Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! Here's and extra chapter as a Christmas present, if y'all want to give me something just leave me a review or send me a pm about the story. As always, I love hearing from you, and I appreciate every person who has followed this story from the beginning. My New Years resolution this year is to finish Where Fire Falls, so hopefully it's finally going to happen. Anyway, I've been waiting for this chapter to happen for a long time, so I hope you like it, and please review!
After work the next day, Mallory went back to her apartment to change into her costume and pick up her stakeout bag, a small duffle that she kept stocked with snacks and equipment that she didn't usually carry on her. From there, she went to her usual zeta tube, pausing before putting in her coordinates to call Roy and let him know she would be ready to go soon. He didn't answer his comm, though, so she let the computer scan her in, coming out on the Bridge at the same time as the team was coming back from a mission.
"Hey, Mal, we would have called you, but we figured you would be at work," Gar mentioned.
She tilted her head, surveying the squad that had gone, everyone except the senior members, Tara, and Peter. "So…who sent you on this one?" she asked.
Jaime shrugged. "It wasn't exactly official, but a distress signal came over the computer, we thought we should go check it out."
"The computer? Who's on monitor duty?" she asked.
"Oh, well, it was Captain Marvel, but he had to leave, and no one else was up here, so Vig offered to take over," Static answered.
Mallory's eyes widened a little. "Vigilante is on monitor duty?" she asked.
Gar shrugged. "Well, it's not like it's hard to do, and it's just until someone else shows up. And look, you showed up, so you can go take over now."
She sighed heavily, shaking her head. "Ok, all of you in the lounge, now. We need to have a talk about boundaries and minors putting themselves on missions that no one else knows about."
The team groaned, but they didn't argue as they started walking. Jaime hesitated, hanging back a little. "You know, technically I'm eighteen so I'm not a minor anymore, so I think I'm just gonna—" She glared at him, and he visibly gulped and finished, "keep on walking to the lounge."
She nodded, but before she could get off the steps, her comm clicked on. "Inferno here."
"Mallory?"
It was Dick's voice, but the line was so staticky that she could barely recognize it. She looked at Jaime. "I'll meet you in there in a sec," she told him, and she split away, walking through the hallway and into the memorial room. Reception for the comms could be a little spotty in space if there were metal asteroids coming close, and sometimes being on the planet side of the satellite helped offset that. "Hey, are you coming on the stakeout tonight?" she asked.
"Please—you aren't—Watchtower," she made out between the bursts of static.
"Yeah, I'm checking the computer real quick, but the team gave me something to deal with."
"-afe! Get—"
Her stomach started to knot up as she realized this wasn't just a normal call. Her friend's voice was panicky, and he never got panicky. "Dick, I can't understand you. What's going on?"
"It's—son!"
"What?"
A clear patch of communication came through, and her friend yelled in her ear, "Get out! It's Ja–!"
Halfway through the last word, the lights and communications went dead, and Mallory froze, adrenaline pumping immediately as she realized that she was in danger. She heard signs of a fight out in the hall, and her eyes widened, remembering that the team was alone out there, most of them were in the lounge together, but her brother was alone in the monitor room. A crash outside the room punctuated the thought, and she pressed against a tree, dropping her duffle and lighting her eyes as she prepared herself mentally to fight the unknown intruder.
She heard footsteps coming towards the room and let out a final calming breath, coming up with a plan with communications down and no backup. The door opened, and she listened as the soft thuds of boots on grass came closer and closer to her position. The figure stopped just in front of her, looking around at the holograms. He was wearing combat boots, cargo pants, and a brown leather jacket, but the red helmet covering his head made her think of a conversation she'd had with Dick, and her eyes widened slightly as she realized that he was the Red Hood, the new player that had been taking over Gotham's crime, and leaving a trail of bodies behind. Though how he'd managed to get up here, with no Light connections that they knew of and no reason to target the League, that was a whole other question.
He started to turn around, and she leapt out of her hiding place, aiming a punch for the forehead of the helmet. He sensed the movement and ducked just before she made contact, and she rolled and popped back up to her feet, automatically raising her arms to block the blow she knew would be coming. His fist slammed into her forearm painfully, but she took the opportunity to look at his face. The helmet covered everything but the eyes, which revealed just enough to be able to tell that he was wearing a domino mask underneath.
He narrowed his eyes, seeing her sizing him up, and kicked her side, throwing her a few inches to the right. She retaliated as soon as she had her balance, thrusting her leg out behind her and making contact somewhere on his leg, then she backflipped, shooting flames out of her feet to propel her body in the circle, catching his shoulder with her knee on her way back down. He grabbed her arm before she landed and threw her across the room, running after her and kicking her threw the partially open door before she could move out the way.
