Sorry for not posting last week, I haven't had a lot of time to write, I was going to write up a chapter the day of, but then my cat had to go to the vet so it just got put off. He's all good, though, and this chapter is a little longer than usual, so hope that makes up for it. Hope you like it, and please review!
Two weeks later, Mallory zipped her duffle closed, all ready to move back to her apartment. She looked around the room, a wave of annoyance mixing with the twinge in her chest as she took in again how much the room had changed. There weren't any traces of her old self, everything had been moved to the attic or she'd taken it to the cave and it had been lost in the explosion. Even the cheerful yellow walls were gone, replaced with a dark blue paint and covered with Gar's movie posters and advertisements for his show. She shrugged it off and shouldered the duffle, taking the steps two at a time.
"Slow down!" Elaine called from the office. "The doctor said you were off bedrest, not that you're ready to be shaking your brain around in your head."
"He said I was good to get back to my normal activities," Mallory corrected.
Her mom shook her head, putting on a stern expression. "You didn't tell him what your normal activities are, and I'm sure he wouldn't approve. You think I'm wrong, then ask your boyfriend and let him tell you. You have to give yourself more time to heal."
Mallory shook her head, leaning on the doorframe. "Alex isn't my boyfriend, exactly, and I've given myself two full weeks. I can't stand the boredom anymore. Besides, once I get back to Metropolis, I'll be drowning in so many case files, I'll be lucky if I can get a little joy flight in." Elaine opened her mouth to continue to lecture her, but Mallory's comm came on and she half turned to answer it, expecting it to be a friend checking up on her. "Inferno here."
"I know you're on bedrest, but I need your help," Megan said.
Mallory narrowed her eyes, noting both the lack of a greeting and the serious tone the Martian was using. "I'm off of it today, what's up?"
"Brion, Tara, and V'lana went to Metropolis this morning, and they aren't answering their comms or their phones."
"They're probably with one of the others, did you–"
"I called for a comm check, everyone else answered, and no one's seen them since last night. I checked with Artemis, they were home last night, but they were gone this morning."
"Ok, but still, maybe they just want to be alone," Mallory reasoned, but her grip tightened around the strap of her duffle as she started to think about the best places to start looking.
"I'd still feel better if we check it out. Conner and I are going to sweep the business district, I have Jaime and Zatanna combing the south side, I was hoping you could grab someone for backup and take the suicide slum."
Mallory pulled out her phone and her eyes narrowed as she read the last text she'd gotten from Brion. "Don't bother," she said through clenched teeth, already starting for the front door. "I have a better place to start."
Five minutes later, Mallory stormed into the Luthor Grand Hotel, stopping abruptly in front of the desk and ringing the bell several times to get the receptionist's attention.
The girl tilted her head, warily taking her in after the aggressive entrance. "Do you need a room?"
"No, I'm looking for a woman who's been staying here for a few months, Dr. Helga Jace. She's in 302."
The girl typed something into her computer, then shook her head. "I'm sorry, but she checked out of that room this morning. She asked that we keep her reservation for the remainder of the day so that she could come back if she couldn't find other accommodations."
Mallory cursed under her breath, then stared the girl down. "I need the key to her room."
"I'm sorry, but I can't–"
"Listen, I'm the one that arranged for her accommodations, and she's the last person to see three teens before they disappeared, so either you hand that key over or I go kick the door in."
The receptionist's eyes widened, but after a short moment of debating it in her head, she handed the pyrokinetic a key card. Mallory took off towards the stairwell, shutting the door behind her and propelling herself up. "Miss M, come in," she said.
"Did you find something?" Megan asked.
"Jace is gone."
"What?"
"Brion texted me late last night telling me that she'd asked to see him and Tara, and when I got to the hotel they said she checked out this morning. I convinced the desk to let me use her key, I'm going to take a look, with any luck she left something behind that we can use to trace her."
"Ok, we're on our way."
She'd reached the door and she scanned the key, but the light flashed red. "Really?" she muttered, snapping the faulty card. She glanced around the hall, and after deciding that it was empty, she lit her eyes, tapping into her strength, and slammed her foot into the door. It slammed open, the lock shattering in a million pieces and the wood splintering where her foot had hit. "Hey, when you get here? You might want to come through the window. I might need a fast exit."
"What did you do?" Megan asked.
"Nothing, don't worry about it, I'm not in costume so it's fine." She flipped on the light and winced. The place was cleaned out, the only thing obviously out of place was a scrap of paper on side of the trash can.
"Mal, we're outside, do you need one of us to come in?" Megan asked on the link.
"No," she replied, ignoring the sirens that were coming closer to the building. "I think I have what we need." The window was made not to open, and she groaned and heated her hand, melting the glass until there was a hole big enough for her to get out. Sure enough, the Super cycle was hovering at her level with Megan and Conner inside. Once she'd flown over and found a seat, the clone tilted his head.
