I love it when I get back into the swing of things. I bet you like it too. You get updates, after all! Anyway, hope you guys like this chapter. Please review!
Thanks go out to the following people for reviewing the previous chapter:
storygirl99210- Aww, thank you! You'll just have to wait for that moment, now, won't you. ;)
Pygmy Pandazilla - I know, I'm sorry there was that several month gap between chapters. I have the entirity of the season planned out and it'll be so much easier writing and updating. I'm so glad you didn't expect the ending!
StillDoll13 - You'll just have to wait and see, won't you! Mwahahaha. And Dick is too smart for his own good. Wait until you read this chapter. Wonder what he'll think now...
lilnightmare17 - Hehe, shocked you there, didn't I?
Chapter 9
Truths and Lies
Ember had stolen some street clothes for her mission. She set up cameras all around the apartment building that Carson, Elliot and Conley lived. All of the wireless cameras went directly to a holo-tablet that Ember had with her. There were several screens up at once, allowing the girl too look at all of them at the same time. She had also hacked into the camera and microphones that they had for security inside of the apartment; they too fed directly to the holo-tablet.
The brunette was sitting in the vent above the living room, looking at said holo-tablet. She got a clear view of all the common rooms; the living room, dining room, kitchen, and even the office. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, waiting for the opportune moment to make her attack.
Conley was shamelessly dancing around the kitchen of listening to a song Ember had never heard before, waiting for her microwavable dinner to be ready. Once it was ready, she made her way to the living room where she had her homework spread out on the coffee table. She was planning on doing her homework on the couch.
She never made it to her destination.
Ember dropped down from the vent the moment Conley was under her. She grabbed her hands and cuffed them together, then hit the pressure points on her legs, causing them to give out. She then gagged her, making sure that nobody would be able to hear her screams. Seeing as she couldn't walk, Ember easily dragged her to a dining room chair and tied her around the stomach to it, then her feet to each leg, as well as her hands, despite them already being tired. She also checked her for anything that she could use as a weapon.
"Hi Conley!" Ember greeted. "Long time no see, right? How long has it been? A day since I last tried to kill you?"
Conley was a contortionist, after all. She could bend and move in so many ways that she could easily escape if Ember didn't secure her properly, which she did. There was no way of Conley getting out of her ties.
She set up the holo-tablet on the table three feet behind Conley so she could have a clear view of it and Conley before she dragged up another chair and sat down right across Conley, fiddling with the silver kunai. She simply turned her head, trying to make out the begs of confusion Conley was trying to say through the gag. She ended up chuckling slightly. It all sounded like gibberish.
"You, Probie, have caused me a great deal of trouble," Ember said, speaking as if the heroes or even the people she was working for could her. She couldn't be too careful. "Master even pulled us out of our missions to deal with all of the problems you've given us."
Ember brought the kunai up to Conley's face and gently, without cutting, caressed her face with it. Conley flinched, trying to back away in the chair as much as she could. She whimpered, her eyes squeezed shut.
"Apparently, you're getting information from one of the scientists at the lab. One of my friends," Ember pressed, putting a shallow put in Conley's cheek. "It makes me wonder how you managed to get Lucas to turn traitor. Lucas was a good man. He's the one that helped give all of us our powers, you know? He brought us into a world power that we would never have dreamed of.
"It was such a shame he had to be taken out. It was difficult to have to do it, but I figured it would be better that I did it instead of one of the boys. I did it quickly, took pity on him. Erik and your brother? They would have taken their time with him; had their fun.
"Just like I'm going to do to you," Ember said. She took the kunai and slowly pushed it into the flesh of Conley's midsection, causing her to scream. She turned it, causing the girl to go slightly limp. Ember grabbed her short hair and forced her head up to look at her. "It's your fault I had to kill my friend."
Ember did it again in another area on Conley's stomach, digging and carving. Conley scream in pain, hoping someone would hear and come help, but nobody would. Ember had time and she was going to use all of it to torture the fifteen year old.
The woman sat back for a moment, looking at the sticky blood covering her hands. She set the kunai on the bare skin on her leg to rub her hands together. She picked up the kunai and stabbed it into Conley's shoulder. Conley managed to muffle her scream better that time by clenching her teeth, but not by much.
