Hyperion and Garfield Logan, who'd rather call himself Changeling or Beast Boy, appeared at the entrance of Titans Tower, both primed for combat. Harper was manning the Model Val, which was moderately armoured and braced with heavy weapons. As she and Garfield swept their eyes through the lobby, they both felt uneasy.
"Uh...something isn't right, fam. Usually when the alarm goes off, there's like a giant hole in the building. But nope...no hole." Garfield quipped.
Harper grunted in amusement. "Not sure if you're using 'fam' ironically or un-ironically."
"Depends which one you want it to be, girl." He said with a smirk. "You know, I'm used to being told to focus or something right about now. You gonna do that?"
"Yeah, nah." Harper replied, peering through the darkness with the assistance of the flashlight mounted on the side of her helmet.
Beast Boy sniffed the air and cocked his head quizzically. "Bro...not even whiff of evil. This is whack. Can you like hit up the Titans upstairs?"
"Power's down, so no. Also, given that it's midnight, they're probably dead asleep."
Garfield groaned. "Could you maybe have used a different word?"
"What's wrong with 'asleep'?" Harper remarked with a chuckle.
The green-skinned young man laughed rather loudly to himself as he led Harper to the elevator. Garfield slapped the call button as Harper watched intently. Seconds passed, and Gar became greatly irritated by the fact that the elevator light did not turn on. He pressed the button about twenty more times in the span of five seconds.
"Logan."
"Yeah? What?"
"Power's out, mate."
Closing his eyes and inhaling sharply, Beast Boy appeared to have an internal panic attack. "Oh. Right." With a sigh, he hung his head and lumbered over to the stairs.
The immense stairwell was as dark as the lobby, prompting Garfield to morph into a barn owl and prop himself onto Harper's armoured shoulder. The Model Val was outfitted for combat, so it wasn't equipped with any low-light optics.
"This doesn't feel right, Harper. Lots of Titans live here...most of the real strong ones too. If some loser felt like jacking the place, they'd run into them...but I'm not seeing any starbolts or magic lassos flying around."
Harper, who had to quickly adjust to the fact that a green owl was speaking to her, agreed with his assessment. "I've been here for one of those, actually. And you're right."
Once they reached the top floor, Garfield leapt from his perch, switched to a gorilla form and stood by the door. Harper armed her guns and brought them up. Garfield looked at Harper, nodded, then raged forward into the door.
The thing was smashed from its hinges as Beast Boy charged inside with Hyperion close behind him. Harper thrusted her guns forward, expecting to see something to shoot.
Instead, he saw Donna Troy and Starfire both sitting on the couch facing the TV wearing nothing but bath robes with a plate of tacos in front of them. They both looked to Harper with widened eyes. Lying on the floor in front of them, also watching whatever was on the TV, was Wally West in his Kid Flash costume.
Garfield, still a gorilla, arched an eyebrow in confusion.
Kori's face was ignited in a beaming smile. As she shifted, Donna Troy leaned over and adjusted her friend's robe to prevent her from flashing their guests. "Hello friends! Have you come to join us in the watching of Neighbours?"
"Neighbours?" Harper repeated as she looked at the screen. "Goddamn. People outside of Australia watch this shit? Who knew."
Donna stood up and interrupted the tangent, being the only calm and collected person in the room. "What's going on? Is something wrong?"
Harper muttered "Yeah, you're watching Neighbours..."
Garfield reverted to his human form and urgently glanced around. "Bro, we got an alert on the Watchtower. Something about the Tower being compromised. The power's meant to be out!"
Donna tensed her brow and crossed her arms. "Everything's been fine over here. The power's on...obviously." She said, gesturing to the TV.
Garfield's eyes fell onto Wally, whose mouth was stuffed with tacos. "Dude, what the hell are you doing here? Are you watching this girly soap opera stuff?"
"Uh...yeah, of course I am. I happen to be a big fan."
"You're just here because two of the hottest girls on the team are here, wet and wearing nothing but robes." Garfield snapped.
