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Cassandra hummed as she flipped through the in-flight magazine. There'd been an article on sports tourism hinted at on the cover. Sadly, it wasn't sports she was interested in, but it did mention the Packers. As she'd touch down in Packer territory in twenty minutes, the article was halfway worth her time.
Her information on Vlad Masters was limited - the family hadn't started looking into him until last night - so all she had was his bio from Dalv, Co's website and his sparsely populated social media. Enough to tell he was a Packer fan.
She checked her watch, a little before nine am, as expected for the first flight from Gotham to Madison since the Gala. Cass walked the plane several times but hadn't seen Masters or Danny Fenton. Neutral news. She had a head start, but the pair were still unaccounted for.
She shuddered, remembering how Danny pushed himself to his feet outside the library. It hadn’t been natural. No one should have that amount of control over someone else.
Cass peeked out the window and saw the airport down below. Sliding the magazine back into the pouch, she leaned back and finalized her plan of action.
Since she beat them to Madison, she wanted to explore Masters’s house.
Wayne Manor was pricey, but not as ostentatious as other homes in the community. Vlad Masters made sure his house stood out, surrounded by flat lawns and composed of orange turrets with green flags hanging at the division between the first and second floors. The u-shaped drive, with different entrance and exit gates, was a security nightmare, but the dark cobblestones to and from the house were well placed. Zillow indicated it was an older house, built by a so-called ‘Dairy King’ in the late 1800s. Vlad had purchased it roughly ten years ago and had maintained the grounds better than the castle’s walls.
The security was light, focused on the road and gates, but there were a few unfamiliar sensors closer to the castle. Cass took photos of the red and grey devices and noted the stylized VC. She shook her head. Masters’ should have just named his company after himself properly instead of using his name backward. Had he been hoping to trick people?
Cass made her case of the house exterior quick, not sure how the Dalv, Co. sensors worked, but the castle was surprisingly open. It was easy to pick the lock of a back door. Lots of corners and shadows to hide in, and very little in terms of standard home security equipment. She did see a handful of Dalv, Co. items and wondered if his company was just a front for his own private collection of devices. Usually, villains hid those as low-publicity subsidiaries.
No matter, that was for Tim to figure out.
Still, Masters had gone through very little effort to hide himself or his actions. Did he not think he would get caught? Or didn’t care?
“Still can’t believe how dismal his security is,” Oracle says through Cass’s comms. “It’s suburban normal, but I expected more for a CEO’s house.
“Special tech,” Cass reminded her.
“That hasn’t sent alarms to an outside network. If you’re pinging something, it’s on an unmonitored intarnet.”
Cass hummed. The cold drip down her spine let her know she wasn’t alone, but the longer it stayed and the longer she saw no hint of a person, she convinced herself the house made her paranoid.
The League had been like that – the chance of being watched was so high Cass always assumed she was and acted accordingly. She slipped into the same tense habits in the castle – keeping to the shadows, minimizing time on the floor, staying out of assumed camera views, and suddenly freezing in an effort to trick a follower.
The cold sense of being watched never faded.
The castle was large, bigger than the manor, with a floor plan that was hard to map with half floors and towers and add-ons over the year. It screamed money, and not in the subtle way of Wayne Manor filled with modern furniture and tasteful décor. More like the old Rocco palaces – full to the brim with furniture and art and embellished crown molding. How much came from the ‘Dairy King’ and how much from Masters was a mystery, but the gallery full of Packer paraphernalia was Masters: jerseys in shadow boxes, twenty framed shares of ownership, a football plated in gold, costers in the shape of Lambeau Field.
Parts of the private living quarters were tamer, more tasteful in style, though Masters’s four-post King bed looked heavy enough to require super strength to move. The room was full of photographs and portraits of a red-haired woman. Cass originally assumed a dead lover, but the more she explored the more she realized that wasn’t the case. Some of the photos were blown up as if taken from a telephone lens. Some of when she was younger but oddly centered. There were a few of Danny too, but all candid and occasionally oddly cropped.
Cass stared at a photo of the woman with her arm around what looked to be a younger Masters. Her opposite arm was stretched out to the side, but the third person wasn’t visible and the frame too thick for Cass to guess anything about them.
“The woman is Madelyne, or Maddie, Fenton. Danny’s mom. Masters and the Fentons were college friends, but it looks like Masters never got over his schoolboy crush. She passed this fall. It’s how Danny ended up with Masters. He had custodial rights in their will.”
