chapter two.
( the cadmus project. )

The echoing sound of a siren travels through the mid-afternoon air as Flamebird drops into the dark alleyway, the line of her grapple gun detaching from the building she used to swing onto the street. The closer they get to the Cadmus laboratory building, the stronger the smell of smoke becomes, almost overwhelming the girl now that she -- along with Aqualad, Kid Flash and Robin -- stand across the road from the burning building.

"Stay put," one of the firefighters calls out to the two stranded scientists still trapped inside. "We will get you out!"

His words are little reassurance to the scientists as an explosion forces them out of the window. Before the heroes have a chance to react, Kid Flash pulls his goggles down over his eyes and sprints forward in a hurried blur of yellow and red, speeding up the side of the building to catch the men. He throws them over the ledge of the rooftop, before losing his balance shortly after.

A small gasp forces its way out of Flamebird's throat as she watches him fall. Kid Flash scrambles to catch his footing, his hands wrapping around the edge of the windowsill to hold himself up before the girl in the alleyway could take a step forward to help him.

"It's- what's his name? Flash-Boy!" The Firefighter with the megaphone cheers, pointing out to the young speedster hanging from the burning building's window.

"Kid Flash!" He shouts to the men below, glancing down at them as he lets out a frustrated sigh.

"So smooth," Robin laughs, moving to stand by Flamebird's side at the entrance of the alleyway they're hiding in. His arms cross over his armoured chest, a grin tugging his lips upwards as he shares a look with the Gothamite standing beside him. Such a simple look, yet it tells her all she needs to know as she reaches her hand down to her utility-belt with a short nod of her head.

"Does he always have to run ahead?" Aqualad catches up to the two, and he stares out in Kid Flash's direction, watching him aimlessly dangle from the window – a consequence of running ahead without warning his team.

"We need a plan." He sighs, pinching his nose. When he doesn't receive a response from either of the Dark Knight's partners -- those who he had believed to be more level-headed than their speedster comrade -- he opens his eyes. From where he stands, he can just make out their figures climbing through the window Kid Flash holds on to. "Or not..."

Jumping off the windowsill and into the burning laboratory, Flamebird turns around to look down at her best friend. "Help me up?" Kid Flash asks with a pleading look, staring up at her as she leans her head out the window.

"What's the magic word?" She teases with a playful smile.

His lips part in surprise, his emerald eyes widening ever-so-slightly. "Seriously, birdy? I'm not-" When she makes no effort to reach out, he quickly rephrases, "Please!"

With a scoff, she offers him her hand. "I should've just left you there," she murmurs, causing a grin to break out on the boy's face as he lets go of her hand and jumps through the window.

"You would never."

Robin, from where he stands in front of the desk in the office, rolls his eyes at their antics. He clears his throat to catch their attention, looking up from the file in his hand just in time to watch them both turn around to face him. "We're on a mission, you know? Save the flirting for when we're done here, lovebirds."

Flamebird's face heats up as she nervously looks between the two boys, the smile on Robin's lips was enough to assure her he wasn't seriously annoyed– but nothing would be enough to calm her racing heart as she quickly steps away from Kid Flash.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." She takes a deep breath and reaches into her utility belt for a small flashlight. Her eyes scan over the small whiteboard in front of her, taking mental notes of the small appointments written down. They might be nothing, but Batman wouldn't let them go unchecked so neither would she.

"Appreciate the help." Aqualad comments sarcastically as he joins them a few minutes later, jumping through the window gracefully and looking between the heroes before him.

"You handled it." Robin shrugs, not bothering to look over at the Atlantean as he flicks through the pages of the folder he had plucked off the desk. "Besides, we're here to investigate. Poetic justice, remember?"

"Anything important?" Kid Flash's voice pulls the girl away from the other conversation. His head leans over her shoulder slightly for a better look at the whiteboard, bringing their faces just a little too close for Flamebird's liking. Just when she thought her heart had stopped racing in her chest, its pace picks up again as they lock eyes, and she quickly knocks her shoulder against his to push him away. She only hoped that he wouldn't notice how red her face had grown in the dimly lit room.

