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See No Evil: The Long Con (ch. 77)
🕑 Added 2022-03-02 16:04:00 +0000 UTCBarbara felt like she had whiplash despite sitting at her computer for the past two hours, completely bombarded with headlines, articles, and one of the single most damning videos that she had ever seen. "It doesn't seem doctored, but that doesn't mean that it's not," Barbara told Dick as the entire world got another punch to the gut. One that they really couldn't afford with so much at stake. It had been something that the entire world had halfway expected, but the sheer scope of it was unimaginable.
"I don't think people are going to care if it's real or fake, Babs," Dick said as he and the team mobilized to contain a massive riot in Gotham -- the population of Lowtown was about to storm the police station and free Vergil St. Jude from incarceration.
Everyone had known right from the start that Vergil's list of sins was long. He openly admitted, downright bragged, about committing acts of extortion or blackmail. Even the conspiracy charges were completely expected, because you couldn't make moves that shook up the globe like Vergil did without a little conspiracy. However, what the world wasn't prepared for was how deep that rabbit hole went. Where murder charges were the lesser charges in comparison to some of the things that Vergil was being accused of.
International Terrorism for intentionally destroying the economy of the planet. Conspiracy to commit mass assassinations, of which included the US President. Normal murder charges of the first degree. Collusion, fraud, blackmail, extortion, insider trading… Vergil was looking at a good dozen life sentences or the death penalty. And all signs pointed to President Luthor, who had been the one to sign the warrant for Vergil's arrest, to be pursuing the maximum penalties allowed by the law.
People might have suspected as much all along. Barbara certainly had. You couldn't do what Vergil had done without removing obstacles. But even with those charges, people, in all likelihood, wouldn't have cared if it wasn't for a slew of video evidence -- Vergil outright admitting that he did it, claiming that the world would be his like an egomaniac, then making terrifying threats that he followed up on.
Queen Bee was dead and the world knew that Vergil had killed her. And her death hadn't been a pretty one. An invisible black ops team had been recorded with some unknown method planting the charges that took Queen Bee's life. The nation of Bialya was furious, demanding death in repayment for their sovereign's life.
"Vergil took a swing at the Light and lost," Jason spoke up, sounding absolutely furious about it.
"Tifa maintains that he's innocent of all charges," Artemis remarked. All of them were perched around the police station, which was under siege by thousands of people. The crowd filled every space in a three block radius around the station, holding up signs, flipping vehicles, throwing everything they had at the station. Thankfully, Vergil had made it a veritable fortress. Barbara wondered if he had known that he might one day be building his own prison.
To that, Barbara scoffed, "Of course, she would say that." Vergil was absolutely guilty. That wasn't in question at all. "But this is a move by the Light. They want Vergil out of the way for their Reach deal." And if the Light wanted it, then it stood to reason that they shouldn't let them have it. "I have an edit reel I can release. Make it look like the video was doctored. It would be enough to introduce reasonable doubt."
Fabricating evidence didn't sit well with her, but needs must. It had been a few hours since Vergil was arrested and it felt like the entire world just ground to a halt. Vergil had made himself the linchpin to the entire planet. Sainthood Enterprises too, because Tifa was threatening to put the entire company on strike if Vergil wasn't immediately released. That made government officials panic because it became clear how much the world depended on Sainthood Enterprises.
A single arrest and it felt like the entire world was going to crash and burn.
"This is the Light -- reasonable doubt won't matter when Lex is the President," Jason pointed out. "You can bet your entire ass that Lex Luthor is going to put his fist on the scales of justice to fuck Vergil."
"My entire ass?" Artemis questioned, earning a faint grin from Barbara. Jason wasn't wrong. He wasn't gifted with words, but he wasn't wrong.
Barbara shifted to a camera feed of Vergil. He was in an interrogation room, his hands cuffed to a table. He idly sipped his coffee, looking as in control as he ever did. If he was sweating at the charges thrown at him, then he wasn't showing it. Her dad was sitting in the chair across from him, the table filled with images and files. Barbara could listen in if she wanted, but she already knew what was being said.
"One thing we don't have to worry about is the League of Shadows," Dick pitched in, moving the subject away from Artemis' ass. That was another charge being thrown at Vergil -- use of nuclear weapons on Infinity Island. Not that there was an island anymore.
It was terrifying to see, Barbara thought. Vergil had the League of Shadows killed to prove a point. Barbara had seen first hand what that golden rule meant he would do, but the escalation from one to a thousand was breathtaking. There was no doubt in her mind -- Vergil had thousands of people murdered, then he outright nuked Infinity Island. He was a criminal. Probably one of the worst that they had ever faced, and she was trying to help him because he had made himself so important to the world.
