Wonder Woman's POV
I shot out of the side of the building, shattering glass and blasting through concrete. I climbed into the air, slowly approaching supersonic instead of instantly breaking the sound barrier out of habit. It was something I'd picked up after spending a month patrolling Metropolis with Superman. He did it out of courtesy to the people.
"Batman, do you have them?" I said evenly into my League communicator, trying not to let my annoyance bleed through.
I'd warned him about recruiting young operatives.
I was their age once, and I was intimately familiar with all the emotional shortcomings of puberty. The fact that M'gann and Connor were mates should have been enough to exclude them from this mission, but Batman had insisted—for admittedly good reason.
Their leader, Aqualad, was traumatized, and the rest didn't have the best standing with Julius, who seemed to be drifting further and further away from us with every lie, promise, and vow.
I frowned.
None of us could reach him. Understand him. Reason with him. But that was all right, at least for now. Canary would prod his mind and help him heal from his war wounds, and eventually he would see the sun again.
"The Satoshi Building," Batman responded. "They're trying to make a call. I'm blocking them."
With my micro-vision, I scanned the tallest buildings, locating the one he'd named. They stood there, silhouetted by moonlight.
Alexander Whitmer barked at the young Meta forced to chauffeur him.
"Approaching now."
Drawing in a deep breath and tensing every muscle in my body, I propelled myself forward, shattering the sound barrier. I was far from most buildings now, so the shockwave didn't shatter any glass.
I was seconds out from reaching them. With any luck, I would catch them immediately. Young and relatively inexperienced, I hoped the teleporter would need short rests between jumps—but I wasn't optimistic. So I ramped up my speed.
A protracted chase was the worst-case scenario.
Or so I thought.
My eyes went wide when I saw a spark of red flare between Alex's hands. He and the boy exchanged words, and then Alex pointed at a parking structure packed with hundreds of cars and dozens of people, at the very least.
No. That animal.
The fireball accelerated as if shot from a ballista. I stopped holding back and accelerated until the world around me was a blur of color and motion. My armor heated up, and I arrived at the parking structure just as they vanished.
I looked in their direction, teeth gritted, then dove into the structure.
The smell of charred flesh hit me.
"Batman, we have a problem," I said.
"We were listening in on them," he replied. "Flash is already on your street. He'll handle the pursuit. You help those people."
A car explosion rocked the floor, and I accelerated, throwing myself over the first survivor I saw. It was a teenage girl covered in third-degree burns. She would be in pain for a very long time. My stomach churned with rage.
There were times I questioned the vow I'd taken not to take another life.
Batman's POV
"His mind… it's dammed off," M'gann said, panic creeping into her voice.
"What do you mean, dammed off?" Canary asked carefully.
I kept one ear on the conversation and most of my attention on the Bioship and my holo-computer as I sent out a distress call to the secondary team and helped Robin expand the perimeter of our hack.
In seconds, we were inside every cell tower in the city, monitoring inbound and outbound communications and scrubbing them for any mention of a Justice League operation involving Alexander Whitmer. We also blocked Alexander's and Sanjay's devices.
They could not, under any circumstances, be allowed to contact Artisan. Not yet. Not until my team arrived—Flash, Zatara, Red Tornado, and Captain Atom. They were all suited to exploiting Artisan's weaknesses and capable of dealing catastrophic damage from afar.
Still, I'd rather not have a fight within city limits. Too much risk of collateral damage.
The hope was to accomplish the bulk of our objectives and relocate the metas, Ade, Alex's family, and the man himself before she arrived.
If that failed, I had several countermeasures prepared—none of which I wanted to use.
Wonder Woman's voice came through the League channel, and I patched her through, feeding her the last known location of Alexander and Sanjay. They were arguing about something.
"His mind is different now," M'gann said. "It's like a young Martian who's just begun training. It's not impossible to push through, but it will hurt him."
I looked up from my screen, struck cold by her words.
