The meeting broke up without ceremony. The League scattered into their usual pairs and clusters, murmuring in low voices, the holographic globe still spinning slowly behind them.
I didn't linger. The sooner I left the Mission Room, the sooner I could stop feeling like a bug under a magnifying glass.
Artemis of Bana-Mighdall fell in step beside me without a word. Her presence was like a blade sliding back into a sheath — quiet, contained, but with an edge I could feel. Not a bad partner to have. At least she wasn't the chatty type.
We moved down the cool stone corridor toward the hangar. The hum of the Zeta-tube and the distant murmur of voices from the lounge faded behind us.
"You're awfully quiet," I said at last, glancing at her. "Most people at least ask me what I'm going to do first. Or warn me not to go full psycho."
Artemis didn't look at me. "I don't ask questions before a mission. I watch. Then I judge."
I smirked faintly. "Fair enough. Just don't expect a redemption arc. I'm not that kind of story."
That earned me a sidelong glance, sharp but unreadable. Then silence again.
We reached the small hangar where the Cave's Bio-Ship sat docked, sleek and faintly pulsing with that weird semi-organic glow. Miss Martian was already there, standing by the open ramp, her hands clasped behind her back in that almost formal way she'd picked up from watching too many Earth TV shows.
Her green face brightened a little when she saw us. "Batman said you'd need transport. I can get you anywhere in under three hours."
"Good," I said, walking up the ramp. "First stop — Grigor Vostek. Slaver, trafficker, all-around human garbage. Tell me you've got the coordinates."
"I downloaded everything from the League briefing," she said. Her voice was calm, but there was a hint of tension under it. She wasn't thrilled about flying me into my first sanctioned hunt.
Artemis stepped aboard behind me. "Eastern Europe. Vostek's main compound is in the mountains, just inside the border of a conflict zone. He uses the chaos as cover for his operations."
I strapped myself into a seat near the forward console. "Classic. Scum like him always needs a broken country to hide behind."
M'gann moved to the pilot's chair. The Bio-Ship hummed and rose smoothly from the hangar floor, sliding out into the tunnel that led to the water's edge. A faint tremor passed through the hull as it breached the surface and shot forward into the sky.
For a few minutes, the only sounds were the thrum of the engines and the soft, hollow rush of the ocean below us. The Cave shrank to a speck behind us.
I leaned back, eyes half-lidded, and let my thoughts settle on the target. Vostek. I'd read the file twice, and that was enough. Former militia officer turned entrepreneur of misery. Bought and sold people like livestock. Families torn apart, children disappeared, lives shattered. The kind of predator that flourished in the cracks between wars.
Artemis shifted in her seat across from me. "You've hunted his type before."
"Too many times," I said quietly. "Vostek's just another face. But I'm not under any illusion this will be clean. Guys like him keep layers of guards and decoys. You cut your way in, and what you find in the middle usually isn't pretty."
M'gann's voice drifted back from the cockpit. "Batman said no unnecessary casualties."
I gave a dry snort. "I'll keep the body count proportional to resistance."
The ship banked northeast, climbing higher. Clouds rolled past the windows, silver in the morning light.
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We cruised in silence for a while. Artemis watched me in that calm, measuring way of hers. I ignored it until her voice finally broke the quiet.
"You said in the meeting you'd never spare telepaths."
"Yeah."
"Yet you're trusting a telepath to fly us."
At the cockpit, M'gann's shoulders went a little rigid at that. She didn't turn, but I could feel the tension in the air.
"Yeah," I repeated, then shrugged. "I trust M'gann enough for this. Besides, she's not the type to do anything malicious."
I shifted slightly in my seat, leaning an elbow on the armrest.
"But if she ever did harbor malicious intent and tried to crawl inside my head…" My voice stayed level, polite even. "…the next thing that would happen is her head would be detached and shredded before she even realized she'd made a mistake."
M'gann's hands tightened slightly on the controls. She didn't say anything, but I noticed the way her jaw moved, like she was swallowing words.
Artemis's brow arched faintly. "You sound very sure of yourself."
"Because I am." I turned my gaze toward the passing clouds, my tone calm but edged with steel.
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If Artemis had been asked to file a character sketch on Attano, her report would have been blunt and unsentimental: inhuman, amoral, sadistic—an operative for whom conventional ethics were little more than a mild inconvenience.
