Robin paced the narrow corridor of the Batplane's passenger section, bored out of his mind but unable to do anything about it. Three days had passed since he'd had visual confirmation that Grayson and Drake were alive and relatively whole. Much of his time since then had been spent staring down at the ground around Asperity Falls in the desperate hope that they would appear again.

They hadn't, though, and that was quickly moving from being a concern to being an outright crisis. Storms beneath the dome had blocked out their view of the earth below on two occasions, and each time they had held out hope that the pair had passed beneath them while they were obscured. Subsequent earthquakes abroad, which now came at intervals of between sixteen and eighteen hours, had ruled that out after each cloud mass had dissipated.

All of them had been intraplate temblors, and all of them had been extremely large. The most powerful had rocked East Africa so strongly that the latest satellite maps were reporting that Mt. Kilimanjaro had been thrust upward several hundred meters and now rivaled Mt. McKinley for the number-three spot in the list of the Seven Summits. Others had struck in northern Europe, central South America, and most recently just east of the Caspian Sea.

Robin had heard snippets of conversations between Batman and the Watchtower, and had absorbed all of the grim facts. The news was as abysmal as could be expected: stock markets were fluctuating madly around the world; unfathomable numbers of people were being toted up as dead or missing; many nations were becoming tightfisted with emergency resources that they might need in their own country when the next quake struck. From those disastrous details he had drawn the simple conclusion that it had to stop, and soon, or there would be little chance of global recovery within anything like a reasonable time frame.

Despite that dire necessity, they still had no breakthrough that would allow them to launch a strike on whomever it was that was causing the world to shudder. The original task force had grown, and now supposedly included some three dozen heroes and a small army of civilian contacts. They had all of the information that was known about the force field, but so far it had come to naught. The invisible barrier stood, and the planet continued to sit on the edge of its seat, waiting.

At least, he thought as Flash gave a sleepy snort in one of the uncomfortable passenger chairs, Superman seemed to have finally pulled his head out of his ass. Besides increasing the size of the team working on a solution, the Kryptonian had made frequent trips to the Batplane, bringing food, news, and a bit of much-needed morale support. He had continued to refrain from making any sweeping statements about the probable state of the men below, but Damian found himself more and more willing to forgive him for that with every hour that passed. It was hard to blame him for being cautious when there were still aftershocks rolling by and no sign of the only people who could halt the ongoing destruction of the world. His own confidence was waning under those pressures, after all, and Superman had been a skeptic from the beginning.

"Robin."

He turned to find his father standing in the doorway to the cockpit, his lips pressed so tightly together that they were all but invisible. "What?"

"Monitor the screens. I need to speak with Flash."

"Why?" He narrowed his eyes and glanced at the slumbering speedster. "What's going on?"

Batman seemed to hesitate, but after a moment he answered. "...Several of the nuclear power stations that were affected by the quake in Europe have entered critical phases. Another is already in meltdown."

Robin stared at him. "Aren't...but they have containment systems for things like this!" he sputtered.

"Yes, and most if not all of those systems were compromised by the earthquake. You saw the pictures from Holland; the same thing as happened to the dikes happened to the buildings enclosing the reactors."

He gulped. The barricades keeping the sea at bay in the Netherlands had twisted and bent in their efforts to withstand the 7.9 magnitude wrenching that the earth had done beneath them, but in the end many of them had given out. It wasn't difficult for him to apply that same sort of motion to the thick, rigid concrete of nuclear cooling stacks and containment walls, and once he did he understood why Batman looked so disturbed. "...We're not leaving?" he asked. "We can't leave." They're still down there, somewhere...even if they're dead, they're still down there.

"No. We're not leaving. There are others who can ferry people out of the risk zone." He paused. "Superman didn't ask us to leave, for the record. Someone has to be here in case we manage to get through. And," he added pointedly, "someone needs to be up front, watching the monitors."

"I'm going," Robin groused, getting the hint. I'm probably not going to see anything, but I'm going... At least it would give him something to look at for a little while.

