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Washington, D.C. July 4, 2011The Hall of Justice looked different in person, Roy Harper thought as he emerged from the armored limousine. He’d seen it countless times in photos and news videos when reporters would film on the sidewalk where Roy now walked, or one of the Leaguers, usually Superman or Wonder Woman, would give a press conference on the marble steps. What the cameras failed to capture was how alien the building looked, an art deco palace amid the staid classicism of the monuments and museums that lined the National Mall.Velvet ropes had been erected to mark their path, and uniformed Metro Police officers nodded to the eight heroes as they passed by in costume, interspersed among the families with kids in Justice League costumes and tourists wearing t-shirts with the heroes’ logos. Members of the Justice League only entered through the front door occasionally, and it always attracted a crowd. At one point, Roy had theorized they had another, secret entrance, maybe via the subway stop at Foggy Bottom, but now he realized he’d been fooled by the same subterfuge as the general public.“Have all four sidekicks ever been in the same place at the same time?” asked Kid Flash, his nerves evident in the reedy tone of his voice. “I don’t think so,” Roy replied, He’d met all of them separately, but couldn’t think of a time when they were all together. There were eight of them total, four mentors and four sidekicks. A dozen cameras snapped as they ascended the steps to the glass doors of the Hall, and a dozen more were waiting to capture the moment when the vault doors opened and the Martian Manhunter and Red Tornado emerged to greet them.“Robin, Speedy, Aqualad, Kid Flash,” the Manhunter said in his formal, even tone. “Welcome.” He turned, and the heroes followed him through the door, which closed behind them, separating them from the noisy crowd. The Martian went on. “You now have unlimited access to the gym, our fully stocked galley, and of course our library.”The doors gave way to a huge room, lined with shelves full of media and furnished with a dozen or so captains’ chairs and a big table. At the back of the room was what looked like a command center, with a panel of instruments at chest height and a theater-sized screen that commanded the room. Past that was a set of double doors marked “Justice League Members Only.” “Make yourselves at home,” offered Flash, and the sidekicks took up chairs facing the big screen while their mentors consulted with the android and the Martian.“Quick debrief to discuss the coincidence of four ice villains attacking on the same day,” Batman told the mentors, then to the four assembled teenagers: “We shouldn’t be long.” A camera emerged from the ceiling and scanned each of the six Justice League members in turn.“Recognized, Batman zero-two. Aquaman, zero-six. Flash, zero-four. Green Arrow, zero-eight. Martian Manhunter, zero-seven. Red Tornado, one-six.” The big doors opened, and the heroes were about the step through when Roy piped up.“You guys zeta-ing out of here?”Even under the cowl, Roy could see the look Batman gave Roy’s mentor. Green Arrow shrugged helplessly.“I know, I know,” he said, his voice full of West Coast chill, “But I thought maybe we could make an exception.” Batman’s eyes narrowed under his mask.“An exception to what?” Kid Flash asked.“The Hall of Justice is a front,” Robin explained, sounding bored. “The real Justice League headquarters is satellite in orbit called the Watchtower. Through those doors, there’s a zeta tube teleporter.” He paused, looked at Batman. “Right?” The subtle nod from Batman was all it took. Green Arrow had told Roy about the Watchtower, apparently earning the black-clad vigilante’s ire, but Roy felt no different from the costumed children they’d passed outside. The silence that followed was broken when the big screen lit up with Superman’s face.“Superman to Justice League,” he said, his mild Kansan accent booming on the surround sound. “There’s been an explosion at Project Cadmus. It’s on fire.”Roy hadn’t heard of Project Cadmus, but he assumed it was nearby if Superman was calling instead of flying to the rescue.“I’ve had my suspicions about Cadmus,” Batman rasped. “This may present the perfect opportunity to—” He was interrupted by another face appearing on the screen, this one as unfamiliar to Roy as the name “Cadmus”: a man in his forties, wearing a top hat with a red ribbon and a bowtie like a stage magician. Wouldn’t be my first choice of costume, Roy reflected, but then, I am a guy in a Peter Pan hat.“Zatara to Justice League,” the man said, his voice colored by an Eastern European accent, “The sorcerer Wotan is using the Amulet of Attan to block out the Sun. Requesting full League response.”The Justice Leaguers traded looks, and Batman said to the screen. “Superman?”“It’s a small fire,” Superman conceded. “Local authorities have it under control.”Batman keyed the control panel. “All Leaguers, rendezvous on Zatanna’s location. Batman out.” Green Arrow addressed the sidekicks. “Stay put, guys,” he said, “We’ll let you know if we need backup.”“What?” Robin demanded. “Why?”“This is a League mission,” Aquaman explained. “You’re not trained,” Flash added.Kid Flash was indignant. “Since when?” “I meant you’re not trained as part of this team,” Flash hedged. “There’ll be other missions, when you’re ready.”“But for now,” Batman impugned. “Stay put.”The Justice League members filed out of the room and into the zeta tube, except for Red Tornado, who stood mute, looking at the sidekicks for a second longer before following the rest.“This is crap,” Roy complained as soon as the robot was gone.Project Cadmus turned out to be an anonymous gray office building, close enough to the Navy Yard to be associated with it, but not part of it. Robin found the address in the Justice League’s computer while Roy located the key to a blacked-out SUV in the parking ramp that faced Constitution Avenue. For some reason that Roy couldn’t fathom, Kid Flash insisted on riding shotgun on the short ride to Anacostia while Robin called out directions from behind him and Aqualad stared out the window.Several fire engines were staged in front of the Cadmus building when they arrived, with water pumping from multiple hoses. The SUV tires squealed as Roy pulled in, and when he looked at the building again, Flash was clinging to a window ledge several stories up.“Does he always run ahead?” he heard Aqualad ask, but Roy was already running toward the building, pacing Robin as they both launched grappling hooks at the roof. The blaze was localized, and Roy knew it would take no time for Aqualad to get the remainder under control, which meant they had a short window to breach Cadmus’s security and find out what had piqued Batman’s interest. As Roy climbed into an office on the top floor, Robin was inside, already working away at a computer while Kid Flash stood watch in the hallway. A moment later, Aqualad appeared at the window, propelled by a jet of water under his feet.“Appreciate the help,” he deadpanned.“Water’s more your thing,” Roy offered apologetically.“We’re here to investigate,” Robin added.“Guys,” said Kid Flash in the hallway. “Elevator just opened.”“Elevators should be locked down,” Roy observed. The four heroes crowded into the hallway to see the elevator doors close behind a humanoid figure in a lab coat. When Roy looked at Robin again, he was already typing furiously on his wristpad.“This is wrong,” Robin said. “That’s a high-speed elevator. It doesn’t belong in a two-story building.”Aqualad pushed past them and made his way to the elevator doors, which he forced open with a grunt of effort. Standing in front of the open doors, all four boys marveled; the elevator shaft appeared to descend underground, with lights marking each floor as far down as the eye could see.“That’s why they need an express elevator,” Robin quipped. He launched a grappling hook at the ceiling, and Roy followed Kid Flash and Aqualad in rappelling down to where the rope ended at a door marked “SP 26.” As Roy’s feet touched the ledge, Robin was back on his wristpad, cracking the security door. “Bypassing security,” he said. “Now.” Aqualad forced the door open to reveal a hallway, twenty feet wide by twenty feet tall, illuminated with sinister-looking red lights along the walls. Kid Flash disappeared immediately.From the other end of the hall came a low rumble, and as Kid Flash reappeared, he was nearly trampled by half a dozen of the largest creatures Roy had ever seen. Each twenty feet tall, they had four legs as wide as ancient oaks, huge walrus-like tusks, and a loping, gorilla-like gait which suggested they might be bipedal in a larger space. Outside the Speed Force, Kid Flash writhed and wiggled to get out of the way of the animals’ massive hooves.As the animals passed, the heroes continued the way they’d come, eventually reaching a room, just as massive as the hallway, full of human-sized, insect-like creatures, smaller than people, contained in glass cylinders stacked five high. These seemed to be in stasis, with arcs of electricity sparking between them and the walls of their pods. Roy got his bearings; they were several hundred feet underground and had traveled a quarter mile or so east from the elevator shaft. From what he’d seen, Roy would not have been surprised if the facility extended into Maryland.“Power,” he said, pointing at the dense cables that led from each pod to the ceiling. “The real Cadmus isn’t on the grid.”“It generates power with these things,” Kid Flash observed, looking up at one, “Must be what they’re bred for.”“Even the name is a clue,” Aqualad agreed, “The Cadmus of myth created a new race by sowing dragon’s teeth into the Earth.”“And this Cadmus creates new life, too,” said Robin, “Let’s find out why.” His fingers danced across the holographic keys, sorting through reams of Cadmus data while Kid Flash and Aqualad looked on. “They call them Genomorphs,” Robin went on. Roy pivoted, facing the door they’d come in and nocking an arrow on his bowstring. It had been minutes since they blew the doors on the elevator, and no matter how good Robin was at covering his tracks, somebody would be sure to notice their presence eventually. Behind him, Robin kept up his commentary. “Whoa, look at the stats on these things. Super strength, telepathy, razor claws. These are living weapons.”“Who the hell needs an army like that?” Roy wondered aloud, keeping his eyes on the door. “Wait, there’s something else,” said Robin. “Project Kr. The encryption’s different, stronger. I can’t—”“Hey, don’t move!” came a booming voice from the other side of the room. Roy wheeled, bowstring drawn, as another door opened and a man entered, flanked by a squad of humanoid Genomorphs. The man wore a spandex costume in the red and white of the District of Columbia flag, topped by a luchador mask with a red band across the eyes. He carried a cat-sized Genomorph on his shoulder. “Wait a minute,” the man said as he got closer, “Aqualad, Robin, Speedy, Flash Boy—”“—it’s Kid Flash,” the speedster interrupted irritably.“I know you,” said Aqualad evenly. “Hawk, a hero.”Hawk stopped in his tracks, clearly taken aback. “Sure, why not?” “What are you doing here?” Roy challenged, his arrow still trained on Hawk’s face.“I’m chief of security, and you’re trespassing,” Hawk said. “Do your parents know you’re here? Maybe I should call them.”“You think the League’s going to approve of you breeding weapons?” asked Kid Flash.“Weapons?” Hawk’s eyes darted between the four young heroes. “What the hell?” His Genomorph closed its eyes, and suddenly Hawk’s fingers went to his temples, eyes closed as if in sudden pain. He bent double, then stood up straight suddenly, his eyes hard and clear. “Take ‘em down,” he ordered his squad. “Don’t go easy on them.”Roy was ready for them. He fired an arrow into the closest Genomorph and continued to loose as the other three heroes fanned out. Robin pressed a button on his utility belt, and suddenly the room was full of smoke, disorienting the Genomorphs. Hawk charged at Aqualad, but Roy sent an arrow into his thigh, knocking him down. When the smoke cleared, the other Genomorphs were on the ground, down but not out.“Let’s go,” ordered the Atlantean, and he, Roy, and Kid Flash advanced through the door that Hawk had come through. Robin was already on the other side, his wristpad lit up as he attempted to crack the door to the elevator. Roy turned and loosed three arrows, stopping the Genomorphs as they attempted to follow the heroes down the hallway.“Way to be a team player, Rob,” Kid Flash complained as they came up behind him.“He’s getting us out of here,” Roy countered.“Sure am,” said Robin as the doors slid open. “After you.”The elevator started to descend as soon as Roy was on board. There was no panel, but the projected display from Robin’s wristpad indicated they were headed to sublevel 52.“Dude,” Kid Flash said, seeing the numbers. “Up is out.”“Excuse me?” Robin challenged. “Project Kr is down. On sub-level fifty-two.”“This is out of control,” Aqualad interjected. “Perhaps we should contact the League.” He stood between Flash and Robin and looked to Roy.“Cadmus knows they’re made,” Roy pointed out. “If they beef up security or clean house before the League gets here, there won’t be any evidence. We should at least see what they’re so worried about.” The doors opened, revealing two long corridors covered in something red that reminded Roy entirely too much of living tissue. Aqualad held Roy’s gaze for a second, but didn’t argue. “Which way?” he asked. “Yeah, bizarre-looking hallway one or bizarre hallway two?” Robin quipped. Down the one hallway, a Genomorph emerged, taller and more humanlike than the ones they’d seen upstairs. It hefted two barrels telekinetically and launched them at the heroes, who ducked and scrambled down the other hallway to get away. As they rounded the corner, a huge door like a bank vault came into view, and a short-haired woman in a labcoat emerged carrying a stack of papers. Kid Flash skidded to a half, but still took her out. The door behind him started to close, but Roy fired an arrow that caught it underneath, slowing it long enough for Kid Flash to wedge it open with a chunk of metal.As soon as they were through, Aqualad removed the wedge, allowing the door to shut, and Robin secured it with his wristpad. Kid Flash stood in front of a computer console, tapping it to wake the system up. Lights came on overhead, revealing a pod like the ones that had contained the Genomorphs upstairs. Inside it was a man, bigger than either Roy or Aqualad, wearing a blue suit with a red and gold symbol on the chest. Roy’s first impulse was that it looked like Superman, but the differences were immediately apparent. The imposter had impossibly pale, craggy skin and unkempt hair, and a prominent brow that made him look almost simian.“What the hell is that?” Roy asked, nonplussed. There was a long moment of silence as the boys stared at the creature that wasn’t Superman. “Robin, hack,” said Aqualad, his eyes not leaving the thing in the pod.“Failed attempt at cloning,” Robin narrated, reading off his wristpad. “Has all the Kryptonian attributes, but doesn’t need sunlight, is immune to kryptonite, and has an IQ around sixty.” Roy stared at it mutely. Kid Flash got closer to the case, looking up into the thing’s face. “That’s just…” he trailed off, as if looking for the right word, “Kind of bizarro.”
