The comms room was a mess. Brightly lit, sure—but chaotic. Chairs overturned, desks knocked over, like a scuffle had just ended. And Cindy wasn’t even trying to hide her disappointment in Sde.

  Even through the mask, he could feel her gaze practically dripping with disdain, like she was silently judging him for failing to handle a teenage girl.

  What does she expect me to do? Torture a disabled kid? Sde sighed internally. Maybe the old Deathstroke would’ve done that without hesitation, but he wouldn’t.

  He dragged over a chair and sat across from Barbara. The single red eye of his mask stared at her.

  “The phones and internet are working now,” he said. “You can call him. And don’t worry—I’m not going to kill him.”

  Barbara, however, didn’t seem convinced. “You’re just her sidekick. I want her to promise me. She’s a mercenary—she should know how to keep her word.”

  Cindy let out a sharp ugh, clearly amused.

  Sde, being called her sidekick, was apparently the funniest thing Barbara had said all night. Cindy looked genuinely pleased, like she’d just found a kindred spirit. Of course, between the two of them, she fancied herself the one in charge.

  “If she wasn’t disabled, I’d have tanned her ass by now,” Sde muttered, exasperated. “Can’t you tell I’m the one calling the shots here?”

  Barbara looked at them both, skeptical. Same gear, same tone, even the same smears of blood on their suits. There was no clear leader here.

  She shook her head. “Not really…”

  Sde sighed, stood up, and walked to the door to keep watch. He gestured for Cindy to take over. Fine. Let her py boss if it helps move things along.

  Cindy swaggered into the chair like she owned the pce, tugged off her helmet and lit a cigar with the confidence of someone rexing on their couch at home.

  “Alright. I give you my word—we won’t hurt Commissioner Gordon. In fact, we’ll try to keep him safe.”

  That was enough for Barbara, at least for now. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small red phone. She dialed, but her face darkened as the line rang and rang without answer.

  She tried again. And again. Still nothing but voicemail.

  Cindy didn’t seem surprised. If anything, it just confirmed what Sde had already guessed: If they came for Barbara, they probably came for Gordon too. After all, from a strategic standpoint, Barbara was just a high school girl. Gordon was a city-wide asset.

  “He probably just left his phone somewhere,” Barbara muttered, stabbing at the redial button again.

  Cindy leaned back, exhaling a zy cloud of smoke. “You can keep trying, but it’s a waste of time. Every second that passes, he’s in more danger.”

  Barbara’s fingers froze over the keypad. Her chest rose and fell with anxious breaths. But instead of panicking, she tossed the phone aside and pulled her ptop back onto her p, fingers flying over the keys.

  “What’s she doing?” Cindy watched her type like a woman possessed. “Does she really think she can just hack her way to Gordon?”

  Sde, still leaning by the door, was cleaning his baton—trying to wipe off the remnants of some guy’s vomit. The st scuffle had been a bit… excessive.

  “She’s probably hacking into Gotham’s telecom network. If she can access the tower data, she can triangute his phone’s st location.”

  “Oh?” Cindy tapped her eyepatch, annoyed that Sde knew something she didn’t. “So your side of the multiverse is all about tech?”

  Sde shrugged. He didn’t even know which Earth this body belonged to. He’d seen enough crime shows as a security guard back in his world to guess how this worked. Sure, he wasn’t a hacker—but he’d seen how the pigs ran.

  “We all have our specialties. I’m betting your mythological trivia is a hell of a lot better than mine.”

  That seemed to mollify her. Being complementary teammates had its perks, after all.

  She took another puff of her cigar. “Still, you’re nothing like the Deathstroke I knew. You’re a moral little angel.”

  Little angel…? Sde almost gagged.

  Was that a normal thing to call men in this world? He suddenly longed for the familiar toxic masculinity of home—not because he liked it, but because at least there, things made sense.

  Even Barbara gnced at them from her screen. Wait… are there two Deathstrokes? Is one of them a guy?

  She filed that away for ter, maybe under deeply disturbing revetions.

  But the moment her fingers touched the keys again, all distractions disappeared. This was her domain.

  A few minutes ter, she hit Enter. Her code compiled cleanly, unching a remote intrusion into the communications company under Wayne Enterprises—the same provider her dad used.

