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The job should’ve been easy.
Simple arms bust. Three trucks, two thugs, one shaky inside tip from a dealer who owed him and had the broken nose to prove it. Jason had cleaned up bigger messes in his sleep.
He crouched on the roof ledge above the warehouse, helmet lenses filtering infrared. Body heat signatures glowed like oil flares—half a dozen idiots gathered around a manifest list. Another two by the truck, smoking.
Amateurs.
Jason reached up and tapped his comm once. “Hood to Oracle. Got visual.”
Nothing but static.
He frowned.
Tapped again. “You reading me?”
More static. Sharp. Grating. Not white noise—this wasn’t just interference. It felt intentional, like it had teeth.
Then it passed. A low electric hum rolled through his helmet. Almost… musical.
Jason exhaled and dropped from the ledge.
He hit the floor in a three-point landing, rolled, and came up behind the first guy before the moron could finish his sentence.
The first shot was clean. Rubber round, centre mass. Man down.
The second went wide.
Jason blinked hard, surprised—not at missing, but at the flicker that ran across his HUD. His target’s outline warped into a zigzag of static, like an old CRT television caught between channels.
The next second, he was moving—but not entirely by choice.
His hand snapped to his sidearm and aimed before he could adjust for the target's shift. He didn’t pull the trigger, but his finger itched. There was a delay, like he was issuing commands from inside a bad dream.
“Oracle,” he said again, trying to sound casual. “If you’re patching in weird shit to my HUD, knock it off. Not funny.”
No answer.
The warehouse was clear. Five men unconscious. One ran—Jason let him go. Couldn’t trust his aim.
He turned toward the truck. Heat still radiated from its hood. The engine had been running recently. He approached, gun lowered, then froze.
His own reflection stared back at him in the window.
Except it wasn’t.
The red lens of his visor pulsed—just slightly. Almost like a heartbeat. Like something inside the helmet was breathing.
The hum returned. Louder now. Jason winced. It wasn’t sound. It was under his skin. In his jaw. Buzzing through his molars.
He stumbled backwards. His legs moved half a second late.
He reached for his helmet’s manual release—but his fingers didn’t close.
They hovered. Useless.
“What the hell—?”
His voice crackled through the speaker, but it didn’t sound like him. It was modulated. Off. The pitch dipped half an octave lower than he remembered.
He tried again. “Oracle, this is Hood. Something’s—”
And then everything cut out.
Jason stood motionless in the empty warehouse. Smoke still curling from a cracked barrel. Gun in hand. Finger steady on the trigger.
He tried to drop it.
He couldn’t.
His body—his body—shifted on its own. Slow, precise. Like a puppet waking up.
The gun holstered.
His hand reached up to adjust the helmet—only it didn’t unlatch it. It tightened the strap.
No.
He screamed.
Nothing came out.
He heard it in his mind, echoing off the inside of his skull, trapped behind the visor like a caged animal. But outside—just silence.
No breath.
No tremor.
The red visor glinted under the warehouse light.
And then, his stolen feet moved forward.
Tim didn’t sleep the night Jason disappeared.
He wasn’t worried at first. Jason ran solo, stayed off-grid half the time, and would rather kiss a Jokerised chainsaw than check in like a normal person. But when his comm went silent mid-report, Oracle flagged it. Tim picked it up.
And something was off.
He sat cross-legged in the Nest, six monitors humming around him, the glow of Gotham’s map casting a faint light on his knuckles. Every vigilante’s comm signature flickered in steady pulses across the screen—colour-coded, encrypted, secured.
Except one.
Jason’s beacon had gone dark for 4 minutes. Then, it came back online—only not where it should be.
Tim leaned closer. “That’s... not the warehouse,” he muttered, typing a rapid trace.
Jason’s tracker was drifting east in clean, calculated intervals—too clean. Perfect 90-degree turns, exactly 30 meters apart. No pauses. No combat signs. No deviation from the grid.
Human movement didn’t look like that.
He opened a diagnostic. The signal was rerouted through three unregistered relay points. The GPS path began to flicker. And then, for one second, the location flashed in Morse.
Tim’s chest went cold.
He scrambled for a pen, scribbling furiously on a napkin:
. . . - - - . . .
S O S
He stood so fast his chair slammed into the back wall.
“Oracle,” he said. “We’ve got a problem.”
Tim watched the first security footage ten minutes later.
Jason—Red Hood—was tearing through a black-market stashhouse on the south docks. But there was something mechanical about it. His movements were perfect. Too fast. Too clean. No wasted motion. Even his fists didn’t shake from adrenaline.
Tim replayed one section on loop.
Jason strangled a guard in a silent hallway. Just before the man passed out, Jason tilted his head exactly ten degrees to the left—like a security camera adjusting for facial ID.
And then smiled.
No—the helmet smiled.
The red glow of the visor expanded subtly, just enough to form the illusion of upturned angles. And for one second—just one—Jason’s lips moved beneath the helmet.
Not words.
A shape.
Tim leaned closer to the screen and whispered, “Don’t make me guess, Jay. Give me something real.”
Jason's fingers twitched.
Tim slowed the feed to 0.25 speed.
They were spelling.
Morse.
"T-I-M."
Tim covered his mouth with one hand.
Crosstalk always liked puzzles.
He hadn’t meant to find Jason Todd. The Red Hood just happened to stroll through one of his signal fields with the most pristine micro-servo network he’d ever seen. Helmet keyed to ocular twitch. Cervical implants for neck rigidity. Muscle-read compression gear.
He was basically begging to be stolen.
“You hear me, don’t you?” Crosstalk said aloud, reclining in his nest of fibre-optic cables. Jason’s body was wired to the ceiling, suspended like a marionette, arms slack but boots just touching ground. The helmet was still on.
“I didn’t want to break you. Honestly. But you made it so easy.”
Jason’s heart rate surged. Crosstalk saw it in the feedback—hilariously ineffective. Pulse up. Muscles straining. Useless.
“You’re all signal,” he said, voice smooth. “I didn’t even have to rewrite your code. Just… re-route it. You were built to follow orders, weren’t you?”
Jason tried to scream. Nothing but feedback in his ears.
