Aiden’s Warehouse, 8:12 AM.

October 14th, 2010.

Aiden’s body hurt everywhere—but it was a satisfying hurt, a recognition of his efforts to improve his body. He’d stayed at twelve times gravity, in the midst of Roshi’s technique for almost fifteen minutes before he needed to take a break to recover his energy—then he’d gone straight back in and done it again—and again, and again.

There was no way for him to tell if he’d made any progress in the hours passed, but honing his body was something he was familiar with, and it was never a fast process.

Byrna had vanished sometime during the night, heading back to the apartment—neither of them had mentioned the living situation since that first day. She had a tendency to spend all of her time in the workshop, only returning to sleep. Aiden was much the same, but either training, chasing down leads, or working.

Occasionally, he’d return to the apartment late at night to find that the audacious woman had stolen his bed, which had led to several instances of—his phone noised out an alert, and he pulled it towards him, sliding it across the table.

“Hello?” Aiden said seriously once he saw the ID.

He’d been wondering when she was going to reach out.

“Hey.” Sarah said quietly, “I just sent the payment through, sorry it took so long.”

Aiden would take her word for the moment; he didn’t think she was the kind to try and stiff him.

“Thanks,” Aiden said simply, “A heavy hitter, huh? Did you know who she was?”

“I knew what she was; I didn’t know her name,” Sarah said carefully.

Aiden frowned; he had so many questions that he was finding it hard to start.

“You set me up to square off against a Kryptonian, Sarah.” Aiden said evenly, “Am I supposed to take that as a compliment, or a complete lack of concern for my wellbeing?”

“I didn’t get to make the decision,” Sarah said vaguely. “I couldn’t tell you about anything.”

“Did you ever personally want to capture Sivana?” Aiden said calmly.

“I don’t care about him at all,” Sarah mumbled.

Working on behalf of that same person again, a person who either wanted him to get killed or was willing to take the chance so long as he got Dr. Sivana.

“What happened to Dr. Sivana?” Aiden said quietly, “I haven’t seen anything about him being turned in.”

Sarah didn’t reply, and he sighed.

“Did you personally kill Sivana?” Aiden said more directly, but diffusing the focus of the question from her ‘master.’

“Of course not; I don’t want to hurt anyone!” Sarah said quickly before pausing. “Well, that’s not true, actually; there are some people I would like to hurt.”

Aiden would have placed a bet on that one being true. Either the ‘master’ killed Sivana, or they did something else entirely with him.

He remembered the last time he’d tried puzzling out the mystery here and her revelation that she thought he would have created ‘an army of machine-fake-humanoids,’ if he had a hundred years to prepare.

The unsaid implication was that she existed close enough to the situation to know about Thomas Morrows plans, well enough to estimate how many fakes he had built—or that Thomas was her master. Aiden hadn’t missed the obvious connection there either he’d just hoped it wasn’t the case.

If Sarah was one of Thomas Morrow’s creations, then he had to give the man some credit—because he never thought he would come to befriend a robot.

The question was, why was she seemingly going against her creator and slipping him the inner details of some of his plans—even if it was in an incredibly vague sort of way. Hell, without his bullshit advantage of knowing the general outline of the plot, he would have missed her hints entirely.

“Aiden?” Sarah said quietly, “Are you still there?”

So her vagueness was most likely attributed to her working around some kind of list of rules that she had to follow, likely embedded in her robo-brain or some futuristic nonsense.

“Yeah—sorry, just thinking,” Aiden sighed; this was totally out of his pay grade now. “Hey, Sarah?”

“Yes?” Sarah said quickly.

He was going to have to ask for help.

“I’ve decided we’re friends now,” Aiden said simply. “So don’t do anything stupid, alright? I’ll save you; you’ll have to pay me though, what kind of self-respecting bodyguard works for free?”

Sarah laughed quietly before she noised out a muffled noise of agreement.

“Aiden—you won’t be able to contact me for a while,” Sarah said tightly.