  She rolled her shoulders and waited, fingers drumming.

  “You know,” Cindy drawled, pointing at the ptop with her cigar, “that’s an espionage felony right there. Welcome to the criminal underworld, hacker girl.”

  Barbara stiffened. Being called a criminal by Deathstroke of all people? Yeah, that hit different.

  It wasn’t her first time hacking. She’d breached school systems, neighborhood stores, even Gotham PD once—just to check what her dad was up to during his shifts. She always told herself it was harmless… for skill-building. Not malicious. Not bad.

  But hacking was still illegal. And in this world, hackers were practically terrorists. Not even her dad knew.

  Now she’d broken into a Wayne subsidiary without even thinking. Instinct. And now the truth stared her in the face.

  “I… but I…”

  Barbara’s face flushed with shame. There was no denying it this time.

  Sde waved it off. “Rex. She’s just messing with you. You think we’re really going to testify against the Commissioner’s daughter in court?”

  Barbara gnced at the unconscious officers piled in the corner. Maybe it was a blessing they were still out cold—if word got out, it’d spread through the GCPD like wildfire. Cops loved gossip.

  Sde took off his helmet too. Watching Cindy puff away made him crave a smoke himself. But then he paused.

  “…Wait. That interference device—did you grab the bet I stuck on the hallway doorframe?”

  Cindy smirked and waved her cigar like a wand. “Heh. This was your cigar. Gotta admit, the fvor’s different over here.”

  “…Men.” Barbara shuddered again.

  So there really are two of them… and one’s a man… oh God, I know too much.

  Sde was getting used to that look—the way people reacted when they realized the truth. In this world, “man” was practically a synonym for “victim.” And Deathstroke? A world-renowned powerhouse. The contrast was just too much for people to wrap their heads around.

  “Focus,” Sde said, nudging Barbara’s ptop. “The coordinates just popped up. Don’t zone out now.”

  “Oh. Right.” Barbara adjusted her gsses and zoomed in on the map. “These are the signal tower IDs from the st pings off my dad’s phone. If I match the tower locations with the city map…”

  Her fingers flew again.

  “He was at Arkham tonight.”

  “Arkham?” Cindy raised an eyebrow and spun her helmet on the table. “That pce is more fortress than asylum. 24/7 guards with rifles, patrol boats, APCs, and dogs. No way the bck suits would strike there.”

  “Exactly. He left at 12:03. Took this route back—this is the st location the phone pinged from.”

  Barbara tapped a key. The map zoomed in street by street.

  Cindy leaned closer, mentally overying her own mental map of Gotham. She knew the official routes and the unofficial ones—bck market dealers, smugglers, even a hidden surveilnce outpost used by the League of Shadows.

  She frowned. “He took the main bridge, through North District Tunnel… but with this rain, that tunnel probably flooded.”

  “Whose turf is that area?” Sde asked.

  “No one’s. It’s neutral ground.” Cindy pointed around the map. “Bck Mask runs this zone. Red Hood’s here. Two-Face’s girl owns this strip. But where Gordon vanished? That’s the crack between them—nobody controls it.”

  Sde nodded. “Like a three-way Cold War. If one tried to take it, the other two would push back. So it’s left alone. Makes it the safest part of the slums, ironically.”

  Barbara clenched her fists. “So what do we do?”

  Sde raised a brow. “You can’t just… call Batwoman? She’s got a phone, right? Let her save him. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  “We don’t have her number. She always just shows up when the Bat-Signal lights up, but… she’s gone. She left Gotham.”

  Both Sde and Cindy went stiff.

  Don’t tell me she already went after the Sea Queen.

  “Where’d she go?” Cindy pressed. “Can we catch up?”

  “I don’t know… She came to our house in the middle of the night to talk to Dad. I only heard the end of it.” Barbara pressed her temples, struggling to remember. “She said there was danger… wanted to take us with her. But we said no. So she left alone. Maybe she said more at the beginning, but only Dad heard it.”

  Cindy slumped back in her chair and gave Sde a look.

  You said this world was in danger. You better start expining.

  Sde didn’t have an answer. Batwoman knew something was coming. Something bad enough to make her flee Gotham.