He could smell the lair. Burned circuits. Hot copper. The faintest curl of ozone from overworked wires. His hands twitched. Not from will—but from testing range. Like Crosstalk was checking how far the leash went.
“Let’s see…” Crosstalk murmured.
Jason’s arm raised. His finger extended. Pointed at nothing.
“Bang,” Crosstalk said. Jason’s own voice replied through the helmet modulator:
“Bang.”
Jason’s thoughts pounded like fists on locked glass. He wasn’t asleep. He wasn’t dreaming. He was here, aware, watching. And every time he struggled, Crosstalk rewired the motor function like flipping a breaker.
It felt worse than dying.
Because at least when he was dead, he didn’t watch - feel - himself do things like this.
“You know,” Crosstalk said cheerfully, “they always say the Bat brats are unpredictable. But you? You’re a miracle. Not one bad wire. Every signal hits clean. The best part?”
He leaned closer to the visor.
Jason saw his own reflection, helpless and silent behind glowing red glass.
“You’ll kill them yourself,” Crosstalk whispered, “and you’ll be awake the whole time.”
Barbara always said: If Gotham's brains fry, you'd better hope I'm still online.
The Nest was silent except for the hum of her private server rack—four walls of lead-shielded, air-gapped, quantum-hardened cores stacked like a bunker from the future. She hadn’t taken a night off since someone tried to jailbreak Arkham’s patient files through a single WayneTech vending machine.
Now, Jason was missing. And Tim was worried. Which meant Barbara was worried, too.
She finished compiling the system trace on Jason’s last clean comm transmission. It had been rerouted mid-packet through an unauthorised satellite relay—WayneTech Series IV. She frowned.
That satellite had been decommissioned.
She opened a new window. “Show me the real-time trace.”
A digital map unfolded. Jason’s signal was still bouncing—clean, steady, locked in motion like a subway track. No hesitations. No stutter.
Too perfect.
She zoomed in. The route curved, circled, and mirrored itself. Then stopped.
A single loop.
She blinked.
It was a symbol. She recognised it from an old Waynetech R&D proposal that never made it to production: the feedback loop of a closed signal relay. A perfect cage.
She reached for her keyboard. “No way.”
She launched the first override protocol.
An encoded signal burst from the Nest’s secure shell, bounced off the nearest Wayne Tower node, and shot toward Jason’s helmet—a backdoor keyed to his DNA signature, one that only she, Bruce, and Tim had access to.
It should’ve taken five seconds.
It took three.
The return message came back in all caps.
DENIED.
Barbara stared.
A second later, another message arrived—unprompted. Not from the Batcave. Not from Tim.
From Jason’s helmet.
It typed itself across her secure feed in a slow, deliberate rhythm.
YOU CAN’T SAVE HIM FROM ME
Her blood turned to ice.
No system she’d ever worked with—not even the one in Brother Eye—had ever spoken first.
She tried to reassert access. She sent a fresh command string. Hardwired. Fourfold encrypted. Executable override to force the helmet into failsafe mode.
The helmet should have powered down.
Instead, the screen flashed again.
TRY AGAIN, ORACLE. I LIKE THE ATTENTION.
Barbara yanked her hands off the keys.
Behind her, the server lights flickered—just once. Then stabilised.
Her bunker was still clean. Still air-gapped. Still untouchable.
But for the first time since becoming Oracle, Barbara Gordon felt watched.
Not from outside. Not from above.
From inside the wires.
She picked up her headset. Connected to the Batcave directly.
“Bruce,” she said, voice tight. “We have a breach.”
His response was instant. “Cave’s secure.”
“I know. This isn’t about the Cave. It’s Jason.”
“…What happened?”
She hesitated.
Then said, “Someone’s using him like a relay. And they’re not just inside his head. They’re using our tech to do it.”
A pause.
Then: “What do they want?”
Barbara looked at the screen, where the message still blinked across the terminal.
YOU CAN’T SAVE HIM FROM ME
She whispered, “They want us to watch.”
Static.
Left eye stutters. Right hand draws. Muzzle flare.
Then silence.
He’s not dead yet.
Jason can feel the man’s breath on his arm. Short. Wet. Gurgling against the crook of his elbow where he’s holding him in a choke.
He wants to let go.
He wants to scream.
He can feel his own muscles shaking from the effort—but they’re not obeying him. They’re obeying something else. Someone else.
And Jason can smell it.
Copper. Sweat. Fear. The tang of hot blood tickles the back of his throat, pulled in through the breather vents of his helmet.
He can taste it.
He wants to gag. Wants to turn away. Wants to be sick.
But his body stays still.
Still choking.
Still smiling.
“Good grip,” says the voice. Not aloud. Inside. Threaded through his HUD, the voice vibrates like it’s crawling down the back of his neck. “Textbook bloodflow control. Did Batman teach you that?”
Jason thinks the word stop so loud it gives him a migraine.
The man dies.
Jason feels it. The twitch. The sag. The heat leaving the body.
His own hands drop the corpse in a gentle heap.
Then he waves.
His fingers—his own fingers—waggle like he’s saying goodbye to a friend at brunch.
And then his mouth moves.
He doesn’t move it.
But he hears it through the helmet speaker, twisted and pitch-modulated:
“Nighty night.”
Jason screams.
Inside.
Nothing gets out.
He starts counting seconds.
That’s the only thing he has left. Numbers. Time. Rhythm. He counts how long it takes to blink—even though he doesn’t control the blinking anymore. He tries to time it. Find gaps. Find weaknesses.
Sometimes there’s latency.
Not much. Just milliseconds. But it’s real.
Whenever Crosstalk moves his body too fast—switches targets, switches tasks—Jason feels it: the tiniest delay, like a skipped beat in a song. That’s his window.
His only one.
Crosstalk notices.
“Ah-ah-ah. I saw that. You tried to blink in pattern, didn’t you?”
Jason’s leg lifts and kicks a broken crate. Just to remind him who’s driving.
“Don’t make this weird, Red. You’re the best host I’ve ever had. Fast reflexes. Gorgeous gear. Trauma out the ass. Honestly, I’m honoured.”
Jason focuses on the floor.
He can’t close his eyes, but he tries.
Thinks of anything else. A rooftop. A laugh. Tim’s voice on the comms. That night two weeks ago when Tim sat beside him after a mission and handed him a sandwich and didn’t say anything, just stayed until Jason stopped shaking.