“Are you going somewhere?” Aiden frowned, trying to unearth the hidden meaning.

“No,” Sarah said quietly, “The whole Dr. Sivana situation showed that I’m not quite meeting my KPI’s at present; so it looks like I’ll have to do some…remedial training—maybe even train a replacement.”

Aiden felt his stomach twist at the words; clearly, they were carefully chosen for him—she’d been thinking about telling him this for a while.

“Can you stall for time?” Aiden said coldly, feeling his mind sharpen. “Push back your…performance review for a month?”

“I don’t have that kind of pull at the company,” Sarah said quietly. “Hey, looks like I need to go now. You’re the first friend I’ve had in a long while, so thanks, Aiden—this was nice.”

Aiden stared at the phone in his hand, doing everything in his power not to crush it to dust.

Aiden’s Apartment, Boston, 4:12 PM.

October 15th, 2010.

“Aiden,” Dinah said, nodding in greeting as she stood outside of his door.

He hadn’t heard from any of the Justice League since the clone situation; he hadn’t spoken to Conner either other than the text message update—although he imagined the guy was pretty busy.

“Not going to lie,” Aiden said, frowning, “I half expected my next meeting with you guys to begin with my door being kicked down.”

“It’s much more preferable to keep things civil,” Dinah said honestly. “I’ve told you before, resorting to violence is a poor first step.”

“That and I still have you all over a barrel,” Aiden said, rolling his eyes. “One identity verse the entire league? That’s gotta sting.”

“That door is starting to look more kickable every second I spend with you,” Dinah said dryly.

Aiden snorted and moved to the kitchen.

“Well, the rules have changed here,” Aiden said thoughtfully, “You know who I am, I know who you are, masks are gone, as thin as their all were—I have something I need to talk to you about, but you’re obviously here for a reason, so—you first.”

Dinah raised an eyebrow at the sudden change in the dynamic that they had built from all of the consecutive meetings and discussions.

“The main reason I’m here to today is to thank you for the information and the assistance,” Dinah said simply, “We’ve had many meetings about you since you arrived here, most frequently about the identity situation—although there were others.”

Aiden just nodded at the thanks, patiently waiting for her to finish.

“Project Match was successfully recovered,” Dinah said simply but paused when he didn’t react. “You already knew? Ah, Conner told you.”

Aiden nodded, mind working to figure out how she knew—Oh, he’d rung Conner from his phone in the presence of Superman and Powergirl—one of them had mentioned it to someone, most likely Clark had reported it.

Conner might have shared that they knew each other himself; that was a possibility—he supposed it didn’t really matter.

“He did,” Aiden said easily, “I let him beat me up occasionally—it’s good training.”

Dinah raised an eyebrow at him before smirking, the first big deviation he had seen from their normal interactions.

“Diana tells me that you let her beat you up regularly as well—” Dinah said, smirking, “How generous of you.”

Ouch. They were talking shit about his mad skills behind his back? The audacity.

“Hilarious.” Aiden said wryly, “You try fighting her, and tell me how that goes for you.”

Dinah just smiled knowingly before getting back on track.

“We have an interest in developing a working relationship with you,” Dinah said more seriously, “You seem to be in possession of a great deal of critical information about things that we had no idea about prior to their revelation.”

“You want me to tell you what I know in exchange for what exactly?” Aiden nodded, “If you were going to drag me in, you would have done it already—so do you have something else to offer?”

“You said you had something you wanted to talk about?” Dinah offered.

It was what he was working towards anyway, but it would have been cleaner if he could have gotten her to agree to some other things first—namely regular updates on the Emil situation.

“Before I get into that, I want regular updates on Emil.” Aiden prefaced; it would weaken his position—but it was better than trying to shoehorn it in later.

“I’ll pass it on and get back to you on that,” Dinah said simply. “It shouldn’t be a problem, though.”