Batman shut the door once he was in the cockpit, making it impossible for him to hear what was being said out in the main section of the aircraft. He wasn't sure what they could be talking about that was worse than the coat of radiation that Europe was currently being threatened by, but since there was no way to find out without being caught – his father would be watching the door, he was certain - he slunk over to the pilot's chair and dropped into it. A single glance at the screens focused on the dried-up pond below told him that nothing had changed, and he sighed. Come on, Grayson. You're better than this. Where the hell are you?

"Watchtower to Batman."

Frowning, he picked up the radio. "There can't be something else wrong," he said flatly by way of greeting. "...And Batman's busy."

"Hello, Robin," Superman answered, his voice a bit giddy. "Believe it or not, I have what may be good news."

He bolted upright. "Did someone figure out how to get us down there?!" he nearly shouted.

"No. It's not quite that good of news. Sorry."

"...Oh." He fell back into his seat. "What is it, then?"

"I'm sending you a file with information on someone who may be involved in this. We've been talking to everyone in the seismology community we can get our hands on, and this person's name has come up several times as being someone with the right expertise who is currently incommunicado. We don't know that it's her," he cautioned, "but you'll see why she seems like a good candidate."

Robin felt his interest uptick again. "Okay. I'll look at it and give it to Batman when he's done," he said.

"Good. Thanks, Robin. I should be down there again in a few hours, depending on how the, uh, little situation we've got in Europe goes."

"The nuclear plants. Yeah, I know."

"...Oh. Well...good. I-"

"Can't you just fly over there and drop enough rubble on top of the piles so that they don't kill everyone?" Damian cut him off.

"There are a few other things I have to do in each place before I get to the 'dumping rubble' part, but...you have a pretty good grasp of what's going to happen in at least a couple of places."

The Kryptonian sounded impressed, as Robin thought he ought to. "Good. At least you're doing something about the problem without being prodded into it this time." He supposed he could forgive the man for thinking that Grayson and Drake weren't likely to have survived the initial quake, but that didn't excuse his failure to do something to verify his suspicions. You could have at least flown out here and looked before you told Father what was going on, he mused. "I'll wait for the file. Robin out."

It was satisfying to hang up on people who had irked you, he discovered as he broke the call off. It was no wonder Batman did it so often. Alfred wouldn't approve, he knew, but Alfred was in Gotham, not here, and therefore couldn't do anything about it. Before he could begin to enumerate a list of all the things he could do when the butler wasn't watching him like a hawk, Superman's message came through. "Okay," he muttered as he opened it. "Let's see what kind of crazy we're dealing with..."

Tracy Rae Collins seemed normal enough to start with. A good academic record had led up to her receiving a doctorate in geophysics some thirty five years earlier. After that she had done a stint of teaching at the university level, but she seemed to have tired of that quickly. Before long she'd switched into field work, which from the short synopses provided seemed to have consisted of historical quake analysis and risk assessment...of intraplate temblors. She had traveled the world in that line of work, visiting – Damian's frown deepened – every single one of the locations where earthquakes had taken place in the last week.

Those places were highlighted in the report, and as he read through them he found a disturbing pattern. Each of the spots that had been rocked by major quakes had been visited by Dr. Collins on a separate trip from the others. What was more, each had been the third stop on her itinerary, and with the exception of the first event they were going in chronological order. Maybe, his eyes widened, they could predict where she was going to strike next...

The door opened behind him just as he pinpointed the most likely new target. "Batman!" he exclaimed, whirling around. "We need to evacuate the Lower Mississippi!"

"Now that's a heck of a proclamation," Flash commented over the cowled figure's shoulder.

"...New Madrid?" Batman ventured slowly.

"Yes! Look..." Leaping from the chair, he gestured for his mentor to take it. "Superman just sent a report down on someone they think might be causing the earthquakes. She did risk assessment studies on intraplate earthquakes for, like, twenty years, and – look – she visited every single place that there's been one lately. Plus there's a-"

"A pattern," a growl cut him off. "I see it. You're right; the New Madrid fault fits as the next location. However, there are a couple of issues with this woman being the culprit."

"Like what?!" he challenged, crossing his arms.

