[Undisclosed Location
Unknown Date, Unknown Time]
Wally stared out at his father with a mix of emotions – the foremost of which being hurt and anger. He'd spent almost every night lying awake in bed, turning over in his head everything he would say to his father if he was ever given the chance. He'd gotten a pretty good idea too a few times, but it all flew out the window at that moment.
He thrust one arm out behind him, pointing at Zoom furiously, "You're working for Professor Zoom?!"
His father looked distastefully at the insane villain who was currently perched on a table and flipping through his book, paying them no attention. He was wearing a dark red and blue uniform with two pistols strapped to his hips. "We're not working for him; we're working with him. Temporarily. We need each other for the moment."
"Need each other for what?" Wally spat. "Zoom said something about a plan and some kind of formula earlier. Who do you think you are – some sort of wannabe supervillain? And, who is 'we'? The League thinks you're working for the Manhunters."
"I am a Manhunter," his father steeled himself, straightening up impressively and pushing his shoulders back.
Wally rolled his eyes, "What, you're a robot now? That's new…"
"Shut up!" his father snarled, stalking towards the cell. Wally took a step back before he could stop himself and felt a cold wave of shame crash into him when he saw his father's expression fill with satisfaction. "You're nothing. You have no idea what the Manhunters are trying to do."
"Kill everyone?" Wally offered angrily.
"They're going to purify the universe," his father crossed his arms over his chest.
"Yeah, kill everyone," Wally glared up at his father. "I heard about what they did to sector 666. That sounds real noble, Dad. Although, that's never been one of your better qualities."
"I wouldn't expect you to understand," he cocked an eyebrow at Wally superiorly. "You've always been useless. The Manhunters promised me a powerful son, and I got you instead."
"What?" Wally's eyebrows knitted together in confusion.
"I joined up when I was fresh out of high school, and I did everything they told me to do – obeyed any command I was given, whether I liked it or not. Something you've never understood. So, when they told me that if I married your mother she would give me a powerful son that would be instrumental to the Manhunter's cause, I was eager to do it."
Wally froze in place, turning his head slightly to look at his father warily, "You married Mom because a bunch of robots told you to? That's…the only reason?"
"I got lucky. Mary was a good woman. She was very tolerable to be around," his dad said dispassionately like he was describing a reliable car.
"Then why did you kill her?!" Wally slammed his fists against the glass right in front of his dad's face. He wished so hard that he could vibrate through objects so that he could escape from this cell and throttle his father before he even had time to scream. "Why did you kill me if I was so damn important?!"
"Killing you was a mistake," his father admitted grudgingly. "I admit, I lost it a little when all the stress got the better of me. Poor Mary was just in the way when I snapped. The Manhunters were upset with me when they had to break into the Watchtower to get me out; it alerted the Justice League to their existence ahead of schedule. Now, they have to destroy the League before we can continue our mission."
Wally's eyes widened in alarm, "Why?"
"Earth is very important to the Manhunters right now. We can't lose it just yet, and the Justice League threatens us, so they have to go," he shrugged.
"West," Professor Zoom snapped suddenly, closing his book and zipping over to the cell. He seemed to have a brief handle on his sanity again. "Stop telling him everything. He's trying to fish for information."
"Let him," his father said offhandedly, gesturing to Wally with a weak swipe of his arm. "There's no way he can escape, and the Justice League is never going to find him. Who's he going to tell?"
Zoom turned to stare at Wally with his horrifying mess of a face. The different colored eyes narrowed in hatred before they looked away, "It's better to be safe than sorry. You never know."
"If it was so dangerous for the Justice League to find out about the Manhunters, then why did they blow all of that to come out of hiding and rescue you?" Wally challenged his father, knowing that if he pushed him into anger, he'd be easier to pull information out of. "Why the hell are you so important? You don't even have any superpowers, and the last time I saw you do anything close to being physically challenging was when you were stooping down to pick up the TV remote."
Surprisingly, his dad didn't rise up at the barb. He just fixed him with a glare and spoke in an irritated tone, "When I was in my cell, your uncle told me that you were still alive somehow. I knew I could fix my mistake, so I radioed for the Manhunters when the League left me alone in my cell. The Manhunters have technology that can track anyone anywhere if they have a blood sample from a close relative of their target. I was the only one on the planet they could use to track you, so they needed to break me out."
