The One-Seven

Chapter 28: The Tower Starts to Topple

Dinah had needed time to herself in order to try and collect her thoughts. There was too much to consider and she didn't need the presence of rambunctious teenagers interrupting her thought process.

She had a safe-house one Zeta tube transfer away back in Gotham, which gave her the peace of mind that she needed. She set herself down at the desk and monitor at the end of the small safe-house, and leaned bag in the chair as she thought on her conundrum.

Dinah didn't know what to do with her newfound information. So, Percy was wanted by the League of Shadows, and apparently the best assassin in the entire damn organization was in on the job too.

It was disconcerting that, of course, Percy had somehow managed to get himself wrapped up in this kind of nonsense. She decided that she needed to start with what information she did know. She knew that Percy was wanted by the League of Shadows, why, she still didn't know. They clearly wanted him dead, but what could he possibly have done to get himself on their radar? She highly doubted that it had anything to do with his status as a demigod. The League of Shadows didn't work like that. For all their glitz and glamor, they really were little more than glorified contract killers. Taking out targets for the highest bid.

Conventional wisdom told her that someone had put a hit out on Percy. But that didn't make sense either. As far as the rest of the world knew, Percy was nothing more than a promising young detective for the Gotham Police Department. While there were undoubtably those that wouldn't like him, she didn't think any of them would have the status or resources necessary to utilize the League.

Contracts weren't cheap, and the Shadows were as expensive as it got. She thought again about Falcone. Percy had definitely made his way onto the mobster's shit list, but did Falcone even know about the Shadows? She didn't think so. In terms of underworld hierarchy, the Falcone crime family were little more than sea plankton in the ocean of the villains.

She was spending too much time around Percy.

It just wasn't plausible that Falcone would know enough about the Shadows to be able to contact them and get them to commit to this kind of a job. Furthermore, while Falcone was influential in his own right, he wasn't in the same league as the likes of Bruce, Oliver, or even Lex Luthor. She was fairly confident that he lacked the resources and influence necessary to call in the Shadows.

But where did that leave her?

Absolutely nowhere.

She decided that she would rule out conventional criminals, and instead focused on the other elephant in the room. The only thing that she could think of was the death of Klarion. Sure, it was possible that Percy had done something in his time in the military where he would have crossed paths with the Shadows or someone influential enough to use them, but she had already cross-referenced Percy's military history with the League's database. There was nothing in his record, even the stuff that the Navy's censors had redacted, that would lead her to believe someone would want him dead.

The only outlier was Queen Bee, but considering what she'd done to the rest of Percy's team that had infiltrated Bialya, it was more than likely that she thought he was also dead.

Which only left Klarion.

But that still didn't make sense to her.

The League had looked into the magical disaster from several weeks ago. While there had been several known magical criminals involved in the attack, the League had accounted for every member of the attack. As far as she had last checked, which had been only a few hours ago, all of the villains were currently in lock-up in Belle Reve.

But there were still questions that hadn't been answered about the attack. Chief among which was why so many powerful criminals had worked together as they had. Aside from the Injustice League, villains didn't work together, maybe the odd twosome, but never more than that. But even that had been odd. Interrogations with the villains hadn't cleared anything up either. The ones that had said anything, had merely reiterated that they had felt that the time was right to begin working together in order to forward a common goal. But what had that goal been? To hold the world at ransom for billions of dollars? Count Vertigo on his own had enough personal wealth amassed that it seemed...unnecessary.