Chapter 6 – A Tale of Two Sisters
Part 1
". . . and therefore a vote for me is a vote for a prosperous America!" roared Lex Luthor in conclusion, while raising his arms to flash victory signs with both hands.
Miranda Tate, who was standing on the platform behind Luthor and three steps to his right, struggled to stifle a yawn even as she clapped politely. Oh, the yawn wasn't strictly due to being dead tired, which she was. Running LuthorCorp would be more than a full-time job even without Lex constantly bugging her for updates on a hundred different on-going projects, from which he should have divorced himself the moment he announced his candidacy. And then there was her other job as a member of Savage's secret Tartarus organization, which also seemed to need her full-time attention. It left no time for her own personal projects, several of which had recently turned hot and also demanded a significant amount of her time. Without her nearly two hundred fifty years of experience multitasking, she didn't know how she would be able to keep so many balls in the air at once.
But none of those were the cause of her desire to yawn. No, it was listening to what was a simple variation of the same speech she had heard Lex give at least a dozen times in the last three months. Then, abruptly, she went from suppressing a yawn to suppressing a grin. Lex was running as an independent against Republican and Democratic opponents. If truth-in-advertising was a requirement for political campaigns, she had just thought of the best slogan for Lex's campaign – LEX LUTHOR – WHY SETTLE FOR THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS.
The general public only saw the side that Lex chose to show – a talented, powerful business mogul who had the ability to get things done. They had no idea of the true evil that filled him and the lengths to which he would go to achieve his ends. Nor were they aware of how many men he had stabbed in the back, both literally and figuratively, in his rise to power. Definitely, compared to Lex, the Republican and Democratic candidates were lesser evils.
Abruptly, Miranda's thoughts were interrupted when the phone in the pocket of her immaculately tailored business suit began to vibrate. She should have stepped up to offer Lex a congratulatory shake of the hands, but instead she gestured Lenny Norton, the LuthorCorp V.P. of Marketing and a true slime-ball, forward in her place, as she moved further back on the platform and pulled out her phone.
It was displaying a text message that simply said Code 7-Alpha-Orange. The seven meant there was a security breach. The Alpha indicated it was at her office in LuthorCorp Tower across the bay in Metropolis. And the Orange meant the security breach had been detected by her personally installed security system. If the LuthorCorp's security system had detected the breach, the message should have been Code 7-Alpha-Blue. Since she didn't get both blue and orange alerts, it meant whoever was trying to penetrate her office had known about and managed to bypass the more public LuthorCorp security measures. Shit.
She could alert LuthorCorp Security, but that meant she would ultimately have to explain how she knew about the security breach when they didn't. And word that she had an independent security system would doubtlessly reach Lex within minutes after that and he would immediately question what she was hiding from him. And to the best of her knowledge, he had no inkling of her involvement with Tartarus.
The rally was being held in the main ballroom of the Excelsior Hotel in central Gotham. Her jump-jet was sitting up on the Hotel's roof. If she hustled, she could be up to the roof in two minutes, the eighteen mile flight across the bay could be done in four minutes, and she could make it from the LuthorCorp Tower's roof down to her office in one minute. Yes, if she could make it to her office in seven minutes, it was better if she dealt with whatever was going on over there herself rather than call in LuthorCorp security prematurely.
That train of thought was barely complete before she was already making her way down the steps from the platform to the ballroom floor. Lex was going to be pissed by her unannounced departure, but there would be plenty of time to come up with a palatable excuse before she talked to him again.
Even as she hustled towards the nearest ballroom exit, she couldn't help but scan the crowd for his face. She had only talked to Bruce once since she had taken the reins of LuthorCorp and he had barely said two words. She knew he disapproved of her association with Luthor, but since this was the first time she had been back to Gotham since then, she thought he might make an appearance. Of course, an appearance by Bruce Wayne at a rally for Lex Luthor might have been seen by the public as a tacit endorsement of Lex's candidacy and that was something she knew Bruce would never do. Therefore, on second thought, the odds of running into Bruce here were infinitesimally close to zero.
Maintaining a brisk stride down the corridor leading to the elevator, Miranda banished all thoughts of Bruce to a secret, locked corner of her mind and turned her attention to the upcoming few minutes. Quickly, she pulled her phone back out and called ahead to her pilot to have the aircraft warmed up and ready. Oh, she was perfectly capable of flying it herself, but rarely indulged in what was basically a recreational activity. No, these days her time was too valuable to waste it sitting in the pilot's seat when she could use the time to catch up on the never-ending backlog of reports she needed to read.
