These Black Eyes Chapter 141: Smoke and Mirrors, a teen titans fanfic

141. Smoke and Mirrors

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Initialize Surveillance Protocols 11/21-SH (Yes/No)?

"Yes"

Initializing....

Initialization Process Complete

Protocols 11/21-SH In Effect

Input Devices at 120 Efficiency

Power Resources 98 And Holding At Nominal Rate Of 0.002 Decrease

Automatic Sensors In Effect

Opening Program "Rahab's House"

Subject: Blake Glover

Location: Warehouse In East Disrtict of City

Date: October 15, 2004

Time: 0113 Hours

Focusing In....

Recording...

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

There was a ring of squad cars beneath the black night. Police lights strobed red and blue and white and back again against the concrete piers and dark waters of the Bay. A yellow line was stretched before the gaping doors of a spotless warehouse with the number '4146' emblazoned across the top. Officers stood in clusters outside, handheld radios squabbling and screeching in a sickening cricket cadence between them. From inside the warehouse, lightning flashes of cameras could be sensed.

One last squad car pulled up. The engine cut off and the driver filed out. The front passenger's side opened slowly, and a balding journalist of short stature and a weathered face slinked out.

Blake Glover gazed at the ceiling. He peered up. His eyes narrowed.

'4146'.

A blink.

Blake took a deep breath and sauntered forward. "Okay...where to begin?"

A single body walked out from the thick crowd of officers and approached Glover. It was Commissioner Decker's right hand man, the lieutenant.

"So you did show up."

"You've given me the opportunity," Glover replied. "I'm not about to turn it down."

"You do realize that we'd appreciate it if you didn't reveal anything that you're about to see here until the next day or two when Decker deems it safe for the pub—"

"I'm not doing a cover story," Glover said.

"????" the lieutenant eyed the middle-aged man quizzically.

Glover stared back. "I'm not doing any story at all."

A beat.

"V-Very well then.....follow me," the officer motioned with his finger and trudged on towards the warehouse.

Glover held his breath and followed along.

They approached the tape.

The lieutenant lifted it for Glover to slip under. He said: "I'm surprised, Mr. Glover."

"About what?" the man ducked the tape.

"Your normal enthusiasm is lacking. I've seen hungrier Jain monks than you. If this isn't for a story...then what are you here for?"

"Let's just say....I don't expect to see something in here that a mortal soul would like....," Glover uttered.

The lieutenant nodded. "Then I guess you don't need me to warn you to plug your nose."

"......"

The officer led the journalist into the dimly lit warehouse.

There were scarcely any cargo or material inside the building worth storing. Maybe a crate or two. A fishing net in the corner. But beyond that, there was merely a gigantic waste of space.

A line of officers stood with their backs to the two entering souls. Things beyond them flashed and strobed.

Glover took deep breaths.

The lieutenant cut ahead, parted two of the police officers, and led the journalist through.

A second line of bodies formed. Investigators. Detectives. They had set up three floodlights on stands that were aimed at the Eastern Wall of the warehouse's interior. They held cameras up and took shot after shot after shot.

Flash! Flash! Fl-Flash!

The lieutenant came to a stop.

So did Glover.

A beat.

"An inspector called in this morning," the lieutenant said somberly. "He said his job was to check on the warehouse's activities on a daily basis. This warehouse is being leased to a company known as 'SeaWings, Inc'. A manufacturer of fins for speedboats....supposedly. The inspector hadn't heard any word from the renters in days. And just this morning when he checked on the warehouse, he sensed a terrible smell from inside. He got the owner of the place to open the warehouse up. And they found this. Now—we've yet to conduct some research—but we're all pretty sure that this work is at least a few days old."

A beat.

A sniff.

The lieutenant scrunched his nose up and groaned. "Been a while since any of us have seen something this messed up."

"........," Glover stepped forward. He stayed two feet outside of the chalk line drawn around the scene. The chalk line wasn't in the shape of a body. It was a semicircle stretched outward from the wall, for it had to contain six bodies. At least....what was left of six bodies.

Six bloody bags of meat lay on the floor side by side in a sickeningly orderly fashion. They looked hacked apart—as with a sword—and simultaneously riddled with dozens of grossly large bulletholes. Their faces were ripped into indiscernible shreds. Their limbs had become mangled stubs. The only part of their flesh that showed was a tiny splash of white or dark sternum, and on such immaculate skin a single letter was cut as with a dagger.

Glover's eyes narrowed. He swallowed and scanned his eyes upward.

A huge, dried pool of red covered the wall like a crimson lake within the chalk. The red blood splashed in tendrils like burgundy sawgrass up the metal wall of the warehouse. They stretched up for about a foot and a half in random directions shooting upwards: red light rays. On the far side of the massacre, a line of bloodstains stretched up like a promontory. It formed a right triangle of sorts, with a straight edge of the left side running up and down almost so solidly that it seemed perfect. The right side angled down too softly to be a steady mark of the triangle's degrees. The whole thing looked like a great red needle cut in half. Adding to the cropped nature of the red mosaic, patches of blood formed a horizontal line along a 'top' meridian that stretched eight feet equidistant from the floor. It seemed as if blood had been gathered from the victim's mangled bodies and splashed about in a rectangle, with splotches at the top, rays at the bottom, a thick triangle stretching up on the left, and a huge space of pale warehouse wall in the center. Only.......the space was not completely empty. In jagged font, a finger or a dagger had painted six letters in blood. It quite legibly read: 'S-T-R-O-K-E'.

".........," Dagger took a shuddering breath.

"Whoever did this to these people....," the lieutenant uttered, "....we're dealing with a madman."

"Quite the creative one too.....," Glover murmured. He swallowed. "H-Have you contacted the Titans?"

The lieutenant blinked. "The Teen Titans?"

Glover slowly nodded.

"No. Why?"

Glover stood up straight. He let out a sigh and turned away from the bloody mess. "No reason......"

Behind him, the cameras continued documenting the scene.

Flash!! Fl-Flash!! Flash!!

FLASH!!!

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"!!!!!!" Blake Glover wheezed. His eyes bulged. He gripped his chest and leaned over in bed, hacking. Coughing. Sweating. He flung a shaky hand over to his bedside table and desperately switched the lamp on.

Click.

An amber light dripped through his loft apartment room.

The middle-aged man stumbled out of bed. Coughing terribly, he limped past translucent tables, leather furniture, and lavish decorations collected from a life of successful journalism. He stumbled towards one of three stools besides a miniature bar. There, an oxygen tank rested for him where he had carelessly left it. He was hyperventilating by the time he fingered the mask and lifted it to his face. His other hand numbly twisted the handle. Fresh air cycled through the cord and into his lips.

He breathed easily. His body sighed with relaxation. His face melted and his eyes closed. He seemed twice as at peace with the oxygen tank than he was inside his own bed. The coughing disappeared. His lungs worked normally. He sat down on the edge of one stool, his back hunched over. He panted through the mask until his hands stopped trembling. He twisted the handle of the tank again and cut off the facilitated oxygen. Glover then lowered the mask and sat back, exhaling. Getting calm again.

Silence......

"....."

The man's weather eyes reopened. His comb-over was splayed across his shining crown. He bit his lip, stood up, and shuffled across the apartment to his desk. His workspace was no longer the tidy relic of his glory years of writing and setting up interviews. Rather...it was a scattered quagmire of photos, scraps of paper, newspaper clippings, tape cassettes, video cassettes, three-and-a-half-inch floppies, and CD-Rs. Despite the chaos, there was something akin to order in the displacement. Almost all the scribblings were in Glover's own handwriting. The dates on many of the exhibits were either identical or in relation to one another. And words and phrases showed up commonly over and over again.

"Red." "Stroke." "Earth." "Piers." "Red." "July 5, 2004." "Gotham." "Dragonflare." "Red." "Bay." "Smoke." "Blood." "Red." "Red." "Red."

Glover eyed the mosaic before him, spending time and effort in the process as if he was reading a magic-eye painting. His optics spun over themselves and landed him in the same spot. He exhaled and sad limply in his desk chair. After a beat, he reached over under a clutter of paper shreds and produced a voice recorder. He slipped a miniature cassette tape inside, rewound it, hit the record button, swallowed, and spoke exhaustingly forth:

"The fifteenth of October. Two thousand and four. Er.....j-just a little after midnight. I can't sleep. Somewhere between the coughing fits and the digestion of all I've come across in my searches lately is keeping me up. I never intended for this to become the nightmare that it now is. But now I have no choice but to confront it. Two and a half months ago, I discovered that I have a malignant cancer in my lungs. This revelation has come to me practically overnight. I would be at a rush to save myself with all of my resources....if saving myself was possible. My doctors have not been very optimistic. And second opinions have turned into third opinions and have turned into fourth opinions and so on—all leading me to this one simple conclusion. The legacy of my life shall end a lot sooner than I originally anticipated. It doesn't get much more bleak than that. I suppose that explains why I am so adamant about enacting this search....and why I am so dedicated to the analysis of this one particular issue which I am bound to call my last great feat of research and information."

Glover glanced at the desk. He glanced beyond it at a slightly-more-orderly assortment of documents and VHS tapes and gathered material.

"There is......there is a secret pattern at work in my world. A rippling current in the bottom of the pool of the underground. I need not get into great details on this review. I've written far more detailed supplements over the last two months. Between doctors visits and public meetings, I've worked endlessly and diligently on examining this one topic. And it is something that—for the life of me—I cannot attribute a name or a title to. Heheh....how humorous for a dying man to invest all of his energies into a wordless epithet. But that is part of the allure....the mystery that draws me in."

He pivoted about and peered out the black night beyond his loft apartment's windows.

"I have found—over the last ten weeks—countless documents, testimonies, and incidents that all point to a spirit of unease and paranoia in the world of crime. Bloody murders, computer hacking, psycho-physical phenomena....everything is pointing to a grand conspiracy that ultimately results in a countdown to.....t-to something. And it is my attempt to find out what that 'something' is. For at this moment, I am almost inclined to believe that even my cancerous body will live to see the culmination of these somber prophecies. This destiny that seems to wrap around the neck of a phrase. A pair of words that stab at me down the dark threads of this endless, mind-numbing yarn..."

Glover slid open a drawer inside his desk. Inside was a single piece of paper in red ink. He pulled the scrap out, held it before him, and uttered:

"'Red....Aviary.....'"

A beat.

He dropped the scrap—fluttering—back down into the drawer.

"It started two months ago shortly following my first test results. I was spending extra hours at work one evening at the station and was just about to head on home....."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"Mr. Glover, sir?"

"........"

"Mr. Glover?"

"......."

"......Blake?"

The journalist looked up.

Avery was looking at him with a sideways glance of concern. "Are you allright, sir?"

"I....uhm......y-yeah....," Glover ran a nervous hand over his half-bald head.

"You seem preoccupied."

"In this job, I'm always thinking."

"I could have sworn you were on 'vacation' still," Avery smirked.

Glover shrugged. The two walked down a lonely hallway towards the parking garage with briefcases in tow. "I make excuses....but I never really stop thinking."

"What ever became of that trip to the lung center?"

Silence.

"Goodnight, Avery...," Glover said in an exhausted voice.

"......," the assistant quietly exited ahead of the journalist. He held the door open, but was silent.

Glover took it as he stepped out of the inside of the building. The men said nothing to each other.

While Avery walked off to some nondescript part of the parking garage, Glover turned immediately right. He didn't have to park far from his office...being the man of his stature in the station. He was halfway through getting his keys out and unlocking the car when he heard a loud clattering sound from across the claustrophobic domain.

The man—startled—coughed uncontrollably and spun towards the location of the sound. The briefcase shook in his grasp.

Glover barely caught sight of a shadow darting down the parking garage. A janitor door set in the wall was halfway through swinging to a creaking stop.

".......," Glover blinked. He looked down the incline of the parking garage. A beat. He looked at the janitor's door. "......" He locked his car again and marched towards the doorway.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Glover found himself in a huge utility closet. But a door at the far end of it was opened, which led to a stairwell. The stairwell led to Glover to the basement level of the station, and another open door. After a stroll down a barren hallway that Glover didn't even know existed, he marched out through an open door into a place he DID know existed. The 'locked and secure' video archives of the station.

It didn't take the journalist long to figure out that something had been stolen, most likely now in the arms of the shadowed runaway. But it was the discovery of what in specific had been stolen...as made evident when Glover happened upon the smashed container marked '07/02/2004'."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"It was the backup videos of Wyldecarde...," Glover spoke into his tape recorder. "Someone had broken into the vault and stolen the footage my boys took of Noir during his fight and rescue of random citizens along the City highway the same day that Phaser Labs suffered its huge explosion."

He shifted in his seat and leaned back with a sigh.

"Naturally, I was devastated. Though—perceivably—it would have made little difference. I agreed to never go public with the footage, even if it meant vindicating Wyldecarde's roguish actions at the time. I was under pressure to keep Noir's heroism secret. And in time—as fate would reveal—Wyldecarde became responsible for his own saved legacy."

Glover swiveled towards the shadows in his chair. His eyes narrowed.

