Detective Comics

PREVIOUSLY: Jean-Paul Valley, formerly known as Azrael, fends off an attack from two unidentified assailants. Later the same evening, following a chaotic fight, the assailants are discovered murdered, and Jean-Paul is missing. Batgirl locates Jean-Paul, who insists on accompanying her to Transbelvia to locate the killers.

At the same time, the Birds of Prey are tracking an international conspiracy that leads them to Transbelvia.

Disappointed with her life and seeking advice, Lorraine Reilly’s friend Valerie Beaudry meets a mysterious stranger in a café in Pittsburgh. He reveals to her that he is a member of the Order of St. Dumas, and recruits her to join the fold. Tracking Valerie to her friend’s home, Lorraine and her boss Simon LaGrieve are confronted by an enraged Silver Swan.

Bullets zinged two inches from Black Canary’s left foot. Paying the gunfire no mind, she raced toward the door of the safehouse-turned-inferno. “Oracle!” she barked into her headpiece. “Get Zinda in here now!” Dinah could make out the front door through billowing smoke. She put her head down only for a split-second, but it was just enough time for the door to explode in front of her. The concussion knocked Dinah backwards, her feet flying into the air behind her as fire singed her face. She felt a thud as her airborne body smacked against – something? She wasn’t sure what.

“Oracle?!? Oracle!!” she shouted as she struggled into an upright position. Dinah realized she couldn’t hear her own screams, much less anything else. Her vision was hazy, flames covering her view. She knew she had to keep moving, but without her hearing she had no idea which way to go.

Oracle could hear Dinah’s cries on the other end of the headset, but Dinah was unresponsive to her return shouts. She’d contacted Zinda, but their mission had required Zinda to keep a safe helicopter distance. She was en route, but wouldn’t be on-site for at least another ten minutes. Babs struggled to keep her cool as she tried to pull her agent and friend from the inferno. This wasn’t my brightest move, she thought, sending her in alone. This is even bigger than we thought.

A new alert popped up on Babs’ screens, this one indicating a call from Simon LaGrieve. Babs hadn’t thought of Simon in some time and was surprised to hear from him. “Oracle?” came his call. “I’m sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a situation here.”

“Sorry Simon, I’ve got one of my own right now. I’ll have to call you back.” Babs shut down the connection before Simon could protest. Turning back to Canary’s situation, Babs’ mind raced as she looked for a solution.

Ten minutes earlier, the Silver Swan had screamed as she swooped down on Simon and Lorraine. When Lorraine saw her friend move, she instinctively shielded Simon with her body, pushing him toward the ground. The maneuver left her slightly off-balance, allowing the Swan to strike her violently with a silver wing. Lorraine cried out and staggered backward.

“Valerie! What’s the matter with you?” she cried as the Swan swooped around for another pass. “Stop this!”

The Swan, however, was not listening. She deftly soared into the suburban night, then spiraled back around in Lorraine’s direction. Her face was a mask of rage.

A second blow knocked Lorraine off her feet, exposing Simon, who was now crouched on the ground. Lorraine rolled back into a standing position as quickly as possible, just in time to see Valerie circling around for another pass.

“Val,” Lorraine said as she triggered her flame. “I said… QUIT!” Lorraine’s body burst into flame as she triggered her transformation into the sometime-superheroine known as Firehawk. Lorraine felt power course through her as the transformation took effect.

The Swan made no effort to slow down, flying headlong toward Firehawk. Lorraine got her bearings and hurtled directly toward the approaching Swan, and they collided in a sea of sparks.

Knocked off-balance for the first time, a hint of recognition flared in Valerie’s eyes. It was all the hesitation Lorraine needed. She fired a bolt of kinetic energy directly at the Silver Swan, slamming her back into the house. Valerie crumpled to the ground and lay motionless. “Oh no,” muttered Lorraine, racing toward her friend along with Simon.

Before they could reach the Swan’s prone body, the front door to the home opened, and four men poured out. Each of them was dressed in all black, and each carried a firearm. All four immediately took aim at Firehawk and fired. Lorraine couldn’t turn in time to avoid being struck by two of the bullets. She felt an odd sensation as they passed through her, not quite pain but something else entirely. She had the feeling of slogging through quicksand, then realized she could no longer think.