“Natural death?” Cass wondered if Masters organized the events leading to his possession of Danny.
“No. Something happened at the house. Danny shouldn’t have survived. Maybe didn’t, not completely.”
Yes, not if Danny could turn into a ghost. Maybe Masters’ had some sort of necromancy powers?
Cass gave one last look at the photo of Maddie and slipped out of the tower to find Masters’ office. All they had right now was guesses; they needed hard proof.
Her second day in Madison, Cass signed up for a public tour of Dalv, Co. It was not even an hour and focused on the company’s history and what it had done for Wisconsin. Master’s rapid expansion of the company provided jobs and Dalv, Co. was a leader in looking out for the mental health of its employees. Everyone got several hundred a year to pursue an ‘obsession’ or passion project.
Her non-public tour was longer. The buildings had a little more security than Masters’s home, but not much. The office building was easy to navigate, and she slipped a few USBS into a server here and there for Tim. Swiped a key card. Listened to a few meetings. Placed button cameras in key offices.
Dalv, Co. was surprisingly normal. A real company with real employees with real tech. Wayne Enterprises had a black ops budget that went to funding devices for nighttime personal use only, but even the odd devices in the mansion were for public sale. Masters was also heavily involved in the company – he created all of the products for Lyne Lines but left Dalv, Co. products to a team of engineers. He sent a lot of emails and attended a lot of meetings.
While people at the office credited Masters’s lack of contact as him finally enjoying a holiday break with his new ward, a few wondered about the lack of any email yesterday and today. Dalv, Co. would run without Masters, but Cass could already see how integral the man made himself to the company – from brokering deals and negotiations to constructing prototypes of new gear. But in two days, there’d been nothing from the man. And as people liked working with him and valued his opinion, someone would express concern soon.
They knew Masters was a villain, no one else could control Danny as he had. But other than an obsession with Maddie Fenton, there was nothing of concern. He was private, controlling even who could photograph him, but people liked him. Dalv, Co. wasn’t a front. None of his competitors have cried foul.
They’ve missed something.
Oracle broke the news after neither Bruce nor Damian shared with the family. It wasn’t standard, but it was a new angle. It was personal. They all needed to know.
Danny Fenton might be Danyal al Ghul, Damian’s baby brother who died at age four.
Cass wanted to take the jet, go to Nepal, to look, to ask. Go to Gotham and hug her baby brother.
“Don’t,” Barabra said kindly. “Damian and Bruce won’t handle the questions well. And now you have something else to check. Look for physical evidence of the League. A dagger in the right place could explain the sudden signing of some of those contracts.”
She’d investigated Madison so well these past five days, she would have found League evidence if there was any. But she looked anyway, eager for something to do. She followed rabbit trails, investigating the C-suite of Dalv, Co. Breaking into the office of the contractor Masters’ hired when he first bought his castle. Digging through records at the University of Wisconsin, staring at the transcripts of both Fenton’s and Masters.
Masters and Danny continued to be elusive.
Compared to the growing wasps' nest of anxiety in her brain Cass locked away every night, Madison was peaceful. Street thugs, not goons and rogues. Cass patrolled at night, home in the shadows and needing to move. She jumped between buildings with an earpiece in. She was too far away to help her family in Gotham, but she liked to know what they were doing. Her line stayed muted, family chatter in her ear while she free-ran.
When Jason explained the calmness of the Pits, she stopped and listened, body trembling.
She didn’t like thinking about her time with the League. It was useful, but not enjoyable. Lazarus Water, and the Pits they occupied, were the center of compound legonds. Hushed stories called the green water demon’s blood and a liquid monkey’s paw. It could give you life, but not the one you wanted. The promise of eternal life was a hard to sell to senior trainees and above; it took your body or it claimed your mind.
Jason struggled with it for so long, clawing his sense of self back constantly. To know that something could give it back to him? To think Danny could help?
Cass stood on the rooftop with her hands on her chest, happy for her brother. She wished she was there to sign her joy.
The night moved faster, the family racing to Bludhaven while Cass paced the roof.
“Stay,” Oracle repeated in the comms. “You cannot get there in time. But they might need you to do something there. Stay on the line.”
They found more children at Masters’s mercy and learned everything they missed.
The audio from Red Robin’s mic was faint, Cass kept raising the volume of her headset to hear better.
Ghosts and portals and ectoplasm and Danny breaking, being forced to break.