"I can tell your hoping someone's going to burst in and save you," Ember said. She shook her head, whipping sweat off of her forehead, leaving blood on her pale skin. "But that's not going to happen." She slid the knife into her flesh once more, turning it slightly, causing the girl to scream again, tears pouring out. "Nobody's going to save you. Not from me."
Ember backhanded Conley in the face, forcing her head to the side. "I hope the information you got was worth it," she said. Ember scratched an itch on her cheek, leaving even more of Conley's blood on her. "Because it's made you a target. Right now, you're one of Master's number one enemies.
"The last person to do that, beside Lucas, of course, was a girl named Cody Conwell. I'm sure you've heard of her. You're living with her brother, after all. Surprising he's still alive, I'd have to admit. It's not every day Master decides to let one of the traitors go. After so many years on the run and not practicing, I suppose Master saw it pointless. Carson's no theat. But he's not the interesting on.
"No, that'd be his little sister, Cody. Cody, Cody, Cody. She caused so much trouble for everyone. That was before my time with Master, but the stories I hear of what she managed to do and what happened after they finally caught her. Oh, trust me, Probie, you wouldn't want to know."
Ember went back to the wound on Conley's shoulder and pushed into it with her fingers, digging, causing even more pain in that area that there already was. She took her fingers out and whipped them on the skin of her left leg, trying to get a little bit of the dripping blood off of her hand.
"But I'll tell you anyway," she said with a chuckle. "If this night won't give you nightmares, the stories will. Not that you'll have nightmares. You'll be dead. But that's just a technicality, wouldn't you say?"
Ember sat down again. She leaned back, crossed one leg over the other and then crossed her arms over her chest, one hand still holding the kunai. "So, Cody. Yeah, she was a hero until the end, I hear. Apparently, what they did with her, after Erik had a bit of fun with her in her very own office was drag her back to HQ, tied her up in one of the cells, one near the one I put you in, I think. They still have the blood stains in there. I'd hate to be person thrown in there…
"But I'm getting off topic." Ember uncrossed her legs and arms and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "They left her there for about three days with no food or water. She was so weak she never even moved. What else do you expect from Plinium Ivy? Nasty stuff. Makes you extremely weak and tired and drowsy. Add that to injury and you have one weak hero.
"So after those three days, they had Erik go in and carve her up, a lot like I'm doing to you. What you don't know is that we're trained to know how to torture our subjects for hours, days even; making them bleed and feel indescribable pain without actually killing them. They work, and we physically and mentally torture them. Then they stop and let them heal. And the process repeats itself. Over and over again; making them weaker and weaker until eventually they break.
"Like I said, they don't just physically torture. You're lucky I only have time for the physical before I kill you." Conley's head started to droop. It wasn't from the blood lose. She was just in a lot of pain. "Hey!" Ember yelled, lifting her head to make her look at Ember. "Pay attention!" Once her head was up and balancing on its own, Ember let go.
"When they mentally torture their subjects, they get in contact with Scarecrow. They buy some of his drugs and repeatedly give it to the subject, making them live their fears over and over. You get where I'm going with this? They alternate between physical and mental, physical and mental. Normally, if they're not dead from the first contact beating, they die within the first couple of days.
"Cody? Heh, she lasted longer than anybody ever has. You can ask any of the other guys. Cody was stubborn bitch. She just wouldn't give up. She thought she had a chance to live, to escape back to her little hero buddies that gave up on looking for her." Ember looked down at her bloody hands and shook her head, trying to focus. "We wanted so desperately to live; to keep fighting.
"They'd ask her questions, trying to get information on the heroes, but she never gave up anything. And I mean nothing. No locations, no names, nada! She was stubbornly loyal, I'll give her that, just not loyal to the right people."
Ember took a deep breath and closed her eyes, opening and clenching her fists over and over again. "You want to know how long that went on? Do you want to know how stubbornly strong that Kunoichi was?" Ember pressed her thumb into one of the wounds on her stomach making the girl grown. The pain was scream worthy, but she didn't have the strength to do so anymore. "Two years," Ember finally said. "Two year. Can you imagine surviving hell that long? I can. And I don't think I could do it. I would have just given up.
"But she eventually gave up. Nobody ever escapes, Conley. Nobody. Not Cody, no you, not anybody! I'm the one ordered to take you out, Conley. And I will.
"There's no escaping me," Cody said, pushing down hard in the flesh creating another hole. She glanced behind Conley and saw that Carson and several heroes; Nightwing, Batgirl, Robin, Miss Martian and Superboy were making an entrance into the building, coming to rescue the teenager.
