Damian raised his wrist. His watch pulsed with a cluster of red dots—same habit as his father; he'd placed trackers on every team member. He cross-referenced against the terrain and studied the readout. "Red Robin and the others are all inside. We go around the guards."
Using the shadows as cover, they moved quickly inward. Patrols were sparse.
What Damian didn't know was that the middle-aged woman, terrified of punishment, had concealed the one crucial detail that two had escaped.
"Brothers and sisters! I have said it again and again—the so-called gods are nothing more than superheroes. In this world, I alone am the true god!" A powerfully charismatic voice boomed through the underground complex over a loudspeaker. The words were followed immediately by a wave of frenzied cheering.
"Long live the Blood Brotherhood!"
"Long live the Blood Brotherhood!"
Damian and Raven slipped past the guards, lifted a heavy curtain—and found themselves looking out at an enormous space. They'd found their target.
A plaza large enough to hold several thousand people. At the center, an elevated platform. A powerfully built man with a chiseled face and distinctly Central Asian features stood with both arms raised, whipping the crowd into frenzy.
Below the platform: hundreds of fanatics, arms in the air like men marching to a holy war, screaming for their leader.
They were dressed exactly like the guards—shaved heads, white robes, expressions feverish and unhinged.
"Rao is no god! Those superheroes even less so! I alone am your one true god!" On the display screens behind him, photographs appeared: recent images of Rao, Superman, Thea.
The crowd erupted. Their voices were loud enough to shake the earth overhead. Every face below the platform burned with the certainty that they could already see it—the day their leader became divine and led them fighting their way out of this pit.
"God!"
"God!"
Damian and Raven both frowned at the chanting. Neither of them shied away from killing—but there were a lot of people in here, and neither wanted the Teen Titans' first group mission to end as a massacre.
Rescue first. They reached the consensus without a word.
"Who are you!"
"Enemies!"
They were spotted before they could act. Neither of them so much as flinched.
Damian drew his long blade, dark energy surging through it as he dissolved into a pool of shadow. Raven's hands crackled with black magic. They drove straight toward the powerfully built man on the platform—neutralize the head and the rest would fall.
The fanatics' frenzy created considerable interference. They were cut off less than ten meters in. This facility had magical suppression devices installed throughout—not particularly powerful ones, but enough. After cutting down more than a dozen, every charge was pushed back. Damian dialed down his magical output and relied on pure skill.
Raven was still not fully recovered from tapping into her bloodline power during the Blackest Night. All she could manage now were shadow bolts and shadow arrows, picking off targets from range.
Their offensive was sharp by any standard. The cultists' counterattack wasn't weak either. High-tech equipment had leaked into civilian hands, and an organization like the Blood Brotherhood had helped itself to a good share of it.
Quantum containment cages. Atomizing ray guns. Exotic weapons of every description came out. For a moment, the two of them were genuinely scrambling.
"Now—activate it! What are you standing there for?!" The leader's voice cracked like a whip toward the middle-aged woman beside him.
She was dressed in a priestly robe now, completely unrecognizable from her earlier refugee disguise. The moment she'd spotted Damian and Raven, cold panic had set in. Concealing the fact that prisoners had escaped was a serious offense in the Cult.
The problem was that she hadn't acted alone. Others had been involved in the ambush. They'd presumably assumed she'd filed the report.
She wasn't one of the fanatical true believers below, and she had no real investment in the leader's delusions of godhood. Her priorities were considerably more practical—wealth, comfort, influence. As his second-in-command, her first instinct had been to bury it. Now, with no hope of keeping the lid on, her priority was deflection.
The leader had no idea what was running through her head. He only saw her standing there while Damian and Raven pushed several more steps inward—and he snapped at her again.
However little she believed in his divine destiny, defying him openly was another matter. The man bathed in human blood. He had reportedly lived two hundred years. His capacity for violence was not something to test lightly.
She turned to the console beside her and worked the controls at speed.
At her command, a massive machine rose from beneath the platform. Over five meters tall and ten meters long, with the sleek aesthetic of science fiction—built in a spread-eagle configuration, five mechanical arms, each bearing one of the captured Teen Titans.
All except Tim—the only one with no superhuman abilities—were bound to the machine: Jonathan, Bart Allen, Blue Beetle, Beast Boy, and Wonder Girl.
As metal probes drove into them, different types of energy began channeling toward the center.
"HAHAHAHA!" The leader settled himself at the machine's core like a madman, and began directing the mixed energies into his body.
If Thea had been present, she'd have had thoughts. Jonathan and Bart Allen she could understand—Kryptonian physiology and the Speed Force were legitimate power sources. Beast Boy's ability barely qualified. But Blue Beetle and Wonder Girl? Exactly what was he expecting to absorb? One was Reach alien technology; the other was an ancient enchanted suit of armor. Did just grabbing everything in reach actually work?
The Blood Brotherhood leader's answer, if asked, would have been: yes. Anything is possible.
"AAAARGH—!"
"HAAA—UNGH!"
The leader bellowed with the tortured intensity of a man straining from constipation. Whether the volume was intentional, or the energy extraction was simply agonizing, the captive kids gradually started regaining consciousness.
"You bastard!" Wonder Girl had some of Diana's fire in her veins. Her jaw was tight, every vein in her forehead standing out, both arms straining with everything she had against her restraints.
Jonathan was struggling with equal ferocity on the other side.
The middle-aged woman worked the controls. High-voltage shocks struck the captives in sequence—she was trying to knock them out again.
One round. They didn't go down. Another. Still nothing. She pushed the output to maximum. The resistance intensified.
"Push the extraction harder!" The leader roared.
She shoved the controls to their limit. Multiple energies surged and crashed against each other. All six screamed.
Damian and Raven weren't going to watch their teammates suffer. Throwing blades, explosive charges, shadow arrows—everything they had flew toward the leader.
The cultists threw themselves in the way as human shields. A wide swathe of bodies had fallen within five meters in front of the leader. The ground was slick with blood.
Damn it. Raven wanted to unleash her bloodline power and end this—but the fear of losing all control, of becoming something purely demonic, made her hesitate.
Then, in the critical moment, Tim shot out of a side corridor like a diving hawk, sweeping at high speed over the heads of the faithful.
Tim was not in a good mood. These people had the audacity to ignore him. They'd tied him up with ordinary rope and left him in a corner like a discarded prop. The reasoning was straightforward—he had no superpowers—which, as the self-appointed leader of the Teen Titans, felt like taking a thousand points of insult damage.
There were limits to what a man could endure. He was going to make the Blood Brotherhood regret this decision.