Simon watched with horror as Lorraine slumped to the ground only yards from where the Swan lay. Thinking quickly, he grabbed his phone and pressed a number. “Oracle? I’m sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a situation here.”

Ten minutes earlier than that, Batgirl pleaded with Jean-Paul Valley. “Jean-Paul, you… can’t do this.”

Jean-Paul had stepped outside the van that had brought him, along with Batgirl and Bryan, to the clearing in Transbelvia. Bryan was slumped over in the passenger seat of the van, and hadn’t made a sound in over a hundred miles. Jean-Paul fixed a strap to hold his glasses in place. “Why not? I could be a help to you.”

Batgirl shook her head. “No. You’re.. not stable. I’m sorry, but you’re not.”

Jean-Paul looked confused. “Because of what happened in Gotham? Batgirl, I didn’t kill those people.”

“I know.” Batgirl held up her hands in mock surrender. “But you… you’re not right. You could get hurt.” Jean-Paul’s expression was unchanged, and Batgirl realized she should have given him the slip back in the United States. “Fine,” she finally muttered. “But stay out of the way.”

Jean-Paul nodded, and the pair began the two mile walk to the safehouse Batman’s research had discovered. Cassandra hasn’t told Batman that Jean-Paul was with her. He had not asked. She wasn’t sure whether Batman had simply assumed she wouldn’t be foolhardy enough to bring Valley along, or whether he just didn’t want to know.

Ten minutes before that, Black Canary had gotten her final op info from Oracle as she prepared to parachute from the Aviary.

“You’ll hit the ground half a mile from the safehouse. At that point it’ll be up to you to penetrate security, get inside, take the photos, and get out. Remember, we do not want to take the place out tonight.”

“Not even if I get the chance, O Fearless Leader?” deadpanned Canary.

“Not even,” replied her too-serious general. “You were right – this is bigger than us. If the documents we appropriated from the embassy are accurate, this thing is much bigger than a safehouse in Transbelvia. We just need some additional documentation, and then we’ll go to the JLA.”

“The stuff from the embassy isn’t enough?”

“Might be. But it’s all paperwork. Even the JLA has a procedure to follow before barging in someplace, and nothing will do the trick quite like some good old photographs. This will make the case rock-solid.”

“Right-o then, skipper!” Canary glanced at Zinda, who gave her the thumbs-up to drop. Dinah leapt into the cool night, feeling like a soldier dropping behind enemy lines.

Her landing was uneventful, or so she thought. Dinah was one of the best stealth operatives on the planet, but even she did not realize her arrival had been detected. She did not realize she was being surreptitiously followed as she sneaked the last half-mile toward the safehouse.

Arriving at the safehouse, Dinah searched for a stealthy way inside. The house was relatively nondescript, all walls and windows in place. “You on the ground?” came the call from her headset.

“Affirmative,” whispered Canary. “What’s Google Earth say about the house?”

“I’m not picking up any heat signatures. It seems empty.”

“Empty? That doesn’t sound right.”

“Not to me either, but this is state of the art equipment. We’re going to have to trust it.”

Canary agreed reluctantly and proceeded unabated toward the house. Examining each of the windows, she found a loose one and slowly pushed it open. She was climbing through when the gunfire began from behind.

Dinah Lance spent an unhealthy portion of her life avoiding gunfire, so its presence here was not particularly unsettling. The fact that she’d been made, despite Oracle’s intelligence, so early on was unsettling, in fact highly disturbing. “Oracle!” she barked into her radio transmitter. “I’ve got company!” She dove into the house to escape the gunfire, fully aware that she was tossing herself further into the lion’s den.

To her credit, Oracle didn’t bother with an “are you sure” response. After briefly acknowledging Dinah’s communicate, Oracle turned her attention to solving the problem rather than pondering its origins. In the meantime, Dinah scanned her dark surroundings with her night goggles. She found herself in an empty bedroom, sparsely decorated and apparently unused. The bed was neatly made, the pillows fluffed – it didn’t appear anyone had been there recently.