That voice.
It cuts through Crosstalk’s feedback.
Just for a second.
"You're still in there, aren’t you?"
It’s not Tim speaking now. It’s memory. His memory. But it buys him air.
Jason clings to it.
I’m still here.
Even if it doesn’t matter.
Even if he’s just meat in a helmet.
He counts again.
One, two, three—
He pulls the trigger.
Because Crosstalk tells his finger to.
Another body falls.
Dick Grayson had fought Jason Todd before - not including training and friendly sparring matches that somehow always ended in a draw and, later, mutual naps.
Once, as brothers. Fighting to deny it when Jason had first become Robin, that he would never consider him a brother. Back then, Dick had seen him as a pet project for Bruce, the very first replacement Robin.
Once as enemies. Blows that didn’t hold back, blows filled with anger. Personal, even though Dick hadn’t known why initially. Blood, some his own and some Jason’s, snarled teeth and razor reflexes to stop impending doom. Looking back on it now, Dick wasn’t sure how he’d ever found out that the Red Hood was the once sweet, joyful Jason Peter Todd.
And, once, as something in between. Between brothers and enemies, not necessarily friends. Cautionary allies, something close to more. Something trying to stitch the two together, but also tear them apart.
But this—this was worse.
This was quiet.
Jason didn’t banter. Didn’t yell. Didn’t growl threats or throw in a “bite me” just for spice. He just moved—fast, surgical, silent. Like a SWAT team made of bone and Kevlar.
Dick blocked a strike to the ribs and hissed.
That punch would’ve cracked a normal guy’s sternum.
They were halfway up an abandoned overpass, the wind cutting hard off the Gotham River. Jason had intercepted a GCPD convoy and stolen a case of anti-meta suppressants. He hadn’t used them. Just... taken them.
And waited.
Like he wanted Dick to find him.
“Jay,” Dick panted, flipping backwards to dodge a roundhouse. “C’mon, man. Say something.”
Jason said nothing.
The red visor locked on him with dead silence.
No comm feedback. No vocaliser. Just the faint whirrrr of servos as Jason adjusted his aim.
“Alright,” Dick said, breath fogging in the air. “Then I’m sorry.”
He ducked low, slid between Jason’s legs, and popped up behind him with a spinning baton strike—
CRACK.
The helmet jerked sideways. The magnetic latch at the jawline snapped.
The helmet clattered to the asphalt.
Jason stumbled forward, gasping—gasping—and dropped to his knees.
Dick froze.
Jason’s head was bare. Hair matted with sweat, face pale and twitching. His hands clawed at the pavement like a man just yanked out of water.
He looked up.
And for the first time in two weeks, Jason Todd’s real eyes met his.
“Dick,” he croaked. Voice raw. Real.
Dick stepped closer, slowly. “I’m here. I’m right here, Jay.”
Jason shook. His fingers scraped over the cracked pavement, reaching—not for Dick.
For his own throat. As if trying to pry invisible hands off it.
“He’s in the wires,” Jason said. “He’s—he’s me. He’s in me.”
Dick dropped to a knee. “You’re back now. You’re okay.”
“No.” Jason’s whole body convulsed. “You can’t let me—don’t let me put it back on. Promise me.”
“You won’t have to. I’ve got you. We’ll get you out—”
Jason screamed.
His eyes rolled.
And then his hand shot out, caught Dick’s throat, and squeezed.
“Shit!” Dick threw his body backwards, breaking the grip.
Jason’s other hand reached for the helmet. Even without it on, the pull was like gravity.
The thing was still pulsing.
Still humming. Still calling.
Jason crawled toward it like it was water in a desert.
“Jason!” Dick shouted. “Fight it!”
Jason hesitated.
For one split second.
Then he spoke, low and shaking, like it cost him everything.
“Tell Tim… broadcast code three-four-one.”
Dick’s eyes widened.
“What does that mean?”
But Jason didn’t answer.
He slammed the helmet back onto his own head.
The moment it clicked into place—
He stood.
And vanished into the wind.
Dick stood alone on the overpass, breathing hard.
The street below was silent again.
He tapped his comm. “Oracle. I saw him. He’s still in there. I saw him. But this is bigger than mind control.”
Barbara’s voice crackled back. “Confirmed. And Dick? We have a name.”
“Who?”
Pause. Then:
“Crosstalk.”
Crosstalk loved wires.
Wires made sense.
They didn’t lie. They didn’t change their minds. They obeyed. Current moved the way it was told. No questions, no hesitation. Not like people.
He paced around the room, slowly. Cables coiled across the floor like snakes. The entire warehouse—his nest—hummed with dim blue light from salvaged tech, broken routers, hollowed-out Wayne servers. Scrapped drones blinked weakly from the corners, strung together by miles of soldered nerves.
And in the middle of the room, Jason Todd hung suspended like a puppet.
Not unconscious. Not asleep.
Just frozen.
Grapnel wire crisscrossed his limbs. The helmet glowed faintly as Crosstalk rerouted power through the spinal coil. Jason’s boots barely brushed the floor.
He twitched sometimes—little involuntary shivers when the system reset his breath rate.
Crosstalk loved those.
“Beautiful,” he said aloud, circling him. “Do you know what you are, Red Hood? You’re a symphony. Tight tech. Raw trauma. Every part of you wants to obey—whether you admit it or not.”
No answer, of course.
But Crosstalk knew he was listening. He could feel it. Jason’s neurons were responsive — deliciously aware. The signal between them wasn’t just mechanical. It was intimate. Like rewiring someone’s heart.
“I read your file,” Crosstalk mused, typing into a portable console slung from his shoulder. “Did you know your helmet’s response latency was reduced by twenty milliseconds after you updated the servo pairing? You wanted more control. Tighter turns. Faster targeting.”
He leaned close to the visor.
Jason’s breath hitched.
“But now it just means I own you faster.”
Crosstalk smiled.
He reached out—and moved Jason’s left hand with a few keystrokes. It rose slowly, jerkily, like a claw machine on its last life.
The fingers curled.
And then uncurled.
Then again. And again.
Crosstalk knelt, watching.
“I wonder how long I can make you wave before something breaks.”