He lunged into the hallway after her, and she launched her legs straight up, slamming her feet into his chest and rolling to a crouch while he was still in the air. She lit her hands, not giving him a chance to recover before she ran at him, aiming a blow for the pressure point on the back of his head. He rolled away without looking up, and she fell forward with nothing to counter the force. He swiped her legs out from under her before she regained her balance, pulling the guns from the holsters on either leg. She saw the glint of light coming off the metal out of the corner of her eye and put up her shield just in time to block the bullets he fired at her. She threw the shield forward, forcing him to dive out of the way to avoid the flames.
They stood at the same time, but Mallory was prepared, closing the distance between them and building a fire in her hands. He blocked the punch, the leather arms of his jacket protecting his skin, but Mallory tapped into her strength, adding force to try to push him into the wall. He held his ground, and she pushed more, flames leaping out of her eyes as she prepared to blow fire at his helmet, anything to give her the upper hand for enough time to come up with a halfway decent offensive attack.
He smashed his head into hers before she could build the fire in her mouth, stunning enough to make her vision go white and force her to loosen her grip on him. She reached out, grabbing blindly at where she thought his neck was. Her hands caught on something smooth and she pulled. Her opponent grunted and what she was holding suddenly came loose, sending her staggering backwards. She winced, shaking her head to clear the whitish yellow field of vision. She felt the smooth object in her hands, with two small holes and one big on on the bottom. She realized she was holding the red helmet in her hands, but there was a slight vibrating, then a familiar whining sound coming from it.
Her eyes widened as she realized what was causing it, and she threw the helmet away and flew straight up, trying to get as far from the blast as she could. It exploded behind her, but she hovered for a second, shaking her head and pressing her palm to her forehead, trying to get her vision to clear from the relative safety of the air. After a few seconds of minimum results, though, she gave up and spun around, ready to continue the fight blind. She heard metal clacking against metal and felt the slight shift in the air current indicating that something small was coming at her.
She reacted too late, throwing her arms up in a fire shield to protect herself from the explosions that she thought were coming. Instead, she set off a chain reaction of pellets spewing a white liquid, the wave of foam covering her and dousing her flames almost instantly. She yelped as she lost her flight and fell to the ground, feeling suffocated without the ability to ignite her skin. The villain was over her in a second, and before she could stop him he had an inhibitor collar slapped around her neck, robbing her of both her fire and her strength. She narrowed her eyes, unable to make out much more than a blur, though it was better than nothing. "You don't know what you're doing," she said.
He didn't say anything, just narrowed his eyes and pulled his gun, aiming it at her forehead.
"I never needed my powers to deal with you," she continued, and she spun around. She wasn't going for the gun, though. She was going for the wall, where the keypad for their section of the watchtower functions was located. She practically punched the reset button, ready to tell the computer the code. She heard the cock of a gun and ducked instinctively, the bullet whizzing past her ear and lodging in the wall an inch from where her head had been. "Inferno B08, emergency reset activate, function key artificial gravity!" she got out in a rush, dodging the blow from behind. She grabbed hold of the handle on the wall, and in three seconds the system reset, taking off the artificial gravity when it did. The Red Hood's eyes widened as he started to float into the air, Mallory staying tethered down low with her grip on the bar, still shaking the haziness from her eyes. Finally, they cleared enough for her to recognize her surroundings as more than a colored blur.
"Robin, B15, override B08, reinstate artificial gravity!"
Her eyes snapped wide open, a chill going down her spine. It wasn't the fact that this Red Hood was using Robin's old access code, or that he had the ingenuity and guts to get to the League's orbiting headquarters to start with, or that he'd known exactly how to take each member of the team down quickly and quietly, even coming prepared with a inhibitor collars already prepped. No, none of those things had her blood running cold, or her breaths coming quick as she lifted her face to see what she already dreaded that she knew: it was the voice. She knew that voice, and it was one that she never thought she would hear again.
Sure enough, with her sight regained, and his helmet in pieces across the room, she could see what she'd been overlooking the entire fight, understood why his moves felt so vaguely familiar. They were, he was familiar, but it couldn't be real. How…how could he be hovering above her now.
"Jason?" she managed to get out, before the artificial gravity came back on and he came falling from above, his fist aimed carefully for the side of her head. She dropped to the floor instantly, her mind struggling to stay in control as the heavy blackness tried to pull her under, and the last coherent thought she managed to put together was the broken message Dick had tried to get to her, the blanks now easy to fill in: 'You're not safe, get out! It's Jason.'
"Mal? Hey, she's waking up!"
Mallory groaned, stretching towards the safety of Conner's familiar voice as she slowly opened her eyes, shivering against the cool floor of the Bridge. As she regained more and more of her senses, she realized that it wasn't just the floor. She was cool all over, almost shivering against it, and that was when she felt the weight around her neck and remembered why. The inhibitor collar was still around her neck, cutting off the flow of warmth that usually ran through her veins. She strained against the throbbing headache and stiff, sore muscles, opening her eyes and pushing herself to a sitting position. Conner was crouching next to her, explaining the familiar voice, and just about everyone else was standing around her. "How's the team?" she asked, trying to get to her feet and putting one hand to her head to try to stop the throbbing.