"For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what someone would have wanted with the tapes. Much less how the tapes were stolen. I suspected someone from within the station. But I didn't report it. I guess Avery was right at the time. I was preoccupied. Nevertheless....history would ironically try to contact me....."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Glover sat at the desk in his office one afternoon. He was perusing articles on local charity events. He sighed and rubbed heavy fingers into his temples.

There was a knock on his door. Then a sliding sound.

"????"

Glover glanced up. His eyes narrowed.

A white envelope lay between his floor and the doorframe.

"......."

Glover got up, shuffled over, and knelt down. He took the envelope in his grasp. Ripping it open, he pulled out a folded piece of notebook paper.

On it, the words simply read:

Mr. Glover,

I stole some video tapes from our vault. I went somewhere. I gave them to somebody.

I do not remember any of it.

Please, help me. Meet me on the centermost bench at the Bayside Plaza tonight during the matinee showing. I don't know who else to talk to. I'm afraid. So very afraid.

Sincerely,

An Associate.

The journalist's lips parted. He looked down the hallway. He rushed out a few feet. He glanced down both ways. He saw no one. After a moment, Glover was aware of secretaries staring strangely at him. The middle-aged man cleared his throat, marched back into his office, and shut the door behind him.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"I think—with my life becoming more and more bleak—I've still managed to keep hold of some of my rebellious qualities. I know I should have contacted the producers about what was going on, but I decided to go out on a limb. I was desperate for something.....something original. Something to sweep me up and away from the funk I was in. And even if it meant dealing with a strange thief from within, then so be it. I had a good hypothesis as to who it was anyways. One reporter in particular—that week—had been missing quite a few days of work."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"Gary Sills.....," Glover whispered to himself.

The journalist was slowly trudging into the Bayside Plaza. The sun had set, and the theatre lights were aglow with electric magic. Dozens of citizens half the journalist's age mingled in the food court and storefronts. But Glover's eyes were on a huddled figure alone on a bench. Pale and paranoid.

Yet familiar.

"G-Glover.....," the man stood up on wobbly legs.

"Take it easy, Gary....," Glover said with an outstretched hand. "Sit down."

Gary swallowed. He sat down on the end of the bench and held his shaky hands together.

".....," Glover sat beside him.

Silence.

The men watched young people move to and fro. High schoolers laughed and joked and flirted before them like some back and forth parade.

"Those tapes were expensive."

"I-I know, sir. I know....."

"Then why did you—"

"Look at me, Glover," Gary gestured. "You know me, don't you?? At least you've read some of my stuff! I have a reputation!! I-I make a living!! A pretty damn good living!! I have a wife and kids and a two-story house and two cars and a dog for God's sake!! Why....WHY would I steal those tapes??"

"........," Glover looked at Mr. Sills as if the man had some terrible plague.

The fellow reported took a deep breath and tried to calm down. "Maude....my wife....she thinks I need to see a doctor or something."

"Are you coming down with something? It's almost flu seas—"

"No.....NO! A different kind of doctor....," Gary ran two shaking hands through his hair. "And.....I-I'm almost tempted to agree with her." He shuddered and stared off into the ever-darkening night. "I....I think I'm going insane, Mr. Glover. I can't seem to....have a finger on what I'm doing anymore. It feels as if I've lost control of everything in my life. Literally.....l-literally....."

Glover shifted uncomfortably. "That still doesn't explain why you took the vid—"

"I know. I know." Gary swallowed. "I....I only have brief flashes. Tiny recollections."

"What do you mean??" Glover asked.

Gary bit his lip. "......I.......I did take those videos, Glover. I know because I saw the door to the vault and utility rooms being smashed open. I saw my hands rummaging through the files for the videos. I saw the street and sidewalks blurring past me while blood rushed through my arteries. And I saw the videos being given away. But....even though I know I was doing it all, I didn't feel like I was the perpetrator. It was like I was being hung from some invisible strings floating above my body the entire time. I.....I was just not in control of myself, Glover. I wasn't. The only thing I could do was speak. Everything else......I swear.....they were in somebody else's hands."

"So...you do remember," Glover blinked. "But—"

"How can I explain it?? You'd have to have been there in my body. Hell...someone had to have been in my body. But it sure wasn't me."

"But you could speak??" Glover asked. "So at least you had some sort of control??"

"N-No! I mean yes.....nnghh....I don't know. Even she couldn't answer me."

Glover raised an eyebrow. "She??"

Gary shivered. "The.....th-the girl I gave the videos to."

"You gave the videos to a girl?"

".............."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Gary Sills panted for breath.

He sweat all over.

He stood in a dark alleyway on the northeast end of town.

A floodlight stretched out of the brick wall before him. It practically blinded him. And yet—no matter how much he tried—he couldn't bring himself to stare away from it. His eyes were burning.

A feminine figure stood in the glare of the light. Her face was turned invisible by the burning brightness. She leaned a hand on her hip and gestured with the other.

"You kept him alive. How very noble of you."

Gary Sills panted.

Her voice had a touch of a British accent to it. She added: "You could have picked someone a pinch more young and fit for the job, ya know. Not this daft piece of shit."

Gary breathed: "Who....are.....you....."

"Give me the tapes."

Gary handed the VHS copies over without arguing. He watched himself in disbelief.

"Very good...," the girl took the tapes in her grasp. There was a whining sound....then another burning pulse. FLASH!!! Her hand exploded and shattered the VHS to burning embers that scattered to the floor.

Gary's lip quivered.

"What.....a-are you doing??"

The girl's body shrugged. "Merely scaring the birds away before they can be caged." A pause. "Let him go already."

There was an intense flash of blue light. Gary's body vibrated. Something aqua-green streaked out of him. The man sighed and fell to the hard ground below.

Out cold.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"I woke up at daylight....," Gary shuddered and said. He bent over on the bench beside Glover and spoke: "....I was gone. The girl wasn't there anymore."

"Who was she talking to?"

Gary looked up. "I-I beg your pardon?"

"I'm sorry...just.....it almost seemed like she was talking to someone," Glover said. "........besides you."

A beat.

"Y-Yeah....just as I felt....," Gary sighed. "Maybe someone was standing behind me. An accomplice. I-I couldn't turn around and see for the life of me."

"So....she destroyed the tapes?"

Gary nodded.

"Did you see any sign of them when you woke up?"

"Sir...I ran out of there the soonest I could," Gary shuddered. "I didn't care so much about the VHS tapes. I never did. I would never have stolen them in the first place! You h-have to believe me!"

"................"

Gary sighed. He ran two shaking hands through his hair. "I'm afraid to show my face outside. It's hard enough to be here with you in this plaza. I'm afraid it'll happen again. I"ll lose control and start stealing things...."

"Why are you telling me this, Gary?"

"........," Glover bit his lip. "I.......I think you can help, Glover."

"Help you?"

"N-No....," Gary shook. "Not me. Nothing can help me."

"........"

"Those tapes were wanted for a reason. And I know you played a big part in filming them," Gary looked at Glover. "Your cameramen.....they aren't so good at keeping secrets. I think some of them rue the fact that you never did air whatever it was you filmed that day in July."

Glover glanced off.

Gary leaned forward. "This has got to do with....w-with Wyldecarde, doesn't it?"

Glover gave him a suspicious look. "How do you know that?"

".........," Gary reached into his pocket. He produced thin object. "I-I awoke with this.....in my pocket...."

"......," Glover reached forward and took the object from Gary's hands. He looked at it up close.

It was a razor-edged joker card. There was wear and tear on it...showing that the acrobatic host had used it to fling at someone or something.

"Turn it over...."

Glover did so.

There were words written on the back of it. In red ink.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"'The game is not over. The head dealer still has a hand.'"

Glover held the playing card in one hand and the voice recorder in the other.

"Gary had no clue as to what it meant. And—to be frank—neither did I. But my curiosity was piqued."

Glover lowered the playing card back to the desk. He then picked up a map with a part of the East district highlighted.

"I kept Gary's story secret. The next day, I went on a drive with Avery to the lower part of Town. I had somehow coaxed the specifics of Gary's late night marathon out of him."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

One door slammed shut.

Then another.

Avery and Glover marched out of their limousine.

Avery seemed uneasy. He spun around and glanced both ways down the street. The neighborhood was lined to the brink with litter, paper bags, shopping carts, and broken glass. Dogs barked and sirens could be heard in the distance. It wasn't a good place to park a vehicle with a built-in wine cooler.

"Uhm.....might I ask why we're creatively committing suicide, sir?"

"I'm looking for something here...."

"What, exactly?"

Glover took a breath. "The bottom of the deck."

"Huh?"

"Just stick close to me. You've got more muscle."

"Uh.....okay."

Glover sauntered down the dirty alleyway. He glanced at the walls in the noonday Sun as he walked. Old red brick formed the layout of the structure. And the walking space was thin, just as he remembered from Gary Sills' account. The shadows in the alleyway increased, and soon they reached a dead end with a run-down door hanging over a set of concrete steps.

"I don't see no poker game here, sir."

Glover's eyes narrowed. He tilted his head up.

There indeed was a lamp there. But the bulb was completely shattered.

"Hmmm.....," the old journalist blinked. "The lamp's shattered."

"Is that supposed to mean anything, sir?"

Glover spun about. "Do you.....see anything?"

"Sir?"

"On the ground. Perhaps the remains of a VHS tape or two?"

Avery scanned the concrete below them as well. The two men paced around liked chickens looking for feed. But not a scrap of desired junk could be found.

"I'm....um.....getting nothing....," Avery muttered.

"......," Glover gazed towards the door. A beat. He walked over towards it. He tried the knob.

"Um....sir?" Avery asked, a bit confused.

"It's stuck....," Glover grunted. He pushed against the door a bit. "I bet whoever was here before had a stake in this building."

Avery walked up. "Isn't that trespassing?"

"This building is condemned, Avery," Glover said. "We'd only be half breaking the law by walking in."

"I don't like the sound of th—"

"Push the door open, Avery."

"But why??!?!"

Glover smirked. "Because you're a hell of a lot younger and stronger than me."

"...........," Avery sighed. He brushed Glover to the side. "I'm no Indiana Jones, but I suppose some muscle could do the trick."

"Or empty lungs."

"Huh?"

Glover looked off depressingly. "Never mind. Just do your job."

Avery gritted his teeth and--

WHAM!!

--forced the door open with his shoulder.

Creeeeeeak.

The wooden door gave way.

".......," Glover peered in. He stepped forward a space or two. Avery filed in behind him.

The interior was dusty. Dark. And devoid of any sort of life. Wooden boards covered windows on the far side. Sunlight filtered in through thin cracks in the wall, casting a fine-toothed-comb of bright yellow on the soiled floor. Wooden furniture populated the space in random spots. Shredded bits of paper and cardboard suggested a hasty retreat of questionable materials. And as Glover trained his eyes upon the scene, he took notice of rectangular shaped spots where the dust had been pushed aside. And in such spots, the ground was remarkably clean.

"Someone's been in here recently....," the journalist said.

"What do you mean, sir?"

Glover pointed. "Those clean areas in the dust. They look like a t.v. or computer or something was just there."

"T.V.?? What are you talking ab—"

The two men noticed the electric outlet in the wall. A very fresh-looking and clean outlet.

".............oh. Uhm........that's wyrd."

Glover glanced at a moldy pile of papers beneath a nearby table. He walked over to it.

Avery stood behind, scratching his head. "Why would a condemned, abandoned building have a fresh source of electricity in it? Especially one this old?"

Glover didn't respond. He reached his hand and brushed the top piece of the moldy pile away. To his surprise, something contrastingly clean rested beneath the dust mountain. A manila folder of sorts. The material of the folder was immaculate. Like it had been processed barely the day before. Glover couldn't help but think it was placed there for someone to find.

"What do you have there, sir?"

"I'm not sure...," Glover turned it over. The closed flap had a phrase written in crimson ink. 'Chime of the Red' "But it's gotten my attention."

"I hope it's enough attention for one day...," Avery sweat. "I've got a really bad feeling about this. I think we should get out of here—"

Creeeeak.

"......"

Both men looked over.

The door to the alleyway behind them had shut on its own.

"........."

Glover blinked. "...........huh."

RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!!!!! Suddenly, bullets streamed explosively through the wooden frame of the door. CR-CR-CRACK!!!

"Get down!!!" Avery plowed himself and Glover to the floor.

P-PING!! CLANG!!! TH-THUNK!!!

Bullets ricocheted across the wall and tabletop beyond the two men.

Glover coughed and hacked and wheezed.

Avery gritted his teeth, slithered forward beneath the invading bulletfire, and dragged the middle-aged journalist towards a door on the far side of the room. "Move!! Move!!!"

Glover was dragged along. He looked down between his legs. The manila envelope was left behind on the floor. He reached for it--

RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!!!

P-P-PING!!

Glover flinched. Flecks of wood and plaster showered his body. He snatched the envelope and scurried along with Avery towards the door. Blind bullet-fire trailed their heels.

CR-CR-CR-CRACK!!!!!

"Nnngh!!" Avery hopped up and kicked the door down.

WHACK!!!

Sunlight exploded in.

"Go!!" Avery shouted as he and Glover ducked into the outside world.