The weather forecast had called for overcast skies and light winds, but that was for down at street level. Up on the rooftop of the vaulting 147 story skyscraper, the wind had picked up substantially from when she had arrived ninety minutes earlier. In fact, she thought, as she grabbed the edge of her knee-length skirt to hold it in place as she raced across the open platform, the wind speed had to be getting close to the safe takeoff limit.
"Mike, are we good to go?" she shouted, as she darted through the open doorway into the small passenger compartment behind the cockpit. By the time she had the door slammed shut and her seatbelt on, the craft was already lifting into the air, giving an unspoken answer to her question. And that's what she liked about Mike Donovan; he understood when she said the situation was urgent and he acted accordingly.
Miranda was just slipping the headset into place when she felt the exit nozzles for the wing-mounted jet engines begin to pivot from the downward vertical lift position to the aft facing orientation for maximum forward motion. Then the thrust pushed her firmly back into the seat. These jump-jets were a product of Ferris Air, but only a few, select customers got the uprated military-grade engines.
"What's our ETA, Mike?" asked Miranda even as she pressed the hidden button which opened the secret weapons' locker.
"I'll have you on the pad in three minutes, thirty seconds, ma'am," the pilot replied promptly.
"Excellent. Are the winds a problem?"
"Not yet. But if they increase another six knots, things will start to get a little dicey."
"Okay," Miranda said. "Give me a warning buzz when we are thirty seconds out. I need to get changed."
Miranda pulled off the headset and quickly followed it by removing her blazer, skirt, and blouse. From a second compartment she pulled a black tank top and leggings. Over these she added a set of body armor, steel-toed boots, and then her weapons. In an unknown, potential combat situation like this she fell back to the arsenal she carried during the long ago days when she had been a member of the League of Assassins - a brace of throwing knifes, boot daggers, and a short sword on her back. But in the succeeding two hundred years she had augmented these with a Glock on her right hip, a second Glock under her left armpit, and a taser-equipped baton at the small of her back for those occasions when she needed to take at least one of her opponents alive.
When she was fully kitted out and had pulled the headset back on, her internal clock estimated she still had thirty seconds before Donovan's warning call and a minute until they would be landing on the LuthorCorp Tower roof. She spent the time doing what limbering exercises she could in the cramped compartment.
"Thirty seconds, ma'am," she heard over the headset at the same moment she started to feel the jet engines' thrust translate back from horizontal flight to vertical hover mode.
"What the fuck?" she heard Donovan exclaim only moments later just as the jet abruptly jerk to the side hard enough to toss her across the narrow width of the passenger compartment.
The craft immediately steadied.
"What was that, Mike?" Miranda asked even as she clambered back into the seat.
"Sorry about that, Ms. Tate," replied Donovan. "For a moment I thought I saw something in the glare of my landing lights. It looked like some huge beast, at least as large as the jet. But it was just a flash and then it was gone. I must be seeing things."
"Is it safe to put us down on the roof?"
"I think so, ma'am."
"Okay, do it," ordered Miranda. Then she quickly reopened the weapons locker and replaced the Glock in her shoulder rig with something a little more high tech and potent. Donovan had been with her for over five years, including being a participant in several firefights. If he thought he had seen something, then he probably had. This was starting to feel like more than your simple every-day break in.
Donovan gave her a ten second countdown. At five, she pushed open the door. At three, she stripped off the headset. At the unheard one, she dove out the door, rolled to her feet, and raced to the building's door leading to the flight stairs to the elevator one floor down.
Right outside the door, she found the crumpled body of a security guard. Whoever was in the building had to have entered via the roof. It raised the question of why their helicopter or whatever other vehicle they used hadn't been spotted. Of course, they could have arrived via stealth chutes which meant they wouldn't have been detected until they made physical contact with the roof.
Miranda paused long enough to check the guard's pulse. It was steady. The man was merely unconscious.
As she straightened, she started scratching names off the mental list of potential adversaries she had been building during the brief flight. If certain of those people were involved they definitely would have killed the guard outright to avoid leaving any potential witnesses behind. And if others on her list were involved, it would have been a full frontal attack and the whole Tower would already be in flames.
She stepped cautiously through the door into the stairwell. If whoever had penetrated the building intended to exit via the same route they had entered, this was the obvious spot to leave a rearguard. But she found no one. Oh, they could have left some kind of electronic sensor, but she didn't spot anything out of place with a quick glance and she hadn't brought the gear necessary for a more detailed search, not that she was willing to waste that much time at the moment even if she had.