Conner put a gentle hand on her shoulder, keeping her down. "Easy, don't stand up just yet. You have a bad bump, might have a concussion. What happened?"
She tilted her head, thinking back. It was a bit hazy, but she did remember the red helmet crashing into her head, the flash of white that stayed in her vision for what felt like hours after. Yeah, a concussion was probably a safe bet. There was a voice cutting into the back of her head, but she didn't know why, or whose. Then she saw Nightwing and Batman standing a few feet away and it all came rushing back, a wave of fear and alarm going through her as she remembered every detail. "Jason!" she exclaimed, ignoring the clone's warning not to get up and rushing over to Dick. "That was…Jason, wasn't it?"
He gave her a concerned look that told her she looked a hundred times worse than she felt, but he nodded. "Yeah, it was."
Her eyes went wide, her muscles going slack as her foggy mind tried to process the information. "But…how? Dick, Jason's dead. Joker killed him, how was he here?" The others exchanged grim looks, and Mallory looked around them, understanding that this had already been explained while she was unconscious.
"He…um, when he was killed, Ra's…" Dick started, but Artemis took over, finishing the explanation in her typical blunt fashion. "Ra's stole his body and used the lazarus pit on him. He's been living on Infinity Island ever since, until recently."
"When he went to Gotham and became the Red Hood," Mallory finished, resisting the urge to nod to avoid the head pain. Her eyes widened as she remembered their encounter with the residents of Infinity Island right after taking Brion in, the image of a ninja clad in red with a mask covering his face floating to the front of her mind. "We were right there...and we didn't see it."
"Yeah," Dick replied, his voice soft.
Megan sighed, looking between her friend and his former mentor. "I am surprised to see him here, even under the circumstances," she commented. Her expression softened and she added, "does Jess know?"
He winced, his eyes trailing to Bruce's face, where the team could now see the fresh bruise spreading out over his jaw. "Yeah, she knows."
The younger members of the team came walking over, and Mallory winced at the bruises on her brother's face and the limp in his gait. He'd been all alone when Red Hood attacked, and with the element of surprise, his previous knowledge of the team, and whatever that pit did to him…they never had a chance.
"You all right?" Peter asked, giving her a once over.
"Yeah," she replied, careful to stay perfectly still. "You?"
He nodded, but his face was conflicted. "Was it really Jason?"
Dick nodded, his eyes narrowing as he looked the team over, assessing every injury his dead brother had caused. Clark and Bruce started walking back towards the zeta tube, but as they passed, the team overheard a piece of their conversation.
"And you're sure it was really him? Not a clone of him?" Clark asked.
Batman nodded, a flash of anger breaking through the stone expression. "Yes, I already talked to Ra's. Not that it matters."
"What do you mean?"
"He was on the inside, Clark. He knows all of the protocols, the codes, he had access to the zeta tubes, the computers, my computer. How did you think he took the entire team down so easily, by himself?"
They moved out of earshot, but the team picked up right where they'd left off. "No wonder," Mallory murmured.
"What?" Kaldur asked.
"He took me down with fire extinguishing pellets," she replied, "and he had the inhibitor collar ready to go." She glanced around. "Speaking of which," she added, pointing to the collar still around her neck.
"Oh, right," Conner said, and he broke it off, allowing the surge of warmth to once again settle just under the surface.
"He had the contingencies, didn't he?"
"The what?" Virgil asked, but the older members of the team ignored the question, all eyes settled firmly on Dick.
Finally, he nodded. "Yeah. There weren't any signs of him hacking into the computer to take them, but he wouldn't have had to if he read them before and remembered them."
"I don't get how he got up here in the first place," Artemis said. "The only way up here in the zeta tube, or a javelin, and even with that the computer has to scan you. Why didn't it lock him out?"
"The League never discontinued Robin's access to the zeta tubes," Kaldur explained, wincing. "They hadn't discontinued any of them, until now."
"Why?!" Artemis snapped. "As paranoid as Batman is, you're saying he didn't even consider the possibility that one of them could have been cloned, just to gain access to our bases?"
Dick shrugged, not giving an explanation, and Conner sighed. "Well, he was right about one thing," he muttered.
"What?" Megan asked.
"It really doesn't matter. He could have been using the tubes for months, maybe years, been watching us for all that time. He already knew all of our fighting styles, all of our weaknesses, families, locations, he's seen the contingencies. He knows everything about us, and at this point, all we know about him is that he's trying to kill us. We can't let the fact that this is Jason get in the way. He's dangerous, and we need to take him down."