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In the impregnable, soundproofed fortress of the Clocktower, Oracle screamed. Hood had turned off his comm and vanished, avoiding surveillance cameras like it was his job. A tiny part of her wished he had been hurt badly enough that he hadn’t had the wherewithal to avoid her, even given what it had taken the last time she’d gotten enough footage of him to track him.
The rest of her was verbally flaying Red Robin.
“Why didn’t you listen to me?” she shouted. “Do I need to tell Batman to test you for stupidity-inducing toxins? Do you need a refresher on basic vigilante skills?”
“I needed to conduct my own investigation!”
Oracle ignored him. “You think you’re the smart one, but you’re just as emotionally incompetent as Batman! If you can’t realize when your hangups are blinding you—”
“Like I’m the only one—”
“And then you threaten him—”
“I didn’t realize—"
“And you blame a rape victim—”
“I didn’t victim blame!”
“You accused him of arranging the whole kidnapping!” she snapped. “Should I have Batgirl vent to you next time she wakes up with nightmares?”
“Oracle, please, can we focus?” Red asked. “If we can track him down, I can at least make sure he’s not too badly injured.”
“I don’t know where he is!”
Red growled. “Well, why don’t you have a tracker on him?”
“He turned it off!”
“Why didn’t you put another tracker on him?”
“Why didn’t you?”
They both quieted. “Let me know if you find him,” Red said quietly. “I need to work on my case, but if you find him, I’ll go.”
“Copy,” Oracle said shortly, and muted herself on his line. She ran her fingertips through her hair and pressed her palm to her forehead. If Red couldn’t find him out there, her surveillance algorithms were their best bet – but they were slow unless she knew what she was looking for, better for searching for past evidence than for real-time information. Chances were good she wouldn’t find him from inside the Clocktower tonight.
She took a deep breath. She’d done everything she could do, and it wasn’t as much as she wanted, but it never was. Right now, Jason almost certainly wanted space, even if she didn’t want to give it. She couldn’t say she knew Jason well, especially not now, but she knew Dick like… like they had been comrades-in-arms for fifteen years, and she could read what Dick didn’t say out loud. Dick was worried about him. Maybe even scared for him.
She could only hope that Jason would recognize that Tim didn’t speak for all of Gotham’s vigilantes – or, more realistically, that he didn’t respect Tim enough to care about his opinion – because otherwise, the two of them might have actually hurt him. And when Jason was hurt, he lashed out hard.
--
Jason woke up on the concrete floor of the dank safehouse. There were puddles that hadn’t been there when he’d evidently fallen asleep, but fortunately it looked like his guns across the room were dry.
It was cold in here. His scalp was cold. He’d shaved his head a couple weeks before. He shouldn’t have. He liked his hair longer than that, for one. For another, giving into anxieties didn’t make them go away; it only made them stronger. But he could only take so much exposure therapy at once. He’d eventually get to a place where his own fingers in his hair didn’t make his chest seize unpredictably, but… not yet.
He sat up with a groan, sore and bloody. It had been a while since he’d gotten that bad. A while since he’d been so empty he couldn’t drum up the will to move. Things had been… harder, since that stupid kidnapping, and running into Tim “Perfect Robin” Drake had obviously made things worse. Worse enough that he’d had to make sure his guns were out of reach before his downward spiral bottomed out.
He’d made a mistake. It had been, like – it was supposed to be some sort of exchange, sort of – where he… took one for the team – not his team, obviously, but a team, one that he had been unlucky enough to have been accidentally grouped with – and in return, Nightwing offered him one extremely professional, last-resort extraction. That was, obviously, all that had been offered, and it was all he had wanted. One Hail Mary for when he had no other options.
It wasn’t going to work. Even if he wanted Nightwing’s help – which he didn’t, not really, why would he – it would always, always come with strings that turned into nooses. He couldn’t afford that. Not professionally, and, however much he hated to admit it, not emotionally. Not if he wanted his head to stay in one piece.
It was hard to remember why he was supposed to want that.
He levered himself to his feet, dried blood flaking to the ground. There wasn’t much to eat in this safehouse – he had to prioritize safety first, comfort second, which meant a lot of them didn’t have anything to cook with. Not a great start to a bad day. When things got bad like this, he usually tried to do things he enjoyed as purposefully as possible, like eat good food. At minimum, however, he needed calories, so he opened a zip-top bag of flour and swallowed a couple spoonfuls.
Thankfully, he had stuff to do. Number one: get rid of the stupid, stupid comms. Number two: obliterate the human traffickers who thought they could bribe him before the pretender and the other bats got to them and did something obtuse like process them legally.
Number three: ditch his best apartment.