The wind felt freezing against their already shocked skin as they desperately dashed down the sidewalk, practically teleported through the doors to the limo, and screeched off down the road.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"Looking back....I'm amazed that no cops pulled us over...," a tired Glover spoke into his voice recorder. "Avery and I were hardly in our right mind then in there. It's not every day that you get violently shot at. Now I'd seen my fair share of frightening stuff as of late. A violent altercation in a subway.....Wyldecarde's 'confrontation' with the Titans....and then the Puppet King's abduction of myself and scores of other innocent citizens. But poor Avery...he was not used to anything overtly dramatic. So I gave him the next few days off to collect his cool. I knew he had many questions to ask. Like why the Hell we got involved in random gunfire. But the truth is...I had no answer for him. But I thought that I was soon about to. Because—as harrowing as that situation was—I did not emerge empty-handed..."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Glover sat in his office. He took a deep breath. He peered over at the knob to his door ten feet away. It was locked. He looked back down at his desk. The manila envelope waited for him patiently. He swiftly untied it and opened the flap with "'Chime of the Red'" on it.

Inside the envelope were three paper-clipped groups of papers. The papers were random schematics, data sheets, time tables, computer reports. Scores of numbers and zeroes appeared on them...the most common of which was quite obviously the four digit string: "0321".

Glover carefully separated each of the three groups and examined them individually. He found that there actually was some text. Just enough—in fact—to provide three identities to the different groups of documents.

"City Drug Rehab Ward." "City Power Grid." "City Zoo."

The journalist's eyes narrowed. He shuffled through the groups of papers and focused on the one for the City Power Grid. He found the page with most text on it. It was a progress report of sorts. It listed a specific date in late July and detailed a power failure that happened in the wee hours of the morning. The time exactly.....3:21 a.m.

"..........."

Glover glanced over at the side of his office where he kept extensive notebooks of local contacts and phone listings. He rubbed his chin in thought.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"The director of overnight technical operations in the management of the City Power Grid is a woman by the name of Dawn Graham. Ms. Graham was working the early morning shift of July twenty-first, two thousand and four. When I called her and asked her about any technical malfunctions at that particular time, she seemed very nervous over the phone. Regardless, she gladly called me in to visit her at the management facility of City Power. There was a feeling of...bitter irony in how willing she was to accept my inquiries at that particular moment. That's when I started to realize that I was onto something that—in spite of its eerie ambiguity—was destined to suck me in until I found out something so significant that it'd effect the entire City as we all know it. It turned out to be a happy obsession. I completely forgot about my medical test results.....much less the sounds of the bullets that had streaked over my head just the day before..."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"Please, Mr. Glover. Sit down. This has been...quite the stressful kind. Please don't mind the shape of my office."

"Not at all, in fact I think it looks nice," Glover said......then discreetly shoved off a pile of shredded paper from the chair as he sat down. He faced Ms. Graham over a desk piled sky-high with folders and disorganized spreadsheets. "You seem quite......busy....."

Ms. Graham, a woman too old for her youth practically pulled at her stringy hair as she panted and replied: "You must understand....ever since we've tried inputting the latest security subroutine into our Net, things have been hectic. Breakneck speed. That sort of stuff, you know."

"Um....I-I called you because—"

"A glitch."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You're asking about the glitch, aren't you? Everybody's asking about the glitch! It's about time someone in the media took a look into it!! Believe me, sir. Normally I'd run from you. But at this point, I think the truth should be made known. Freaky things are happening. And no better can you see it than in our system."

"Uh....okay....," Glover nodded. "Ahem. I-I found some printouts. I can't tell you where I got them. But believe me—I didn't do much to get them. Er...that is to say, I didn't ask anyone to make these printouts that I found. I just happened upon them. But now that I have, they caught my attention. You mention a 'glitch', huh? Well...tell me. What happened on July twenty-first? At twenty-one minutes after three, no less...?"

The woman leaned back and folded her arms. "Well...to put it simply...there was a City-wide power outage."

"There was??" Glover asked.

"It was in the middle of the night. Most of the population didn't notice it. And it lasted for only fifteen minutes, approximately."

"Then what is the big concern?" Glover asked.

Ms. Graham replied: "Our system was infected. And, sir, when the City's Power Grid is infected...that's a very severe thing. Someone had somehow polluted the digital network we were using. In order to do that, she or he had to break through ten separate security barriers."

"A virus?"

"A terribly strong one, if it was," Ms. Graham shuddered. "But it's not so much the potency of the glitch as it was the nature of it that has had me—and all my co-workers—on edge."

Glover leaned forward. "Care to explain?"

"..........."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

There was a beeping chime.

The door to the control room unlocked.

Dawn Graham stepped hurriedly in, stringing her keycard back around her neck.

"What's the status?"

Four or five workers scurried around an array of controls, keyboards, and switches inside a twenty foot by twenty foot room lined with glowing screens displaying the City's power layout.

A worker replied: "We started getting reports of power cutoffs from sub-grids twenty-nine through fifty-two. Backup reserves are working...for now. It's just a matter of time before we'll have to reboot the system and reset the core distribution."

"Damn....are we that desperate?"

"Look at the schematics yourself," another worker handed Ms. Graham a still-warm printout.

The woman scanned them with her eyes.

A beat.

She placed the sheets down.

"Do it."

"Hoo boy, here we go."

"Concentrate, everyone. Let's make it just like practice," Ms. Graham strolled over to a chair in front of the master controls and typed a keystroke. "All right. Remember, we do this one step at a time. First we destabilize the auxiliary banks, then lower the energy distribution to the central branches. Follow my lead by the word. Got it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Right."

"Got it."

"Good," the director nodded. "On my mark. Let's get this right, people."

She fingered the controls.

The time read 0321 hours.

"Countdown in T-Minus 10....9...8....7...." she began.

"Ms. Graham!!"

"My-My terminal!!"

The woman looked over. "What is it, John??"

The worker gestured emphatically at his computer.

Murmurs.

Gasps.

Graham stood up and craned her neck.

The computer monitor was flickering madly. It glowed from white to yellow to red and stayed there.

"Shit! Mine too!!"

"What's going on?!!?"

"It's....it's some kind of bug!!"

"Quick! Shut it down!"

"I can't!!"

"I've lost secondary controls to the grid!!"

"We're losing the City!!"

"Ms. Graham, what should we do—"

"I'm shutting it all down!' the woman exclaimed.

"But....that'll cut off all the power from the local facili—"

"We don't know what we're dealing with here. It could be a virus. It could be a deficient program. Whatever the case is, I can't let it permanently damage the mainfra—"

"Look!!!"

ZZZZZTTT!!!

Sparks flew from the first monitor that broke down.

The worker jumped back. "Jeez!! What the Hell?!?!"

"A power surge?!?!"

"Impossible! Even we don't have the controls to—"

"SOMEONE GET ME A FIRE EXTINGUISHER!!"

ZZZZZZZTT!!! ZZZZZZT!!!

Two more monitors exploded.

Ms. Graham gasped. She glanced at her screen as her hands madly keystroked to shut everything down. But her ministrations froze in mid-action. Her screen had crashed into a DOS prompt with a red background and even redder text scrolling down a mile a minute. She couldn't discern the words.

FLASH!!!

Workers gasped.

Red light splashed across the room.

Ms. Graham looked up, panting.

The huge visual displays across the wall were short-circuiting. Dotted lights on the power grid map disappeared one by one until three separate strings of jointed lights remained—flickering—and roughly spelling out the word: 'RED'. There was a brief but nightmarish clatter of every printer in every building printing at the same time, followed by a final flash of red and more flying sparks and....

Darkness.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"It was like a scene out of Poltergeist," Dawn Graham murmured. She ran a shaky hand through her stringy hair and refocused her gaze on Blake Glover over the desk. "Everything sorta.....came 'alive' then 'died' right before us. Thankfully, one computer hadn't.....er....'exploded', and we were able to access the basic program of the power grid and successfully reboot the energy distribution before the City had an official 'blackout'. It could have been a lot worse, despite the freakiness of it all. Again, it was at night...and places like the Hospital and Prison had auxiliary power to rely on. That was during the lull in crime here in the City. The Teen Titans were absent for about two to three weeks and the City was being guarded instead by Green Arrow and his sidekick Speedy. There wasn't much to worry about....unless you were one of us cooped up in that creepy place that early morning..."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"It's back online....," John said.

Dawn Graham wiped her brow. "Okay....just what happened?"

"I can't run a diagnostic right now," another worker said. "But maybe I can run upstairs and try one of Department Four's terminals? Surely they're back up and running at this point. Maybe we can trace the problem back to a hacker or something."

"What makes you think this was a hacker's doing? Maybe it was a bug in an old program. Y2K four years late....heh."

"Guys...take a look at this!"

Graham and the others wandered over to another worker leaning over a string of printouts from one machine.

"Is this wyrd or what?"

"Lemme see....," Graham took the ribbon of paper in her grasp. She put on tiny reading glasses and narrowed her eyes.

The printout was a constant chain from top to bottom of 'REDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDRED'.

"........," a chill ran over Graham's body.

"Over here!!"

The group looked over.

John stood by another spool. "It's the same thing over here!"

"And here."

"And here, man."

"What's up with that?"

Graham shuddered. She looked over the printout again.

It seemed to hiss at her.

'REDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDRED'

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Glover sat in his office.

He brushed the City Power Grid to the side.

He held up the printouts from the City Zoo next.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"Dawn Graham's account only confused me more," Glover spoke into the recorder as he sat in his apartment. "I kept trying to look for a connection ahead of time. I was too eager for a pattern. So far, the only thing in common between the Power Grid's glitch, Gary Sills' ordeal with the VHS tapes in the alleyway, and Avery's and my near death experience was this heavy, over-empowering sense of eeriness. All that feeling did was push me along. I felt a cold, cold fear clawing up my throat. I almost dreaded having to take this thing to the zoo as well."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"I could have sworn one of you local journalists did a cover story about what's been happening here lately," spoke Gionvanni Gent, the chief zookeeper. He lead Blake Glover—after closing hours—down an electrically lit path beyond the central cages and exhibits. A gated trail lead them to a portable building that served as the Zoo's main office. Once inside, Mr. Gent showed Glover a chair to sit in. "This is the sort of thing that brings people to the Zoo nowadays. Drama. Craziness."

Glover smiled ever so slightly. "Nobody can ask for too much drama."

Gent fetched a plastic notebook from a fresh spot in a nearby bookshelf. He marched back over and held it before the journalist. "I suppose I must warn you......are you squeamish?"

"My digestive system is an old thing, Mr. Gent," Glover spoke. "It's learned to handle anything."

"......," the zookeper blinked. "Well....I sure as Hell hope you're right." He held the notebook down for Glover to take. "Here....take a gander."

".....," Glover bowed his head. He opened the first of the page and gazed on what turned out to be the plastic sheathe of a photo album.

Glover soon wished he hadn't opened the book to begin with.

He visibly grimaced. "Wh-What........is that."

"That....," Gent uttered, pointing to the first Polaroid on the overleaf. "....is what's left of a lemur's digestive track."

Glover stared at a photo taken of the City Zoo's lemur cage. The frame caught sight of the darkly lit, back corner of the enclosure. What looked like a ball of rolled-up fur rested in the darkness. But it was spotted and strewn with tiny red ropes that stained the fluffy fur in crimson. A few inches away, a meaty rag of red lay in the dirt.

"My god....did....did another animal get inside the cage or something?" Glover gulped. "That's horrible...."

"Another animal did do that to the lemur indeed," Gent nodded. "The only thing is...," he scratched the back of his neck. "It wasn't another species."

"........," Glover looked up from the chair. "You mean to say....the other lemurs did this?"

Gent nodded. "Overnight. Nearly two months ago. Late July. One of the security guards heard a terribly high-pitch squeal...."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Morgan Knox ran across the grounds.

He panted.

He rested a palm to the hilt of a gun at his side.

His feet crunched through the mulch in between paths.

He stopped dead before the lemur cage...a fifteen-foot tall, cylindrical thing with a pale lamp hovering above. A thin amber glow illuminated halfway through the metal bars in a sickly manner. Things were hauntingly quiet by the time the guard arrived.

"Okay....who's here screwing with the animals?!?!" Morgan barked. A beat. "Show yourself!!"

Silence.

He kept one hand resting on his gun. His other grasped the flashlight and aimed it into the cage.

Click.

A thin, yellow spotlight splashed through the bars. A broken circle appeared on the other side, rippling gently across tree branches, a mulch-covered floor, a pale white wall, and then settling towards the circle.

Morgan paused. He narrowed his eyes.

Something red, pulpous, and glistening twitched in the corner. Gray fur twitched in the cold wind.

Morgan exhaled. He bit his lip, swallowed, and walked straight up to the metal bars for a better look--

CL-CLANK!!!

A lemur with bulging eyes pressed itself up against the bars. It howled with a blood-soaked, furred mouth. "SKRIIIII!!!!! SKRIIIIII!!!!! SKRIIIIIII!"

"DAAH! Jeez!!!" Morgan jumped back, the flashlight in his grasp shaking.

CLANK!!! CL-CLANK!!!

Two more lemurs banged up against the inside of the bars. They shrieked with pulsing eyes. Thin, furred claws covered in red stretched out through the spaces between the bars.

