Barbara Gordon woke with a shriek and a start, flailing about as the sensations of her dreams lingered in her mind, the fear impulse going into overdrive as she felt something touching her face.  After a second she realized her surroundings as the kitchen where she sat, her homework in front of her, a page of trigonometry glued to her face by a bit of spit.  Wiping her face clean she noticed her brother James staring blankly at her over the back of the couch in the living room, a horror movie playing on the tv that had been the background noise as they did their schoolwork reaching its climax.

"Shh, it's getting to the good part," he hissed, and she narrowed her eyes at him in response.

From the hallway came "Is everything okay in there?" a half-second before their father Jim walked into the room.

"Uh, yeah, Dad," Barbara stammered, every nerve fiber relaxing as the sight of her father reassured her before suddenly feeling incredibly stupid and childish that at age 14 her dad had come running because she had a nightmare.  "It's nothing, I just dozed off and had a bad dream," she muttered as he knelt down beside her and put his hand reassuringly on her shoulder.

"With all the drool you'd think she was dreaming about Josh Mackey," retorted the 10 year old on the couch.

"Oh my god, shut up you little twerp!" Babs screamed.

"Kiss me Babs, I've got a learner permit and a minibike!"

"JJ, cut it out or you're grounded!" his father sternly warned as he stood up.  His attention refocused, Babs grabbed the pencil off the table and hurled it at her little brother, nailing him right in the forehead before her dad could stop her.  "Barbara!," he yelled as he stood between the two siblings and pointed a finger at both, "I will ground both of you for the next month if you keep it up.  No friends, no phone, you get to spend every day after school at the station break room being babysat by Detective Bullock, and..." he looked around a bit for something else to threaten them with, "...no horror films."

"That's not fair!" James whined.

"C'mon, daaaaadddddd!"  Barbara added to the whining.

"Are you two going to behave and stop antagonizing each other?"

Babs and James looked at each other then back to the their dad.  "Fine," they muttered in unison, and after a few moments of waiting to see if his kids' newfound truce was to last, Jim went back to his room to finish up the paperwork he had brought home.

As soon as they heard the sound of their father's chair scraping against the hard floor James popped his head back up over the couch.  "What was your nightmare about?" he asked, his eyes shining bright with that curiosity of his that veered towards an intensity Babs found somewhat unsettling.

"Nothing, just some alien monsters."

"Lame.  It should have been like a slasher or something.  That'd have been cool."

"It's not that..." Barbara trailed off as she thought about the details of the dream that had already slipped to wisps of imagery in her mind, "it's more like, it was the thing that just sorta gets under your skin."  As she spoke she ran her hands down her arms, half expecting to find pieces of herself missing, "The stuff that sticks with you."  James looked at her intently and when Barbara met his eyes for the briefest of moments his curiosity seemed to morph into something different, hungry and hollow, but it flashed so quickly Barbara wasn't sure if it was there at all.  After a few seconds he lowered himself back down out of view and Barbara turned to trying to salvage her trig homework.

"They're coming to get you, Barbara."

"The annoying brother died in that one."

						********************************************

Alan Yeoh yawned as he pressed the start button on the coffeemaker.  The earliest rays of dawn were creeping over the filtering high rises of Gotham City, and he wearily reflected that when he chose artist as a career path he certainly wasn't expecting 6am meetings with gallery owners.  Knowing the scene, he fully expected to be dealing with a bunch of twitching, holier-than-thou snobs half-drunk and coming down from an all-night coke binge acting like they were doing him a favor.  But still, beggars can't be choosers, especially not with how much money a single night at one of the "in" galleries could bring, and Lord knows that-

CRASH!

With the slam of the kitchen door Alan's roommate Bradley Gordon burst into the room and looked around, eyes wide and bleary, oblivious to the fact he was standing in front of his roommate in nothing but a ratty pair of boxer briefs.  "Are we being invaded?"

Alan blinked in confusion at the barked question and glanced out the window before glancing back at his nigh-hyperventilating roommate.  "By whom?"

Brad opened his mouth but nothing came out.  He thought for a moment, "...Aliens?  Like have you ever seen pictures of the thing that killed Superwoman a few years back.  That, but they could fly...I think."

"...No."

They stood there in awkward silence as the coffeepot finished brewing.  Ever since Alan found out his roommate was none other than the superhero Batlad his life had become more interesting to say the least, but this was a little weird even for the circumstances.  Grabbing the carafe, he poured himself a cup of coffee and slipped it slowly as Brad calmed down.  "What's this about?"

Brad scratched his stubble and looked embarrassed.  "I might have had a dream Earth was being invaded."  Alan took a long slurp of his coffee and looked judgmental.  "Okay, dude, when there is a big JLA thing we usually get a telepathic alert from the Martian Manhuntress and when telepathy mixes with sleeping things get weird."  Still under judgmental eyes, he poured a coffee for himself, blowing on it to cool off before tentatively taking a sip, "I mean, I'm pretty sure I was a chick my dream."

