Chapter Text
Tap. Tap. Tap.
A gentle rapping sounded on the door of his quarters. Jason blinked open his eyes. His retinal display switched on, the tiny icons of various indicators at the edges of his vision brightened into focus.
Power levels, 100%. "Acknowledged," he said, and the indicator toggled off.
Nanite Concentration, Optimum. "Acknowledged."
Cognitive function, 40%. He sighed. It was still early and he needed coffee. "Acknowledged."
Biologic function, 60%. That was less good. He looked at the time, noting he'd slept for six hours, but that didn't seem like enough to replenish the week prior where he had run on just core power. The nanites could sustain him for short periods without any biological sustenance or rest, but eventually he would become depleted, and without the nanites his biological functions would fail.
"Acknowledged." He dismissed the alerts one-by-one, clearing the feed that had built up as he slept.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Cassandra was still rapping softly outside his door.
"Yeah, I'm coming," he called out, and rolled out of bed and stumbled toward the bathroom to relieve himself.
Hydration low. The icon blinked in his peripheral vision. "Fuck. I know!" he said to the empty bathroom. "Acknowledged."
Jason washed his hands and splashed some water on his face. The cold felt good against his skin. He looked up into the mirror as he dried his face with a towel. He definitely didn't feel like he was at 60% biologic function. More like 30%. He looked like hell. His hair was a mess, there were dark circles under his eyes, and he looked sallow and pale. He probably needed at least a few days downtime to give the nanites time to rebuild his biologics.
He sighed at his reflection. He'd have to make do for now. Cass wanted something, and while it wasn't an emergency (she would have barged right in if it were), she wouldn't have woken him if she didn't think it was important. He finger combed his bed head into something moderately sensible, donned the first set of clean clothes he could find and stepped out of his room.
He found Cass sitting in the small bridge of their docked ship, watching an incoming message on one of the monitors. Someone was speaking through an electronic voice, and as Jason approached he could see an eerie green face on the screen.
"I know you're there listening, whoever you are," the voice was somewhat feminine despite the distortion. "This message is for the Red Hood. There is an urgent issue for which we wish to discuss the engagement of your services. Your presence is requested at these coordinates."
Jason recognized that green face. It was the symbol of the infamous Oracle, and by extension he knew who the person behind it was—Barbara Gordon. Babs. Someone he hadn't let himself think about for a long time.
For a moment he froze, before the 40% of his working cognitive function caught up to remind him that Oracle had asked for the Red Hood, not Jason Todd. For all she, Bruce and the others knew, Jason Todd was still dead, just like he wanted them to think. There was no reason to panic. Even so, his heart had started involuntarily racing before the nanites kicked in to forcibly crank it down to homeostasis. There were some advantages to being a cybernetic.
Except that didn't protect him from Cass' observation. She was immediately up and in his face, putting her hands on either cheek to hold him still, staring at him in concern. Sometimes the way she looked at him… as if she was staring into an infinitely interesting new quasar…. Jason hated that kind of scrutiny. He had no idea what she saw, but reading the human body had been her first language amidst the fucked up social experiment her douchebag of a dad had put her through.
He'd figured out that much the first time she'd synced her neural network to his nanites. She had the network implanted into her brain too early and it had ruined the proper development of her language centers—a good reason why such experiments and childhood cybernetic integration was universally banned across the League of Stations. Still, Jason had managed to sync a dictionary into her memory banks with his nanites, but it often took her awhile to sort through to find the right words.
You. Scared. Her words blinked along the lower line of his vision. Why?
She looked at him, her dark eyes a little wide with surprise, though she patiently waited for a response.
"I'm not scared," he replied. "My nanites just aren't back at full operation after I got blasted by those LexCorp battle droids last week." They had been the latest in a long line of deadly automatons Luthor had cooked up to protect his supply transports from smugglers like the Red Hood. Jason hadn't been expecting them to be equipped with vorpal blasters and they had nearly fried him. It was almost as if Luthor had designed them especially for him, but Jason wasn't so pompous to actually believe that to be true. Thankfully, Cass had been raised and trained by battle droids. She took out the whole squadron without breaking a sweat.
Lying. Cass sent the word back at him. Nanites optimum.
Damn. She really could read him like a book, if nothing else. "Fine. I'm lying, but believe me, we don't want to take this mission."
They are bad? Cass waved at the Oracle symbol, replaying on the monitor screen.