The thought gave him pause. Dick had been there, shown up with doughnuts like he had been invited, so it was beyond compromised. He had to ditch it. But he liked that apartment, liked it in a way he liked very little these days. It was comfortable. Peaceful. It was the one place he had really worked to make his.
No. He would keep the apartment. If Dick showed up again… Jason would just shoot him. Or at him, at least. A couple warning shots. Maybe one in the calf if he really didn’t get the memo.
Do you think Nightwing will still come for you if you shoot me?
A muscle twitched in Jason’s jaw. The pretender had been right. Shooting at them was the most effective way to say “leave me the hell alone” and make sure they listened.
He forced himself to swallow another mouthful of flour and sat back to plan. Problem one would be a good solution to problem two, if he did it right. There were many benefits to having a crew, especially one as vetted and experienced as his. The rules were strict in his gang, but he’d had very little need to enforce them so far. New members had to be adults recruited from other gangs or Rogues, for two reasons; first, because if his strategy was working, then fewer Crime Alley kids would look to crime as their best option, and he refused to be the reason a kid had his first warrant; second, because then they already had skills and connections. He was busy enough – the less training he had to do, the better. But that was the point of having a crew – he was able to get so much more done now that he could delegate.
He hardly ever recruited former Joker goons. Any the Joker left alive were never sane enough to be useful.
Swallowing another spoonful of flour, he called up the lieutenant on duty. “Ivo, I’ve got some business to attend to, and we need a bat-sized distraction. Teams of two, and I’ll give bonuses for creativity.”
Jason could hear him smile over the line. Ivo didn’t loathe the bats – Jason had found that too much hatred made for poor judgment – but there was rarely love lost for vigilantes in Crime Alley. “What have in mind?”
“Meet me at the old sweatshop at three,” Jason said, tallying up what he would need. “I’ve got some supplies for you.”
--
Jason’s comm was on when Barbara arrived at the Clocktower. She breathed a sigh of relief. It had been three days and none of her algorithms had found anything. Either he was moving exclusively via the sewers or he’d barely been outside. She sent a quick encoded text to Tim, and ten minutes later he was on comms. “Give me some warning, would you?” he asked. “I’m still at WE.”
“I have a location for Hood,” she said. “No eyes on it.”
“He turned his comm on in the one location you don’t have security cameras?”
“He has a talent for finding blind spots,” she snapped. “It isn’t like your algorithms have had any more luck.”
Oh, yes, she was feeling testy. She always did, when she wanted to go out and punch a problem in the face, and it was so much worse when she didn’t have eyes. At least in the Clocktower she was the master of her domain, but not being able to see what was going on made her feel helpless. She hated feeling helpless.
A couple minutes later, Red Robin’s mask cam popped up on her feed and she opened it. It was only just getting dark, so it was easy to see as he grappled between buildings. Hood’s location was at a shorter building sheltered on three sides, so Red had an easy time rappelling down. It was clear at first glance that Hood was not on the roof, even though the altimeter suggested he would be. Altitude was usually the least precise location measurement, so Red would either have to search the building or wait for him to exit.
“Do you see that, Oracle?” Red Robin asked.
His cam was focused on something, and as he approached she realized it was a paper bag. Red opened it and pulled out a comm and a baggie, the contents of which she couldn’t make out. Red snorted.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I think it’s the stuff to brew ayahuasca,” Red said. “For Hood’s expensive lifestyle.”
Oracle rolled her eyes. “Of course it is.” At least he was being funny, although Hood’s sense of humor tended to overlap with his propensity for violence to a degree usually associated with rogues.
Red shifted, and Hood’s comm light turned off as he tucked the comm and the baggie away for safekeeping. “Okay, he’s obviously throwing a hissy fit. I’m gonna get going on my investigation. Let me know if—"
Another light lit up on her switchboard. “Wait, Red, another comm just turned on. This one in the fashion district.”
“I’ll go check it out. Wanna have a party in the Clocktower? I’ll bring the drugs.”
“Red.”
“I’m going.”
Red was almost there when the comm blinked off. Moments later a report came in on her police scanner. “Wait, Red, I think I know what’s going on.”
“So do I,” he said. His cam showed a plume of smoke rising between buildings. He swung toward it and glanced below. There was a dumpster on fire, drawing a crowd.
“A dumpster fire,” Oracle said, taking off her glasses so she could press on her eyes. “Does he have to be so on the nose?”
Another comm turned on. Oracle swore to herself. Three times was a pattern. “I’ve got a third location,” she said. “He’s dumping his comms.”
Red groaned on the line. “Nightwing is going to kill me.”