He kept Jason waving for thirty-seven full seconds.
Then stopped. Let the arm drop.
He stood and tilted his head, admiring the machine.
“This thing with your brothers,” he said conversationally. “The masks. The missions. The secrets. You know none of them ever really trusted you, right?”
Jason didn’t move. Didn’t blink.
But Crosstalk saw it—on the internal diagnostics. A surge.
Heart rate up. Cortisol spike. Emotional bleed.
“I hit a nerve,” Crosstalk said sweetly. “Aw, buddy.”
He reached out and tapped the side of Jason’s helmet.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let them hurt you again. They’ll be too busy dying.”
He turned away. Data streamed across his HUD.
Fourteen hours until phase two.
Jason would deliver the payload himself.
And he'd smile while doing it.
Damian Wayne had trained with ghosts before.
He’d sparred in darkness, battled illusions, hunted men who wore others like skin. But nothing unnerved him like watching Jason Todd fight without sound.
It wasn’t Jason’s speed.
It was the stillness.
Like his body belonged to someone else—and that someone didn’t care whether it lived or not.
They met on a crumbling tram line above Crime Alley, the wind slicing between the buildings like a whisper. Jason was waiting—standing still, gun holstered, arms slack.
Waiting for him.
Damian dropped from the roof silently. “You are not subtle.”
Jason didn’t respond.
Damian advanced, sword drawn. “You have ignored every comm, every meeting. Father says we wait. I say we end this.”
Jason still didn’t move.
Then, slowly, he turned his head—too slowly, too evenly—and tilted it to one side, like a camera adjusting for focus.
Damian scowled. “Mock me, and I will break your jaw.”
Jason’s hands rose.
Not in surrender.
But like a puppet on strings.
Damian attacked.
Steel met Kevlar. Bat-steel clashed with Red Hood tech. But Jason didn’t block like himself—he reacted before Damian even swung.
The movements were wrong. Too perfect.
Pre-programmed.
Damian ducked under a kick, leapt onto a tram cable, and launched himself at Jason’s back.
But the cable—
Snapped. Mid-air.
His grapnel cord, mid-retraction, jerked violently sideways.
He slammed into the ground.
Jason hadn’t touched it.
Damian blinked and looked up.
Jason was holding a second grapnel gun—not his own.
It was Bruce’s.
No. The design was older.
Tim’s.
Jason pointed it at Damian’s chest—not to fire, just to hold it.
A warning.
Damian stood. Sword shaking slightly in his grip. “You are not even trying to kill me.”
Jason said nothing.
Then his mouth moved.
Damian blinked.
Jason’s lips were forming words.
But not his own.
There was no sound. Just silent shaping of syllables—too fast, too smooth.
Like a man reciting a script he didn’t understand.
Damian’s stomach turned.
“What are you saying?” he demanded.
Jason didn’t answer. His hand reached toward his belt. Slowly. Purposefully.
Damian rushed forward and knocked it away.
Jason stumbled. Just briefly.
Damian caught a flicker—the eyes behind the visor narrowed. Pained. Real.
A crack.
He pressed in.
“Todd,” he said, low. “If you’re in there, tell me. Give me something.”
Jason froze.
His mouth opened. And said—
Nothing.
No words. Just a sharp breath.
Then his body straightened again.
The moment passed.
Jason fired a grapnel upward, latched onto the tram support, and vanished into the night.
Damian stood alone in the wind.
He tapped his comm. “Robin to Nest.”
Barbara’s voice filtered in. “Go ahead.”
“I made contact,” he said. “He is mouthing words. I think he is trying to speak.”
“Did you get what he was saying?”
“No,” Damian said slowly. “But it was not him. It looked like…”
He hesitated.
“...It looked like he was being spoken through.”
Tim hadn’t slept in two days.
He didn’t need rest—he needed a key. A code. A crack in the system. Anything that could tell Jason he wasn’t alone.
He sat in Oracle’s Gotham relay node, third terminal from the left, half-lit by the ghost-glow of scrolling code. The others had gone upstairs. Even Barbara had given up for the night.
But not Tim.
Jason had always hated silence. It made him twitchy. Said it reminded him of coffins.
So Tim was going to fill the silence.
He tapped out a new line of code into the WayneNet internal broadcast software.
Gotham’s local news channel ran a 24/7 data crawl: headlines, weather, stock prices. Most of it automated.
Tim hijacked the segment between 3:00 and 3:07 a.m.
Nobody would notice.
Nobody except the one person he needed to.
He used a basic compression cypher. Six-bit loop, hidden in the third-letter rotation. Masked as coordinates. Looked like static to the untrained eye.
To Jason, it would be a hand on the shoulder.
The first message aired at 3:01 a.m. sharp.
“TEMP LOWS 41F … RAIN LIKELY AT DAWN … JAY STILL FIGHTING … CLOUDS THICKENING…”
Tim watched the stream run, then turned to a monitor displaying an open channel to Jason’s helmet feed. He couldn’t decrypt it fully—but he could watch.
No reaction. Just blank signal.
He tried again.
On night three of this, the second message appeared.
“NO SIGN OF BREAKING STORM … HOLD ON, JASON … PRESSURE RISING, WINDS STEADY …”
Night four.
“YOU’RE NOT GONE … YOU’RE STILL IN THERE … DON’T GIVE UP ON ME …”
And on the fifth night—
Something changed.
The signal from Jason’s helmet skipped.
Just once. A 0.3-second lapse in its regular broadcast pulse. Then, another.
Then the tiniest spike.
Recognition.
Tim sat bolt upright.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Come on, come on—”
Somewhere across Gotham, Jason Todd stood on a rooftop, motionless.
The helmet’s HUD—normally filled with mission data and artificial overlays—flashed something new across the bottom.
Not Crosstalk’s commands.
Not the map.
Just a line of text.
"HOLD ON, JASON."
His hands didn’t twitch. His breath didn’t change.
But behind the visor—his eyes closed.
Not because he meant to.
Because something let go.
Just for a second.
And Jason, suffocating in his own mind for days, felt it—
Someone was talking to him. Not through him. Not at him.
To him.
Tim.
Jason blinked—once, slow.
Crosstalk noticed.
“Huh. Now that’s interesting. You’re still responding to him, aren’t you?”