"..........," Morgan panted. He looked past the mad creatures at the pulpous thing in the corner.

"SKRIIII!!!" the three lemurs hopped down. In the yellow light from Morgan's electric torch, their shadowy forms bounded over to the corner. All three began to rip, tear, and pound upon the dead brother's carcass as they had been doing long before the guard got there. "SKRIIII!! SKRIII-III!!!"

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"Morgan resigned from his post that very night. Heh. Yellow bastard," Gent smirked. "The next two guards we hired noticed similar things. All happening overnight. But with different animals." He pointed at the photo album in Glover's grasp. "They were all documented in there. It wasn't so hard after a pattern formed."

Glover gazed down and reluctantly turned the page. Each open sheathe of the notebook contained a relatively identical looking blob of shredded flesh, blood, and fur. But each was labeled differently...be it "raccoon cage" or "marmoset pin" or "sea otter pool".

"For one thing...each one of them is a mammal that died," Gent said. "And all done by their fellow cage mates. It started happening so fast—and one at a time too. Never two different cages or pens at once. Only one species at a time overnight. We started getting desperate to stop it. Then someone got the bright idea to put all the animals in separate cages. Ya know...keep them safe from each other. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And the last time it happened, it was the prairie dogs that were 'chosen'. We know this because the next morning we found every prairie dog dead in their cage but one. Three out of five of them ripped their limbs and heads apart against the metal bars trying to get at the single one's throat. Damndest thing I ever saw."

Glover shuddered as he turned to a page that showed four cages in a row with all but one prairie dog reduced to half-bloody meat.

"You....uhm....," the journalist fought his lunch down and gazed up at the zookeeper. "You say this all happened overnight?"

"Yeah....just different nights."

"It wouldn't happen to have been.......a specific time overnight, would it?"

".....," the zookeeper scratched his head. He swallowed....then said: "Well....actually....yes...."

Glover's eyes narrowed. "Three in the morning perhaps?"

"Nope. More like twenty after three."

"........."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Glover walked in late that night into his office. He flicked on a light and tossed his briefcase onto the desktop.

He slumped into his chair....and sighed.

"..........."

He gazed at the manila envelope on his desk. He eyed the two clumps of files. One on the City Power Grid. The other on the Zoo. He bit his lip and slid both into the envelope. But when he gazed at the third file, his attention made him freeze. The journalist's eyes narrowed on the words reading: 'City Drug Rehab Ward'. Again he glanced at the digital string '0321'. He groaned.

Riiiiing! Riiiing!

Glover jumped. He looked to his desk phone.

An outside call was coming in.

Riiiiing! Riiiing!

Glover eyed his watch.

'12:53 am'

Riiiing! Riiing!

Glover took a deep breath.

He picked it up.

"........Hello?"

"M-Mr. Glover?"

"Yes. To whom am I speaking with?"

"This is Dr. Schafield. Dr. Schafield with the City Drug Rehabilitation Ward."

Glover's heart stopped momentarily. He glanced meltingly down at the clump of files in his grasp....then back into empty spce.

"Wh-What...er....I-I mean....how can I help you?"

"I didn't expect to actually hear from you at this late an hour. I was just going to leave a message. Actually....I'm rather desperate right now...."

"Desperate? How do you mean, Dr. Schafield?"

"I've heard that you've been making rounds, Mr. Glover. Visits to places where 'odd' things have been happening. Don't be startled. I've actually met with Dawn Graham and Gionvanni Gent on City Council meetings. So I've not had to search hard far to hear of your inquiries."

"How can I interest you, Mr. Schafield?"

There was a pause on the other line. A pause of thought and uncertainty.

Then....

"Could you possibly spare a visit to our facility?"

"This late an hour??"

"By all means, if you're too tired or indisposed, I shall not force you to—"

"N-No....I'm just curious....why would you need to see me this late?"

"Because it's only late at night when it happens, sir."

Glover's eyes narrowed. "When what happens??"

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

With a metallic ring, the double doors to the psychiatric ward of the City Drug Rehabilitation Center opened. Dressed in white, Dr. Schafield and two orderlies walked along with Glover down the checkerboard-floor hallway. It was lined with doors to individual cells. Everything felt terrifically 'white'. Glover felt like he was going insane looking at it all....and smelling the sterility in the air.

"I have worked for over twenty-five years in providing aid to drug addicts and psychotics in this City's rehabilitation programs....," Schafield calmly uttered as they marched down the corridor. "And never have I been prepared for this..."

"Wh-What exactly is 'this'?" Glover asked. He glanced up at a clockface on the pure-white, cinderblock wall as they passed. Both the hour and the minute hand were barely past '3'. It was still dark outside.

"The cells of this hallway are reserved for our most extreme cases of psychotic episodes. Now...over the last five years, modern therapy has greatly reduced the number of people we've had to put inside these cells. The record stands at 'four' for two years ago. But over the last two months...we've had to resort to an unbelievable increase in patients utilizing these spaces."

"Like how many?"

"Eighteen."

Glover's eyes widened. "Eighteen???"

"It is most troubling," Schafield said with a long face. "Especially considering that there's a connection between all of them."

"A connection?"

Schafield shuffled to a stop in front of a cell door that was still open. Inside, two orderlies were fastening a twitching and sweating patient to a safety bed with leather straps all over his body and limbs.

"Every patient that we have to place in here is a drug addict. Specifically, a drug addict to Dragonflare."

"Dragonflare....," Glover murmured aloud. His face brightened a bit. "Yes.....y-yes, I remember that substance. It was connected to the ambiguous legacy of 'Dagger'."

Schafield nodded. "'Dagger' remains to be a proven entity. But Dragonflare is very real. And—consequently due to the nature of the drug's hallucinogenic properties—the psychotic episodes caused by the drug are very real. Real to the people involved. But typically, Dragonflare side effects are random and unique to each individual. It's utterly impossible by scientific understanding for any group of random Dragonflare addicts to....to experience the same horror."

"As in......?" Glover raised a curious eyebrow.

".......," Schafield turned and motioned for the two orderlies to hurry it up.

They workers did so. They fastened the patient tightly and walked out of the cell. They shut the door to the padded room behind them and locked it.

Glover found himself strolling past the other cell doors. He glanced through the criss-crossing wire hatches of the windows to the doors and saw a patient in each room strapped to a table. Every single one of them was twitching and fighting against the restraints. Some uttered curse words while others sobbed incoherent words of terror.

"Right now....are they all experiencing the 'horror'?" Glover asked.

Schafield appeared to be suddenly obsessed with his digital watch. "No...," he shook his head without looking. "They are resting right now...."

"?????" Glover gave the man a pathetic look. "You call THAT resting?"

"Just wait...."

"What're you looking at your watch fo-----," Glover's voice trailed off. His lips pursed. He glanced up at the wall clock.

At precisely that same time, Schafield spoke: "And.......three twenty a.m."

Glover looked through the cell windows.

The orderlies gazed from afar...their eyes tired.

Schafield was silent.

At precisely the same time, each of the eighteen patients stopped squirming and gasping and—for the most part—breathing. Their eyes went wide under sweaty brows and their mouths were clenched shut. They lay back silently on their chair. Still as boards. Quiet as rocks. Glover could feel his heart hear his lungs wheezing.

"And...............," Schafield fingered his digital watch. "..........thirty second past....."

As if on cue, every body slowly began to flex and rise up against the leather straps. It was a gradual process....like the loading of a rocket on its launcher. Every body was trying desperately to sit up straight. In the last half a minute left, every single addict mutely inflated their lungs and stared in absolute, beady-eyed horror at some monstrosity beyond the cinderblock and padded walls.

Glover took a shuddering breath. He looked at the patients....at Schafield...at the clock...then at the patients again.

Schafield tapped his digital clock once....twice....and he breathed: "3:21 am."

"REDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Eighteen mouths exploded.

Eighteen pairs of eyes clenched shut.

Eighteen brows sweat.

Eighteen lungs emptied.

Eighteen patients in eighteen cells with eighteen voices screamed the long-winded word.

All at the same time.

It filled the thin, checkerboard hallway like the acoustics of an opera house filtered through a glass amplifier being dropped on concrete. It was the sort of thing to explode one's heart up into his eardrums.

Glover was so mesmerized and horrified at once that he didn't realize until the last second that Schafield was visibly counting down five of his fingers and—

".............."

All eighteen voices cut off.

All eighteen bodies slumped back against the bed.

All eighteen lungs collapsed.

All eighteen patients went unconscious....relaxed in dead slumber.

The unified scream had lasted a full sixty seconds.

"3:22," Schafield uttered. He and the orderlies numbly looked Glover's way. "A full minute....every night...for the last two months."

Glover's lip quivered. He shook. He shivered. He murmured: "Wh-Why haven't you t-told anyone?"

Schafield seemed to suddenly lose his cool as he swallowed and shuddered forth: "Mr. Glover....it took me four weeks to tell my Priest about this...."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"According to the doctors there, the patients inexplicably lose six hundred calories during each 'scream' alone....," Glover explained into the voice recorder. "Schafield is forced to scrounge around for extra IVs to feed the addicts during the daytime, only for them to hurt themselves with the screaming every night. At exactly the same time too. It wasn't easy to sleep for a few days after making the visit to that ward. Not so much because of the eeriness of it all as it was for the sharp desire to find out more. Things were happening all over the City at the same time early in the morning and in a haunting fashion. But still, I couldn't see a connection with the stolen Wyldecarde tapes or the playing card I had been given by Gary Sills. 'The game is not over. The head dealer still has a hand'. So, I swiftly did a strict no-no thereafter. I went to the police."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"Glover, for the last time...I have no friggin' 'last time'. I don't even have 'first time'!" Decker growled. "If that's not enough of a clue that I'm busy, then go run outside and make love to a telephone pole cuz that's gonna produce far better results than any damn interview with me."

"This isn't an interview," Glover said, helplessly following the police Commissioner around the hazy police department. Officers and clients filed about and worked loudly around them at multiple stations of business. "Don't you understand? I'm not doing a story. I'm trying to understand something!"

"Understand what?!?! That power outages, dead lemurs, and crackheads all have something in common??" Decker grumbled. "I'm currently giving my damndest to cover all bases in the City's downtown as we speak!! For over twenty-four hours, fifteen square City Blocks were covered in absolute darkness when Dr. Light suddenly decided to show off his fart bomb. I've got looting incidents to investigate, property damage in the shopping mall and library and—"

"I understand that must be a great strain on you," Glover nodded. "But what I think I'm following is important!"

Decker paused long enough to give Glover a curious glare. "Since when were you ever someone to go on chivalric crusades, Glover?"

Glover took a deep breath. "I know I've been wrong about a lot of things in my career."

"I'd say."

Glover held his peace. "But....that doesn't stop me from wanting to—"

"What?? Confuse the situation more?? Forget it," Decker marched off. "Contact me when I'm not busy."

"And when will that be?!?!"

"WHEN I'M DEAD!!"

Glover sighed. He turned around and made way to exit the offices--

"Hello, Mr. Glover," spoke the lieutenant.

Glover jumped, a bit startled. He coughed, cleared his throat, and breathed easily. "G-Greetings. Sorry...you startled me."

"Quite a nasty cough you have there."

"Yes....well....to each is own. How can I help you?"

"Actually....," the lieutenant's eyes trailed on the background and then back to Glover. "I was thinking that I could help you."

Glover's eyes narrowed. "You'd be willing to answer some questions?"

The man nodded.

"But.....would Decker approve?"

"Truth is not in the hands of a man such as that," the lieutenant said. He smiled. "Mostly just a gun and a cup of coffee."

Glover grinned crookedly.

"Come....," the lieutenant motioned with his head. "Follow me."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"So you're looking for some connection between these late night phenomena and 'Wyldecarde'??" the lieutenant asked. He was talking to Glover while nonchalantly filing things away in the police records.

Glover stood with his back to the door. He nodded. "The tapes that were stolen—that I nearly lost my neck for—were of Wyldecarde saving over a dozen citizens on and off the highway."

"And you never showed that to the public—"

"Wyldecarde asked me not to."

The lieutenant looked strangely at Glover.

Glover sighed. "Noir.....had other plans up his sleeves."

"Or an ace in his deck."

"Apparently. Slade is dead now."

A beat.

The lieutenant rummaged through a few files and spoke without looking: "And you say that Gary Sills stole the tapes....but did so without knowing it?"

"Exactly....and I'm inclined to believe that of him," Glover said. "That or the other possibility."

"What's that?"

"He's completely and utterly insane. As I'm slowly becoming," Glover coughed.

The lieutenant smirked. "But there was something of real importance in that abandoned building. You were shot at, right?"

"Yeah....by an assault rifle, I'd gather. My studies on gun proliferation filled me in on the sound and ballistics of various types of firearms. I'm pretty sure that was a high-calibre assault rifle that tried to end us."

"Not very easy to find these days," the lieutenant said. "Ever since the Slug and Reload incident months back, even gun stores in the City have been wary about selling large firearms. I think whoever attacked you could have been from outside. A foreigner."

Glover narrowed his eyes. "According to Gary Sills' story....the woman he met had a British accent. She was the one who took the VHS tapes and destroyed them." He gazed up. "Maybe....it was her?"