Wally glanced left, then right, before murmuring, "...I do not appreciate these disingenuous accusations."
Garfield glared daggers at Wally...then turned blank. "Harper...what's that mean?"
"He says you're stupid and wrong." Harper translated.
"Yeah, well, maybe you're stupid and wrong." Garfield pressed.
At that point, Donna walked around the couch and barked, "That's enough. Nothing's happened here all day. Why did you receive an alert?"
Harper planted her hands onto her hips. "...Let me have a look at your server." She opened the network systems and began an in-depth scrub.
Meanwhile, Wally responded to Garfield with, "You're just jealous because you didn't think of it."
"No, actually. I would if Raven was here though. Where's Raven at?"
Kori answered, "Raven preferred to remain in her bedchamber to study Satanic texts."
Garfield smiled warmly. "That's her, alright. She loves her Satan."
Harper finally uncovered a proxy signal that was laced into the background transmissions from the various scanning arrays installed on Titans Tower. It was a fake alert signal...designed to bait someone...and it worked.
"Garfield...we need to get back to the Watchtower right now." Harper barked.
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Centennial Park in Metropolis used to be Victor's favourite place to go. It was massive, so had plenty of space for him to practice football with the rest of his team. Food was plentiful thanks to the various stalls that would speckle the location, as well as the wealth of restaurants outside the park. The sound of children playing, birds chirping, cars going by, and insects buzzing about came together and created a layer of relaxing tranquility that Victor was eager to experience once more.
He quickly discovered that it wasn't the same. The simulation was incredibly advanced; it could convey touch, taste, sound, and sight directly to Victor's brain using his neural net infrastructure. Once these connections were made, it could also accurately simulate all laws of physics, real world locations using satellite imagery and topographical scans, as well as create very simple 'NPC' type characters to populate the world. However, that's where the detail ended.
The program didn't know what Centennial Park was meant to sound like, smell like, or feel like. Victor had to input those parameters manually...and at that point, he felt like he'd understand all too well that it wasn't real. Even the facsimiles of his friends were glorified chatbots that could only respond in ways he instructed them to.
Feeling empty without company, he decided to at least relish what the simulation could give him. For the last twenty minutes, he sat on the edge of the fountain at the centre of Centennial Park, running his fingers across the cold water within. It had been over five years since he felt anything with his fingers. Having his prosthetic hands detect touch and send signals to his brain about it was similar, but different. Feeling the clutch of water to his skin gave him great solace.
He swept his hand through the water and watched the ripples pulsate outward. It was also relaxing for him not to be given information constantly by the internet, his other optical sensors, and cybernetic implants. As he watched the water and the trees in the wind, he genuinely didn't know what was going to happen. He wasn't trying to filter out all the other nonsense.
For a split second, the trees seemed to skip a beat then pause. Victor blinked, but saw nothing out of the ordinary as they continued to sway in the breeze.
However, when Victor dismissed it as a trick of his troubled mind and looked downward at the water fountain, he found only more questions. The water stuttered, as if it was a streamed video that was still buffering. Victor tensed his brow and stood up from his seated position.
Although he relished the way the simulation did not give him the abilities granted his cybernetic systems, it was then that he wished it did. Something was wrong with the program...and Victor had to disengage in order to find out what. The sim wasn't connected to anything outside of it; it was completely isolated and cut off from the internet. To troubleshoot, he'd have to have a look from the outside.
Shutting down the simulation wasn't as simple as Victor was expecting; many security measures were coded in order to protect Victor's mind from deterioration. After this gruelling process was completed, Victor came to, once again accompanied by the noise of incoming signals and comms.
He looked down at his hands as he flexed them, listening to the sound of the motors and joints within as he tensed.
However, his passive network scans promptly took priority in his mind. The Watchtower's central computer was capable of immense processing loads; that's why Harper's program needed to be loaded onto it. It handled the input just fine, but the interruptions Victor saw suggested otherwise. According to the scan his systems automatically conducted, someone else was using the Watchtower's servers to transfer terraflops of data to a remote storage device. This someone was an unauthorised user...an intruder.