--
Hood had his arm around the bare shoulders of an escort and she murmured low and sultry in the general vicinity of his ear like she could distract him from tonight’s business. He really, really wanted to push her off, and the only thing stopping him was the need to be on the good side of this racket. That and a good half inch of armor between her skin and his.
He really couldn’t do skin contact right now.
The other gangsters at the low table were also wearing masks – a few had plain Greek-style masks, but he was here for the heads of the operation: George Washington, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan, all in latex masks. Everyone but him was drinking, and a few were stepping out to do other, harder drugs. The lack of professionalism was excruciating.
He tried to avoid these things, partly because he hated them, and partly because too many parties undermined his image. Dehumanization worked in more than one way. Batman had always used it to great effect. It was easier to deal with criminals when they were already afraid of you, and it was easier to make them afraid if you kept them from seeing you as a person, by, say, appearing to be a vindictive creature of the night. No one was afraid of a guy just doing his grocery shopping, something he knew for a fact.
But he needed their trust for now. He just had to take the risk of letting their fear dwindle.
He laughed at Washington’s lewd joke along with the rest of them, glad for his helmet. He’d always found it hard to laugh when he really wanted to break someone’s jaw, in this case because they were trafficking refugees. The containers carrying the adults had arrived in his warehouse the day before, and he had round-the-clock eyes on the place, even though he wasn’t able to go in yet. Not until he found their kids.
He didn’t want to be here.
Reagan tipped his mask back to chug his canned cocktail and put his drink back down. “Gotta say, Hood, you were a real hard-ass with Nixon for someone looking to make friends.”
“Oh, that wasn’t me being a hard-ass,” Hood said. “You’ll know when I’m a hard-ass.”
Kennedy and Washington laughed at that, but Reagan just nodded. “It’s not your style. Making friends.”
“I’m picky.” Hood shrugged for emphasis, which had the double effect of slightly dislodging the escort. He felt vaguely suffocated under her weight.
“Forgive me for not buying it,” Reagan said. “Been in this game a long time, and I don’t plan on going out any time soon.”
This was perfect. “You want a gesture of good faith?”
“Like what?” Reagan sounded skeptical.
He forced his hand to close lightly around the escort’s waist, like he was totally relaxed. “You want to know how I beat the bats.”
“Listen,” Kennedy said, slurring a bit. “You’re still new. You don’t know. You don’t beat Batman, not forever. You have to know when it’s time to run. Switch up your aliases.”
“Kennedy,” Reagan said sharply, and Kennedy lifted his hands in acquiescence. He turned back to Hood. “I don’t think you’re beating the bats. I think you’re lucky and full of shit.”
“It’s a goodwill offering,” Hood said. “Take it or leave it.”
“What’s the offer?” Reagan asked.
“Everyone thinks the key to driving the bats away is to have the best weaponry,” Hood said. “But it doesn’t matter how good your guns are if your operational security sucks. For all their dramatics, what they’re really good at is stealth, so if you want to beat them, your first priority has to be keeping your secrets safe.”
“Get to the point!” Washington said loudly. He was the drunkest, for all he was probably the boss.
“I can do a security audit,” Hood said. “And before you ask, Reagan, this benefits me. I’m invested in keeping my operation bat-proof, so if we work together that means yours has to be bat-proof as well.”
“Just security,” Reagan said dubiously. “We aren’t giving you any names or numbers.”
Hood shook his head. It didn’t matter. “Of course not. That’s your business, not mine. I’m just in it to keep you from going down.”
“I’m in,” Washington said.
“Me too,” said Kennedy. “What’s the harm, right? What say you, Reagan?”
Reagan’s rubber face was turned on Hood like he thought he could read something in his body language. “Fine,” he said. “Meet me back here tomorrow, seven a.m.”
Hood rolled his eyes in the safety of his helmet. It would be nice if they accounted for the fact that some crime lords around here had to do their jobs without amphetamines. “I’ll be here.”
He stuck around a while longer, even though he really wanted to get an update from Ivo on the bat situation. Something about conspiracies and galas having similar etiquette galled him. Eventually he blinked a command for his helmet to send an alert to his phone so he had an excuse.
Unfortunately, the damn escort followed him. She was probably supposed to make sure he didn’t go anywhere he wasn't allowed, in addition to extracting what information she could. All part of the business. “What do you say we go upstairs and have a little fun?” she asked breathily when they reached the hall, wrapping herself around him.
He tried to pull away. “Get off.”
Her hands were creeping around his armor, feeling for catches. “You’ll like it, baby, I can—”
“Get off me!” He pushed her off more violently than he’d intended, and she hit the floor hard on her side. She made a strangled noise of pain, instinctively keeping quiet when something hurt.
