Milk And Cardamom | S. Brown ✔

[30]

The night sky spread over Gotham akin to a canopy of darkness, the only flashes of color were the vigilantes patrolling the city in their routine hours.

Red Robin was not on patrol that night, instead Tim was doing a last survey as Red X.

In order to delude the spy, they had used the decoy plan very often despite Bruce's warning, enabling Tim to stay out of sight and work further on tracking out the spy.

So far he hadn't found out a lot except for a few reasons the spy could be targeting them and most of them pointed to past vendettas which were not uncommon for the Bats to face.

His suspicion regarding Luke had led him to monitor the boy closely as well but there was not much that could label him guilty. All he had seen him do was take pictures wherever he went, like an enthusiastic tourist, with no possible linkage of the photographs to just be those of the vigilantes.

Once or twice, he had seen Steph with him but hadn't gotten the chance to ask her about it.

Recently, Jason had missed a deadly attack by mere inches when someone attempted to blow up his safehouse but he and the Outlaws drove out the intruder before much damage could be caused.

Tim knew that another attack meant the spy was letting them know that he was still at large, that he could strike unexpectedly and could cause a lot of damage.

That night, Tim thought it would be the last time for him to use the Red X suit but little did he know that wasn't the case.

Much to his surprise, more than half of the patrol hours had passed yet there had been no sign of the shadowy figure in the vicinity. Though what he did catch sight of was alarming, to say the least.

The darkened alleys were not empty, contrary to what he had thought, but he had not been able to catch any sign of life or movement through the alleys. And when he edged closer, he understood why though a sickening wave of horror gripped him.

Thrown away in the darkened corners were corpses of people. Four, he counted, eyes sweeping over the surroundings.

Cautiously, he approached the bodies and discovered that none of them had been struck with rigor mortis yet. That meant the deed had not been done more than an hour ago. The silence indicated otherwise but perhaps the killer was not far from the spot either.

"We meet again, X."

He spun around immediately, caching sight of the shadowy figure he had been tracking for days. But the shocking aspect was that a dark tendril emerging from the figure was wrapped around a struggling human who grew limp seconds after, dropping to the ground lifeless.

He grew alert; that once he had made sure to be armed with the shurikens as well as the knives, both quite different from his usual weapons, but that was the key point in ensuring that the spy did not connect him to Red Robin.

Though by witnessing what had just happened, he could see that the shadowy enigma was capable of killing with much more ease, quite like a predator.

The dark tendril swept towards him and he dodged, a shuriken slicing through the opponent. However, it seemed as if that mysterious entity was made up of just darkness.

A thick black liquid oozed from the cut and that once the figure stepped forward, it's features unrecognizable due to the dark halo engulfing him.

"You are stupid to interfere into things that are clearly not related to you. I have no motivation to get rid of you, boy, let that be. But if you keep interfering, you'll be no different than these corpses at your feet."