Wally took in everything his father was saying with a growing sense of dread. He opened his mouth to speak, shut it when his words failed him, and tried again hesitantly, "….what exactly do you need me for? Why did you kidnap me?"
"You'll find out soon enough," his father smiled darkly, clearly taking great delight in his son's fear. Then, he looked over at Professor Zoom. "You're almost ready for him, aren't you?"
"Tomorrow," Zoom agreed, reaching back and pulling the cowl over his head. His body started sparking with power, and Wally saw his eyes glow red instead of blue through the eye holes cut into the mask. So, he hadn't been imagining that red color earlier – but what was causing it? "The formula is almost ready to test again. I need to go finish it now before the new subjects arrive."
"What formula?" Wally asked in a panic. What the hell were they going to do to him?
"Send one of your goons to knock him out, will you?" his dad cast one last revolted look at Wally before turning to leave.
"Hey!" Wally shouted, kicking the glass again. "What the hell are you talking about?!"
"They're not my goons," Zoom protested. "They're Savage's. I don't want anything to do with them; they're completely ruined."
Wally halted in his struggles abruptly, watching the pair walk away. Savage? Vandal Savage?! What did he have to do with all this?
"They were fine until they tried your formula."
"It was the first batch. Of course it didn't work right. I'm surprised it made them as fast as it did."
Realization hit Wally dead in the chest like a hammer. Oh no.
At the same time, the vents in his cell powered up, and a fine white vapor started spewing from the ceiling. Wally immediately took a deep breath and held it, dropping to the floor to escape the smoke for as long as he could. He braced himself against the cylindrical glass walls and watched the smoke fill up the top of the cell and swirl down around him. One minute passed, and Wally could barely see through the glass to the rest of the room. Another minute went by, and Wally had to shut his eyes, because the white fog was so thick. His lungs were burning as he fought his body's natural reflex to take a deep breath.
It seemed redundant to hold his breath until he passed out, since the gas filling up the cell was designed to knock him out anyway, but Wally didn't want to give in. He didn't want to give in and surrender even that tiny shred of control in a situation where he had next to none, but after only fifteen more seconds, he was releasing that held breath with a strangled cough.
And then, his body sucked in another lungful of air before he could stop himself.
Ten seconds later, he was lying half on his side, slumped over against the glass and unconscious.
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[Gotham City
March 24, 14:00 EST]
Hal had never been in the Batcave before. He'd seen glimpses of it in the past when they'd had to read Superman's mind once, but that had only irritated him, because it meant that Clark had been allowed in while Hal had not. Batman still didn't fully trust Hal. It was probably their personalities…just didn't mesh well…yeah, that was it. The seven founders had all eventually shared their identities with each other two years ago, so Hal knew that he was Bruce Wayne, billionaire playboy – which was just wrong! But, he'd never been allowed in until today.
And it was under terrible circumstances.
He stood behind Bruce, who was seated at his supercomputer, arms crossed and feeling very much like a five-year-old in a priceless antique store with his mother. Above him, a chorus of high-pitched screeching swirled around in flocks, and Hal nervously threw up a full body shield against any falling bat guano. The floor and equipment was miraculously clean of it, but Hal wasn't willing to take any chances. He was the type that would get pooped on the first time he visited the Batcave.
Hal just wished that Barry would hurry up and get here. Standing in awkward silence with the Bat was torture, but he knew that his friend had been later than usual recently. When he wasn't working, he was running the globe looking for Wally. Hal had even caught Barry pushing himself to speeds that were dangerous to the planet. They needed to find Wally soon – not just for the kid, but for Barry as well. He was starting to lose it.
Hal knew that Barry hadn't eaten anything at all the day his nephew was taken, and he'd worked straight through the night analyzing the blood samples they'd gotten off of Jay, physically searching the planet while he was waiting for the results to come in from the labs. He hadn't even spared a minute to pop into the med bay to see Max and Jay, and he hadn't seen Iris yet either. Diana had been the one to break the news to his wife. Iris had understood Barry's absence completely, and Hal could tell that she was trying her best to be okay so that her husband could give one hundred percent to finding Wally. She was a tough broad, and she'd been amazingly stable so far after everything that had happened, but she needed this to be over quickly too.
Somewhere behind them, Hal could hear a massive turbine running and the distant rush of waterfalls. He gave a sigh, even daring to make it audible, and took a few steps to the edge of the platform, looking down over the railing at the small dock at the very bottom level of the cave. There were three varying types of watercraft tethered to it and bobbing gently in the water. Man, he really wanted to see the Batplane up close again. Bruce had left it in the Watchtower's Javelin bay only once and never again after that.