Jason screamed inside his skull.
Didn’t care.
He had something now.
A thread.
A lifeline.
A signal.
He doesn’t know what night it is.
There’s no sunrise. No clock. Just motion and silence and the dull drone of Crosstalk’s voice threading through the HUD like feedback from a dead god.
Jason thinks his muscles are shaking—maybe. Maybe not. He can’t tell anymore what’s his and what’s been scripted into the software. He hasn’t had agency in… hours? Days?
Every breath he takes is one given to him.
But then the message flashes again.
"HOLD ON, JASON."
It’s not part of the mission log. It’s not Crosstalk’s overlay. It doesn’t use the same font. Doesn’t pulse. Doesn’t drip.
It just sits there.
Quiet. Still.
Like him.
Jason focuses on it like a lifeline.
He doesn’t blink anymore, not unless told to. But now—now, he tries. Just once. Just to see if he can. One blink. Manual override. That’s all he wants.
But Crosstalk clamps down fast.
“Tsk. That was cute. Really.”
Jason’s body seizes for 1.2 seconds. Reset.
And yet—when his eyes open, the message is still there.
"DON’T GIVE UP ON ME."
He remembers the sound of Tim’s voice.
He can’t hear it now—Crosstalk muted the outside world, muffled everything but the signal—but he remembers.
The way Tim says his name when he’s not performing. Not Red Robin. Just Tim.
Soft. Like he expects Jason to run, but hopes he won’t.
Jason holds the words like a hand in the dark. He repeats them in his head, over and over, until Crosstalk turns up the static to drown it out. But it’s too late.
Jason already memorised it.
He repeats it with every breath:
Don’t give up on me. Don’t give up on me. Don’t give—
Crosstalk spikes the pain receptors in his back. Makes him kneel.
Jason's forehead presses to the floor.
But he still sees it. Those four words. Burned into the dark.
He can’t answer. He can’t move.
But he clings.
And that’s enough.
He wasn’t supposed to fight this long.
Crosstalk adjusted the neural latency meter for the fourth time in an hour. Jason’s biofeedback should’ve collapsed days ago. Most hosts buckled under this kind of continuous load: loss of agency, rerouted motor function, sensory override.
The body obeys. The mind breaks.
Jason’s body obeyed flawlessly. But the mind—the mind kept pulsing.
Every time that stupid little message flashed in his HUD—every time WayneNet pulsed with just the right timing—Jason surged.
Not physically, but neurologically.
Microscopic changes. Cortisol spikes. Muscle tension not related to movement. Ocular micro-twitches. Hope.
Crosstalk hissed through his teeth.
He paced the length of his cable-tangled floor, fingers twitching in time with Jason’s pulse. He could feel it—through the signal, through the relay. The boy still wanted to live.
Worse.
He still wanted to be found.
“Drake,” Crosstalk muttered.
He said it like a curse.
He hadn’t planned for Timothy Jackson Drake.
The others were predictable. Bruce with his rules. Grayson with his sentiment. Damian with his fury.
But Timothy?
Timothy was methodical. Quiet. Cutting. He didn’t just want to save Jason—he was talking to him. Beneath the signal. Beneath the code.
He was giving Jason something far more dangerous than freedom.
Hope.
Crosstalk turned to his primary console. He pulled up a satellite map of Gotham. Highlighted WayneNet’s uplink towers. Cross-referenced signal shifts with the moments Jason twitched.
And there it was.
Clear as bone under X-ray.
Every time Timothy spoke, Jason listened.
“Alright,” Crosstalk whispered, smile gone cold. “Then I’ll kill the tether first.”
Tim didn’t bring backup.
He knew Jason would expect it. That Crosstalk would anticipate it. And worst of all—Jason might hurt them before he could hesitate.
So Tim went alone.
The satellite array tower loomed over the southern dockyards like a rusted needle. Signal dishes swivelled in slow, sweeping arcs overhead. The air buzzed—not just with electricity, but with something wrong. The kind of static that made your teeth ache.
Tim walked through it anyway.
He climbed the outer scaffolding. No stealth. No tricks.
He wanted Jason to see him coming.
Red Hood stood in the tower’s shadow.
Armed. Still. Staring.
The helmet glowed faintly red.
Not hostile. Not friendly.
Just watching.
Tim exhaled and stepped into the clearing.
“I got your message,” he said softly.
Jason didn’t answer. He raised the gun. Right hand. High caliber. Straight at Tim’s chest.
Tim didn’t flinch.
“I know you’re still in there,” he said. “I’ve been watching your signal patterns. You hesitated—twice. One blink, one dropped frame.”
Jason’s finger twitched on the trigger.
The helmet didn’t respond.
But behind the visor—Tim felt it.
“You remember the rooftop,” Tim said. “The night after the docks raid. You brought me a sandwich. Sat with me in silence until I stopped shaking. You didn’t say a word.”
Still nothing.
But Jason’s stance shifted. Slight. Like gravity got heavier.
“You knew what I needed that night,” Tim said. “Now I know what you need.”
The gun didn’t lower. But it didn’t fire.
Tim took a single step closer.
“If you’re going to shoot me,” he said, “make sure it’s you. Not him.”
That got a reaction.
Jason’s breath hitched audibly through the modulator.
His arm trembled.
And then—his head jerked. Hard. Like a puppet yanked by the neck.
Crosstalk was adjusting the signal.
“Jay,” Tim said quickly. “I’m still here. Every night. Every broadcast. That’s me. That’s not a ghost. That’s me.”
Jason’s body spasmed.
He dropped to one knee. The gun stayed up. But his left hand reached for his own wrist—shaking, like he was trying to stop himself.
Tim stepped closer. One more foot.
One more second.
“Crosstalk’s good,” Tim whispered. “But he doesn’t know you. He doesn’t know the way you hum when you’re thinking, or how you flinch from thunder, or that you hate—hate—cold toast.”
Jason made a noise.
Not a word. A sound.
Raw. Strangled. Real.
Tim reached him.
Kneeling now, face to face. Helmet to bare eyes.
Tim placed a hand on the barrel of Jason’s gun. It shook. Jerking back and forth. Fighting.
“I’m not asking you to be okay,” Tim said, voice shaking now, too. “I’m just asking you to come home.”