  But how? She shouldn’t know about the coming multiversal crisis. Not unless someone told her.

  And now, the bck-suits were targeting both Gordon and Barbara.

  Why? Gordon’s important—but he’s not a multiversal key pyer. So why go after him? Why now?

  Both women stared at him, and Su Ming could practically feel the pressure crushing down on him—especially from Barbara, who looked like she was about two seconds from crying.

  “What do you usually do after this? Once you’ve pinpointed the phone signal?” he asked, nudging the ptop closer to her, hoping it might jog her memory.

  “I... I don’t,” Barbara stammered, looking genuinely lost. “I’ve never actually gone this far. I only did it for fun before. Once I got the signal, that was it.”

  She wasn’t lying. That much was clear from her expression. This Barbara wasn’t quite the Oracle he knew from other universes—at least, not yet.

  “Okay, then listen to me,” Su Ming said, voice calm but firm. “Start hacking into Gotham’s traffic system. Pull the surveilnce footage from the area around the st ping. Check the moment the phone stopped moving—that’s where we start.”

  “Got it!”

  Barbara quickly wiped her eyes and adjusted her gsses. Her hands trembled slightly as she began rewriting the address protocols, connecting into the Department of Transportation’s backend.

  As long as she still had ideas—as long as they had a lead—they could keep going.

  A few minutes ter, she managed to pull up the traffic footage from the street in question. But there was nothing unusual. Just a rainy night in Gotham, the streets eerily empty—no pedestrians, no cars, not even a flicker of movement.

  Barbara gnced at Su Ming again, silently asking for help.

  “The footage was tampered with,” he said, leaning in close enough to catch a faint, sweet scent from her. “They used a wave jammer and some other tools to hijack the feed and loop a prerecorded scene. This rain—it’s too light. Probably recorded around 10:30 and kept looping ever since. Rewind a bit, look just before that time.”

  Barbara adjusted the timestamp back to 10:30. The three of them watched the screen in tense silence.

  Then, the image glitched for a brief moment.

  “There. Pause it,” Su Ming said sharply. “Slow that down—py those three seconds again.”

  But the result was underwhelming. The st thing the camera caught was a flicker of a bck glove sweeping past the lens—no identifying marks, nothing useful.

  “Damn… no choice. We’ll have to go to the scene ourselves.” Cindy grabbed her helmet from the table, gave Barbara a quick pat on the shoulder, and headed for the door.

  Su Ming didn’t argue. If they wanted any chance of tracking Batman, they needed to find Gordon. He was their only lead right now.

  “Take me with you!” Barbara blurted out, grabbing Cindy’s hand with a sudden surge of courage. “I can help—just like I did earlier. I want to save him too!”

  “No,” Cindy said immediately. “You can hide in the armory. Once the day shift shows up, you’ll be safe.”

  She wasn’t wrong. A storm was raging outside, and dragging someone in a wheelchair into it would slow them down—maybe even get them all killed.

  But Su Ming wasn’t convinced that leaving Barbara behind was the better option. Aside from her skills at a computer, if they did manage to rescue Gordon, would he really trust Deathstroke? But if Barbara was there too…

  “I think she should come,” he said. “She’s still a target. Even if she hides in the armory, what if those guys come back?”

  “She’s not like us—she doesn’t even know how to fire a gun. How’s she supposed to defend herself?” Cindy snapped, frustrated. Su Ming gestured subtly toward the other cops—useless, all of them. And tomorrow’s day shift? Not much better. “If we save Gordon but lose Barbara, what then? We’ll just have to mount another rescue, wasting more time we don’t have.”

  Barbara looked like she was about to interject—probably to say she could shoot—but Su Ming shot her a frantic look and waved his hands in a silent not now. She bit her tongue.

  Cindy hesitated, then sighed. For some reason, Su Ming had a way of talking her into things she really shouldn’t agree to.

  “Fine,” she grumbled. “But don’t expect me to push your wheelchair.”

  Tough words, but she still put her helmet on. Her stance had shifted.

  Su Ming shrugged at Barbara, then pulled his own helmet over his head. From behind the door, he yanked a blue police-issue rain poncho and tossed it to her.

  “All right. Grab your ptop and your wireless card. Let’s find a ride.”