Hal may or may not have been the reason for that.
"Where's Robin at?" he asked suddenly, unable to stand the silence any longer.
"With the Team," Bruce said quietly, not looking up from his work. "I found a few things that needed further investigation, so I split the Team in two and dispatched them to Russia. If we try to keep them out of the loop on this, they'll just take matters into their own hands. Especially Robin."
"Russia? So, you found something on-" Hal began, but paused when he heard the unnatural sound of solid matter warping against its will. He turned to the side to see Barry stepping out of the limestone and onto the platform across the water from them. He disappeared into a red blur and was standing beside Bruce at the computer in half a second.
"Alright, I'm here," he said grimly, pulling back his cowl and crossing his arms. Hal took in his friend's appearance and felt his expression tighten with worry. Barry's normally bright face was grey and worn. He stared at Bruce's monitors with tired, dark eyes and sweat pouring down his neck. His shoulders and chest heaved quietly in exhaustion. Hal walked up beside him and took it as confirmation that Barry knew exactly how terrible he looked when he refused to meet Hal's gaze. "What did you find?"
Bruce turned back to the computer and started pulling up various windows and pictures on the screens, "After you took the blood samples to your own lab, I examined Kid Flash's goggles again and was able to find a few microscopic fibers that we missed the first time."
He enlarged a photo of a single strand with notes and lines drawn all over it, "The material is similar to your Flash costume, but not as effective. It's made to withstand extremely high speeds and temperatures as well as friction resistant, but it's not as strong. I'd estimate that these speedsters need new costumes every other time they exceed the speed of sound. The severe rate of deterioration is the reason that fibers were left behind on the goggles."
"Any idea who made it?" Hal asked curiously.
"S.T.A.R. Labs," Bruce said grimly. When Barry and Hal looked down at him in angry disbelief, Bruce pulled up another window detailing the schematics of the unique material, "Twenty-eight years ago. It was sold in bulk to the Russian government under the pretense of being used for their aerospace program, but the program never produced any aircraft coated with the material, so I did some digging. It looks like the shipment completely disappeared officially, but after breaking into some secure files, I found out that it was sent to a top secret facility in Siberia called the Puleski Institute. The facility has been abandoned for years, but I dispatched Aqualad, Miss Martian, and Artemis to investigate it for any clues. When I tried to look into the Puleski Institute further, I found that most of the records had been destroyed. The only names I could uncover were Orloff and Krulik, both bio-geneticists. Doctor Krulik is deceased, but Orloff is alive and living in St. Petersburg. I sent Robin, Zatanna, and Superboy there to question Orloff."
"So, really old S.T.A.R. Labs tech is running around with Zoom and the mutant speedsters three," Hal ground his teeth together unhappily. He liked to think that S.T.A.R. Labs was on their side, not helping foreign governments make super criminals. "What else?"
"I hacked into S.T.A.R. Labs databases, and there's nothing even close to the boots that the speedsters were wearing," Bruce sat back in his chair and rubbed at his forehead in frustration. "They don't even have any research into the subject at all."
"I got that one," Hal perked up a little. "And it's not good. The boots are definitely Manhunter tech, which means that they're working with Zoom for sure."
Barry's expression sharpened, and he looked at Hal dangerously, "If Zoom has Wally and he's working with the Manhunters, then he's taking him to Rudy. That's got to be how he found out Wally's identity in the first place. Rudy told him."
"I'll bet that's why they broke him out of the Watchtower," Bruce frowned at some point in the distance, tenting his fingers together pensively. "They need Wally for something."
"But, what?" Hal didn't understand. "This looks like it's turning out to be a speedster thing. If they needed a speedster, then why not attack Barry? He's the fastest. And why would they need another speedster at all? It looks like they've got plenty already."
"I don't know," Barry closed his eyes like he was thinking hard. "Maybe it's just because he's Rudy's son."
"What did you find from the blood?" Bruce asked, looking up at Barry where he had one hand resting on the back of the chair.
"Well, the two types are both male. I ran it through every database looking for hits and got two matches. Boleslaw Uminski and Gregor Gregorovich. Uminski went missing from his school in 1991 in Samara, and Gregorovich disappeared on a family vacation in Moscow. Both were five at the time, and they've been missing ever since. That was twenty years ago; they'd be adults now."