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Gotham City, 2015
It was summer, and Jason Todd was home alone in Wayne Manor. Bruce—Batman—had been staying with him while Alfred took his annual vacation to the UK, but Batman had been called to the Watchtower and left Jason with a stern warning not to cause any trouble. For the first day, Jason played video games, shot pool, and watched the movies Alfred and Batman wouldn’t normally let him. The second day, he descended the stairs into the Batcave to look at the monitors the way Bruce always did.Gotham was uncharacteristically quiet, especially for summer. The police scanner was full of officers conducting welfare checks and responding to graffiti and shoplifting calls, all sure signs that things were slow. Jason checked the Justice League’s database, but he didn’t have access to the good stuff, and he wasn’t as skilled a hacker as Dick—he was maybe good enough to get in, but not to cover his tracks. Instead, he hacked the GCPD’s cold case unit and started reviewing their case files, looking for patterns or inconsistencies, the way Bruce taught him. It was a drill Batman had done with each Robin when they started. A few times they had major breaks, whether through luck, skill, or the benefit of looking with fresh eyes, but mainly it was good practice for the kind of investigation that Batman expected of his proteges. Jason’s favorite place to start looking in a file was “uncategorized leads”—things the GCPD detectives noted but didn’t connect to anything else. Many were observations from eyewitnesses, CSI, or autopsy reports that seemed out of place. Cracking cold cases was often about reviewing these seemingly unconnected observations and applying old-fashioned detective work; tracing phone records, cross-referencing times and locations, looking for places where witness’s stories didn’t match up. When Batman or Robin found something this way, they’d call it into the GCPD tip line, and sometimes there would be an arrest. Bruce was always more understanding of the detectives than Jason was. After all, if the cops couldn’t crack a case, but a high-school-aged kid could, then what good were the cops?Jason was a few files deep when he got his first gut feeling, about a missing-persons case. The victim was Eddie Blake, 59, who’d been missing three years with little evidence. The case file was last updated the previous day, when one of the victim’s checks was forged and cashed at Gotham Gold Loans, a seedy, strip-mall outfit offering check cashing and payday loans. It seemed the business had reported the forgery to GCPD for insurance purposes, but the detective had added the report to the Blake file with a scan of the forged check. Jason looked the scan over; the forgery was good, indistinguishable when compared to Blake’s genuine signature elsewhere in the file, but in the memo field was scrawled, “A man walks into a bar…”His curiosity piqued, Jason plugged Eddie Blake’s name into the Bat-computer. He found that Eddie had been the inheritor of Wisecracks, a comedy club that had once been a Gotham institution before it succumbed to a slow death alongside with the rest of the city. Wisecracks existed in various forms for more than a century of Gotham’s history, starting in the late 1800s in a vaudeville theater on the Amusement Mile. During Prohibition it operated out of a Falcone speakeasy, and during the war it moved into the basement of the Falcone-owned Monaco Club, where it stayed for more than fifty years. The Monaco was a favorite haunt of Gotham lowlifes like Jason’s father and Ma Gunn, the crooked schoolmarm who’d taken him in before Bruce. Jason could still remember Ma Gunn coming home sauced and repeating the jokes she’d heard at Wisecracks. The Monaco’s best days were behind it long before she ever darkened its doors, though, and in the last few decades it was kept afloat mainly by nostalgia and the generosity of the current Falcone boss, Carmine. Eddie Blake was the grandson of Wisecracks’s founder. When the name fell to him he took it and set up shop in a suburban storefront, where it operated until he went missing. A hipster bar by the name of the Velvet Merken next used the Wisecracks name for its comedy nights for a years ago before it went under, though it was unclear whether there was any official connection.Jason plugged the Monaco’s address into the GCPD database, and wasn’t surprised that only one crime had been reported there in the near century since it opened. The Monaco’s customers weren’t fans of the cops as a rule, but the one crime they chose to report stood out. The body of Robbie Romero, 86, was found in the Monaco’s basement, decades after Eddie Blake moved Wisecracks to its new location. The Bat-computer’s dossier on Robbie was relatively short by Bruce’s standards, but it mentioned that he had dabbled in comedy as a young man and performed a few gigs at Wisecracks. Though he hadn’t made it a career, his act impressed Don Vicente Falcone enough to get him a job running the mob’s books. The Falcones never took their outfit digital, so guys like Robbie who knew how to keep an old-fashioned ledger were valuable. It tracked that Robbie might have had his hand in the cookie jar back in the day, and the Falcones certainly didn’t believe in statutes of limitations, but it struck Jason as odd that his corpse was found in a basement where he used to perform standup. The detective’s writeup in the Romero file said the deceased was discovered on the former Wisecracks stage, clutching a single piece of paper. There was a scanned image of the note, which looked like it had been torn from a stenographer’s book, and said in big, clumsy letters: “A guy walks into a bar, and doesn’t walk out.” Disbelieving, Jason flipped back to Eddie Blake’s forged check to confirm the joke was the same. Theories spun in his head as he leaned back in the captain’s chair and laced his hands behind his head. This was the kind of detail Bruce would get hung up on, and his intuition was exactly the kind of thing Bruce would tell him to pursue. Was it an in-joke from the heyday of Wisecracks? Was Romero demented and reverting to his old standup act? Or was it some wise guy’s idea of irony?Next Jason plugged the other addresses where the Wisecracks name had resided into the GCPD database and searched for reported crimes. He got a hit; the former Velvet Merken was still vacant, but a year after it closed, police found Zhenhua “Jimmy” Li, 22, a former viral video star, dead on the stage. Jason remembered Jimmy Li; he’d made a name for himself making funny videos in the early days of YouTube, but stopped creating suddenly. The report on his death said he’d attempted to transition to live comedy and performed a few times at the Velvet Merken, and noted that someone had called him out for stealing jokes. The detective concluded that Jimmy had broken in and overdosed on the stage as a “final performance.”Turning back to the Bat-computer, Jason did a cursory check on the rest of the Blake family and found that Ira Blake, Eddie’s grandfather, started the club on the Amusement Mile and stuck around well into its Monaco days before leaving it to his Eddie in his will. After Eddie’s disappearance, the rest of the Blakes seemed to steer clear of the family business, all except for Eddie’s niece, Ira’s great-granddaughter, Allison, who was a working comic in Gotham. Her website showed a healthy schedule typical of an up-and-coming performer, except her show that night was canceled.When Jason returned his attention to the GCPD database, he did a double take at the results. He’d queried police reports for the addresses which had housed Wisecracks—the Amusement Mile, the Monaco Club, the storefront, and the Velvet Merken—but when he scrolled, he saw a picture of Gotham Gold Loans, the spot where Eddie Blake’s forged check had been cashed. His heart sank, and for the first time ever, Jason Todd hoped he’d made a mistake. He said out loud, “Don’t let it be—”But it was. The listed address for Gotham Gold was 1110 Elliott Plaza, Suite C, the exact storefront where Eddie Blake’s version of Wisecracks had been housed. There was a rational explanation, sure—maybe Eddie was still around, lying low, and had run out of cash—but Jason wasn’t buying it. Bruce would lecture him about Occam’s razor, but Jason knew bad news when he saw it. Whoever forged the check and wrote the joke in the memo had left the same joke on Robbie Romero’s body, and Jason had a strong hunch it was the same person behind Eddie’s disappearance and Jimmy Li’s death.Jason hit the streets, not in his red and black tights, but the ratty, hand-me-downs he’d brought with him from Ma Gunn’s. Since moving into Wayne Manor, Alfred had put together most of Jason’s outfits, allowing him to fit in with the prep-school crowd and maintain Bruce’s façade of a billionaire philanthropist with a soft spot for orphans. For this mission, though, he needed to be invisible in broad daylight, and that meant looking like the street urchin he was before Bruce rescued him in Crime Alley.As the L train approached the rundown area that had once housed the Velvet Merken, Jason saw evidence of failed gentrification: realtors’ faded fliers in empty storefront windows and posters left on walls for events months or years in the past. It was a warm day, and there were a few people walking dogs or running with headphones in, but none of them saw Jason as they passed. A wooden sign reading “Velvet Merken” still jutted out at a right angle, above a boarded-up glass door and a “for lease” sign. The lock gave easily.Inside still had the bar trimmings, though the shelves of liquor were long gone and the floor was strewn with trash and detritus. The stage where Jimmy Li’s body was found was made of wood, only a few inches higher than the rest of the room, and still had its microphone stand and three-legged stool, as if there was an open mic later that night. Against the back wall, between the bathrooms, was a corkboard, still papered with faded and torn posters. One stood out: a sheet of plain white copy paper, newer than the rest, with a strange, square symbol on it. Jason fumbled with his smartphone, which he never used except as part of his rich-kid camouflage, but managed to scan the QR code and open the link.It was to an unlisted YouTube video, the only one posted from its account. The thumbnail showed Jimmy Li standing on the stage in the dark, lit by a spotlight, but without a microphone. He looked older than he did in his viral videos, in his late rather than his early twenties, his expression shaped by all the vitriol he’d received. His expression as he looked at the camera was both scared and pleading. Jason pressed play, and in the video Jimmy immediately began to speak. “You want me to…” He trailed off, making a deferential gesture with one hand.