Robin's POV:

I knew this was a bad idea. We were too exposed. We had safe-houses but not enough supplies to operate a base in any of them for more than a couple of weeks. The meta-humans would view my kidnapping as a sign of weakness. They would come to prove something to themselves and us. And then there was Joker's threat against Starfire... If anything happened to her I would lose it. The night I watched my parents fall from the trapeze I became something else. There are some that like to think that Batman made me into what I am, that he saw a kindred spirit that night in the tent and took me under his wing to teach me how to be strong. Those people are wrong. Bruce trained me because he knew that without his code I'd have turned into another murdering Gotham psychopath. I would have died trying to kill Zucco if Batman hadn't intervened and shown me another way. It was the grief, Batman explained. I let it controll me. Ever since he's tried to get me to detach, because deep down he knows just how bad things will get if I lose control. That's why he pushed the no dating rule so hard on me but didn't seem to care when Babs talked about her latest high school crush. Babs wasn't a ticking time bomb. I was. And right now Starfire is my fuse.

From the moment we entered the city I felt the hostility and it set my teeth on edge like never before. Every pedestrian we passed was a potential threat, every eye that followed us we out to get us. Star still didn't understand the danger she was in. Not even after those guys in the alley tried to attack us. It was all I could do not to spin my bike around and head right back out of the city and take her someplace, anyplace, where I could keep her safe.

Herr arms tightened around my waist, as if she knew what I was thinking and was scolding me for it. I ground my teeth.

Due to the tunnel collapse Star had to carry us out to the island. She could have carried me and the bike, but that was too conspicuous so I stowed the R-cycle at one of the safe houses.

"Robin, you are the all right?" she asked nervously while I pulled a tarp over my bike. Every muscle in my body seized with the urge to lash out, but I clamped my mouth shut and waited until I had control. This wasn't her fault. I repeated it over and over.

"Let's just get to the Tower."

Notmally when Star takes me flying it's a fun experience. She knows how I like to swoop and dive and brush the water with my toes, but she knew me well enough to ow that today I was in no mood for games. As we flew, the distant wreckage of the Tower got slowly bigger, and the nearer it got the greater my sense of dread became. It squeezed around my chest until it became physically hard to breathe. Inside my gloves my hands began to sweat and if it weren't for Starfire's grip on my wrists I'd have worried that my fingers might slip out of my gloves and drop me straight into the bay.

"Oh, Robin," Starfire said in a sad, small voice as she lowered my feet to the sand. The lump in my chest made it too difficult for me to respond. But I held onto her hand and squeezed it do reassurance.

Steell beams and slabs of concrete lay everywhere, coated by panes of broken glass whose jagged edges caught the light with an evil glint. A layer of ash still coated everything. The ground was scorched and the trees closest to where the tower had stood were charred and twisted.

"Cyborg?" I cleared my throat and called out to the others. They would already be here since they hadn't had to stop. I couldn't see them and beside me Starfire gave a little shiver.

After a long moment with no answer, there was a shuffling sound and a green bloodhound climbed over an exposed pipe to greet us.

"Hey guys. Cyborg found a way in and he's trying to see if any of his security systems are still working. I don't know what Raven's doing. If you think this is bad it gets worse," he said. His ears were the lowest I'd ever seen them, and for once he didn't sound like a squeaky kid. The weight of it aged him and gave me a glimpse of the man lurking inside the teenager.

"You'll want to be careful, there's glass and metal everywhere," he pointed out unnecessarily. Without a word, Stafire lifted us a foot or so off the ground while Beast Boy transformed back into the bloodhound to show us the way. I never instantly what he meant by worse. Not only was our home in ruins but in the time we'd been away someone, or more likely a lot of someones, had vandalized the place. Spray paint artists wrote messages in crooked handwriting. "Cowards", "stay away", and the occasional "R.i.p." The ones with a little more artistic talent had gone so far as to draw hazy pictures of us in less than flattering positions. I caught sight of one disturbingly large penis pointed toward a green legged stick figure and didn't look any further.