"Now that's a big assumption."

"I know. I'm no detective. I'm just a journalist."

"You're neither," the lieutenant said. "You're a mortal man desperate for answers to something that doesn't even have a question."

"......."

The lieutenant paused in what he was doing. He spun about and asked Glover: "Back to the 'red' and the screaming and the killer lemurs. You said this all happened at approximately the same time?"

"Yes," Glover nodded. "Around three in the morning."

"......when exactly."

Glover took a deep breath. "3:21 A.M."

"........," the lieutenant leaned back. "I think.....I-I think I might know a possible connection."

"With what?"

"Wyldecarde."

"Seriously?"

"As serious as I can contemplate it," the lieutenant replied. "It still keeps everything feeling.....well....supernatural."

".........," Glover stared.

"Come along....," the lieutenant closed the nearest cabinet and marched into an adjacent room. "Time that you see a VHS tape of our own."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

The two men sat before an array of editing tools and t.v. monitors.

The lieutenant spoke while forwarding a grainy piece of footage. "Slade—as we found out after his death—was notorious for filming everything. He was a master at sticking hidden cameras and microphones all over the place. On the top of the Wayne Enterprise building. Inside the Titan Tower. Even the police department. His lairs would be set up with walls of huge monitors displaying any piece of the City that he so desired. And even his own lairs would have documentation thanks to camera devices. The freighter that he was on last during the carbonite bombings of the City is no less affected. Cameras were rolling as he abducted the Titans....and even when Wyldecarde killed him."

Glover's mouth dropped. "It was Noir who killed Slade?"

"Why....yes....," the lieutenant glanced at the journalist. "I thought you would have come to that conclusion on your own."

".............."

"Anyways. The time of Slade's demise is visibly recorded. I warn you....this will be disturbing."

"To those who are disturbed, much is required to be more disturbed...," Glover croaked. He sighed. "Play it."

"Here goes."

-Tap.-

The footage was from a high-angle in the corner of the freighter's bridge. The naked-eyed image of a one-armed Noir was seen violently slicing his sword in and out of Slade, ripping his fingers off, slicing through his metal-mesh outfit to the flesh underneath. The Titans watched wearily from glowing chairs of torture in the distance. Jinx's body lay unconscious on the floor. A digital counter at the bottom right of the recording counted off the time down to the millisecond.

Glover bit his lip.

Noir's sword-swinging shoved Slade up to the bright, round window at the edge of the bridge. The villain's body stretched up. Noir ran in and shoved the full length of Myrkblade through the man's chest. There was a sickening pause as Noir leaned forward one-handed and held his blade through Slade's center. Then....Noir ripped the blade out. A fountain of red, red blood spurted upwards in Technicolor glory. Then Slade's carcass fell back through the glass window, shattering it, and plunged into the waters beyond.

-Tap.-

The bloody drama paused.

"Did you notice it?" the lieutenant asked.

Glover's lip quivered. "N-Notice what??"

The officer silently rewound the tape until it was during the first strikes of Noir's attack. He slowly played it forward. In slow motion, Noir hacked at Slade, slashed at Slade, and then charged in for the final blow. Myrkblade's length agonizingly sank into Slade's chest and skewered him. Slade's head lurched forward.

-Tap.-

"There....," the lieutenant froze the frame.

".........," Glover stared...but saw nothing.

"Look at the time."

And Glover did so...icily.

The counter at the bottom read: '0321 hours'.

Glover coughed uncontrollably.

The lieutenant spoke: "The fifth of July, twenty-one minutes after three in the morning....Slade's heart was pierced in two. There was no return to life from then on out. Slade....is dead."

"..............."

"I thought you'd might like to know that. But honestly....I don't know what the connection could be with all the stuff that has been happening."

".............," Glover's eyes trailed. He stared at the limp body of a pink-haired apprentice on the floor of the freighter's bridge. "Perhaps.....perhaps someone closer tied to fate would know...."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Glover sat at the cold table in the small dark room. He spun the joker card around in his grasp. He made careful not to cut himself on the sharp edges.

The door clicked open.

Glover sat up. He quickly pocketed the card away.

A pair of guards led a petite prisoner to the other side of the table before Glover. They quietly sat Jinx down and retreated to the dark corners of the room.

Jinx had an ever-bitter look on her face. She burned through the table-top with her pink eyes. She didn't seem willing to give Glover so much as a stare.

The journalist leaned forward. "You were there when Slade was killed."

"................"

"I also here that the freighter you and the Titans were on nearly self-destructed," Glover spoke. "But at the last second, you saved everyone from a fiery doom with your hex."

"..............."

"Jinx.....I don't want anything from you but just a little help," Glover said. "I promise that I'm not about to write a story about anything on this."

"You're dying, aren't you?"

"......I-I beg your pardon?" Glover blinked.

Jinx looked up. "You're dying. I can sense it."

Glover breathed slowly.

Jinx's pink eyes narrowed. "Fate makes this invisible hissing sound when it's squeezed slowly from a mortal person's soul. You, Glover, are practically a siren. It's most deafening."

Glover swallowed. He spoke: "I know my days aren't long. The cancer....it is practically monstrous. But that's not why I'm here—"

"It isn't?" Jinx asked. "What do you believe in, Mr. Glover? Justice? Victory against evil? Isn't Slade's death enough for you?"

"Is it for you?"

"............," Jinx looked away.

Glover took a deep breath. "I've been on the outside, Jinx. And there people....lots of people who are starting to analyze the incidents of July Fifth in a new light. Much in the same way as they're trying to re-examine the robotic takeover of the City over half a year ago. Terra was used by Slade. And so were you, Jinx. You were manipulated and terrorized into your roles. Besides, you're only childr—"

"I was not manipulated," Jinx spat. She looked up. She bore an eerie grin. "I liked Slade. Heaven help me, I would have let him have my children."

Glover bit his lip.

Jinx hissed: "But he bit me in the end. He bit me so hard...I bled all that was left of me to fight back anymore. I could have let the ship explode. Hecate knows....I wanted to die. But I took the painful path. I resisted fate...and let myself live. And everyday, I begin to regret it. But being alive is all the punishment I'll ever need. This prison....these cells....they are nothing to me. I could escape at any second."

"And you haven't because you're punishing yourself?" Glover asked. "Wasn't H.I.V.E. enough of a torture to someone as young and impregnable as you?"

Jinx's sneered: "Don't....talk....about.....H.I.V.E......"

Glover leaned back.

A beat.

"What do you want from me?" Jinx groaned.

"When Slade died...something else happened. Something bad. What was it?"

"I don't know what you mean...."

"You're a child of fate, Jinx," Glover leaned his head to the side and took a gamble. "Surely you've felt it. Increasing in volume every night. A frightening force at work twenty-one minutes after three in the morning. Marking a daily anniversary of the holocaust on July the Fifth."

"........," Jinx looked down at the table again.

Glover leaned forward. "Tell me.....what do you feel? What are you in tune to?"

"You tell me something first, Glover."

"???"

Jinx looked up. "What does the word 'Red' make you think about?"

Glover pursed his lips. "Blood." A beat. "Slade's blood?"

Jinx slowly shook her head. "It means far more than just that."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"Red is the personification of something. Perhaps a spirit. Perhaps an angle of fate itself......"

Glover stood in the back of Pier 4146. He rested a hand over his mouth and leaned against a wall as he watched the investigators gathered around the five bloody bodies, taking photographs.

Flash! Flash!!

Fl-Flash!!

Glover's eyes trailed up and eyed the word 'STROKE' splattered in thin red streams across the warehouse wasll.

"Fate can be seen as the balance of life and death. And when you see the world of the Probable like me, Glover...you find that even supernatural essence has its own iconography."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

At the City Zoo—early in the morning—two keepers were discreetly gathering the ragged remains of a meaty animal's carcass and depositing it into a miniature body bag. They fought away the flies that had gathered overnight and looked over their shoulders as if to make sure no patrons had arrived to see the nasty ritual.

"Life is a living thing on multiple layers. Life itself is most likely an entity all its own. And Life has a whim—like Fate itself. It leans to the sides of some colorful spectrum occasionally. And when it does so, our world senses it."

The keepers finished depositing the body, zipped up the bag, and marched quickly out of the back of the pin.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"The giver of all life......that which constructs......is white......"

Dawn Graham was busy directing computer experts around the array of systems monitoring the City's power grid. She took a moment to sip a shaky cup of coffee and gather what was left of her wits. She glanced at the huge City layout at the far end of the small room and took a shuddering breath.

"White stands for Creation. God the Father. Brahma. Whatever. It's the energy of life force that still courses through our arteries from the beginning of time till we grow old and die......like you."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Schafield wrote on a clipboard, watching a lounge full of resting and silently gazing patients through a one-way mirror. A few doctors at his side bickered about procedural ways to cure the former Dragonflare addicts of their nightly trauma. Nobody was going anywhere.

"Black is Balance. Like Vishnu or perfect adherence to the Tao. It's the acceptance of Fate in all of its positives or negatives. Black is everywhere......like the background of a Baroque painting masterpiece. It's what we all know is around us but fail to recognize because we're so used to it but cling to White instead."

Schafield paused in writing. He gazed to the floor, hidden in the shadows. He sighed.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

The soonest Glover returned to his apartment one day, he had a coughing fit. He left the apartment door open and stumbled across the way to where his oxygen tank was. He desperately grabbed the mask, planted it over his face, and turned the handle.

"Red............"

Glover was momentarily dizzy.

"Red........................"

He caught a good whiff of air and filled his lungs. He relaxed, slumping back in a chair and panting.

"Red is the color of Destruction. Shiva, the Grim Reaper, Murphy's Law. It's what awaits us all in the endless harvest of souls. Each and every one of us is going to die. Time frames it and Fate dictates it. Red stands for the ravenous black hole on the opposite side of the spectrum from White. In due time, Red catches up with us and consumes us and burns us into oblivion. And the energy we all once had and shared is exhausted into nothingness......further dissipating the universe into a gigantic thin line of empty space."

Glover lowered the mask and breathed naturally. He leaned his head back towards the ceiling and sighed.

Riiiiing! Riiiiing!

Glover's eyes opened.

Riiiing! Riiing!

He groaned. He got up from his chair and stumbled over to the home line.

Riiiing! Riii—click!

"Hello?...........Lieutenant?..........What..........Y-You're serious??.......I.....I.....Of c-course. I-I'm on my way. Thank you."

Glover dropped the receiver down, regathered his belongings, and stormed back out the door.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Later that night—after the sickly viewing—Glover and the Lieutenant walked along the docks outside of Pier 4146. The cold waters of early fall lapped up against the concrete sides while the police lights strobed in the background.

"I'm sorry if that was too gruesome for you...," the Lieutenant uttered. "I asked you to come because I think this may have some relevance to your search. I tend to not let stuff like that phase me anymore. I suppose all of us in the department have been rather blasé about death since the Titans took Viper down."

"I had to see it....though....I'm not sure exactly how it's aided me...."

"There was some evidence at the scene that you might find interesting.....chiefly this," the Lieutenant held up a printout.

Glover blinked. "You're letting me see it—"

"Just look."

Glover obeyed. He held the paper out in front of him and squinted his eyes. It wasn't easy to read at night. Especially at his age.

"That was a note found written and laid on the ground just outside the pool of blood from the six bodies."

Glover's eyes traced the words.

'By his breath they freeze, by his breath they die. Smoke and mirrors is what keeps him alive.'

"How poetic....," Glover slurred.

"And this was found on the other side of the note....," the lieutenant handed him another printout.

Glover took the sheet. He read the grainy copy. One word.

'Aviary'.

"Um....the Hell?"

"It gets wyrder," the lieutenant said. "You remember seeing a single letter carved into the skin of each bloody victim?"

"Y-Yes...."

"Well I have them here listed....in order of when you see the victims' bodies from left to right as you enter the warehouse...," the Lieutenant read off from a list. "'T...R...V...G...K...J...'"

"'T, R, V, G, K, J??'"

The lieutenant nodded.

Glover looked at both copied-halves of the note in his two hands and then at the paper in the lieutenant's hand. "I am completely and utterly confused....."

".......," the lieutenant stared off.

"S-Sir??"

The officer handed him two things. One, the copy of the letters. Two....a manila envelope.

"Don't open it until you're somewhere alone," the lieutenant said, walking off.

"But...sir! What's it mean—"

"It means that this wasn't the first," the lieutenant pointed at Pier 4146 surrounded by squad cars as he walked off.

A chill fell ran down Glover's spine.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Glover sat alone in his office late that night.

He had only one desklamp on.

It filled the room with a deep, amber glow.

He opened the manila envelope and slid out a clump of folders.

His eyes scanned the material in his hands.

"'Gotham City......September Twenty-Ninth....Two Thousand and Four....'"

He ruffled through a few documents.

"'Outer docks of Gotham Bay.....Pier 7123.......discovered at 4:12 in the afternoon.....'"

His hands shuffled through another sheet....and he came across a photo.

".............."

