The sun was rising over Chicago but Trish and Laurel had only a short time to admire it before it was blocked from their view as they entered the Halsted/Taylor Parking Structure on the campus of UIC.

"Why'd you pick this place?" Trish asked.

"Because it's Thanksgiving weekend, and everybody's home sleeping off a turkey coma, and we won't be disturbed," Laurel answered. The two bound men were still motionless. Trish could hear their breathing and knew that one of them was sleeping, and had been for the past ten minutes. Laurel had called Commissioner Gordon when they had still been en route and told him where they were going, and what cargo they were carrying, and that they intended to deliver it to him, or at least someone he trusted. His response indicated that the number of people he could trust was getting closer to zero each passing hour, but he would come up with someone if she gave him an hour.

That hour was almost up. Laurel had no idea how far Fredo Giancona had penetrated the Chicago Police Department, and she was certain that Jim Gordon's information wasn't much better. The man he trusted with his life was in a secret location waiting for the all clear, so John Dorazio would not be arriving any time soon.

Trish had been unusually quiet on the ride from Kate's building, and Laurel could guess why. The woman who looked so much like Sara that Laurel sometimes forgot that it wasn't her sister in the van with her had good reason to be distracted. All of their information on what occurred was second hand. OK, maybe first hand once removed. But until Trish spoke to Beth and confirmed that her partner was OK she was always going to be preoccupied, and in their line of work inattention lead to death by a very short route.

"Do you want to call her again and see if she's heard anything?"

They were still avoiding using names with the two corrupt men in hearing range. Trish had found a folding Adamas tactical knife in the side pocket of Sara's borrowed clothes and had spent the better part of an hour playing with it. Laurel thought she looked even more like Sara for that sixty minutes. It was when she stood up and walked back to the men with the open blade in her hand that Laurel's instincts took over.

"Sara, for fuck's sake, we need them alive."

Trish squatted in front of the two men before answering. "When it comes down to it, we really only need one of them alive."

"How are we gonna explain to the commissioner that one of them died from stab wounds?" Laurel asked. She'd realized her mistake as soon as Sara's name had left her mouth. She'd spent enough time with Trish to know that she wouldn't kill defenseless men. But if Trish ever got her hands on the guys that hurt Beth, all bets were off.

"He was distraught? Because of all the bad things he'd done?"

"So he stabbed himself to death. With his hands tied?"

Trish stood up and returned to her seat. "Why do you always have to be a killjoy? Fine."

Fifteen minutes later a Chicago Police Department van drove into the parking garage, followed by an unmarked black SUV.

"Took them long enough," Trish said.


Beth's hair was still wet, but all the dried blood and small bits of bone fragments were now little more than a memory. They had all returned to the large porch where every piece of furniture was now occupied. Tyler had found an empty section of flooring and was practicing the canine version of corpse pose. Beth and Kate didn't have an appetite for anything besides coffee, which they were sipping slowly as Kate explained what happened. She had barely left her sister's side since their arrival, and the twins were still just a few inches apart.

"It started fine," Kate said, "Batgirl and I made our way to a second floor window and dropped in."

"We were outside, giving them time to get in position," Beth added, not explaining who we was, but Aric knew who she meant; he'd see the two women standing with a third that had to be Batgirl.

"There were four large brew vats, on two levels. There was a railing separating the upper level from the lower, with a flight of stairs between the two. Four men with automatic weapons were positioned behind the two lower vats. It was blind luck that the window we picked was positioned behind the two upper vats, otherwise they'd have spotted us before we ever made it in."

"We heard the men screaming, and that was our cue," Beth said. "Huntress had picked the lock on the front door while Kate and Batgirl were rappelling up to the window ledge. Then we just waited. We charged up the stairs, but there wasn't much for us to do once we got there."

"The guys on the next level must have put the rest of the building on alert," Kate continued, "but they had no way of knowing how we got in. The tops of the brew tanks were on that level, and the main staircase had a landing in the middle, and they had more men trained on that. It was a shooting gallery for anyone coming up the stairs."

Beth picked up the recounting. "But they'd made the same mistake that their buddies below did, and they left a space behind them, probably as a fall back position, and Kate's plan worked just as well the second time as it had the first."

"Not quite; they had twice as many men, we were very happy to see three women charging up that last flight of steps," Kate added.

Beth smiled before continuing. "It was short work after that. You wouldn't believe it unless you saw it for yourself. They were something else, those three."

But the smile faded quickly, and Kate's voice when she continued the story was flat and emotionless.

"It got harder from there on. No more windows, no more getting behind them. They knew where we were, and our only path to Freddy Giancona went through them. The next floor was a narrow walkway with a railing on the right that looked out over the brew vats. On our left were pillars and a large room beyond. The stairs leading up were directly in front of us, but it was dark once we got to the steps, and of course they were waiting at the top."

