Hope you like it, please review!
Three months later, Mallory was patrolling Metropolis one night. Well, she was in her suit, but she was really just flying around, talking to Dick on her comm.
"You really didn't find anything?" she asked. He'd gone through the agency's database over the last few weeks and even branched out to look at national disappearances, but he hadn't found any connections between the kids that were disappearing.
"I'm sorry, Mal, but there's just nothing there. I don't think whoever's taking them is looking for anything, it's probably just opportunity."
She shook her head. "There has to be something."
"If there is, it's well hidden. I'll keep looking, but I think this was a dead end. I'll need to check around at other agencies, missing persons reports, all that, it might just be that you work for a really forgetful company."
"This isn't funny, Dick," she said. She'd meant for it to sound stern, but she just sounded tired.
"I know, I just hate that there's nothing I can do," he replied. "How did your lead turn out?"
She sighed and stopped, hovering over the city. When she first saw the chart, she'd thought that the time of the disappearances was about the same as when Intergang started upping their game when Ugly and Whisper recovered, but when she went back and checked, they didn't wake up until two weeks after the spike started. "It was a dead end," she told him.
"Yeah, that figures."
"What does that mean?"
"Nothing, just, whoever's doing this is covering their tracks. This isn't like with the Reach, where we had something to go on."
"We only had something to go on because we had someone on the inside," Mallory pointed out, starting to fly forward again.
"Well, maybe that's what we need," Dick muttered, more to himself than her.
"We're not doing that again. We lost too much the first time around," she said firmly. Her comm beeped and she sighed. "I have another call coming in, I'll talk to you later."
"Ok. Hey, don't stay out all night, ok? You've been doing too much lately."
"I'm fine," she said automatically, but then she sighed and added, "I'll get some sleep. I'm on my way home now. I really have to go."
"Ok, 'night."
She turned in the direction of her apartment and tapped her comm to take the incoming call. "Inferno here."
"Hey, Inferno. You wouldn't happen to be free right now, would you?"
It was Peter's voice, and he sounded weak. She froze and put a hand to her ear. "Vig, where are you?" she asked.
"I'm in Metropolis, the Suicide Slum. If you're not busy, I could use a hand." His sentence ended with a loud thump and a sharp hiss as he sucked in a breath.
She doubled her speed, heading for the worst part of the city. "Ok, I'm on my way, just hang on."
He chuckled, then she heard a gunshot. "Easier said than done, Sis."
"just stay on the comm, I'll track your signal." She switched back to Dick's line and started talking as soon as it clicked on. "I need you to track Peter's comm and send the location to my suit."
"Is he ok?"
"I don't know. Yeah, I think so, just…" The coordinates came up in her mask, and she let out a breath and started to fly. "Thanks. I'll check in in a little bit and let you know if we need backup."
"Be careful, Mal," he told her.
"Yeah, always," she replied distractedly, then she switched back to Peter's line. "I'm on my way," she said. She didn't get an answer, and a pit formed in her stomach. "Vig, you there?" Nothing. "Vigilante? Peter, answer me!"
She was only a block away from the signal now. She heard a gunshot and swooped down towards the noise, into the back of an alley. Vigilante was fighting three men at the front of the alley, four more were unconscious on the ground. She landed hard, and the fighting stopped at the thud of her boots on the concrete.
Vigilante laughed and heaved a few ragged breaths. "Told you I had the big guns," he said, blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth when he smiled. The smile turned to a wince and he clutched his side and backed up a few steps.
Mallory narrowed her eyes and took in the situation. She had to go through the men to get to the opening of the alley, to get to Peter. He had backed up to the wall and was leaning against it, his eyes shut tight.
"Whatever you're thinking about doing," she said, eying the men in her way, "I promise, it's been done. Can we just wrap this up so we can call it a night?"
One of them pulled a gun and she barely had time to put up her shield before he pulled the trigger. She shook her head. "Guess not," she muttered.
She took two steps forward and took the middle man out with an elbow to the neck, and without even pausing she slammed her foot into one's stomach and dropped to the ground, narrowly missing a bullet to the head, and spinkicked, knocking the last one off his feet. She knocked out the one on the ground, then stepped over him to get to the last one that was conscious. He was recovered enough from the kick to the stomach to straighten up and swing at her, but his skills were lacking. She blocked the punch without even thinking about it and slammed her fist into his jaw. He dropped to the concrete, and she stepped over him and glanced back at the unconscious men. The whole thing only took a few seconds, and she didn't waste any more time getting to her brother.
He had slid down the wall while she fought the men, and she knelt down beside him and lit a fire in her hand to check his injuries. He had some cuts and bruises on his face, a hole in his vest where a bullet caught him, and he was holding his side.
"You ok?" she asked.
He shrugged. "I'll live."
"Why didn't you answer me? Or at least keep your line open?"
"My comm came out when I headbutted that one," he said, nodding to the shortest of the seven.
She chuckled and pushed his hair away from his forehead. "Well, that explains that," she said, brushing a gash along his hairline. She walked over to where her mask was still leading her and picked up the white disk. "Here," she said, tossing it to him. "Come on, let's get you fixed up."
"Yeah, I told you, we're fine," Mallory said. She was in the air, flying her and Peter back to her apartment, but she'd called Dick back as soon as they started out to let him know they were ok and have him get the police to pick up the men.
"Do you need someone to meet you at the Watchtower? I can get whoever's on monitor duty to warm up the xray and get some stuff together."
