Night Rider

7: More or Less the Rest of the Tragic Backstory

"I thought you would figure it out eventually. It was a calculated risk from the moment I took you in," Bruce was nonchalantly sipping his coffee. He wasn't mad about my discovery, and that was the most terrifying part.

"Seriously?" I asked, wringing my hands. We were sitting in Bruce's office- no doubt Damian and Dick were listening at the door, but for now we were pretending it was just Bruce and I.

"Yes, though I thought you would have figured it out sometime later. And I didn't think you would hit it off with Damian so well, that was unexpected. He's usually so confrontational," Bruce said.

I blinked. Being friends with Damian was what had tipped me off to the strangeness going on in the manor, but was it really so odd for me to have befriended the kid?
"It doesn't seem so odd to me, I mean, he can be really hard headed sometimes and self absorbed, but I've been friends with more unpleasant people. Once you get past the exterior depreciation of other people, he's... a really loyal and..." I zoned off at Bruce's intense concentration on my words, "um."

"Sorry, it's just not often that people see Damian's better side- me included." Bruce sighed a little, almost as if he wished to know the Damian I knew. But that was a conversation for a later date.

"So, um, what does this mean for my future here? I mean, it's great hanging out and riding all day, considering I'm technically dead and what not, but do things change from here on out? Am I joining your secret society? Do I get to know everybody's tragic back story? And more importantly, can someone explain the freaky techno tube connecting the house to the cave? Because that thing is like the davinci code to me right now and I'd really like to know how it works before Dick decides he has to carry me up it again..."

"Whoa, hold up. Ground rules first. You get to know the extended circumstances surrounding your apparent death. The whole reason we're in this mess to begin with, and as far as, did you call them tragic back stories?" He frowned at me and I saw a sliver of the Batman.

"Yes. Yes I did."

"As far as those go, you have access to Dick and Damian. If you can convince them to tell you, they're both highly knowledgable and I will fill you in on what I deem... pertinent to your situation. You aren't allowed in the cave without supervision. I'm serious. You don't have training and dumb decisions will get you killed in this city."

Naturally.

"This also means my other associates will be dropping in more frequently. You will need to get to know them in case you ever end up in the implausible situation you need their help..."

And thus I was not silenced forevermore by the Batman in a tailored suit. I was dragged into their world more or less feet first, which is to say slower than I was expecting. Like being chased with a zambonie, but slightly less weird.
Actually, just forget the metaphor. I was pulled in, end of story.

...

The first thing to happen was an explanation of my faked death.
I knew most of the circumstances already, but the whole mess went far deeper than had ever been explained.
I should probably start at the beginning.

Back in my home town I was a college student, out of state actually, so this whole thing ended up crossing state lines, but the instigating incident was actually when Tuffy was stolen from my barn at school. This was two years ago, but I had pinpointed the beginning of the end to that one moment. Had she not been stolen, I never would have set down the path I was on and consequently would never have discovered what I did.
As it was, my horse was stolen from me during my freshman year of college. Finals time, so yeah, it sucked. We put out a reward, worked with the police, spent weeks chasing down dead leads at school before I had to go home for break. I kept searching, but eventually it was decided their was no evidence or answer and the search was given up. Tuffy was gone and I wasn't going to see her again. Life moved on with incredible frustration and bitterness on my behalf.
Then almost a year and a half later, weird things started to happen at school. Not noticeable things mind you, I thought I was just paranoid at first. I started seeing people slipping around at my barn, started finding weird stories in the paper about other horse thefts, as if suddenly somebody was throwing this in my way. As if they wanted me to find it. My roommate thought I was crazy when I started following the tracks left behind.
But I wasn't letting those jerks keep on doing whatever the hell it was that they were doing.

It picked up pace after winter vacation, I got a hacker friend involved and some other close confidants, and long story short we discovered an underground group that had been experimenting with genetic modification. Horses were their current schtick as far as it seemed, but eventually, as we dug deeper, we uncovered it went far deeper than it looked originally. The group had been working on cloning and experimenting on humans illegally, and not just regular people but people in power too and, when we found ourselves at the heart of the matter, superheroes. Go figure, my horse getting stolen turned into the exposure of a freaky secret organization.

So naturally, I hadn't been as careful as someone who actually knew what they were doing. I started receiving threats. Things got more serious, and I dragged my friends out of it, made sure they weren't implicated, and then I essentially pulled the hunt in my direction. They were on to me big time. Things got nastier and I kept digging even though my friends were out and scotch free.

Eventually I sent the information we had found to the Justice League. But at that point, I was down in the deep end of it all. Everyone I cared about was being targeted if I didn't agree to hand over the information and do what they wanted. Thankfully the organization still didn't know the full details of what we'd uncovered, but it was only a matter of time and they were getting nastier.
People I knew started inexplicably getting into near fatal accidents. Giving in started to sound really good. When they killed my professor and informed me he was only the first of many to come, the league inexplicably intervened.

In order to stop the plans I had uncovered, we faked my death. There was an explosion. My body was unidentifiable and over twenty eye witnesses could testify to my entering the building not two seconds before- and not exiting. No one knew I was alive and yet somehow I ended up at Bruce Wayne's manor with everyone thinking I was dead.
That was the story as I knew it.

Batman revealed the organization to be called Cadmus. It was heavily involved in genetic experimentation, going so far as to have cloned superheroes, Superman and Red Arrow. It had been thought Cadmus had been destroyed some time back, but my revelation of its continuing operation proved that to not be the case and Cadmus was not happy about that fact.
They started destroying their compromised complexes. Which was exactly how Bruce came to be in possession of Tuffy and Sitdka. He had been digging into the leads I had sent to the League, only to arrive and discover the whole complex burning to the ground via chemical explosion, all of the animals they had modified still trapped inside. Evidence was not to be left behind. My horses should have died, but by a miracle Tuffy remembered the things she had learned before Cadmus got a hold of her. Batman entered the building to look for anything salvageable in the inferno and found her by chance, instead of panicking she followed him out and Sitdka followed her lead. Thus the Batman ended up with two genetically modified horses he couldn't do much with. They were specially trained for who knew what.
Meanwhile, back on my end of things the accidents were heating up, and then my professor was found murdered. Batman realized Cadmus wasn't above murdering everyone I knew to keep me silent and terrified. Killing me wasn't an option yet because they didn't know how much I knew- and they never did find out considering my 'death' a few days later. With the Batman was the safest place for me to be while he unraveled the mess of Cadmus.

And the rest, as they say, is history.
...

"The coincidence is unbelievable. That that horse is one you trained is insurmountable luck."
It was a week later and Bruce was observing Tuffy, Sitdka, Damian, and I riding.
"The file said they were conditioned to allow only handlers to use them, but apparently your connection broke that conditioning."

I nodded and high fived Damian, "Yeah, though I don't know what one would do with a pair of genetically modified horses. They move three times as fast as normal horse, and Cadmus made them a lot smarter and durable than normal, but how exactly did they plan on using them?"

"In theory, they could be used as intelligent modes of transportation and stealth off-roading. Horses were used for warfare for centuries, vehicles are the modern version but old school mounted fighters might have had some applications..."

I zoned out for a moment and glanced down at Tuffy. Some applications huh?
Wouldn't hurt to test out that theory...