"Today might not be the day," Cody said, standing up. She moved behind Conley and got close to her ear, whispering, "But the day will come. You'll be mine, Conley Corporal. Just you wait."
With that, Ember turned, grabbed her holo-tablet and disappeared into the night.
xXx
Cody entered the actual ship from the Manta-Flyer a little before midnight, her bag over her shoulder with her equipment and the street clothes she had stolen. She was still covered in Conley's blood as she turned and nearly ran into Kaldur. He was standing there without his helmet on. Behind him were Erik and Rich, smirking at that state Cody was in.
"Welcome back," Kaldur greeted.
"Sir," she replied, looking down at the ground. She couldn't bring herself to look up.
"It's good to have you back," he told her. "I was informed that your mission was interrupted."
"Yes Sir," she said. "I'm sorry, Sir. I hereby report myself for disciplinary action."
Kaldur narrowed his eyes at her, studying her before quite some time before finally saying, "That's not necessary. From what I gather, you delivered enough physical damage to at least put the hero out of commission for quite a while. That is at least a small gain. They'll be down in at least one. Why don't you retire for the evening?"
"Thank you, Sir," she said with a bow. She passed him, not taking her eyes off the floor as she went.
Erik and Rich followed right behind her. She should have known they wouldn't leave her alone when she returned, especially after everything that she had done that day. It was too much to ask for.
"I can't believe you actually took out Lucas!" Erik exclaimed excitedly.
"I didn't know you had it in you!" Rich added.
"It was so hot, Girly. It was a total turn on. And look at you now! Getting down and dirty."
"Did you enjoy yourself?" Rich asked. "Damn, why did you get to have all the fun tonight?"
Cody finally made it back to her private quarters. She unlocked the door and was about to go in, but Rich pulled her back, not finished talking to her. She shook off his hold and moved to go into her room.
"Man, Ember," Erik said, blocking the door. "I've got to tell you, seeing you in all this blood puts thoughts in my head. Dreams of the two of us rolling around with nothing on, in pools of red, hot blood." He stepped closer to Cody, almost to where their lips were touching. "Can you imagine what we're doing?"
She brought her knee up and hit him in the groin. She threw him into Rich and slipped into her room, locking the door behind her. They banged on the door angrily at what she had just done, but she wasn't paying any attention whatsoever.
Cody was too lost in her own memories of that day, starting off with the little visit she had paid to her older brother that evening.
xXx
Carson was sitting at the desk that once belonged to Cody herself, doing the very same work that she had once done when she had been a teenager. When she was secretly in charge of the Conwell's company. It made her slightly nostalgic as she hid in the ducts watching him as he finished up his last phone call of the evening.
Once he hung up, Cody dropped down from the ceiling and slowly approached her older brother.
"Cody!" Carson jumped. He got out of his chair and made his way around to the other side to hug his little sister. "Either you've gotten better or I'm getting rusty."
"Perhaps a little of both," she suggested without any tone of happiness to see her brother.
"What's wrong?" Carson asked, taking note of that.
"This isn't a social visit," Cody told him. Cody gestured for Carson to take a seat back at his desk. He did hesitantly. She ran a hand through her hair before leaning against the desk with her arms crossed. "Will Conleybe home tonight?" she finally asked.
"Yeah, it's a school night."
"Will she be alone?"
"I was going to pull an all nighter," Carson said. "But Elliot is going home in a little bit."
"I need her there alone," Cody said, coming right out with it.
"Why?" Carson asked.
Cody sighed and took her domino mask off, rubbing her eyes. She turned to her brother and placed the keys to the car she had parked on the street in front of him. "The scientist that was working with me got caught," she said. "I was ordered to kill him."
"Jesus, Cody!" Carson sighed. "I never wanted you to have to kill."
"He's in the back of the trunk of that car," she informed him. "Alive. I did that chokehold trick you showed me years ago. Just pinch the nerve on his neck and he'll snap back into consciousness." Cody could tell Carson was relieved to hear that. "He'll need a new identity and someplace to hideout until I get Master thrown in jail. Once it's all over I promised him a place in the R&D division of the company. Hope you don't mind."