“Just say the joke, Jimmy,” said a male voice, probably the person holding the camera, sounding impatient.“Okay, okay, fine,” Jimmy said. He drew himself up, as if preparing for a performance, and said with as much gusto as he could summon. “A guy walks into a bar…and he doesn’t walk out.”He looked at the camera, his expression partly hopeful, partly desperate. There was a long, uncomfortable silence, the same male voice saying, “Bravo,” then a few slow claps and a chain of snorts, as if the speaker were trying to contain himself. Then he started laughing. It was normal at first, but grew higher and higher pitched until it was a giggle, then a squeal. The camera started to shake, and there was a pop and a hiss from somewhere out of frame. First Jimmy’s face grew grim, then it twitched, and then Jimmy started laughing. Jason paused the video just as Jimmy was realizing he couldn’t stop.“Laughing gas,” Jason said out loud. “Goddammit.”On the L train headed back toward Wayne Manor, Jason searched Allison Blake on his phone, hoping to find that she was on vacation, or had given up comedy and taken a 9-5 job. While he didn’t find any evidence she was missing, finding nothing was worse. Her website and social media profiles were intact and up to date, but the venue for her next show had posted an apologetic note for having to cancel her show at the last minute. A few comments complained about her cancelling or expressed concern for her wellbeing, but no evidence or theories were shared. Slumping his shoulders, Jason keyed the gate and started the long climb back to Wayne Manor.In the Batcave, he hovered over the computer for a second, debating whether to contact Batman. One the one hand, someone, probably the Joker or an imitator, was on a crime spree in Gotham; on the other, when weren’t they? Whatever the Injustice League was throwing at their superhero counterparts was probably much worse, in absolute terms, even if it lacked the psychological punch of the Blake family’s fate. He briefly considered calling Dick and his friends, the Team, but he also wondered whether they had what it took, or if they’d even see the benefit in confronting the Joker over a single Gothamite family. Finally, he decided this was a Gotham problem, and he’d handle it the Gotham way.Dressed in his Robin suit, utility belt, and domino mask, Jason climbed behind the wheel of the Batmobile and started it. If Bruce were going to get mad at him for anything, it would be taking the car without permission, but meeting the Joker on his home turf meant he had to be prepared for anything, including—especially—beating a hasty retreat. Besides, the car would draw some attention, but nothing like the sight of Robin on public transportation. He opened the garage door that led out the back of the Wayne estate and headed for the Amusement Mile.The vaudeville theater that had been the original Wisecracks was dilapidated almost beyond recognition. As he approached, Jason saw no evidence that anyone, Joker or otherwise, had been here, but he kept his guard up as he pushed open the big double doors. The inside of the theater was dark, but he could see past the box office, down the aisle to the stage. There stood a brunette woman stood, lit by a spotlight: Allison Blake. She wore a long black dress, her hair in an updo, and a pearl necklace, but even from this distance Jason could see she’d been worked over: a blackened eye, gash on her face, and she stood like she was favoring one leg. On the stage with her was a microphone stand and a three-legged stool.The first attacker hit Jason from behind, grabbing his arms at the biceps and pulling them behind him. Jason tried to twist away, but the next one came from his left and closed a bag over his head, blinding him and controlling him from the neck. The first attacker kicked the backs of his knees, and he felt bindings go around his wrists and ankles behind him. He writhed and kicked, but the hands holding him felt like vices. He tried to yell, but couldn’t get enough air to fill his lungs. There was a sharp, stabbing pain in his neck, and then nothing.When he awoke, he was still in the theater, seated in a chair in the front row, gagged, with lashes around his chest, both wrists, and both ankles. He tried to strain against the restraints, but his movements were sluggish, as if his limbs were far away. He screamed, but the lashes came alive with electricity, causing him to spasm as they dug into his flesh. Behind him, a familiar voice chided, “Quiet. The show’s about to start.”Onstage, Allison was in the spotlight. She looked even rougher up close, Jason thought; her shiner was fresh, and he could see she had a swollen lip and a clump of hair missing. She looked down at Jason, squinting from the spotlight, and pursed her lips, as though thinking of something to say, before looking past him, into the audience, although Jason was fairly certain he was alone with the Joker. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “Welcome to the historic Wisecracks Comedy Club, which, honestly, doesn’t look much worse than anywhere else in Gotham.” She raised a hand slowly, indicating the premises. Behind Jason, the Joker chuckled earnestly. “Good start, acknowledging the venue,” he said, under his breath, “Let’s see where she goes from here.”“I’m your host for this evening, Allison Blake. You know, my great-grandfather started this place, because he said ‘in Gotham, comedy is the best medicine.’ I always thought medicine was the best medicine, personally, but I guess that goes to show that in Gotham, you take what you can get.”The Joker howled his approval.“One thing about Gotham is it’s a shitty place to live, but it’s a really amazing place to die. You know? There’s just so many ways it could happen. I learned a new one today—a guy laughed himself to death. I didn’t believe it could happen until I saw it, right there on YouTube.” Her voice caught, and she paused, taking a breath. “Only in Gotham, right? I guess I’d better be careful up here, or the GCPD might arrest me for murder.” She looked into the back of the theater, her face twisted in mock indignation. “Nothing for that? Really? The GCPD doing its job is the best joke I got!” Now the Joker laughed, a deep, throaty cackle. “Oh she’s good,” he muttered. “That’s real, dark, Gotham humor right there.”Onstage, Allison kept the bit going. “No, it would be a real shame if anyone laughed themselves to death. You know, I’ve killed onstage before, but never like that.” She looked down at the Joker, and Jason saw sadness flash across her face. “Unfortunately, that’s all my time. Ladies and gentlemen, I now have the distinct, dubious honor of introducing you to a true Gotham City icon. You know him well, public enemy number one, the clown prince of crime, the—” Her voice broke, and she looked down at Jason, all pretense gone. “The Joker.” Now the Joker’s voice came from in front of Jason, making his way toward the stage as a jaunty tune and the sound of recorded applause played from hidden speakers. Joker took the microphone and bowed deep.“Keep it going for Allison Blake, ladies and gentlemen! A tough act to follow.” He paused, looking into the audience as if unsure what to say. “You know, I’m going to do something a little different tonight,” he said pensively. “I’ve been trying this one joke, all over the city, different venues, but it never seems to land. I think, just maybe, this is the right audience. What do you say?” He stooped for a moment and produced a crowbar from off the stage, resting it on his shoulder like a baseball bat. “Ah, what the hell. Here goes. A guy walks into a bar.” He jumped off the stage, landing in front of Jason. “And he doesn’t walk out.”Jason heard a wet, sickening crack, searing pain radiated from his forehead, and then nothing. “You…killed him.”Werner glanced at the lifeless boy at his feet only long enough to confirm it was Robin, and not just another of the clown’s sick pranks. While there may have been another Robin running around with Aqualad’s lot, the corpse in front of him matched the description of the Robin who’d been seen with Batman in Gotham, which meant the Joker had killed him, which meant Count Vertigo and the Injustice League had a problem.“Yeah, so?” asked the Joker casually, glancing around as if he were bored. The abandoned theater where the clown had set up shop was well-suited to his tastes, and despite his growing fury, Werner was amazed and appalled at the clown’s meticulous preparations. Every ingress and egress was rigged, and he had traps to cover every square inch of floorspace from the stage, to the green rooms and prop rooms, to the box office and even the rotting bathrooms. Superman or the Martian Manhunter would have been hard-pressed to root the clown out of the nest he’d built; a single, teenaged hero stood no chance at all.Perhaps that should have been a sign, Werner reflected. When he’d approached the Joker with the Light’s plan to kidnap the new Robin—presenting it as an Injustice League collaboration to avoid invoking the clown’s ire and tipping the Light’s hand—the clown had been exuberant beyond his usual giddiness. He’d espoused how he had “the perfect bit for this” that he’d been cultivating over years, and he was certain Robin would get the joke. Werner had humored his teammate and told him to reach out when he had the boy in hand, thank you very much, but with hindsight he should have known the clown would get carried away.“You were meant to kidnap him,” Werner chided, looking in the clown’s eyes for any glimpse that he might understand.“Yeah, but I had to riff,” the Joker countered, “It’s improv, you know. Can I get a little ‘yes, and’ here? Allison, tell him.”He gestured at the stage, where he had a brunette woman in a dress bound and gagged. She shrieked against her gag, eyes wide in primal terror.“Let her go,” ordered Werner, less out of mercy than a desire to punish the clown and put a stop to whatever scheme he had lined up next. “Clear out of here and lie low for a couple of weeks. I have to smooth this over with Ra’s al Ghul.”Before he serves me up to the Justice League like a prized goose, thought Werner glumly. He appreciated both the resources and the raw power that the Light brought to the table, but he had no doubt that Ra’s would betray him, the clown, and the whole Injustice League to buy a little bit of breathing room from the capes. Ra’s had trusted him with a crucial, sensitive mission, to kidnap a sidekick and brainwash him into a useful mole, and Werner had committed a serious gaffe by allowing the Joker to do what he always did.“Ra’s al Ghul? What’s he got to do with this?” the Joker asked, cocking his head to one side. He paused for a second, seemed to mull it over, and then threw his head back in a wicked cackle that echoed through the dilapidated theater.
