The med-bay's lights hummed overhead—low, sterile, and eerily steady.
Wildcard stood over the recovery cots like a tactician overlooking a battlefield, arms crossed behind his back, eyes following data readouts flickering in the air like ghost sigils.
M'gann followed the direction of his gaze. Robin twitched. Cyborg's optic flickered on and off in a corrupted strobe. Beast Boy's form kept shifting every few moments—cat, bear, hawk, human again—never settling.
Jinx let out the faintest groan in her sleep, her wrapped leg kicking slightly before stilling.
Wildcard broke the silence.
"Waking you was... straightforward," he said, eyes still locked on the biometrics. "Your resistance to psychic influence made extraction easier. You were fighting back. Quietly—sure. But consistently."
He turned toward her then, voice sharpening slightly with tactical weight.
"Your friends?"
He gestured to the beds.
"They're not that lucky."
M'gann said nothing, but her brow furrowed.
"Each of them's trapped deeper. Worse conceptual locks. And I'm about... ninety-eight percent sure that the moment we wake any of them, someone's getting drop-kicked."
His chin twitched toward the others. "Jinx is still healing. Better luck than most, but one detonation in this room and she'll re-break everything I fixed."
He shifted his cloak aside as he approached the central console again, fingers dancing across energy filters.
"So the plan is simple," he said, voice eminently calm.
"You handle immobilization. Contain them with telekinesis. Doesn't need to be elegant—just effective."
Wildcard locked eyes with her.
"Restrain first, wake second. If they thrash, you hold them down. If they attack, we neutralize them. Once mentally stable... we explain."
M'gann nodded fast, no hesitation now. "Got it. Keep them from hurting each other. Or us."
"Or the med-bay," Wildcard added dryly. "These lights are expensive."
"Also I like them," Sage chimed in. "Warmer than you'd expect for government-grade bunkers."
Wildcard ignored it.
He swiped clean through the holographic readouts and brought up priority targets.
"All of them are risks," he said, flicking through the cots. "But one's the lowest on the glass-break meter."
M'gann looked where his gaze anchored.
Beast Boy.
Restless. A ripple of feathers crawling down his arm as it shifted again. Limbs retracted. Bones stretched. Then again.
"Incomplete transformations even inside the illusion," Wildcard observed. "His form's unstable, even when sedated. That means pressure's leaking both ways."
M'gann nodded. "Which also means we have a window. If parts of his real self are trying to break through, there's a path in."
Wildcard's voice lowered.
"Exactly. And if he wakes up like a panicked jungle? I can handle the blunt-force part. You just need to slow him."
She looked at Beast Boy—the light catching just enough of the uncertainty still playing in his subconscious field.
"We wake him first."
Wildcard reached for the chakra lock on the cot, palm glowing faintly.
One glance at M'gann. "Final check. You ready?"
Her glow shimmered around her arms like coiled ribbons of emerald mist. "I'm good. He won't get far."
Wildcard smirked.
"Then let's turn the green one back on."
He reached down—two fingers to the boy's temple—chakra precise, cool.
"Genjutsu… Kai."
The chakra pulse was clean, surgical—meant to sever the tether of illusion without detonating the trauma beneath.
But even precision wasn't always soft.
Beast Boy gasped—violently.
His chest heaved as he bolted upright, sweat dripping from his brow in rivulets. His pupils were blown wide, unfocused, trembling.
He looked around the room like a hunted animal.
His breaths were ragged, sucked in with the guttural force of someone who didn't remember how to breathe. His fingers curled against the cot as though it might vanish. His skin shimmered—green hues flickering with rising instability.
"…No," he whispered. "He's still here—he's still watching—"
A tremor ran through his spine. Then another.
And then the shift began.
His body convulsed as scales rippled across his skin, then fur, then claws. His feet planted on the cot, toes hardening into hoofed paws before becoming talons. His muscles ballooned—lacing unpredictably between forms without a single conscious command.
Not transformation.
Disintegration of form.
His aura snapped like a cracked whip.
"He's losing definition," Wildcard said fast, tone perfectly level. "Fight, flight, or freakout. We're in phase three."
M'gann acted instantly.
