When I wrote the last appearance of Roy, I really intended for that to be the last time the team saw him until Wally and Dick talked to him on the rooftop, but then he just sort of showed up when I was writing this chapter, and I liked it so I kept it. It also sort of shows the OG's reactions to him dating Chesire. Sorry for the spoilers, I guess. Enjoy the chapter, and please review.
The young heroes got to the waste disposal plant and crept in quietly. Mallory looked to Robin for direction, and he pointed towards a stairwell. Conner and Aqualad went ahead of the rest, carefully checking for security patrols.
"The place is empty," Robin said suspiciously, scanning the place for signs of life. Kaldur kicked the door to the stairs in and they looked down into the abyss.
"Um, how far down are we going?" Mallory asked.
"As far as it goes," Robin replied. He shot his line at the ceiling and jumped. The rest of them took turns sliding down. Robin ran out of line a few floors shy of the bottom, and they climbed back over the stairs rail.
"Inferno, give us some light?" Wally asked. Mallory lit a fire in her palm and led the way as they continued to descend. Finally, they got to the bottom level, and Mallory took a step back to let Conner kick the door in. Kaldur nodded to her to take the lead again, and she entered the floor, one hand extended to provide light, the other ready to throw flames at an enemy. They went down three hallways with Robin scanning the doors before he stopped in front of a door and held up his scanner.
"There's something behind this door. A lot of somethings, actually."
Kaldur kicked in the door, and Mallory walked in cautiously, holding the flame high. At first, she wasn't sure what she was looking at, then she took one horrified step back. There were hundreds of genomorphs lying dead around the room, their bodies charred, twisted, broken. Several of them had the skin melting off, and they all had twisted, painful expressions on their faces.
"So this is why Doubbilex contacted me," Conner murmured beside her, his voice weak.
Mallory couldn't say anything, couldn't bear to look at the site, and yet she couldn't force her eyes away from the gruesome bodies. Robin started moving around the room, scanning the bodies. He hardly seemed phased by the amount of misery that had occurred in that room.
"This was definitely experimentation. There's no other explanation for the injuries."
"What, what are we going to do with this?" Mallory asked, fighting the vomit trying to claw it's way up her throat. Robin gave her a sympathetic look. He knew she'd never seen this kind of destruction before.
"There's nothing we can do for them now. Well just have to try to get some answers from them," Robin replied gently. He continued to walk through the bodies, scanning them.
Mallory couldn't breathe. She turned her back on the scene, tried to catch her breath, but it was seared into her mind. She could feel a panic attack coming, tried to gasp for air. Then she felt a hand in her shoulder and turned. Wally was standing there, blocking the view, a concerned look covering the grim one he'd been wearing. Mallory gulped in a breath, ignoring the horrible smell, and nodded to him. Robin walked back over.
"Well?" Kaldur asked.
"Well, they all have the same marks on their wrists, ankles, and chests. They were strapped to the same kind of tables. Superboy, do you remember anything about the surroundings in those visions? Anything that could help us find where they were tortured?" Robin asked.
Conner closed his eyes, replaying the visions in his head. "The walls were blue, the paint was chipping on it. And there were a lot of machines, all going at once," Superboy told them.
"Of course!" Robin exclaimed, pulling up his wrist computer and typing something in. "For these types of experiments, the amount of power needed would be huge. All I need to do is track the power usage of all the rooms, and, bingo, there," he said, pointing to a room on the blueprints of the building. "We need to get to sublevel thirty eight."
The five of them hurried out the room back to the stairs. When they got to sublevel thirty eight, Robin led them to a door at the end of the hall. Before they could open the door, they heard electricity crackle and a bloodcurdling scream of pain came from within. They exchanged horrified looks, and Conner had the door down in less than a second. They ran into the room and saw a poor genomorphs, more dead than alive, strapped to a board, machines surrounding him. Opposite of the tortured creature was Dubbilex, contained in a pod, his horns glowing. Between them was a scrawny man with a black bowl cut in a lab coat. He looked up, surprised, but then he pressed a button on a table and smiled.
"Good evening, children," he said.
Robin's eyes narrowed. "Achilles Milo. Of course, you would be twisted enough to experiment like this," the young hero said.
Milo shrugged. "Jobs are scarce these days, I take what I find," he replied.
"I think you're going to regret taking this one," Mallory said, igniting her hands.
"Maybe, but I doubt it," Milo replied, and the team was surrounded by goons and genomorphs alike.