Infinity Island
The Shadows flew Jason Todd’s remains into Infinity Island’s civilian airport in the back of a de Havilland Caribou twin-prop cargo plane, an aircraft so common in the Third World that it was the aeronautical equivalent of a Toyota Hilux or an AK-47. Talia al Ghul had purchased it thirdhand through her military contacts in Southwest Asia and paid a local in cash to keep it airworthy. Her father Ra’s had doubted her judgment at the time, but now he saw the benefit of having a plane that could fly unnoticed even in a rural location like Infinity Island.The stasis pod was clean and white, a contrast to the grubby olive green of the Caribou’s hull, and so big it barely fit between the rows of hammock seats in the back. Jason Todd, the boy who had been Robin, didn’t even take up half of the pod’s interior; it had been designed for people and creatures much bigger than he was. The cargo ramp lowered and Talia was there, with a Mercedes cargo truck, a team of Shadows, and a forklift. Ra’s allowed himself to feel relief seeing her; after the abject failure the last twenty-four hours had brought, it would be nice to work with someone who hadn’t let him down yet. The Shadows wheeled the stasis pod off the back of the plane and then forklifted it onto the back of the truck.“Thank you for making the arrangements,” Ra’s said as he descended the ramp toward his daughter. “No problem, Father,” Talia replied humbly. She turned on her heel and started toward another vehicle, a black SUV parked on the other side of the truck. “Do you think the Lazarus Pit will work for this?”“I don’t see why it shouldn’t,” answered Ra’s, with more confidence than he felt. “Those newly revived by the pit are disoriented, suggestible, and Jason Todd had only just started puberty when he died. I suspect if we indoctrinate him correctly, he could prove an even better asset than if we’d simply kidnapped him.”The truck started across the tarmac, and Ra’s and Talia climbed into the SUV to follow it. The streets outside the airport were empty; the locals here knew better than to cross the Shadows. “What if it doesn’t work?” Talia asked quietly as they approached the gates of the compound.“Then I will have gambled and lost,” Ra’s admitted, “It makes no matter. The Justice League has a seemingly endless supply of expendable teenagers, and I just pray it never realizes what a liability they are.”The Shadows in the cargo truck dismounted and ran to open the gates, and the little convoy pulled through, turning off their headlights as they passed inside. Their destination was a small, corrugated steel shed near the edge of the compound; anyone looking at satellite imagery would have assumed this was a storage building, not the compound’s main purpose for existing. Another forklift unloaded the heavy casket onto a wheel cart, and a gang of Shadows wheeled it inside.The interior of the shed was mostly empty but lit with a sickly green glow that emanated from a rectangular pool of bubbling, churning liquid at its center. The source of the light seemed to move beneath the surface, as if swaying in the ebb and flow of some unknown current. The Lazarus Pit did not advertise its secrets, but the nauseating odor and color attested to its grisly purpose. In his centuries of life, Ra’s had bathed in the Pit many times, but he still couldn’t get used to the sensations its alchemical processes catalyzed inside of him. The leader of the Shadows threw up a fist, and his squad mates stopped moving the casket and fanned out. Talia stepped forward with slow, measured paces, looking into the shed, where a dark figure crouched at the edge of the Pit’s light, its silhouette dancing slowly against the back wall in time with the Pit’s gyre. “Jade,” said Talia evenly. “What are you doing here?”“I could ask you the same question,” came the impertinent reply. She pointed overhead, indicating the sky. “I heard the Caribou land. You only use that for special deliveries, so who’s in the box?” Talia smiled coyly. “See for yourself.”Jade emerged from the shadow and approached the casket. Her pupils widened a fraction when she saw Robin’s corpse lying in repose inside. She glanced at Talia, then back to the casket. “Somebody killed Robin,” she reflected. “That’s bold.” Jade stepped out of the way, but folded her arms and didn’t remove her gaze from the casket until it was out of view.“He’ll make a good sparring partner for you, once we bring him back,” said Talia. “He may be small, but he was trained by Batman.” Jason woke on his side on a tatami mat, his arms extended limply in front of him. Everything hurt. His wrists bore the lacerations where the Joker’s thugs had tied him up, and he could feel his head was bandaged, likely where the crowbar had struck, but he knew he was no longer in Gotham. With a concerted effort, he managed to roll onto his back so he could see more of the room. Sunlight filtered through rice paper walls, illuminating a space that was bare except for a tray with a pitcher of clear liquid and a single cup. He looked around; there were had no doors, nor windows. Suddenly thirsty, Jason attempted to get to the pitcher, but found his limbs were less than cooperative. He was woozy; had the clown given him a concussion? Probably worse than that, he reflected, the way he’d swung that crowbar and—“How am I alive?” he asked out loud, his voice parched. The wall moved, and Jason became aware of the space beyond, saw the vague outline of what looked like gym equipment. The walls that enclosed him were shoji, rice paper screens, and the tatami mats barely occupied a corner of this room. The sunlight that had awakened him came from overhead rack lighting, and he squinted as it burned into his eyes. He shuffled backwards as a tall man stepped onto the tatami, wearing boots and olive-green fatigues with a black t-shirt, flanked by two figures in black ninja suits.The man stooped and poured water into the cup, holding it out to Jason, who brought his knees up close and feebly attempt to place his fists in front of his face for protection. He turned his head slowly left and right, the pain swirling. The man snorted softly and one of the ninjas knelt by Jason, gently pushing his hands aside while the other took the water and slowly poured it down his throat. It was cold, and Jason hacked and sputtered as it went down, but it soothed the burn in his throat and settled his churning stomach.“Where am I?” he asked, his voice clear, but still weak.“The League of Shadows base on Infinity Island,” Ra’s al Ghul answered neutrally.“Infinity Island,” said Jason, staring blankly at the ceiling. “But that means…”“Quite,” Ra’s agreed. “You have been resurrected, or perhaps even reborn. After your mentor allowed you to die at the hands of the Joker, my daughter recovered your body and brought it here. You were brought back to life by the magic of the Lazarus Pit.” Jason’s pulse quickened. He clawed ineffectually at the tatami, gasping for breath, then turned and vomited, the few gulps of water mixed with noxious green bile. Ra’s stepped out of the way as the puddle slowly spread. “A side effect of the Pit’s process, I’m afraid,” he said sympathetically. He turned, and the ninjas lifted Jason by his armpits. He kicked his feet, trying to stand, but they ignored his efforts and settled him in a wheelchair parked just off the tatami. “You needn’t suffer the indignity of the chair much longer,” Ra’s explained, following Jason’s gaze to the top of the pull-up bars as they wheeled past. “Neuromuscular connections are among the first things to go when you die, and one thing the Pit’s alchemy does a poor job of recreating. You’ll regain muscle memory, slowly at first, but you may overtake your former self sooner than you think.”Two women greeted them at the edge of the gym area, dressed in tight black exercise clothes, their hair damp with sweat. The taller of the two was also younger, Jason judged, late teens to her partner’s late twenties. Both were toned and stood like fighters; Jason looked up at them from his chair, wide-eyed. “Cheshire will oversee your rehabilitation,” said Ra’s. “In time, you will join her for instruction from Talia in ninjutsu and other subjects. I expect great things from you both.”Cheshire looked down at Jason and smiled, and he saw the predator barely contained behind her dark eyes. It was almost enough to make him feel regret as Ra’s and Talia walked away with the ninjas. When they were out of sight, Cheshire got close to him, arms casually at her sides, secure in the knowledge he wasn’t a threat. She held out her hands to him, palms up.“Press down on my hands,” she ordered. He looked up at her, and she raised her eyebrows impatiently. With great effort, Jason lifted his arms and placed his hands on top of hers. “Press,” she said. Jason glared at her and gritted his teeth, willing her arms to go down. “Harder,” she repeated. “Now stand!” Cheshire took a half step back, and the motion pulled Jason out of the chair. His feet found the floor beneath him, and he waivered a second, leaning on her hands, then dropped his arms to his sides and looked left and right to ensure he’d done it. “Not bad,” Cheshire allowed. “Now, come on.”They went slowly, Jason shuffling his feet while Cheshire walked behind him to one side with a hand raised. She ordered him to stop at the edge of what looked like a grappling ring while she fetched a plastic bucket and overturned it in front of him.“Stand on the bucket.”After briefly recalling the muscles involved, Jason lifted his left foot like a crane and set it tentatively on top of the bucket. He inhaled, braced his core as best he could, and then pressed down, lifting himself to a dizzying height and placing his right foot beside his left. From on top of the bucket, he looked around, surveying the kingdom he’d just conquered: the wrestling mat, a small, raised boxing ring, and the changing area where they’d just been. He looked to Cheshire and— Her fist caught him on the chest before he could comprehend what was happening, much less react. He sailed through the air, landing on his tailbone and rolling backwards. The air was pressed out of his lungs as his head whipped back and bounced off the mat. His arms went straight out and slapped feebly, displacing some of the impact. Pain radiated through his body and he spasmed as he hacked up more green stuff. Cheshire stood over him, grinning smugly.“Your reflexes aren’t shot,” she observed. “That’s a good sign.” Cheshire and Jason circled each other in the ring, barefoot in white gis, probing. Jason committed first, belting an angry kiai as he shot for her hips, but Cheshire anticipated him and stepped back on her left foot, slamming her right into his side. Jason caught her ankle, and she had time to gasp before he yanked her forward and sent her to the mat with a sweeping kick. He followed her down and landed in a full mount, with his knees pinning her biceps. His elbows rained down on her head while she planted one foot and twisted beneath him, trying to squeeze herself free. Finally, Jason stopped when Talia’s firm hand on his back brought him back and ended the round.Sitting cross-legged on the tatami, Cheshire and Jason shared a dinner of white rice and fish portions. Outside it was probably evening, but could have been bright Caribbean daylight for all Jason knew. He looked up at Cheshire, and she sensed his intent before he could open his mouth.“What?”“Ra’s lied to me,” Jason answered. “His story doesn’t add up.” Cheshire looked his way but said nothing. “Even if Batman was off-planet, there’s no way Talia got to me before the Justice League. She had to know the Joker was going to kill me.”“Or at least where to look,” Cheshire agreed, sliding a fish bone out between her lips.“I’m going to tell you this so I don’t waste your time,” Jason went on. “I’m escaping here, first chance I get. If you want to run and tell Ra’s, I’ll understand, just do it sooner rather than later.”Cheshire’s face hardened. “I’m no snitch,” she said. “But where are you going to go? Back to Batman, or the League?”Jason shook his head. “They’ll never trust me again, nor should they.” He paused. “Really, the feeling’s mutual. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, but if I see the Joker, that bastard’s going to feel what I felt.” “And you think revenge will cure what ails you?”“I said ‘if’ I see him,” Jason asserted. “If I loved the thrill of the chase, I’d stick with Batman.”Cheshire grinned, and for a second, Jason saw where she got the name. Gotham City, 2016Tim Drake emerged from the Gotham Village subway station into the warm, late summer air and craned his neck to take in the view. He led a pack of his fellow GCU students, mostly from Capes and Cowls, the club he’d joined for students with an affinity for superheroes and metahumans. They were bound for the Monaco, a club rumored to have been founded by Don Vicente Falcone and to still serve as a front for the Falcone mob, but that only added to its allure. The chattering flock dispersed, taking up the entire sidewalk, pointing and laughing and hanging on each other.“Check it out.” Tim pointed out an ad on a bus shelter—scrawled at an angle, graffiti-style, it read:
The Only Punchline I Didn’t See Coming
Allison Blake: ‘The Killing Joke’,
Live at the Monaco Club Aug 16, 17, 18, 19.
Shows at 7 and 9pm.
