The old sub-grid beneath the city groaned like a creature in pain. Pipes hissed. Water dripped. The air was thick with copper and damp mold—the scent of long-abandoned experiments and things better left buried. Old Cadmus symbols—faded, but unmistakable—lined the cracked walls like scars from another life.
Lucas led the way, his hand brushing the walls occasionally, feeling for static pulses. The artifact in his chest hummed erratically, syncopated like a dying heartbeat.
"Still got the signal?" he asked over his shoulder.
"Yeah," Finch replied, voice hollow through the comms. "It's weak, but K-09 passed through here. Maybe a day ago. The readings are… fragmented. Like he's bleeding psionics into the walls."
"Bleeding?" Maya muttered. "That's comforting."
Alice rubbed her temples. "It's like noise. Every corner's whispering something. Some of them feel like my own memories, but twisted."
Batgirl glanced around, pausing beside a cracked observation window. "Residual psionic imprint. Cadmus used this grid for ghost caches—dumping failed assets. He's probably been here before. Might even think he never left."
They pushed deeper, footsteps muffled by layers of dust and corroded metal grating. Lights flickered overhead—some too weak to show more than blurred silhouettes, others blinking like failing stars.
The air changed—heavier, saturated with a strange electrical tension. Then the whispers began. Not words—emotions. Fear. Isolation. Screams echoing from the wrong directions, too distorted to follow.
The corridor narrowed, and so did their focus. Each step felt like it echoed twice—once in the air, and once in their skulls.
Lucas's vision blurred. He saw the slab again. Cold restraints. A gloved hand turning dials. The artifact pulsing over his ribs like it wanted out.
He staggered. A flash of red. A scalpel. A whisper that didn't belong to him.
"You okay?" Maya called, voice sharp, slicing through the static building in Lucas's head.
He blinked, grounding himself with a slow, shaky breath. The whisper of the slab was still behind his eyes, but he buried it. Swallowed it like a pill he couldn't afford to taste.
"I'm fine," he muttered. "Keep moving."
The others exchanged glances but didn't argue. The air ahead carried a pressure—dense, electric, and faintly metallic, like walking into the hum of a broken circuit.
A thump echoed from deeper within the structure. Something not mechanical. Almost like… breathing.
They reached a large rusted bulkhead, its edges buckled from time and stress. A faint heat signature pulsed behind it, casting shadows that didn't match their shapes.
"Containment seal's degraded," Finch noted, examining the display. "Manual override's fried, but the psychic lock's still active."
Lucas stepped closer, but the artifact in his chest pulsed in warning—a heavy thud behind his ribs, like it sensed something it didn't trust. He backed off instinctively, his breath catching.
Alice stepped forward, brows furrowed, eyes shimmering with a strange recognition. "Let me try."
Lucas opened his mouth to object, but something in her voice—almost reverent—held him back.
She pressed her palm to the seal. A tense moment passed in silence. Then a pulse. Then another. Fractured glyphs flickered across the steel—alien, symmetrical patterns that seemed to breathe with their own memory. The air thickened as if the door itself remembered being locked. Remembered the fear behind it.
The symbols pulsed faster, syncing briefly with the hum of the artifact in Lucas's chest. Everyone flinched. The wall vibrated.
Then the door groaned open, peeling apart with a sound like bone being pried from flesh—a wet, shuddering creak that echoed down the corridor.
What lay beyond looked like the aftermath of a contained explosion frozen mid-burst. Walls scorched black. Floor ruptured. Tubes cracked and curled from the ceiling like snapped tendons. The air was humid with psychic residue, shimmering faintly like heatwaves.
And in the center—curled like a defensive animal—was a boy.
He didn't speak. Just lifted his head slowly. Skin pallid. Veins glowing faint blue beneath the surface. His eyes glowed—not with fury, but a kind of primal alertness. Like a cornered animal deciding if it was safer to lash out or disappear. His breaths came shallow and sharp, and for a moment, he didn't blink—as if blinking might make him vulnerable.
Finch's scanner stuttered, then locked.
"Cadmus tag reads... K-09," he said slowly. "But there's metadata underneath. Heavy redactions. Fragmented core ID. They tried to write over something. Whatever his real name was... part of it still says Wilson."
That name hung in the air like a dropped knife.
Then the boy screamed.
It wasn't just a cry—it was a rupture. The walls trembled, a sonic-thrum rolling through the concrete like a living quake. A burst of psionic force ripped outward in all directions, hurling the team like rag dolls across the room. The lights didn't just flicker—they exploded in sequence, showering sparks across the ruined chamber.
Lucas slammed into a support beam, barely managing to roll back to his feet, ears ringing, chest tight. The artifact inside him hummed violently, a warning and a reaction.
"He's not lucid!" Maya shouted, coughing as she leveled her weapon.
"Don't shoot!" Lucas barked, stumbling toward her, shoving her aim aside. "He's scared. He doesn't know who we are."
The boy—K-09—jerked upright like a puppet on live wire. His eyes blazed with psychic heat, and his mouth opened in a soundless shriek. The ground beneath him cracked. Furniture bent inward, drawn toward a center of gravity that shouldn't exist.