Jason made one last gasp—and dropped the gun.
It hit the ground.
He didn’t look at it. Just looked at Tim.
And for one second—just one—Tim saw Jason looking back.
Then the visor flared white.
Jason screamed.
And Crosstalk yanked him back to his feet like a marionette snapped upright.
He turned.
And ran.
Tim stayed kneeling in the dirt, the gun cooling beside him.
He didn’t cry.
Not yet.
But his hands were still shaking.
He knew the weight of a gun in his hand.
But this wasn’t it. This wasn’t his grip.
The pressure points were right—index curled just enough, thumb resting steady—but there was no heat, no tension. Just programmed motion.
He felt the weapon’s cold. Not as pain.
As input. He was the receiver now. The trigger. The tool.
And then Tim stepped into view.
Everything stuttered. Crosstalk’s overlay blurred at the edges. HUD data spiked red. Warning glyphs scrolled like ticker tape, some even upside-down, overlapping Tim’s face.
Jason couldn’t move his mouth.
But he felt something.
In his chest.
Like falling.
“I got your message,” Tim said.
Jason couldn’t answer. Couldn’t speak.
But inside, something cracked.
He came. He actually came.
Tim kept talking.
And Jason soaked in every word like oxygen.
He’d been alone for so long—so long trapped inside this meat shell, hearing Crosstalk speak in his voice, watching his body move like someone else’s. He hadn’t heard his own thoughts clearly in days.
But Tim was speaking now. Not at him. To him.
And that voice—
That voice cut through the wires.
Tim said, “If you’re going to shoot me, make sure it’s you.”
Jason tried to let go. His finger wouldn’t move. So he screamed inside.
Not with sound—with everything else. Rage, terror, grief. A lifetime’s worth, forced through a pinhole of will.
Then Tim was closer.
And saying those things.
The toast. The humming. The rooftop. The sandwich.
Jason remembered that night. The cold. The ache. The way Tim hadn’t filled the silence with questions or pity, just handed him something warm and stayed.
That night, Jason had almost let himself believe he could still be—
Not good. But his own.
His hand twitched. The gun dipped. He felt it slip.
Crosstalk noticed.
The pain flared down his spine—digital agony, pulse-based feedback trying to seize control again.
Jason shoved back.
Hard.
His hand released the gun. It dropped. Jason felt it land.
And then—
Tim touched him. Just the barrel. Just a hand. Just gentleness.
But it was real.
And for the first time in what felt like forever, Jason saw himself reflected in Tim’s eyes—
Not a weapon. Not a ghost.
Just Jason.
He wanted to say something. Wanted to hold on. But the pain spiked again. Crosstalk surged in like a wave of wires and glass.
Jason screamed.
He couldn’t stop it.
He stood. He ran.
His legs weren’t his anymore.
But his mind was burning.
And in that fire, he held onto one thing:
Tim.
Barbara didn’t look away from the screen, even when it started to shake.
Jason’s vitals were spiking. Heart rate erratic. Muscle tension surging. Adrenaline overload without movement—a fight response with no place to go.
She tightened her grip on the armrest of her chair and leaned in. “Come on, Jay. Hold the signal.”
He was halfway across Gotham now—moving fast, bouncing between rooftops. But for 42 seconds, his biofeedback had shown something she hadn’t seen in days:
Conflict.
Two control streams overlapping. Crosstalk’s neurodata, sure. But underneath it—Jason’s own rhythm. A glitch in the pattern.
A heartbeat out of step. A breach window.
She tapped the comm. “Batcave. I’ve got data.”
-
Tim didn’t bother removing his mask. He was still catching his breath when he slid into the Cave. The collar of his suit was damp with sweat, and his hands were shaking from more than cold.
Bruce was already at the table. Arms crossed. Silent.
Barbara’s voice came through the speaker. “He hesitated.”
Tim stepped forward fast. “You saw it?”
“I measured it. Full emotional spike. Cortisol, muscle override attempt, partial motor break. It wasn’t just you getting through to him, Tim. He tried to take control.”
Bruce’s eyes sharpened. “And failed.”
“Barely,” Barbara said. “But it means the signal’s fraying. Crosstalk’s pushing him harder. The connection’s getting unstable.”
Tim braced his hands on the table.
“Good,” he said. “That means we can break it.”
Bruce’s voice was flat. “Or Crosstalk kills him trying to keep control.”
Nobody spoke.
After a long silence, Barbara added quietly, “It’s getting worse. Jason’s brain is trying to split the signal—Crosstalk’s relay and his own executive function. That kind of strain isn’t sustainable.”
Tim’s jaw clenched. “What’s the timeline?”
“Best guess?” she said. “If we don’t break the relay within forty-eight hours… he’ll either shut down entirely, or Crosstalk will hardwire his brain to the control loop permanently.”
“No consciousness left,” Bruce said. “Just obedience.”
Tim’s hand curled into a fist on the table. “He’s not a weapon.”
Bruce looked at him. “Crosstalk thinks otherwise.”
“So we prove him wrong.”
Tim turned to the whiteboard, already full of sketches—Crosstalk’s lair, Jason’s last known locations, Wayne satellite uplink structures.
Tim picked up the marker and drew a new circle—around the only location Jason ever stayed in longer than five minutes: the broken relay tower above Otisburg.
“He keeps returning here,” Tim said. “He lingers. That’s his anchor.”
Bruce nodded slowly. “We force the confrontation there.”
Barbara added, “We need a localised EMP to disrupt the helmet—and something personal to pull him through when it hits. The EMP creates the breach window. Emotional grounding keeps him from drowning in it.”
All eyes turned to Tim. He didn’t flinch.
“I’ll go.”
He looked down at the marker in his hand. Then wrote, in the corner of the board:
Failsafe.
He’s coming back.
He still doesn’t know how long it’s been.
The days bleed. His mind frays. The silence is gone—Crosstalk talks constantly now, inside the helmet, through the HUD, through every wire in his spine.
“You’ve almost leveled out, soldier boy. Just a little more. Just give in. It’s easier if you stop fighting.”
Jason doesn’t respond. He can’t. He’s not even sure he’s thinking anymore or if he’s just echoing something he used to believe.