It also meant that the Light were down two members in a single day. No, not just two members, but two massive organizations. A secret society that had existed since the Crusades, and a nation. Two titans that they had struggled against for years. Gone just to prove a point.
"The Light is going to be licking its wounds," Barbara agreed. The Light swapped out members whenever they needed, but Ra's and Queen Bee had been core members of the Light. They wouldn't let Vergil get away scot-free.
Barbara was broken from her thoughts when one of her systems caught a flag. Bringing it up, she saw that it was one of the tripwires that she had left out for the Reach. They had been on a campaign to sell their image -- they had gone as far as refraining to comment on Vergil's charges because it was 'not their place to levy accusations' but did make it clear that if the charges were true that they trusted the Earth's sense of justice. Basically, the most PR answer that had ever been given.
Diplomat had just looped a camera feed that she had hacked into. She sent a message to Concerned Citizen to see if he had gotten anything on his end, wondering if this was a backdoor meeting or the start of something else. A half-second later, Barbara got a video feed of a train station in the middle of North Dakota. A young-looking teenager wearing rough clothing was sitting at the station. For a moment, Barbara had no clue what she was looking at ,but she suspected what was happening a moment later when the child was grabbed by two men and drugged.
The camera shifted to a nondescript building out of town, the two men bringing the child there to what looked like a holding pen filled with another dozen children. Barbara's lips thinned as she saw a member of the Reach step out of the shadows, inspecting the children before they vanished.
Barbara asked a pointed question -- where did they go?
The answer that she got was that Concerned Citizen didn't know. But there was evidence of this happening across the planet.
With that, the situation changed. "The Reach are kidnapping children," Barbara informed the team on overwatch. "They're using this as a distraction and to keep us preoccupied. I'm sending you all a location to infiltrate -- the Reach are using teleportation to bring the children to an unknown location."
"What about Vergil?" Dick questioned as they started to pull out of position. The Reach was the higher priority, as were the children. The Reach was here to take over the planet and the Light were in a tug of war over the fate of Earth. And the Light just took a bad blow. They needed to be on top of the Reach every step of the way or after the dust settled they would find that the Reach wouldn't ever leave.
Barbara made a snap decision, "I'll keep an eye on him on location." She decided, standing up and pushing back her chair. She had made her own Batcave in an old clocktower on the edge of the city that had managed to survive Vergil's reconstruction of Gotham, because of historical significance. Dick, Artemis, Jason, and Garfield would head out to the location in question. She would go to the police station. "I'll go as myself. Dad would expect it from me," she admitted as she started to get dressed in her Batgirl costume.
"Sounds good to me. Keep a close eye on him, Babs. Vergil might be an asshole, but I don't want him dead." Dick said as they both began their missions. Barbara had high-tech lenses installed into her cowl, letting her keep up with the situation as she made her way to the police station. The crowd seemed bigger when she came across it a few minutes later, sailing through the air with the aid of her cape.
Their shouts of anger seemed to shake the air itself, hitting her with almost physical force as she flew above then. They held up signs and flags, their protests overlapping to the point that she couldn't make out what any of them were saying. For a solid three blocks in every direction, the crowd of people was so dense that she couldn't see the street. Even on the periphery, people were protesting.
It was to be expected, Barbara thought as she shifted her angle of approach, trying to go unseen if possible. Gotham was Vergil's support base. It was a city that he had remade in his image. It was a place where people thought that they knew Vergil intimately. Most of them might believe that Vergil was guilty of all charges, but they didn't care because their lives were better because of it.
It was an interesting conundrum, Barbara reflected, landing lightly on the top of the roof of the police station. She clung to the shadows, moving soundlessly before she began to unmask and undress. A moment later, she was wearing a dark purple jacket, yoga pants, and a nice set of loafers. Her image was completed by a set of wide frame glasses that acted as her cowl did, providing with a feed of data.
She slipped into the door that led to the rooftop and made her way down. Dick's team was on site as well thanks to the Zeta Tubes in the city. Barbara monitored their progress as she descended into the belly of the beast. As soon as she reached the lower floors, Barbara felt the tension in the police station. It was what she imagined a castle under siege would feel like.
Cops clung to the windows, keeping an eye on the massive crowd from all angles. Some were whispering softly to one another while others argued loudly.
"Fuck that -- I can take care of my kids because of Vergil. He can murder whoever the fuck he wants as far as I care. And he plugged some assassins and a fucking mind-controlling dictator -- I couldn't give less of a shit if I tried," Barbara heard one officer dressed in navy blues shout at Detective Bullock. "Good riddance. I'm only pissed that his first stop wasn't Arkham."