Hood was trembling – hands on him, cutting his clothes off – and he did a breathing exercise for a moment. The woman didn’t move from where she’d fallen on the ground, but her eyes were studying him as she obviously tried to guess what he wanted from her. What he was going to take from her.
He backed up, reached into a zippered pocket and counted out five hundred dollars without looking. “Take this. When they ask, tell ‘em I’m compensating for something.”
“What—”
He held out the money, and she snatched it like she thought he was going to grab her arm. She counted it and looked back up, fear and discomfort plain on her face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You’re just doing your job,” he said, stomping past her. Hopefully Ivo had some entertaining news. He needed a distraction.
--
Red Robin was far enough away from the explosion that he heard it a second before he saw it. He swore to himself. “Was that…?”
He was answered by a string of curses from Oracle. The comm he was going after had just exploded, again. “I’ll go check it anyway, make sure there are no casualties.” There hadn’t been, yet. Hood had at least refrained from hurting bystanders while throwing his temper tantrum. But they couldn’t ignore explosions.
They couldn’t ignore any of it. Even the ones that weren’t a potential danger to others were bad in their own way. They couldn’t leave comms loose in Gotham – it was a security risk. They had to retrieve every one that Hood dropped.
“Dammit,” Batgirl breathed on the line. “It fell in the sewer.”
“It’s moving,” Oracle said. “Go to your next location. I’ll send you its location when it stops.”
A little beep signaled someone jumping on their line. “Report,” Batman growled. “Does anyone have intel on tonight’s explosions?”
Red swore silently.
“There is a complication with Red Robin’s trafficking case,” Oracle said smoothly. “The explosions are intended to distract him from it.”
“Hn. Robin and I can take care of them.”
“That’s all right,” Red cut in hurriedly as he dropped on top of a semi. “They’re all petty. Not endangering anyone. Your cases are more important.”
Red could feel Batman’s skepticism through the line. “It would free you up to focus on your case.”
“I have six days until the victims are moved again, and my best lead won’t be good until tomorrow,” Red said. “I’ve got it. It’s fine.”
“Hn.” But he didn’t say anything else, and the line beeped with his departure.
Red swore under his breath again, grappling off the semi as it turned away from the direction of the explosion. “What do you think the chances are we keep this quiet?”
“I think you’re quickly approaching Steven Spielberg levels of speculation,” Oracle said. Red stretched his neck in frustration. She was right.
“Got one,” Black Bat said.
“Okay, you’re going to Chinatown,” Oracle said. “Red Robin, how’s that explosion?”
“People are running out of the building,” Red said, coming to a stop on a building across the street. “Looks like it blew a hole in a boarded-up factory, but these guys don’t appear unhoused. Actually, some of them have heavy-duty gas masks. Full PPE. I think they might have been cooking drugs. Let the cops know, and I’ll sweep the building for casualties.”
Oracle swore again. She sounded exhausted. Red felt a little bad about that. He didn’t feel bad for Hood, obviously – not really, anyway – and anyway, Hood was responsible for his own decisions. But Red had upset the tentative peace that Nightwing had negotiated, and it could have been completely avoided if he had been aware of his own blind spots. He winced, remembering what he had said. He’d implied that Hood wasn’t a person. It hadn’t been his best impulse.
But he’d never expected Hood to care – and based on his reaction, he had. Now, when he examined his feelings toward Hood, he didn’t feel anger or betrayal or fear. He felt like he owed Hood something. And honestly, he'd rather have Hood hunt him for sport than feel like he owed Hood anything.
--
Robin would hope for an Arkham breakout, but Grayson had cautioned him against wishing for crime. It was a road that encouraged vigilantes to stop thinking about victims as people, which was the exact same road that led to villainy. Evil always started when you stopped thinking of people as people. But something had to happen. Batman was a taut bowstring without an arrow – with nothing to fire at, the tension would destroy him. They needed action.
“There is a call in the East End,” Agent A said. “An unmanned car crashed into a payday loan—”
“Taken care of,” Oracle said briskly.
Batman didn’t say anything, but his grapple to the next building was stiff. When he was – not happy, that was never a good word to describe Batman – focused, maybe, his movements were graceful even in their ferocity. Not so tonight. Every time Agent A reported a disturbance on the police scanner, Oracle quickly stepped in, so despite all evidence to the contrary, it was becoming a simple patrol.
Robin hated it. “Surely Red Robin can’t be everywhere. Wasn’t he just in the Diamond District?”
“That was Black Bat,” Oracle said, like that explained anything.