Dinah quickly moved through the room and into a hallway, leaving the closets and drawers undisturbed. It was of course entirely possible that those nooks and crannies held treasures, but survival and reconnaissance had to be top priority at the moment. Dinah hoped she could get a vantage point to observe her pursuers, or at least hold them off.

Before Oracle could give her further instructions, Dinah made her way through the narrow hallway toward the front of the house, finding herself in what appeared to be a living room, decorated as sparsely as the bedroom. Windows lay to her right, with a doorway into the kitchen on the left and the front door straight ahead. Dinah noticed to her horror that the front door was clearly unlocked. She bolted forward to lock it (or escape through it) when the window suddenly exploded in a blast of glass.

Dinah leapt away from the window hoping to avoid the jagged shards of glass. Gunfire rained through the window, and Dinah could now hear small explosions behind her, near the bedroom. Realizing she was trapped, Dinah eyed the front door and considered her options. She hadn’t decided whether to rush the door when a grenade lobbed through the side window. Dinah leapt away from it as it exploded. Percussion rang in her ears as she heard another explosion in the bedroom. Fire danced before her as she bolted desperately for the front door.

NOW: Oracle was becoming nearly apoplectic as she heard the explosions over Dinah’s radio. “Zinda, what’s your ETA?”

“Three minutes” came the reply. Damn, Oracle thought. Not nearly good enough.

“Oracle?” Babs glanced at her monitor. Simon again. She didn’t have time for this.

“Simon!” she barked. “I cannot – ..”

“Listen to me!” he yelled. Oracle was momentarily taken aback by the normally mild-mannered scientist’s tone. “This is an emergency. What is the Order of St. Dumas?”

Simon’s words froze Oracle. She was well-familiar with the Order from her experience with Jean-Paul Valley, aka Azrael. Suddenly unconnected pieces fell into place. “Simon? What about the Order?”

“I seem to be running from three of their agents here in Pittsburgh. They’ve injured two metahumans at minimum, and I need help!” Oracle was already tracking Simon’s cell phone, locating it in seconds and calling up his location. Making an executive decision, she punched another button on her keyboard.

“Wally? Need help. Now.” Deciding Dinah was better equipped to survive the next three minutes than Simon, she made an executive decision. I hope I can live with it, she thought.

Simon’s cell phone dropped the call as he was rapidly spirited from Pittsburgh to a safehouse in Baltimore. He’ll call back in a minute. “Thanks” Babs said to no one in particular.

“Noproblemcan’tfinetheothersthough.” came the rapid reply.

Quickly changing focus, Oracle tried Dinah again, hoping her hearing had returned. No joy. “Zinda?”

“Two minutes, Oracle.”

One minute had elapsed since Dinah’s hearing had been lost. Realizing her affliction, she had stopped trying to get a response from Oracle. Instead, she sought cover amid the smoke from the explosions. Even injured, Dinah’s mind focused on trying to count her attackers. She’d thought there were ten, but now it seemed that there were only nine. Dinah struggled to detect and sense their movement.

Dammit, my senses are playing tricks on me. Now there’s only seven. Come back, hearing! A dull buzzing had begun in her eardrum, and she knew her deafness would be temporary, but felt completely exposed in the meantime.

Wait… only sensing five now. Are they freezing in place? What’s..? Four?

Suddenly Dinah saw the blur of a black cape through the smoke, and she understood. Within seconds there were three distinct attackers. Then two. Then one. And finally Dinah could detect movement no longer, not even the moves of her savior. “Oracle” she spoke into her headpiece even though she could only barely make out her own words. “We’re good here.

“It’s Batgirl.”

Jean-Paul Valley watched through binoculars from five hundred yards away as Batgirl deftly disarmed and incapacitated the gunmen. She moved with a grace unlike any he’d witnessed – and he’d witnessed Batman in action many times. Even Nightwing didn’t have this fluidity of motion.

This is.. the Order, he thought to himself. We thought they were gone, but they’re not. They’re hurting people. Again.

I know what I have to do.

Oracle could barely contain her relief at knowing Dinah was okay, but there was no time for rest. Simon had finally gotten his phone working again. This time she took her time talking to him. “Sorry I was abrupt earlier, Simon.”

“I understand, Oracle. I know you’ve got a lot on your plate.”