"No. Nothing." She coughs to clear her throat, tucking her flashlight back into the belt so she could instead cross her arms over her chest. "Just a bunch of company meetings and deadlines- but hey, it's Dr. Grace's birthday today, so that's something..."

Kid Flash snickers at her comment. "What better way to spend your birthday than watching your workplace burn to the ground, am I right?"

"I would kill to have that happen to my school before it picks up again." Flamebird sighs. Batman certainly didn't approve of him knowing their real identities and so much about their personal lives, but it couldn't be helped. They were so excited to meet other young heroes, they couldn't keep it in when they first met the boy.

If she thought about it hard enough, she could still picture the face Batman made when he found out Kid Flash knew their identities. It wasn't a pretty sight to say the least.

Her gaze flickers from Kid Flash to Aqualad and Robin — while the latter is still sifting through the documents messily scattered across the surface of the desk, Aqualad is instead drawn to something outside of the office. He hovers by the doorway, staring down the hall with furrowed brows and a worried look painted across his visage.

"What is it, Aqualad?" She calls out to the boy, joining him in the hallway. Her dark eyes flicking between him to the closed metal doors of the elevator, on its own there's nothing particularly suspicious about the elevator, but there was something off– it shouldn't be working during a fire.

"Elevators should be locked down," Kid Flash says, announcing her exact thoughts as they all move towards the elevator.

"This is wrong." Robin pushes past the taller heroes, a small holographic blueprints of the elevator appearing from his gauntlet. He lets out a noise, similar to those their mentor made whenever he discovered a secret during a mission. "Thought so. This is a high speed express elevator. It doesn't belong in a two-story building."

"Neither does what I saw." Aqualad points out with a grim tone, causing the younger heroes to face him. Without wasting even a second, he steps forward and pries the metal doors open with his bare hands. The strength of an Atlantean , Flamebird realises, before peeking over his shoulder and letting out a rather loud gasp.

Her eyes widen as she stares into what she could only call a never-ending bottomless-pit of an elevator shaft. "That's a long way down," she breathes out shakily— like she doesn't spend the better half of every night swinging from skyscraper to skyscraper in Gotham. "Why does an office building need so many basement floors?"

"I guess we know why they need an express elevator," Robin comments, ducking under Aqualad's arm to connect his grapple line to the top of the elevator shaft before he jumps down.

With a gulp, Flamebird follows behind the youngest of the heroes, sliding down the grapple's rope till she reaches the end. Carefully, she swings herself onto the ledge Robin sits on– where the elevator and floor would connect. Aqualad joins them a second later, and as Kid Flash reaches the end of the rope, he reaches his hand out to help the speedster onto the ledge.

"Bypassing security." Robin crouches by the doors as he hacks into the alert and alarm systems, deactivating it so their entrance wouldn't be announced to any unwanted people. There was a reason Batman found this place suspicious, and if they wanted to prove themselves to the League, they couldn't be caught yet.

"There, go." He announces as the buttons on his holographic screen light up green.

Aqualad steps forward to pry the doors open once more, allowing them to enter the next floor. Floor Twenty-Something, she stopped counting a few floors ago, was a long dark hallway. The dim lighting did almost nothing to help the young heroes learn more about the building they stepped into.

"Welcome to Project Cadmus," Robin whispers.

Flamebird's eyes scan over the area around the elevator, searching for clues or hints of any kind that would allow them to learn what was going on in this building to make Batman and the League curious. Kid Flash had other plans, taking off into a sprint to scout ahead without warning the others of his plan.

"Kid, wait!" Aqualad whisper-shouts to the boy, reaching his hand out in the speedster's direction as though he could do anything to stop him.