"So, Zoom's got both of those missing kids…" Hal tried to make sense of it in his head. "What do you want to bet that the female speedster was a missing child as well?"
"That's the thing," Barry said tiredly. "I don't have her DNA, but both of the men weren't metahumans as children. They had to have gotten their powers after they went missing. They're both definitely speedsters, but…there's something very weird about them. Their blood samples contained a chemical compound I've never seen before."
"A new drug?" Bruce questioned grimly.
"It looks like it," Barry nodded. "But I have no idea what it does. I'm working on taking it apart piece by piece and analyzing the different elements. Max said that something was wrong with the speedsters. This may be it. I've also been trying to track down what Zoom's been up to lately, but I'm coming up with nothing. The Rogues don't normally work with him, but I figured I'd check anyways. Piper said they haven't had anything to do with him in a long time, and I believe him. I looked at the CCPD's records of his appearances, and he hasn't shown up anywhere in Central for almost a year. I don't know how I missed that. I mean, he doesn't attack every day, but I still should have been on it more."
"You can't watch all of your villains all the time," Bruce fixed him with a serious stare. Hal saw Bruce's blue eyes scan Barry over quickly and knew that he was unhappy with how the speedster was taking care of himself.
"It's Professor Zoom," Barry met his stare with one of his own, not backing down in the slightest. "He's criminally insane and can move faster than the synapses in your brain can fire. I should have taken him down years ago. Permanently."
"You mean kill him?" Hal's eyes went wide. Since when did Barry talk like this?
"If I had, then this might not be happening…" Barry's shoulders sagged helplessly, and the lightning in his eyes fizzled out with defeat. "This is twice now that I've failed Wally because I didn't do enough."
"I guarantee you he doesn't see it that way," Bruce said forcefully. "And you forget that his father's working with the Manhunters. This would have happened anyway."
Hal grasped his friend's shoulders and made sure he was looking at him, "Quit being stupid, Barry. Let's just catch this bastard and make him pay."
"What did you find in Egypt?"
Hal looked at Bruce in surprise and took a step back from Barry, "An abandoned Manhunter base – just like the Hawks said. I took Katar, Guy, and four other Lanterns, and we did a full sweep of the base. It was old. Like, the rations we found in there were dated to expire in the seventies."
"So, they've been recruiting humans since well before then," Bruce's scowl deepened. "How have they kept this quiet for so long?"
"Cloaking devices," Hal pulled up glowing green schematics of the massive generators they'd found. "This one was buried beneath the whole tomb, and it's not all we found. There were homing beacons to seven other bases."
Barry suddenly looked hopeful, and before he could ask the locations, Hal cut him off, "Teams of Lanterns are already searching them right now. They're all dotted along Africa and the Middle East, but there are bound to be more. If every one of them could lead us to seven more, we'll have them mapped out in a matter of weeks."
The look on Barry's face clearly said that it wasn't fast enough, but there wasn't anything they could do about it. It took time to locate and safely sweep all of the bases on an entire planet.
Bruce seemed pleased by that timeframe. Hal knew that the big bad Bat cared about Wally's safety, but he was removed enough emotionally to consider the bigger picture. A few weeks was a fantastic amount of time to remove several decades worth of Manhunter invasion advancement.
"What did you find out from the Manhunters that were left behind?" Bruce asked quickly before Barry could get any more upset than he already was. Hal had never realized before just how much they took Barry's usual temperament for granted.
"They're much newer than the Manhunters that attacked Oa, but they're also older than the ones that tore a new port hole into the Watchtower," Hal ran a hand through his hair and dismissed the ring construct. "Which means we're a few thousand years out of date and in for some nasty surprises. We also found the remains of a factory that looks like its function was solely to make Manhunters. If every base on every planet has a factory like the one we found, then we're in a lot of trouble. The only good news is that it takes a very long time to make even a single Manhunter. Even on Oa, it took the Guardians days to make just twenty."
Barry and Bruce didn't look particularly reassured by that fact. Hal couldn't blame them. It was still a massive number they were looking at.
"We also confirmed that they are completely deactivated. The cores are missing from every single one of them," Hal said.
"I don't get it," Barry scratched the back of his neck, resting one hand on his hip. "Seems like they're all about expanding their numbers. Why would they leave any behind?"
