Not Oracle Yet

The brightly lit communications room was a complete mess, with many of the tables and chairs overturned. Cindy was clearly dissatisfied with Su Ming's lack of progress.

Even through his mask, Su Ming could feel her disdainful gaze. It seemed she was looking down on him for being unable to handle even a little girl.

He was helpless. Was he supposed to torture a disabled underage girl? Maybe the old Deathstroke would have done that, but he would not.

He pulled over a chair and sat across from Barbara. The scarlet eye on his mask stared at her.

"Now that the phones and internet are working again, you can call him. Don't worry, I won't kill him this time."

Barbara was skeptical. "You're just her sidekick. I want her to promise me herself. She's a mercenary, so she should know the value of keeping her word, right?"

"Pfft."

Cindy could not help laughing. Being mistaken for Su Ming's boss delighted her. Barbara clearly had an eye for quality; of course, she, the woman, was the stronger of the two.

If Barbara had not been disabled, Su Ming would definitely have smacked her until her backside bloomed. "Can't you tell that I'm the one calling the shots?"

Barbara studied the two of them. Their equipment was the same, their tone was the same, even the bloodstains on them looked similar. How was she supposed to tell who was in charge?

So she shook her head and honestly said, "I can't."

Su Ming let out a long sigh, got to his feet, and went to stand guard by the door. He gestured for Cindy to take over. He needed some quiet.

Cindy did not hesitate to sit in the chair he had vacated. With great satisfaction, she removed her helmet and lit a cigar, lounging as comfortably as if she were on the sofa at home.

"Fine, I promise you. Not only will we not hurt Commissioner Gordon, we'll do our best to keep him safe."

With Cindy's assurance, Barbara took a small red phone from her pocket and dialed a number. But as the busy tone rang out, her expression turned ugly.

She called several more times without giving up, but the result remained the same: the number you have dialed is not answering.

Cindy had expected as much. It seemed things really were as Su Ming had said. Since these Men in Black had come to kidnap Barbara, they would definitely make a move on Gordon as well. From a social-value perspective, Barbara was only a high school girl, while Gordon was an important figure in the city.

"How could that be? His phone must not be with him." Barbara kept pressing redial.

Cindy leaned back in her chair, leisurely smoking her cigar as she cut in, "Go ahead and keep trying, but you're only wasting time. Every second Gordon remains kidnapped is another second of danger for him."

Barbara's hand froze over the phone. She was at a loss, but quickly tossed it aside and put the Laptop from her lap back on the desk, beginning to hammer at the keyboard.

"What is she doing?" Cindy watched Barbara type frantically, as though she had gone mad. Could that really help them find Gordon?

Su Ming leaned against the doorframe, wiping down his staff. He had hit those blubbering men a little too hard when knocking them out earlier, and some vomit had gotten on it.

"She's probably hacking into Gotham's mobile carrier servers, then using triangulation from signal towers to determine Gordon's location."

"Oh?" Cindy touched her eyepatch. Su Ming knew something she did not, which made her look a little annoyed. "Is technology popular where you're from?"

Su Ming had no idea which Earth this body's Deathstroke came from. As for him, he had watched plenty of TV dramas while working as a security guard, and that was how they always did things in them. He did not know how to operate it himself, but even if he had never eaten pork, he had at least seen pigs run.

"It's nothing. There are bound to be some differences between us. I'm sure you know far more about mythology than I do."

Su Ming comforted her. Since they were working together, complementary abilities were a good thing.

Cindy indeed stopped dwelling on it. Even a Super Soldier did not need to know everything.

But then she added, praising him a little too much, "Yeah, and your methods are nothing like the other Deathstroke's. Your moral standards are much higher than mine. You really are a Little Angel."

Little Angel.

Was such a girly term used on men in this world? Terrifying. Su Ming wanted to go home, or at least back to the patriarchal society he was used to. It was not that he was some straight-man chauvinist; he simply constantly felt as though yin and yang had been reversed here.

Even Barbara, who was madly typing code, stole a glance at them. So that was the relationship between the two Deathstrokes?

She seemed to have discovered something incredible again.

But whenever something involved her specialty, she remained intensely focused. The clatter of her keyboard never stopped.

Several minutes later, she hit Enter. The attack command she had just written smoothly hacked into a communications company owned by Wayne Enterprises, the carrier that provided her father's phone service.

She rolled her shoulders as she waited for the program's results. She no longer looked so nervous, instead rubbing her fingers together as she waited.

Cindy suddenly spoke again. With a cigarette in one hand, she pointed at the computer on the desk with the other. This time, she understood. "Welcome to the big family of criminals. If I remember correctly, hacking into someone else's company system without authorization is at least espionage."