Flamebird silently watches the boy speed down the hallway, a giggle almost falling from her lips as he trips over his foot and slides across into the next corridor. Just as the group catches up to Kid Flash, a looming shadow of an elephant-like creature covers him. "KF, move!" Flamebird shouts, catching the boy's attention as he quickly rolls out of the way.

A second later and he would've been flattened under the foot – hooves? – of the pack of creatures stomping through the corridor. The ground shakes with every step taken, and Flamebird's dark eyes widen as she watches their every movement with a fearful gaze.

In her three years as Flamebird, she had seen a lot.

But nothing like this.

She wasn't even sure what this was.

Kid Flash pushes himself back onto his feet, weaving his way through the pack of creatures to join Robin, Aqualad and Flamebird on the other side. Relief was written all over his freckled face in the aftermath of narrowly escaping death.

"No... Nothing odd going on here," Aqualad mutters sarcastically as he watches the beasts while they growl and huff– though none of them seem to turn their attention toward the teens gaping up at them.

The herd passes, revealing the opposite side of the hallway. "In there." Flamebird points toward a single metal door, almost hidden as it blends in behind the dozens of wires and machinery scattered across the walls.

It takes Robin mere seconds to hack the doors open, and the young heroes rush inside.

Insect-like creatures smaller than the beasts outside were kept in containment chambers lined up against the walls of the room, each pod connected to glowing electrical wires that disappeared somewhere behind the walls.

Flamebird gulps at the sight. "This must be how they hide themselves from the world," she suggests, taking note of the electricity the insects were producing. "This reminds me of a horror movie."

"Yeah, well, you can't hide your face if you get scared this time," Kid Flash half-heartedly grins at her, the best smile he can put on in their current situation.

She's quick to glance back at the boy, raising a brow as she defends herself, "It was one time!"

In hindsight it wasn't the best idea to bet "A Nightmare on Elm Street" wouldn't be horrifying before it was even released. The old movies were nothing, sure. In fact it was in the middle of watching all of them when she so proudly boasted that the new movie wouldn't be scary at all. But then they had gone to the cinemas just a week later, and she spent the duration of the movie with her head buried in her hands while Wally laughed at her expense.

She had gone so far as to promise herself she would never see another horror movie with Wally and Dick after that.

"Okay," Robin lets out a sigh as he turns around to get a better look at every inch of the room they stand in, "I'm officially whelmed."

Kid Flash places his hands on his hips, leaning closer to one of the metallic pods as he observes the creature inside. "The real Cadmus isn't on the grid," he says, bringing up Flamebird's previous idea. "It generates its own power with these... things. Must be what they're bred for."

"It's disgusting," Flamebird mutters, crossing her arms as she stares at the pod in front of her. The creature inside didn't look to be conscious, but the blue impulses of energy it was releasing into the wires above had to mean it was alive at the very least. "No living being should be treated like this..."

"Even the name is a clue," Aqualad points out as he takes another step into the room, only pausing when he stands between Flamebird and Kid Flash. "The Cadmus of myth created a new raven by sowing dragons' teeth into the earth."

"And this Cadmus creates new life, too." Robin realises where Aqualad is going with his story. "Let's find out why."

The teens all crowd around Robin as he hooks his gauntlet up to the computer console, hacking into the systems to read the files of the creatures surrounding them. "They call 'em Genomorphs," he reads aloud to the team, then gasps, "Whoa! Look at the stats on these things: super strength, telepathy, razor claws. These are living weapons."

Flamebird's heart drops to her stomach, a truly sickening feeling taking over her body as her dark eyes lift to look around the room. Only a despicable person would be able to do something like this, but what scares her more is the knowledge that they had to be planning something big.

"They're engineering an army," Kid Flash whispers. "But for who?"

"Wait. There's something else." Robin taps one of the buttons on his gauntlet, attempting to open another file while he lets out a frustrated sigh. "Project Kr. Ugh, the file's triple-encrypted. I can't-"

"Don't move!"