"No, not exactly." Jason didn't really want to lie about that. Bruce wasn't bad, per se… he was just… he didn't know how to explain it to Cass. "They're not bad, but they still hurt people," Jason managed finally.
Hurt you? Cass gestured toward him.
"No." Jason shook his head and stepped away. Maybe if he made them something to eat Cass would drop it.
Why lying? Her words blinked through his comm channel even though he had turned his back.
"I'm not lying. I'm not hurt. I can't be hurt. I'm not exactly human anymore, so you're not reading me right."
Lying. And then swifter than a ghost, she was suddenly standing in front of him. Human? She touched her hand over her heart.
"Of course, Cass!" Jason frowned, and then took her hand and squeezed it. "Of course you're human, don't ever think you're not!"
Human. She moved her hand now over Jason's heart.
His heart started thundering in his chest again, though he didn't quite know why. The nanites in his core must have been malfunctioning, because this time he couldn't get it back under control.
"I… I need to go out and resupply the ship," he stammered out, suddenly feeling like the confines of their small ship was too suffocating.
He hurriedly donned his brown planetary-hide jacket, switched on his optical distortion field to hide his face from cameras, and stepped out of the ship onto the catwalk into the station.
Even in the endless void of deep space, Gotham Station was known for its harsh beauty in the hours of the artificial dark of the night. The Chrono-circadian Committee had decided long ago that Gotham's daylight hours would be shorter than most other League Stations to save energy during the Divestiture War. The ever adaptive citizens had simply gotten used to it, and eventually they grew to embrace that as part of the uniqueness of Gotham.
The long nights were punctuated by the soft glowing lumens that lined the criss-cross of archaic styled arches, gangways, and pavilions. The vaulted bridgeways meant that even in the brightness of the circadian day, there were always shadows casting a dark line across the multi-gravitational footpaths. These were the celebrated mainstays of Gotham Station architecture, so much that efforts to standardize the circadian cycle with the rest of the stations had been resisted. The vaulted architecture lent the station a sort of anachronistic feel, despite the station being perhaps the most technologically advanced out of the League Stations.
Even after everything, Jason was still drawn here. He loved Gotham. It brought him some level of comfort to walk the multi-gravs down into the narrow allies of the lower levels. This was where he grew up, in the crowded tenancies Gothamites had dubbed Crime Alley. Corporate Security had never been able to root out the rougher crowds that had settled into the cracks here, but it wasn't all bad. If you looked up from the lower levels, you could see the splendor of upper Gotham—the twinkling lights amidst the glittering glass of corporate towers, the flowing cascade of water fountains, the haze of mist and fog that drifted out from the weather machines—all curving upward along the arc of the outer levels of the station.
A lot of the incoming station immigrants also found their settlements here, the cheaper rooms and the melting pot of station and planetary cultures was familiar and reassuring. Jason knew his way around, and even though nowadays he felt it hard to claim himself fully a person, he knew the people here. It was still home.
Jason made his way to the underside of the tram tracks, where tucked into the gap between the bridge posts was a small watering hole he had frequented in the past. He ducked into the door, sat down at the bar and ordered a drink.
Planetary beer was expensive on a station, but Jason himself had smuggled a container of the stuff in not more than a few weeks ago. The bartender didn't recognize him of course, not without his signature red helmet, but they were still generous with the tap. Jason took a swig, the cold brew hit his gut quickly, and he relaxed into the feeling
Foreign toxin warning. The alert blinked up at the edge of his retinal display.
"Retinal display off. Toxin filtration off, two hours," Jason mumbled under his breath. "Emergency alerts only."
The alert disappeared. Nanite integration sucked. They kept him alive, but sometimes that was the problem. Talia hadn't asked before she dipped him into a vat of Lazarus tech. If she had, he would have said no. He would have preferred dead to the interstitial existence of being both man and machine.
At the very least, over the years he had figured out the system overrides, and now that the alerts were off, he settled into listening to the idle conversation that drifted across the small bar.
"You seen the kids under the Parkway lately?" someone was saying.
"Naw. I looked yesterday, couldn't get the hookup 'cause they cleared off."
"Yeah. Gal near the Narrows' gone too. Nobody's under the boardwalk anymore neither. Kids're fucking disappearing. Maybe the CorpSec nabbed 'em."