She flew into her window and let Peter down gently, helping him to her couch. She realized a minute too late that it was new and he would get blood and alley dirt all over it, but she let the thought pass. "No, it's fine. I have supplies at my place, and he doesn't seem too bad, mostly sore. Listen, I'll talk to you later, ok? I need to get him patched up and find out what he was doing in Metropolis in the first place."
"Ok, I'll talk to you tomorrow," he replied, and the line clicked off. She went to her bathroom and pulled out some towels, and her first-aid kit and went back out to the living room.
"All right, what do you want to do first?" she asked, putting the supplies on the coffee table and shrugging off her jacket.
"Uh, I guess my head," he replied.
She nodded and pulled some alcohol and a needle and thread out of her case. "Move your hair," she told him, putting the alcohol on the towel. He pushed the hair back and she started disinfecting the cut. She put some numbing cream on it and looked at the other cuts while she waited for it to work. "I think the rest of those will be fine, you can take care of them yourself. Can you get your shirt off? I need to make sure you don't have a broken rib in there."
He slowly started to unhook his outer vest, then unzip the bodysuit underneath. Mallory helped him ease his arms out, trying to keep him as still as she could. He had an ugly bruise forming on his right shoulder where the bullet hit, and she winced and looked at his vest, digging the bullet out of it.
"Jeez, Peter, what happened?"
"I got shot."
"Yeah, no kidding. What were you doing in Metropolis, anyway?"
"I've been looking into some disappearances in Central, I tracked these guys here."
"Why didn't you call for backup? I would've come with you, I was in patrol anyway."
He shrugged one shoulder. "I didn't think I'd need help. I was just trying to tail them, but they were smarter than they looked. I tripped a perimeter alarm and they grabbed me, brought me here to take care of me. I was better at fighting than they are. Hey, where's Superman? He totally left me hanging."
"He's on monitor duty," she told him, pressing gently on each rib to see if there was any give. He winced at the middle three, taking deep breaths for a moment. "Bruised, not broken," she reported. "You should still get them x-rayed tomorrow, but you'll be fine until then. Let me just stitch up your forehead, then you can go clean yourself up." She threaded the needle and started to stitch the gash. "So," she said, taking her time getting her words right, "what did you find with the disappearances?"
"Nothing. It stated with two kids from my school. They were always kind of loners, everyone said they'd run away but it didn't sit right with me. When I looked at their records and their rooms-"
"You broke into their houses?" Mallory interrupted.
He raised an eyebrow. "Do you want to hear this or not?"
"Yeah, sorry, continue," she replied, making a mental note to circle back to the breaking and entering after.
"Anyway, there weren't any signs that they were running, or that they had a reason to. I started looking around at other schools, and it turns out there are kids going missing a few at a time all over the city. Mostly kids without a steady home, you know, fosters, broken homes, that sort of thing. I started looking around, and I connected some of the disappearances to a gang in the city. They're a branch of a larger human trafficking ring, but that's all I know about them. I heard that they were meeting with another branch in Metropolis, so I followed them. You know the rest."
She nodded and tied up the last stitch, clipping the extra string off. "So, did you see anything about where the kids were going? Or if there is a branch in Metropolis?" she asked.
He tilted his head. "I don't know where they were being sent, I assumed the usual, out of the country or into the black market. But, if they were having a meeting in Metropolis, then yeah, I'd assume there's a branch here. Why are you so interested?"
She bit her lip and slowly packed up her medical supplies, debating how much to tell him.
"Mallory?" he pressed.
She sighed and turned back to face him. "Because I think we might be looking into the same case."
"This is all you have?" Peter asked, staring at the screen in front of him. He had taken care of his cuts, showered, and was now sitting on the sofa in some gym shorts and a sweatshirt.
"Yeah, I know it's not much. Dick's been trying to come up with more, too, but he hasn't found anything yet. He even suggested putting someone on the inside." She scoffed and added, "even if we would do that again, we're all too old for it to work." She went to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of pineapple juice and two glasses. When she brought them back out to the living room, Peter was staring into space, the screen asleep in front of him. She poured the juice, glancing up at him.
"I'm not," he said quietly, not looking at her.
"You're not what?" she asked, handing him the glass.
He looked up at her, not taking it. "I'm not too old," he said.
"No," she said immediately, backing up a little.
He put the computer on the coffee table and leaned forward. "It's the only way we might actually figure out what's going on around here," he reasoned.
"It's also a good way to get you taken to God knows where. You're not doing it, we'll find another way."
"Yeah, great. And while we're doing that, how many kids are gonna get taken off the streets? You know this is the best shot we have at putting an end to this, to finding out who's behind it."
"Oh, come on, Peter. Who do you think's behind it? Who's been behind everything since before Cadmus?"
"The Light? So that's all the more reason to do this. We have to stop them. We were so close when–"
"When Kaldur infiltrated them?" she was yelling now, and her body was shaking uncontrollably. "I'm not putting us through that again, Peter. I'm not. It cost too much." She shook her head, raking her hand through her hair. Her brother looked away, and they stayed there in the silence.
He took a breath, about to say something, but Mallory's phone rang before he could get it out. She clenched her fist, trying to get her hand to stop shaking, then pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked the caller ID. It was Artemis.
"Hey," she answered. Immediately, she picked up on the uneasy energy on the other line. There was too much background noise, and her friend's breathing was too quick. Her heart stopped. "What happened?" she asked before her friend could say anything. There were some car doors, then some sirens before the archer finally answered.
"It's Barbara. She's been shot."