Flamebird's quick to spin around on her heel as the shout echoes through the laboratory, sending a chill down her spine as she realises they've been caught. A man stands in the doorway they had just come from, a small herd of blue creatures crawling around behind him as they hiss and growl at the teenagers– awaiting the man's order to attack. "Those must be the Genomorphs," she points out, lifting a hand to point a finger at one of the creatures while her other hand hovers over her utility-belt.

"Wait..." The man's brows furrow as he looks over the group in front of him. "Robin, Flamebird, Aqualad, Kid Flash?"

"At least he got your name right," Robin teases his friend from where he hides behind him, keeping his gauntlet out of sight as he continues to download the Project Kr file from the Cadmus system.

"I know you." Aqualad moves to stand in front of his comrades as he addresses the man with the golden helm. "Guardian. A hero."

"I do my best," Guardian shrugs.

"Then what are you doing here?" Kid Flash questions him pointedly, the boy's emerald eyes narrowing in his direction.

"I'm chief of security," he answers. "You're trespassing. But we can call the Justice League, figure this out."

"Figure what out?" Every bone in Flamebird's body screams at her to run while she can, not trusting this man further than she could throw him. Only the cruel would work for a place like Cadmus while knowing what they really were; but instead of running, she brushes her crimson and gold cape to the side and reaches for the folded bo-staff attached to her belt . "Why are you helping protect whoever's creating living weapons?" She continues to question him. "We both know the League would never approve."

"Weapons? What are you-" The Genomorph on his shoulder glows red, and Guardian's eyes begin to dilate. "What have I-" He clutches his head for a moment, seemingly in pain before his face shifts and he glares down at the teens. "Take them down! No mercy!"

Without a moment of hesitation, Robin jumps in front of Flamebird, Aqualad and Kid Flash; he throws a smoke-bomb at the ground, allowing a thick fog to fill the room. Flamebird reaches for her grapple-gun, shooting the wire up to the roof so she could make a quick escape in the cover of the smoke.

She's quick to reach the hallway they had originally come from, and she takes off running after Robin– the two of them having worked together long enough to catch onto each other's plans in such a high risk situation. She glances over her shoulder, her eyes widening when she realises the hallway behind them was empty.

"Where's Aqualad and KF?" She skids to a stop, bracing her hands out in front of her to prevent her body from slamming against the metal doors of the elevator that Robin begins to hack.

Sensing her worry without even lifting his gaze from his gauntlet, Robin lets out a sigh, "They'll be here! Just give them time to catch up."

His words bring a frown to Flamebird's face but she falls silent nonetheless. He's right, they would catch up any second now; but they need to get the elevator open before they do, or none of them would be leaving this godforsaken building.

With the genomorphs still hot on their trail, Aqualad and Kid Flash turn the sharp corner to find Flamebird and Robin by the elevator. Kid Flash speeds down the hallway, his eyes narrowing slightly as he skids to a stop next to the Dark Knight's proteges. "Way to be team players!"

"Weren't you right behind us?" Robin glances at his friend for a split second, despite already knowing the answer to the question.

One last tap of a button is all it takes for the elevator doors to slide open and the three teen heroes to rush inside. Aqualad follows just a moment later, sliding into the elevator at the very last second before the doors slide shut behind him, narrowly escaping an attack from the Genomorphs that are left on the floor behind them.

Flamebird lets out a sigh of relief, her knees threatening to give out beneath her now that she knows all of them are safe and finally getting out of this place. She leans her head forward, the long strands of her hair falling in front of her face and blocking her vision of the elevator's floor number.

At least until Aqualad speaks up. "We're headed down?"

"Dude," Kid Flash's eyes widen as he turns to face Robin. "Out is up!"

"Excuse me? Project Kr." Behind the mask, Robin raises a brow at his comrades as he reminds them of what they found. "It's down on sub-level 52."