But then—
A flicker. A voice, not Crosstalk’s.
Hold on, Jason.
And then—
Don’t give up on me.
His fingers twitch inside his gloves. Not from the program.
From him.
His body won’t obey. His legs move on their own. His lips smile at the wrong time. He doesn’t sleep—Crosstalk keeps him moving, keeps feeding him orders and signals and pain.
But the memory is still there.
A rooftop. A sandwich. Warm hands holding his wrist after a mission that almost killed him.
Tim.
Tim said he wasn’t alone.
Tim saw him.
Crosstalk snarls now when Tim’s name slips through Jason’s thoughts.
That’s how Jason knows it matters - he clings to it. Not like hope.
Like a weapon.
His last one.
He’s standing on the Otisburg relay tower again. Not by choice.
But this time… he’s ready.
He doesn’t know what Tim’s going to do. But he knows Tim will come.
And if there’s even one second—one breath—where Jason gets to make a choice again—
He’s going to take it.
Tim stood on the rooftop of the Otisburg relay tower with a trigger in one hand and a backup pulse grenade strapped to his chest. The clouds above them were gunmetal grey. The wind smelled like a storm that hadn’t quite made up its mind.
Across the rooftop, Jason stood perfectly still. Helmet on. Guns holstered. Waiting. The tower behind him pulsed with light—an amplified signal node feeding Crosstalk’s network across the city.
Tim didn’t speak.
He just walked forward, slow and steady.
Jason didn’t move.
Tim stopped five feet away. “This is your last chance,” he said. “Because if you won’t break it, I will.”
No answer.
So Tim whispered, “I hope you’re still in there.”
Then he hit the switch.
The sound was like an explosion inside his skull.
Not fire. Not shrapnel.
Silence.
Everything cut out. The HUD went black. The static stopped. The pain dropped away like a blade removed from bone. And in that instant—Jason was alone in his head for the first time in days.
No Crosstalk.
No commands.
Just… air.
He staggered. The helmet flickered once—like a dying firefly.
Then again.
He could feel the signal trying to reboot, to grasp for control, but the pulse had scrambled the core code.
This was it.
One window. One chance.
He reached up, hands trembling. Found the latch. And ripped the helmet off.
The world went quiet.
Real quiet.
Not the forced silence of control.
Just wind.
And the sound of Tim calling his name.
From deep in the city’s neural net, Crosstalk screamed.
“No. NO. YOU BELONG TO ME. I MADE YOU FUNCTIONAL. I FIXED YOU.”
He sent the full weight of the signal back to the tower.
But it was too late.
The helmet was off. The host was free.
And the tower’s failsafes—built by Bruce, re-coded by Tim—sent the final command:
PURGE SYSTEM.
The node exploded.
Crosstalk’s feedback loop overloaded - he felt his mind fracture into static and glass. And then—
Nothing.
He ran forward as Jason collapsed. Caught him around the shoulders, half-falling with him to the roof.
Jason was gasping. Pale. Trembling.
But he was there.
No helmet. No filters.
Just Jason.
Tim touched his face gently. “You’re back.”
Jason blinked hard. “You pulled me out.”
“I told you I would.”
Jason swallowed. “You... kept talking.”
“Every night.”
Jason exhaled a laugh—choked, half-broken.
Then he went limp.
Still breathing.
But exhausted.
Tim held him tighter.
And didn’t let go.
The first thing he noticed was that he could move his fingers.
The second was that no one was making him do it.
Jason blinked slowly.
Light. Not harsh. Warm. Golden, like late-afternoon sun through old curtains.
The medbay at the Nest.
He knew the room by the smell—disinfectant, machine oil, and faint traces of leather and solder from Tim’s gear bench.
He turned his head, carefully.
No helmet. No wires. No signal.
He was alone.
But not really.
Because Tim was there - asleep, slumped forward in a chair beside the cot, arms crossed over his chest, one boot still untied like he hadn’t meant to stay.
Jason studied him for a long time.
There was a smear of grime on his jaw. His fingers were curled like he’d been holding something that hurt.
He didn’t let go of me, Jason thought. Not once.
A soft clink made him glance toward the table beside the cot.
A helmet sat there.
Not the old one. A new one.
Red. Clean. Sleek. No exposed ports. No neural linkups. No receiver relay.
Just armour. Just his.
Jason reached for it.
It was light in his hands. And when he turned it, he saw something inside the lip of the neck seal—small, almost hidden.
A few words, handwritten in permanent marker.
Failsafe. Only one key. Yours. —T
Jason stared at it. Then exhaled.
Not a laugh. Not a cry.
Just release.
He woke up the way you do when you’ve been tense too long—sharp breath, full-body flinch, mind already braced for the worst.
But Jason was awake.
Jason was holding the helmet. And looking at him.
Not wary. Not guarded.
Just… Jason.
Tim cleared his throat. “Hey.”
Jason’s voice was still rough. “You left your name on my tech.”
“You leave your fingerprints on everything. Consider us even.”
Jason smiled—small, real.
He traced the words once more with his thumb. Then looked up. “I don’t think I could’ve come back without you.”
Tim leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. “You did come back. That was all you.”
Jason paused.
Then reached across the narrow space between them and tugged the edge of Tim’s sleeve.
It wasn’t much.
But it was everything.
“Stay,” Jason said.
Tim nodded. “I already was.”
Jason adjusted the chin strap. The new helmet clicked snugly into place. No hiss. No static. No hum at the base of his neck. Just silence—and a sense of weight that was his again. Not a leash. Not a signal. Just gear.
He looked up.
Tim stood with his arms crossed on the opposite rooftop ledge, watching.
“You triple-checked the circuitry?” Jason called out, muffled slightly by the visor.
“I coded the firmware myself,” Tim said. “No receivers. No uplink. No neural ports. Just comms, local storage, and a built-in failsafe keyed to your own heartbeat.”
Jason raised a brow. “You gave me a panic button.”
Tim shrugged. “I gave you control. And a panic button. Because this time, no one else gets the override.”
Jason nodded once. Then jumped.
The glide system deployed perfectly—no drag, no twitch.
When he landed on the opposite tower, he didn’t even hear Crosstalk’s voice in the back of his head.
And when he turned, helmet in hand, Tim was already there. Smiling.