"Guy thinks they're just defective, but Kilowog's thinking it's a trap, and I'm going with him on this one," Hal gave a small laugh. "So we took them apart inside the base and left them there for now. Salaak is mapping out their programming to see if we can use it against them somehow, but the going is slow. Their systems are so complicated that it'll take him half a day at least to decode everything. The Guardians don't have any other ways to help us either. When the Manhunters rebelled, it looks like they severely altered their systems."
"So, we're at a standstill until new leads open up," Bruce sighed in mild frustration.
Barry shook his head and tapped the communicator in his ear, "I don't stand still. Call me when you have something new."
And then he was gone before either of them could say anything to stop him. Hal just stared in the direction he'd disappeared into, and Bruce turned back to his work after a moment.
"He's going to drop dead if he keeps this up," Bruce said tonelessly.
"What's he supposed to do – just sit around and do nothing?" Hal felt the immediate urge to defend his friend, despite the fact that he really did agree with Bruce more than a little.
Bruce had nothing to say to that, and Hal kind of wished that he did. He really had no idea how to help Barry aside from wrestling him down and knocking him unconscious, but that was clearly a terrible idea. Not only would Barry be really angry when he woke up, assuming Hal was even able to take him down in the first place, but his time would be better spent awake and trying to find his nephew – even if the intense searching was bringing out a really dark side of Barry that none of them ever knew was there.
Hal would've loved an easy fix, but for now he just had to trust that his friend knew how to snap himself out of it before things got really bad.
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[The Puleski Institute
March 24, 15:00 EST]
"Miss Martian, please link us up," Kaldur requested calmly.
Artemis stood in the middle of M'gann's bio-ship and zipped up the front of her grey and white snow suit. She tucked her long ponytail into the hood and pulled it over her head, slinging her bow over her shoulder. Instantly, she felt the sensation of two foreign consciousnesses inside her head. She felt M'gann's overwhelming grief and Kaldur's quiet anger and determination, along with her own emotions – which she was so not going to think about at the moment. Not with Kaldur and M'gann in her head.
A hole opened up in the bottom of the bio-ship, and Artemis jumped down to the snow below, landing with a crunch. She nocked an arrow and took off running towards the nearest ice encrusted shed in the compound. Kaldur wasn't far behind her, his water bearers out but not activated. He peeked into one of the windows in the shed while Artemis turned to scan their surroundings.
M'gann had dropped them down right in front of the abandoned Puleski Institute. Artemis thought maybe they'd be raiding some run-down college campus by the sound of the name, but the real thing was something straight out of a horror movie. The entire compound was maybe thirteen buildings: a radio tower, a small airplane hangar, several sheds and a large garage with twelve roll down doors, two or three dome shaped-buildings, what looked like a barracks, and the biggest, creepiest, dilapidated structure she'd ever seen. It looked more like a prison than a 'laboratory', especially with the electric fence surrounding the whole compound.
"Miss Martian, please search the buildings for any signs of life," Kaldur asked mentally.
"I'm on it," M'gann thought a touch more seriously than she usually was. Artemis saw the telltale ripple in the air of M'gann's camouflaged bio-ship taking off. She was able to track it flying into the center of the compound before she lost it in the sky.
Artemis stayed silent, working very hard to suppress her thoughts. She scanned the horizon through her visor, getting a really unsettling vibe from the whole place. There was nothing but snow all around. No trees. No people. No noise. Artemis clutched her bow and the arrow she had at the ready, listening to how eerily quiet it was and trying not to admit to herself that she totally believed in ghosts. God, especially after Halloween when she and Zatanna had encountered Greta Hayes and Harm.
"The compound is completely clear of all human life," M'gann reported quickly.
"What about ghost life?" Artemis thought before she could stop herself.
"What?"
"Nothing, sorry." Artemis shook her head miserably. "Too many movie nights with Green Arrow and Black Canary."
Kaldur eyed her with confusion for several moments but didn't push any further, "We're going to split up. Miss Martian, I want you to search the barracks. I will case the perimeter and the smaller buildings. Artemis will take the main building. If anyone encounters any kind of trouble, call for help, and we'll tackle it as one. We're looking for anything at all that can tell us more about the speedsters that took Kid Flash. The Justice League is hitting dead ends, and they need more leads."
"We'll do our best," M'gann said confidently over the mind link.
