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Tim frowned at the batcomputer. This was the third time this month where the perpetrator of a theft remembered nothing. While normally, Tim would think they were lying, these were average normal people. They would have no reason to steal this kind of high tech stuff or have the ability to lie about it so effectively afterwards.
He reviewed the camera footage again. It wasn’t much help, as soon as the perpetrator stepped into view of the camera the footage became grainy and glitchy.
Wait a second. Tim rewound the footage and played it frame by frame. There. For only a moment, the thief looked towards the cameras. There was a red glow emitted from the thief's eyes. Tim frowned. It could just be an effect of the glitchy footage, but… He pulled up the footage from the other two robberies. One of them didn’t ever show the thief’s eyes, but the second one did for just a moment. They also had glowy red eyes.
Tim leaned back in the batchair. It couldn’t be a coincidence that two of the three thefts were committed by thieves whose eyes glowed red.
Tim reviewed the data they’d collected on the thieves. None of them showed signs of metahuman abilities, and there was no connection between the thieves either. The only thing they knew was that the thefts were each committed by a technician working at the robbed companies.
Tim tapped his finger against the keyboard. Could it be a third party? Someone controlling the thieves? And if they were, how? Was it technology like the Mad Hatter, or was it some kind of meta ability? And what were they after? It was three separate companies that were affected, each having a top secret project stolen. Tim still needed to finish hacking the companies to see what exactly had been stolen. Was it just a competitor wanting to get ahead? Or did they need all the components to create something else?
So, he needed to figure out what was stolen, why it was stolen, and who was behind the robberies if it wasn’t the ones caught on camera. He tapped on the edge of his keyboard and reached for his coffee.
“Nuh uh.” someone said, grabbing his coffee. Tim turned to glare at Dick.
“Give it back.”
“No can do, Timbo, you already had coffee today.”
Tim froze. There was no way Dick knew about the coffee machine Tim had hidden in his room.
“No, I didn’t.” he crossed his arms. He wouldn’t give anything away.
Dick leaned on the edge of the desk taking a sip of Tim’s coffee before scowling at the bitterness. “Come on, Tim. I saw you at that little coffee shop you like.”
What? Tim had been in the cave all day. “Dick, I’ve been here all day. You can check the footage.”
Dick rolled his eyes. “As if you couldn’t alter the footage.”
Tim frowned because that was true.
“Yes. But I didn’t go to Deathpresso. You know Alfred banned me.”
Dick raised an eyebrow. Tim scowled. Finally, Dick rolled his eyes one more time before turning to leave.
“Fine. But I know what I saw. And I saw you buying a death wish coffee. You can’t convince me otherwise.”
Tim scowled after him. He hadn’t gone to the coffee shop today. He’d snuck over there yesterday, but that was beside the point. Tim narrowed his eyes. Dick did seem pretty convinced so either he’d seen someone that looked like Tim, or they had a clone problem. While Tim himself hadn’t been cloned yet, that they knew of, Damian had been cloned several times. And Tim wouldn’t put it past Ra’s to clone him. That man was obsessed.
Ugh. Tim didn’t have time for this. It was probably some random stranger Dick had mistaken for Tim. Besides, if Tim had been cloned by Ra’s the clone wouldn’t waste time going to coffee shops.
Nope.
It was just a random stranger. Tim had other things to worry about right now. He’d look at the coffee shop security camera footage later.