That couldn't be possible.
If it was true, then all of my containment plans were obsolete. If his mind could evolve like his body, then nearly every part of him could grow. Connor and Artemis had mentioned him poisoning himself repeatedly to build immunity.
Who's to say that didn't apply to most known phenomena.
No. Focus, Bruce.
Stick to what you know.
If he was becoming a telepath, then he won't need us for much longer to get around Artisan's Vows—and that was bad. Very bad.
We hadn't found him after the Canada incident.
He'd come to us. He'd vanished once.
If he vanished again…
"Batman," Robin called, panic edging his voice. "They're doing something."
Robin didn't panic easily. If he was worried, it was serious.
"Flash, I need you at the Satoshi Building now."
"Already in the city," Flash replied.
Two explosions rocked the city. One near. One far.
Concrete and glass erupted. Screams bled into the cacophony. Alex's building groaned and began to list toward the crowded street below.
No.
"Zatara!" I shouted into my comm.
"Tnemecrofnier larutcurts," Zatara intoned. A thin lattice of light climbed the building, stitching broken supports and locking shattered sections in place.
The trembling stopped—but the damage was done. The streets below were chaos. Dozens were dead. Cars lay twisted and burning, and civilians were fleeing in terror.
Julius hovered in the air, freezing a tumbling car with a flick of his hand. He looked half-dead, but if he felt it, he didn't show it. He warned off police, healed himself, and traded taunts with Ade, who swaggered out of the building grinning.
It made my skin crawl.
Julius needed backup—not because he couldn't handle Ade, but because the collateral damage was climbing.
The vow we made didn't factor in collateral damage. Hundreds of thousands could die. If there was no intention behind their death, it wouldn't violate his vow.
None of us was fast enough to intervene directly, and telepathy wasn't working either. M'gann had tried to probe Ade's mind, but it was warded.
The B-team was still seconds out.
Wonder Woman called again, and I saw the aftermath of the second explosion on my holoscreen.
Alexander Whitmer had set an entire parking structure on fire.
In a sick way, I understood his intention.
Media attention. Bypassing our comms blackout. Distracting Wonder Woman.
I met Robin's eyes. He'd reached the same conclusion.
"This is on him," I said softly, not fully believing it.
It was rare to see such naked callousness. He might have been a banker, but Whitmore was more an animal than most of Artisan's flock—more than most criminals we went up against.
Numbly, I responded to Wonder Woman, patching Flash into the call.
"We were listening in on them," I said. "Flash is already on your street. He'll take care of the pursuit. You help those people."
"Roger, Bats," Barry Allen replied, then cut the link.
Below us, the air thundered as Julius unleashed his technique again and again. He and Ade moved and fought so fast that the bioship's sensors took a moment to adjust. In seconds, Ade was over the skyline, and Julius followed, leaving the street behind in a mess of overturned cars and structural damage.
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding when they vanished over the horizon.
Tense seconds passed as I shoved my fears, doubts, and apprehensions down.
Compartmentalization. It was my greatest asset—and, according to my therapist, the greatest obstacle in my personal life.
"Robin, Canary, Miss Martian, Zatara, and Superboy," I called, "we need to finish the mission and re-establish control down there."
Canary looked up from her conversation with the telepath.
"You have to send Captain Atom after them," she said. "M'gann can't get a solid hold on either of them. And the way they're going, we're going to need someone who can shut them down before they kill somebody."
"You got all that, Captain?" I asked, having patched through Beta team at the start of the conversation.
"Loud and clear, Batman." I could hear the air whipping around the Captain.
I turned my attention to the other telepath on the approaching team.
"Martian Manhunter, would you mind shadowing Flash and Wonder Woman? I understand it's a big ask, but—"
"Given Artisan's reach and abilities, I stand the best chance of incapacitating her," he answered in a thick, calming voice.
I nodded.
"Yes."
"Then that is where I must go."
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