“I hope Wally didn’t jar you too badly.”

“Far preferable to what awaited me if he hadn’t arrived, I’d say.”

“Tell me about this. You’re sure it was the Order of St. Dumas?”

“They claimed to be.” Simon still found himself somewhat short of breath. “I’d never heard of such a thing. What is it?”

“The Order is a pseudo-religious group that’s been heavy into mucking around with the world for about 700 years. We thought they were out of commission, but I’ve been tracking them over the last few weeks – it looks like they have rebuilt themselves and are inserting themselves back into the world picture in various ways. Specifically, it looks as if they are recruiting metahumans.”

Simon thought of Lorraine and Valerie. “Was there no sign of Firehawk or the Silver Swan?”

“I’m afraid not, and Wally could have found them if they were nearby. It appears they were spirited away from the scene, most likely through some sort of extranormal means.”

“We need to find them. They could both have been injured, and the Swan was not in her right mind.”

“So it seems,” mused Babs. “You getting all this, Dinah?”

Black Canary’s hearing had finally returned. She sat on a rock outside the smoldering remains of the safehouse while Batgirl and Zinda finished binding their prisoners. She had a mammoth of a headache but pressed on. “Most of it,” she answered. “Maybe this wasn’t a total loss. The house went up before we could salvage anything, but we got ourselves ten captives.”

“Yes,” Oracle replied. “Make sure they’re sedated before putting them on the Aviary.

“I don’t get it.” said Dinah. “These guys knew I was coming. They were able to cloak their heat signatures from you. From you! That never happens. How’d these guys pull it off?”

“Clearly we are dealing with some sophisticated tech – or some metahuman ability at work. Keep in mind these guys employed Typhoon. Who knows who else is on their payroll? Batgirl, are you patched in now?”

Cassandra Cain fumbled with her headpiece before answering. “Yes, Oracle.”

“Thank you. I mean that. You did real good, kiddo.”

Canary nodded and grinned in Batgirl’s direction. “Yessirree. I’d be a crispy critter right now if you hadn’t come along.”

“I hate to break up the pleasantries, girls.” came Oracle’s voice over the radio. “But we’ve got ourselves a problem. This is an international mess, and we have no idea just how big.”

“Thus,” Canary gestured to the bound gunmen, “our new pals.”

“Yes,” answered Oracle. “Thus.”

It was ninety minutes later before Batgirl returned to the spot where she’d left the van. Jean-Paul hadn’t been in his designated spot, and Cassandra wasn’t surprised to find the van gone as well.

The note was stapled to a tree only a few yards away. It was brief and to the point.

“I have to stop them.”

Batgirl crumpled the paper in her hand and wondered if she should pray for her friend. She wondered if she’d ever see him again.

Lorraine’s eyes fluttered open as consciousness slowly returned. At first she couldn’t feel her arms or wrists, then realized she was bound. She had the sensation of vertigo, as if she was off-balance somehow. As her senses came back to life, Lorraine realized she was on a boat. The room around her was dimly lit, containing only one other occupant. It was a woman, Lorraine could tell, but no one that she knew.

It was when she tried, and failed, to summon Firehawk that Lorraine became aware of the collar around her neck.

Her captor seemed to sense Lorraine’s thoughts. “A nice thought, but no.” Her voice wafted from her thin figure like smoke. “Not yet, I’m afraid.”

“W-where..” Lorraine managed to ask. Her throat burned.

“En route,” replied the woman. “To your new home.”

Lorraine spotted the needle as the woman advanced toward her, but could not move to avoid it. The last thing she remembered was the needle plunging into her shoulder.

Mark had been awake for two hours, but had not been able to discern his surroundings except for… white. Everything around him was white. There were no doors, no windows, no objects – just white as far as the eye could see.

The voice startled him. “Gotten comfortable yet?”

“Who’s there?”

“I’m called Oracle. Ready to chat?”

“What is this? Where am I?” Silence. “I’ve got rights. What are you doing to me?”

“We’re going to chat. I told you that.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

“Oh yes, yes you do.” Oracle’s voice was tinged with disinterest. “But I can wait.. as long as you can.

“I’ve got all the time in the world.”

The End...

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