Six bodies lay in a puddle of blood before an inner warehouse wall. The blood formed a semi-circle on the floor around the bodies and then splashed up along the wall in swishing sawgrass strokes. A frame of dried blood stretched left and up and formed an eight-foot-long rectangle. A half-triangle of sorts stretched up along the right of the 'frame', seemingly incomplete. In the pale center of the red layout, a word was formed in crimson lines: 'D-E-A-T-H'.

Glover's lips parted.

"It's......It's almost identical!"

A beat.

He flipped through to another page.

He saw a series of letters, presumably from the victims' skin carvings:

'T...R...V...G...K...T...'

"Only off by one letter....," Glover murmured, eyeing the last 'T' in the arrangement.

A beat.

He nervously flipped to another page.

Indeed...he found printouts of two halves of a scrap of paper.

The first side read:

'In order for the Sky to turn red, the Earth must bleed.'

A beat.

He flipped to the copy of the other side of the note.

Indeed, it was one word:

'Red'.

"..........."

Glover pulled out the papers that the lieutenant had given him from the Pier 4146 scene.

'Aviary.'

He glanced back at Pier 7123.

'Red.'

A beat.

"What is 'Aviary Red'?"

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Jinx blinked. "Excuse me?"

"What does it mean?" Glover asked. "'Aviary Red'?"

Jinx did something eerily which she hadn't done in a long time.

She giggled.

A pink glow formed in her eyes.

The two guards in the back of the room shifted uncomfortably.

Jinx stopped giggling. She cleared her throat and leaned back with an amused smile.

"Aviary Red....that's rich..."

"I....I'm confused...," Glover sweatdropped.

"As well you should be," Jinx folded her petite arms. "Cuz it's 'Red Aviary'. It's always been."

Glover's eyes narrowed. "Do you know what happened at the Piers? Do you know why?"

"All I know is that Fate has been leaning towards one end of the spectrum lately...," Jinx slurred.

Glover blinked.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

The Power Grid shorted out.

Bloody lemurs shrieked and jumped around.

Dragonflare addicts screamed at the top of their lungs.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"Red......," Glover murmured. "Destruction...."

Jinx slowly nodded.

"But....why?"

"I am not one to dictate the whims of fate....," Jinx said. She smiled coldly. "I merely obey it." A beat. She looked aside depressingly. "I......I-I have learned the price of trying to control it. For it has always controlled me."

Glover took a deep breath. "H.I.V.E. took a lot out of you, didn't they—"

"I said DON'T MENTION THAT WORD!!!" CLAMP!!! Jinx's fist slammed into the table.

Glover shook.

The two guards placed their hands on the girl's shoulders.

She panted...panted....panted...and relaxed. "I.....I-I don't want to talk anymore...."

".......," Glover stood up. "I understand. Fairwell, Jinx."

He turned and walked towards the door.

"Glover...."

The journalist paused. He turned and looked over his shoulder.

Jinx hugged herself as she stood up and was led away. "If the earth bleeds...and the sky is red....where is there for the birds to go?"

"........."

And she was gone.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Gary Sills' lip quivered.

"What.....a-are you doing??"

The girl's body shrugged in the blinding light. "Merely scaring the birds away before they can be caged." A pause. "Let him go already."

And Gary collapsed.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Glover's eyes looked past the roadsigns and streetlights ahead of him as he drove home that night.

He gripped the wheel to his sports car and sighed. His mind full.

"Red Aviary........."

He stopped at an intersection, waited, then cruised along.

"In order for the Sky to turn red, the Earth must bleed."

He passed a homeless person at a bus stop. The man was looking through garbage.

The journalist's eyes momentarily trailed.

"By his breath they freeze, by his breath they die. Smoke and mirrors is what keeps him alive."

Glover prepared to drive up an onramp and take the highway under nightcover to his apartment.

"Why is Destruction on the rise??"

FLASH!!!!!

A blinding orb of light exploded in front of him.

"Shit!!!" Glover swerved wildly, thinking he was hitting an oncoming truck in its headlights.

SCREEEEEEEEECH!!!!

The sports car slid to the right and slammed up against the guardrail of the onramp.

CLUNK!!!

And......

Still.

Glover panted. He was sweating all over.

Flash!!!

A bright light through the driver's side window.

Glover's eyes darted out.

A female figure appeared out of nowhere.

He started coughing.

The girl aimed a glowing hand at Glover through the window.

The man hacked and spit--

FLASH!!!!!!

-T-T-T-T-T-

"Nnngh....."

............

"Nnngh....ugh....."

Glover stirred.

He was sitting in a chair.

His arms were bound tightly.

But his face wasn't blindfolded.

He opened his eyes painfully and found himself in the shadowy interior of some run-down apartment complex. The floor was covered in soot and dust. The walls were peeling. A window on the far side danced with a neon-light glow.

"H.....H-Hello??" the aging journalist's voice echoed into the room.

No response.

"Nngh....," he stirred. He grunted. He couldn't get loose. "H-Hello???"

A beat.

A female voice filtered through the darkness. "You're a upstart old sod, aren't ya? You're doing this all arse about face. The hostage doesn't talk, the kidnapper does. Chiefly, me."

Glover's eyes thinned.

A British accent.

"Who are you??" Glover asked.

"I know your friend very well. Gary Sills. Upside down wanker, he. It was rather easy for us to get him to procure those tapes. Fancy that he's married and has children. You Yanks are polluting the gene pool, I swear."

Glover took a deep breath. "I got your message...."

"What? The playing card or the bullets over your head when you smashed into our old flat? I was rather fond of the latter, to tell the truth."

"It was you who fired upon us?" Glover murmured. "You nearly killed Avery—my associate—and me!"

"That was really just all shits and giggles," the voice said. "If I'd wanted to, I would have offed you the very moment I touched the trigger. I've killed so many people in my day, you wouldn't even know they existed. Oh, I could have played a shirty game with you. A prize for every bulls eye. Two gold coins for your bullocks, assuming you even have but one, namby pamby."

"You....gave Gary Sills' the card.....Wyldecarde's old weapon," Glover grunted. "And he gave it to me. Is that what you wanted?"

"Remember the note I scribbled on that?"

Glover nodded. "I...I think so...." He shifted in his seat and realized....his pockets were empty. "Um....."

"Allow me to remind you," said the voice....uncomfortably close to a shadow positioned across from Glover—the journalist noted. A dark hand raised the joker card up before an even darker face: "'The game is not over. The head dealer still has a hand'."

"Were you trying to hint me to something?" Glover asked. "What is your obsession with Wyldecarde? Why did you want to destroy those tapes?"

"It wasn't a matter of wanting to destroy tapes....it was merely a way of prolonging Destruction itself."

"...........," Glover blinked.

"Don't get me wrong, Mr. Glover. I am but a lowly assassin. I do not do charity things for the end of the world. But when it comes to my mates, I can get very....very....protective."

"Someone like you has friends?"

A flippant, cold laugh.

"Why, yes. I know it sounds daft. But it's true. To be honest, I have only one friend. And I do sincerely wish you would get off her arse about all this."

Glover's eyes narrowed. "Jinx......" A beat. "You know Jinx?"

"Who doesn't know Jinx? The key point is that I respect her. And coming from me, that truly is no....laughing....matter...."

Glover felt very uncomfortable. So he gulped and changed the subject: "Gary described a bright light in the alleyway when he......'was brought' before you. But when Avery and I visited, I noticed the lamp that he described had been shattered. Was breaking part of your grand exit? Along with attempting to ransack your own 'flat'?"

"Silly Yankee. The lamp was always broken."

"Then how did Gary see a light?"

"Because I was the light...."

FLASH!!!!!

Glover groaned. His eyes thinning. His face wincing. He braved a stare into the shimmering halo before him. His jaw dropped some.

A blonde girl sat across from him. She sat with her legs crossed and her golden hair cascading around her shoulders. She wore a silver jumpsuit....very sleek and simple. She would have been a living, breathing trademark of feminine grace if it wasn't for the sharp images of the pistol and silencer against her hip and the huge, black assault rifle resting against her chair. She held the joker card nimbly in the fingers of one hand and produced an unnatural, golden glow in the other. Her blue eyes stared coldly between Glover and the discarded weapon of Wyldecarde.

"My talents are nothing to boast of," she muttered. "I'm too busy killing people in or outside of the light to possibly find someone to busy myself with yakking."

"Are.....a-are you going to kill me?" Glover asked.

She glared at him under the crop of her dangling, golden bangs. She slowly shook her head. "No," she said. "Jinx and my other accomplice have no reason for killing you. To be honest...such was not a majority vote. But still...I'll deign. Besides, it's not very sporting to kill a man who's already dying."

In response to that, Glover's lungs instinctively wheezed. He stirred in his restraints and regained his breath.

The girl tossed her hair out from her face and turned the card over and over in her fingers. "You're a curious man, Glover. And I suppose one can attribute that to your nosy career. But there's something very....very different from the firebrand public speaker of the past and the obsessed invalid of the present. Something has inexplicably and dramatically changed your life overnight from something superficial to something ambiguous. And in the world that I know—a world defined by bullets and bastards—you don't get that far too often. People stay people—uniquely the same overtime. But that is not the case with you. And for once...I would get a qualm for ending someone's life. Because I do not know if it can in fact be called 'life' to begin with. When Gary Sills decided to tell you about what happened to him that night, my first thought was to eliminate him as a loose end. But then I realized that the only person who would ever pay attention to him would be you. So I let you start this journey, Mr. Glover. I let you have a go, if you will."

Glover's lips parted. He narrowed his eyes and said: "You.....left the envelope there for me on purpose!"

She slowly nodded.

"You wanted me to investigate the power grid....the zoo....and the drug therapy center....," Glover thought aloud. "This was your mystery to solve from the beginning. Not mine. Y-You just sent me on the rest of the path!"

The girl's head turned to the side and there was the slightest hint of a smirk on her cold face. "And what a brill job you've done of it too. It truly went like a bomb. You've been quite the help, being how busy I am. But still....you cannot figure out the first-AND-final clue that we gave you."

Glover's eyes fell to the Joker card in her grasp.

She brandished it.

"Don't you see??" she remarked. "Come on, you're not so daft! Who was part of the card game to begin with?"

Glover took a breath. ".........Slade.......Noir......." A blink. ".......Dagger.........the.....th-the Titans!" He brightened.

The assassin nodded. "Someone still has a hand to dish out. And from all that you've seen in these bloody days of runaway Red....who do you think is truly responsible?"

"I....I don't know....," Glover murmured. "But....it's not the Titans...."

"It's not the Titans...," the girl said. "....but they're still involved."

"........"

"Very involved indeed."

"Are they in trouble?"

"Everybody's in trouble, Mr. Glover," she leaned back and twirled the playing card more. "Even myself."

"Wh-Who are you exactly?"

"Does it truly matter in the long run, nosey parker? Horses for courses, I'd kill you if you were to find out my true identity. So be happy that you and I will not get too friendly, alright? Now, if I were you...I'd keep playing this game for us, Glover. I'd keep following the clues. I'd keep zeroing in on the truth, if there be a thing such as truth. Because my mates and I don't truly know everything, as much as it irks me."

"You and Jinx and....your 'other'....," Glover remarked with narrow eyes. "What are you.....planning?"

"Not planning, Glover," she waved the card. "Counter-planning."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's supposed to mean that birds are best left to the wild," the girl said flippantly. "What use is an aviary—red or not—when the little shits are going to lose their feathers eventually anyways!"

"........"

"The dead bodies, Glover....," the girl spoke. "....they're the greatest offerings a fan has ever made for the Teen Titans. I'm rather envious of it myself."

"You know about the two Pier murders?"

"I know a lot....but I can learn more," she said. She stood up, shuffled over, and stuck the card back into Glover's pocket. "But you're going to find out for us."

Glover gulped. "Lemme guess....you're going to 'keep watch over me'."

She leaned over. Her blue eyes narrowed: "You've been watched over for a long time, Glover. The least of all by us."

His mouth hung open.

She leaned back and extended a hand out before his face. "Turn your lights on."

He blinked.

"It's dark outside. It's best to drive with headlights."

And her fingers pulsed hotly---

FLASH!!!!

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

".........," Glover stirred. His hands were gripping a steering wheel. He sat up straight and blinked.

He was parked on the median of the highway. The keys were in the ignition. The engine was running.

"........," he blinked.

A car streaked by in the darkness.

The journalist glanced at his clock. It was three hours later than when he last looked at it. He looked at his arms. Creases in the skin showed where the binding ropes were.

He shuddered a sigh. He went into driving mode, signaling to merge back onto the highway when he realized something.....

It was dark.

".........," Glover switched his headlights on. He took a deep breath and drove home.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"The assassin was pointing me in the direction of the Pier murders. But I could have sworn I read over them from top to bottom. I didn't know what she and her 'posse' wanted from me. At the same time, I was worried about her connection to Jinx. Perhaps the authority needed to know that their high-profile prisoner had a contact outside of the jail cells. But then again...I was dealing with an assassin. An assassin with unnatural power over the spectrum of light. Though she didn't threat me....I can't help but feel....h-helpless."

He lowered the voice recorder and paused it. He gazed out through the windows of his apartment. The endless night. There was a rumbling sound as a storm front moved in from the dark distance beyond.

"......"