Miranda raced down the stairs two at a time. She didn't even give the door leading to the elevator alcove a second glance when she reached it. Her office was only five flights further down and the stairs would be faster than the elevator. And the elevator would also do a giveaway 'ding' when it arrived at her floor.
When she reached the floor to her office, she paused, a knife already in her hand. The door was a fire exit and rigged with an alarm that would register down in the security office when it was opened. She knew what wire to cut to silence the alarm, but when she bent closer, she discovered it had already been cut and the door was slightly ajar. So, whoever was in her office had used this same route. It was one more tidbit of information to add to her growing collection.
Miranda brought up a mental image of the floorplan. This emergency exit door was near the bank of elevators. The corridor beyond the door led passed three executive Vice Presidents' offices and the boardroom before reaching, first, her assistant's office and then her secretary's office and finally reaching her own.
At 11 P.M. on a weeknight, the floor should be empty. If anyone had been working late, the intruders had doubtlessly silenced them like they had done with the guard above. Therefore it should only be her and the intruders.
She eased the dagger back into her boot and pulled one of the throwing knives instead. If she encountered anyone before she reached her office, it would be best to take them out silently before potentially alerting any others.
Miranda dropped to her knees before carefully opening the door. She knew it was human nature to more quickly notice movement at head level than something much lower. Easing her head out, she quickly scanned of the corridor. Nothing. If anyone was still on this floor, they had to be in one of the offices, hers being the most likely.
She raced forward at a crouch. All the offices she passed were dark. It was possible someone was in one of them but using only a small flashlight or night vision goggles, but she doubted it. She sped forward until she was just outside her own door. The door was closed, but she could see a line of light along the door's lower edge. Definitely, the lights were on. Someone had to be in there.
Miranda paused for a moment and listened. She heard nothing. Carefully, she slid the throwing knife back into its sleeve on the front of her chest's body armor and pulled the Glock instead. The time for stealth was over. If there were multiple intruders in her office, she could take them down faster with the gun than with knives.
Slowly and quietly, Miranda pushed the door open, her gun hand leading the way. She had barely taken a single step into the room when something hard smashed into her gun, knocking it from her grip. Before the gun even hit the floor, she realized it was half of a fighting staff and that it had been thrown from across the room. Realizing whoever was in there had the drop on her and that they hadn't yet resorted to lethal force tonight, she stepped into the room with her empty hands clearly visible.
Two women were in the room. A blonde dressed head-to-toe in white including a mask over the upper half of her face, who was holding the remaining half of the fighting staff in her left hand, and a brunette in a burgundy version of the gear worn by the League of Assassins. She didn't recognize the blonde, but even with the lower half of her face concealed by an extension of her hood, she immediately knew the brunette from old photos. The most recent photos she had were over five years old, but the girl had changed little.
"Nyssa, I wondered when this day would arrive," stated Miranda, more calmly than she suddenly felt inside. She knew the girl had been Heir to the Demon for years, but then, at the last moment, her place had been supplanted by another. Miranda had no idea what that turn of events had done to the girl, but she had dropped off her radar only a couple of months later and that was over eighteen months ago. She had no clue where the girl had been since then or with whom she had been associating. And the unknown state of the girl's mind scared Miranda more than she cared to admit.
Part 2
Nyssa stared at the woman standing in the doorway. Based on the photos Felicity had dug up after Hunter's revelation, she knew the woman was her sister, or at least half-sister. And she could see some familial resemblance, although more with her father than herself. Mostly, Talia had her father's hard grey eyes, but she wondered how much of that was due to their shared, greatly extended lives through repeated immersions in the Lazarus Pits.
"Why didn't you ever contact me, Talia?" asked Nyssa. "I never even knew I had a sister until earlier today." She hadn't planned to say any of that, not that she had truly been expecting to meet her sister under these circumstances, but it seemed to just rush forth of its own accord.
"You were with your father. I'm afraid he and I didn't part on the best of terms. "
"I wasn't always in Nanda Parbat; you could have contacted me when I was away on some mission," responded Nyssa, hearing more of a pleading tone in her voice than she had expected. She had never suspected she had a sister, so why was this topic suddenly so important?
Miranda shook her head. "Your father had spies everywhere. And at least the few times I was able to track your movements, he always had men following you, to make sure you didn't get into trouble. Contacting you simply carried too much risk of reigniting our old battles and too many people had already died as a result in the past."
Nyssa almost bristled at the thought that her father would have had her followed on missions like he didn't truly trust in her abilities. And perhaps he never had. Perhaps that was why he had bypassed her and chosen Oliver. Perhaps it had had nothing to do with her relationship with Sara.