"You don't think that's a bit dangerous? He's a sixteen-year-old kid with the entire planet by the balls." Harvey argued, a sigh audible in his voice as she made her way down the halls, heading towards Vergil's interrogation room.
"You weren't saying that when we got a budget for OT again. Or our fancy-ass equipment. Vergil's dick was so deep in your throat I could barely hear a word you were saying."
"Fuck you," was Harvey's eloquent reply. "And that's different. You think I'm going to care that he's playing the game of politics a lot fucking better than the other player? Nah, no way. But the kid wants to become king of the world and he's fuckin' close enough to taking the crown that I don't like it. He killed the President -- who else will he bump off? Power corrupts and all of that."
"I don't care how corrupt he is so long as me and mine are looked after."
Barbara left the arguing officers behind her as she continued on her way. Even within the walls, there was a divide on what to do. The police force had a lot of respect for Vergil since the No Man's Land days. They remembered that Lowtown had stood with them against an increasingly hostile city. Since then, Vergil had dumped resources into them -- better body armor, new vehicles, computers that weren't made in the nineties, and so on. The police force was hardly the same after Vergil remade Gotham.
Slinking down the halls, she got an update from Dick that Jason had chosen to slip into the pen to be one of the children kidnapped. They would trace his signal to find where the Reach was keeping the children, then mount a rescue. Part of her wanted to be there -- she missed being Batgirl at times, but the amount of good that she did as Oracle far outweighed the good she did as Batgirl. Barbara sent back a confirmation and a greenlight that things were progressing smoothly here.
Glancing down at the cubicles that marked various detectives' offices, Barbara looked at her father's office. He was nose deep in a file, completely oblivious to her presence. Much to her annoyance, he had a cigarette dangling from his lips. How many had he had? If it was more than-
Barbara caught sight of his ashtray. There was an entire pack dumped in it. Her eyes narrowed into slits, and she froze in place -- James Gordon was a chain-smoker when he was feeling stressed. He'd use the stubs of old cigarettes to light new ones, and he would go through them so fast that he would be honestly shocked when he burnt through an entire pack. Her method to get him to break that habit was bribing detective Renee to interrupt him with something and he would catch himself.
It took two hours for him to smoke an entire pack of cigarettes.
It had been two hours since Vergil had been arrested.
Barbara's blood ran cold as she pivoted on a foot and broke into a dead sprint towards Vergil's interrogation room. Grabbing hold of the handle, she gave it a solid push, knocking the man that had been standing guard at the door from the other side over as she entered the interrogation room. Instantly, the smell of blood hit her nose and the sound of a meaty thunk reached her ears. Her eyes darted to the source to see a familiar face holding Vergil by the hair, a pair of blood-stained knuckle dusters on his fist, and the broken and bloodied face of Vergil St. Jude as he laid limply on the ground.
"Get off of him!" Barbara screamed, alerting the department to what was happening. She knew these two men. Detective Roman Cavallo and Detective Marcas Wise.
"What the fuck, Marcas!" Roman shouted, pausing mid-punch as Vergil's head rolled to the side, blood dripping from deep lacerations on his face. He needed immediate medical attention.
"She-" Marcas started, picking himself up, and Barbara moved. She lashed out with a foot, catching Marcas between the legs and kicking his testicles into his throat. Marcas gasped, bending over, giving Barbara time to kick his ankle out from under him, sliding his leg to the side and forcing him to drop to a knee. She met him halfway down by throwing a high knee that slammed into his nose. He went down hard, leaving her to continue unimpeded.
She stepped up on the chair on her side of the room, then onto the table as Roman froze, not certain what to do. That hesitation cost him when she threw herself at him, throwing a roundhouse kick that caught him in the temple hard enough that his head slammed into the wall. He was out like a light. "Help! We need to get to the hospital!" Barbara screamed, the door on its way to closing when Harvey, shockingly, slammed through the door.
His eyes widened when he saw Vergil -- his face was a mess of blood. His jaw was broken, there were bits of teeth laying in an alarmingly large pool of blood on the floor. It dripped down his neck, his nose shattered, and the brass knuckles tore skin rather than cut it. Even with a quick glance, Barbara knew that his life was in danger. Brass knuckles on someone that knew how to throw a punch were easily fatal. And Roman Cavallo knew how to throw a punch.
Her hand went to his neck, finding that he still had a heartbeat while she went through the little first aid she could give. In doing so, she saw that the beating hadn't started at the face. He had at least one broken rib, his hands showed signs of torture…
This is my fault. Barbara felt it in her gut as she joined Vergil on an emergency helicopter to a hospital. Her dad was with her, interrogating her on what happened, but she didn't have the answers. That video feed wasn't real. I should have noticed.