"So, what did you find?" he asked.
She held up the scrap of paper, narrowing her eyes. "Just a phone number, and a name." Megan gasped slightly when she saw what was written, and Mallory nodded. "Looks like we're going to be paying Mr. Luthor a visit."
They made a pit stop for Mallory to change, and they were on their way to the business district in five minutes. As soon as they made it to the window of his office, it was clear that he was expecting them. The entire wall of windows was open, and he was at his desk, Mercy watching them closely as the Supercycle landed and the heroes walked up to his desk.
"Well, to what do I owe this unwelcome visit?" Lex asked, hardly even looking up from his computer.
"Where are they?" Conner growled, leaning across the desk like he was going to grab the billionaire right out of his chair. He thought better of it at the last second, leaving him inches away from the man.
Luthor, however, just arched an eyebrow bordly. "Who are we talking about?"
Conner clenched his fists on the desk. "You know who. The Markovs and Nautica, where did Jace take them?"
"I haven't the faintest idea," he replied, leaning back in his chair. His eyes shifted to take in each of the three heroes and his lips twitched up in a smirk.
"Right," Mallory said with disgust, "just like I'm sure you don't know anything about how the second Robin's back from the dead."
His smirk spread to a smile. "Of course not, but when opportunity knocks…"
The heroes stiffened, restraining their anger so that they didn't act on it, and Megan had to take the lead. "All we need from you is the location that Jace took our people. You can give it to us, or…"
The man arched an eyebrow. "I do hope you aren't about to threaten me, Miss Martian. Not with Inferno right there, and my updated office cameras all pointing right at you, ready to pick up even the slightest whisper. I would be honor-bound to present the footage to the United Nations to show that they made the wrong choice in letting your friend go, and we wouldn't want that, now, would we?"
Mallory narrowed her eyes, the visors in her mask glowing red with muffled flames, but Megan just smiled. "Of course not. We wouldn't threaten such an upstanding member of the community. It's just that, recently I was thinking about poor Aqualad, and his condition."
"You don't do that anymore," Luthor said confidently.
Megan shrugged. "I don't know what you mean. He had a stroke. Amazing he made such a remarkable recovery, really. Still, he told me that being comatose for all that time was a hell he wouldn't wish on anyone. Of course, he recovered, so all worked out well in the end."
Her eyes glowed white for a second, and Luthor rolled his eyes. "Save the intimidation for someone who is scared of you. Yes, I spoke to Dr. Jace, she acquired my contact information from a colleague, and I directed her to an associate of mine who could help her with her situation."
"That situation being?" Conner asked.
"Returning home with the children."
"You mean disappearing with them, don't you?" Mallory spat. "She knows she can't go anywhere near Markovia with the royals and stay off the radar, there's no way she would even try to smuggle them in."
Luthor shrugged. "Whatever she decides to do after our conversation is none of my concern. As far as I was informed, she seemed to be trying to reunite two kidnapped children with their family. Tragic, that she deceived me so completely and made me an unknowing accomplice to an ongoing kidnapping investigation." He arched an eyebrow, staring Mallory and Conner down. "Remind me again, who was it that took the latest victim out of Markovia to begin with?"
They narrowed their eyes, both fuming at the underlying threat that his words carried, but before they could come up with a response, Megan paused, then set up a link. "Kaldur just call on comms, they're back."
"Where?" Conner asked, turning away from Luthor.
"At the Watchtower, they just zetaed there, let's go."
The heroes started to go to the open window, but Luthor stood and said, "Inferno, a word?" They all stilled, Mallory at the back of the small group, and Lex continued, "I would be careful, if I were you. Your situation is precarious at best, and you don't look up to par. You might do well to sit this one out."
She arched an eyebrow suspiciously, unsure what his angle was. "Thanks for your concern," she replied sarcastically, "but I think I'll be fine. And if you are involved in this in any way, I swear, I'll bring it right back to your doorstep." She hopped into Sphere and Conner steered his pet away from the building.
They were quiet for a few seconds as they headed for the closest zeta tube, then Conner tilted his head. "You were bluffing back there, right? All that talk about Kaldur's condition?"
Megan nodded. "Of course. I just thought it might shake him. Not that it did much, though, he knew it was an empty threat."
"Too bad," Mallory said quietly, looking between her friends. "I mean, just think, sucking out all the information in his head? We could end all of this once and for all, shut down the Light, find the partner and take them down, end all his other illegal dealings, and fix his psyche when we're done. One immoral act, and our whole fight would be over, no one else would have to get hurt, who knows how many lives would be saved."
