Tim Drake-Wayne | Second Son (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
filialson) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dreamsanddisasters2014-09-16 11:20 pm
filialson) wrote in dreamsanddisasters2014-09-16 11:20 pm
Entry tags:
Clone What-If (GDI PLUS REALLY IS AN ENABLER)
[ Stone walls, tile floor, a tank; brilliant, fluorescent green glow. Breathing for the first time is unlike anything. There's cables hooked up to him and men looking down at him and they have questions. ]
What is your name?
[ He knows the language, and he knows the answer--
(Damian)
--and he knows this is danger and those men are jackals and he must give them nothing. ]
What is your name? What do you remember?
[ He stays silent, stares at them in silent incomprehension. They're disappointed, and he takes a vicious kind of satisfaction in that.
His name is Damian, and he remembers the feel of Kevlar-covered arms pressed around him, the bright and smiling undertones of a man's chatter, and the warmth of walking in from the cold and not being alone.
He's incomplete and defective, but he remembers he had a father, a brother, and a home. ]
[ Surprisingly, it's Tim's network that catches the leak first, rather than Barbara's. Perhaps because Tim has more people on the inside of the League, more bots crawling through the servers he can access. He keeps an eye on their dark-net projects where he can, but this one was buried deep.
It's a video, just one from what must be a series of many. Pretty standard, as far as medical logs go. There's a doctor, a scientist, sitting in front of the web camera, and he begins his report. ]
Subject Alpha is showing more promise, but not the results we were looking for. We'd thought, with the brain activity during development--
[ The scientist sighs. He thought they'd had it for sure this time. ]
The muscle memory transferred over, but it's incomplete. Re-training is going smoothly. The response levels to further synchronizations--
[ And the man lists numbers. Statistics. Comparisons between now and previous updates, of which there are many. There's even mention of other, terminated, subjects. Tim, watching, feels the first stirrings of unease. ]
--previous subjects may have been too young, and the accelerated aging, contrary to expectations, was, by all accounts, a success. Mental faculties fully intact, the subject remains responsive, aware, and cooperative. Most days.
There are very few rational explanations for why a natural age of fifteen rather than ten seems to have been the magic number, even with the reduction in data that could be transferred over--
[ There's ice in Tim's stomach and a pounding in his ears and he stares, transfixed, at the screen. ]
--hope to have better results for the Demon's Head, soon--
[ Tim's tuning out the words by now, numbly pulling up the attached documents, and he has to stop, remember to breathe, at the crisp photo image of a young man pops up on screen. Dressed in simple white clothes, he's been caught on camera in the middle of a spinning kick, and it's a set of too-familiar, sharp grey-blue eyes, ringed with the smudges of chronic exhaustion, that stare straight into the camera. A too-familiar face, expression neutral, with a too-familiar, impudent slant to his lips. Handsome, healthy--
--alive.
Tim stops breathing, and starts throwing everything to Babs. ]
[ Bruce is off-world, at Apokolips, but even if he wasn't this message would go to Dick, first, because Bruce is an asshole who doesn't believe in telling them the whole truth.
(Dick, also alive, Batman again in Bruce's stead. What happened to no more secrets, B?)
Attached to the message is the video, the photos, the documents he could pull up. A location, and a plan. ]
Just say the word.
What is your name?
[ He knows the language, and he knows the answer--
(Damian)
--and he knows this is danger and those men are jackals and he must give them nothing. ]
What is your name? What do you remember?
[ He stays silent, stares at them in silent incomprehension. They're disappointed, and he takes a vicious kind of satisfaction in that.
His name is Damian, and he remembers the feel of Kevlar-covered arms pressed around him, the bright and smiling undertones of a man's chatter, and the warmth of walking in from the cold and not being alone.
He's incomplete and defective, but he remembers he had a father, a brother, and a home. ]
[ Surprisingly, it's Tim's network that catches the leak first, rather than Barbara's. Perhaps because Tim has more people on the inside of the League, more bots crawling through the servers he can access. He keeps an eye on their dark-net projects where he can, but this one was buried deep.