18 and older, presented by Arkham Comedy
“That’s where we’re going!” a young woman in the crowd shouted, to whoops and fist pumps from her friends. Tim grinned; for a woman to not only survive an encounter with the Joker, but make it into a standup special less than a year later, was exactly the kind of spirit that had attracted him to Gotham. Going to the show was his idea, but the C&C membership had taken it up without much of a fight; after all, the Joker was the second-biggest “capes and cowls” draw in Gotham.The Monaco was packed as Tim and his friends showed the tickets they’d printed on big, white sheets of copy paper. Bass-and-drum music throbbed over the bar’s speakers, blending with the crowd’s raucous chatter as Tim’s group scattered across high-top tables, looking constantly at the stage. Tim took a seat and ordered a lemonade when the waiter came for his table.The house lights went down, and there was scattered applause and cheers as the host took the stage, a man in his twenties in skinny jeans, a skintight T-shirt, and spiral-shaped gauge earrings. He acknowledged the crowd as he took the mic.“Welcome to the Monaco—I’m Marcus, your host this evening.” He took a pause, acknowledging the few snickers from the crowd. “You want to know what the worst part is about hosting for Allison Blake?” Tim heard a few rumbling chuckles as the crowd caught on to the joke. “You can’t tell anyone how hard it is! I mean, she had the worst hosting gig of all time!” He let the laughter die down before he went on. “But really, ladies and gentlemen, it would be my utmost pleasure to introduce you to a true scion of Gotham City comedy royalty, someone who has faced the worst and the toughest this city has to offer and come out laughing. I would love to introduce you to the Joker—but I’ll settle for Allison. Allison Blake, everybody!” He shuffled offstage awkwardly to scattered applause, his eyes wide. Allison Blake took the stage to dead silence and looked where Marcus had gone, standing stiffly in front of the microphone and turning her whole head to track his movement until he disappeared behind the bar. Then she smiled and began. “Yikes.” Tim leaned forward, waiting for her first joke. “I’ve seen a dead kid get more laughs than that.” As one, the crowd sighed with relief, and then came the laughs, guilty and tentative at first, then snorting and sputtering. She went into a tight five about living in Gotham—crime, traffic, and superheroes—and then her act took off, Tim watching every second enraptured. It contained a little bit of everything, including a few barbs about Gotham’s rogues gallery, but she saved the Joker material for the end. The audience stayed with her every step, and by the time she began, Tim had briefly forgotten who she was.Her story about the Joker wasn’t funny, but it was enthralling, her telling so raw and sparse that it was impossible not to watch. The mood lightened as she finished, when she paused and asked:“And as a comic, do you know what offended me the most about it?” The crowd was deadly silent, every eye on her. Tim white-knuckled his empty lemonade glass. “He did all that, for an empty house!” The floodgates opened, and the audience released its tension in breathy, cracking laughter. Allison finished strong while the house came down around her, crying, “There was no one else there! If you want to hear more jokes, you’re gonna have to buy me a drink! Goodnight!”Someone insisted on a picture of the C&C club with Allison, which she graciously accepted. Tim was near the center of the photo, next to Allison with his arm around her, and when the group started to disperse, he turned to her and asked, “Was the house really empty?”She looked up, surprised. “What?”“When the Joker performed, was there really no audience?”Allison took a sip of her drink, her big brown eyes looking at Tim with an unreadable expression as she said dully, “That’s the way I tell the joke, kid.”The next day, Tim parked his hatchback outside the chain-link fence that enclosed the Amusement Mile. When Allison set the scene for her Joker story, she described the location simply as a deserted theater (“no, not deserted like Marcus is performing there—actually abandoned”), and the many newspaper articles, though sensational, also omitted that detail. It still didn’t take Tim long to identify the former Wisecracks, and he correlated it to a rather workaday GCPD report that described “assault and false imprisonment” without mentioning the Joker.He threw his backpack over the fence, then cleared it easily and started down the row of dilapidated buildings toward the old Wisecracks. Even in broad daylight, the Amusement Mile was an unsettling place, and Tim found himself checking behind empty ticket booths and scanning the rooftops for what he didn’t know. Wisecracks looked the same as the other buildings, though the weeds in front were shorter and the front door was open, slowly undulating in the wind. Tim entered, producing his mag light from his bag and holding it by his temple as he looked into the box office through the broken window. Paper trash, dead bugs, and rat droppings piled against the legs that supported the counter. He entered the theater lobby and passed into the grand hall itself, walking down the aisle and permitting himself to look toward the rafters. There were no boxes, no mezzanine—even in its heyday, Wisecracks had never been more than a source of family entertainment. He shined his light along the floor, looking up and down rows, between and on the seats. He checked a few rows before he concluded there were no rat droppings in here. Not a smoking gun, he reflected, but unusual all the same.Kneeling in front of a front-row seat, Tim produced a fingerprinting kit from his backpack and dusted an armrest. The powder swept clean off, finding no purchase anywhere, and he repeated the result on several more chairs. Allison’s set, the newspaper stories, and the barebones GCPD report all agreed that Allison was found bound and gagged onstage, after having “performed” for the Joker’s set. The clown himself was caught by the Justice League days later, bound in glowing green manacles by the Green Lantern and delivered to Arkham. Tim hopped onto the stage, looked around, and saw no evidence that Allison or the Joker had been there; no surprise, he thought, since the crime scene would have been cleaned. He went behind the rotting curtain and opened the trap door that led beneath the stage, covering his fingers with a bandana. The trap room underneath was strewn with props, broken chairs, and old playbills, but no rat droppings, and no dead bugs. Tim dusted the handle of the trap door for fingerprints, then the entire outside edge; nothing. Someone had cleaned the stage and the entire theater, thoroughly and deliberately, since Allison and the Joker were here.Detective Renee Montoya was an old-school cop, which meant she drank at an old-school watering hole, which meant she was easy to find after a shift. Tim took the stool next to her at Noonan’s Tavern and ordered a lemonade, earning a sidelong glance from the barmaid. “What?” Montoya asked, before Tim’s lemonade arrived.“I’m Tim Drake, from the GCU Capes and Cowls Club. I’m trying to learn more about metahuman outreach, and I was hoping you’d agree to let me do a ride along sometime.”“What?” Montoya repeated, raising her glass of añejo to her lips. Her phone buzzed, and she stared at it for a few seconds, then emptied her glass and stood up.Tim set a twenty-dollar bill on the bar between them, making eye contact with the barmaid. “I thought you were off.”“You coming, or what?” Tim followed Montoya to her ancient sedan and climbed in the front seat. Inside it was tidy but reeked of stale coffee. As they pulled away from the curb, he began to talk. “To be honest, I was going to try and ride along with Detective O'Shaughnessy, because he had the last Joker case, but then I saw he’s no longer with the unit.”Montoya glanced at him, her dark eyes appraising. “O’Shit quit the force,” she said, her voice a raspy monotone, “Said the last case rattled him.”“But he had eight years on the Metahuman Squad, and only three until retirement.”“What do you want me to say, kid?” Montoya asked, pulling onto the freeway. “Everybody’s got a number. I bet yours is lower than you think it is.”Tim focused his attention out the window, watching the exits pass until Montoya flicked on her turn signal. The scene was a pawn shop a few blocks into Coventry. Red and blue lights orbited, illuminating glass storefronts with vinyl ads stuck to them and houses with their curtains drawn. Tim followed Montoya under the crime scene tape, past the uniforms, his eyes lingering on their pistols.“You brought a kid?” asked the pot-bellied detective standing just inside the shattered glass door. “What are we, the goddamn Justice League?”“Easy, Harvey,” Montoya intoned. “I’m off right now. Consider this a favor.”“Don’t need it.” Detective Bullock shifted his weight and looked further into the shop, where the deceased was lashed to a wheeled office chair, his head obscured by a plastic bag that was tied tightly around his neck and adhered to his lips.“Harvey,” said Montoya, resting a hand on his sternum, above the GCPD badge he wore on a chain. “Did you solve the case without me?”Bullock met her eyes, then placed his hands on either side of his gut and inhaled. “The deceased is Arnold Kaspirisin, suspected fence for the False Face Society, Black Mask’s outfit. This plays like a hit, Renee.”“You think Red Hood is behind it?” Tim ventured. Both cops looked at him like they’d forgotten he was standing there. Bullock dipped his head and looked at Montoya over his double chin. “Yeah, I do.” He pointed at the floor just past where they stood, where a shell casing rested beside an evidence marker, open end up. “Shop is closed, so the perp forces entry,” Bullock narrated. “Shoots at Kaspirisin, misses, so he closes the distance and grabs the nearest thing to hand to strangle him.”“Ballistics?” Montoya asked.“The boys are looking for the bullet, but it won’t be hard to find,” Bullock said. He indicated the shell casing. “Fifty-cal Desert Eagle. Goddamn hand cannon. Somebody wanted to send a message.” Tim’s eyes lingered on the casing while Bullock went on. “911 call came from a burner in the parking lot, most likely the perp. We bagged it, but there’s no prints. They wiped it clean.”Tim looked up from the casing. “I don’t think the perp shot at Kaspirisin.” He looked at Montoya as he said it.“Oh?” Bullock challenged, turning toward him.“If you shoot and miss, your first instinct isn’t to close the distance,” Tim explained, “You’re probably going to fire the gun at least one more time before you give up on it entirely. And like you said, the Desert Eagle is overkill for an assassination, but not if you want to make sure somebody hears it.” He looked at Montoya again, who nodded. "I think the perp wanted intel on Black Mask’s operation,” Tim continued, “Otherwise, why hit the fence and not the muscle, or someone in leadership? He fires the pistol, gets Kaspirisin’s attention, then gets in his face and starts asking questions. Kaspirisin’s a little reluctant, gives him some attitude, so the perp grabs the bag and closes his windpipe.”Bullock and Montoya traded glances, nodding slowly. “Also, Detective,” Tim added, looking at Bullock, “There’s a bullet hole over your head.” Bullock looked up and pointed a meaty hand at the ceiling.“Goddammit.”Montoya took Tim back to her car and sat behind the wheel for a second, watching the CSIs and Bullock work. As she returned her attention to the car and Tim, he asked, “Do you think we can track down the 911 call? See if there’s anything in the background.”“Sure,” Montoya allowed after a moment. “We’ll have to go by the office, but sure. We can do that.”Tim sat in the uncomfortable chair next to Montoya’s desk, separated from her by a forest of empty mugs and discarded pens, his eyes making wide passes of the darkened squad room. After a moment, she looked over at him and asked, “Ready?” Tim nodded.“911, what is the nature of your emergency?”The voice that responded sounded frightened, but not panicked, like the speaker had just realized something went wrong.“I’m at Shamrock Plaza, nine-seven-one-eight McGregor Avenue. I just heard a gunshot. I think it came from Pistol Pete’s Pawn.”“I understand, sir, and I’ll get a unit over there right away. Please stay on the line so I can get some information…”The call disconnected, and Tim’s heart accelerated in his chest.“Anything?” asked Montoya, her usual rasp dusted with hope.“No,” Tim lied, eyes fixed forward. “Can you send it to me, though? I’ll run it through some isolation software I have back in my room.” Montoya nodded, but her eyes held questions.Tim was sure he’d recognized the voice, from a dozen or more short clips that had been posted to message boards. It was Robin, the second Robin, the one who hadn’t been seen in a year. Detective Bullock suspected the villain Red Hood of being Kaspirisin’s killer, and Tim had no reason to doubt him, which left one conclusion: Robin was back, he was calling himself Red Hood, and he had killed a man tonight.Nightwing waited until Bullock and his squad had cleared the crime scene before he went in, as Tim knew he would. He stood in the doorway while the hero took in the scene. Kaspirisin’s body was at the morgue, but crime scene tape and evidence markers still littered the scene. “If you’re looking for the bullet hole, it’s up there,” Tim said, pointing overhead with one finger.“Thanks,” said Nightwing, his sarcastic eyebrow raise visible beneath his domino mask. “And you are?”“A big fan of yours,” Tim admitted. “And Batman’s. And Robin’s. Or is he Red Hood now?” Nightwing’s hands floated upwards, toward the escrima sticks he wore on his back. Tim mirrored the gesture, showing the hero his palms as he went on. “I don’t think he meant to kill Kaspirisin. He would have fired his pistol, interrogated him for a few minutes, then tied the bag around his neck to scare him.”“So what happened?” Nightwing asked, his face implacable.“He called 911 himself,” Tim explained. “I think he was counting on someone to call as soon as they heard the gunshot, but when he didn’t hear sirens, he had to make the call himself.”Nightwing snorted, then looked down, seeming pensive. “Only in Gotham,” he reflected. Silence fell, and Tim slowly lowered his hands.“I think it’s really good, what you’re doing for Batman,” Tim said at length. “Handling this Black Mask situation, so he doesn’t have to get involved after what the Joker did to Robin.”“What do you mean, ‘what the Joker did to Robin’?” Nightwing asked, turning his head slightly away from Tim to look at him sidelong.“I assume he beat the shit out of him, with Allison Blake watching,” Tim answered. Seeing Nightwing’s expression, he added, “Is that not right?”“Close enough,” Nightwing told him hastily. “The truth is—weirder than that, but you’ve got the gist right.”Tim nodded softly. “You should consider sticking around,” he told the superhero. “Batman is—when he—Batman needs a Robin.”Nightwing’s eyebrow went up again, and he smirked heroically. “You want me to put the shorts back on?”Tim nodded. “Or find someone else to.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Master Jason, will you be taking any tea?”Alfred’s words cut the silence in the Batcave, and Jason removed his helmet, holding it at his hip as he turned to his former butler. “No, thank you, Alfred. I can’t stay long.” He turned to Batman, who stood behind the Bat-computer, staring at him. “Jimmy Li’s death was reclassified to homicide,” Batman told his former protégé. “His family was very grateful for the closure. And Allison Blake has a new standup special, ‘The Killing Joke.’”“I’ve seen it,” Jason interrupted. “It’s good. Dark, but hilarious. I’m glad she’s been able to…” He trailed off, his eyes hardening. “Why’s he still alive, Bruce?” Under the cowl, Batman’s features flashed surprise, then anger. “If we kill him, we’re no better than he is,” he argued, his tone measured. “It isn’t that I don’t want to kill him, Jason—it’s that I do. I want to kill him more than anything. Kill the Joker, and I solve my problem. But how many more problems can I solve with killing?”“How is that still the argument?” Jason demanded, his voice echoing in the cave. “He killed me, Bruce. How does that not cross a line? Can you not distinguish between ‘killed my sidekick and surrogate son’ and ‘didn’t’?”“You went alone, no backup—” Batman began.“Oh, so now I was asking for it?” Jason unholstered one of his pistols and set it on the desk in front of him, his eyes never leaving Batman. “You know where he is. You put him in Arkham. Put a bullet in his head, and I’ll come back. I’ll join the Team, run around with Aqualad and Kid Flash, and do whatever missions come down the pipe. You kill the Joker, Bruce, or I swear I will.”“You think that’s justice?”“I think it’s necessary. You run around with a cape and cowl, but at the end of the day you’re no different than the cops. You play by the rules, but your enemies don’t.” He paused, and his voice softened. “You’ve outlawed guns, so now only the outlaws have them. You want to work within the system, but I say the system is the problem, so burn it down. You think playing by the rules makes you the good guys, but it makes you accomplices. I’ll take outlaw justice over the League’s version any day.”
