Batman grimaced and started prioritizing targets on his head.

*******************

OracleCom, Channel 2:

_"Batman, status. Batman, this is Oracle. What is your status? Batman?"

Channel 1:

_"Nightwing, Batman has gone off-line longer than scheduled. Can you check on him?"

_"Sure, Oracle. Do you have a location?"

_"A suspected Kobra transport ship on the river. Intel analysis indicated it was lightly protected, but... He should have radioed in by now."

_"Don't worry, I'll look for him. E.T.A. seventeen minutes."

_"Roger that, Nightwing... And Dick? Be careful."

*******************

One thing you can say about Batman, Barbara mused during the mission debriefing, he was a complete professional. The analysis session had been just as grinding and unforgiving as ever - he didn't let something as small as a broken arm slow him down, and he refused to take any medication that might blunt his faculties.

Nonetheless the session was mostly a waste of time. Oracle had quickly surmised what had gone wrong with the mission: somebody had played with her intel data, subtly misleading her into a wrong analysis that could have proven fatal to the Batman.

Beyond that, they knew almost nothing. That was the most worrying thing.

*******************

A series of images frozen by the storm's lighting. Frames of violence, almost like a comic.

Nightwing flying over Bludhaven. A blue angel of justice.

A sharpshooter's bullet, barely avoided by skill and luck.

A battle quickly joined by others. There are three of them, and he's fighting alone.

A grin and a quip. He has fought hard to fight alone.

The battle begins.

Lasers and nets. Smoke pellets and decel lines. Mercenary training against the Bat's mark.

The predictable ending. Their rushed escape.

A detective's fingers now, searching through the equipment left behind.

A minicomputer's records. A bounty on his head, together with coordinates and notes, some stolen from Oracle's data. An almost scary concept.

And there is also a name. The Left Hand of Darkness.

Now the enemy has a name. But nothing more.

*******************

Nightwing only leaned through the window, sensing the tension in Barbara's frame even from behind. This wasn't a good moment for playful visits.

_"Barbara?"

The rainstorm of keys clicking didn't abate at all.

_"Go away, Dick."

As many times as she had told him that, Dick thought, this was one of the few she had meant it. But he couldn't.

_"I've seen your logs, Babs. You've got to rest a bit. You're not going to catch the Left Hand if you're collapsing from exhaustion."

_"Well, I sure haven't been able to catch them so far, have I?" The tone tried to be sarcastic, but the pain showed through.

_"Barbara..."

Suddenly the woman stopped typing and whirled about in her chair.

_"They almost killed you, Dick. They almost _killed_ you... using _computers_. That's my turf and you are my..." ---a tired, pained, raging head shake--- "I'm supposed to make technology work for us, not against us. If I can't keep us safe from this kind of thing then... then we're all in grave danger, and I will not allow that."

Dick knew that it wasn't that. What was driving her now wasn't protectiveness but fear --- the fear that if she lost mastery of the cyberspace, she'd lose the one thing that made her valuable to her "family". Fear of becoming the useless cripple she feared herself to be.

He turned around and jumped out of the Clocktower. Someday, he vowed to himself over the rushing air of the free fall, he would convince her otherwise.

But not tonight. Tonight the Left Hand was after them.

*******************

Watchtower security camera #334.

We can see part of the Watchtower transporter engine room. An emergency alarm sounds, and we can see the Batman rushing to the console, trying to fix a remotely-caused containment breach. Without warning the console explodes taking out the chamber, the camera and certainly any human on the room, body armor or not.

*******************

_*J'onn? Are you all right?*

_*I'm... fine, Bruce. I'm regenerating my body as we speak. You were right - the breach was a trap. Any serious damage?*

_*Teleporters will be out of line for a few hours.*

_*Could you trace the origin of the signal?*

_*Yes. It's... the Clocktower. I'm engaging internal video surveillance now.*

_*You have video surveillance of Barbara's home?*

_*...*

_*All right, I understand. Is she well?*

_*Visual inspection shows nothing amiss. She's working at her main station, standard routine... DAMN.*

_*Bruce? What are you...?*

_*Quick. Do a scan of Barbara's apartment. NOW.*

_*Scanning... BRUCE! There is somebody else in...*

_*I know. I'm on my way.*

*******************

Told by Batman to meet him quickly on Barbara's apartment, Nightwing dropped through the Clocktower window a mere fifteen seconds behind his mentor.

It's odd what you notice in situations like that, the trivia your brain focus on to avoid what can't be faced.

The first thing Nightwing noticed was how utterly shocked Batman looked standing next to Barbara's blood-covered body.

The second thing he noticed was the soldering laser.

Only then did his mind cave in and let itself recognize her left hand, thrown upon the opposite wall of the room. It hadn't been, his forensic training told him, a neat cut.

The rest of him was absolutely frozen, keenly watching for... for... yes! Barbara's shallow breath hadn't finished its cycle when Dick was already next to her, doing what he could to prepare her transport to Leslie's clinic.

*******************

Bruce found Dick sitting next to Barbara's bed, the exact place where he had been for the last days. He was pleased to see that she had just woken up, just as Leslie had told him, but the look on Dick's face told his father that he hadn't figured it out yet. Not his fault, really, and first he had somebody else to comfort, unused as he was to the role.

_"It's over," he said to Barbara.

Dick shot him an incredulous glare, but the woman in the bed simply looked uncertain.

_"For now, yes. The graphs are normal, and J'onn concurs."

Any other day, he knew, she might have felt - violated, by the actions implied by his words. Today she just seemed grateful.

His son, on the other hand...

_"What the hell are you talking about?! The Left Hand is still out there, and..."

_"It's over, Dick."

_"No. Way. I'm _not_ letting those critters go after what they did to Barbara. I'll find them and..."

_"DICK." Barbara's voice, even weakened from more than shock and the loss of blood, still carried enough authority over him. "Bruce is right. It's over for now. And Bruce? Please - tell him. He deserves to know."

Bruce nodded at her. She had always been a brave woman, even with all her... problems. Problems, he recognized to himself, he was perhaps too familiar with.

_"Tell me what?"

_"There was no Left Hand. It was a... dissociative attack."

_"What do you mean?"

_"You know what he means, Dick" - Barbara remarked - "He means it was me. Or at least part of me. How did you find out, Bruce?"

_"Pattern analysis" lied Batman, ignoring his dumbstruck son. "You?"

_"I... saw my left hand typing by itself, trying to engage the orbital defense systems against your shuttle. I couldn't - couldn't stop it. I...I had to..." The cold, thin shell of rationality that had been holding her together broke apart and Barbara started to cry.

Dick snapped out of his shock. Whatever sick, twisted thing fate had thrown yet again in Barbara's path, he knew where he wanted to be. Hugging her, wiping her tears... doing what he could, even if it was never enough to protect her from harm. Even if the pain was sometimes too much for any of them to bear.

At this Bruce slipped quietly out of the room.