sorry it's a little late, but hope you like it and please review!
"So, you saw Geo?" Cameron asked quietly, positioning himself so that the wind wouldn't carry his words to the rest of the squad.
She didn't look at her ex, instead devoting her full attention to scanning the field they were crossing. The factory seemed completely abandoned, no vehicles on the outside, no lights on the inside. An infrared scan didn't show any heat signatures in the immediate vicinity. "Static?"
He put a hand to the ground, then shook his head, confirming her findings. "No big power use, just a small charge running to the main buildings," he reported.
She nodded and looked at the people on the squad, trying to decide how to use each of their abilities. "Blue, any Reach tech?" she asked finally.
He shook his head. "No, no big ones, anyway," he reported, then paused and shook his head in annoyance, adding quieter, "yeah, I know that would be easier, but I'm not going to do that."
Peter smirked. "Scarab wants to blow the place up?" he asked, having become quite familiar with the scarab's preferred way of handling situations.
Jaime chuckled and nodded. "Yeah, that's an understatement."
"Later," Mallory promised, understanding the sentiment. "Vig, you take point, we'll start in the lobby and work our way to the shipping and packing," she decided, vaguely remembering the setup from the tour she'd taken with Jonathan.
Peter nodded and led the way to the building, hacking through the security protocols and letting them in without tripping any alarms. He, too, seemed to remember some things about the layout, because he had them in the first produce room without even looking at the downloaded blueprints and they wasted no time spreading out, inspecting every inch of the shelving, tubing, and flooring of the place.
"I don't get it," Wondergirl said after a moment, her whisper just as loud as her normal voice would have been. "What do you expect to find here? It's been shut down for ages."
"I don't know," Mallory admitted, running her fingers over the tubing that used to hold the pink additive. There was still some left in it, turned to a rusty sludge color with time and stagnation. "But this is the only farm the Light set up for the Reach. They made sure that the drinks were harmless, and they always intended to double cross them, so why invest time and money on a project that they never intended to profit from? It's not like them."
"Unless there was a reason to put this place here, and the Reach were just the cover story to keep people from finding out what the real objective was," Jinx finished, nodding. "Sounds about right."
"Yeah, it sounds right," Cameron said, getting to his feet after kneeling to inspect the floor beneath one of the plant shelves, "but there's nothing here."
"So we move on and keep looking," Mallory said firmly. "This is a big place, lots of room to hide something." She led the way into the next building, leaving Blue and Cassie to search the small yard between them. This was the pluot orchard, but the trees had long since withered and died, the liquid in the tubes the same rusty color as the last building. She looked at the large pot closer to the wall, remembering her small contribution to sabotaging the Reach's agenda by spoiling some of their additive. A little extra heat, and the whole place was covered in a thick pink smoke.
"I don't know, T," Cameron said, coming over to her after scanning the obvious spots. "I think this might be a dead end."
She shook her head, not willing to accept defeat. She needed a new lead, they had to make some kind of progress. Her eyes caught on the pot again, and she walked over to it, examining the stand it was sitting on. It was a burner, but beneath the spiral metal was a deep, dark hole.
"Hey, Vig," she said, looking over at her brother, "come here."
He dropped the tubing he was holding and walked over. "What, you find something?" he asked. She pulled the pot off the burner and tried to lift it off its rim. It didn't budge, so she tapped into her strength and ripped it up, wincing at the screeching sound it made. "You have a line on you?" she asked, not wanting to use her fire in case there was something volatile down there. He nodded and pulled it out of his belt, shooting it at the roof and throwing a glow stick down to see how far down it went. It went down fifty feet before slapping on concrete. The others had gathered around by now and they exchanged glances, their hearts starting to beat faster now that there was a chance that the evening wasn't a dud.
"I'll go first," Jaime offered, taking out his wings. He descended down into the darkness, following the dim green light of the glow stick. They waited for him to get all the way down. "Uh, guys?" he called up, "I think we found what we were looking for."
Mallory took her brother's line and lowered herself down, sending it back up when her feet touched the floor. The room was still pitch black, so she lit her eyes and scanned the room. There wasn't very much in it, and she was starting to question Blue's statement when suddenly the lights flicked on, revealing Jaime's hand still on the switch, and large outlines in the dust on the floor where something had been removed recently. She tilted her head, kneeling next to the largest of them, tracing the scrape marks with her fingertips as the others came down the hole one by one.
"Woah," Peter said, making her look up. "You were right about the boomtube," he said, showing her his screen. The readings were extreme, implying that more than one had been opened in this small space. The overlap wouldn't have been caught by the League's computer unless individually isolated, and at the time she hadn't seen the need to.
"Well, whatever was here, looks like we're too late," Jinx observed, walking around the room.