Bludhaven
Step Lively’s was a dive bar two blocks inland from the wharves that had been Bludhaven’s lifeblood when the city’s heart still beat. The wind had teeth as Artemis got off the bus across the street and hustled through the parking lot past rusted-out trucks and cars with trash bag-covered windows. She kept her head down, the hood of her jacket shielding the wind and hiding her age and gender from a distance. She was maybe halfway across when the doors swung open and a red-faced man stumbled out with two of his friends.“Hey, fuck you!” the man called toward the bar. “It’s not your place!”“Go home, Stanley,” said a voice from the door. “Sleep it off. See you tomorrow.”Stanley charged up the wooden steps, but the bouncer was ready for him, slamming a baseball bat into his ribcage with a sickening crack. Artemis crouched behind a car, out of sight. One of Stanley’s companions rushed the bouncer the same way Stanley had, dropping his shoulder for a football tackle, but the bouncer horse-collared him and sent him stumbling back down the steps. Artemis watched the third man closely; while his friends seethed and the bouncer brandished his bat, the third reached into his coat pocket and seemed to ponder something in there.Artemis knew better than to think he was just averse to violence, and she was ready when she saw his face harden with resolve. She shed her coat, drew her bow, and loosed an arrow, catching him on the shoulder just as his hand cleared his coat pocket. He yelped in pain, and something heavy landed on to the ground next to his feet. When he stooped to grab it, the bouncer was already on him, yelling “nope!” and shoving him while he kicked the pistol out of reach. “That does it!” the bouncer shouted, “Go home, all three of youse, and don’t come back. You’re eighty-sixed!” He turned toward the bar, muttering, “Bringing a gun in here…” Stanley and his buddies stayed rooted to the ground, until the bouncer turned again and raised his bat, at which point they scrambled for the bus stop. Artemis approached the bouncer, holding the pistol out to him by the barrel. “No, I don’t want that,” the bouncer said, looking at the gun in disgust. He looked at her, his blue eyes watery with anger. “You know I went to high school with Stanley? And now he runs around with those bums. That guy can have his pistol back, for all I care.” He stopped talking and glanced at Artemis’s bow, now slung over her shoulder. “That was a nice shot. You some kind of superhero?”“No,” said Artemis. It was too cold for banter.The bouncer dug in his pocket and presented her a wooden coin. On the obverse, it had the Step Lively’s logo, worn from years of use, while the back read “one free drink.”“Go on in,” he said. “You can take Stanley’s stool at the bar. My advice, don’t let anyone buy you a drink.”Artemis bowed her head gratefully and walked past him into Step Lively’s, where it was noisy, dingy, smoky, but warm. She hung her coat and bow on a hook on the wall and took a seat at the end of the bar while she sized up the barkeep. He was tall, classically handsome, and wore tight jeans and a button-up shirt that looked too clean for this place. A couple of barflys had gathered around him, and he accepted their attention but kept his distance, washing glasses or pouring drinks to keep his hands occupied.Eventually, the barback, a dark-haired, tattooed woman Artemis hadn’t noticed, placed a gentle hand on her back. “Something you need, hon?”Artemis presented the token, saying, “Club soda and lime, please.” She remembered her mother telling her to order that drink “on a job”, because it looks like a real cocktail but has no alcohol. The woman nodded, approving, and went behind the bar.By the time the handsome barkeep announced last orders, Step Lively’s was mostly empty. He made his way to where Artemis was nursing her club soda and favored her with a friendly grin.“Heard you shot some guy with a bow and arrow in the parking lot,” he said conversationally. His voice carried a soft Texan lilt like a football commentator. Artemis raised her drink in acknowledgement. “Appreciate the effort,” the man went on, “Old Todd’s not as tough as he thinks he is; sometimes he needs pretty girls to bail him out.”“Todd’s tough as nails,” Artemis disagreed. “That guy wanted everyone to know he had a gun.”The bartender nodded. “So I hate to ask, but I feel it’s a fair question, given the circumstances.” He grinned apologetically. “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”“I was looking for someone,” Artemis said, stirring her drink. “But she’s not here.”“What’s she look like?” he asked. “Maybe she came in earlier.”“I don’t think so. She’s in town this weekend on business.”The barkeep stretched his back and looked toward the booths, where Todd the bouncer was starting the long process of prying the regulars out of their spots. The tattooed barback was closing out tabs, sorting through receipts and counting stacks of cash.“She’s not a False Face, is she? Your friend.”Artemis looked at him in surprise. The False Face Society was a notorious gang in Gotham, headed by the supervillain Black Mask, but their being in Bludhaven was news to her. He had to be asking for a reason.“No, why?”“Whole bunch of them checked into the Marcus Casino this afternoon. They’re all in town on business, too.”Artemis played her hand. “I’m surprised you’re not there, Stallion. Seems like your kind of thing.” “Whoa, whoa,” Stallion objected, showing her his palms. “I don’t do that anymore. Matter of fact, when the False Faces came in here recruiting, I turned them down.”“Recruiting for what?” Artemis leaned forward, not disguising her interest.“No idea,” Stallion admitted. “I had Todd walk ‘em out before they could give me the pitch.”Artemis settled back on the stool, watching her reflection in the bar mirror. On the one hand, it couldn’t be coincidence that her sister and Black Mask’s crew were in Bludhaven the same weekend. On the other, the False Faces were Gotham street thugs, exactly the sort of outfit that Jade left the city to escape. Stallion gave her space, attending to his closing tasks, before returning with a slight gleam in his eye.“I don’t have any information for you,” he said, “But I might have something you want more. Come with me.” Artemis took her bow and quiver off the hook and followed him through a door behind the bar into a small storeroom. When Stallion turned on the light, she saw a twin mattress had been propped against the back wall. “It’s not the Ritz-Carlton,” Stallion narrated, arranging the mattress on the floor and draping a fleece blanket over it, “But nobody’ll bother you, and I know in your line of work, that means more than Egyptian cotton. We keep this for regulars who can’t make it to the bus. I cleaned it pretty good after the last time Stanley threw up on it.”Artemis’s eyes went wide. “It’s…more than I could ask for,” she said. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept in a bed without owing someone a favor or spending money she didn’t have. “It’s a thank-you for bailing Todd out this evening,” Stallion explained. “And for whatever you’re planning with the False Faces. I know you’re on the right side.”Artemis set her bow and quiver down and folded her coat to use as a pillow. Stallion put a hand on the doorknob, then stopped. “One other thing.” Artemis looked up at him, surprised. “Dr. Grace Balin. Orca. You might’ve heard of her. Her crew runs the docks, and I’d be willing to bet they’re not happy the False Faces are in town. She’s got a rep, rightly so, but if you can get to her, she might know more than I do about what Black Mask’s play.”Sleeping warm and safe in the back room of Step Lively’s, Artemis dreamt she was home with Jade and their mother, and when she woke, she wept.“Black Mask?” asked Robin, “What’s he doing out of Gotham?”“Exactly what we’re trying to find out,” answered Green Arrow, addressing the gathered Team in the Watchtower’s briefing room. “We know he’s meeting with an agent of the Light tonight in Bludhaven. This is a good opportunity to gather intelligence.”“Find out what they’re up to, so we can shut it down, right?” asked Kid Flash, leaning forward in his chair.“Not necessarily,” the Arrow explained, “Batman’s got ears inside the False Face Society, Black Mask’s gang, but the Light doesn’t know that. If we go in too strong, we tip our hand, and we lose a valuable source of intel.”Roy’s eyes went to his teammates, watching their reactions. Robin settled back in his chair, arms folded, eyes cast downward like he was trying to think of another plan. Aqualad kept his gaze steady on Green Arrow, his lips drawing into a tighter line, while Kid Flash’s brow furrowed and Miss Martian just looked shocked. Roy spoke, breaking the pensive silence.“I’ll go,” he said. “We need Robin here to tap into the False Faces’ chatter, and Aqualad would stand out too much. Kid Flash can get in quick if things get hairy, and M’gann can wait with him and see how this kind of operation plays out.”Roy and Green Arrow shared a look, then the Arrow nodded once and left the briefing room. Silence fell, and all eyes went to Aqualad, but before he could say anything, M’gann stood.“I’ll go prep Bioship.”Bludhaven looked almost pleasant from the air, the Ferris wheel on the boardwalk standing out from its skyline as Bioship banked and came to hover above the Marcus casino. Roy stepped off into an alley and checked his disguise in a window: designer chinos, patterned shirt, and gold watch. His expensive suitcase was packed with his bow and gear for the mission, but from the outside, he was just an obnoxious rich kid from Gotham, spending his parents’ money at the tables. He checked in under an assumed name and rode the elevator to the ninth floor, just below the penthouse. In the living room of his executive suite, he opened the suitcase and spread Robin’s communications equipment on the desk.“Speedy to Team,” he said into his earpiece. “Comms check.”M’gann responded first, her voice high and chipper. “This is backup team; we read you loud and clear.”“This is Watchtower,” said Robin. “Got you loud and clear. I’m up on the Marcus’s CCTV; they’ve got cameras everywhere. Black Mask is downstairs in the high rollers’ room. I’ll let you know if he moves.”“Acknowledged. I’m going to go scope out the floor; keep me apprised.”It was mid-afternoon, but the floor of the Marcus was bustling with noisy slots and thick knots of people crowded around the tables. The False Faces were scattered throughout, wearing their masks brazenly but not presenting a threat. Roy stopped at the cage and made his way to a craps table where a few of them were playing, stepping up just as the stickman announced a new round.“Careful, Speedy,” came Robin’s voice in his ear. “That shooter is Jade Nguyen, Cheshire, the supervillain, Sportsmaster and Huntress’s daughter. She’s not here just to play dice.”Roy nodded, knowing Robin could see him on the CCTV, but his eyes were fixed on Cheshire. She wore a simple black strapless dress, accessorized with gold hoops and black suede lace-up wedges. Her black hair was down, cascading to her shoulders, and her whole body moved lithely as she pivoted to chat with the False Faces on either side of her, like she was fighting, or dancing.Cheshire’s dark, inquisitive eyes watched Roy as he stacked his chips neatly on the pass line, the corners of her thin lips turning up. The False Faces’ excitement was palpable as they placed their bets, shaking one another by the shoulders and slapping each other’s backs. Cheshire accepted the dice, shook them in her manicured hands, and threw; they rebounded off the back wall and landed showing five and six. The Faces around the table erupted in rapture.“Natural,” announced the stickman. “Pass line wins. New shooter.”“Movement downstairs,” Robin reported, “False Faces moving in and out of the ballroom. Whatever they’re doing, I think they’re doing it there.”“Roger,” said Roy, turning his head away from the table. “I’ll go check it out.” When he looked back, Cheshire was gone.Artemis had been tied up before, but this felt personal. Two thugs from Orca’s outfit, the Whale’s Enders, bound her wrists together with fishing line that cut viciously into her flesh and then marched her through a refrigerated warehouse, the cold settling around her bare shoulders and tensing her muscles. At first she protested, but when they ignored her, she clammed up and settled for glowering at them as they walked.Orca was seated on a steel crate at a cheap folding table, typing away at a spreadsheet. When her men brought Artemis in, she slammed the laptop screen shut and faced them, standing to her full height. Her body was built top-heavy, as befit a creature meant for the water, yet on land she still moved with a swaggering grace, the muscles in her arms and shoulders tight as coiled springs beneath her slick, black flesh. When she spoke, her mouth seemed to split open, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth.“What’s this?” Orca asked impatiently, looking at the thug on Artemis’s left. Her voice was normal, even feminine, with a trace of a blue-collar Bludhaven accent.“This girl wants to talk to you,” said the man. “Says she knows something about why Black Mask’s crew is in town.”“Not much,” Artemis quickly interjected, shooting him a dangerous look. “But I know it involves the Light.”“What the hell is that?”“They’re supervillains,” Artemis explained, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice. “A conspiracy. They’re subtle, they work behind the scenes, and they use cut-outs to keep the heat off. Black Mask is a perfect pawn for them.”“I don’t like Black Mask in my city,” Orca snarled. “And I definitely don’t like the Light mucking about. What are you proposing we do about it?”“I don’t know,” Artemis admitted. “I was hoping you knew something about what Black Mask is doing.”Orca let out a shrill, high-pitched squeal that sent prickles down Artemis’s back, then settled on her crate, resting her elbows on her knees. “That makes two of us,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Cut her loose. We need to talk.”Artemis settled in a rolling chair and accepted her bow, quiver, and a duck cotton jacket someone brought. Somewhere in the warehouse, a reefer cycled on, filling the space with a mournful bass drone. “How exactly do you know about the Light?” Orca asked, her dark eyes meeting Artemis’s. “What’s your angle here?”“My family,” Artemis exhaled. “My parents and my sister are all in the game. Well, my mom got out, but anyway. My dad—Sportsmaster—is an enforcer for the Light, and I think my sister’s wrapped up with them, too.”“Your dad’s Sportsmaster?” Orca asked. “That’s quite a pedigree. And you’re here for your sister.”“Yes,” Artemis confirmed, swallowing hard.“Here’s what we’re going to do,” said Orca. She looked at her henchmen, then back at Artemis. Without breaking eye contact, she produced an AK-47 assault rifle from under the table and turned it over on her lap. “You know where the meet’s going down?”“My contact says the False Faces are gathering at the Marcus casino,” Artemis answered quickly.“That tracks,” Orca agreed, nodding her massive head. She met Artemis’s gaze. “Are you ready to play for keeps?”“I want to get my sister out, and I want to stop Black Mask,” Artemis asserted. “You’re my best bet at doing both.”“Damn right,” said Orca, grinning with all her teeth. “Kenny there will give you a radio. Go in and find your sister. Then when Black Mask is weakest, key the mic, and we’ll shut it down.”In the alley behind the Marcus, an unmarked white tractor-trailer rumbled into position behind the loading docks, the urgent squeal of its reverse alarm disrupting the stillness. The trailer doors opened, and a squad of men in black fatigues swarmed out, opening the garage door to the loading docks. Inside, someone disengaged a series of ratchet straps that restrained a small forklift and a sterile white, sarcophagus-like container marked “Project Kr”. The forklift hefted the box and proceeded out of the trailer into the casino itself, bound for the grand ballroom.In the ballroom more men waited in black fatigues and riot masks, holding submachine guns and looking bored. On the opposite end, the buyer’s side began shuffling in, just as well-armed, but showing arrogance instead of discipline. The False Faces wore cheap suits and smelled slightly of booze, the skin of their faces sweating beneath the neoprene masks that were their identity.The forklift entered, and the driver set his load down, then backed up and began the arduous process of standing the case up on end. The False Faces watched enraptured as the glass front came into view, and they saw the contents for the first time; a man in stasis, his face as white as chalk, dressed in a blue suit.“Is that Superman?” somebody asked.“Can’t be,” replied another voice. “Has to be a clone, or something.”Roy stood at the back of the casino floor, beneath the sign reading “To Grand Ballroom”, staring at his phone screen. “I just lost eyes in the ballroom,” Robin reported in his ear. “They cut the cameras.”Roy grimaced; these criminals were more careful than he’d given them credit for. “Roger,” he said, “Can you find me a better vantage point, then? False Faces are all off the casino floor, so I assume they’re in there.”“There’s an access hallway from the kitchen,” Robin told him. “Go in through the restaurant, take a left, and go past the prep stations. The hall will be on the left before pastry, across from the dish room.”“Don’t forget to say ‘behind’ when you’re behind someone,” Kid Flash cut in.Jason Todd aimed the jet of blistering water at a stubborn bit of something congealed and relished the way it peeled off the ceramic plate, yielding to heat and pressure. The dish room at the Marcus casino wasn’t his favorite surveillance spot—its only door was behind him while he worked, and the constant din rendered him deaf as well as blind—but at least it was adjacent to the grand ballroom. He’d only been here a few days, ever since he learned where Black Mask had a meet, but in that time he’d managed to stash his two trusty Desert Eagles and his red welder’s mask in a crevice beneath the dish drier. While he worked, he muttered along with the rap song that blared over a tinny Bluetooth speaker—might as well, since couldn’t hear shit anyway. The lyrics were relatable, chronicling the same cycles of poverty, violence, and desperation that had shaped his early life, propagated by guys like Black Mask. Between the music, the noise, and the endlessly repetitive nature of the work, he found his mind was numb enough to sleep at night. Two men hustled past the dish room toting AK-47s, and Jason set down the plate he’d been washing. Something was going down in the ballroom. His coworkers exchanged concerned glances, but Jason pushed past them to retrieve his pistols and mask from their hiding place. He crouched in front of the dish drier, removed his soaked apron, strapped on his holsters, and pulled the mask over his face. He saw his supervisor looking at him on the way out and paused.“Uh, I’m with them,” he said, indicating the men with rifles. The supervisor considered, then shrugged and dismissed him with a waved hand.Cheshire positioned herself near the center of the ballroom, between the main doors and the box containing Bizarro, smiling triumphantly. Crouched in the darkened sound booth, Artemis watched her sister preen, a note of nostalgia entering her thoughts unbidden. Her finger hovered over the radio from the Whale’s Enders. The big doors at the other end opened, and Black Mask made his entrance, flanked by two False Facers on either side. Artemis counted six, seven, eight of his paces, then depressed the button.Nothing happened, and Artemis’s breath sped up as she considered the possibilities. Was Orca was really on the other end of the radio? Should she key it again? Was this a set up? Before she could decide, all hell broke loose. Gunfire crackled from the hallways around the ballroom, followed by screams of bloody murder as the False Faces’ and Shadows’ sentries were taken out. Jade’s head whipped left and right, looking for threats before she dove and crawled for the relative safety of the box containing Bizarro. The False Faces opened up with their submachine guns, spraying indiscriminately toward the back wall, bullets plinking harmlessly off the big, white box. Black Mask retreated toward the doors, two of his men covering him, while the Shadows went prone and collapsed into a perimeter around Jade, their barrels pointing out. The shooting stopped, and the ballroom fell silent.“This isn’t us, you fucking amateurs!” Jade rasped at the False Faces.“Then who is it?” Black Mask demanded. “Who got the drop on us?” Roy crouched in the service hallway, observing through a small window, an arrow nocked on his bowstring. He heard heavy footsteps in the kitchen, the sounds of death from the surrounding halls, and both sides in the ballroom yelling at each other. “Bioship to Team,” came M’gann’s voice. “We heard gunshots. We’re preparing to extract Speedy.”“Negative,” Robin insisted. “We send a speedster and a Martian in there, and it’s as good as tagging the building with, ‘The Justice League was here.’”“Robin’s right,” came Aqualad. “Speedy, can you self-extract?”“That depends,” said Roy, exasperated, “Talk to me, Robin. What the hell is going on?”“Looks like some locals are after Black Mask,” Robin answered. “It’s about to get hairy.”“It already is hairy!” Roy snapped back.“It’s gonna get worse,” Robin clarified hastily. “They’ve got a metahuman with them, and she’s—"The side door of the ballroom splintered, torn apart by something monstrous. Eight feet tall and half a ton of hulking muscle, Orca emerged wielding a crudely formed, man-sized shield fabricated from corrugated steel and slabs of concrete. Blood dripped from her mouth and oozed from gunshot wounds in her shoulders and torso, but she didn’t slow as she advanced behind her shield, two Whale’s Enders flanking her with AKs. Each False Face who tried to get around them was cut down before he could blink.The two guys with AKs from the kitchen took the corner into the service hallway with Jason behind them, pistols at his sides. Jason spotted Roy before either of the thugs did and fired two shots over his head to alert him. Roy reacted quickly, loosing a flashbang arrow that briefly turned the cramped hallway to daylight. The two thugs caught the full effect, their hands feebly rubbing their eyes while they moaned in pain, but the visor on Jason’s mask went momentarily dark and saved him the worst of it.“You ready?” Jason asked as he made the door.“Do I have a choice?” asked Roy.“Does any of us?”Jason burst into the ballroom, his pistols booming like thunderclaps as he sprinted for cover behind the white sarcophagus, hurdling dead Shadows and False Facers. Roy followed him, tucking his bow in favor of speed. Orca was fast approaching where Black Mask was pinned down among what was left of his False Faces, having lost one of her Whale’s Enders to a stray bullet. She stopped, and her men fanned out from behind her shield, executing the remaining False Faces at point blank range. Jade emerged from her prone position and turned to the front of the sarcophagus, typing a code on a keypad. A light at the top of the box began blinking, and the sarcophagus lid hissed as it released pressure. “Time to finish this,” she muttered, looking over her shoulder to gauge Orca’s progress. The big metahuman had set down her bullet-ridden shield and was limping toward Black Mask, baring her impossibly sharp teeth and laughing, a feral, clicking sound that cut through the din of the ballroom. No matter; the glass front of the sarcophagus lifted, and the fog cleared, revealing Bizarro standing stock still in his blue suit. His fingers twitched, then his bloodshot eyes snapped open.“Take out the big one,” was all Jade had time to say before her sister football tackled her to the floor.Bizarro erupted from the sarcophagus and barreled across the ballroom, scooping Orca up by the waist and punching a hole in the roof of the casino as they flew out. Aboard Bioship, hovering off the coast, Kaldur’ahm saw the two behemoths emerge from the darkened Bludhaven skyline.“Speedy,” he said, unable to keep the urgency out of his voice. “Situation report. What the hell is going on in there?”Roy watched bemused as the two women grappled on the floor in front of him, oblivious to the conflict ongoing around them. He looked around. Nearly everyone was dead or incapacitated save for him, Jason, these two, and Black Mask, who was rapidly scrambling for the door—yet the two continued to fight like the fate of the world depended on it. The report from one of Jason’s pistols got their attention, and they looked up at the big man in the red mask like guilty schoolgirls.“Cheshire,” said Jason, his voice betraying surprise through his mask. “I see you found a new sparring partner.”“Speedy to Bioship,” said Roy, walking away from the others. “Situation is under control, relatively speaking. We’ve got some loose ends to wrap up.”