They stood across from each other and drank their coffee in silence as the morning light slowly began filling the room with its rich golden and orange hues.  "So..." Brad finally broke the silence, "you're up pretty early."

"I've got a meeting to get some of my pieces in that gallery on 49th and Craig."

"That's rough.  I didn't get in until about 2 hours ago.  I don't have to be on campus until 10 but I don't know if I'll be able to go back to sleep."

"You probably shouldn't have drunk that coffee," Alan retorted.

Brad looked down at his cup and finished it with a big gulp, "I probably shouldn't do lots of things."

"I've got a date with Joe tonight," Alan mentioned as he rinsed his mug out in the sink, "but afterwards we're just having drinks.  I was thinking maybe turn it into a friends thing, see if Frank is free, maybe you could invite that mystery woman you're pretending you're not seeing."

"Will you guys give it a rest?  I don't have a secret girlfriend.  I am just seeing a woman very casually and we're mutually keeping it at arms length."  He opened the fridge and stuck his head in to see if there was anything to eat in the apartment.  "You guys need to quit being weird about it."

"Mmhmmm, she's ugly isn't she?"

"No."

"Is she fat?"

"Careful, that's not very 'woke' of you."

"How old is her kid?"

"Twelve."  And after a few seconds for everything to process through his sleep-deprived brain, came a softly whispered "Goddamn it."

					****************************************************

Barbara Gordon laid in bed and stared at the ceiling.  She had been staring at the ceiling for exactly 3 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds.  She was used to bad dreams but for some reason this was different.  Most people can barely remember a dream upon waking, ephemeral things that slip and drip from one's brain no matter how desperately they try to keep them in mind, but things were different for Barbara.  Her eidetic memory made sure everything remained crisp and vivid, and the neuroimplants covered any possible gaps.  With a sigh she finally found the ambition to rise from bed, going through the motions of blinking away sleep despite having been fully awake since it was still dark out.  Tossing on a robe, she headed to the balcony and drank in everything.  The sky was the color of concrete, and from the 109th floor NeoCity Gotham stretched out as far as she could see, a graveyard of glass and steel cut with veins of freeways full of auto-pods whizzing at 300 kilometers per hour pulsing with its lifeblood.  She inhaled deeply, savoring the chemical tang of the air that let her know it was real and that she was alive.  Her robe fell open in the wind and as she went to retie it she couldn't help but stare at the pale scar on her midsection.  She could deal with the memories of that, stark and vivid as they were, forever locked in her brain, the gunshot, the feeling of nothingness incompleting her, the seemingly endless surgeries and months of rehab were she drank the pain like water.  So why was a dream bothering her?

An alert flashed across her vision, breaking her thoughts, Proxy was on a secure channel and whatever issues Barbara was currently having suddenly became a distant second.  Still, she hesitated before accepting the call.  "Go for Oracle."

Proxy's image overlaid Barbara's view, her head obscured a VR headset and snaking cables that lead to datajacks with only her mouth visible.  She twitched and responded to a dozen data feeds running direct to her brain and from off-screen came the rapid fire of fingers on keyboards.  "Sorry to interrupt your beauty sleep, boss, but we've got a potential R-CAM situation developing at Kane Arcology #12.  Information is still coming in but it is not looking good."

Barbara turned back and strode into her penthouse, letting the robe hit the floor once she was inside.  "That place has been derelict for years, nothing but homeless and scrappers, what could be doing this?"  She hit the lock on an armored panel in the back of her closet and pulled her biolink suit off its rack.  Slipping it on, she plugged it into her nerve ports and trembled as the quasi-organic mesh rippled to life, writhing in brainless sensation before constricting and conforming to every part of Barbara's body as a second-skin.

"Don't know yet, but information is still coming in.  Operator is on her way, ETA 10 minutes to your roof.  Proxy out."

Once again Barbara was left alone with her thoughts and they kept returning to her dream.  She had a thought.  She knew it was stupid.  She knew it was a waste of time.  She knew it might only exacerbate a pre-existing problem.  But it was the only idea she had and she needed all her focus on the upcoming task.  She sat down at her desk, a rich, wooden antique standing as an anachronism inside the chrome and plas-ceramic cathedral to technology that was Barbara Gordon's domicile.  Digging through the drawers, she found a brainwave imager, a device once claimed to be the death of artistry and technique that now was nothing more than an old-fashioned children's toy, and crowned herself with it.  She inhaled slowly and regularly to steel herself, switched on the imager and relieved the death of a Barbara Gordon who was not Barbara Gordon, this time paying close attention to the monsters that tore her apart.