"What about after father was . . . after father was dead?" Nyssa didn't know why she still had trouble getting those words out. He had effectively stabbed her in the back not once, but twice. First, by choosing Oliver over her to be the next Ra's al Ghul and then, again, when he forced her to marry Oliver. Still, he was the only family she had ever known, or at least until now.
"I didn't learn about his death until several months later and then, when I looked, I could no longer track you down."
Nyssa nodded. Sometimes word traveled slowly in the world of the League with most of the organization set up in cells where everything was on a need-to-know basis. If Talia had spies within the League, it was easy to believe it would have taken time for the word to reach them, even for something as important as a change of the person who was Ra's. And then it had doubtlessly taken additional time for Talia's agents to get clear to pass the Intel up whatever additional chain was required to reach her sister. And if it had taken Talia several months to learn of their father's death, it might not have been until after Hunter had whisked her and Sara away. It was still hard to believe they had skipped forward eighteen months in time. Obviously, if she hadn't been around during the last year and a half, it would have been impossible for Talia to have gotten into contact with her, assuming she would have even wanted to try.
"I've been away," stated Nyssa without going into any details as she doubted her sister would believe her time travel tale, as she could hardly believe it herself and she had experienced it firsthand. "But I'm back now."
"And maybe we can now find an opportunity to get acquainted," replied Miranda. Then sensing an opportunity, she asked, "Perhaps you could tell me a little about the current Demon, Malcolm Merlyn. I've never had any direct contact with the man."
Nyssa started to shake her head. She wasn't here just so her sister could pump her for information. But before she could say anything in reply, she was overridden by Sara.
"Do not refer to him as the Demon. He is just a man. There are real demons we should be worrying about."
Sara had made her unexpected announcement with such conviction, Miranda didn't know what to say, but merely swung her gaze back and forth between the two women on the opposite side of her desk.
"This is my . . . friend, Sara," said Nyssa, not certain what other term to use for their relationship. They had been so much more before Sara's death. But now, with Sara's memories still mostly gone, she didn't know exactly what their relationship was, other than it was a lot less than it had been or what Nyssa wanted. "She . . . ah . . . died. I used the Lazarus Pits to bring her back, but she was changed. She now says demons are real, but only she can see them. She says they are planning something, some kind of an attack."
"My memories might not be the same, but I am certain they are acting in league with Vandal Savage. Why else would they have been with him in Ancient Egypt?" asked Sara. "We need to be on the lookout for Blaze, she has to be the demonic ringleader of what is coming. Why else would she be trying so hard to pull me back to Hell?"
Miranda felt a tremor of dread suddenly and unexpectedly run down her spine and it wasn't about the inexplicable comment about Ancient Egypt. She was supposed to be having dinner the next evening with Vandal and his newest recruit to Tartarus, a Ms. Angelica Blaze. Could that woman have some connection to what Nyssa's friend was talking about?
Just then, the device Felicity had given Nyssa, which was resting on top of the desk, buzzed faintly, indicating it had completed its data retrieval task. The sound was enough to draw Miranda's attention and remind her that her sister wasn't here on some social visit.
"What The Hell are you doing in my office anyway? If you just wanted to meet me and discuss our common heritage, you wouldn't be skulking about my office in the middle of the night on a night when you must have known I would be in Gotham!"
Nyssa picked up the device, which was the size and shape of an old-school portable CD player, and tucked it into an inner pocket of her tunic. "We are looking for information on Vandal Savage's plans and activities. He is on a course that will be devastating for the entire planet and he must be stopped."
From what Miranda had seen, Vandal Savage was a megalomaniac of an even higher order than Lex Luthor. She had seen an opportunity for some personal gain when he had courted her to join his secret organization, so she had cautiously accepted. She knew she was only privy to a small portion of Savage's overarching plan, but she had had no inkling that whatever it was could possibly damage the entire planet.
"How could you possibly know that?" she asked with more curiosity than animosity. She never expected the reply she received.
Nyssa was trying to formulate some appropriate response, but once again Sara beat her to the punch.
"We are working with a time traveler. He knows what will happen if Savage isn't stopped," stated Sara.
Time travel? Miranda couldn't believe the blonde had just said that. But when her eyes jumped to her sister, she could simply read in her face that it was true. Suddenly, the cryptic remark about demons working with Savage in ancient Egypt made a lot more sense.
Miranda had been working with Savage for months before she had uncovered the big secret about his immortality. Other than her father, she had never met anyone older than her own two hundred sixty-seven years. Then to learn Savage was thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years older than her. It had been downright humbling.