Barbara's expression stiffened. Being called a criminal by Deathstroke made her feel exposed and ashamed.

That was right. This was not the first time she had used her hacking skills. In the past, she had infiltrated countless other websites. Not to do anything bad, merely to hone her skills and improve her programming methods.

She had hacked into her school, the neighborhood convenience store, and even the Gotham Police Department in secret, wanting to see what Gordon did during work hours.

But she had always been very careful, because hackers were not well regarded in this world. Technology and the internet were still emerging things here, and news reports portrayed hackers like terrorists of the web.

Even Gordon did not know this secret, because she was afraid he would throw her in prison. All this time, Gordon had only thought his daughter liked playing with computers, maybe video games or something.

In her panic this time, she had hacked someone else's server for clues almost instinctively. Only now did she realize what she had done.

"I..."

Barbara's face flushed as she tried to explain herself, but the evidence was indisputable. There was no way to deny it.

Su Ming helplessly shook his head. They were doing serious business right now. Cindy's teasing was not helping.

"Enough. She's Just Kidding. What law or no law? It's not as if we could testify in court that the police chief's daughter is a hacker, could we?"

Barbara secretly glanced at the colleagues by the wall. She was even a little relieved that they had all been knocked unconscious. Otherwise, if they found out, men loved gossiping. Soon the whole station would know.

Su Ming took off his helmet as well. Seeing Cindy happily puffing away, he felt his own craving rise and decided to have one too. Then he suddenly realized something.

"No wonder you rushed out to deal with the signal jammer earlier. Did you already take the bet from the corridor doorframe?"

Cindy proudly raised the cigar in her hand and drew a circle in the air with it like a wand. "Heh heh, this is your cigar. I have to say, it tastes a little different from the ones on our side."

"Man."

Barbara's face became horrified again. She felt she had uncovered the ultimate secret! There were actually two Deathstrokes, and one of them was male!

Now that she knew so much, would she survive in the end?

Su Ming was gradually getting used to people looking at him with disbelief after discovering he was a man. In this world, men had always been synonymous with weakness, while Deathstroke was a world-famous powerhouse. Anyone would find it hard to accept those two identities existing in the same person.

"The results are in. Why are you staring blankly at us instead of watching the screen?"

Su Ming nudged Barbara's computer. Beneath the string of code, a set of coordinates had appeared.

"Oh, right." Barbara adjusted her glasses and her breathing, then slowly exhaled. "These are the signal tower IDs my father passed along the way. I pulled the towers' locations from the database and compared them against a Gotham map. He went to Arkham tonight!"

"Arkham?" Cindy shook her head, rolling her helmet around on the desk. "They call it a sanatorium, but it's actually more secure than a fortress. At least four hundred armed guards patrol there twenty-four hours a day, along with gunboats, armored vehicles, and police dogs. The Men in Black wouldn't strike there."

"That's right. At 12:03, he left there and returned along this route. His phone's final location was here."

Barbara pointed at the screen with one hand and typed with the other, zooming the map in slightly. Through triangulation, she could even pinpoint the exact street.

Cindy leaned closer to look. A map of Gotham immediately appeared in her mind, one even more detailed than the police department's. Her memories included many shady locations, such as Black Markets selling weapons, gangs running smuggling operations, and even a hidden League of Assassins surveillance point in Gotham.

But after looking at the screen, Cindy shook her head. "Gordon took the right route. He crossed the sea bridge, then went through the North District Tunnel. After that, he only had to keep going straight to reach the police department. But with today's rain, the tunnel may have flooded badly."

"Whose territory is that?" Su Ming also leaned in to take a look, but he could not make anything out.

"No one's. It's a very delicate location." Cindy smoked as she came up with the right words, then pointed around the map. "Here, here, and here are Black Mask's, Red Hood's, and Two-Face's territories."

"So Gordon's last location was where the three territories meet, a true no-man's-land." Su Ming understood.

It was like Romance of the Three Kingdoms. None of them could take the area. If one tried to claim it all, the other two would surely join forces, so they simply left it alone as a buffer zone.

It was also one of the more peaceful areas in Gotham's civilian districts. There might be a few small gangs around, but nothing major.

"What should we do?" Barbara now knew Gordon's location, but she had no way to act. She could only look anxiously at the two of them.

Su Ming raised an eyebrow. "Can't you call Batwoman or something? She always has a phone, right? Get her to save him. We happen to have something we need to discuss with Batwoman too."

