Chapter 3: Things Could Have Been Worse

"I got it!"

Robins triumphant voice drew the attention of the team and they all quickly ran towards him from the various corners of the room that they had been occupying as they waited for the good news.

Robin didn't disappoint them as he quickly started tapping on his wrist console.

"It toke a while but I managed to gain enough access to release him. Lets hope that this works."

With a final tap, everyone looked towards the containment unit with the boy, and where surprised when several robotic arms extended down from the ceiling of the containment unit. They quickly fiddled around with the cables and managed to disconnect them from the boy before attaching metal covered to the holes in his back from which the cables where attached.

In no time at all, the boy was fully disconnected and the fluid that held him suspended slowly started to drain away. What none of them expected was for the containment unit to simply split apart like an egg and dop the unconscious by unto the floor. Thankfully, Megan was quick enough and she caught him with her telepathy before he landed on the floor. 

They all watched as the boy floated towards them and now that they could get a good look at him, they were surprised at just how young he was. While his large bulk made him seem older, his youthful face made it clear that he wasn't much older than any of them. 

That realization only made it all the more unsettling that they had found him in such a condition. 

Robin waved his hand over the boy and scanned him to the best of his current equipment allowed. After a moment of thinking he turned to the others and explained what he could.

"His vitals are stable and nothing seems to be of a great concern right now. I don't know if he'd out cold because of something that the researchers did, or because he's simply needs time to wake up, but we need to get him to Mount Justice. The medical facilities there should be able to able to tell us more." 

"I've already tried to alert the league of what's been happening here but I think we're either to far underground to get a signal out, or the facilities have some sort of jammer that's blocking all outgoing transmissions." Aqualad said as he tapped his communication device.

"Well if that's the case then we should get out of here, we got that thing that we came here for already afterall. Lets not waste anymore time and head up." Kid flash kicked off of the wall he had been leaning against and turned to walk through to the door, but was stopped by Superboy who blocked his path.

"That 'thing' your referring to is a person. You should respect that." The glare that Super boy was pinning Kid Flash with made him take a step back and raise his hands in surrender.

"Sorry, you're right, that was uncalled for." 

Happy with the response Superboy turned to look at the unconscious boy, his facial expression softening slightly, before he turned to Robin who was still tapping away at his wrist.

"What are you doing now. Are there more people trapped that we don't know about?"

"No. He's the only one, that much I verified already." Robin replied "I'm trying to download as much data from this place as I can. I'm pretty sure that the league will be all over this place soon, but that doesn't mean that we will be briefed on what they find. This place could have the information we need to help track down Task Master and the people he's been working for. At the very least there might be some more info about who our mystery guy here is."

"Well be quick about it." Aqualad said as he looked at the other vats that had been filled with misshaped pieces of flesh. "This place gives me a really bad feeling. The sooner we leave the better."

No sooner had the words left Aqualad's mouth, did the sound of an alarm start sounding throught the room. Thw gentle white light that had been illuminating the room was immediately drowned out by the flashing crimson red. The containment units that had been visible slowly begand to retact into the floor and ceiling, while the hydraulic locks on the door began to become engaged.

"you just had to jinx it didn't you" Kid Flashed shouted out as he flashed to the door in an attempt to pry it open."

"Miss Martian, plant this in that wall." Robin tossed a small circular item to Miss Martin, who caught it and phased into the wall without a moments hesitation. It didn't take long for her to come back and as soon as she reappeared, Robin pressed a button that he had suddenly been holding.

They all heard a soft boom, that had been greatly muffled thanks to the walls before the Circular door practically fell from its hinges. While most of the team was pleasantly surprised, Superboy couldn't help but through another glare in Robins direction.

"You could have done something like that all this time, and you let me bash my head against that wall to break it down?"

"You needed the exercise? Besides, I don't carry so many big charges on me, its better to leave them for an emergency situation." Replied Robin as he and the others made their way back to the hole in the wall that they had made to access this part of the lab in the first place.

They didn't get a moments rest either as Robin soon got a notification that caused his face to pale immediately.

"We need to go! NOW! Whoever is in control of this place just initiated a meltdown in the generators. This place is going to blow!"

"Can you stall it somehow, we wont have enough time to make it out of here." Asked Aqualad as he kept trying and failing to contact the league.

"I'm trying but I didn't think that they would have left a back door in the generators operating system. We have about ten minutes tops."

They rounded the corner and came face to face a slew of bots that where blocking the path to the elevator, the one and only way out of the facility. Without a word they all lunged forward, wasting no time taking down the bots, but at the cost of several minutes. 

"Here hold him. I need to focus."

 Miss Marian, who had been keeping the unconscious boy suspended through the entire fight, handed him over to Superboy, and focused her mind in order to ripe out a piece of metal from the walls around them and shape it to her desire, once she was satisfied she turned to the elevator and ripped it out of the wall before levitating the metal disk she had just made into the empty shaft space.

"Get on! We don't have much time!"

Once everyone was onboard, she speed up the shaft, dragging the metal disk along with her as she went. In no time at all they had climbed back up to the ground floor of the warehouse. They didn't waste any time and immediately rushed to the doors, managing to exit the building right the generators reached critical failure.

A single glaring red notification appeared on Robins wrist before the ground began to shake. The team looked back at the building that they had just managed to escape from, and watched as it burst into flames, before collapsing in on itself. The blast of warm air washing over them form the explosion was powerful enough that it knocked them off of their feet and unto the ground.

As the dust cloud cleared, they all managed to climb to their feet, unsure of what to do as they took in the destruction that had occurred.

"Batman is not going to be happy about this." Robin muttered, and everyone nodded their heads in agreement.

"I'm glad that your well aware of that fact, thought it seems not to prevent you from doing things that wouldn't make me pleased."

They all flinched as they heard the familiar sounded voice, and turned to see that Batman had appeared behind them at some point in time. Sadly he wasn't alone either.

Superman was floating with a unreadable expression to Batman's right, while Wonder Woman stood with her arms crossed standing to his left. A few of the other recognizable members of the Justice League were also present, though they were more focused on containing the spreading fire from reeking even more destruction, than on cornering the group of rambunctious teens that had been causing mayhem in recent weeks.

The two groups looked at each other in silence, the justice league on one end and the members of young justice on the other, neither die seemingly wanted to break the tension that was slowly building. Eventually, Batman glanced at the unconscious boy who was still being held in Superboy's hands and sighed.

"Head back to mount justice and await further directions. We will be having a serious discussion about what you guys have been getting yourselves involved in once we arrive, but for now its good to see that your all safe."

With that he passed by the team members and went to direct the efforts of the leaguers in cleaning up the mess. Both Superman and Wonder Woman exchanged glances with each other, but didn't say anything as they two followed behind Batman, not saying anything to .

Once they were alone again, the team took a collective sigh of relief and made their way over to the Bio-Ship that had been in cloaking mode the entire time.

"Well that went a lot better than I expected." Said Kid Flash as he swiveled around in his chair once they had boarded the ship. "All things considered I think we did pretty good today."

"You say that now, but I assure you that this is anything but over. If I know batman, and trust me when I say that I do, he's going to tear us a new one once he's had the time to think about all the things that could have gone wrong tonight." Robin downtrodden voice made everyone flinch, though it was much to late to be repentant now.

"Uh guys, what am I supposed to do with him?" Superboy was still standing in the middle of the ship with the unconscious boy still held in his arms, unsure as to whether he was supposed to just place in one of the chair, or lay him on the ground.

"Yeah this is going to be a long night alright, I can already tell."