Barbara is the first to get to the Batcave.
At least, as far as Bruce can tell. He doesn't actually notice when she arrives, only when she first speaks.
"Bruce?" Barbara asks as she approaches. "What's the update?"
Bruce isn't able to say anything for a long moment. He's still stuck staring at the screen where he's played and replayed the video over and over. Right now, the screen is back to the file details, which he's also looked at over and over, trying to tell if this could possibly be real.
"Bruce?" Barbara asks again, and she sounds concerned now.
"Barbara," Bruce manages to acknowledge.
"What's the update?" Barbara repeats.
Bruce opens his mouth, then he closes it again and shakes his head.
"Nothing good," Barbara deduces.
"I don't know," Bruce says quietly.
"Well, let's figure it out then," Barbara says, and she wheels forward toward the computer keyboard.
Bruce raises a hand, palm out. "Not yet."
"Not yet," Barbara says skeptically. "Bruce, if someone hacked the Batcomputer, we don't have any time to lose. We need to investigate-"
"Not yet," Bruce says, trying to sound firm. "Not until everyone's here. I won't- I can't explain this twice."
Barbara stares at him intensely.
To be honest, Bruce isn't sure she's going to take him up on his insistence. Thankfully, the roar of vehicles entering the tunnels ends the conversation. The sound of the vehicles die off abruptly, and moments later, Dick, Cass, and Damian hurry up to the Batcomputer.
"What is the situation?" Damian demands.
"You said there's something up," Dick adds.
"Something big," Cass says as she watches Bruce.
All Bruce can do is nod helplessly.
"Something very big," Cass says.
"Tell us," Damian says. "If we must-"
"He said he's not saying anything until everyone's here," Barbara says, a tone of skepticism cutting through her voice.
"Soon," Bruce says.
"Soon," Dick repeats. "Everyone? You called in Steph and Jason too?"
"It is their 'cram night,'" Damian says. "They will not be pleased."
"They will have to deal with it," Bruce says.
Dick, Barbara, and Damian trade glances. Cass is still watching Bruce.
"How's patrol been so far?" Barbara asks eventually.
Dick shrugs. "Pretty quiet. We stopped a mugging, but that's about it."
"And we brought an injured dog to the nearest shelter," Damian says.
"She looked a lot like Titus," Dick adds in a stage whisper. "Dami got kinda emotional."
"I did not," Damian says, scandalized by the accusation to the point that his voice cracks in indignation.
Dick snickers.
"I did not!" Damian says, trying again, only for his voice to crack again.
Cass pats his shoulder. "She will be okay."
"Indeed," Damian says with a sniff.
The four of them chit-chat about patrol routes and plans for a few minutes. Bruce tries to pay attention, but he finds his attention quickly and repeatedly drawn back to the file on the computer screen.
Eventually, Alfred ushers Steph and Jason into the Cave, the latter two complaining all the while.
"This sucks," Jason is saying, flipping through the textbook in his hands as they come to halt by the Batcomputer.
"If there's a big pop quiz next class like Professor Char was hinting at, and I get a failing grade on it, it'll be all your fault," Steph says, pointing an accusing finger at Bruce. "All. Your. Fault. If we fail."
"If YOU fail," Jason corrects. "I'm not failing."
Steph opens her mouth to say something else.
Bruce doesn't let her. "This is more important than a grade."
"What could be more important than good grades?" Jason asks.
Dick laughs and mutters, "Says the former crime lord."
Jason smacks him in the shoulder with the textbook.
Dick staggers back dramatically.
"Enough," Bruce says, and just like Damian, his voice cracks.
Everyone goes silent and still.
"Master Bruce," Alfred says quietly. "Are you quite all right?"
Bruce doesn't know how to answer that, so he just doesn't answer. He plunges into his explanation. "Barbara and I realized earlier today that the Batcomputer was hacked."
"We know that," Steph says.
"But it wasn't hacked," Bruce says.
Various noises and faces of surprise greet that statement.