She didn't know his exact age, but he definitely had been alive during the time of ancient Egypt. And based on their comments, Nyssa and Sara had time-traveled back there and had encountered him.
Miranda was caught in a quandary. On the one hand, her sister was here to steal LuthorCorp and potentially Tartarus secrets and for that she should be handed over to Luthor or Savage. But, on the other hand, if what she said was true, Savage was planning something that could devastate the planet. And Miranda knew he would throw her under the wheels, as the old saying went, without a second thought if it was to his advantage. How much allegiance did she really owe Savage?
But before she was forced to make any hard, life-altering decision, the situation was taken out of her hands.
An impossible blast of wind suddenly hit the room, lofting several sheets of paper into the air that had been resting on the credenza behind the desk.
And along with the wind, suddenly there was a young girl standing in the middle of the room, midway between where Miranda continued to stand by the door and the other two women behind the large desk. Even though she didn't look more than twelve, maybe thirteen tops, she was decked out in a red and black costume with a large yellow lightning bolt on the front and a red mask around her eyes. A single glance at her eyes and the visible portion of her face told Miranda the girl had a mixed race heritage with both Blacks and Asians in recent branches of her family tree.
"Hunter has been trying to get a hold of you. Apparently, Luthor has activated some damping field around the building which is blocking your communicators," said the girl. "Significant security forces will be here in twenty seconds. You have to get out now and there isn't time to use the planned route via the roof."
"Who are you?" asked Nyssa.
Miranda stared at her sister even as the young girl blurred and reappeared at the floor-to-ceiling windows along the west side of the office. She had assumed the girl was working with the others, but then why didn't Nyssa know her?
"The name's Iris West," said the girl as she raised her hands and pressed them against the window. Her hands seemed to blur and a second later the window exploded outward in a million tiny shards. Then with a grin, she looked back over her shoulder and added, "Although the public knows me as Kid Flash."
"Your ride is ready. You will just have to jump and you'll be caught," Iris continued. Then with a laugh, she added, "Hopefully, before you fall too far."
She turned as if to leave, but then Nyssa shouted, "Wait."
"What about my sister?" Nyssa asked and pointed in Miranda's direction.
Iris blinked out of existence for a second and then immediately reappeared in the same place. "Luthor has hidden surveillance cameras in this room. At this point he appears to believe she is in cahoots with you. She better come along or he will doubtlessly torture her for information."
The girl glanced down out the window again, gave a small nod and said, "Well, I've got to run. I'll probably see you again later." Then she somehow appeared to start running down the side of the building for just an instant before turning into a yellow blur. And then she was simply gone, the only evidence she had ever been there being the gaping hole in the glass wall of the office.
"What the hell?" exclaimed Miranda.
"No time," shouted Nyssa, running over to the window with Sara hot on her tail. They could all hear shouts and the sound of many booted feet running down the floor's central hallway. "We have to go, now!"
Miranda followed the two other women over to the destroyed window and stared out. She didn't see anything but the normal nighttime skyline of Metropolis and the street far, far below. Nothing like an escape vehicle was visible.
The girl in white jumped into the abyss. Nyssa grabbed Miranda's hand and then jumped, too. Before she knew what was happening, Miranda found herself falling through the air, the street, which was seventy-four floors below her office, was racing up at an impossible speed.
She was just about to start screaming when suddenly, something was directly below them. They thumped down hard onto a hard surface covered with fur. Nyssa's grip on Miranda's left hand tightened even as Nyssa's left hand reached out and grabbed a handful of reddish-blonde mane. Mane?
If they were going to be rescued, Miranda had assumed it would be by some kind of aircraft. Instead, it slowly sank in they were on the back of some giant winged animal, as crazy as that seemed. Then it got even crazier as the winged animal turned its head and looked back at them over its shoulder. In the dim light streaming from the surrounding skyscrapers, Miranda discovered the creature had a greatly oversized version of a woman's face. And then it even began to speak.
"Don't worry. Kendra caught Sara."
End of Chapter 6
Coming Soon – Chapter 7 – Speedy & the White Canary
Author's Note: Kid Flash is not the Iris West from The Flash. Per DC canon, the second Flash, Wally West, is Iris West's nephew. Wally will eventually have a daughter who is also named Iris West and who goes by the moniker, Kid Flash. In this story, Hunter has recruited Kid Flash from about twenty years in the future. I'm not sure if Kid Flash is going to be a regular member of the team, so perhaps I'll just leave it up to the readers. Tell me in a review whether or not you want Kid Flash (or any other particular hero) to be part of the team.