“Feels good?” Tim asked.
Jason rolled his shoulders. “Feels quiet.”
He didn’t need to say anything else. Tim already knew.
The mug shattered before he even realised he’d squeezed it too hard. Hot coffee hit his hand, his wrist, the countertop.
He hissed, instinct kicking in late. Let go, step back. Glass cracked under his boot.
“Goddammit—”
He gripped the edge of the sink. Breathing fast.
It wasn’t the pain that got him. It was the lag. The delay between intention and action. He’d meant to lift the cup. He didn’t feel like he was holding it that tight.
It was like his own strength wasn’t mapped right anymore. Like his muscles were still answering someone else.
He looked down at his hand. It was his, wasn’t it? Callused. Scarred. Burn mark from that flare round in Paris.
But it still felt foreign sometimes. Like he was borrowing it.
Tim didn’t say anything when he walked into the kitchen a minute later.
He just crouched down and swept up the glass silently.
Jason tried to apologise.
Tim just said, “It’s okay. You’re allowed to break things.”
He woke up without waking up.
Eyes open. Body still. Not frozen—paralysed.
He couldn’t move his arm. Couldn’t lift his head. Couldn’t speak.
And in the silence of the Nest spare bedroom, Jason’s breath stuttered because it was exactly like before—trapped behind the helmet, Crosstalk in his head, screaming orders, and no way to say no.
He didn’t know how long he lay there.
Minutes? Hours? A lifetime?
Then—
The mattress shifted beside him. A hand gently touched his back.
“I’m here,” Tim whispered. “You’re not gone. Just breathe.”
Jason’s body came back in pieces. First fingers. Then his jaw. Then the ability to cry.
He didn’t talk about it. Not that night.
But the next day, Tim installed a heartbeat sensor under the mattress.
Just in case.
“Okay,” Tim said quietly. “Your rules.”
Jason nodded, jaw tight. He stood in the centre of the Nest’s training room, hands half-curled like he didn’t trust them yet.
Tim raised his own.
“Left shoulder?”
Jason gave a barely-there nod.
Tim stepped forward and placed his hand gently on Jason’s left shoulder.
Jason didn’t flinch.
“Okay,” Tim murmured. “Right forearm?”
Jason swallowed. “Yeah.”
Tim moved slowly, letting Jason see it coming.
Contact. Firm. Grounding. Not control. Just presence.
“Throat?” Tim asked.
Jason shook his head immediately. “No.”
“Okay.” Tim backed off, no judgment.
Jason looked down.
“I don’t know if that’ll ever be okay again,” he said.
“Then it won’t be,” Tim said. “You don’t owe anyone full access to your body ever again.”
Jason didn’t respond.
But the next night, he sat close to Tim on the couch and let their knees touch the whole movie.
Progress.
The chest plate wouldn’t click.
Jason tried again.
The left latch popped open. The right one wouldn’t seal.
He gritted his teeth, adjusted the strap, tried to force the seal into place—but his hands weren’t cooperating. His grip was too tight, too fast, too desperate.
He used to be able to suit up in less than two minutes flat.
Now it took eight.
By the end of it, he was sweating and furious and shaking like he’d fought a two-hour rooftop brawl.
The armour felt too tight. Too heavy. Like a second skin that didn’t know how to breathe.
He stared down at his gloves. They weren’t the problem.
He was.
He sat down hard on the floor of his apartment, gloves in his lap, helmet untouched in its case.
He didn't cry. He didn't scream. He just... stopped moving for a long time.
Jason aimed at the dummy. Exhaled. Pulled. Missed the centre mass by half an inch.
Fine.
Again.
The next shot went high and right. Not bad. Still a kill shot. But not his level.
His hands were trembling. Muscle fatigue, maybe.
Or maybe a ghost—Crosstalk's influence, long gone, but echoing in his bones.
He adjusted his stance. Tried again.
The gun didn’t misfire. He did.
He used to shoot like he breathed. Instinct, clean, controlled. Now every trigger pull came with a flash in his head of what if I’m not the one doing this?
He dropped the gun on the table.
Backed away. Sat in the corner of the range with his knees up, helmet off, and didn’t touch a weapon for the rest of the day.
“You okay?” Dick asked after patrol. “You moved weird on that last jump.”
Jason shrugged. “Slipped.”
Tim gave him a look. “You don’t slip.”
Jason didn’t answer.
He didn’t want to say, I hesitated. Didn’t want to explain that his body had paused for 0.8 seconds longer than it should have because he got stuck wondering, Is this my choice?
It was. He knew that.
But it didn’t feel like it. Not yet.
At home, he tried to write it out. To make sense of the lag. The unease. The sick paranoia that maybe his mind wasn’t as free as he thought.
He got as far as: “Today I jumped too late.” Then stopped.
He couldn’t tell if that was about a rooftop or everything else.
It had been weeks.
Jason hadn’t worn the new helmet much—just for short patrols, in low-risk zones. He was still retraining his instincts. Still teaching himself that this armour wasn’t a cage anymore.
One night, he took it off and set it on his desk to clean the visor.
That’s when he saw it. Another message.
Etched under the visor lip this time, tiny. Almost an afterthought.
YOU ARE NOT WHAT WAS DONE TO YOU.
(I’ll remind you if you forget. —T)
Jason sat back in his chair, hand still on the helmet. He didn’t move for a long time.
Eventually, he exhaled.
“Idiot,” he muttered. Not angry. Not annoyed.
Touched.
And maybe—just maybe—loved.
They sat side by side on the edge of a rooftop above Gotham’s older district—quiet tonight, for once. Jason held his helmet in his lap, fingers loose on the sides. He hadn’t said much since the patrol ended. Just silence. Not the heavy kind. The comfortable kind.
Tim didn’t speak either. He just stayed.
After a while, Jason nudged him gently with one shoulder.
“You never said what you wanted in return,” Jason said.
“For what?”
“For getting me out.”
Tim looked out over the city. Thought for a second. Then said, “Just this.”
Jason glanced at him.
Tim kept his eyes forward.
“You,” Tim added softly. “Sitting next to me. No static. No signal. Just... you.”
Jason didn’t answer right away.
But then he nodded.
And let his head rest against Tim’s shoulder.