Glover raised the recorder again and pressed the switch.

He continued: "Though I knew that whatever was going on involved the Titans. I guessed that the assassin wanted me to find a tie-in with the Titans. But I couldn't figure out what. I mean...besides the fact that Gotham City is the origin of Robin's fighting career....I couldn't see any significance. I spent nearly half a week trying to come up with a solution. I obsessed over it all and agonized myself so much that I needed to get out."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Glover strolled through the Bayside Plaza one afternoon. He had a notepad in his grasp and he was busily scanning over scribbles that he had made from a night-long brainstorming in his apartment. At that particular moment in time—as he walked nonchalantly around the courtyard and storefronts—he read aloud the letters on the murder victims' bodies.

"'T...R...V...G...K...J...'," Glover muttered. His eyes darted across his notepad. "'Pier 4146'..."

He walked around the circumference of tables set up in the food court. He tapped his pen against his balding head.

"'T...R...V...G...K...T...'," Glover read. "'Pier 7123'."

A beat.

He came to a stop and groaned. "Just one letter difference. What did the murderer want? What was his message?"

There was a muffled set of giggles and girlish voices behind Glover. The journalist was dead between his own thoughts, and he couldn't help but pick up the conversation:

"I swear!! Gar was sooooo cute in Space Trek, 2022!! He was like some elf-changeling alien and stuff!! He didn't get much airtime, but when he did it was precious!!"

"Pfft!!! You make him sound like a wash-out!! Face it, Hope! Garfield had no legitimate fighting experience before he joined the Titans!!"

".........????" Glover turned and craned his ear to listen.

"You girls forget Vic. Stone had some action in Metropolis before he moved here."

"Yeah, Janice...but nothing like my Robbbbbie!!! Hehehehe!"

"Ugh. Gawd. Someone kill her."

Glover stumbled over towards a table where four teenage girls were positioned. "Uhm....e-excuse me...."

All four looked up at him like deers in headlights. They were instantly all mute.

Glover bit his lip. He cleared his throat, and said: "I-I'm sorry to be nosy but---"

"Say....," a curly-blonde girl blinked and pointed. "Ain't you that old guy on the news that once hated the Tita—"

A dark-haired girl elbowed her.

"Ooof!!"

"Ahem....can we help you?" the brunette asked.

"I couldn't help but ask....," he blinked. "Who're you talking about?"

"Huh?" a petite girl with blonde hair blinked.

"Just now. You were talking about—"

"The Titans!" the taller blonde blurted again. "Hope here thinks that Garfield was cute as a child actor! Pffft! She's so obsessed."

"Who's Garfield?"

"Beast Boy!!" the petite practically exploded. "Everybody knows that!!"

".........."

"Garfield Logan," droned a voice who hadn't spoken before.

Glover glanced over.

A dark-haired girl sat with her arms crossed over a half-finished sketch. She had an eyepatch for some reason. "Garfield Logan. That's Beast Boy. He starred in a few two-bit acting roles before he joined the Titans and used his morphing abilities towards fighting crime."

"They weren't two-bit!!" the petite one squealed.

Glover blinked. "And Victor is..."

"Cyborg," said the other brunette with a wry smirk. "Victor Stone. Sheesh...for a journalist, you're pretty washed out."

"Uh.....yeah.....I-I've been preoccupied lately," Glover sweatdropped. "Ahem....m-may I ask where you people learned this??"

The girls looked at each other. A beat. A good few of them giggled.

Glover bit his lip.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"I never had any idea....," Glover smirked helplessly as he spoke into the voice recorder. "....the Internet has a culture that adores the Teen Titans. People young and old—but mostly young—have organized hundreds upon hundreds of websites dedicated in reverence to the heroes of this City. 'Shrines' they are called. The girls gave me a few webrings where I could find sites based entirely on Raven's legacy, Beast Boy's career, and even a few 'shrines' that revolved solely on theories concerning the love interests of—say—Robin and Starfire or Raven and Beast Boy or even Robin and Noir." A beat. Glover took a shuddering breath, but continued: "These sites are hubs for fanfictions, fan sites, captured images of the Titans in action, message boards covering all subjects of Teen Titan fandom, and—finally—a few scant samples of legitimately intelligent research and information. And from perusing a good many sites and coming up with average information, I realized that the identities of—at least—most of the Titans weren't entirely secret."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"Robin. Founding member of the Titans. Origin in Gotham City. True name and identity....unknown. He is simply referred to as 'Robin'."

Glover read off a list of notes he had made and printed before him in his office. He squinted his eyes under the amber light and continued aloud to himself:

"Raven. Assisting, founding member of the Titans. Origin in another dimension. True name also Raven. Last name unknown."

He slid another sheet over.

"Cyborg. First Titan recruit. Origin in Metropolis with S.T.A.R. labs. True name Victor Stone."

Then...

"Beast Boy. Fourth Teen Titan. Born and raised abroad with scientists Mark and Marie Logan. Name Garfield Logan. Former child actor and present member of the Teen Titans."

Glover produced another sheet.

"Starfire. Fifth Titan. Alien from the planet she calls 'Tamaran'. Real name is allegedly 'Koriand'r'. Information on her name supposedly gathered from the Titan Tower occupation by the Puppet King. No known 'last name'."

Glover's eyes scanned over. He took a breath.

"Terra. First official 'sixth Titan'. Infamous Second Apprentice to Slade. Police files identify her as 'Tara Markov'. Her background is completely unknown. Her state of being now is also in question."

Then a last sheet.

"Noir. Present 'sixth Titan'. Temporarily 'Wyldecarde' during Slade's last and fatal plot. Name undisclosed. Also a completely unknown background."

Glover lined all the sheets up in chronological order.

He narrowed his eyes.

He read:

"Robin...Raven...Victor...Garfield...Koriand'r...Tara...Noir..."

A beat.

He pulled out a pen and wrote:

"R...R...V...G...K...T...N..."

He leaned back.

He scanned the pages.

He took a breath.

A beat.

He slid out the information from Pier 7123.

"'T...R...V...G...K...T...'"

He then glanced at Pier 4146.

"T...R...V...G...K...J...'"

A beat.

"Only six initials....," Glover breathed. "Six initials for six Titans...."

Silence.

"Or six Titans at a time......," he uttered. He glanced at the Pier 7123 files. "Of course.....Pier 7123's murder took place in Gotham City BEFORE Pier 4146 in this City." A beat. "T...R...V...G...K...T..," he said. "Robin...Raven....Victor....Garfield....Koriand'r....Tara...." He looked at his other list. "T...R...V...G...K...J...," he inhaled. "Robin...Raven...Victor...Garfield...Koriand'r...Noir...."

A beat.

"All the names match up except for Robin's and Noir's...," he spoke to himself, leaning back. "....unless....the killer truly knows the names of the Titans. If that were the case....Robin's secret identity would have to begin with a 'T' and Noir's with a 'J'."

Silence.

He took a deep breath.

"If someone who truly knows the Titans that much did something that violent....that's a great threat indeed. But what kind of a threat is it? What does it hint to? Does it hint to anything at all?"

Glover glanced over at another pile of papers. He reached into a clutter and pulled out the copies of the two note-halves from the Gotham Pier 7123.

"In order for the Sky to turn red, the Earth must bleed."

And...

"Red."

Then he looked at the copies from Pier 4146.

"By his breath they freeze, by his breath they die. Smoke and mirrors is what keeps him alive."

And...

"Aviary."

Glover took a deep breath.

"It's supposed to mean that birds are best left to the wild," the assassin said flippantly. "What use is an aviary—red or not—when the little shits are going to lose their feathers eventually anyways!"

Glover's eyes narrowed.

"What did you mean? What do you want from me? What am I supposed to find??" he looked at the array of paper madness. "Is it total and complete doom? Is it Destruction on the rise? What's it got to do with birds??"

A beat.

Glover took a deep breath.

"Or maybe......just one bird......"

Glover reached for the files on the two piers. He focused on the numbers. He breathed:

"Pier 4146...."

A beat.

"Pier 7123..."

Another beat.

"...............!!!" Glover gasped. He dropped the papers to the floor. He spun in the chair—coughed once—and scooted over to his bookcase. He whipped out a miniature atlas. "Crazy....you've gone absolutely crazy...." He flipped through the pages. "Completely bonkers.....utterly.....bonkers...." He stopped when he found a map of the U.S. Northeast. He trailed his finger on the lines. "41.46 North......." He trailed another finger. "71.23 West....."

When both fingers met, Glover's breath left him.

"Gotham City......"

A beat.

Glover eyed the phone on his desk.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Ben Clapton was an apprentice of Glover's illustrious past. He considered the aging man to be his mentor and one day promised he'd do anything to assist in his research.

He didn't think it'd come to this.

"Is this some really important development or something, sir???" Ben gritted his teeth as he steered his hummer with one hand and held the cellular phone up in the other. "This weather is really ruining my paint job....not to mention my shocks way out here!!"

Indeed, the landscape of Gotham City was under inclement weather. The usual red sky was replaced by gray overcast as rain pounded in from the huge stormfront trembling over the landscape. Lightning flashed in the distance and the wind was strong enough to threaten the balance of the huge vehicle.

"Please!! I really need you to tell me what's at those exact coordinates! It's imperative to...uhm...my latest studies!"

Ben eyed the GPS tracking system he had installed into his dashboard. It beeped away and signaled him which compass directions to take in order to arrive at 41.46 N and 71.23 W.

"What kind of studies?"

"S-Secret studies."

"But of course...," Ben said. "Just my luck...," he grumbled.

"What was that?"

"Er....I-I mean...I'm almost there now!!"

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"But I can't see what's so important about these coordinates!! I'm practically out in the middle of nowhere!! I-I'm surprised these damn roads haven't been closed off!!"

"Don't go anywhere too dangerous, Ben," Glover said. He paced slowly in front of the windows of his office. He gazed out at the black night of the City sky. It was calm and tranquil outside. "As much as I want to find out what's out there, I care about your safety foremost."

"I ain't going back by this point!! You've gotten me curious myself, sir!"

"Where are you anyways?" Glover asked, his eyes narrowed. "It looked like—judging from my atlas—that the coordinates are somewhere close to the Bay."

"Kinda sorta! When you say 'close to Gotham Bay' in this City......you can mean anywhere—Hold on!!"

Glover jumped. "What?? What is it??"

"The GPS is beeping like crazy! I think I'm here!!"

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Ben slammed the door to his hummer shut. He clung a raincoat to himself with one arm and kept the cellphone to his ear as he marched against the howling winds and beating rain. Solid curtains of falling water clouded the air in gray translucency. The young man grunted and panted as he soggily climbed a hill of rock bluffs and looked over a rainsoaked Bay. Somewhere in the blackness, a dark shadow rose up high into the air and strobed with a bright pulse of light. The man panted as he overlooked the stormy black waters stretching before him. He huddled and shouted into the cell phone.

"Well! This is it!!"

"What's there??"

"I've only been here once before!! Flew over it on the way to the Gotham Airport! There's a lighthouse across the Bay from here!! Oh!! Also some chemical plant!! I'm not sure what they make there, but it's nestled between the Bay Waters and some of these rock bluffs!! The plant and the lighthouse are like the only buildings in this place!!"

The water around him exploded in yellow light as the lighthouse's beam swept past him.

He continued: "I hope there's some special meaning to this or something!! Cuz I'm clueless!! And I'm also getting soaked!!"

"Ben...can you—I dunno—take a photo or something??"

"Uhhh......," Ben looked wearily into the rain and drenching wind.

"If you can't or aren't up to it, I'll understand—"

"No! I'm glad to help, sir!! Just....I gotta let this all clear up some!! I brought my Polaroid Camera here!! I'll take a snapshot of the coordinates, scan it, and have it e-mailed to you as soon as possible!!"

"Much appreciated, Ben. You're a life-saver."

"Yeah....heh....though I could be hung out to dry!!"

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Glover paused in the middle of his dictation to the voice recorder.

"......"

His eyes scanned some invisible horizon.

"......."

He switched the recorder off. He shuffled his deskchair over to his apartment's computer. He brought the interface out of standby mode and accessed his hotmail account. After a few clickings and keystrokes, he indeed found an e-mail from Ben. And inside of it was the promised scan of the Gotham Polaroid.

Outside the man's windows, the stormfront was catching up. The night air started to vibrate with low thunder.

"Come to Poppa.....," Glover selected 'Print' on his browser.

His printer whirred into action.

Glover waited patiently.

A paper slid out.

A grainy—but discernible image of a watery landscape appeared before him in limited color.

"Get a new scanner, Ben....," Glover smirked. He removed the sheet and looked at it. His eyes narrowed. "........"

The image taken that night captured a mostly uninhabited section of Gotham City's Bay. The foreground contained the tops of rock ledges laced with sprouting sawgrass. Beyond the black waters, the lone lighthouse stretched up in the center of the picture. It jutted high into the square, red splash of Gotham night sky. The evening sky of Gotham City was always red. Experts had many environmental theories as to why that was the case, but no solid solution could be reached. Glover figured that no explanation could efficiently supply logic.

".......," Glover blinked.

Red.........Red sky............

His lips parted.

Red Aviary............