Diana had already briefed her on his toolkit—[Blink], [Devouring Swarm], [WindBlast], [Shadow Kill]—and hinted that there were tricks he hadn't shown.
Artemis shake her head. She already witness the brutality of Men throughout her Life. But this. This is just completely top it all.
Grigor Vostek.
Lay in the floor alive. His arms and legs has been twisted and shredded like a noodle. His ears has been ripped off. A horizontal slash in his Eyes permanently blinding him. Every teeth in his mouth has been push inward. And his tongue has been devoured by rats.
Attano, by contrast, treated the scene like an inconvenience. "Come on," he said, dismissive. "There are still people here who need to be broken."
Artemis's jaw tightened, but she followed. They moved with the same economy that had cost them the compound's usual comforts: no alarms, no drawn-out slog. Inside the slave block, the air was hot and metallic; desperate murmurs rose when the door swung open.
Two guards, posted at the threshold, reacted a hair too slowly.
Attano folded into shadow and then was on them—[Blink] like a soft crack of thunder. Hands closed at necks. A sound of impact; a dry, clinical snap that echoed down the corridor.
"ATTANO!" Artemis growled, all the control she'd cultivated snapping with it.
He tossed one of the men toward her as if it were no more consequential than passing a toolbox. "Relax," he said, casual. "They're still alive. I only paralyzed their bodies below the neck."
Artemis leaned over the guard in her arms, checking for signs the man for life. The guard's eyes were wide but unblinking; he could feel everything and move nothing below his throat. The second man was the same—conscious, trapped inside his own body.
Attano's voice drifted, proud and weirdly bright. "I already mastered snapping someone neck without killing them.," he announced as if sharing a travel tip.
"Eight hundred seventy-five," he added when Artemis stared.
"What?" she snapped.
"It took me eight hundred seventy-five attempts to master this," Attano said, shrugging as if that were the most normal thing in the world. "I killed a lot of people practicing."
Artemis's eyes widened—horror and flat calculation in equal measure.
"How many have you killed in total?" she asked, slow and careful.
"Eight thousand, four hundred twenty-two," he said evenly. "That's how many evil people I've killed. I keep track. And a fairly good memory"
The number landed in the corridor like a thrown thing. Artemis's face tightened; whatever shock she felt was tempered by duty. In her line of work, facts mattered. Motive mattered. Mercy was a foreign currency easy to counterfeit and hard to spend.
Attano moved to the block's inner door and pushed it open. The room beyond filled with thin bodies and the damp, hot smells of confinement—children and adults together, eyes raw from smoke, cages overturned, hope in rough supply. He moved among them like a storm that brought answered prayers.
"Get up," he told them, flicking his blade at the locks. "You're free now."
His voice lacked ceremony, but the effect was immediate: people stumbled forward, hands trembling, as if the world had been turned right-side-up. Artemis took point, checking wounds and calling names—her motions precise and human. Attano methodically unlatched the remaining cages, flicking his blade with the casual efficiency of a man unbothered by morality but focused on results.
"My kill count would be even higher if Diana never found me and put me in the League," Attano said quietly as he worked the last lock, eyes on the freed captives. "I simply made a mistake and now I am here."
"There are so many scum in the world. I've gone off the maps to thin them out. The Justice League is completely unaware all of it" He added
He spoke as if reciting logistics; the casualness of it made Artemis flinch. The slaves—barely more than specters an hour before—began to move toward the ramp, guided by Artemis and Miss Martian. Attano's hands were steady as he handed a child a blanket and a bottle from a scavenged crate.
"You're free now," he said again, stripped of tenderness but not of effectiveness.
Artemis watched the procession go, the warrior's caution warring with the undeniable fact that something practical had been done. She let the contradiction sit between them like a wound that would not close easily: the freedom on one side, the tally on the other.
When the last of the captives had been escorted onto the Bio-Ship, Attano flicked his blade shut, the motion as ordinary as buttoning a coat. "Miss Martian," he said. "Put them in the hospital and erase their memories. There are still more soldier of Grigor Vostek here so I am staying and clean it up"
Artemis glanced at him for a long moment, the weight of what she'd witnessed settling like armor. Then she turned and followed—because orders, because mission, because there were still more people to save.
A/N
Uhh... To Brutal?