Black & Red (Young Justice/Batman Fiction)

Chapter 7

I actually really like working with Red Arrow. Harper is a cool professional; he's almost like bat family, which made breaking into this place much easier. Star Labs, LexCorp, and Wayne Enterprises all got one thing in common; they all have rich guys footing their bills and covering up their fuck-ups so the masses don't panic. Meyerland, Inc got started by a buncha computer geek rejects from MIT that didn't have a pot to piss in until they wrote the VR Game: Mass Murderer.

You put the helmet on and suddenly you're a death row prisoner escaping into the night after a bloody prison break. Loose on the streets, your goal is to kill everybody in sight. Fun game, right? It sold out in its first week. Then, kids started stabbing their teachers with pencils and bringing guns to the mall.

The game got snatched off the shelves... but the killings haven't stopped in California: Palo Alto, Stanford, Santa Clara, and Sunnyvale the worst hit. Copycat killings have started in Arizona and Nevada. It's like a wave of crazy, washing over teenagers and getting sucked back in like the tide only to come back out later. All the kids caught don't remember killing anybody after the fact, and they don't have criminal records before their murdering sprees.

The FBI locked up the Meyerland Geeks, but this goes much deeper than them.

Red Arrow is in a black suit, shaking hands with a geek in a lab coat. The guy's wearing sneakers, jeans and a Green Lantern t-shirt. I crouch in the shadows in the vent above. Dick mapped out the ventilation system for me. I can follow Red as he's given the building tour, if I want to. Harper's got a tracker on him, so I'll know which direction he's going in even when I get to places where there's no visibility. Tonight, Red's a young professional that wants to invest in special software. Translation: he's a newly made man on business for a big boss who needs his rivals whacked. If only that geek knew the big boss is my brother. Dick really did a shitting good job building this whole thing up. The geek lords accepted Red no questions asked just based on the profile Dick created. I mean he built up a fictional organized crime ring and even hacked some bank codes to make it look like money was stolen by those guys. He started online rumors and made threats, and instigated a small turf war with Kaldur, Super Spawn(Super Boy) and Artemis playing street scum.

I still can't get over that this is what my brother was up to before he got sick and why he pretended not to be sick up until that night. Dickie-Bird's a mastermind. And hell yeah, if I had been the one to set all this up, I'd be pissed as hell if I couldn't go in for the bust. Though, Dickie-bird's gonna have to settle for some long distance busting.

The outside perimeter of the building is clear.

I scowl at Miss Martian talking inside my head. I hate telepathy, but it is kinda useful right now. Wish green girl had more reach, so Dick can be more in on this. We're in northern Oregon, out past Portland, and in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but dark woods and bad signals for miles. It's a great place to hide a super secret lab. It only sticks out a lot... but then again, nobody comes out here without business. Nobody else knows it's here. Dick only found it by making contact with the geeks and winning an audience for a transaction. This Geek Squad is selective-and well-funded by someone powerful. "...and on behalf of our sponsor, we thank you for your business, Mr. Cavanaugh," the geek in the lab coat says to Red. "Follow me, please."