".......," Glover glanced across his desk. The two separate folders for Pier 4146 and Pier 7123 stared up at him.

A beat.

The journalist reached a shaky hand out and gathered the murder-scene photos from both. He took a shuddering breath.

He placed the first incident's photo—Pier 7123—on the left.

Red......

He placed the second incident's photo—Pier 4146—on the right.

Aviary......

"......"

Glover swallowed.

He pressed both photos together. Side to side. Left to right.

And it happened.

It clicked.

The two photos of the bloody massacres.

The Polaroid of the Bay.

"........"

They match.

A perfect symmetry was formed. The red frame of blood from the Pier 7123 photo crossed over to merge with the blood puddles of Pier 4146.

The rock bluffs.

Red fingers scratched upwards against the two separate walls in various, arching directions.

The saw grass......

Red splotches lined the top in a perfect cropping.

The red sky of Gotham......

And to Glover's undeniable shock, the two tall half triangles of blood formed together to create a solid structure or promontory.

The lighthouse......

The journalist's heart raced. His eyes darted down to the meaty bags that were the remains of the dagger-initialized murder victims.

"Robin...Raven...Victor...Garfield...Koriand'r...Tara...Noir...."

The Titans......their names.........their 'bodies'......

With a twitch, his eyes fluttered back up both the Polaroid and the murder scenes at once.

His breath was ragged.

The two blood-written letters became a whole on either side of the hyphenated 'lighthouse'.

'Death-Stroke'

A blink.

Deathstroke.

Glover sweated.

His trachea went numb.

Something icy crawled up his spine.

Red Aviary. Deathstroke. Red sky. Bleeding earth. Freezing. Smoke and mirrors.

Something collapsed together into a horrifying whole in the man's brain.

And his lungs gave out.

"!!!!!"

Glover leaned over. He coughed. Hacked. Wheezed. Tears formed in his eyes. He coughed and sputtered. He gasped for breath.

THWUMP!!!

His desk chair collapsed backwards.

He stumbled....limped...and hobbled towards the miniature bar.

He practically fell across a stool as he reached for the oxygen tank.

His fingers fumbled over the handle. He started pumping it long before he had the mask over his mouth.

But once he did, his body convulsed. He struggled to inhale the air. He gasped. He wheezed. He tilted his neck back.

Somehow, his lungs stretched just right...and he started inhaling. And he started breathing. And....

He started relaxing.

"...............," Glover inhaled/exhaled long and hard. He shuddered and reveled in the oxygen.

But the iciness was still there. The throbbing heartbeat.

After a good five minutes, the man lowered the mask and panted on his own.

Rain started pattering against the windows. Streaks of water ran down his flat stretch of glass windows.

Glover closed his eyes. He sighed. He shuddered.

He rested....

Riiiiiing.

Riiiing. Riiiing.

Glover's eyes opened.

"......."

He glanced over.

That late an hour, the phone was ringing.

Riiiing. Riiing.

Glover grunted. He swiveled the tank handle and cut off the oxygen. He was still holding the oxygen mask in one hand when he yanked the phone off its handle and grumbled.

"Yeah....what is it??" Glover frowned.

"They've been poisoning you, Blake."

"................."

"It's not really lung cancer. They've been poisoning you all this time."

"................."

"Quite simple, really. Tiny additions to your diet here and there. Intravenous methods with your common, everyday environment. The thing is...it's been happening over so long a period of time, that it'd might as well be excused as lung cancer. But think about it, Blake. You didn't smoke any much more than your fellow man. Besides...you quit doing it over the last three years. There're chain-smokers much worse than you who live their life like walking diesel engines and live to the age of seventy-seven, and here you are croaking at barely sixty years of age? That just doesn't seem fair, does it?"

"................."

"You can talk now, ya know. Not everyone I pester is mute."

"H-How......what........," Glover's eyes narrowed. He glanced forlornly at the mask in his hand, then at the receiver he was holding. "......what's going on here?"

"A damn good question, Blake. But I think you're pretty close to the answer. Otherwise I wouldn't be calling you."

"I.....I'm confused...."

"Are you really?? Surely you know that things are awry in this City......once again. Heh...things have almost always been caddywankas in this Town. Ever since the Titans joined, it's been bomb threats followed by supernatural phenomena followed by terrorist occupation followed by bloody murder streaks. At one time you were a vehement opponent to the Titans in speech and in practice. And as much as you were pretty much an asshole over what you said and did, you were right about a few things. The Titans are responsible for some of the nightmares you see in your world. But it's not necessarily a matter of their choice. I mean...how could it be? Quite simply, they desire nothing more than the proliferation of justice and the diminishing of evil in all of its forms. They are heroes to the core. Through and through."

Glover put his mask away and scrunched back on the stool. He gazed out through the night window as rain streaked down in translucent river under a crown of low thunder.

"The fact is, Blake......there's this queer thing called the 'Balance of Morals'. There's always been. Back in the days of Dagger's reign, the Balance of Morals was simply a theory. But it's much...much more than that. I know it because I've dealt with it first hand. I'm a lot like you, Blake. I do my research. I practice nosiness in a sneaky manner. And—as a result—I learn things. I may not get abducted by buxom blonde Britons in the process......but-heheheh—not everyone is that lucky. Ahem. The world......the universe......life and fate......it is all part of some transient organism, Blake. And the world metabolizes around us at a constant rate whether we like it or not. Energies are exhausted and processed into new forms. And this covers all spectrums of Construction and Destruction. Jinx told you that Destruction is the ultimatum of all universal energy. And that's quite understandable coming from the tortured little sorceress. I, on the other hand, am quite the optimist. I'm prone to believe that energy goes on undaunted by the powers of Destruction. The universe has many layers to it......so many complex possibilities. To say that Construction has a limit would be short-sighted and selfish. Life is a lot stronger thing than we give it credit. But that does not mean we must ignore the faculties of Death. Especially now, Blake. So much importantly now."

"What is happening.......?" Glover murmured into the phone. "Do.....d-do you know?"

"I know that whatever is going to happen is but a manifestation of the constants I'm always outlining. The Balance of Morals......it is flexing. It is bending back from its last exercise. The bowels of the universal metabolism has emptied and the Spectrum is hungry again, I suppose you can say. A long time ago......during a very dramatic chapter in this City's legacy......so many chaotic things came Full Circle. And for once I was naive enough to assume that Full Circle was simply that. A culmination. A climax. An end. But how narrow-minded I was. And I fear that it may have blinded the Titans......though I'm certain Noir is wary enough to expect my return eventually. And it's a good thing too. For reality dictates that the universe lives off of not one—but many Full Circles. Like loops linked endlessly in a chain. Constantly morphing. Constantly dynamic. And yet......in repetition of the previous debacle. Think about it. Robin and the Titans nearly die at Slade's hands. Terra dominates the City. Noir kills Slade. All violent links in the chain. And...after a spite......the universe is flexing again."

"Then wh-what now??"

"A harvest, Blake. A stroke of death running across the wind with red wings like that of a bird. But the cage is full. The aviary is a crowded place. But not if Destruction has its say. Not if the Red becomes doubly Red. Not if blood is spilt. Blake...I dare say...this lovely vacation of ours is coming to an abrupt end."

Glover took a deep breath. "And why am I a part of it? Why are you a part of it? Just who the Hell are you anyways??"

"It's not so much our roles that's important as it is what our roles play," the voice said. "Think of me as a simple messenger, Blake. I appear......I disappear......I try to lend a helping hand when I can. Hell, even a good techno CD if I can fit it in. But my time is always short. Damned space-time-continuum......eh?"

"How is this helping me??" Glover swallowed. "Telling me that I'm poisoned?"

"True, Blake. You already knew you were dying. After all, you wouldn't be where you are now......would you?"

"............."

"Which is ironic. Because the ones who poisoned you thought that they'd be silencing you and your inquisitive nature. Or maybe I should say 'The One'."

"Who??"

"A King......and a Pawn all at the same time. He is the strongest enzyme in this metabolizing organism we call 'existence'. The harvester this time is merely a virus. A fluke of the Balance of Morals. An opposite reaction. And the resulting friction will spell quite a bit of chaos for this City......but most of all, the Teen Titans."

"What's going to happen to them?"

"That's what I'm here for, Blake. And quite frankly......that's what you're here for too. That's why you're still alive."

"Me??"

"You're my backup, Blake. Never mind the assassin. I'm the one who'll be needing you when worse comes to worse. And—as a matter of fact—so will be the Titans. This is quite simply the way things work. Messengers stay out of the spotlight."

"What if I don't like being used....," Glover grunted.

"If only you could see it through my eyes, Blake. The white and red mosaic of fate. The blackness of tranquility and the green that thrives hotly outside of it. The universe is a colorfully complex place...and yet there is order. It dictates for me to separate myself from my essence and intercede on behalf of the Titans. As it also dictates to you. But what is your purpose? What is your role?? Maybe someday you'll find that epiphany before you die from your 'cancer', Blake. But when you do find it...it will be quite the remarkable revelation. It's like the face you had before your parents were born. Or the sound of one hand clapping. You'll have to experience it to know it. Like Noir has."

"N-Noir??"

"But he's not the center of this issue. Not this time. There's another Titan to go. Another link to the chain. But I will tell you one thing for sure."

"Wh-What's that??"

"July Fifth, Two Thousand and Four......It's a hard act to follow."

-Click.-

"..........," Glover lowered the phone. He gazed out the rain-drenched windows. Lightning flashed and the sky looked betrayingly cold and dark-blue beyond. Without a hint of red.

"The Aviary......," Glover whispered. "....who truly rules the roost?"

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

The catwalk went on for miles and miles. Acid dripped from the ceiling and mud caked the metal surfaces. Everything was boiling and steaming around him as he ran along. His boots clanked loudly against the floor. His lungs heaved and his black spikes of hair started to bend and melt with sweat. Somewhere in the distance, a strobe of light danced against a red, red sky.

"R-Robin!!" a voice cried out from a black horizon.

"I'm coming!!" the Boy Wonder panted. His face was pale beneath his eyemask. Chills ran through his thirteen year old body.

The catwalk started to rust beneath him. Bits and pieces falling out from under. There was more and more mud.

Mud everywhere.

Brown against the black and sizzling with the acid that dripped from the ceiling.

And beyond that the immortal red with its dancing strobe.

The factory crumbled around him.

Robin gasped.

He lost his footing.

His leg broke through the rusted catwalk and he tripped forward with a grunt. Acid fell onto his cape and slowly ate into his agile form.

He strained and grunted. He couldn't move.

"R-Run, Robin!!" a voice sobbed from the far horizon. "Can't you see? I'm not real!!"

Robin bit his lip and looked ahead.

Shaking.

She was flailing in the center of a churning mass. The mud was eating her from the inside out. Her round eyes bulged and her black hair shattered as the acid and rust swallowed her whole.

"NOO!!!!" Robin shouted. "Get out of here!! Stay alive!! STAY ALIVE!!!"

But she disappeared. The factory rippled like waves. The mud laughed and the acid flew and everything crumbled and rattled down a maelstrom of urban Hell.

And Robin went numb. He stood silently on rock bluffs overlooking dark bluffs. The sky dripped red. The earth leaked scarlet. A lighthouse stretched high up into the crimson air and with each flashing sweep of its bright beam, mysterious words chanted louder and louder as if rushing in from the distance.

red aviary

Red Aviary

Red Aviary!!

RED AVIARY!!

RED AVIARY!!!

RED AVIARY!!!!!!!

FLASH!!!!!

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

I shot up from the table with a gasp.

Sweating all over.

A terrible chill was running up from my metal limb like liquid ice in my blood vessels.

I cringed where I sat on the booth inside the kitchen unit of the Main Room. I clutched my titanium hand to myself and shivered all over. Finally the cold was unbearable and I gnashed my teeth and practically ripped the metal limb off--

C-Click!!

Hisssssssss!

CLUNK!!

I dropped the hand to the table.

I clutched my metal-laced left stuff and panted....panted....panted...

My black eyes narrowed under my shades.

Wh-Where did that dream come from??

A beat.

I swallowed and wiped my brow with my right arm.

R-Robin???

Beep! Beep! Beep!

I jumped.

I glanced across the Main Room.

Framed by rain-streaking windows under the darkness of night, the Main Screen of the computer hung down from the ceiling and displayed a flashing pulse of light.

Shaking off the last of my shivers, I picked up my metal limb and stumbled over on tired legs. I reached the computer console and pressed a switch.

Zzzzt!!

An image splashed across the monitor.

It was Simon Stone's construct.

"Noir!! Thank goodness one of you kids is awake!!" the old man's hologram flickered in front of the interior image of Phaser Labs. "Look. Can you wake Victor? I've got something urgent! Some really earth-shaking data, if you pardon the pun!!"

I raised an eyebrow. With one finger, I keystroked an inquiry and sent it to him via text messaging.

'What's so important at this hour?'

Simon Stone took a deep breath...as if he could breathe. "Please....I just need to speak with Victor. He'd best understand my findings more than anyone."

I bit my lip suspiciously.

Finally he gave in: "It's about the girl."

"....."

"You know the girl!! The one made of stone!! I......I think I might have found a cure for her..."