“Why are you and Red keeping us out of this case?” Robin demanded as he retracted his grapple, rising. “You’re sending all the others all over the city. Have we really offended you in such a way you would rather further weaken yourself—”
“Wait, I have something for you,” Oracle said, and she’d upped her voice distortion like he’d gotten under her skin. “Quick – turn around—"
But wherever she wanted them to go, they would have a better view from the top of the tower. As they climbed over the edge, they could see the next building over on which sat a defaced military recruitment billboard. Someone had spray-painted a hanged body over it, and underneath was written in sharp black letters, “A GOOD SOLDIER.” Only when it turned did Damian realize that it was an actual body, strung up in the lights.
The body wore a distinctive red helmet.
Batman froze for a bare moment, then took off toward the billboard.
“Batman!” Robin shouted. “Oracle, we have eyes on Hood, he appears to be—”
“No, you don’t,” Oracle said sharply. “Batman, do not approach, it’s a trap.”
Batman stopped short at the edge of the roof. “It’s not him,” he said, and Robin could hear – they all could hear – the pain in his voice. “The weight is wrong. It isn’t a real body. Oracle, what—”
“He’s the one setting the explosions,” Oracle said. “The one distracting Red Robin.”
That didn’t make any sense. For all of his many flaws, Hood did not tolerate human trafficking. He wouldn’t prevent Red from saving trafficking victims. “You’re leaving out some details.”
Red’s voice was shockingly defensive. “Nothing relevant—"
“Explain!” Batman shouted. Robin’s head whipped to look at his father. Batman’s jaw worked once as he stared at the hanged effigy of his son, barely moving, but emanating power and rage to such a degree Robin felt moved to step back. This was the Bat he had been raised to emulate.
“We gave Hood some comms in a gesture of goodwill a few weeks ago,” Oracle said briskly. “Three nights ago, he and Red Robin had an encounter that ended poorly and it appears he is now destroying them in a play to keep us occupied.”
Red Robin sounded sullen. “The refugees are being held in Crime Alley, so he informed me it’s his case now.”
Batman was silent, staring, furious. “How many did you give him?” Robin asked.
“Fifty,” Oracle said. “We have found thirty-six distractions. So far.”
A beat. “We still have to cut it down,” Batman said.
“None of the distractions have been designed to harm, but there’s always a chance,” Oracle warned. “Hood keeps explosives in his helmet.”
“I know,” Batman said, and shot his grapple at the next roof. Robin followed his father, unable to vocalize his thoughts. Do you love me this much, he wanted to scream – would it kill you like this to see my body strung up – and why, why, why is this the only time you show you care about him?
Batman approached the effigy cautiously, likely flipping through cowl filters to check for hazards. Robin stayed back, surveying the scene. Hood had meant for them to see this – if not Batman himself, then one of them. The epitaph hit too precisely for it to have been unintentional. It was a message for anyone who had seen the memorial in the Batcave.
Good soldiers kill themselves.
Damian didn’t know Todd, not at all. Everything that had happened with him had happened long before Damian had arrived in Gotham – to him, without the emotional baggage of the others, he had been just another criminal. The others spoke of him as a cautionary tale, as Batman’s greatest failure, and Damian had always gotten the feeling that Todd was what Batman worried Damian would become.
The man Damian had seen during the kidnapping had been different than he had expected. Todd had been tense, picking fights, but he’d still had Richard’s casual grace and Drake’s calculating eyes. And Damian hadn’t missed – no, he had not missed – how when the kidnapper had explained his intentions, Todd’s gaze had settled on him with everyone else’s, like the four of them had telepathically agreed that the kidnappers would touch Damian over their dead bodies. He still had the instincts of a Robin – to protect.
He had protected Richard.
The effigy was made of garbage bags stuffed with sawdust, and the helmet was nothing more than a shell with a comm attached. Batman hooked it to his utility belt. No doubt he would want to scan it more thoroughly back in the cave to see if Hood had left traces of anything informative. Robin doubted it. This whole enterprise had taken planning and precision. If he’d taken the time to strip a helmet of tech, he’d certainly scrubbed it of everything else.
“This has to be something he learned from you,” Robin said. “Mother would never permit this kind of tantrum.”
“This is his own doing,” Batman growled, like he hadn’t just panicked. “They should never have given him a comm. He was always going to use it against us.”
Nightwing obviously hadn’t thought so. “He protected Nightwing.”
Batman’s jaw clenched but he said nothing. It was clear – even standing between his children and the people who wanted to hurt them wasn’t enough to redeem someone in Batman’s eyes. His love didn’t outweigh his standards – standards Damian had never, ever met. Batman fired his grapple and swung to the next building, heading for the next distraction, and Robin followed, chest tight and bitter.
--
“I’m calling it,” Red Robin said over the line. Oracle briefly considered turning on voice modulation for him so he would sound like a chipmunk. “We’ve had fifty distractions. I think he’s done.”