"This is out of control." Aqualad runs his hand down his face in what Flamebird can only call frustration– frustration in the simple mission going backwards, frustration in the fact that Robin didn't let any of them know his plan before acting on it. "Perhaps... Perhaps we should contact the League."

This place was getting weirder and weirder by the second, she didn't even want to know how horrific Project Kr had to be if it was kept more hush-hush than the genomorphs were. The elevator beep snaps Flamebird from her thoughts, and she lets out a sigh as the doors slowly slide open in front of them. "I think it's too late for that now..."

Having expected more Genomorphe to be waiting on the other side, she was pleasantly surprised to be greeted with an empty hallway. But the feeling doesn't stick for long as her eyes begin to adjust to the dark.

It wasn't a dark corridor like they had just come from, but instead a hollowed-out cave; with pods and machinery scattered across the halls, and lights that shine down on the walls causing them to glow a pinkish-red hue.

Robin slips his birderangs back into his utility belt before he takes the first step out of the elevator, and then another, until he is running down the cave hallway with the others following close behind him.

The heroes drop into a crouching position behind a row of containers. "Which way?" Aqualad kneels behind the younger teens, one of his arms leaning against his knee as he looks at the fork in the road ahead.

"Yeah. Bizarre looking hallway one? Or bizarre-looking hallway two?" Robin frowns as he motions between the two separate paths– both look the exact same, but Flamebird's sure that while one would lead them to Project Kr, the other would inevitably lead them to an early demise.

"Halt!" A tall – more sentient, judging by the lab coat it wears – Genomorph steps out of the darkness in the left hallway. The horns on its head glow bright red, similarly to the ones they had come into contact with earlier, though instead of messing with someone's head, the Genomorph instead throws two barrels their way.

The second the barrels come into contact with the wall, they explode, causing Flamebird to flinch as she dives away from the explosion. "Bizzare Hallway Two! Go, go!" She calls out to her teammates, and shakily pushes herself back up onto her feet so she can run.

The Genomorph continues to hurl explosives in their direction as an alarm begins to blare through the cavern. Flamebird turns a sharp corner, catching a glimpse of Wally as he knocks a female scientist off her feet and uses a small gas canister to keep the sliding doors labelled "Project Kr" open.

She sprints for the door, jumping over the tank, only to lose her balance on the landing. She stumbles forward into Kid Flash's arms, and he wraps his arms around her smaller form to prevent either of them from falling over.

Behind them, Robin and Aqualad enter the room– and the Atlantean spins around to kick the tank out of its spot, forcing the doors to spring shut just before the Genomorphs could follow them inside. Their hisses and growls grow muffled beneath the steel, and she can faintly hear them scratching at its surface.

"I disabled the door," Robin announces as he looks up from his gauntlet with a half-hearted grin. "We're safe."

Flamebird's shoulders relax as she sighs in relief, before she quickly straightens up and jumps away from Kid Flash. She clears her throat awkwardly, averting her gaze as she murmurs a thanks to the boy beside her.

"We're trapped." Aqualad corrects Robin with a pointed look.

"Trapped or temporarily hiding to gain the upper hand?" Flamebird tries to lighten the mood by grinning in Aqualad's direction. Across from them, Kid Flash steps away from the group to explore the dark room.

"Uh, guys." He raises his voice slightly to gain the attention of his bickering teammates. "You'll wanna see this." He reaches out to press a button on the control panel, and the containment chamber in front of him instantly lights up.

Flamebird squints at the sudden burst of light, then looks the containment chamber up and down. Her lips part in surprise as she realises there's a boy inside; he didn't look much older than herself, but the bright red 'S' symbol on his white shirt shocked her to her core.

"Big K, little r," Kid Flash points out grimly. "The atomic symbol for Krypton. What do we think? Clone?"

"This is wrong," Flamebird whispers, hugging her arms around herself as her lips curl into a frown. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the unconscious boy. Clone or not, this was no way a living being should be treated. "This is so, so wrong."