Huh. That didn't sound right, Jason thought. CorpSec usually didn't bother policing the small time kids dealing under the bridges. They roughed them up sometimes, but rarely did they ever outright arrest them. There just wasn't room in the station brigs to house a revolving population of vagrants, let alone protect and place the minors. It was one of the reasons he had thrown his hat in with Batman back in the day. He had believed Bruce. He had believed that they could make a difference for these kids, because Jason had been one of them himself. He had thought that Bruce had cared when no one else had bothered…..
His chest felt constricted suddenly. His throat seemed to close up and his pulse was up again. Damn the nanites. They did a piss poor job of regulating his amygdalic responses. If only the Joker had blown away his limbic system too. Then he could have had a fusion core in his brain instead of his two arms and heart.
Jason downed the rest of his beer. Hopefully the alcohol would dull the most useless part of him that was still human. He transferred a few credits to the bar and got up to leave.
He'd have to look into the missing kids later. He hadn't exactly been lying when he had told Cass he needed to resupply their ship. He was planning on hitting the Lexcorp caravans coming through from planetary in the next few weeks. They would need to stock up on weapons as well as food. Real food. Cass had grown up eating only rations and intravenous infusions. He wanted to give her the opportunity to eat real meals as often as possible.
It would also be a sort of apology for running out on her earlier. He felt bad about that, but sometimes he couldn't control his reactions. At least it hadn't been one of his Lazarus rages, though Cass did a pretty good job of subduing him when those happened. Still, Cass was the closest thing he could call a friend, if such a thing were possible for him.
He let out a sigh. He had a lot of stops to make in the next few hours. Might as well get started. Jason stepped out of the bar and onto the multi-gravs to make his way back into the Gotham night.
Jason didn't make it back to the ship until the next morning. After traipsing across the multi-levels of Gotham Station to find each black market fence and distributor, and after all the haggling and posturing and threatening required to finalize a deal, he was able to place all the orders for munitions, energy cores, and med-surg packs (Cass had used the last of their supply on Jason after the vorpal blasts) needed to survive in deep space for at least a month. It was early morning by the time he was done, and then he had to wait a couple more hours for the food market stalls to open. It was the only place to get the flash frozen goods he needed to cook Cass and himself proper meals.
By the time he made it back to their ship, he'd been gone nearly a full circadian day. Guiltily, he had picked up a planetary dinner of mixed curry. Hopefully Cass wouldn't be too angry with him.
"Cass?" he called out as he entered the ship. There was no response, which wasn't unusual given that she couldn't speak, but the ship was unusually silent. Cass often like to watch old-world culture vids of ballet and other forms of dancing. There was often music playing aloud during their downtime when they weren't running from InterSec Space Officers or other various security they had stolen from.
Jason peaked into the common areas, and then through the open door of her quarters, but found them empty. Finally he made his way onto the bridge. One of the monitors was on, and a pit started to form in his artificial gut as he called up the screen.
It was that damned message from Oracle. Cass had been watching it again, the last timestamp had not been an hour after Jason had left the day before. He tapped a few commands with a feeling of dread, only to have his fears confirmed. Cass had downloaded the coordinates Oracle had sent. She had gone to meet the Bats.
Jason cursed himself. He should have known Cass would get curious. He didn’t blame her. He didn’t tell her a whole lot about himself, plus she tended to be a little protective. Cass must have left soon after she had downloaded the coordinates, which was almost a day ago, but she hadn’t come back. He knew Cass could handle herself, and he knew the Bats wouldn’t actually kill her, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t be harmed in some other way, or that they would find some way to detain her.
He did his best to rein in his concern and his once again rapidly beating heart as he went to suit up, grabbing the small metal card that unfolded and expanded out into his Red Hood helmet. He donned it and shrugged into his armor, trying not to let the worry overcome him as he plugged in the coordinates to track her down.
He followed his nav to the mid-levels of the station, into a sector of the station most often used as research facilities. Jason scanned the surroundings. It was late evening now, and the business crowds had died down and gone home. From what Jason could tell, the facility was mostly deserted. He knew Bruce though. He knew Babs from before she was Oracle. There was no way they’d put the coordinates out to the Red Hood without fully securing the area. He’d have to tread carefully.
Fortunately, he had been raised as a Bat, and he knew most of the tricks they used frequently. He had ready a few counter-measures his nanites could enact to distort the readings on the sensors they had likely employed. Jason switched his defenses fully on, armed up the low-power phasers he kept at his belt, stepped out of the shadows and kicked down the front door.
Alarms were immediately blaring. Red flashing lights in short bursts that illuminated the darkness of the interior. It was meant to be disorienting, and for most non-cybernetic entities it would be, but Jason simply switched to infrared.