"I can take care of that," he said, nodding his head before putting the keys in his pocket. He got up and moved to stand in front of his little sister. "You look like crap, Cody. You have bags under your eyes, you're pale and skinny and I don't think I've ever seen your eyes so red." Cody turned her head away from her brother, ashamed that she was letting how much all of this affecting her. He took her face in his hands and gently forced her to look at him. "Talk to me."
"Do you remember when we talked about my crushes?" Cody asked.
"Yeah, you were caught between two guys," he said.
"Well, the one I really liked, my team leader, ended up going dark-side," she said. "And he's my boss."
"Whoa," he said, absorbing that information. "Are you sure he's not doing a double agent thing like you?"
She shook her head. "He blew up an entire island yesterday with aliens on it. They were just trying to get off of Earth and now they're all dead."
"My God," Carson said. "I'm so sorry, Cody."
"They want me to kill Conley," Cody blurted out, trying to control how shaky her voice sounded.
"What?" Carson backed up from his sister, scared of who she was turning into. "I can't let you do that, Cody. She's just a kid."
"I know," Cody insisted. "I'm not going to kill her. I just," she shook her head and looked out the window where she had once almost plummeted to her death, "I just have to make it look like I tried." She reached into her sash and handed him a flash drive. "When I leave, look at this. It'll tell you everything. What to do and what to tell Conley."
"Are you sure about this?" Carson asked.
Cody nodded her head. Tears were running down her face now. She angrily whipped them away, frustrated with herself and the situation. "I've gotta hurt her, Carson. I've gotta hurt a teenage girl." She shook her head as if the idea of it would somehow fall out of her head if she shook hard enough.
"Are you sure we can't just get her a new identity too? Can't we hide her?" He sounded as if he were begging her to reconsider.
"No," Cody answered. "I need her. In order to keep the mission going, she has to be there with the heroes. I have to hurt her. It's the only way. Can you promise me you'll talk to her after it all happens? Try and make her understand why I did and that I was never really going to kill her. Please, if she doesn't want to continue with our deal, I'll understand, but without her this all become so much messier. I need her, Carson."
Carson angrily sat in his chair, head in his hands. He was just as ashamed at himself and Cody as she was. Though Cody wasn't ashamed of Carson. Cody started to make her way back to the vent. Once she was under it she put her mask back on and turned to her brother. "Read the drive," she said. "Follow the instructions."
"I can't believe I'm doing this," Carson said.
"You and me both."
xXx
After taking a good hour long shower and scrubbing every inch of her raw, Cody got out of the shower over her quarters and left her room, absentmindedly walking around the ship.
Cody was making her way back to the observatory windows again. The area was quickly becoming her favorite place on the ship. The room didn't have much purpose, which raised the question as to why it was there, but Cody didn't ask and she really didn't care. She liked it. It was quiet and there rarely people there. Whenever someone saw her enter, they quickly left, not wanting to spend time in the same room with her if they had to.
Maybe it was her Pyrokinesis. Perhaps it was the fact she had boarded the ship that evening covered in blood that wasn't her's. Or maybe her real power was to repel people away from her when she wanted to be alone. Too bad it didn't work on Erik. But this place was an area that Erik and Rich would never go. There was no need to. It would bore them. But it let Cody be alone and she found more and more being on that ship, she wanted to be alone. It hurt less to be on her own.
And after finding out that Manta was Kaldur, having faked Lucas's death and tortured Conley, she really needed some time alone.
However, when she got there, she didn't expect to have company. She was sitting on the floor, facing the window watching fish swim by. Despite how beautiful and relaxing it was, she was still uneasy. It was no longer the fact that she was underwater, but the news that Kaldur, of all people, was now a villain, that she was quickly becoming the person she always feared she would be. She was becoming a monster and she was too deep in it to back out now.
She heard footsteps walk up next to her. Having spent so much time working directly under Manta, Cody knew that it was him.
"It's beautiful," Cody said still able to easily talk to Kaldur just as she had when they were both teenagers, which seemed very odd to her at that moment. She had been referring to a brightly colored fish that float by. She couldn't turn her head to look at him, but by the reflection in the glass, she could tell he didn't have his helmet on.
"It is," he agreed. "It reminds me of home."
"You're from Atlantis, right?"
"Yes," he answered.
"I've always wanted to go there," she admitted. "It sounds beautiful."
"It is," he repeated.
There was a long silence between the two as they both watched the creatures out the window. Cody wanted to ask him so many questions, but she couldn't. What could she say without giving herself away.