Mallory looked to Aqualad, waiting for his signal to attack. "I do not understand. Why experiment on these creatures? Surely they are worth more to Cadmus alive," the leader said to Milo.
"Not since you kiddies shut down the real Cadmus. Now all they're good for is a cleanup crew. But I must say, I can't wait to see how you five hold up to the prize. Get them. I want them alive."
Mallory spread her legs slightly, balancing herself. She made the flames in her hands rise and aimed, but she was still waiting for Kaldur's signal. When the first of the goons started forward, the leader pulled out his water bearers, and Mallory took that as an ok to attack. She sent streams of fire at their attackers, ending the fire's life before it could set the room ablaze, but not before burning the weapons and hands of the goons.
"Inferno!" Kaldur said sharply.
Mallory looked at the leader. "What? They started it!" she said defensively.
Robin cackled and threw some batarangs at the bad guys. "She has a point," he said.
Wally ran around the group, taking out most of the smaller genomorphs, and Conner attacked a bigger one. Kaldur sighed at the chaos that the team had created. Ten minutes later, the five heroes stood panting and smiling in satisfaction at the unconscious bad guys at their feet.
Wally grinned at Milo. "You want to take us yourself, or can we call it a day?" the speedster asked.
Milo smiled, and Mallory narrowed her eyes, slightly unnerved. "Well, it would seem I am completely at your mercy," the professor said. Mallory heard a hissing sound above, and when she looked up to see what it was, her head started spinning.
"Get out!" she told her teammates, but it was too late. The gas had affected all of them. Mallory collapsed to the ground a moment later. She tried to crawl to the door, but she was soon paralyzed. The last thing she saw before she blacked out was Milo smiling evilly down at her.
About an hour later, Mallory started to come to. Her eyes were stiff and irritated, and she groaned as she tried to stretch but was restricted from doing so by iron binds on her hands, feet, stomach, and neck.
"Inferno's awake," she heard Conner say, and then Aqualad said, "Thank goodness. Inferno, are you hurt?"
Mallory took a moment to assess her injuries. They all felt minor, and she remembered getting them during the fight with the goons. "No, not really. How about you guys?"
"Nothing to speak of," Aqualad reported.
"Great. Well, let's go," she said, trying to send fire to her hand. Nothing came, and she realized that the strap around her neck was an inhibitor collar. She heaved a sigh, her breath collecting on the glass front of the pod.
"Yeah, it's going to be a little harder than just busting out," Wally called from the end of the line of pods.
"Yes, which is why I called you here," a new voice said from Mallory's other side. The heroes turned, and Conner said, "Dubbilex, how long has this been going on?"
"Weeks. It took a long time to reach you, and then to be able to show you the visions," the genomorph replied.
"So those visions, they were what you were seeing, not memories," Conner guessed.
"The latter ones were mine. The ones you saw in the beginning were already in your mind, I just helped them to the surface. I had to prepare your mind for the intensity of the images," Dubbilex explained.
"Well, what are we supposed to do now?" Mallory asked.
"Inferno, any chance you can do what you did on Apokolips?" Conner asked.
Mallory shook her head. "There's no fire to control, I'd have to make it, and I can't do that with a collar on," she said.
"Great. Well, how bad can an experiment be?" Wally asked, trying for levity. Images of the bodies in the room downstairs came to all of their minds, and the comment hung over them like a cloud. They didn't say anything else until Milo walked in with a clipboard.
"Good to see that you're all awake. I'll just start programming the machines, and we'll get started," he said, his tone light and business like.
Mallory watched him like a hawk, trying to memorize what buttons he pressed so that if she got out, she would know how to reverse the machines. Some sticks came out of the side of the pods, and then suddenly they stuck into her shoulders. She winced at the sting, but she was more concerned with what was going to come next.
"Now, what should we do first?" Milo said, surveying the keyboard. "Oh, how about a nice electric shock to start us off on the right foot." He hit the button, and electricity surged through the sticks and into the heroes' bodies. Mallory groaned at the pain, and she could hear the boys' yells as they too suffered the shocks. She tried to summon the strength she'd had against Ultra Humanite, but she didn't even know what to do. Finally, Milo stopped the shocks, and Mallory sagged from her restraints, panting.
"Hmm, what next? Fire on the speedster? Kryptonite on the girl? Tell me, Inferno, are you a Kryptonian, or do you just tag along with the supers for protection?" Mallory glared at the mad scientist, and he shrugged. "Never mind, I'll find out when I dissect you," he said with a grin.