“Roger, Speedy,” came Kid Flash’s voice, sounding more excited than usual. “We have a, uh, situation out here. We’ll let you know when it’s complete.”Bizarro flew out over the ocean past Bioship’s holding position, cradling an unconscious Orca with his elbows hooked under her armpits. The cold air on her face woke her, and she shook her head violently, managing to mumble, “Let—let me go.”Bizarro let go, and Orca plummeted three hundred feet to the ocean.“So what is—this?” Red Hood asked, indicating the two sisters with a casual wave of his pistol. They had gained their feet and were standing in front of him as Roy returned from talking to the Team. “You two know each other or something?”“She’s my sister,” Cheshire explained.The blonde cast her eyes down. “Artemis.”“And what are you doing here, Artemis?” Jason asked, his tone saccharine.“I just wanted to talk to her,” Artemis sputtered, “But then she unleashed that—that—”“We call him Bizarro,” Roy supplied.“Thank you,” said Artemis, nodding to Roy. “Then she unleashed Bizarro!”“And you had nothing to do with the thousand-pound apex predator that just tried to kill my customer,” Cheshire deadpanned.Bioship recognized the danger to Orca before her passengers and opened a circular hole in her hull. Kaldur stared through it a moment, watching the wave caps below, then dove, streamlining his body to reduce the shock as he collided with the Atlantic. He took off as fast as he could, relishing the feeling of being in the water again despite the circumstances. Orca was at least partially an aquatic creature, but she would have hit hard, and she hadn’t been in great shape before Bizarro took her and dropped her. Kaldur needed to get to her and get her to the surface so she could take on air—then he could assess the damage and see what needed to be done.“Sisters,” said Red Hood, with a meaningful look at Roy. “Didn’t see that one coming. So you’re, what, on opposites sides of this scrap?”“Not exactly,” Cheshire objected. “Artemis claimed not to want the life, yet here she is.”“And I thought you hated Dad,” Artemis shot back, “Yet you’re working for the same lowlifes he does.”Kaldur found Orca in the ink-dark water by a mix of echolocation, Atlantean sorcery, and dumb luck, but he managed to get her to the surface and breathing again. With air in her lungs, she could float on instinct, but she was still barely conscious and bleeding bad. Kaldur cast a spell, but all it would do was keep her comfortable and prevent the bleed from getting any worse. Bioship touched down in the water nearby, and Kaldur towed the unconscious metahuman on board, laying her out on the floor while M’gann and Wally looked on, mortified.“Look,” said Roy, holding up his hands in surrender. “There’s clearly a lot going on here.” He and Red Hood shared another look. “Maybe it’s best we go our separate ways. Mask didn’t get his new toy, but at least he’s not dead. He won’t be back in Bludhaven anytime soon, either, which had to be Orca’s angle.” Artemis nodded grimly. “Bizarro’s out there somewhere, which isn’t great, but at least he’s not an enforcer for the False Faces.” “Aqualad to Watchtower,” said Kaldur, his voice measured but breaking. “We have an injured metahuman on board. She may need…specialized care, specifically Atlantean medicine.”“Acknowledged, Aqualad,” came Aquaman’s voice. “Tell us everything you know.”Kaldur sighed, looking up and down Orca’s injured form with fear in his eyes, but it was M’gann who spoke, her eyes glowing the way they did when she used her telepathy. “The patient’s name is Dr. Grace Balin. She was a human marine biologist who spliced her DNA with a killer whale to cure a degenerative spinal disease.”“So you know Cheshire?” Roy asked Red Hood as they exited the casino through the back.“Yeah,” Red Hood confirmed. “Long story.”Sirens wailed in the distance. Roy hesitated just outside the door. “Is she…”“Dangerous?” Red Hood interrupted. “A psychopathic criminal? Yes and yes.” “Right.” Roy cast a last look inside the casino as Bioship came into view overhead. “Well, it was good working with you.”Jason was already stepping into the shadows beneath a fire escape. “Yeah, likewise,” he agreed. “Let’s never do it again.”
“What happened in Bludhaven?”
The question was everything. Roy slept on the Watchtower the night after the Marcus casino incident. Except he didn’t; his muscles quaked from leftover adrenaline, and he couldn’t get out of his state of hyperarousal long enough to relax, much less sleep. He’d eventually crashed not long before the sun come up, and then it was time for breakfast, yoga, and his report.
“The Light…the Light was selling Bizarro to Black Mask.” He stopped, caught his breath while Ollie looked on patiently while Roy tried to remember where it all went wrong. “A local gang, Orca’s people, the Whale’s Enders, they crashed the meet. That’s when i went haywire. The Light’s agent got spooked and turned Bizarro loose to deal with Orca.” Ollie kept looking at him, expectant. “It got messy.”
Roy relaxed slightly; it was all true. He hadn’t lied to Ollie.
“Dr. Balin’s going to be fine,” said Oliver, changing the subject.
“She’s alive?” Roy shook his head in surprise. The height of her fall, the damage she took from the bullets and the way Bizarro had ragdolled her—he’d thought she was a lost cause. Ollie nodded solemnly.
“She’s in Atlantis with Kaldur, receiving the best care. The scientists down there are very interested in how she was able to splice her genes with a killer whale.” Roy nodded. Orca was a scientific miracle, worthy of study. Her DNA could link land and sea and create greater understanding between peoples, but she was also an inhuman monster. Roy had seen her sheer, animalistic bloodlust and the cold way she’d dispatched Black Mask’s men. His mind stuck on an image of her limping forward, maw full of blood and gore, determined to finish Black Mask, and he wondered whether they were truly better off with her alive.
“That’s enough for now,” Ollie told him. “You did good. Take care, and we’ll follow up if we have any questions.”
Roy nodded and left. The Watchtower’s library was a small room in its higher floors, away from the League’s tactical beating heart. Leaguers would use it for research, but otherwise it was usually unoccupied. Roy sat at a terminal and entered, “Crock, Jade.” No results.
He stopped, fingers resting on the keys. What did he really know about her? Last night she’d played a round of craps with him and some shady characters, possibly cheated, then proceeded to turn the casino ballroom to a warzone. Yet when he thought about her squabbling with Artemis, or hurling invective at the False Faces, he felt he understood her. She was a person with a life, hated her dad, fought with her sister. He closed his eyes, recalling the feeling he'd had the previous night, after the bullet stopped flying. Standing in the ballroom with Jade, Artemis, and Jason, Roy had a fleeting glimpse of life beyond the Justice League’s long shadow. Down there, there had been no judgment and no one to second-guess him. With a long look out the window at Earth, he deleted Jade’s name and typed “Cheshire.”
Jackpot. The League knew Jade’s date of birth, fighting style, schools, known associates, seemingly everything about her, except the fact that she was in Bludhaven last night—because he hadn’t told them. He and Cheshire had struck a deal, as equals, to keep the League out. Where was that pragmatic streak in their files? Or the subtle respect she and Jason shared? He searched for addresses, filtered by Bludhaven, and found one, a known League of Shadows safehouse on the boardwalk, a couple of blocks from the Marcus casino.
Roy returned to Gotham by Zetatube at lunchtime and took a train to Bludhaven, watching the surroundings go from bleak to hopeless with each stop. The graffiti beside the tracks grew fresher and lewder, and Roy started avoiding eye contact with passengers as they disembarked. He didn’t belong, but he was here by choice. Downtown Bludhaven always felt dangerous in a way that only the worst parts of Gotham or Star City could manage. He passed an adult bookstore with a full-length poster of a nude woman in the window, her private areas covered by sticky notes, and he fought an intrusive desire to go inside. It would be a lot safer, said a voice somewhere in his mind. In there the vice was contained within four walls. He could feel clean again the second he walked out, and he could go back to the train and the Watchtower with a clear conscience. He kept walking.
Roy’s pace quickened as he closed the distance to the safehouse, and he checked the address on his phone despite having it committed to memory. He was looking for a storeroom at ground level, accessible from the street, underneath the loud, bright world of the boardwalk. There it was—a nondescript door, no cars parked in front of it. He crossed the parking lot quickly, his eyes trained on the ground, and rapped on the door twice. His thoughts veered; what if Jade wasn’t here, or another assassin was using the safehouse? Had he just walked into a trap?
“Speedy,” said Jade evenly as the door opened. “Come in.”
She looked over his shoulder as he entered and shut the door quickly. Inside the safehouse was spartan but functional, with assault rifles and straight bladed ninjato swords on racks, cans of food and other necessities, and a desk furnished with a chair and a laptop. Roy’s mind flinched at the sight of the weapons, thinking those are meant to kill people like me. His eyes fell to the bed, an army-style twin fitted with white sheets and a wool blanket. Jade was barefoot in black joggers and a loose-fitting tank; a sports bra lay flat on a crate of MREs.
She sat on the bed and indicated the chair. Roy sat silent for a long second, taking in the room from this perspective before alighting on her.
“Roy,” he said, pointing at his face.
That got a smile. “Jade,” she replied, tucking her feet beneath her knees. “But you knew that.”
Roy took a breath and squared his shoulders. He held eye contact as he asked: “Why’d you want to sell Bizarro to Black Mask?”
Now Cheshire laughed, a mocking titter. “To make money,” she said, as if to a child. “Seriously, that’s how you start? The Arrow must not have taught you interrogation.” Roy’s eyes went wide, and he stared at the floor beneath her feet. “It’s okay,” Jade assured him. “I’m not judging you. My best-laid plans got wrecked by my kid sister last night, if you’re keeping score.”
Roy’s eyes didn’t leave the floor. He studied the hem of the sheet and contemplated how it would feel. “I’m sorry?” he tried, weakly.
“Tell me he at least taught you to read body language,” she went on. Roy looked up at her, feeling his face color. “You know, signs of attraction? The exposed neck?” She turned her head to one side, looking down at him past the bridge of her nose. “The coy smile? But really, it’s all in the hips.” She stood, looming over him while he tipped his head back slowly, taking her in an inch at a time. “I orient myself towards you, and I keep my arms at my sides, so you know I’m open.”
“I saw plenty of that at the craps table,” Roy prodded.
Cheshire grinned. “Yes, you did.” Roy stood instinctively and they were eye to eye, their breath mingling in the tiny space between them. His eyes strayed to her lips, and for a second he wondered if she was going to hurt him. He placed a hand on her waist and kissed her, and she balled his shirt in her fists and fell backwards with him onto the bed.
Roy descended on her, pressing his mouth to hers, relishing the heat of her body beneath him. Her arms wrapped around his chest and pulled his shirt over his head, and he started down her jaw, to her neck, to her collarbone. She shed her top quickly and he explored her chest, her nipples perked as his lips closed around them, one, then the other. Next her hands found his waist band and tugged, and then he was on hands and knees, chasing her up the bed as she slid back until her head was on the pillow. He exhaled as he entered her, thrusting desperately and relishing the squeak of the bedsprings.
A second later, he felt doubt and pushed up on his elbows, separating himself from her. He looked in her eyes, thoughts racing, but as he opened his mouth to speak, she interrupted him.
"Hang on."
She planted a foot and turned, flipping him on his back, then slid partway down the bed. When she took him in her mouth, he surged, hips rising off the sheet, and a hand tangled in her hair. Her lips slid up and down his length, Roy panting incoherently with each stroke, and then she was straddling him, taking him inside her as she leaned back on her forearms. Her muscles worked as she rocked back and forth, and Roy grasped the sheets and craned his neck into the pillow as he released inside her.