Beth took over for her sister and continued. "But we weren't stupid, and once we'd cleared the room beyond the pillars we used them for cover as we approached the stairs; four stairs, then a short landing. Then four more stairs leading to a long corridor."

"The whole corridor was dark, but there was light at the other side, and I could see people running back and forth even before we got to the steps," Kate said. "That's when Huntress came into her own."

"They call her The Huntress," Beth said, "and we could see why. She rapid fired two arrows down the length of the corridor and before we knew it she and Lady Shiva were in a dead sprint."

"Beth, Batgirl, and I were caught by surprise, so we ended up behind them when the flash bang went off. A split second later the other arrow's smoke bomb went off. When we got through the cloud both of them were already engaged, and in a second so were we."

"They couldn't use their weapons, we were all mixed together at that point, six against five. Someone got off a shot that grazed my cowl," Beth said as her hand went to the spot were the impact had left a deep bruise. Her fingers found no sign of any sort of trauma. She looked at Kate and realized that something else was missing.

"Your two scars, they're gone."

Kate's own fingers went the former location of those scars under her left eye, only to find smooth skin.

"Sorry," Aric said as Kate and Beth both looked at him, "I was upset, seeing..." He couldn't finish the sentence, and needed a moment to continue. "I panicked. I flooded the field. By a lot. It's probably still working."

"Still working?" Kate asked as she began to worry.

What the fuck did you do to me? she thought to herself, never expecting to hear an answer.

Nothing bad, she heard in her head just before Aric spoke again.

"You're still healing, both of you. And you're both probably shedding years, getting younger."

Beth looked at Aric, who was much older than he looked, for the reason he was explaining right now. "You too?"

Aric nodded. He'd been right next to both Kate and Beth when the golden light surrounded them. "Me too."

Meg Chander and John Dorazio had no way of knowing that their thoughts in that moment were almost identical.

What the fuck are they talking about? Still healing? Getting younger? Who the fuck is he? What did he do to them?

"Like what happened in Mexico?" Beth asked.

"No, that was different. When it happened in Mexico I wasn't in control. That was orders of magnitude bigger."

Kate was barely hearing them as they spoke, her mind was too busy taking mental inventory of all the aches and pains that were no longer present, scars that had been long time companions that had deserted her.

"Shit," she said before she stood up and walked quickly to the bathroom as she pulled her shirt up and over her head to reveal her muscular naked torso, devoid of all scars and blemishes but still covered in tattoos.

"Thank God for small favors," she said as she rotated back and forth in front of the mirror to view all the art work.

"You healing doesn't erase tattoos?" Meg asked as she admired the view of Kate's half naked body, which made her think of Barbara's naked form, which should not have been making her horny at the moment but very definitely was.

"No, probably for the same reason that her body hasn't erased them years after she got them, but who knows."

John Dorazio enjoyed a nice set of tits as much as the next guy, but he wanted to hear the rest of the details of the raid.

"So, hallway, arrows, ba da boom, ba da bing..."

"Right," Beth said, "I'd had my bell rung and was still feeling it, we were in another hallway that ended in another large room stacked with old crates and bottles, barrel staves and hoops, stuff that must have been a hundred years old..."

"That let out into the room where you found us," Kate said, "which had a large center space framed by more fucking pillars and a platform at the far end."

"It seemed like there was a man behind every pillar," Beth said, "and us behind the ones closest to the door we walked through."

"Huntress was watching the farthest pillars, and every time someone stuck his head out she'd put an arrow through it. Shiva just dodged her way to a pillar that someone was hiding behind. When he'd stick his arm out to aim she'd break it and them bash his head against the pillar," Kate said. "I'd run out of throwing knives by then, and stars. I had a flash bang, but didn't want to use it with all of us scattered. Batgirl was using her tonfa, and those crazy looking shurikens. Beth and I were entirely hand to hand at that point. We were three quarters of the way through the pillars and heading towards the platform that had wide stairs on the left and right."

"Sandra was smiling the entire time, right until..."

Beth remembered sprinting to the farthest pillar on the right, zig zagging her way up to the last row. When the man stepped out in front of her and pointed his pistol at her face he was already too late, his three dot sights aimed at nothing right before the leg sweep sent him careening backwards, his head striking the stone floor with a dull thud. Beth was just standing up and turning.

Watch out! Beth could remember someone shouting before something struck her hard, spun her around, and flung her backwards.

"She didn't know our names, or how to tell us apart," Kate said, "but it wouldn't have mattered if she had known. He was too close to Beth. It happened too fast. He was dead a second later. He was the last one I...That's when I saw..."