“Where is my partner?” His modulated voice echoed in the empty building, but he knew full well that the Bats could hear him. “Let her go, before I take down this whole fucking platform!”
There were heat signatures at the edges of his vision, and he turned as a caped figure whirled down from the high ceiling above.
Jason recognized the figure immediately. A full cowl covering his head, but not exactly Batman. He was smaller, slight, and wielded a full-length energy powered bow staff. Bruce’s spec ops officer codenamed Red Robin—civilian identity Tim Drake—Jason’s replacement after he had been offed by the Joker and the boy he had planned to murder once upon a time. He’d gotten distracted from that bout of revenge after he met Cass, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still harbor a certain kind of rage toward the other. An overpowering anger suddenly bloomed inside him, and the nanites were suddenly reacting, interpreting the anger as a threat and engaging the Lazarus protocols. The programming took over, and Jason holstered the phasers and instead armed his fusion blasters, upping the output levels as he aimed and fired.
Red Robin deftly flipped out of the way, but the explosions rocked the entire sector platform attached to the station hull. The residual plasma melted whatever was left after the impact. Jason fired off another blast at Red Robin, but again he quickly dodged out of the way, and the red flare of fury obliterated any rational thought. A small voice in the back of Jason’s mind told him he was overdoing it, that using a fusion blaster at these levels inside a station threatened the stability of the entire structure, but the Lazarus rage had taken over, and he was ill equipped to stop it.
“He’s using fusion blasters. I need backup,” Red Robin managed to gasp into his comm. “We need to stop him before he destroys the whole sector!”
Another figure whirled out of the darkness, wearing a familiar set of pointed ears, a billowing cape, and a bat symbol emblazoned across her chest. Batgirl. But not the one Jason had known in the past, if the waves of blond hair coming out from the back of her cowl was any indication. She was slower than he expected, but her movements were solid, her attacks firm and direct, and despite his battle AI running in full operation, he couldn’t completely predict her movements. She managed to land a solid kick before he could recharge his blaster, and then a third figure was suddenly tackling him to the floor.
There was a quick jab at his spine, a weak point that directly affected his neural arrays. It sent his optics on the fritz, leaving him momentarily stunned. The action was quickly followed up with an electrical current to the insides of his elbows. It effectively shorted the fusion blasters that were permanently embedded in his arms, rendering him temporarily unable to access his primary offensive weapons.
There was only one person who could take him down that fast—Cass.
The blackness that had momentarily blinded him cleared, and he blinked his eyes until he was looking up into her worried eyes. “Cass?” he managed to choke out. “What… what’s going on?”
The Lazarus rage was clearing as well, his executive function returning as the nanites receded from control.
Shit. Oh shit.
He had nearly taken out an entire sector because he couldn’t control his anger. Thankfully Cass had been there to stop him, but then another round of worrying thoughts came to mind. What was she doing there? Was she under mind control? Had they convinced her to work against him? His thoughts spiraled, until Cass pressed her hand against his chest.
Okay? The word blinked into his retinal display through her neural network.
“I’m fine.” Jason pushed himself up, and Cass stood up with him. He put his hands on her shoulders, peering down at her through his helmet. “What are you doing here? Did they hurt you?”
She shook her head. Need you. Mission. Important.
“I told you, no. Whatever they need, they can find someone else.” Jason took her hand and attempted to pull her away, but she resisted.
Dick Grayson. The name blinked across his vision, and Jason couldn’t stop himself from pausing. He hadn’t let himself think that name in a long time. The shock of it only lasted a second however, and he was able to regather himself. “No.”
Cass narrowed her eyes. There was no way she had missed his reaction, because she repeated the name. Dick Grayson. Find. Mission. People dying.
The words came in rapid fire, but Jason tried to ignore it. He stepped away, noticing the silent observation of Red Robin and Batgirl. They were looking at them curiously, but didn’t interfere. He wasn’t sure what they had done to influence Cass, but he needed to get them both away from here until he could figure this out. Jason took Cass’ hand again, turning toward the exit with the intention of leading her away from the facility, but then to his surprise, she spoke.
“Wait,” she said. Her voice was raspy and quiet, but he heard her clearly. “Help. People. Missing.”
It wasn’t what she said that had Jason’s jaw nearly hitting the floor (thank goodness he was still wearing his helmet), it was the fact that she had spoken at all. She had never done so before now.