"Like the fact that the first quake does not fit the pattern. Also, none of this explains the force field. Judging from this file," he scrolled past where Damian had stopped reading, "she doesn't have the sort of experience that would lend itself to such an advanced development in practical physics. Although..." He trailed off for a moment, leaning in towards the screen.

"Although what?!" Robin demanded. His entire body was tense, every muscle tightening as he waited to hear whether or not they had identified their villain.

"There's a note here that states that Dr. Collins was dismissed from her position because she got into a nasty feud with several other top scientists as well as with a couple of different ethics boards. According to some of her past colleagues, she had the idea that lives could be saved if they implemented a system to relieve plate pressure by instigating quakes." He leaned back. "Mm..."

"That's practically a smoking gun," Flash opined. "Don't you think?"

"It's certainly gives us an idea of her mindset when she was fired. But it also leads to another problem; whoever is setting these quakes off isn't giving any warning other than maybe the pattern that Robin found. If her whole argument was that her plan would save lives, why would she launch a warning-free campaign that has already killed hundreds of thousands?"

"To prove her point, obviously!" Damian exclaimed.

Batman turned to him. "To prove her point. All right; but how is she doing it?"

"How should I know?!"

"How should she know?" the man countered. "If she had a way of doing it ten years ago, when she was initially trying to 'prove her point', why didn't she? And if she didn't have a way, I doubt ten years of study in a separate field from her own would have given her the knowledge she needed in order to come up with one, let alone to come up with the force field. I'm not saying it's impossible, Robin, but I am saying that it's improbable."

"So's the whole thing, Batman! The force field, the earthquakes, all of it!"

"I agree. That's why we're going to look further into it. We'll treat her just like a suspect in any other case. You can get started on looking up her relations and anyone else she knew who might have had the expertise to create a force field or cause a massive earthquake. In the meantime, we'll ask for the evacuation of the New Madrid area and nearby major cities. Flash-"

"What's that?" the speedster asked plainly.

"...Weren't you listening?" Batman half-growled, a trace of annoyance bleeding into his tone.

"Yes, I was, but what's that?" Leaning in between them, Flash jabbed his finger at movement on the screen still displaying the ground below. "I just looked over and saw it..."

There was a moment of perfect silence as they all stared at two tiny moving spots. "...Is it?" Damian breathed finally.

"I don't know," Batman replied, but his voice was trembling. He zoomed the camera in, and three simultaneous gasps filled the small space. Their angle wasn't conducive to seeing facial expressions, but there was no question as to who they were looking at. Dick was still limping, Damian noted, and Tim was still carrying the red backpack, which looked suitably beat-up for the trek it had just been on. "...They must have come up the river instead of going back along the trail," the seated man murmured, his hand cupping the side of the screen. "Clever..."

"There are no guards, you idiots," the boy muttered as the figures stopped and began to scan the surrounding rocks. "Just go."

"They don't know that," Flash, who was still leaning in over him, said. "We're the only ones with a birds' eye view."

"They need to hurry," he argued despite his private admission that the redhead was right.

"Just because we haven't seen any guards doesn't mean there aren't any inside that cave we noticed when we swung around to scan the cliff yesterday," Batman put in distractedly. "They're unarmored and unarmed; they need to be cautious. Extremely-"

He broke off as a third figure stepped out from behind a large rock. She carried what appeared to be a shotgun in her hands, and as they watched she trained it on the men who had stumbled into her territory.

The tension in the cockpit was suddenly so heavy that it was hard to breathe. The woman's mouth moved, and Damian felt something strain in his chest. Don't shoot them, he begged. Don't, don't shoot them. If you do, I swear I'll...I'll...I'll do something. Just don't shoot them...

Whatever they said must have been sufficient, because after a second she moved her lips again and then jerked her head towards the cave. Tim shrugged his pack off, abandoning it on the ground, and then he and Dick both started to walk. "...Batman!" Robin whispered desperately. Do something!

"I can't do anything, Robin," a helpless answer came back as the duo was marched up and out of sight. "...I can't do anything at all."

Author's Note: There's a little infographic up on my blog this morning about the Seven Summits, in case anyone's interested. Happy reading!