“Thanks,” Aiden said easily, earning a raise of an eyebrow. “There's a situation that I thought I could handle, but it’s growing far beyond me—and now a friend of mine is in danger.”

“Short version?” Dinah said seriously, “We can go from there.”

Aiden spent a moment trying to summarise the situation in a comprehensive way.

“There’s a guy who is making machine-copies of people, and he’s been doing it for what could be a hundred years,” Aiden said slowly, watching her. “There are potentially hundreds of them, and they are all indistinguishable from a normal person. My friend is one of them and has been attempting to feed me information about her creator.”

Dinah tented her hands in front of her face listening intently.

“She has implied that she is about to be…remade? Repurposed? Trashed? Replaced?” Aiden said one after another, “I don’t know—she’s unreachable for now, and due to whatever—programming she’s under, she can’t do anything but accept it.”

“That’s the short version?” Dinah said seriously, “This sounds incredibly troubling—do you know who the person responsible is?”

“I’m not certain; I’ve been trying to find that out—but I have a solid guess.” Aiden said quietly, “Thomas Morrow.”

“That’s impossible,” Dinah said, frowning. “He’s-”

“Currently in Belle Reive penitentiary, in a coma,” Aiden said calmly, not breaking eye contact. “An old broken man, incapable of doing anything but sleep.”

Dinah remained silent.

“Thomas Morrow, a man who has shown he is capable of creating human-duplicates, indistinguishable from a person, good enough to fool Power Girl—a Kryptonian.” Aiden continued, “The man who once upon a time made an android who was capable of infiltrating the ranks of the heroes as one himself.”

“Red Tornado,” Dinah said quietly.

“What’s to say that old man Thomas—lying in Belle Reve, isn’t just another fake?” Aiden said seriously. “You wouldn’t know, even if you had a Kryptonian check it out, the only way that Miss Martian knew Bromwell Stikk was a fake was because she couldn’t read his mind.”

That little bit of information might have tipped his hand a bit, and he regretted mentioning it—he shouldn’t have any reason to know how that had played out seeing as they had never reported how they had known to the public.

“Morrow created that replica of himself that was involved in the Yellowstone incident decades ago,” Dinah said quietly in understanding, “He’s been capable of this from the start. There’s no reason he couldn’t have made more than one.”

“Dinah, It’s much, much worse than that.” Aiden said seriously, “He’s had a hundred years to get better at it; who knows what the guy is actually capable of at this point—my friend—I’ve seen and interacted with her multiple times, and I had no idea what she was.”

Now that he was thinking about it, she even came up as having Ki to his senses—did all of the fakes have Ki? Did Red Tornado—did old Tom in Belle Reve have Ki? How hadn’t he thought of this yet?

“I need to go to Belle Reve,” Aiden said suddenly. “To see Morrow.”

“Why?” Dinah said firmly.

“I can sense life-energy,” Aiden said carefully, “My friend has life-energy, which doesn’t make sense because shes supposedly a robot—”

“Is it possible that she started as a human?” Dinah said quietly, “A cyborg, instead of an android?”

Aiden hadn’t even considered the possibility—that would have explained the existence of her Ki, but it would also invalidate any Ki-sense scan he did of Old Tom—because he might have some human parts in him that would let him pass the Ki test.

“Damnit,” Aiden gritted out, “Forget that then; I wouldn’t be able to tell a human from a Cyborg if that’s the case; you’ll have to get Martian Manhunter to check if Old Tom has a mind or not.”

“That’s not necessarily a solution either,” Dinah said gently, “If the Morrow in Belle Reve is a fake made much later, then it’s possible he was created with human parts—a cyborg would defeat both tests.”

“Cyborgs, Androids, Robots, and Clones.” Aiden said in frustration, “This place is a god damned horror show—how the hell do we test if Old Tom is a machine or not? Or any else for that matter?”

“I can think of several people who might have the answer to that question,” Dinah said seriously, standing quickly. “Give me a couple of hours to organize a meeting, and we can discuss it properly.”