Her foot had barely touched the gangway when the hovercopter peeled off into the sky and hit its afterburners.  Barbara slipped into the cockpit and leaned over the shoulder of Operator to check the screens in front of them; it didn't actually matter much to Barbara since it was all flight data, but it made her feel like she was in some way in control.

Operator turned to face her then turned back, "Babes, are you ever going to stop micromanaging?"

"If I did that I'd get bored, Frankie."

"Wendy's got an update for us.  Looks like a group of prims took over the operational levels of the arc' and hacked their way into the systems.  Once they had control they reactivated all the security systems and bots and turned it into their own little colony.  25 minutes ago everything started to go haywire.  Couple of homeless got turned to charcoal by what was left of the electric fences, every single entrance and exit sealed itself up tight and went to lethal force mode, and a couple of security bots were seen nabbing anyone on the grounds and dragging them inside.  What do you think, a LOCKUP or a MASTER JAILER?"

"Best case scenario.  If its security we can't rule out a KNIGHTFALL scenario.  Worst case it's not restricted to a hardlimited system and we could be looking at multiple simultaneous R-CAMs."  She patted Operator on the shoulder, "I'm going to suit up."

Heading into the cargo bay she stood infront of powered armor, gleaming blue on brushed chrome, and let herself have a brief smile.  Though she'd never admit it openly, she lived for this.  With a wave of her hand the suit opened up and began startup diagnostics, and Barbara slipped behind the suit, making sure Operator couldn't see her and hoping the engine noise would cover everything else.  She pulled a personal communicator out from the neck of her suit, feeling a slight bit of guilt knowing that she'd had ripped anyone else a new one for having unsecured devices on a mission and a slight bit of trepidation for what she was about to.  "Misfit," she softly whispered to the blank device, "Misfit, I know you can hear me.  You've been eavesdropping since this thing got a signal."

"No I haven't," came a high-pitched girlish voice from the device.

"Liar."

The communicator sprang to life on its own, it's screen showing a cutesy cartoon figure of a redheaded girl in a domino mask looking sheepish, "Okay, maybe a little.  But.  But!  I did like a I promised and I haven't been trying to access your personal feeds and systems in weeks!"

"I'm not mad."

"You're not?"  The image switched to the figure having a big grin with smiley faces fading in and out in the background.

"No.  In fact, I need your help."

"You mean it?  You're letting me go on a mission with you?  Officially?"  The cartoon avatar switched to a looping animation of her jumping with glee to the strains of the Ode to Joy.

"No, sorry.  Instead, I have a special task for you.  There is an image file stored on this thing.  I need you to run it against every single database you can get into.  Focus on anything to do with genetics or bioengineering first, then start snooping around anything to do with outer space."

"Leave it to me, Misfit is on the case!"

"Thank you."  Babs thought for a moment, and found herself blurting out, "Do AIs have dreams?"

"Of course not, we don't sleep.  Why'd you ask?"

"No reason.  And this stays between you and me, no one else can know."

The cartoon girl zipped her mouth shut, quite literally, then the screen went blank again.  Barbara stared off into space listening to the hum of the engines, this was probably only going to cause future problems with Misfit.  An obsessive AI wanting to be your friend was bad enough, but this would only encourage her further.  She wasn't even sure why she bothered, it was just a dream, wasn't it?

"Operator to Oracle, did you fall asleep on me?"

Babs snapped out of her thoughts and slipped into her waiting armor, syncing the armor to her biolink suit which in turn fed the sensor data and feedback directly to her nervous system and allowing her to transcend human form and metal hide to a fusion of man and machine.  "Sorry," she said as the armor snapped into place around her, "just trying to get my head in the game."

"Well, you're about to miss kickoff.  All our data should be uploading now, and Cass and Steph are on standby.  I'm going to deploy a squad of drones, for whatever they're worth, to assist you.  The prims set up a phased current field set up over the arc' shell so you're not going to have any comms unless you can bring it down or bypass it.  It also means if I get too close systems are going to fry, so you're getting an air drop."

"For a bunch of Luddites, prims sure do love their gizmos.  Alright, Oracle online, set operating channels to standard frequencies.  Report in."

"This is Deep Purple, ready to rock and roll!"

"Vanta Black reporting in."

"What have I told you two about making up your own codenames?  You should have internal maps uploaded.  Cass, you're coming in through old transit tunnels, Steph, you'll make your way up from the industrial canal.  I'll be dropping in from above.  Once inside we will make our way to the spire to regroup and attach comm boosters and bypass the phased current field.  Try to avoid contact with either R-CAMs or prim forces until we meet up; once together we will make our way down to the operational levels and find out what's going on.  Move out."

"Roger, roger."

"Moving out."

She motioned to Operator to lower the ramp and stood poised at the edge, carefully examining the gash in the arcology shell that was her landing zone as she readied her jump jets for deployment.  "The only monsters are the ones we make ourselves," she whispered quietly to herself, then leapt without a second thought.