She stopped for a moment while the tears flowed down her face before looking at Aric. "The next thing I remember is you standing there."

Everyone was quiet for a moment. They were all up to speed finally, and John ventured onto shaky ground in as unaccusing a manner as possible.

"And Fredo?" John asked simply.

Kate shook her head. "No idea. We left Batgirl, Huntress, and Lady Shiva there. They might have got him. But they had at least two more floors to go, and they were down to just the three of them. We need to see if they're OK. We can ask them about Freddy Giancona then."

"We would have heard from them if they had got him, wouldn't we?" Meg asked.

"If they had any way to contact us," Kate said. "Our phones are still in our saddlebags. Does Julia have Aric's number?"

Beth and Aric shook their heads in unison. "He never keeps the same one for long," Beth said.

"Then, yeah, we need to check if they're OK," John said, "Fredo can wait. They either have him, or they don't."

"Julia must be worried sick," Beth said after another moment of silence before a thought occurred to her. "Has anyone told...the other two? How did their thing go?"

From the expressions on everyone's faces, they were all equally in the dark on that subject.


"He doesn't know, and I want to keep it that way," Laurel had said prior to James Gordon arriving on the UIC campus.

"He's gonna ask you why you're wearing a full length trench coat buttoned up to your neck, Trish replied.

"I'll tell him I have a cold. Besides, it's almost December. Christmas is just around the corner."

"The most wonderful time of the year. Except for these two assholes," Trish had replied.

James Gordon waited in the SUV while the six heavily armed men exited and searched the parking structure, and the stolen white cargo van that held Trish, Laurel, and two members (for the time being) of the CPD were not excluded from that search. Trish and Laurel were forced to exit the van at gunpoint with their arms raised.

"Easy does it fellas," Laurel said before Jim Gordon showed his face and gave a command.

"They're ours!"

"The pair in the back are yours too, but I wouldn't brag about it," Laurel said as she lowered her arms.

Five minutes later Jim Gordon was viewing the men up close.

"Who are they?" he asked.

Laurel handed him the IDs and badges the men had been carrying.

Jim Gordon simply nodded his head as he read each man's name from the plastic cards bearing their images.

Juan S. Wilson, Travis L. Johnson

Jim Gordon handed the items to the man who had begun to frisk Laurel before turning his attention to the bound duo, neither of whom chose to make eye contact with the Police Commissioner.

"How'd you manage to grab them?" he asked Laurel.

"Funny enough, there's a bit of a story behind that," Laurel said.


Barbara was standing at her living room window. But while her eyes were directed outside, her mind was replaying the night before.

Watch out! Sandra had yelled at Beth who was only beginning to turn towards the man who had emerged on her left.

BANG!

She knew it was only her imagination that made that particular shot sound louder that all the others. They'd all been wearing networked noise canceling earbuds, so logically she knew it was not possible. But in her memory of the event, the shot that preceded Beth's face exploding sounded like a canon, or a stick of TNT. In the instant afterward, when she'd been frozen in place with shock, Kate blindsided the man with a strike that had broken his neck.

What happened after that had been a lengthy topic of discussion. Freddy Giancona, if he had ever been there in the first place, had used the delay caused by the strange man's appearance out of thin air to scuttle away with the rest of his men. Whether that had been a good thing for the three remaining members of their team had also been a topic for discussion. In the end, no consensus was reached on either subject. The only thing they agreed on was that they hoped Beth would live to fight another day, and that they would stand with her if she did.

Barbara Gordon was startled out of her memory palace by her phone ringing on the end table next to her.

Kate

"Thank fucking God!" Barbara said, "How is she?"

Kate was standing next to her motorcycle. Her older model, which she'd given to Beth, was right next to it. "She's fine. How are you? How are all of you?"

"We're fine too. Freddy hoofed it with the rest of his men, probably while we were watching the light show. Turns out he did have an escape route from that upper floor."

"They had years to turn that place into a fortress. I'm surprised he didn't install a fucking moat. It's easy to miss a secret passage in a building like that. I'm just glad you're OK. No injuries? None of you?"

"Sandra and Helene are fine. I was hit a total of four times. I'm gonna be covered in bruises, and some of the kinetic fibers in my suit are permanently deformed. But other than that..."

"That's what they're there for. That's easy to fix. The rest of you isn't. But I know a guy. We'll see if he makes house calls."

Barbara smiled as she spoke. Her entire body seemed to relax all at once when she heard the news that Beth was OK. "I think I know your guy. I've seen him at work. What does he charge?"

"You can ask him yourself. But first I need a favor. I'll pick you up in a few. Can you drive Beth's bike back home?"