Dick couldn't possibly move fast enough to prevent the attack in his current state, but fortunately Tim wasn't suffering under the same handicaps. He caught the mad woman's unbroken arm easily and rolled onto his back, flipping her over and tossing her a short distance. She screamed anew as she flew through the air, then went silent when she hit the earth in a floppy-limbed tumble.
For a moment no one moved. "You didn't," Charity started, swallowing heavily, "you didn't...kill her, right?"
"No," Tim shook his head. "I can see her breathing. She should just be knocked out."
"Good," she sighed, sounding relieved.
Dick had begun moving forward as soon as Tracy had charged. Reaching the others now, he stretched out his free hand and gripped his brother's elbow. "You okay?" he asked, scanning him for fresh injuries.
"Yeah. I got her out of the way before she could touch me." His mouth turned down as Dick swayed gently against his crutch. "How's your head?"
"Everything's cloned itself twice," he replied as he tried to blink the new copy away. "It would be trippy if it didn't make me want to puke." The truth, he noted immediately, didn't make Tim look any happier. Before the younger man could suggest that he go sit down, however, he forged ahead. "I'll check Dr. Shakes over there. You two take a look at the machinery."
"Are you sure-"
"I'm sure, Alfred." Giving him a weak grin, he punched at his shoulder playfully. He missed on his first attempt, which didn't help Tim's expression any, but managed to connect the second time. "Ah-ha. So that one isthe real you. Kidding," he added quickly, hobbling away before he could be forced to rest. "Just kidding."
The geophysicist didn't so much as twitch when he knelt clumsily beside her. So far as he could tell she was fine other than a lump on her forehead and the strange way her knee had twisted beneath her. The latter injury was unpleasant to look at, but it didn't seem likely to cause her permanent damage. "Lucky you," he commented as he straightened the limb out. "You're a heck of a lot better off than your victims, lady. Remember that when you wake up."
He thought about tying her up, but pushed the idea away after a bit of thought. They'd left the cord back in the side cave, and she seemed to be down for the count besides. The time it would take for him to retrieve the rope and bind her would be much better spent trying to help save lives in New Madrid, he decided, and dragged himself to his feet once more. "How's it going?" he asked as he approached the work zone. "...Is this the thing that makes the earthquakes?"
"Wait, if you were asleep-" Charity began.
"A little bird told me," he cut her off. "...Tim?"
Tim didn't look back as he answered. "Not so hot. And yes, it is. Unfortunately the system is completely unintuitive, and we're not exactly overburdened with time."
Dick glanced up at the small blue glow of the system's timer. Fifteen minutes, he winced. No, that's really not long to sort out a completely unfamiliar program as complicated as this one must be. "You can do it, little brother," he encouraged, keeping his true thoughts to himself. "If anyone can do it, you can."
"The residents of New Madrid had better hope that your confidence isn't ill-placed," Charity said tightly.
He met her skeptical gaze with a firm look of his own. "It isn't. Tim's the best," he asserted.
"Hmm...well, we'll see for sure soon, won't we?"
"Yes, we will. And even if you can't stop New Madrid," he turned back to his pursed-lipped sibling, "at least you've made sure there won't be any more new quakes after that."
"Yeah, but..."
"...Yeah," he commiserated, well aware of the emotions the other man was feeling at the prospect of failure. "But. I know."
They all stared at the console for several silent minutes. Dick couldn't even venture an intelligent guess as to how most of it worked, and while Charity managed a few decent suggestions Tim was the only one who dared to touch the many knobs and levers in an attempt to make the ticking clock stop. Only when a groan sounded from behind them did they look around. "Hey," Dick frowned at the now-sitting Dr. Collins. "You're supposed to be knocked out. Lay down and stay down."
"Come and make me, you pathetic, self-centered piece of shit," she spat back.
"Bitch," Tim muttered angrily beside him.
Dick just sighed. "I'll deal with her. You two keep working on this," he directed, and limped forward. Tracy got her good leg underneath of her in the meantime, and immediately sought to get to the control board. "I'm thinking not," he said, using his crutch to sweep her feet out from under her as she tried to hop by.
"I'm unarmed, you brutish asshole!" she accused from the ground.
He laughed mirthlessly. "Unarmed? Lady, I don't know exactly how many people you've killed with your supposed lack of armament, but I'm guessing you've secured yourself a spot in the history books alongside all the best-known dictators and homicidal maniacs. Given that, I'm not in any hurry to treat you like you're unarmed."
Hissing, she began to crawl backwards. She was moving away from the computers, but he followed her anyway. There was no reason to think that she didn't have another gun secreted around the cavern somewhere, and Dick had no intention of letting her get to it. "Knock it off," he advised. "It's over."
"It's not over!" she denied, scrambling upright again. The leg that had been contorted beneath her earlier hovered above the floor, touching down every few seconds to help her stay stable. Her eyes still blazed with rage, but they were full of tears now, too. "It's never over!"
"Got it!" Tim cried triumphantly as Charity squealed. Dick didn't need to look back to know that the girl had kissed his brother again as a reward for his success; the expression on her mother's face told him everything.
"You traitor," she blurted out. "We did so much – I did so much – to give you a better world in which to live, and this is the thanks I get?"
"Mother, this has to stop-"
"You have to stop, Charity! You have to stop! Stop living in this fantasy world where people are well-intentioned and willing to help each other. It's a lie, girl, a simple lie!"
"It's not a lie," Dick disagreed. "This is just the first chance Charity's had to see that for herself."
"She doesn't agree with you, damn it!"
