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III
Birds
of Prey
Oracle
Somewhere in the city of
The room was unremarkable, with no
furnishings other than the chair and no adornments other than a flat LCD
screen, currently blank.
Much more eye-catching was the woman
in the chair. By any conventional
standards she would be deemed attractive, her most eye-catching feature a first
glance being a mane of shoulder length, flaming red hair. She wore rimless
spectacle that pleasing accentuated a pair of alluring green eyes. She was dressed in a figure hugging
sleeveless blouse of a deep purple hue, buttoned just high enough to appear
modest but not quite enough to conceal the topmost cleavage of her full breasts. The blouse came down snugly over her trim
waist and blended stylishly with a pair of tight black pants. High heel boots
covered her feet, which were resting on a metal plate that was attached to the
chair four inches above the floor. Her
demeanour was calm, revealing none of the panic that might be expected of a
woman finding herself a hostage of some of the most dangerous men on the
planet.
Most especially, one that was
paralysed just below the waist.
Barbara Gordon could still remember
the night she had excused herself from her Police Commissioner father and
answered the door of her apartment, only to find herself facing a nightmare
with paper white skin, green hair, and eyes without the slightest glint of
sanity. The single bullet the criminal
psychopath called the Joker had fired had severed her spine, leaving her lying
bleeding and in deep shock as the madman responsible had kidnapped her
father. All she had been able to do was
lie there sobbing and clutching the wound in her lower abdomen, wondering if
she were going to die.
Barbara was not used to feeling
helpless. She was used to taking the
initiative, being in control. She was
used to action. Not really surprising,
considering that when she was not working at the Gotham
library she was swinging through the rooftops of the city and fighting crime
alongside Batman and his partner Robin with the unlikely title of Batgirl. Before being shot by the Joker Barbara had
been an athlete that could have put Olympic gymnast to shame, and bloodied the
noses of some of the most skilled martial arts fighters in the world.
One bullet from a maniac had ended
that life forever.
Lying on that carpet, Barbara had
learned what it meant to be truly helpless, to be totally at the mercy of
another. And just to help drive that
message home, the Joker had waited until her father had been dragged away by
his goons and then taken out his camera.
He had knelt down beside her, and he had smiled, and then while she lay
there bleeding from her belly he had stated to undress her.
Her blouse first, and then her skirt,
both soaked with blood.
Then her bra.
Her panties.
He had stripped her naked while she
lay there in agony and horror. Only when
she was completely nude had he started taking the pictures, arranging her in
various poses. On her belly, on her side, on her back. She remembered the click-click of the camera
and his hands on her arranging her hair, adjusting her arms, parting her legs.
Barbara had lain there and wept
softly, too much in shock to resist.
When he had started removing her clothes, her greatest fear for herself
was that he was going to rape her. She
had fought criminals wearing a figure hugging spandex suit for years and no man
had touched her without her consent and bragged about it. She had seen women who had been raped, but
she had never really understood the horror of it, mostly because she had always
been confident in her ability to fight back, to resist. She would never be the helpless victim.
Until that night.
The Joker had not raped her, but that
had not lessened the horror. In fact, it
was worse. In the whole time the human monster had been taking the pictures,
never once did her relate to her as a person.
His touch had been cold, clinical.
He had smiled without cease, but it had been with the twisted joy of a
child that was playing with a toy it had deliberately broken. She had been a thing to him – not a woman,
not even a human being. He had used her
without remorse, and then left her there lying naked and bleeding for the
paramedics to find; with nothing to think about except where her father was and
the numbness in her legs.
One thing the Joker’s attack had not
robbed her of, though, was her brain.
Cursed with a perfect photographic memory, Barbara could remember every
aspect of that horrible night as if it were yesterday – time would never
distance her from the experience.
But, even though she would never pull
on a mask and fight crime in the streets again, Barbara was still determined not
to finish her crime fighting career as a victim. She had taken her keen
analytical mind, and sharpened it even further. Added to that were computer
skills that were honed to be the most formidable in the world. She could hack any network, seeing though
security system, and remote cameral, any satellite or telecommunication
network. No computer-information system could resist her abilities, not scrap
of knowledge remained hidden from her is she determined to ferret it out. She became the ultimate finder of
secrets. And she took on a new identity.
Oracle.
Sitting now locked to the metal
chair, Barbara remembered the feeling of helplessness the Joker had instilled
in her, but she pushed it aside.
Recently she had faced a similar situation to this one when a corrupt
Barbara studied her surroundings
carefully. It was a plain chamber 12
feet by twelve feet, with a ceiling about eight feet above the floor. The walls, ceiling, and roof were all the
same kind of marble favoured by the Amazons. So she was likely still in the city. She was cold, and there was a feeling of
dampness in the air, so she was probably underground.
