Behind the Mask

Chapter 16

Bruce rubbed his temple, small wrinkles forming under his fingers as he continued to stare at the screen, the glowing blue light reflected in his dark eyes. The cave was quiet, save for the dull roar of the waterfall in the background and the occasional rustle of bats as they flitted around somewhere in the vast expanse of the ceiling. The tapping that usually accompanied the light of the computer was absent, as was any other sounds relating to human movement. The cave was quiet, unusually so.

Even for Bruce, who’s thoughts were usually enough to make up for any silence around. For once, the billionaire’s mind was still, as if in pause, waiting for someone to start it up again. It had been running on overdrive for the past fifteen hours and seemed as though finally it had burnt out. Or maybe it was because it had finally exhausted all there was to think about. He’d finally, finally, finally, found some sort of lead on Cadmus. He’d found something that at least shed a little light on the mystery and opened up further investigation. At least he hoped so.

Once Robin had recovered enough to speak coherently, he’d told Batman everything that had happened. Of course Batman had been mad, furious even, at the boy and had lectured him for probably longer than they boy’s attention span, but he’d had to. Robin had to understand that what he’d done had been stupid and reckless, no matter what he may have learned from it. His life was worth more than whatever information he’d managed to procure, no matter how important the information turned out to be. Batman had then put Robin on ‘house arrest’ and Dick as well, until his ankle was well enough to walk on. The boy was currently upstairs sleeping, a large brace on his ankle, bandages covering most of his body and a large bottle of medicine for the poison still coursing through his body. Thankfully it hadn’t been deadly.

Once Dick had been taken care of, Bruce (or at least he assumed it was Bruce; he wasn’t wearing the cowl, right? Though the fact was that Bruce was seldom around anymore) set upon sorting all the information he’d received. He’d managed to condense it down and arrive at the conclusion that, A: The man after Dick was crazy; B: He’d injected Dick with some type of DNA that he’d managed to somehow hide from scanners, for now; C: Said DNA wasn’t ‘active’ and hence was not playing any role in Dick’s genetic make-up – yet; D: The scientist, if he could even be called that, behind all this needed to activate the DNA inside Dick; and D: His reasons, while still unknown, either appealed to most of the villain population at large or he was able to give said villains what they wanted. That was the part that scared Bruce the most.

Whoever this man was, he either was able to give these villains something they wanted, which, in some cases, was hard to do, or else whatever he was up to somehow appealed to them. Either way, he was someone Bruce wasn’t happy to be messing with, especially if it was Dick’s life that hung in the balance. At least now he had something to go off of though. Or he hoped he did. Atomic Skull hadn’t been much help, having only been heading to some rendezvous point where he would meet up with this freak scientist and not actually knowing yet where his main base was. This man was good – almost too good – but only almost. He was Batman, after all.

oOo

“Recognized: Robin B-01”

“Oh, you’re here!”

Robin smiled, limping over to where M’gann stood with a spoon in one hand and a fish in the other.

“Yeah, sorry I’m late; had a lot of homework.” He subconsciously tried to adjust his sunglasses so they weren’t pressing into the small cut and bruise on his face.

“It’s alright.” M’gann smiled, waving the fish slightly as she spoke. “I was just trying a recipe Conner gave me. He told me I should make it for Kaldur so I decided to have it ready when the Team gets back.”