Displaced

prologue

When the mission came in the original four thought Batman was joking, but they should've known better.

Batman never jokes.

"Project CADMUS has resurfaced after being dormant for the past few years. Your mission is to infiltrate and do recon, make sure they really are on the straight and narrow now. And if they aren't report back to the Justice League. Understood?" Batman narrowed his eyes at the gathering of teens before him, all of whom grumbled their agreements. "Good, you will depart now."

The teens ran off in silence, nobody daring to talk until they were safely boarded on the bioship. At that point, nobody knew what to say, so nobody said anything as M'gann piloted the bioship out of Mount Justice's hangar and towards Project CADMUS' base of operations. 

Internally, Conner was freaking out. This was the place that created  him out of strands of Superman and Lex Luthor's DNA. He hadn't thought much of project CADMUS since Kaldur, Wally, and Dick had rescued him. Part of him hoped they had straightened their act out, but deep down he doubted that.

Sensing her teammate's distress, Zatanna turned to Conner and put her hand on his shoulder. "Hey, it's going to be okay. If they are dealing with experimenting on meta humans then we will take care of it."

Conner nodded, smiling gratefully at the magician. M'gann announced that they were approaching the air space above project CADMUS and would be entering camouflage mode. The team all put on their stealth mode suits, preparing for the drop onto the roof of CADMUS.

M'gann opened up a hatch for the team to drop through and one by one they landed silently on the roof, heading straight for the door that led into the building. Once inside, M'gann established a mind link.

Artemis and Nightwing are going to take the east side of the building. Superboy, you and Zatanna take the west while Robin and Kid Flash take the north.  Miss Martian and I will take the south.

Roger that.

Stay active on the link, we need to know what is going on.

Aye aye, sir.

The team split up, heading in their directions in silence. 

On the surface levels it seemed as if CADMUS was any old research facility, but the team knew better than that. Converging at the elevators on the bottom floor, Zatanna used a quick spell to open the elevators and launch the team down to the bottom of the shaft. 

Once at the bottom of the shaft, Superboy used his super strength to open the elevator doors and let the team out into the dank hallway. Superboy felt a shiver go down his spine as he led the team through the hallways, hating the feeling of being back at CADMUS.

The team had lucked out so far by not running into anyone, but that changed when they got closer to what used to be Superboy's old containment chamber. There was a crew of scientist standing there, about half a dozen, all with clipboards talking in hushed voices. Zatanna cast a quick glamour spell to make the team invisible to the scientists so they could get closer and hear what they were saying.

"She is not ready, her powers are still unstable."

"Our benefactors demanded she be ready for transport by the weekend, so what are we to do?"

"Sedate her and let them handle it."

The group of scientists seemed to all agree on this, one of them pressing a button on the door outside of the containment chamber and disappearing inside for a moment, returning a few minutes later to lead the charge towards the elevator right past the team.

Nightwing was the first one to the containment chamber, reading the words on the metal door.

Project Mx. Hmm. Want to find out what that is?

Shouldn't we call Batman?

Nah, not yet.

Are you su-

Positive. Now shush, I need to focus on hacking.

Allow me.

Zatanna stepped forward, muttering a quick spell to open the heavy doors without a trace of their breaking and entering. The doors opened with a low groan to reveal a dimly lit room, computers on one wall and on the far end of the room was a glass wall.

Conner, it seems they upgraded your old room since you left.

Shut up, Wally.

Nightwing and Robin immediately went over to the computers, plugging in their gauntlets to begin downloading the information they could access and hacking into the information they couldn't.

Superboy slowly walked around the chamber, taking in the changes they had done to the place he was made. Aqualad and Miss Martian followed him with thinly veiled looks of pity, while Artemis, Zatanna, and Kid Flash walked to the glass wall cautiously, unsure if they wanted to know what was being kept behind the glass.

I can't see, it's too dark.

I got this.

Artemis lit up one of her flare arrows, gasping when the glass room was finally revealed.

Inside was an unconscious teenaged girl, her feet chained to the wall while her torso was wrapped tightly in a straight jacket. Around her neck blinked the unmistakable lights of a shock collar, burns in various stages of healing littered her neck on the edge of the collar.

Zatanna whirled around to face Nightwing and Robin with fire in her eyes.

I'm alerting the League now.

No one's stopping you, but we should take her upstairs for easier extraction.

What if moving her hurts her?

True, let's see what the League says.

Zatanna called Wonder Woman, letting her know what the team had found. "...right. We'll stay put." Zatanna hung up the communicator, turning to face her friends once more. "The Justice League are on the their way, we are to stay and guard the girl."

Zatanna couldn't help but look back at the poor girl chained to the wall inside that cage, the rage fueling her next spell. She shattered the glass silently with her magic, walking inside with Artemis  hot on her tail.

Do you think she is the same 'she' the scientists were talking about?

If so, even more of a reason to get her out of here.

What if she is dangerous?

That's why the Justice League is on their way, but given her condition, my guess is she will be thankful for us saving her.