"Where is Raven?" Starfire asked. Beast Boy sighed and shrugged.

"I tried to follow her but her eyes went all red and glory on me and I decided to leave her alone." It didn't surprise me. Ravem, for all her talk about not having emotions would be taking this very hard. The enemy had gotten inside our home. That was something that shook you up no matter who you are. It was a violation, and Raven would be having a tough time pretending not to feel violated.

"Hey Cyborg, any luck?" I called into the mouth of a tunnel that had formed where our front door used to be.

"Nah, man. It looks like some punks made off with some of my tech. Probably sold it for spare parts because they took bits and pieces but left the generator. Don't know what they think their going to do with some neutron sprockets without a generator..." He sounded disgruntled, more at the idea that someone had handled his equipment that clearly didn't know what they were doing rather than at the theft itself. I almost smiled. Leave it to Cyborg... But I guess a guy who'd literally been rebuilt from the ground up would know a thing or two about starting over. Knowing him he was already planning improvements and saw this as an opportunity to make changes he'd been wanting to make for years.

"Robin, I will find where Raven has gone. I do not like not knowing where she is. She should not be alone here. There is too much sadness and she..."

Starfire was right. Raven would soak up all the sorrow, bitterness, and hate in th sir like a sponge. I let go of her hand reluctantly, feeling oddly empty when she moved away. I decided to help Cyborg. Even if the place had been looted there still might be things we could salvage. Blueprints, files... We had a lot of work ahead of us. I got a headache just imagining the consequences of some of our records making it into public hands.

"You sure this is safe?" I called, crawling under a fallen support bea on my hands and knees.

"Yea, I scanned it first. It's messy but it's not going anywhere." Cyborg was crouched in the smallest ball he could contort his massive frame. A flashlight had emerged from his arm to shine on the motherboard that had once controlled our security system.

"Looks like someone really rolled out the welcome wagon for us," he said in a low voice. "I was starting to think someone figure out your name out there. I wasn't expecting that."

"It's just a bunch of punk kids," I said, shrugging. "They'd probably paint penises all over the Batcave if they could find a way in."

"Ha! They wouldn't live to tell about it." Cuborg's teeth gleamed in the darkness. Even I had to smile at the thought of Bruce walking into the cave to find penises painted on the walls. His head would explode. The thought was so good it was almost worth the prank if I thought I could survive it.

"Have you gone back any further?" I asked, changing the subject back onto saner ground.

"Nah. I got hung up here. But the tunnel goes back a little further if you want to have a look. My systems say its structurally sound enough that you won't have a problem as long as you don't move anything." Something about that sentence picked at my brain. Unease began creeping up my spine and I didn't know why. Still, I thanked Cyborg and crawled around him to follow the tunnel.

Why was there a tunnel? I could understand an opening or a crawl space, but with each foot I moved the more I began to realize that this space had been cleared. It was just large enough for a person to crawl through. And while I believed Cyborg when he said it was structurally sound, falling debris wouldn't do that on its own. There'd be places where the way was blocked. This was...man-made.

I almost turned back. Alarm bells were clanging in my head. Someone had been through here. Someone with enough manpower and determination to rearrange steel and stone. Curiosity kept me going. What were they after?

Just ahead of me, where the garage elevator shaft used to be, the tunnel opened up into a space large enough for me to stand up. A black computer desk chair stood in the middle of the space facing away from me. It looked undamaged, so it had been brought in after the Tower came down. My feeling of trepidation got worse. Slowly, very slowly, I approached, scanning the ground for trip wires or motion sensors. Carefully I put my hand on the chair and spun it around.

"Cyborg!"

Propped up on the chair was a photograph of the Titans hanging out at the park. Starfire and Cyborg were tossing a tennis ball for Beast Boy, who was a green retriever. Raven sat in the distance reading a book under a tree, and I was watching the game. At least I looked like I was, but I was really watching Starfire. God, had I been that obvious? Around Starfire was a red circle drawn in marker. Underneath was scribbled: "Target Acquired."

Behind the photograph, propped up against the back of the chair, was an orange and black mask.

Slade.