“How?” he finally managed to say after he had worked through his shock. “You’re talking now, but how?”
“They,” she pointed at where Batgirl stood. Stephanie. Barbara, she switched back to her neural comms. Help me talk. Fix me.
"Fix you?" Jason said, confused.
"We helped her forge new neural pathways in the language centers of her brain," a new voice interjected, and it took everything in Jason not to flinch, because he recognized that voice. It was a voice he had once fixated on for revenge when the side effects of the Lazarus tech was still in full effect. He was the man Jason had once looked to as a father, and then someone he reviled for his ultimate betrayal. None other than Bruce Wayne, the man behind the intra-station spec ops. The man who secretly masqueraded as Batman.
He stepped out from behind a hidden panel, his black cape hiding the tech and specialized armor he wore, along with the black and yellow symbol that spread across his chest. Jason unconsciously found himself backing away, still somehow intimidated by everything the Batman represented all these years later.
Cassandra had been watching Jason intently, and she must have seen something in his body language that was suddenly alarming. She looked back and forth between them, and then was suddenly crowding into him, squeezing back the hand that he was still holding.
Sorry. Sorry. Hurt you. Sorry. She was apologizing, and it took another few seconds for Jason's brain to catch up as to why. She had deduced from his reaction that Bruce was the reason Jason was nearly having a meltdown. She thought Bruce was the one who had hurt him.
"I just wanted… fix me," she voiced. She sounded anguished, her eyes looked wet and red.
"We're willing to make an offer," Batman said. "We can help her build her ability to speak, in return we need someone who knows how to navigate the Darkspace to find a missing officer."
Jason ground his teeth. "And if I refuse? You'll try and keep her hostage here?"
"No," this time it was the new Batgirl. She stepped up and put her hand on Cass' shoulder, giving her what Jason thought was a genuinely warm smile. "We're still going to help her talk, if that's what she wants. She's free to go too if that's what she chooses. You on the other hand, are a known criminal. If you're not going to help us, we're going to take you in."
Not bad people. Cass was relaying again. I know. Trust. Sorry hurt. Help missing people. Dick Grayson. Grief.
It was the most she had ever said to him at any given time. Whatever she'd found out about the disappearance of Dick, whatever the new Batgirl or Bruce or Barbara or his replacement had told her in the short time that she'd spent with them, she was convinced that Jason should help them. And if the Bats could help Cassandra find the ability to speak, could he really deny her that? Could he really say no, because he was still spiteful and full of anger?
"We did our research on you," the new Batgirl was talking again. "You're one of the few smugglers who regularly makes it in and out of the Darkspace. Most everyone else who tries never makes it out. We also know you've been helping victims of illegal experiments out of Lexcorp and into Gotham Station and its territories, and you've been funneling stolen supplies to the Wasteland refugees. We know you're not the stone cold mercenary your reputation makes you out to be. Cass here is testament to that." She gave Cass' shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
"We've lost one of our own." Now even the stupid Replacement was appealing. "You're the only one who can help us get Nightwing back."
"We can help Cassandra, and if you're successful, we'll grant you amnesty, as long as you leave Gotham Station," Bruce added.
Jason snorted disdainfully. They had no idea what kind of bitter pill they had offered. Bruce hadn't gone nearly so far when Jason was murdered. He'd spared his killer, the Joker, and had done nothing to avenge him, but of course he would pull out all the stops for Dick, the golden child that Jason had never lived up to. Bruce was even going so far as to offer a known smuggler and killer amnesty for the return of his favorite son.
Jason hadn't known Dick all that well, but he'd never hated him either. In so many ways it had been quite the opposite, but Jason refused to think about the embarrassment of his early teenage years. That boy was dead and gone anyway. He was more machine than anything now. And yet... was his humanity so completely gone that he'd forsake someone in need simply out of spite?
Human. Cass' uncanny ability to read him was unnerving. "Save… him," she voiced. You can. You want to.
He knew he was going to regret this, but she'd never forgive him if he said no.
Jason turned back to Batman. "Fine. I'll find your lost idiot and bring them back. In return you'll do what you can for Cass. I get amnesty, I leave this shithole, and five billion credits."
There was a tightening around the corners of Bruce's mouth, reshaping the downturn of his mouth from a frown into a sneer. "Done. Red Robin will brief you on the mission."
Batman turned back to walk through the hidden panel he had come through, indicating Jason should follow. Cass was already up ahead with Batgirl and the Replacement, and Jason had little choice but to follow suit.