Before anyone can say anything coherent, though, Bruce continues. "At least, not in the usual way we think of hacking, where someone outside of the system breaks in for malicious purposes."
"Are there other ways we would think of hacking?" Jason asks, leaning on the desk.
"Several," Barbara says.
"But that's not the point," Bruce says hurriedly. "The point is, it wasn't a hacker from the outside doing something malicious."
"Then what was it?" Dick asks.
"It was someone from the inside," Bruce says, and he pauses, trying to gather himself enough to make it through the next sentence. "It was… It was Tim."
For multiple moments, quiet reigns.
"What?" Steph asks, a terrifyingly blank expression on her face.
"Oh," Barbara says softly. "He left us something for if he was off the Batcomputer for a certain amount of time, didn't he? Some kind of message for if something happened."
"Like a time capsule," Jason says slowly.
"On the condition that he wouldn't be around for it to be opened," Barbara concluded.
"Aw, B," Dick says. "I'm sorry it surprised you like that."
Bruce shakes his head, feeling dizzy. "No."
"I mean, I'm not sorry it exists," Dick says. "It might be hard to watch, but it'll be… Good, I think, to see it."
"No," Bruce says again.
"No?" Dick asks.
"You're not going to let us see it?" Jason asks, and his voice is already raising to an extreme volume as he continues, "What kind of sick, stupid, self-pitying-"
"You can see it," Bruce says. "I want you to see it. But it's not a time capsule."
"Well, yeah," Dick says. "Not exactly."
"Not at all," Bruce says. "It's not a time capsule from the past. It's from this morning."
Again, quiet spreads through the Cave.
"It cannot be from this morning," Damian says, as blunt as he can be.
"It's from two years ago," Steph says quietly.
"It's from this morning," Bruce says, putting a hand back up to the computer keyboard. Foreseeing the next question, he adds, "And it's from Tim. Look."
And Bruce plays the video.
The image on the screen flips from a file to a face.
In the video, Tim is looking down at something, messing with some wires. He looks old and young at the same time, older than Bruce remembers him ever being, but younger than Bruce wants to acknowledge.
"There," Tim says, and he looks full into the camera. "I think that's it. Okay. Here goes. If you're watching this? Hi. It's me. Surprise, I'm not dead! At least, I assume that's a surprise. Who knows, maybe you know I'm alive and you've been searching for me, or maybe you know I'm alive and you gave up by now, or maybe- I don't know. But anyway. I'm alive and I'm here. Wherever here is."
Tim pauses and looks side to side. "I mean, it's the Gilded Cage. It is what it is. I just don't know where exactly it is. My talks with Ra's aren't exactly big on geography or-"
The camera shifts, starting to fall forward. Tim catches it and eases it back up to view his face. "Right, yeah, focus. Okay. Well, I'm alive. Ra's al Ghul kidnapped me and faked my death. He's been holding me here, wherever here is again, for the last… I think it's been a year by now? It's not easy to tell, but I think it's been at least a year."
Pausing for a moment, Tim gets a weird look in his eyes. "It better have been at least a year, or else I've been lying about what birthdays mean."
Tim shakes his head and looks down. "But whatever. If I'm wrong, I'll fix it. Cross that bridge when we all get to it and all that. The point is, I've been trying this whole time to contact you and I think I finally did it. So. Yay for me, I guess. And yay for stupid noisy toys that have working video and internet capabilities respectively."
"Moving on," Tim says, looking back at the camera again. "I'm alive, I'm wherever Ra's al Ghul put me, and I'm asking you to come get me."
A soft noise comes from off-screen.
"Come get us," Tim corrects himself. "Yeah. Right. Anyway, I'm probably almost out of battery, so I'm sending this along. I'll see you soon, I hope. Tim out."
The screen pauses on a close-up of Tim's face as he leans in toward the camera, and he shuts it down. Then the video is over, and it disappears. The screen is left on the closed file once more, and Bruce is left with just as many questions as the first dozen times he watched the video.
This time, though, Bruce isn't alone.