Kaldur placed one hand on Artemis' shoulder bracingly before running off to the front of the shed to kick in the door. Artemis looked over her shoulder at the looming building she was tasked with and felt her stomach squirm uncomfortably. He took a deep breath and ran across the silent courtyard and up to the main doors.
The doors were chained shut with a rusty padlock, and a swift kick from Artemis sent them crashing open. Snow swirled in around Artemis as she took a few steps forward. Most of the windows had been boarded up, letting very little light through aside from the front door. Artemis squinted into the dim room, taking a minute to allow her eyes time to adjust to the dark, and moved into the main foyer. Dusty desks and overturned chairs were all clustered to one side of the entry room, and a massive pile of soot, charred boxes, and files sat in the middle of the floor. Someone had made a bonfire before they left…
Artemis swept the room with her arrow before bypassing the old staircase leading to the upper floors. She kept an arrow trained on the railings above until she'd backed into the next room and checked that one over as well. The residual snow packed onto her boots crunched loudly as she explored the entire first level of the structure, making her glance over her shoulder every other second for someone following her. M'gann had said that the compound was empty, but it paid to be cautious. She quickly doubled back to the first room and began rifling through every drawer in the desks. She found a couple of scattered envelopes and a few supply lists that she quickly translated into English through her visor's digital display. It looked normal enough. Food, gear, bullets, light bulbs, new blankets. Artemis replaced the list in the drawer and looked over at the stairs again.
Time for level two.
She exhaled a shaky breath and took one tentative step onto the rusty staircase. It groaned under her weight, causing her skin to turn icy in response. This place was seriously giving her the creeps. She was totally fine with physical enemies – cool as a cucumber – but her experience in New York with Greta had made her extremely superstitious. Her whole body was on high alert. Artemis continued up the staircase sideways, pointing her arrow straight up as she went. She placed her foot on the next step, and it buckled, dropping half a foot with an echoing metal screech. Artemis shrieked both mentally and out loud, and scrambled up to the landing, her heart fluttering madly in her chest.
"Artemis!" M'gann sensed her spike of terror instantly.
"Hold on," Kaldur thought urgently. "We are on our way."
Artemis desperately smothered her hysteria and placed a hand over her heart to calm herself down, "I'm fine! It was nothing – just almost fell through a staircase. I don't think there's anyone else here. It's just a little freaky in here."
"Are you sure?" Kaldur asked skeptically.
"I'll be fine," she bent down to retrieve her arrow and continued up to the second floor as fast as she could. "I've only got two more floors to go."
With that, she crept up onto the second floor, sneaking through the empty hallways and rooms there too. A second ash pile was sitting in the middle of one of the rooms just like downstairs.
"Someone's done some serious housecleaning here," she thought to the others, looking at the discolored patches of floor against the walls where large pieces of equipment once rested. All of the ports built into the walls looked like they'd been hastily removed, leaving gaping holes in the concrete. There was one desk shoved into a corner with a tall filing cabinet turned over beside it. Artemis set her bow on the desk and crouched in front of the cabinet, searching through the half pulled out drawers.
"I am encountering the same situation out here," Kaldur informed calmly. "Almost all of the equipment here has either been destroyed or removed."
Artemis went through five drawers before she found a small, white corner of something sticking up from the track on the bottommost drawer. She carefully pulled it out to reveal a small, crumpled picture of eight people tightly grouped together in front of the building she was currently in. The windows weren't boarded up, various others in the background had been captured going about their duties, and a military jeep was parked off to the side. Artemis rubbed her thumb across the glossy surface of the photo and held it closer to her face. The picture was of two older men in lab coats standing behind six young teenagers, all staring at the camera with small smiles.
She flipped the photo over in her hands and looked at the back curiously. January 1st, 2000 was written in the top right corner by hand, and a small paragraph was scrawled in Russian in the middle. Artemis translated it with her visor. 'Dr. Orloff and Dr. Krulik with Boleslaw, Anatole, Cassiopeia, Gregor, Bebeck, and Christina.'
Artemis recognized four names off the list. She flipped it back over angrily and glared at the six children, four of which were male. Two of those boys, and one of the girls Artemis was willing to bet, had taken Wally. She folded the photo up and slipped it into the pocket of her jacket. Batman would definitely want to see it, if only to put a face to the attackers.
She retrieved her bow and searched the rest of the room and the entirety of the top floor without finding anything else helpful. She searched the ground floor again for signs of a hidden basement, or secret passageway, or something, but came up empty. Hopefully, Kaldur and M'gann had found something in their parts of the compound.
