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Tim made sure to keep himself between any bullets, shrapnel, or other fast moving metal Jason and Damian’s more vulnerable bodies. It almost backfired when the blast front of an unexpectedly large explosion picked him up and flung him toward Damian. Only Tim’s inhuman reflexes kept him from smashing Damian into the wall. The gyrations required meant he was unable to avoid smashing into the wall himself.
System shutdown
System restart
Turning back on wasn’t the same as waking up. It was too abrupt. There wasn’t the same fuzzy confusion Tim had seen humans and augmented humans display on regaining consciousness. He could only hope Damian wasn’t paying close attention. He opened his eyes to find Damian staring at him. Shit.
“Drake,” Damian said. “Are you with us?”
“I’m awake,” Tim muttered. He wished he could adjust his pain sensors. Hard shutdowns always disrupted the programs which helped him think like a human. “How bad is it?”
“You got thrown into a wall and passed out,” Jason said. “So pretty bad.”
“Tt.” Damian clicked his tongue. “He meant the situation, Todd. I have basic access to their Feed. They have two CombatUnits and a dozen soldiers in powered armour, plus drones.”
“So pretty bad,” Tim repeated.
“Very.” Damian glowered as his glibness.
They were holed up in a small room with only one door and windows too small for even Damian to fit through. Cobwebbed shelves and dusty boxes filled most of it. Jason leaned against the only clear space on the far wall and Tim was slumped against the only clear space opposite him. Damian crouched next to him.
Jason scowled. “How long until Bruce gets here?”
Too long. The CombatUnits must know Damian was in their Feed. They wanted their prey to know they were doomed. It was part of their unfortunate tendency towards sadism when their advantage was overwhelming. Without their own CombatUnits or even just CombatBots, they were dead. Normally Tim would try to be encouraging but he needed Jason and Damian to be ruthless.
“Not soon enough,” Tim said. “And the moment they see reinforcements, they’ll bust in here to keep us from flanking them.”
“I don’t know why,” Jason growled. “My gun didn’t even scratch their armour.”
“Speak for yourself, Todd.” Damian glared up at him. “I’m a threat even without my guns.”
“Until they ride the Feed into your augments and cook your brains like scrambled eggs,” Tim said, unkindly. “We don’t have anything to stop their hacks.”
“My security—” Damian began.
“Isn’t worth shit without HubSystem or SecSystem to back it up,” Jason interrupted. “Tim’s right. We’re fucked.”
“So you’ll just let them kill us?” Damian snarled.
“Fuck no, I’ll die scratching their paint if that’s all I can do.”
Tim lay there and listened to them one up their futile dying gestures. He was going to ask them to do something unexpected and disturbing. It would be easiest if they believed it was their only chance. The parts of his own programming he could still perceive also required a certain level of hopelessness. While Jason and Damian boasted, Tim was engaged in a sort of reverse mindfulness.
They were going to die. Jason would likely go first. He’ll try and block the door. His projectiles will bounce off the CombatUnits, striking sparks but not doing damage. The return fire will punch through his unpowered armour and he’d collapse, reduced to an untidy pile of meat and fluid and bones.
Meanwhile, Damian would be seizing. No valiant last stand for him. The augments which had caused him so much grief would kill him at last. He’d be cooked from the inside out. Nothing left but a steaming, swollen corpse.
Unless Tim prevented it. None of that had to happen. They might never talk to him again but they’d be alive. Whatever was going on with him and Jason would certainly be over. He’d lose their trust but they’d be alive. They wouldn’t look at him the same. Even if they didn’t want to, they’d keep wondering if he’d turn on them. They would stop thinking of him as human, but they’d be alive.
“Damian,” Tim said, breaking into their increasingly contentious discussion, “do you still have that knife I gave you?”
“Of course.”
“Give it to me.” Tim held out a hand.
Damian hesitated only briefly. Good. He’d accepted their situation and was responding to decisive action. He reach into his jacket and pulled out a gaudy and impractical knife. It had been a joke gift with a cutting edge.
Tim took it. “Don’t freak out. Waif until we get home to mad. This isn’t the time for messy emotions.”
He opened his armour and shrugged his right shoulder out. Fortunately he had enough muscle definition to see where he needed to cut the skin without inhibiting the function of the arm. His hissed with pain as the knife drew a line of fire where his bicep overlapped his brachialis.
“Tim! What the fuck?” Jason lunged towards him but Tim glared him back.
“No freaking out.”
“You’re carving yourself up, how am I supposed to not freak out?”
“I’m just breaking the skin,” Tim explained, with agonized patience. “The muscles are fine.”
“Drake, this is bizarre, even for you,” Damian said cautiously.
“Then you’re going to hate this next bit,” Tim said blackly. “I need you to reach in and take out the chip that’s mounted on my humerus.”
“That’s not just breaking the skin, Tim.” Jason made the typical human response of focusing on trivial details in a crisis.
“Why do you think you have chip in your arm?” Damian asked in the non-judgemental tone you used with the delusional.
“Because Bruce had it installed there.” He really missed being able to control his pain sensors. “Reach in and remove it and we’ll get out of here alive. You can ask all the questions you want then.”
Damian started to reach for the wound when Jason exclaimed, “You aren’t going to do it!”
“Either he is telling the truth and this is how we must proceed to survive or he’s insane and the only way to prove it is by humouring him,” Damian said reasonably.
“The sooner he does it, the sooner I can stop bleeding.” His arm was soaked in blood that was leaking from the breached veins. His mission required absolute verisimilitude and that fucking sucked.
Damian’s questing fingers nearly made Tim shutdown again. Human bodies got quite upset by people digging around open wounds. Unfortunately, his system reliability stayed high enough to prevent him from shutting down. He almost broke his teeth while clenching his jaw to keep from screaming. He only needed to stay in control for a few more seconds. Just long enough for Damian to find that damned control chip.
Damian whined in disgust and opened his mouth, likely to announce his refusal to go on, when something clicked in Tim’s arm. Damian made a horrible motion with his fingers, then he was pulling something out of the wound.
Tim barely noticed. He was distracted by all his systems coming back online. Long unused processors hummed to life and he immediately shut off all pain in his upper arm. He sighed with relief even as he secured Damian’s Feed and rode the connection into the CombatUnit’s feed.
Their sadism was going to get them killed. Not because Tim could hack their internal system but because he could hack their drones and the powered armour. They only had an augmented human running security and Tim could run circles around them. He also had the latest firmware codes from Wayne Enterprises’ Industrial Security division. Not being able to use his software was no reason not to keep it up-to-date.
He set up a program to cycle through access codes for the drones and armour while he ripped up his shirt for a makeshift bandage. His restored firmware had sealed the leaking veins but he figure Jason and Damian would feel better if he wrapped it up.
“Holy shit,” Jason said. “What the fuck is that?”
“A control chip to make it easier to pretend to be human,” Tim said. He had the capacity to properly multitask now. “Early stealth constructs exhibited high levels of anxiety and neurosis from suppressing their abilities in order to act like a human or augmented human. Using a control chip to disable 86% of their systems increased their longevity significantly.”
“You are so illegal,” Jason whispered.
“Tt.” Damian inspected the blood soaked chip. “This is Father’s design.”
“It’s a long story,” Tim said, getting to his feet and sealing up his armour. “But the important bit is that I wasn’t allowed to remove my control chip.”
“He is such a bag of dicks,” Jason muttered.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Tim strode to the door and double-checked his status indicators. Other than the cut on his arm, he was physically fine. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go kill a dozen people.”