"Robin," Aqualad glances at the boy, "Hack."

An uneasy feeling settles in her stomach, her heart pounding in her chest as she finally brings herself to look away. "Weapon designation; Superboy, a clone force-grown in... 16 weeks?!" Robin's eyes widen as he reads the project information aloud, "From DNA acquired from Superman."

"Stolen from Superman," Aqualad corrects.

Kid Flash nods in agreement as he looks between the clone and his teammates. "No way the big guy knows about this."

Robin continues to read, "Solar suit allows him to absorb yellow sun radiation 24/7."

"And the creatures?" Flamebird points up to the three small gremlin-looking monsters sitting in the containment chamber above Superboy's head, their horns constantly glowing red. "Guardian had one of those, too."

"Genomorph gnomes," Robin explains. "Telepathically force-feeding him an education."

"And we can guess what else." Kid Flash lets out a breath, his expression shifting to a much softer one as he faces the chamber. "They're making a slave out of, well, Superman's son ."

Flamebird frowns again at the revelation, wondering what might have happened if the League came to check this place out before they did.

Silence fills the room for a moment, none of the teens knowing what to say or do, until Aqualad speaks up. "Now we contact the League," he orders, knowing they no longer have a say. It didn't matter if this was their way of proving themselves, the League needed to know about Superman's clone before it was too late.

With a sigh, Flamebird reaches up to turn on her earpiece. A static noise greets her from the other side, and she flinches at the deafening sound before quickly switching it off. Confused, she turns to face Robin who shares the same surprised look on his face. "No signal," he informs the others, after being met with the same response.

"We're in too deep," Kid Flash sighs. "Literally."

"Well... What do we do, then?" Flamebird asks, her eyes flickering between the boys. "It won't be long until the Genomorphs break through the door." She glances over at the steel doors they entered from, dents were already beginning to form in the metal from the Genomorphs outside.

"This is wrong," Kid Flash shakes his head, turning around to face Superboy once more as he frowns. "We can't leave him like this."

"Set him free," Aqualad instructs the boys. "Do it."

"What?" Flamebird's eyes widen and she shakes her head in disagreement as she watches Robin step forward to connect his gauntlet to the containment chamber. "You don't know what they've been teaching him, one look at the symbols on our suits and we could be done for."

Despite her objections, Robin lowers two holographic levers on the gauntlet screen, and the containment chamber opens up with a soft hiss. Flamebird takes a step back, reaching one of her gloved hands down for her bo-staff.

Everything stills for a moment as Superboy opens his eyes, but then he races forward faster than a speeding bullet and throws Aqualad against the ground with a growl.

"I knew this would happen!" Flamebird shouts, watching as Kid Flash and Robin dart forward to grab hold of Superboy before he could throw a third punch at Aqualad. She pulls out her staff, and takes a step forward to strike the clone.

Before she can attack, Kid Flash's shout echoes through the room. "Don't hurt him!"

"Don't hurt him?!" She repeats in confusion. "But he's hurting us!"

"We're on your side!" Kid Flash turns his attention to the clone; Superboy reaches his arm back and easily hurls the boy across the room and against the glass chamber.

It feels like the world around her freezes in time as the sound of glass shattering reaches her, out of the corner of her eye she can see Kid Flash fall directly through the glass and roll across the floor; by the time he stops, his body is limp and unconscious.

"KF!" She gasps, dark eyes widening in fear for him. In her distraction, she fails to see Superboy grab Robin by the back of his cape and throw him over to Kid Flash before lunging in her direction.

The clone slams against her roughly, knocking her onto the ground. She gasps as she hits the floor of the cave, her chest tightening and her lungs burning as her vision begins to bleed black. The last thing she sees is the sight of Superboy hovering over her menacingly before she finally loses consciousness.

author's note.

4.8K for this chapter, which is crazy cause the version of this chapter in the old fic was only around 2k lmao