Sorry for the late post, my internet was down. This chapter wraps up another year, so I think this is a good place to take an official break. I'm going to take two weeks to recoup after finals and get back ahead so I don't have to write two chapters a week to keep up. I'll still be checking my stats, though, so keep reviewing! My birthday is also this week, so I'd love to get to at least 60 reviews! :)
Once Barbara was out of the hospital, things started to go back to normal. The team went to see her after a few days, and she seemed great, like nothing was wrong.
"It's great to see you guys," she told them after they'd all sat around the family room in Wayne Manor. She'd moved in at the Batfamily's insistence so they could make sure one of them would always be home with her while she was relearning how to do everything.
"Yeah, you too," Megan said. She started to gather the empty glasses off the table to refill them, but Barbara shook her head.
"No, don't bother, I'll get it." She chuckled as she backed her chair away ou of the sitting area and added, "I don't even have to get up." She maneuvered her way out of the room, bumping into a table and the wall before she made it out. The team looked at each other awkwardly, the conversation dying out, but Barbara just laughed at her mistakes and came back a moment later with a pitcher of lemonade between her knees. "I'm still getting used to it," she told them as she eased back into her spot and started to pour the drinks. "I have to remember that I'm not as small as I used to be."
No one said anything and they didn't look her in the eye. The redhead filled the last glass, then she slammed the pitcher down, making the others jump.
"No," she said firmly, glaring at each of them in turn, "you're not going to start acting all weird around me. I'm not broken, so stop acting like I am. So I can't jump off roofs anymore. That doesn't mean I'm not the same person I was a month ago."
Mallory looked at the redhead and nodded. "You're right. We're sorry, we just, we didn't know how to act."
She gave the pyrokinetic an unimpressed look. "Yeah, sure. I feel the same way about people with powers. I mean, how can I possibly know how to act around someone who isn't normal? Someone who has that crutch to help them through life?"
Malllory smiled, thinking about Barbara's response. It had only been two days since the visit, but everything has started to settle back into place since they saw how well their friend was doing, and how mean she was to them when she found out how much had gone on standstill while she was in the hospital. She'd found the team their first mission since before her injury right on the spot and ordered them out of the manor. Dick and Roy were even back in the field, continuing with their investigations.
Mallory was, too. She had a list of disappearances across the country and she was using her laptop to run simulations, trying to find similarities in the disappearances, areas, anything, but so far she had nothing. She couldn't find money trafficking, an influx of people in an area, large amounts of supplies being ordered or shipped, vehicles disappearing and reappearing without a lot of explanation, nothing. She was starting to think that they were disappearing in thin air.
There was a knock at her office door and she jumped and slammed her computer closed, pulling an open binder on top of it. "Come in," she called. The door swung open and Peter popped his head in.
"Hey, whatcha hiding?" he asked with an amused look.
She rolled her eyes. "Shut the door," she told him. He grinned and shut the door, bringing the chair in the corner over to her side of the desk while she pulled up her latest simulation. "I've been going over the disappearances," she explained.
"So, what did you find?" he asked.
She shook her head in frustration. "Nothing. Every time I think I have a lead, it turns out to be a dead end or my imagination."
"You have Dick take a look recently?"
"Yeah, he didn't find anything either."
"Wow, that's a big surprise," he muttered.
She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, whatever. I'm running out of ideas."
"No, you're ignoring the best one," he said. She tilted her head and he explained, "putting me in the system."
She shook her head. "We've been through this," she said. "It's too dangerous."
"We have not been through it. We got cut off and you thought that meant you won." She rolled her eyes and he continued, "This isn't even that dangerous. You'd be watching the whole time. I mean, think about all the dangerous stuff I do all the time with Gar that you don't even know about. We've let ourselves get kidnapped before just to see who could get out of it first."
Mallory arched an eyebrow at him, narrowing her eyes. "It's like you forget that we share parents who can ground you."
He grinned. "Yeah, right. You wouldn't tell, and they haven't done any grounding since you were just starting out."
She sighed. "It wouldn't matter anyway. It's too late to slip you in, I submitted the last stack of files weeks ago."
He shrugged. "Well, it was a good idea, anyway."
She leaned back in her chair and tilted her head. "What are you doing here, anyway?"
"It was a half day at school, so I thought I'd come see if you wanted to go to the movies when you get off."
"You could have texted," she pointed out.
He grinned. "Yeah, but then I wouldn't have gotten lunch out of it."
She chuckled and looked at the time. "All right, I guess I can take my lunch. Here, put this in my bag and put the chair back where you got it."
He took her phone and wallet from her and dragged the chair back to the corner while she organized her desk. She opened her drawer to put her laptop in and froze when she saw the file sitting on the top. Peter plopped her backpack on the desk, but he tilted his head when he noticed her face.
"What?" he asked, craning his neck to see what she was looking at.
She pulled the file out and set it on the desk. She glanced up at Peter and back down at the file.
"What?" he brother asked again.
She sighed and looked back up at him. "How serious were you about going undercover?"
That night, Mallory was in her apartment, sitting cross-legged on the couch, a dozen tabs open on her computer and Megan and Conner on speaker phone.