Another blast came—raw and animalistic. Alice stepped forward, arms wide, her hands glowing as she forced a counterwave into the pressure. The collision flared, and she nearly buckled.
"He's projecting raw trauma," she hissed. "It's not even deliberate."
Batgirl swept to the left, eyes sharp. "We need to close in—cut his focus before he spirals any further."
Kaldur raised both arms, drawing water from shattered lines in the walls. He formed it into a dense bubble, pushing against the psionic tide and creating a tunnel of stillness.
Lucas moved into it.
Every step felt like walking against a wind made of screams. The glass cracked beneath his boots, each shard singing underfoot like a warning bell. His chest glowed brighter now—the artifact syncing rhythmically with the storm.
Around the edges of the room, the others held their breath and held their ground.
Maya was crouched behind a support beam, rifle pressed tight against her shoulder, finger hovering just shy of the trigger. Sweat beaded at her temple, her eyes locked on Lucas—waiting for a signal, hoping there wouldn't be one.
Alice was bracing against the wall, blood trickling from one nostril, her eyes still lit with defensive magic, trembling as she fought to keep the barrier up between herself and K-09's spiraling mind.
Batgirl shifted her weight slightly, baton in hand, ready to strike—her stance perfect, but her jaw clenched with hesitation.
Aqualad stood between two fractured pipes, water still suspended in coiled arcs at his sides. He didn't speak, didn't flinch, but his eyes stayed on the boy floating in the middle of the chaos, reading every twitch.
They were all ready. For the worst. And Lucas could feel it.
K-09's body was shaking violently, levitating just slightly off the floor, fists clenched, mouth open in a silent cry. Around him, fragments of broken machinery hovered and spun like debris caught in a collapsing star.
This wasn't just raw power—it was grief, weaponized.
Lucas stepped into the ring of broken glass. His heartbeat synced to the rhythm of the tremors. He raised his voice—not yelling, but cutting through, threading between all the violence and fear.
"I know what they did to you," he said. "The cage. The tests. The noise that never stopped. I know what it's like to wake up and not know if the memories in your head are yours or someone else's nightmares."
K-09's eyes shifted, a tremor of recognition flickering somewhere deep. His hands shook harder.
"They didn't keep you because you were broken. They kept you because they were afraid of what you might become if you weren't."
The energy around him surged again, snapping with unstable psionic feedback. One of the overhead lights burst.
"They didn't keep you because you were broken. They kept you because they were afraid of what you might become if you weren't."
Lucas stood his ground, even as the wind howled louder in his ears.
"You're not their weapon," Lucas pressed. "You're their mistake."
K-09 collapsed forward onto his knees, trembling. His voice came out as a raw whisper. "They said I was the failsafe. That if everything else broke… I'd remember how to reset it."
Lucas crouched beside him, lowering his tone. "Not anymore."
The boy blinked slowly. His focus steadied.
"My father used to say… a weapon doesn't get to choose what it protects," he murmured. "Only what it survives."
Lucas paused, the name Wilson echoing in his head now with a faint chill.
"You're not a weapon anymore," he said firmly. "You're still breathing. You survived. That means you choose."
Jericho—because now, the name was no longer just a label—looked up at him with eyes no longer brimming with power, but with something far more fragile: hope.
Lucas held that gaze for a moment longer, then asked softly, "Do you know your name? Your real name?"
Jericho blinked, like the question tugged at something buried too deep.
For a second, he didn't answer. Then his lips parted.
"Joseph."
The name hung between them, raw and unsteady.
Lucas's brow furrowed. "Joseph…?"
A pause. The boy's expression tightened. "Joseph Wilson."
Finch's breath caught. Maya froze mid-motion. Even Batgirl straightened, eyes narrowing behind the mask.
Lucas felt his stomach twist. "Wilson..." he echoed. Then it hit.
Slade Wilson.
Deathstroke.
The room chilled with recognition. No one said it out loud, but they didn't have to.
Jericho looked down. "He was never supposed to know I existed."
The weight of it settled over them like dust in a ruined chapel.
Silence fell.
Then it cracked.
A sharp sound—footsteps on metal grating. Not theirs. Not hesitant.
Alice spun, eyes flaring again, and stepped between Lucas and Jericho. "We don't have time to hug it out," she snapped, her voice low but urgent. "They're coming."
Everyone went rigid.
A low mechanical hum echoed behind them—the same frequency they'd heard when Echo engaged them before. Maya cursed under her breath and dropped to a knee, checking her weapon. Batgirl's eyes scanned the corridor like a hawk.
Finch checked his scanner. "Multiple signatures. Fast. Two minutes, tops."
Lucas looked to Jericho. The boy was breathing harder now, panic threatening to rise again.
"Hey," Lucas said, grabbing his shoulder. "You're with us. You're safe. But we need to move."
Jericho nodded weakly, and with help, staggered to his feet.
Alice's hands were already glowing again. "I'll hold back the first wave if I have to."
"No," Lucas said, steel in his tone. "We all go. Together."
He turned to the others, jaw tight. "We've got what we came for. We move. Now."
Author's Note:
If you're enjoying the story and want to read ahead or support my work, you can check out my P@treon at [email protected]/LordCampione. But don't worry—all chapters will eventually be public. Just being here and reading means the world to me. Thank you for your time and support.