Artemis exited the building and looked for signs of the others, "Alright, I tore that building apart, and the only thing I could find was a picture. It has at least two of the speedsters that kidnapped Wally in it."
"Excellent work, Artemis," Kaldur sounded relieved. "Run the photo through the scanner on the bio-ship and send it to the Watchtower. M'gann and I will meet you there. I am almost finished checking the garage."
"I'll bring her around for you," M'gann offered quickly, and Artemis could see the camouflaged ship slowly lowering to the ground in the center of the courtyard. "I'm almost done, too. Just two more rooms to go."
Artemis jogged through the snow as quickly as she could and up the ramp to the bio-ship. Once inside, she directed the ramp to close and then pulled the hood back. She pulled the photo from her jacket and placed it face down onto the wide screen set into one of the seat consoles. Recently, M'gann had assimilated a large variety of Earth tech into her bio-ship in order to better connect it to the Watchtower and the cave in Mt. Justice. Artemis scanned both sides of the photo and sent it straight to the Watchtower.
"Artemis to the Watchtower," she held down the button on her communicator.
There wasn't any answer for a long minute, and when someone finally did send a return transmission, it sounded harried and full of radio static, "Watchtower here. What is it?"
She breathed a sigh of relief. It was Wonder Woman on the other end. Artemis still wasn't very confident speaking to seventy percent of the Justice League, but Wonder Woman was something of an idol to her, after Black Canary of course.
"I just sent a photo that I found in the Puleski Institute, and it's got two of the three speedsters in it along with that scientist that Beta Squad is after."
"Good work," Wonder Woman said quickly. "Return to Happy Harbor when Alpha Squad is finished with the mission, and Batman will contact you all for details."
Artemis frowned at the almost dismissive tone in her voice. She could hear shouting and some kind of loud crackling noise in the background, "Is everything okay up there?"
"I'm afraid not."
Artemis immediately stiffened in alarm. Was the Watchtower being attacked again?! Were the Manhunters finally making their move?
"One of the decommissioned Manhunters that Green Lantern and Hawkman recovered just disintegrated," Wonder Woman replied. "We hadn't yet broken into its programming. The Lantern dissecting it must have accidentally activated a failsafe."
Artemis sat down heavily into one of the seats, letting her bow fall to the floor of the ship with a clatter. Another lead gone… She felt angry tears beginning to fill her eyes and wiped at them hastily. Stupid Wally. They'd been starting to get along really well, and after he'd accepted that Sportsmaster was her father, Artemis had started to let herself crush pretty hard on him. Things that had annoyed her before were endearing now, and Wally had even seemed like he felt the same. And then…nothing.
Wally hadn't flirted with her, or anyone really, or made any moves to ask Artemis out. He'd turned indifferent towards her – not mean – like he just wasn't interested anymore. Then came February, and…everything with his father. Artemis had waited until Wally was mostly healed before trying to make him like her again. She'd learned how to cook, had started wearing more girly clothes around him, and had all but outright said that she liked him, but he didn't seem to notice. She'd even kissed him on the cheek twice to try and make him confront her about it. Okay, no, that had been to show him how much she missed him, but she'd hoped that he would ask her about it later. And then, right after Artemis finally made the decision to change tactics and tell Wally she liked him, he went and got himself kidnapped!
She felt like she'd missed her chance, and now she was never going to see Wally again.
"We're going to find him, Artemis," Kaldur's voice was suddenly in her head, and she cringed. She'd been projecting her thoughts…. "We are a team, and we do not leave each other in the hands of our enemies."
Artemis stared at the floor of the bio-ship and felt herself nodding even though Kaldur wasn't there to see it. Now wasn't the time to fall apart. She'd have to channel her doubts into something productive.
Like where she was going to stick her arrows into Zoom when she was turning him into a human pin cushion.
"Sea urchin," Kaldur suddenly said out loud from behind her. Artemis jumped up from her seat in surprise and saw the Atlantean making his way up the bio-ship's boarding ramp.
"What?" she directed the hatch to close again and fixed their leader with a confused stare.
Kaldur walked over to the ship's assimilated scanner and lifted the photo Artemis had found to inspect it. "You were thinking that Professor Zoom would look like a pin cushion after you have shot him full of arrows, but once I have dragged him down to the bottom of the ocean, he will more closely resemble a sea urchin."