"May I ask you something, Sir?" Ember asked.
"If you must," he granted.
"You used to be a hero, right?" Ember asked.
"I was," he said. "And then I realized my place was with my father."
With your father, Cody thought. With a man that uses his son. A man that is evil and corrupt and works for the light, the group we used to try and stop? Cody didn't understand. Then again, if someone found out Cody was who she was, they most likely wouldn't understand why she was there either. They wouldn't know what she was really doing.
"Do you like me, Sir?" Ember randomly asked.
"You're a devoted, strong worker," Kaldur said. "You do everything to the best of your abilities and as far as I have seen, that is normally good enough to get the job done. I believe tonight was your only failed mission so far."
"I don't," Ember said. "I don't like who I am. I don't like the person I see when I look in the mirror." She had no idea why she was telling him that. Maybe it was because he looked like her Kaldur and she would tell her Kaldur anything, even if she didn't want to, though, if she really thought about it, she had wanted to tell him the truth all along. That was what happened when she admitted she broke her friend out of jail in order to prevent his death.
"And why is that?" Kaldur asked, glancing at her from the corner of his eyes. He was interested in what she was saying, she could tell.
"I'm that person that would walk an old lady across the street if she needed help," Ember said. "And I would help a little kid get a kite out of a tree. Or if someone drops something and I see them do it, I'll return it to them.
"I do bad things for bad people for bad reasons, and I don't like it. But I do it. Because I have to," Ember said. "It's my job. It's my duty to my Master and to whomever I'm working for. And I do it. I do my job and I do it well.
"But if I'm on a city street and I see a lady that needs help crossing the street, I'll still help her across. I'd do it over and over and over. But that doesn't make me a good person. And I don't know why I do it. I shouldn't care if she needs help. I shouldn't care if the kid's upset about a toy. There are more important things in life. But I still do it."
"I don't understand where you're going with this," Kaldur said.
"I-I suppose, Sir, that I'm wondering what it feels like, or felt like, to be a good person."
"It," Kaldur started to say, but stopped, not sure what exactly to say, or if he even should. "There's nothing like it. Nothing feels better than doing the right thing."
"Then why did you change sides?" Cody asked.
"It's complicated," Kaldur said. "I shouldn't have told you what I just did."
"Nor I, but I did, and I assure you that I will still perform any task you give me to my fullest capability," she said.
He did something that she wouldn't think he'd do. He sat down beside her, his legs out straight in front of him, one arm behind him. He was letting his guard down. That was a good sign.
"But then why did you tell me?" Cody asked. If all the rumors she had heard about him were true, how could he do this? How could he work for his father? How could he still believe that being a hero was the best thing ever, basically, and do the things he's doing? Cody didn't understand.
"I don't know," Kaldur said, shaking his head. "You remind me of an old friend. We used to talk a great deal. We would always be honest with one another. I could tell her anything."
So he still feels the same why, even when he's bad and doesn't know who I really am."The one that used to own the feather?" Cody asked.
Kaldur nodded his head, turning his head to look at her. He shifted his body away from the window and gently took her face in one hand, making her face him so he could look at her face. "You look like her," he admitted. "You sound like her. You fight like her. If I didn't know any better, I would think you were her."
"And why don't you?" Cody asked.
He let go of her and turned back to the window. "You do things she would never do," he said. "Things she would never feel right doing."
"I don't feel anything," Cody said. She leaned her head against the glass, crossing her arms over her chest. She was speaking only truth. She didn't feel anything anymore. She had felt so wrong for so long doing what she was and now she thought she was losing who she was.
Was she still doing the right thing? Was it worth getting all that information to her old friends? Was it doing any good? Was it worth Cody doing so many bad things for such a small, or even nonexistent benefit? Was it worth hurting a teenage girl? Was it worth cutting into her skin, making her bleed and scream and cry just to get some information that may or may not be doing any good?
"Nor do I," Kaldur admitted. That almost broke Cody's heart. She wouldn't wish that on anybody.
"You should retire for the evening," Kaldur suddenly said.
Cody nodded. "Yes, Sir," she said. Before turning to leave, she looked straight into his eyes, his familiar pale green eyes that used to hold so much light and goodness in them, and said, "Whatever you tell me, Sir, will stay between us. You have my word. And I'm always good on my word. I just wanted you to know that."