But the most telling, and most
disturbing, evidence for the red head to consider was the mere fact that she
had been singled out. Barbara had
travelled to
And yet, despite the precautions to
protect her identity, the young crime fighter had been singled out from the
other civilian hostages taken when the villains and their mercenaries had
seized control. For the first 24 hours
she had remained with the other captives in one of the library buildings. Then,
without explanation, they had taken her in her wheelchair and brought her to
this room, silencing the protests of some of the men captured with a few well-placed
rifle butts. Barbara had raged at the
injuries done to the men only seeking to protect her, but had agreed to
accompany the mercenaries without protest, knowing resisting at this point
would only cause more suffering. They had pulled a hood over her head and
wheeled her out of the library, travelling for about ten minutes before lifting
her into the chair she currently occupied and then, once she had been secured,
leaving her alone with her thoughts.
Caught unawares away from her
computer laptop Barbara had not even had the chance to warn her companions or
send a message of help to the outside world. She was desperate to find out what
was happening to her friends, but new she had to be patient. This attack had
been well planned – blind action at this point would be useless. She needed information.
Abruptly, a speaker somewhere in the
room concealed from her sight crackled to life.
‘Good day, Miss Gordon,’ said a
voice. ‘I trust you are comfortable.’
Barbara started,
a feigned reaction to conceal her abilities.
‘Why am I here,’ she asked, letting her voices pitch rise an octave to
simulate fear.
‘Please remain calm. You are
perfectly safe, Miss Gordon, as long as you cooperate. We have need of someone
of your technological skills.’
Barbara sat perfectly still. There were any number of individuals
currently on the island whose public dossier registered as impressively as her
own in computer science, yet they had picked her to bring here. Not good – unless others had also been
selected without her knowledge, a kind of psychological leverage; making the
victim thing they possessed some unique ability to control their situation. She
remained confident that these men could not know she was Oracle; she had to
draw them out and discover what their purposes was.
'I'm not sure how I can help you,'
she replied.
The reply, when it came, stunned
her. 'We want you to hack the Amazons
computer files for us.'
Barbara allowed her surprise to work
for her, and then faked a laugh. 'You must be joking.’ she said. 'I’m a fair
hand with a computer, but there’s just no way I can do that; they're too
advanced. You might as well ask me to hack the Pentagon!'
'Maybe later.
We will start with the Amazon files.’
‘It’s impossible,’ Barbara shot back,
making her voice thick with frustration.
‘I can’t do it.’
‘We think you can, Miss Gordon,’ came the response, 'if you’re properly motivated.’
Overhead the light panel dimmed as
the screen flickered to life. Barbara squirmed a little, not liking where this
was going.
The image on the screen resolved
quickly to show a room about twice as big as the one Barbara sat in, but the
walls, floor and ceilings were all gleaming metal. It was well lit, and had the look of an
operating theatre, perhaps a room in one of the hospital building on the
One of the women was blonde, about
5’4” tall and with shoulder length hair with a tousled fringe drifting down
almost to her clear blue eyes. She had a compact, athletic look to her 120
pounds, her nicely curved figure currently clad in a shiny, sleeveless black
costume that ran from her neck to the tops of her shapely legs. She wore black
leather gloves with metal plates on the backs of her hands, and fishnet
stockings ran from her thighs down to the black boots that stopped just short
of her knees.
The woman facing
her was taller by about 7 inches, but with a lean build that made her
and the blonde almost the same weight. She had long black hair that fell down
past her shoulders and back from the curved edges of the purple mask covering
her eyes, which were darker and harder than that of her companion’s. Her face was more angular but no less
attractive. Her physique was a little
less curvaceous than the woman she lay facing, but her
body was no less impressive, particularly the firm flat midriff left bare by
her purple and black costume. Like the
blonde’s it began at her long neck and ended at the top of her long legs, but
unlike the others this outfit featured longer gloves, rising up to the well
toned biceps, and the slightly tattered remains of a dark sweeping cape. An equipment belt hung abound her narrow
waist, but all the items that would have hung there had been removed, as they
had been from the bands that formed the tops of her thigh high black boots.
Barbara started, seeing the two women
strapped to the tables by metal bands around their waists, wrists, elbows and
ankles. But it wasn’t just the outrage
of seeing two women in this vulnerable position – it was the recognition of
these two.
Her Birds of Prey operatives, Black
Canary and the Huntress.
The red head sat in silence and felt
her world collapsing out from under her, as if she
were back in that apartment hearing the shot and feeling the life go from her
legs. It could not possibly be the case
that with all the hostages to choose from, random chance had caused her captors
to choose her two closest associates in the superhero community. These men had
done this deliberately – the only question was did they already know Barbara
was Oracle, or was this some kind of test to find out.
The fear was mounting now but Barbara
fought it down - it would not help any of them. 'What are you doing?’ she
asked. She had a terrible certainty that
she knew, but she had to play this out, however much is sickened her.
'These two women have little to
interest us, but they may help you find a way to crack the Amazon system,' was
the reply. ‘If they suffer enough.'
Barbara felt her bile rising. ‘You’re not listening to me. Its not that I don’t want to - the system is
too complex - I can’t do it!'
There was a laugh, utterly sinister
and without humour. 'Then I'm afraid these two are in for a very bad time.'
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