A heavy silence settled over them as her words sunk in, stretching until they stopped at the zeta tube, but finally Conner broke it with a simple, "yeah, but we can't."
Mallory sighed and nodded, looking away. "Yeah, I know," she murmured, wishing for all she was worth that she didn't.
Almost everyone associated with the team at any point in its history was gathered at the Watchtower when the three heroes zetaed up from Metropolis, all surrounding the missing teens. Cassie and Artemis made room for them, and all three seemed to let out the same sigh of relief at seeing the two Markovs standing there safe, followed by the same sharp gasp when they realized that V'lana wasn't with them.
Brion saw Mallory and Conner and met them halfway, a look of apprehension on his face. "It was Jace…" he started, but Conner nodded, cutting him off with a neutral, "we know."
Brion winced, then looked at Mallory. "I know you did not want her around, but when she contacted me, I just…I thought enough time had passed, that I could forgive her, but she–"
Mallory surprised them both by wrapping her arms around the teen, stopping his rambling in its tracks. He tensed at first, then sagged against her, letting her support him for a few seconds. When she let go, she looked between the royal siblings, a firm expression on her face. "This isn't your fault, ok? Any blame goes to Jace, and she's going to pay for whatever she did as soon as we find her and get V'lana back."
"Where is V'lana?" Megan asked, shifting into her leader stance as she started to assess what kind of rescue op she would be sending the team out on.
"I do not know, Jace and the ape took her away. They would have taken us, too, but Tara managed to get our chips off and we escaped." He grunted angrily and added, "she never should have been there."
"What do you mean?" Artemis asked.
Tara winced. "She was with me when I received the message from Dr. Jace to meet her and Brion in Metropolis, she offered to come for moral support."
Peter's eyes were narrowed behind his mask, and he tilted his head, looking at Tara. "So, if she used chips on you, how did you manage to break the control on yours to take Brion's off?"
The girl glared at Peter, her expression flipping so fast it startled some of the team. "It must have malfunctioned. Why am I being interrogated? I was kidnapped again and V'lana is still out there, most likely she is already being prepared to go into one of the fighting rings!"
Nightwing put a hand on Peter's shoulder and looked at Tara. "No one is trying to interrogate you, we're just trying to understand what happened so we can find the people who were involved."
"You said there was an ape," Artemis broke in, gently shifting the group back on topic. "What did he look like?"
"He was huge, and white, and he was carrying a machine gun. Oh, and he had a helmet on, I think he was using it to talk," Brion answered.
The seasoned heroes exchanged a look. "Ultra Humanite," Black Canary muttered.
"Luthor did say he referred her to an associate," Conner said, earning a questioning look from the others that he ignored.
"Do you remember anything else? Did Jace or Humanite say why they wanted you? Were there any other people around you?"
The siblings looked at each other, thinking. "There was someone else, an old woman. The three of them were arguing about something, kept bringing up a deal Jace made with them. I do not know what she was supposed to give them, but they were going to let her keep us in return. This Ultra Humanite argued with her before the old woman showed up, he did not want her to go through with it."
"What did the old woman look like?" Dick asked.
Tara shrugged. "Just old, she had gray hair and a wrinkled face. She was large, though. Almost as wide as the ape, and as tall as Dr. Jace, at least."
None of the heroes could think of a known player matching that description. "Anything else?" Megan asked.
Brion nodded. "The old woman got angry when the ape interfered with the exchange, and she said that the partner would not be pleased."
Eyebrows shot up at the new information. "What does the Light's partner want with Jace? Or the Markovs?" Wonder Girl asked, shaking her head as she tried to come up with an answer.
Gar didn't let her get very far. "Nothing good," he said. "Come on."
"Wait," Kaldur said. "Our top priority is retrieving Nautica. What happened when you broke free of the control chips?"
"The ape started shooting at us, and he, Dr. Jace, and V'lana went through one boom tube, and the old woman went through another. We couldn't follow them, so we broke out of the building and managed to find a zeta tube once we hit the city again."
"Wait, again? You left Metropolis?" Mallory asked.
"Yes, Jace had a car, she drove us over an hour to a lab outside of the city."
Mallory looked right at Clark. "Is that old Lexcorp lab you and Lois did the hit piece on still standing?"
He nodded. "Yes, and fully functional."
Mallory pulled up a hologram computer and started typing, very familiar with the zeta and boom tube signature after all of the time she'd spent studying them. "There," she said, isolating the lab and spreading the map so the signatures would appear side-by-side instead of on top of each other. "At least five signatures at that lab, they've used it before tonight."
"If they're talking about the Light's partner, they must be trying to ship more teens off world," Megan reasoned. "We need to find V'lana before they do. Suit up, we'll leave in ten minutes."
"Where are we going?" Tara asked.