But she hadn't. Barbara expected if someone was going to try to assassinate Vergil, they would loop the video feed when Vergil was alone. Her tripwires in the systems hadn't been triggered. Instead, a hyper-realistic render was what played over the feeds. It had been realistic enough to convince her that the video feed was real. And it didn't just stop in the interrogation room, but every camera in the police station systems was playing fake footage.
Barbara barely recalled arriving at the hospital, her hands covered in blood, and Vergil being rolled away on a cart for emergency care.
"What happened?" Her dad asked her as she sat down.
"I-"
"I'm not asking you, Barbara. I'm asking Batgirl," her dad voiced, his words a low whisper as he gave her a sharp look. Her mouth dropped in shock for a moment, but Barbara quickly caught herself. Of course, her dad knew. She always suspected that he might, but he never brought it up. So, she hadn't either.
Taking in a slow breath, she let it out just as slowly. "The police station is compromised. Every camera was playing fake footage. I only noticed something was wrong when I saw your ashtray." she said, taking a seat in a waiting room with her dad.
"Fake how?" He questioned, frowning deeply.
"Quantum computer fake. Or they used magic. I'm not sure how they managed it yet, but I'm going to find out," Barbara swore, her hands curling into fists. "Especially when it could have been used create that video." She would analyze every single frame of that video to figure out how it was made. She had tried every trick in her playbook and came up with nothing. Now she would start flipping other people's playbooks.
Her dad let out a long sigh, reaching for his pack of cigarettes, only to find that it was empty. "At least my smoking habit helped someone… do you know if he's going to make it?" There was a sigh question in his voice, and a request. The idea that Vergil could die because of her mistake didn't sit well with her, even if there was no logical reason that she should have caught the mistake in the first place.
However, all the same, she pulled out her phone and started tapping away on the keyboard. She was already in the hospital's systems because it was convenient -- it paid off to keep an eye on gunshot injuries and the like in case someone was a suspect or a witness. Because of that, with a few taps, Barbara was able to monitor Vergil's condition in real time.
Her lips thinned at the results. Three broken ribs, six broken fingers with the rest dislocated, with the nails all torn out. A broken jaw, a broken orbital, fractured skull, internal bleeding across his stomach, and he had lost a lot of blood. He was firmly in critical condition but he had a team of doctors working to repair the damage.
His doctors. A team of them that he had on standby in case he ever suffered a terrible injury. Vergil's prudence might save his life.
"It's too early to tell," Barbara muttered, speaking to herself more than her dad. But if nothing went wrong, then he could make a full recovery. It might take getting his jaw wired shut, and a fair bit of scar tissue, but he could recover. A doctor she wasn't, but she had enough experience reading a chart and X-Rays that…
Barbara narrowed her eyes, bringing the phone closer to her before she inspected the image with her glasses. "What is that?" She breathed, zeroing in on one of Vergil's X-rays.
"What's what?" Her dad questioned, looking over her shoulder. He saw it too. "That thing on his spine? That's not natural, is it? Could it be the contrast?" He asked, looking for explanations, but Barbara shook her head. It felt like a hole was opening up in her gut and none of this was proving to be what it seemed.
On the back of Vergil's spine was a black square.
Her mind started to race, putting connections together at a speed that left her breathless. In that same location years ago… the Light had put mind control tech into the Justice League. Her heart hammered at her ribs when she pulled up his MRI to check brain activity to make sure that he didn't have brain damage.
It read as irregular.
"Oh, fuck," Barbara swore, something that she didn't often do. Her dad's eyebrows rose high as she fought to keep still. The MRI was irregular from an unconscious person, but because parts of it that were meant to be dormant were still active.
That video made sense now. All of it made so much more sense now. The Light had used Vergil as a proxy for their ends, released the video to turn public opinion against him, and to steal his company from him. Because if Lex Luthor had tried to do half of what Vergil had done, he would have faced a lot more pushback. But everyone loved an underdog story -- a street punk trying to take on the world? That…
"Barbara, what is it? What's going on?"
Barbara swallowed thickly and all but went limp as she sat in the uncomfortable hospital chair, feeling like she had been played in the worst way possible.
"Vergil's been mind-controlled, Dad." She told him, making her dad go still. Vergil had been mind-controlled by the Light. By Vandal Savage. Killing Queen Bee and Ra's… was that to clean house? An internal issue that needed to be dealt with? Barbara didn't know. What she did know was this:
"It's not his fault dad. None of it is his fault."
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