It's a video, just one from what must be a series of many. Pretty standard, as far as medical logs go. There's a doctor, a scientist, sitting in front of the web camera, and he begins his report. ]
Subject Alpha is showing more promise, but not the results we were looking for. We'd thought, with the brain activity during development--
[ The scientist sighs. He thought they'd had it for sure this time. ]
The muscle memory transferred over, but it's incomplete. Re-training is going smoothly. The response levels to further synchronizations--
[ And the man lists numbers. Statistics. Comparisons between now and previous updates, of which there are many. There's even mention of other, terminated, subjects. Tim, watching, feels the first stirrings of unease. ]
--previous subjects may have been too young, and the accelerated aging, contrary to expectations, was, by all accounts, a success. Mental faculties fully intact, the subject remains responsive, aware, and cooperative. Most days.
There are very few rational explanations for why a natural age of fifteen rather than ten seems to have been the magic number, even with the reduction in data that could be transferred over--
[ There's ice in Tim's stomach and a pounding in his ears and he stares, transfixed, at the screen. ]
--hope to have better results for the Demon's Head, soon--
[ Tim's tuning out the words by now, numbly pulling up the attached documents, and he has to stop, remember to breathe, at the crisp photo image of a young man pops up on screen. Dressed in simple white clothes, he's been caught on camera in the middle of a spinning kick, and it's a set of too-familiar, sharp grey-blue eyes, ringed with the smudges of chronic exhaustion, that stare straight into the camera. A too-familiar face, expression neutral, with a too-familiar, impudent slant to his lips. Handsome, healthy--
--alive.
Tim stops breathing, and starts throwing everything to Babs. ]
[ Bruce is off-world, at Apokolips, but even if he wasn't this message would go to Dick, first, because Bruce is an asshole who doesn't believe in telling them the whole truth.
(Dick, also alive, Batman again in Bruce's stead. What happened to no more secrets, B?)
Attached to the message is the video, the photos, the documents he could pull up. A location, and a plan. ]
Just say the word.
no subject
Oh sure, easy enough to say when you have explosives. Last time I had to bite a man's finger off just to get past the touch ID.
[ But even he can't refrain from following eagerly at Dick's heels into the elevator shaft, wide eyes immediately snapping up to the top of the shaft; shadowed, but promising. Freedom.
(He looks like he'd climb it with his bare hands and feet.) ]
Wasn't even the right finger.
[ The batons are still gripped in his hands, and now he's looking at Dick as if asking 'what next?' Actually climb? Get the elevator itself to work after blowing the circuitry? ]
no subject
[The smirk on his face says that he thinks he's the most hilarious asshole on the planet right now.
But he missed this. Dick was a chatty guy, and while Tim and Babs had more in the way of wit, Damian's sarcasm always had a vicious bite to it that Dick couldn't help but laugh at. He probably was not setting the best example. But, who cares.
He answers the unspoken question with action, whipping the grappling gun out of his belt and pointing it straight up at the ceiling, releasing the mechanism with a simple flick as the cable flew straight through the air. And once it caught and the line pulled tight, he didn't bother to ask permission to reach out and curl his arm around Damian's torso (he's heavier, and taller, and it's not as if he could toss him around like Bruce could've when Dick was that age, but he's still got a strong grip) and pull him close.]
Hold on tight.
[The sound of bullets and footsteps rapidly approaching-- another click, and up they went.]
no subject
Batman.
[ He doesn't appreciate being squished up against Kevlar. Or being touched at all, for that matter. But he connects the dots quickly, accepts his lot in life with a grumble and curls his own arm over Dick's shoulder to strengthen the hold.
Bullets, ringing in the hall. Urgent yelling and the stampede of feet. It's so much like last time, when he'd been so close, pressed against this same service elevator, that he can't help but think it's back to the room for him. Back to the slow insanity of being isolated, tested, a science experiment with no hope for any release but death.
Except escape is a reality. The jerk of velocity, dragging him up, is a reminder of that. The pissed off yelling below brings a vicious smile to his face, though it drops at the sound of bullets -- real bullets, this time -- ricocheting off metal as they're fired on. ]
Try again, assholes! [ He yells down at them, taunting. ] A little to the left this time!