Artemis stared at Kaldur's back in surprise, feeling her lips pull into a smile, "You're probably right."
"Kaldur! Artemis! I found something!" M'gann thought excitedly. "I need some help!"
Artemis retrieved her bow from the floor and yanked the hood back up over her head. Kaldur hit the release on the ship's ramp, and they both sprinted back out into the cold and through the drifts of snow to the barracks. This building was only two floors and similarly boarded up like the others, and the heavy, steel double doors had been torn right off their hinges. Kaldur and Artemis exchanged alarmed glances and cautiously entered the building.
M'gann had been unusually quiet over their telepathic link, and now Artemis knew why. She'd been throwing all of her concentration into completely tearing the abandoned barracks apart looking for clues. The rooms and hallways looked like they'd been hit by a pack of tornadoes. M'gann hadn't bothered with any doors; she'd just ripped them off and thrown them aside. Every room was a slowly swirling vortex of floating debris. She hadn't searched the rooms – she'd destroyed them. Artemis ducked under a rotating chunk of door, eyeing the devastation in wide-eyed shock.
"M'gann…did you do all this?" she thought hesitantly.
"Yes," the young Martian responded easily, not picking up on her teammate's concern. "I wanted to be thorough for Wally's sake. Now, hurry. I'll guide you through."
The look Kaldur sent her told Artemis that he was just as worried about M'gann's display of power as she was, but he led the way once M'gann imparted images to them that showed them how to find her. As they weaved through the first floor, Artemis tried to dodge idly floating smashed furniture and shards of glass from lights that M'gann had exploded. They finally found M'gann hovering a few inches off the floor, auburn hair billowing out around her and eyes glowing green. She turned to face them, revealing a set of stairs that led down into what looked like a ransacked mess identical to the rest of the compound.
"This way," M'gann said in their heads harshly, leading the way down the stairs and parting the debris before her to clear a path for them. She stopped in the middle of a hallway that forked at the end. Disabled cameras were mounted at every vantage point, and what used to be an office was located right beside the bottom of the stairs. Artemis followed M'gann to the fork in the hallway and looked around for whatever she'd wanted to show them.
"Up there," M'gann pointed to the large ledges hanging over each of the two hallways. "I almost missed it, but they've been painted over. Nothing else in the building has been, but these were. I need help removing the paint."
Artemis squinted at one of the ledges, looking for signs of what M'gann had described, but found nothing. She examined the other ledge and immediately spotted it: the black corner of a letter, sticking out from the edge of a hastily done swatch of grey paint. Kaldur carefully guided her to step back a little. He turned to M'gann and gestured to the objects defying gravity all around them.
"Miss Martian, please rest your powers for a moment. I am about to use my own abilities, and it would be helpful to have some gravity," Kaldur placed a hand on M'gann's shoulder, and their teammate seemed to snap out of it.
M'gann's eyes returned to their normal color, and she looked at him in surprise, then all around at what she'd done, "Right! Sorry!"
All around them, the debris dropped to the floor with a loud crash, and M'gann stood back beside Artemis, looking a little embarrassed at how badly she'd lost control. Artemis gave her a friendly nudge with her elbow and a reassuring smile.
"Do not apologize," Kaldur's tattoos flared bright blue, and he commanded twin streams of water into the opposite ends of his water-bearers. "You were merely focusing on your task, and you found something that may be able to help us."
Artemis watched curiously as Kaldur used his water-bearers in a way she'd never seen before. Usually, he held them like hilts to whatever hard water weapon he chose to create, but this time he released two powerful jets of water right at the paint like a pressure washer. He must've been using the new weapons that had been created for him to fight the Manhunters with.
Within minutes, Kaldur had both ledges completely cleared of the cover up paint, and the three of them were staring at the exposed words in confusion. Over one hallway, black lettering spelled out the words 'Red Trinity', and the words 'Blue Trinity' hung over the second hallway.
Artemis felt her guts twist into an uneasy knot, and she stared around at the objects littering the floor, "Miss Martian...how many rooms are down here?"
"Six," she answered immediately, looking down from the signs and at her. "Why?"
Artemis picked her way carefully down the hallway labeled 'Red Trinity' and stooped down to pick up what had caught her eye – a very old and worn teddy bear. She held it up to Kaldur, who seemed to be picking up on her train of thought, "How much do you wanna bet that this is where those six kids in the photo lived?"