"We'll start in Metropolis, one group will go back to Luthor and see what ese he feels like disclosing, the other group will go to the lab and see if they can find the boom tube traces."
"You do that, there's somewhere else I want to go," Mallory said, looking at Artemis and Dick to see if they would go with her.
"Where's that?" Kaldur asked.
"The Manheim Mansion. Intergang is involved in this somehow, I know it. I think it's time we find out exactly what they're doing and shut them down."
"No!" Tara exclaimed. When everyone looked at her, she narrowed her eyes, her body language indicating that she was preparing for a fight. "You would just be wasting time."
"How do you know that?" Peter asked. She didn't answer right away and he scoffed, shaking his head. "You just said that we should be focusing on getting V'lana back, and now you don't want to do anything to find her. Do you even want us to catch the people who keep kidnapping you?"
"Dude, lay off!" Gar snapped, stepping between the teens. "What's your problem?"
"She never gives anyone a straight answer, and she's dragging her feet, but I'm the one with a problem?!" Peter snapped back.
"My sister has been through more than anyone in this room, leave her alone!" Brion demanded.
Peter narrowed his eyes. "I wouldn't make a blanket statement like that until I knew what everyone else had been through," he said coldly.
"Dude, stop!" Gar said, raising his voice.
Peter didn't back down. "No, I want some answers, and there's no reason she can't give them to me."
"Oh, you want some answers. That sure makes a difference."
"I don't think I'm the one with a problem here. You just can't look past the fact that you like her. You ask her to go back to LA with you yet, or you figured out that she's playing you for your protection?"
Gar's fist connected with Peter's cheek before any of the heroes even knew he was going to throw it, and from there the boys that had never even had a verbal fight in all the years of their friendship were rolling on top of each other, hitting and shouting and kicking and anything that would hurt the other, physically of emotionally. Conner and Kaldur stepped in just as the trash talk was turning to their moms, with Gar pointing out that Peter's had left him for dead on the side of an interstate and Peter shooting back that Gar's died by being a pawn of Queen Bee.
"Hey!" Dick shouted, stepping between where the two original team members were holding the younger boys apart from each other. "That's enough! We have a mission. Tara, I'm sorry if you think it's a waste of time, but unless you have something else to give us, starting in Metropolis is our only option."
"I do," the girl said.
Dick raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Dr. Jace mentioned Markovia, I think they will be meeting my uncle there. We must go there."
Dick froze, just staring at Tara for a moment, and Mallory tilted her head. She knew that look, the look he got when he'd just figured something out. The next second, Mallory felt the link in her mind, and he said, "Listen carefully…"
Tara kept her eyes on Nightwing's face. He knew something, she could tell. She knew she shouldn't have gotten involved, but Deathstroke told her to make sure they ended up in Markovia. What else could she do? She couldn't risk her cover, and it was already tricky to explain away how her chip had "malfunctioned". She resisted shooting a glare at Vigilante, but hatred boiled up inside her. If it wasn't for him, no one would have questioned anything she said. At least Beast Boy had jumped to her defense and made the situation about him and Vigilante.
After a long moment of silence, Nightwing nodded slowly. "Ok, Markovia it is. Suit up, we'll meet on the Bridge in ten minutes. Peter, come with me."
She let out a breath that she hadn't realized she was holding. Her cover was safe, for now. Brion put a hand on her shoulder and led her out of the room, but she glanced back, wanting to observe the heroes once more before she let them out of her sight. They were grouping up in their usual way, at this point she could predict who would choose to work with who, and who would be assigned to each squad based on their usefulness.
Tonight was the last night. After this mission, she could go back to Slade and not have to worry about trying to befriend these people, or manipulating their plans to match the Light's agenda, or dealing with her own guilty conscience. "You're soft!" she could still hear Slade's words ringing off the walls of the alley the last time she met with him, three nights before. He'd seen her hesitation when she got her last mission, broke right through her walls and attacked the root of her being. Yes, she had doubts, yes, she didn't want to do this, but no, she was not soft. She would never allow herself to be the pawn in someone else's game again. Just one more night, and she would never have to hear about these people again.
Her gaze drifted to Beast Boy, who had finally calmed down and was talking to Kid Flash and Wonder Girl. He noticed her looking and offered a warm smile, one that she couldn't bring herself to return. Beast Boy, the kid that had been looking after her since the night her brother and his friends found her in the fight club, who had never treated her differently because of who she was or what had happened to her or how she walled herself off, who clearly had a crush on her, and who had all but thrown his friendship with Vigilante away to defend her. He was a good person, sweet, caring. She could like him if they met in another life. Too bad he wouldn't be alive to see another sunrise.
Happy back to school for everyone! I'll be back in classes next week, if update day needs to change because of my schedule I'll let you know! :)