Her hands surged outward, arms glowing emerald as invisible pressure lashed through the air. Telekinetic coils wrapped tightly around Beast Boy's limbs like harnessed gravity lines—compressing just enough to hold, not harm.
He thrashed against them, eyes wide, part-gorilla, part-lizard, mouth half-shifting into a wolf's snarl.
Then—
Wildcard's hand flashed out beside him.
"Lightning Style: Paralysis Fear."
⚡
No visible strike—just a soft ripple in the air.
A pulse of energy—silent, unseen—shot through the space between them and struck Beast Boy's spine like static threading an open circuit.
His body seized mid-shift.
No pain. Just halt.
Every muscle locked in place as his nervous system quietly paused itself.
Beast Boy froze.
Jaw slack.
Limbs jittering faintly against M'gann's telekinetic field like rubber bands at their limit.
Then—his form slowly began to de-escalate. The monstrous hybrid shifted back down—claws softening into fingers. Snout retracting, posture lowering. His breathing ragged, but real.
Then came the quiet.
Wildcard stepped forward slowly, crouched just beside the cot now glowing with low medical amber light.
"Garfield," he said, voice calm, not cold. "Listen to my voice. You're safe."
Beast Boy's eyes darted to his, still unfocused. "He… he was in my head. He was inside all of us."
"I know," Wildcard said softly. "He's not anymore."
"And… the Titans?" His voice cracked.
"Still here. Still breathing."
Wildcard looked up—gave M'gann the smallest nod.
Ease off.
She loosened her restraint, slow and measured.
Beast Boy collapsed backward into the cot with a gasp, limbs limp but back in his own skin now.
For a while, no one spoke.
Then—
"Containment successful," Sage reported mildly. "Zero equipment loss. Emotional stability... pending reassembly."
Beast Boy collapsed backward into the cot with a gasp, limbs limp but finally back in his own skin.
For a while, no one spoke.
Then—
"Containment successful," Sage reported mildly. "Zero equipment loss. Emotional stability… pending reassembly."
Beast Boy's chest rose and fell in uneven breaths.
He swallowed. Voice raspy.
"…Who are you?"
Wildcard didn't answer.
He was already checking vitals at the next cot before Gar added the second question:
"…And where… where am I?"
Miss Martian stepped beside the bed, her voice softer now—measured reassurance.
"You're in a secure medical facility. We pulled you out of a psychic trap. The museum ritual was—"
Wildcard cut in, sharply.
He turned.
No words.
His Sharingan snapped open—red spinning with layered tomoe.
Beast Boy blinked—
—and his pupils flickered.
His breath caught as images, knowledge, context slammed into him like an audio-visual tsunami.
A demon prince.
A false Slade.
The Crimson Heart.
Nightmares that weren't dreams.
Possession.
Ritual sacrifice.
Him screaming inside a tiger.
His friends on the verge of collapse.
Wildcard dragging their bodies from the depths.
It lasted only a second.
But Beast Boy swayed like an ocean had passed through him.
His lips parted.
"…Whoa…"
M'gann turned sharply toward Wildcard, eyebrows raised.
"Seriously? Instant info-dump? He just woke up."
Wildcard didn't even blink.
"No time to play therapist. Asmodeus built systems to track resonance. He might find us the second someone breathes wrong."
He turned away again, already inputting something onto the holopane above the medical beds.
"Now hurry."
He tapped three glyphs on the console.
Three silhouettes illuminated under dim lights behind him. Their cores pulsed faintly as the stasis locks rechecked themselves.
"Choose," Wildcard said coldly over his shoulder.
"The red," he flicked a finger at Robin's bed, "the pink," Starfire's aura flickered like candlelight,
"or the blue." Cyborg's body lay perfectly still, visor dark but humming with residual code.
M'gann looked at the three, then back at Wildcard.
Beast Boy blinked his way through the mental storm still clearing from his retina.
Sage spoke, always level.
"Unaffected metaphor usage: impressive. Suggest rapid choice before any of them detonate from internal overload. I hear those are messy."
Wildcard rubbed two fingers together.
"Clock's ticking. The next dream we crack might scream back harder."
End of chapter.