Mallory shook her head. "Spread out, search every inch. They could have forgotten something, or maybe we can figure out what was here that they had to come get." She noticed a hallway connected to the room and took a step towards it. "Jr, with me, the rest of you, if you find anything let us know. Static, if any signals come in or out, I want to know it." They all nodded and went to their jobs, Inferno and Icicle Jr heading out of the room and into the hallway. She couldn't find a switch for the lights, so she held a fire out in her palm, swinging it around to light the walls and floor for Jr. "This isn't suspicious at all," he muttered, gesturing to more scrape marks on the floors here.
Mallory narrowed her eyes, kneeling down to light what looked like claw marks in the concrete floor. "Oh, we're way past suspicious," she said. They followed the hallway all the way to the end, not finding anythin, no other rooms, no secret doors, not even a scrape of paper left behind.
"Whoever came back, they cleaned this place out," Cameron mentioned.
She nodded, looking at the stairs they were coming to. "Let's see where this goes," she suggested. She took the lead as they climbed the staircase, coming to a door before long that opened into some kind of office. "It's like they weren't even trying to hide it," she muttered.
He shrugged. "Maybe there was a false wall or something. Or, maybe the Reach wer so convinced they wouldn't get double crossed that they just didn't bother to check things out."
She looked over the room. There wasn't a computer, the filing cabinet was empty, the books on the shelves were generic biology and chemistry books. She shook her head, disappointed, and pressed her comm. "The hall was a dud, nothing interesting. You guys have any luck?"
"Well, actually," Cassie replied, a smile in her voice, "yeah."
"We found…something. Not sure what it is, but it was in a hole in the baseboard, mist have gotten kicked and they didn't miss it," Jaime explained.
"Well, bring it with you. Just come up the hallway, it only leads one place."
The team made it to them before long, and Static handed their prize to her, a small metal box not much bigger than a phone. Or a motherbox. "It's some kind of computer, but I can't get it to turn on," Virgil told her, shaking his head in confusion.
She examined it. The outside was blank, but there were ports to plug it in to a screen. "This is great," she assured them. "Good work."
"Come on, let's get out of here," Cameron said, walking to the door.
Static scrunched his eyebrows, and as soon as the cryokinetic started turning the knob, he lunged forward. "Wait, don't!" It was too late. A blaring alarm started up.
"Static, turn it off!" Cassie snapped.
"I can't!" he yelled back. "It's not running on electricity!"
"Come on!" Mallory ordered, going to the wall. The stealth bit didn't matter anymore, and she didn't trust the building not to be boobytrapped. She tapped into her strength and knocked a hole in the wall, ushering her squad into the night before it even stopped crumbling.
"Where are we going?" Virgil asked, looking around for an escape.
"Let's go!" Cassie said, running into the cornfield surrounding the plant.
The others followed her without question, but Static hesitated, irritation on his face. "Oh, no, I'm not going in there. I'll take my chances with the Light, thanks."
Mallory glared at him. "Move!" He groaned.
"Fine!" he snapped, running to catch up to the others, "this is exactly why I didn't want to come on your side mission! I swear, if I die in this field, you're the first person I'm coming back to haunt."
"Deal, I'll be expecting you," she replied, keeping up her steady jog. They slowed down about a few miles away from the base, not far away from the farm truck they'd taken to the plant. I think we're ok now," she said, pulling out the hard drive again to look at it as they walked.
"Oh, now why would you say that?" Virgil snapped, looking around nervously.
"Relax, Virgil, nothing's gonna happen," Peter laughed. No sooner were the words out of his mouth when there was a rustling to their side. They all jumped to attention, putting their backs to each other and trying to see out into the night.
"There's something on infrared," Mallory reported. "Something big."
Virgil shook his head, backing up. "I knew it, this is it, this is where I'm gonna die. Well, I call the middle. If anyone's gonna get picked off first, it ain't gonna be me."
"Get a grip," Jinx snapped, her eyes darting around the thick wall of cornstalks. Another rustle came a little to the side of the first one.
"Stay ready," Mallory told the squad, keeping her fire ready just under the surface. The rustling was getting closer, and Virgil was getting more on edge. Just before whatever it was broke through, he shot a stream of electricity out, yelling something about the demons not getting him today.
"Wait!" Jr yelled, and he shot a wall of ice, blockign the shot from making it to its target. The squad tilted their heads, and he walked around the ice and led the offender out, a cow.
"Silvy?" Peter said, then he burst out laughing. "Oh, great. Some hero, Virg. You almost fried an innocent cow."
"And a mother, no less," Mallory teased, stroking the Kent's prize dairy cow. She must have gotten out of the fence and wandered out into the field.
Virgil rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, looking around like he didn't quite believe that she was the only thing following them. "Whatever," he muttered. "I'm never coming back to this town again." He huffily took the lead eager to be back on the truck and headed back for the familiar territory of a big city.