"We don't have her number. Before, she would appear whenever the Bat-Signal lit up, but... but Batwoman left. She isn't in Gotham." Barbara had reached the end of her rope.

Both Su Ming and Cindy frowned. Could Batwoman have already gone to kill Aquawoman?

"Where did she go?" Cindy asked again. If she was not too far away, perhaps they could still catch up.

"I don't know. She came to our house in the middle of the night that day to talk to my father, but when I woke up, I only heard the latter half." Barbara pressed her temples, trying hard to remember. "She said she was leaving Gotham for a while, that there was some danger, and that she wanted to take us with her. But we refused, so she left on her own. Maybe she said where she was going in the first half of the conversation, but only my father knows."

Cindy slumped weakly against the chair back and looked at Su Ming. He was the one who had said this world was in danger, so he should know what was going on.

Su Ming was equally at a loss. Batwoman had actually learned of the danger in advance. What kind of threat could make even Batwoman run away? Did she know about this major Multiverse event? But she was in the Dark Multiverse, so there was no reason she should know.

These Men in Black had appeared to kidnap Gordon and Barbara. What move was that supposed to be? Aside from being Batman's ally, Gordon did not seem particularly special.

Both women looked at him, making Su Ming feel enormous pressure. Barbara especially looked like she might burst into tears at any moment.

"What did you usually do after confirming a phone signal's location?" He moved the computer closer to Barbara, hoping she might have some ideas.

"N-Nothing. Before, I only did it for fun. Once I got this far, that was it."

Barbara did not look like she was lying. It seemed this version of her was not yet as mature as the Oracle from other worlds.

"Listen to me. Start hacking into Gotham's traffic system and pull the surveillance footage from this area. Find when the phone stopped moving, then retrieve footage from that time."

"Okay!"

Barbara secretly wiped away her tears, adjusted her glasses, and began rewriting the intrusion program's address code to connect to the transportation department's server backend.

As long as they still had an idea and knew how to investigate, that was enough.

A few minutes later, she successfully obtained surveillance footage from the relevant road section, but there was nothing unusual. The road showed only a quiet rainy scene. There was not a single pedestrian on the street, much less any cars.

She looked to Su Ming for help again.

"The surveillance footage has been tampered with. Using a signal disruptor and some equipment, someone can access the cameras and repeatedly play prerecorded footage." Su Ming leaned closer to the screen. He could smell a sweet scent coming from Barbara. "The rain is too light. This was probably recorded around 10:30, and it has been looping ever since. Rewind a little and see if there's anything."

Barbara adjusted the time to around 10:30 as instructed. The three of them quietly watched the screen.

Suddenly, the image flickered.

"There, stop." Su Ming shouted. "Slow it down and replay those three seconds."

But the result disappointed them. The last thing the recording captured was only the shadow of a black glove passing over the lens. There was no information that could identify anyone.

"Sigh... There's no helping it. It looks like we can only head to the scene ourselves." Cindy picked up her helmet from the table, patted Barbara on the shoulder, and prepared to leave.

Su Ming had no other choice either. If they wanted to know where Batwoman might have gone, they had to find Gordon. He was their only lead now.

"Take me with you!" Barbara did not know where she found the courage. She grabbed Cindy's hand and pleaded, "I can help you, like before. I want to save him."

"No. You can hide in the armory. Once daylight comes and the officers on duty return, you'll be safe."

Cindy immediately refused. Moving through a storm was inconvenient enough already; bringing along a disabled person in a Wheelchair would be nothing but a burden.

But Su Ming saw it differently. Leaving aside Oracle's computer skills, after they rescued Gordon, would he believe Deathstroke's words? If Barbara were there, would it not be easier to gain his trust?

"I think we should take her. She's still in danger. Even if she hides in the armory, what if the Men in Black come back?"

"She's not like us. She can't even shoot a gun. How can she withstand an attack?" Su Ming tried to persuade Cindy, while gesturing that the police around them were all useless, and the day-shift officers tomorrow would be no better. "If we rescue Gordon but Barbara gets taken, then we'll have to help Gordon rescue her. Wouldn't that never end? We don't have much time."

Just as Barbara wanted to correct him and say that she could shoot, Su Ming desperately gestured at her. In the end, she held herself back.

Cindy thought it over and sighed. She did not know why Su Ming always found it so easy to persuade her.

"Fine, you can come. But don't expect me to push your Wheelchair."

Though she said that, Cindy put on her helmet and changed her mind.

Su Ming shrugged at Barbara and put his helmet back on as well. He pulled a blue police raincoat from behind the door and tossed it to her. "All right, bring your computer and wireless network card. We'll find a car outside first."