“You have my number,” Aiden sighed, “Don’t wait too long, though? This is time-sensitive.”

“I won’t,” Dinah said evasively.

The Watchtower, Earth, 8:59 PM.

October 15th, 2010.

Aiden stepped out of the Zeta-tube, frowning at the feeling; the room was the same as the last time he’d been here—only this time it was empty. Dinah came to a stop behind him, and he crinkled his nose at the strange smell in the air.

“No greeting party this time?” Aiden asked curiously, rubbing at his nose.

“No, they are waiting in another room,” Dinah said easily, “Something wrong?”

“Weird smell,” Aiden said strangely, blinking as his eyelids suddenly felt heavy. “Can you smell that?”

“No,” Dinah said apologetically.

Aiden turned at the tone, Dinah was standing in the same spot, but she had a clear glass mask covering over her nose and mouth. He stumbled back away from her and felt three impacts on his left shoulder, he belatedly started raising his Ki from it’s resting state, but everything was growing dark.

“Hey, I hope you have space insurance,” Aiden said tiredly, dropping to his side on the floor. “When I wake up, this place is going to have some problems staying in the sky.”

“It’s just a precaution, Aiden; we just need to check if you are one of them.” Dinah said gently, “Don’t do anything rash.”

“Rash…” Aiden mumbled, “Look who’s talking…”

Aiden’s Apartment, Boston, 4:12 PM.

October 16th, 2010.

Aiden’s eyes snapped open, and he was on his feet in an instant, searching the room.

He was back in his apartment, and a familiar Ki-signature was sitting at his kitchen bar—and it wasn’t Byrna.

“What the fuck was that?” Aiden said furiously, the tenuous trust they’d built completely shattered. “I told you about everything—I came to help you!”

Dinah kept her hands visible on the bench and made no move to change her posture, even when he stomped over to her, cracking the floorboards with each furious step.

“Aiden, we checked on Thomas Morrow, the one in Belle Reve.” Dinah said seriously, “You were right; it was another replica.”

“Obviously!” Aiden snapped, fury growing by the second. “That isn’t what I asked—I’m a half-second away from kicking your ass, Canary.”

“I’m not sure you realize it, but you seem incredibly suspicious,” Dinah said gently, not at all backing down, but watching him carefully. “The league had to make sure you weren’t one of them; the details painted you as an incredibly likely suspect for being one of the replicas attempting an infiltration.”

Aiden clenched his hands in anger, doing his best to restrain himself from breaking something.

“You arrived here months ago in a ship with advanced technology, saying you were ‘experimented’ on by an unknown person. You say you’re from alternate earth without heroes, yet you somehow know all of our identities and the location of a secret project of Cadmus Labs that not even the head scientist knew of.” Dinah said calmly, “A very trusted person that we assigned to you vanishes without a trace, apparently in the company of a cloned Kryptonian—a second identical clone appears and then vanishes soon after, along with Dr. Sivana, all of that—”

Aiden reached over, snagged her by the collar, and dragged her over the bench to hang in front of him. Dinah gripped his wrist with her hands, toes just touching the ground; her expression was tense, but she wasn’t at all scared—instead, she seemed to be evaluating how best to escape his grip.

“All of that, and you were wrong—find out where Morrow is and then send me his location.” Aiden said furiously, “Until then, get the fuck out of my apartment.”

He dropped her to the ground, and the door clicked shut behind her as she left.

Unknown Location, 2:32 AM.

October 20th, 2010.

A dark room, illuminated by nothing other than a single flickering light above and a panel of blinking lights.

A glass tank filled with a thick viscous liquid, and countless needles, inserted through sealed channels in the glass, thick hoses running from the end of each into the shadows.

A sickly bundle of corded flesh, small, spherical, and blue, sits in the middle of the mess, expanding and contracting.

A single monitor lay embedded in the wall, the numbers slowly ticking unerringly downwards.