Batgirl sighed. "Tonight really sucked."
Red didn’t say anything back, which said a lot. He’d crisscrossed the city all night putting out fires, sometimes literally, but even tired he should still be able to banter. Silence was usually the product of self-recrimination.
Batman, of course, had to make it worse. “Red Robin, I want a full report tomorrow.”
“Okay,” he said quietly, and the line beeped as he flipped his comm off. Several beeps followed in succession as everyone else packed up for the night.
Oracle stayed right where she was, like usual. She had more she could do – she wasn’t constrained by daylight. She could check questionable matches on her algorithms to refine them, add searches, and do her daily speed-reading of world newspapers. But first, frustrated as she was with Red, she wanted to be a better mentor than Batman, so she typed him a quick message. <I’ll comb footage for your traffickers. Try to get you a lead, since you missed a night tonight>
It took him a couple minutes to reply. <Thanks>
<That ayahuasca is sounding pretty good right now>
He didn’t answer. Oracle sighed. It was hard to decide which of Hood’s distractions had been the worst. Some had been annoying wastes of time, like the comm stuck to a buoy in Gotham Harbor. Some had been intended to point out problems they weren’t addressing, like the comm attached to the failing water treatment plant at the reservoir. And while many had been petty, others had been… bad. They’d all had a moment of collective panic when another comm had clicked on, this one in Arkham Asylum, and on the open line Two-Face had growled, “Luck’s on my side tonight, isn’t it, Batty—”
Oracle had isolated that line faster than any before it, and sent killware for good measure.
But the emotionally fraught ones had been… especially hard. A different voice had come on the line, and she had isolated it, but it was just some random woman. Oracle had thought at first she might be a hostage – was suddenly terrified Jason had handed a bomb to a civilian – but she was cheerful and calm when she said that Hood had just asked her to return the comm to the people on the line. It was only when Batgirl had gone to retrieve it that the woman had mentioned that a couple months prior Hood had thrown her date through the wall of a bar when he’d put something in her drink. Hood had even taken her to the clinic himself before the drugs had fully kicked in.
It was another taunt. I actually save people from their rapists.
She was so mad at him. This was a tantrum, pure and simple. He’d done plenty of things that were a lot worse than a wild goose chase, but this had been so personal. And it had come after they had talked; after he had let down his guard, acted human with her. So now she wasn’t angry at the anonymous crimes of the Red Hood – she was mad at Jason.
But deep down in her heart, what she really felt was fear: fear that he thought they didn’t care, that she’d lost the relationship forever, or, worse, that when he got hurt he wouldn’t reach out, and he would die scared and alone again.
There was no way to be sure. Some of the comms had been unrecoverable because they had presumably been destroyed. But even though she was so angry with Jason, she still had to hope. There was a chance he still had one. There was still a chance he’d left himself a way to reach out. Because otherwise Barbara was terrified that his bastardized billboard monument was a sign of things to come.
--
It was midnight as Hood crept into the budget hotel basement alone, though he had a team waiting for him in a party bus in the parking lot. After training his people, he liked to expose them to firefights as little as possible. Saved him the trouble of training more people.
Reagan had been skeptical when he’d begun his security audit, but when Hood demonstrated with a lower-level goon’s phone just how many hidden settings kept a record of their location history, he was happy to listen. A little sleight of hand later, and he had a microSD in a computer, granting him remote access. Once he’d finished up, followed the requisite etiquette, it was the work of moments to boot up a computer and access their records. He might have shown them how to avoid surveillance in the future, but they’d already left a trail to this hotel like a helicopter spraying napalm.
One day of further surveillance confirmed that they weren’t keeping children in any of the actual hotel rooms – none of them had ordered nearly enough food – but there was more food missing from the kitchen than the day’s orders accounted for. Now, after hacking the security cameras and looping the footage, he’d found a blind spot so big it had to be deliberate, which let him know exactly where the guards were.
There were two of them holding assault rifles, and the only reason Hood didn’t shoot them where they sat was because he didn’t want to walk the kids past fresh bloodstains if he could help it. Instead, it was smoke bombs and broken necks before he dragged their bodies off to a closet. He would come back if he got a chance – he needed to send his message – but his first priority was getting the kids out as untraumatized as possible.
He took off his helmet – it scared most kids – and opened the door with keys stripped from a corpse. There were around twenty kids sleeping on the floor, many of them huddled tightly to others. One shifted slightly – a light sleeper – but didn’t get up or make a sound. He crept over to them. It was a girl, around twelve years old. “Hey,” he said softly.
“What you want?” she whispered in accented English.