They made it back to the farm in a few minutes and got off the truck and started loading onto the supercycle to find the zeta tube. Cameron hung back a little, something on his mind. "You going to talk to him again?" he asked.
Mallory sighed, glancing at the house. "I don't know what good it's gonna do," she said dejectedly. "He doesn't want to hear any of it."
"No, but then, it wasn't that long ago that youwere where he is. You didn't want to listen to your team or your mentor either."
"So what am I supposed to do?" she asked.
"Just give him some guidance and let him work it out on his own. That's how you got over it."
She shook her head slowly, starting to get an idea. "No, not exactly," she murmured. "Is V'lana still staying at the Watchtower?"
Cameron nodded. "Yeah, why?"
"Nothing, I just might know how to get him back." She looked over to the rest of the squad, now loaded on the supercycle and waiting on Cameron to get going. "Thanks for coming," she told them. They nodded and she watched them take off before going up the porch steps and letting the screen door slam behind her. The first floor was empty, so she climbed the stairs and went to the guest room, the same one that she'd stayed in when she lived with the kents. Brion was sitting on his bed, just staring into space, Moe playing with his shoe on the floor, trying to get him up. "Hey," she said softly.
He jumped a little, but he didn't look at her. "What do you want?" he snapped.
She leaned against the doorframe. "Just to apologize," she said. This caught his attention enough to have him look at her and she sighed. "I was harsh, and I overreacted."
"Yes, you did," he agreed, but his tone wasn't so rough now. He was waiting for her to explain, which was unusual for him these days.
She sighed, looking around the room and noting the changes it had gone through in the three people who had stayed there since she left. "It's just that I've been here before," she said quietly. Anger flashed on his face and he opened his mouth to snap at her, but she didn't let him get far. "Before you start telling me that I don't know how you feel, I do. Kid Flash was like a brother to me, he died during the Reach invasion, and it was my fault. Or, I thought it was my fault," she added quickly, not wanting the exact details to be spread around. "I did all the things you're doing now. I isolated myself, drank all hours of the day and night, put myself in bad situations on patrol, anything to keep myself from remembering, or thinking, or living. I went months like that."
He stopped looking at her, instead focusing on the fox rolling around at his feet. "Well, you clearly moved on." It wasn't an accusation, more like an observation, or maybe a question.
She nodded. "Yeah, I did, eventually. But it wasn't the lectures I got from Clark or the support that the team gave me that snapped me out of it, so I'm not going to do that to you. Anymore," she added, wincing when she realized that she'd already been doing that to him. "This is something that you have to deal with in your own time, in your own terms, so I'm going to back off and give you the space to do just that. Just, do me a favor and take it easy on the drinks. Our powers don't mix well with alcohol, and I don't want you to do something you'll regret."
She started pushed off the doorframe, about to go back downstairs, but she stopped when he cleared his throat. "What…what did you do?"
She shrugged. "For starters, I went to the Watchtower and talked to his hologram, said everything I wanted to tell him."
"That helped?" he asked, his voice unreadable.
She sighed, shaking her head slowly. "Not really," she admitted softly, "but I think it put me in the right mindset to hear what I needed to hear."
"And what was that?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Nothing I hadn't been told before, just that survivor's guilt is real and I had to think about the people that are still here, and how my self destruction was hurting them. And how it wasn't helping Kid Flash, me driving myself into an early grave right alongside him." He didn't answer and she shook her head. "I don't expect everything that helped me to help you. Not now. Just think about it, ok? You still have people who love you. We'll be here for you, when you need us."
She left the room, closing the door softly behind her. She felt good about that conversation, better than she had about the way they left things before the mission. Maybe he would take her suggestion, start getting rid of the guilt surrounding his sister's death. In any case, it was out of her hands now. He needed to come to that decision on his own, or at least hear it from someone new.
She started working on the hard drive as soon as she got back to the apartment, plugging it into her holographic screen. The password was one problem, but she managed to make it through after an hour of trying to remember Dick's hacking tricks well enough to make them work. Once she was in, though, she discovered a whole separate problem. Each file on the drive was triple encrypted, and the one that she managed to get into was written in some kind of code, or maybe another language, she wasn't sure which. She shook her head. She was going to need help with this.
She had just texted Dick asking him to meet her at the Watchtower the next day after work when her phone rang. She answered it, expecting it to be the original Boy Wonder, but it was Cameron's voice that greeted her.
"What did you say to Brion?" he asked.
She scrunched her eyebrows together, not knowing where he was going with this. "Nothing special, why?"
"He's in the lounge with V'lana and Jinx, and he's laughing. He seems…different. Better."
She took a relieved breath and let it out slowly, smiling and leaning against the back of the couch. "I didn't do anything," she insisted. "I just set him up to see the right person."