar metal ball swung out of nowhere and would have crushed his skull like an egg if he had not dropped and rolled out of the way.
"Back for round two?" Sportsmaster asked, but Robin was already out of reach, running past him and through the doorway. He jogged halfway down the connecting corridor, following it to the left, before tapping the device on his wrist. Even with M'gann's telepathic field, the team had still started the mission with earpieces for backup communication. Kaldur should be utilising his own quite soon. They came equipped with tracking devices, and on Robin's holographic display he saw four- no, five flickering red dots. Three were clustered together away from the warehouse, another was his own, and Wally's was... just around the corner.
Robin's stomach twisted. Wally's dot wasn't moving.
He sprinted round the corner and had to stop suddenly to avoid a tripwire, positioned at about knee height across the narrow corridor. Stepping over it, Robin checked for signs of life. There was nothing. He walked forwards, until his dot was right on top of Wally's.
Where was he?
Robin looked down to see a tiny cylindrical object, flashing a red light. Well that explained something. He stooped to pick up what he could only assume to be Wally's earpiece, and saw something altogether more worrying.
A great swathe of blood, smeared on the concrete floor.
No. Panic took control as Robin stood and ran to the end of the corridor, taking the left passage and meeting a group of armed goons who had obviously gotten lost. And no Wally.
"Where is he?" He shouted, relieving one man of his gun and using it as a club to take down the others. "Where the hell-"
"Robin. Return to the bioship."
Kaldur had turned his radio on and was speaking in his ear.
Robin kicked the last goon in the solar plexus and carried on. He was stopped by the rattle of gunfire, coming from behind him. A glance back told him there were more men surging around the corners, he was surrounded. Great.
"Return to the bioship, Robin. That is an order." He pulled the communicator out of his ear, that was a distraction he did not need. The men on either side of him began to fire and Robin hit the ground. With a combination of luck and sheer stupidity, the men's bullets sailed over him and hit the opposite group, who were also inadvertently shooting at their own men.
When they were all down, Robin stood, grinning bitterly. He picked his way over the bleeding bodies, his friend had to be here somewhere- but the evidence had pointed him in a direction he liked less every second. No time to waste, Robin's pace picked up and he took another turn at the corridor, a right.
He had little time to react to the sudden shriek of bullets raining past him, and as he backed up to go back up the way he came, a bullet sunk its white hot teeth into his arm. Robin cried out in pain, clutching his upper arm with his other hand. Need. To. Find. Wally.
He was running back down the corridor, blood trickling down his arm, leaving a trail of blood behind him. A whelming sense of frustration filled him and Robin desperately searched for any clues that would tell him something other than what he knew.
Wally's earpiece on the floor.
Blood smeared across the concrete.
Gone.
He couldn't help his friend, not like this, and though he hated to think it, it would be better this way. Robin took off down the corridor, sprinting back out into the main warehouse, and through the exit Superboy had created, dodging bullets the entire time.
He ran to the bioship, and although he was running to escape the men who followed, guns blazing, it felt like he was running from Wally.
I'm sorry, he thought, but I'll find you, I promise.
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Twenty four days later, he was back in the bioship, a different thought at the front of his mind.
Hang on, we're coming.
I just wanted to give an alternate perspective of what happened in the first chapter, plus some people were asking what the others were doing, so here. But I wouldn't expect to see Rob's perspective again, but anything could happen at this point, I guess.