Ghost powers and ghost tech and cores. Obsessions.
What can she do in Madison? How can she help from afar?
And then she heard it.
“Just so I got it,” Rob Robin wound down the conversation, categorizing what they’ve learned. “For Danny’s health, he needs two things. One, to be able to protect who he’s identified as charges.”
“Which can be people or places.” Tucker Foley sounded young, but there was confidence in his voice. “He’s good if they’re safe, but needs the freedom to protect them just in case things happen.”
“Two, a constant supply of ectoplasm. The only reliable source for that is the Ghost Zone, and Masters controls access.”
“It’s in a secret basement of his house. It’s just a random hole in the ground, no doors. He and Danny turn intangible and drop through the floor to access it.”
“Go,” Oracle said in her ear, but Cass had moved as soon as she heard ‘secret basement’.
Cass didn’t have super strength. She can’t punch through a floor. But she didn’t need to break in with her fists. There were plenty of other options.
At this point, Cass was very familiar with the layout of the mansion. She started in the kitchen, if only because a destroyed kitchen was a huge hassle. She muted her comms, mic and speaker, secured noise-canceling headphones over her ears, and then placed the jackhammer directly in the center of the room.
It roared to life with a juga-chak and nearly vibrated out of her hands, but she braced herself on the floor and pushed down. Tile chips flew past her face, hitting the cabinets, the dishwasher. Dust started filling the air as she hit the concrete foundation. Cass pushed through until she hit dirt, the sudden softness unexpected. She turned the jackhammer off and stared at the hole. If there had been a secret room under the kitchen, she would have found it.
She paused to listen, but Masters’ instance on a large property meant no neighbors to hear. With a grin, Cass dragged the jackhammer through the house. She destroyed the floor in the Great Room, eating through a wool rug and hardwood. Shattered the tile in the bathroom, leaving it flooded. Turned on the machine in the middle of the Packer room, shaking the walls and sending frames crashing to the floor, glass twinkling on the floor. No room, hall, or corner if the room was large enough escaped the jackhammer. Cass took glee in imagining Masters’ eventual return to his wrecked house.
And still, no one came to make her stop. All those Lyne Line devices made sense now – his security system was not set up for humans.
She saved the library for last. Like a squirrel, she’d filled it over the night with things to save. Memorabilia Masters might want returned, photos of Maddie and Danny worth saving, a piece of art she genuinely liked and didn’t mind liberating. Cass moved her items to a safe space near the front door, before positioning the jackhammer on the floor.
Books fell from the walls, the plush carpet lasted seconds. Concrete dust plumed into the air, and then the jackhammer fell from her hands. Cass threw herself from the machine, then looked into the hole it made. Under the concrete was not earth, but another room. The jackhammer gave a few juga-chaks before falling silent.
Cass lept down, landing on a metal table. As Tucker had said, there was no door, just a concrete box four feet under the house. It was a mad scientist’s dream, full of technology Cass barely recognized but that one in the corner looked suspiciously like a cloning pod. Cass ignored everything, the vials and half-made devices and scattered papers, for the large blast doors in front of her.
They were tall, easily seven feet, and the frame two feet thick. On the other side was the Ghost Zone: the space between dimensions, a world of ghosts, and unlimited ectoplasm. Cass was curious, what did it look like, but she didn’t have time to indulge.
She turned her comms back on to a mess of chatter, Dick trying to help Jason, Tim talking down Masters.
“Found lab,” she told Barbara.
“Look for glowing green vials. Take as many as you can.”
Cass ransacked the place. The mansion was already trashed, who cared that she tossed things to the floor? In a bag she stuffed every file, hard drive, and flash drive she found. The jackpot was a mini fridge and the two racks of glass vials filled with Lazarus Water. She carefully placed them in a cooler. Her babiest brother would need them.
It was tough climbing out of the lab, she worried about the motion of swings on the vials, but once on the first floor, it was time to go.
“Twenty-four,” she told Barbara.
Cass didn’t get an acknowledgment right away, but eventually, Barbara’s voice cut through the silence.
“Masters left the ice rink, and presumably is flying toward Madison. I don’t know his speed, so get out as soon as you can, Orphan.”
Cass had already loaded her stolen car with her treasures from the mansion. She took three seconds to take a photo of the damage she’d done to the front hallway, then peeled out of the driveway grinning.
It would take a fortune to fix all that vandalism.