"How will that work?" Conner asked after she told them that she was thinking about putting Peter's file in the system and having him go undercover with the couple as his foster parents.
"It'll be just the same as if I had processed that girl's file," she explained. "It's my job to find the best possible matches, so no one will think twice about it. And I did miss a file, so when I bring it to my boss, I'll probably get a talking to for that, but I don't think she'll look into it too closely. She doesn't have a reason to."
"What happens to the girl who was supposed to be processed?" Megan asked.
"She'll stay at the group home she's in for a little longer."
"Is that really fair?" the Martian asked.
Mallory sighed, enlarging one of the charts she had up on her computer. "No, it's not, but neither is the thousands of kids being taken off the streets. I have to do something. I feel so stupid. There has to be a connection here, and I just can't find it."
"Don't beat yourself up over it," Conner said. She heard some background noise and Roy's voice from their end.
"You're at Roy's already?" she asked. The old team had planned to meet at Roy's house to order a pizza and watch the election play out. She'd decided at the last minute that she was going to stay home and try one more time to find some sort of lead.
"Yeah, it's getting late. We're the last ones here," Conner told her.
"Is that Mallory?" Raquel asked, her voice muffled by distance.
"Yes," Megan replied.
"Give me that," she demanded. A second passed where Mallory could picture her friend marching across the room to snatch the phone. "Where are you? You're missing the commentaries on Luthor's campagne. It's only fun if you're here to be mad about it."
The pyrokinetic laughed and shook her head. "Sorry. Maybe Conner can fill in for me. I told Roy to tell everyone that I'm not coming."
"Yeah, well, just because you said it doesn't mean we accept it," she replied, and Artemis chimed in, "yeah, it was your idea in the first place, you can't just bail on us."
"Ok, I'm gonna hang up now," Mallory said, determined to get off the line before she was dragged into an argument and tricked into dropping her work to join them.
"Fine," Raquel grumbled, and Megan got her phone back and said, "bye, Mal. Good luck on your digging, we'll let you know how the election comes out."
"Thanks, I'll see you later."
They hung up, and Mallory sighed and continued her investigation.
Mallory pushed her computer to the side in frustration, stretching her stiff back and neck. She'd been at it for hours, and the closest thing she had to a connection or a lead was that about two thirds of them were male. She grunted and swung her legs to the floor, accidentally bumping the keyboard. One of the tabs came to the front. She glanced at it, shaking her head. The simulation started, running on the eastern seaboard. The weather passing through the area, infrared light waves, all the same as every other time she'd run it.
Then, she noticed something. A quick flask of energy. It was so fast that if she blinked she would have missed it. She tilted her head, pulling the computer back onto her lap, and started adjusting the simulation. She slowed it down, took out the weather and the light waves that she'd already looked into, and she played it again. Again, everything was normal, then there was a quick, large flash of energy, it faded a bit, flashed one more time, and then it was gone. All in the span of less than a minute. She bit her lip and pulled up the other simulations. She put the same restrictions on them and spread them out, covering the room in holographic screens.
Her heart quickened as she spun around in the circle, watching the same energy signature flash in every single one. She finally had a lead. But there was something very familiar about the signature. She spun in another circle, staring at the simulations, trying to remember where she'd seen them before. She went to her computer and looked up the Leagues satellite, punching in the coordinates and a date a few months before. She watched as the same energy signature flashed across her screen, and she nearly dropped her computer. She glanced at the TV still playing the election. The team would still be at Roy's. She grabbed her computer and a jacket and ran out the door. She had to get to her friend's house.
She knew what was happening to the kids.
She burst into Roy's house three minutes later, startling the others into near attack positions.
"Mallory, what are you doing?" Zatanna asked, taking a breath to calm down. The TV was still playing in the background, but it was forgotten the second the pyrokinetic rushed in.
"It's boomtubes!" she blurted, excitement making her words come out loud and in a fast. She pushed her way to the middle of the room and started setting up her computer on the coffee table.
"What is?" Dick asked, peering over her shoulder.
She swiped the simulations off the screen, turning them into the holograms, all of them frozen at the energy signatures. "Look, they're all the same! This is every month to the day since the kids started to disappear, but starting after the Reach left. Notice anything familiar about it?" She didn't let her friends answer the question, she pointed to the one simulation that was apart from the others. "This was taken when Virgil and the other Reach kids used the fatherbox to get the the Warworld a year and a half ago."
"It looks exactly the same," Zatanna said, pulling one of the simulations to compare it side by side with the known boom tube.
"What are you saying?" Kaldur asked, turning away from the holographic screens to look at Mallory.
"They're being sent off world," she explained.
They went silent at the realization, looking at each other. The TV seemed to grow louder in the silence, and Cat Grant's voice say, "And the votes are in. In seconds, we'll get the first address of the newest UN secretary…Lex Luthor."
The name drew the team's attention to the TV and they watched as the Light member walked onto the stage, right up to the podium. They exchanged grim looks as he started his speech.
"Well, crap," Artemis muttered, voicing all of their thoughts.
The game had just escalated, pushing them onto a whole different board, and not only were they the last ones to know it, they were already ten moves behind.
Ok, that wraps up the year! I'll start posting again on the 24th, but don't forget to leave a review before you leave!