He pressed another button, and the pods filled with some sort of grey gas. Mallory looked around, panicking as she tried not to breathe. The gas seemed to have some tear gas mixed in, and she shut her eyes against the burning in them. She started coughing, but the more she coughed the more air she needed, which started the coughing all over again.
She heard something crash in the distance, but she couldn't open her eyes against the thick smokey gas filling the pod. Some more crashes came, closer now, and someone yelled something. She squinted her eyes open a crack and saw shadowy figures moving towards the computer system, then the gas cut off the the pods opened. Mallory and the boys dropped to the floor with a thud, and Mallory laid there, her eyes burning, gasping in clean air and coughing out the gas.
"Hey, you all right, pal?" She heard someone say to her left, and she struggled to try to push herself up and tried to open her eyes, but she couldn't. Still, she knew that voice, and she wanted to see the face for herself.
A second later, she felt a hand slowly rubbing her back. "It's all right, just breathe," the familiar voice said in her ear.
"Red?" Mallory rasped, desperately trying to regain her breath.
"Yeah, it's me," he replied, his voice soothing. It took Mallory another moment to get her breathing under control, but when she did, she managed to open her eyes and shakily get to her feet. She turned to face Roy, needing to see his face.
"Red," she said, and she threw her arms around him, not even caring that Milo was tied up on the floor watching. Robin and Wally came over and Roy knocked their heads together affectionately.
"Glad we got here in time to save you idiots," he said, ever the older brother.
Robin grinned. "We could've handled it," he said, his way of saying thank you.
"Do not mistake my confusion for ungratefulness, but why are you here, my friend?" Aqualad asked.
"We got a tip that Cadmus had this property, thought we'd check it out," he replied.
"We?" Conner asked, and a figure stepped out of the shadows. "Chesire?" Mallory said in disbelief, her stance changing from ease to ready for a fight at a moment's notice.
"Relax, Inferno. She's with me," Roy told her.
Mallory narrowed her eyes. "'With' you how?" she asked, eyeing the team's nemesis suspiciously.
"We're dating," Chesire told them smugly, a cat-like grin on her face. Mallory's eyes widened, and she saw that the team had similar expressions of surprise on their faces.
"Tell me she's not serious," Robin said, looking at Roy with an almost pleading expression on his face.
Roy shrugged. "Sorry," he said.
"She's tried to kill us on multiple occasions. She's tried to kill you before!" Wally said, and Chesire grinned all the more at the statement.
"Look, this isn't what's important. You guys need to get out of here before anything else happens to you."
"What about you?" Mallory asked, crossing her arms.
Roy sighed heavily. "Tell me you're not going to try to convince me to come back with you again. The answer's no."
Mallory shook her head. "I know you're too stubborn to listen to reason. But you can't stay here. As soon as we get out of here, we're calling the League to come see this place. I don't want to see you and them get into it again about how they aren't doing enough and you aren't listening to reason."
Robin and Wally stared at her like she was an idiot, but she kept her eyes trained on Roy. He nodded. "Ok, we already looked around here. We'll be leaving now," he said.
Mallory nodded, and Chesire hurried ahead to scout the area. Roy hesitated at the doorway, and then he turned and said, "Thanks, Inferno."
Mallory nodded, and then something popped into her head and she ran to the door. "Red, have you seen Guardian lately?" she called down the hall.
"Yeah, I know about him, if that's what you mean. He's been helping Chesh and me look for Speedy."
Mallory nodded, and she watched as Roy disappeared down the hall.
"Come on, Inferno. Let's get out of here," Wally said as the heroes and Dubbilex filed past her towards the stairs. Mallory gave the line of pods one last glance before nodding and following her friends up the stairs and out the building.
The League and team were there within ten minutes, and while the League looked around the building, Brek sat with Mallory away from the rest of the team. Now that it was all over, she was starting to process the carnage in the room, and being captured, and then seeing Roy, only to find out he was dating a villain, then to have to say goodbye to him again.
She sighed and leaned against Brek, resting her head on his shoulder. "Why is it that every time life starts to calm down, something worse happens?" she asked quietly. Brek wrapped her in a hug, resting his chin on his head. Mallory closed her eyes and smiled slightly.
Kara looked over at her teammate and Inferno, and she winced at the pained expression on Brek's face. She locked eyes with him, and he glared at her. She sighed and turned back to Clark, who was talking to Conner about the mission. She just hoped that Brek would be all right when he eventually had to say goodbye to this time period, and everything in it.