"I do agree!" Charity shouted back. "Daddy would want me to agree, and I do!"
Tracy froze, her mouth agape. The moisture that had been building up in her eyes was suddenly too much to be held back, and the twin flows succumbed to gravity. "...Then you really are no child of mine," she whispered. "No child of mine." With that she turned away and started gimping towards the exit.
Wow. Dick stood for a second, stunned. He could hear Charity sobbing behind him, her whimpers overpowering Tim's quiet attempts to soothe her. What a colossal hag. "I'm going after her," he announced.
"Dick, don't," his brother protested. "Stay here. I should be able to get through the force field pretty fast now that I've figured out how the system works. She won't get far."
He shook his head. "It's too risky." Would it have occurred to her to wire the cave to self-destruct? Somehow he wouldn't put it past her. Someone who could disown their own child as easily as she just had didn't seem likely to mind the thought of trashing another piece of their life's work if it failed or was at risk of becoming a turncoat. "...Keep working. I'll see you soon."
"...Right. Well...good luck. And be careful."
"You know it, little brother."
As a result of Tim's defensive move Tracy was now only slightly faster than Dick. While he wasn't able to catch up with his left leg dragging uselessly along and everything presenting itself in twos and threes, he did manage to get a glimpse of her every few turns. It was solace enough for him, since so long as she was moving she wasn't re-arming herself or setting anything off. He tagged along doggedly through the entirety of the entrance tunnel, hoping that he would miraculously discover Batman working his way up from the other end. C'mon, Bruce, he begged as he had to pause for a moment to hold back his bile. I'm about tapped out, here.
No relief came, though, and before long he found himself standing in the open air at the top of the hidden staircase. It was dark out, but there was enough moon to let him see his quarry almost fall off of the bottom step. Tilting his head back, he found the tiny lights at the ends of the Batplane's wings. They would be indistinguishable from stars to anyone who didn't know better, but at the moment the fact that they were still a thousand feet above him was far more important than the efficiency with which they were cloaking the jet. Hurry, Timmy. Get that force field down. Please hurry...
On more than one occasion during his descent he very nearly went crashing to the exposed rocks below. Not gonna die tonight, he reminded himself, hugging the wall after each close call. Can't do that. Tracy could get away, and Bruce... No. Bruce didn't need to see that happen. Besides, after the clusterfuck their hike had turned into he owed Tim a much more sedate, villain-free vacation; he had to live, and he had to keep going.
When he finally reached the foot of the dried-up falls, he glanced around for the fleeing woman. She had stopped, he found when he spotted her, and was hunched over something. As he drew closer he realized that she was rummaging through the backpack she had forced Tim to abandon beneath the river-carved cliffs. There could be no doubt that she was searching for a weapon, and Dick knew she would find one in the form of their camp hatchet. Stopping a prudent distance away, he called out to her. "Tracy, stop this. It's over."
She didn't answer.
"Charity loves you," he tried a different tack. "She begged us not to kill you. Even after everything that's happened, I'm sure she'll forgive you." No response. "You're eventually going to be handed over to people who will hurt you if you try to resist. Don't make her see you like that, Tracy. Please, think about your daug-"
"I have no daughter!" her shriek rent the night. "You've taken her from me and turned her into my enemy!"
A cool breeze washed over them before he could do more than open his mouth to reply. An instant later he realized that he could hear the Batplane's engines, distant but growing nearer. A ridiculous grin stretched across his lips as he swelled with pride. Yes! Tim the Boy Genius; that's my little brother...
The force field, after a week in place, had been dissolved.
"Nooo!" Tracy squealed as she, too, realized what had happened. "Damn you, Charity! Damn you, and damn him who has taken you from me!" Her stare locked onto Dick, and she bared her teeth. "And you! Encouraging them, and...and...I'll kill you!" She'd found the hatchet, he saw, and was brandishing it menacingly as she staggered towards him. "If I have to tear this entire planet apart, I will kill you both for taking my daughter from me!"
He made to back away, but managed only a step before the world shivered under his feet and threw him down. For a moment he panicked, thinking that the woman had somehow triggered another massive quake despite being far from the control center of her dastardly empire. Then he heard a wet, violent rushing sound, and everything clicked into place.
The river, he recalled the conversation that he and Tim had had on the banks of the strange hovering lake a few days before. If it was held back by the force field, and the force field's gone now... How much water was roaring towards them at this very moment? Too much, he winced. Too much, and they were both so far from anything like a safe zone...
"Tracy!" he hollered at the disheveled figure that was still clawing along the ground towards him, hatchet gleaming dimly in the moonlight. "Get behind the biggest rock you can! The water's coming back!" She tried to stand up despite the fact that the earth was shaking worse with each passing second, and immediately fell. "Tracy!"
He tried to crawl towards her, intent on disarming her and dragging her as near to safety as he could, but it was too late. Everything was moving of its own accord, and as if that wasn't bad enough he was still seeing it all in duplicate and triplicate. "Ugh," he moaned as his stomach gave a miserable lurch. Had there been anything in it to come up he would have been sick; instead he merely retched and then pressed his back against the closest boulder. The water could come, he thought, so long as the shaking stopped...
There was a loud pop like a cork leaving a bottle of Champagne, and he knew that the falls were dry no more. Just before the water slammed in and tore him away from his stone shield, he turned his eyes upward. By squinting hard he managed to get the outline of the still-descending plane down to just one, and he smiled sadly. I'm sorry, Bruce. Timmy, Dami, Alfred...Bruce...I'm so sorry...