Spanish. He felt his brain shift gears. “No voy a tocarte. Ayúdame a despertar a los otros. Voy a reunir a ustedes con sus padres.” I’m not going to touch you. Help me wake the others. I’m going to reunite you with your parents.
She looked at him dubiously and gestured at his domino. “Policía?”
He snorted. “No. Pero necesitamos apurarnos.” No. But we need to hurry.
Maybe the still-open door convinced her, or the fact that he wasn’t waving a gun to enforce his orders, but she nodded briefly and started waking the other kids. When they were all awake, the older ones carrying the younger ones, he shepherded them back up to the service entrance and into the waiting party bus.
Immediately Paola, one of his newer recruits, jumped up and started offering water and snacks. He’d brought her largely because he figured most kids probably trusted women more, and he was doubly grateful because she spoke Spanish. With all the kids on the bus – several crying from sheer overwhelm – he had them drive off. He wasn’t taking them anywhere specific, just keeping them out of sight until Hood rescued their parents. After that, they could do whatever they wanted. Hood didn’t care. He had a date with some presidents.
It was a forty-minute drive from the suburban hotel to the warehouse in Crime Alley, going as fast as he could. He hadn’t found any evidence of regular check-ins from guards, but there was always the chance someone would check on the kids unexpectedly, so he needed to get the parents out, and fast.
He’d loaned Nixon and the presidents this warehouse specifically because it had a secret entrance from the warehouse next door, so he parked two streets away and silently entered the spare. With luck, no one would realize the refugees were gone for hours or days.
Using the night vision overlay in his helmet, he went through the tunnel that ended at the warehouse’s maintenance bay. It was a small, mostly empty warehouse, so the two containers on the ground stuck out. He oiled the joints and hinges of the first container before he broke the locks and opened it, finally turning on the flashlight on his helmet.
A few people sat up, instantly awake, but many still slept. “Vengan,” Hood said, not bothering with English. Come on. “Tenemos que movernos rapido.”
Someone stood up as others began to wake, and he shook his head, gesturing anxiously. “No, no. Our kids, our kids!”
“Sus hijos están seguros,” Hood said – your kids are okay – and called Paola. “Miren.” Look.
Paola answered the video call with a view of a bunch of the children, and Hood turned the phone around so the refugees could see them. Someone immediately snatched the phone from his hands, and he turned the volume up on his helmet to be heard over the sudden commotion. “Ellos están seguros, pero ustedes no. Tenemos que ir ya.” They are safe but you aren’t. We have to go now.
As they roused themselves, Hood started oiling the hinges of the other container. Around half the refugees had made it into the darkness out of the first container when Hood’s whole field of vision went white, blinding him for a second. He whipped around as his helmet automatically adjusted. Someone had turned the warehouse lights on.
Greek-masked gangsters piled through the front warehouse door, each carrying an assault rifle. Hood stepped forward, placing himself in between the goons and the refugees. The math didn’t look good, no matter how good of a shot he was. He was wearing body armor, but the refugees weren’t. And while the traffickers couldn’t afford indiscriminate bullets – these people were their product – Hood couldn’t afford them either.
“Well well well, if it isn’t the Red Hood.” It was Reagan, in rubber mask and bulletproof vest, pushing his way to the front of the goons, carrying his own rifle. “Put your weapons down. All of them. And your phone.”
All eyes were on him. So were all gun barrels. Kennedy was among the goons, too, and so was Nixon. Only Washington was missing. Hood would track him down. In the meantime, he slowly, deliberately disarmed, leaving guns and knives scattered around him on the concrete. This was what he got for letting their fear fade.
Reagan kept his gun pointed right at Hood as he gestured for someone to pat Hood down. “I never trusted you,” he sneered. “I knew you were planning something.”
“You trusted me enough for my purposes,” Hood said.
“All for nothing, apparently,” Reagan said. “Go ahead. All of you. Back up. Get back into the container. Go.”
Even if the refugees didn’t understand his words, they understood the universal language of guns. They all slowly backed into the open shipping container. Hood’s jaw worked. This was fine. The only thing that had been keeping these people in line was the threat hanging over their children, but they were safe now. There was nothing that could keep Hood from breaking out at his earliest convenience.
Reagan stepped closer and poked Hood with the barrel of his rifle. “I’m going to think of you fondly, you know. You and your ideals. You’re practically a bat. I almost wish I were going to be there when they break you.”
“Don’t worry,” Hood said coldly. “You won’t be.”
--
“Don’t worry,” Hood said. “You won’t be.”
Red Robin threw his entire stash of smoke bombs at the goons.
Immediately the sound of container doors slamming echoed through the warehouse. And then the sound of gunfire.
Red grappled into the rafters on a wing and a prayer. This case had completely escaped him. Oracle had been the one to find the warehouse they suspected was hiding the refugees. By the time he’d found a computer to hack, the gang had either wiped or encrypted all their useful data. And it had been Oracle again who had alerted him to movement at the warehouse while he was still looking for the kids. His only saving grace was that the goons hadn’t left a lookout when they’d filed into the warehouse because there weren’t any unsecured entrances.
It would be really helpful if Hood had a comm.
Red swore to himself.
--
Hood snarled as he fought. Smoke bombs meant bat interference, which he had to put an end to as soon as he wasn’t in an active firefight. Even with a human shield and the smoke bombs, his armor had already taken several hits. But he’d seen Kennedy go down, and Reagan was at least hit, and as the smoke began to clear there were only a few stragglers pelting for the door. He could finish cleanup later.
He reopened the door to the shipping container, which he’d closed to protect the refugees. The metal was dented but not perforated, so it had worked. “Vengan,” he said in a rasp, fortunately amplified and distorted by his helmet. “Está seguro.” Come on. It’s safe.
Men and women rushed past him, most not even looking at the bodies on the ground. He broke the lock and opened the second container. He left one of the other refugees to explain everything.
He was exhausted, and the night wasn’t over. He went to retrieve his gear, which was still on the ground, but at a glance, he could tell a handgun was missing. Once again, he pulled himself back into combat mode, picking up another handgun and creeping through the bodies. If one of them was faking—
One of the women was standing over a goon who was sitting up against the wall with his hands raised in surrender. Nixon had apparently hit the deck to avoid getting shot. “You don’t want to do this,” he was saying. “Your kids are just outside. Don’t you want to—”
He shut up when Hood approached. “Los niños están seguros,” Hood said, reaching out a tentative hand. The kids are safe. “Te puedo ayu—"
She shook her head. “Me violó!”
He raped me.
Jason’s blood turned to magma. He seized the front of Nixon’s bulletproof vest and slammed him into the wall, once, twice, three times – there were hands on him, there were fingers in his hair, they were jeering and he could do nothing – he barely registered that Nixon’s mask was off, he was struggling, clawing at his arm as Hood picked him up by the throat and started to squeeze—
He was shouting. He couldn’t remember starting “-do you like how it feels? How does it feel to be overpowered? How does it feel to be terrified?”
He threw him to the floor and hoisted him upright by the hair, and shoved a gun between the man’s neck and the strap of the bulletproof vest. He aimed carefully, not through the lungs, not through the heart, he wanted this to hurt and he wanted it to last—
“Hood!”
Hood spun, pointing his gun at the noise. It was Red Robin, hands up. He took a step back. “I’m not here to fight,” he said quickly.
“Then get out!” Hood growled. He was sweaty and he couldn’t breathe and Red was too close and hands were on him—
“I just… wanted to thank you,” Red said. “For your help. On my case.”
Hood shook Nixon. He wasn’t even sure if Nixon was conscious. “If I wanted to be lied to I’d talk to Nixon. You just don’t want me to kill this piece of chewed-up dessicated shit.”
Red took another step back, eying the gun still pointed at him. “No, I mean it. You helped me out during my surveillance. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Oh, but I shouldn’t have,” Hood sneered. “Since you always have everything under control. You don’t need a murderer’s help. I’m just manipulating you.”
“I’m sorry,” Red said softly. “You are a person. I shouldn’t have implied otherwise.”
No. They were trying to get close to him and it wasn’t going to work. Even now, just beyond the moment's rage and panic, Hood could feel the emptiness dragging him down. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want Red to be nice to him. He didn’t want anything, so profoundly the vacuum where his heart should be was going to compress him into nothing—
No.
Hood fired.
The bulled whizzed a fraction of an inch past Red’s cowl. He went impossibly still.
“Let me make one thing clear,” Hood growled, taking a step toward Red, gun still out, Nixon splayed behind him. “I am not a person. I am a revenant. I am an abomination. I have no vulnerabilities and no mercy. I will kill anyone who crosses me, especially these power-hungry child-trafficking raping bastards. I am the Red Hood.”
A shot rang out. Hood’s head whipped around as fast as Red’s. The refugee woman had shot Nixon. She lowered the gun and spat at him.
Hood tossed Nixon on the floor in Red’s direction. “There!” he snapped. He couldn't breathe. “Save him if you can.”
Red was already stripping the man of his bulletproof vest, but he still shouted after him. “Wait! Hood!”
Hood wasn’t listening. He sent a message to Paola to bring the kids to the warehouse and ditch the bus, then hopped on his bike and drove like if he could go fast enough he could outrun himself.