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There was a lull in the conversation - everyone else in the Tower was long asleep, but the three scientists that Darcy was responsible for were still going at it. Tony, Jane, and Bruce had been on a rampage for almost seventy-two hours at this point, and Darcy was starting to look into alternative options to get them to sleep - including but not limited to drugging their coffee - when she heard it. And then everything froze.
It was a sound that normally wouldn’t have been out of place. No one would have noticed it. But ninety-five floors above the ground, higher than most birds cared to go, the sound was loud and clear. Birdsong - to be specific, the call of a robin, although none of the Avengers knew that. And Darcy felt her blood run cold - especially when she heard it again, just a few seconds later.
“What was that?” Tony asked.
Darcy went stiff for a moment, trading looks with Jane before she darted for her phone. Jane was right behind her, one hand on Darcy’s shoulder like she was bracing the other woman.
And then Darcy hit play, and her twin’s voice - disguised by the voice modulator in his costume - was ringing around the lab. “The north wind doth blow/And we shall have snow/And what will poor Robin do then,” the background was full of the sound of whistling wind and the occasional gunshot. Nightwing’s voice was slightly breathless and full of panic, but he still managed to get the words out. Then the message cut out, and there was silence.
"He'll sit in a barn/And to keep himself warm/Will hide his head under his wing." Darcy finished the line under her breath, her eyes narrowing as she tossed her phone on the couch. As the team watched, her body language changed completely, setting them all on edge. Instead of carrying herself like she normally did, she moved like a warrior - her every move controlled and calculated to conserve energy. She knew she was about to blow her cover - if her change in behavior didn’t, then what she was about to do definitely would. But she didn’t care.
“Who is that?” Tony asked, following only a few inches behind Darcy with a manic energy that few people ever really saw from him. “Who called you? Who’s chasing them? What's going on?” he continued, but Darcy ignored him completely - until she saw the look on his face. It wasn’t anger, irritation, anything like that. He was just worried.
“It’s a coded message from Nightwing.” she said softly, feeling the same worry that Tony had, but for a different reason. Tony was worried because he didn’t know what was going on. She was worried because she knew exactly what was happening. Still, there were things that she had to do, and they had to be done quickly. “Tony, move.” she requested.
The second that he did she was in his spot at the keyboard, fingers flying as she worked. It had been a while since she had really used her hacking skills. But seeing as she was the one who normally tested Oracle's coding before it was used to help her girlfriend out, she was still fairly up to date. "Since when can you code like that?" Tony asked, sounding slightly awed. Neither he nor Bruce had any idea what was going on, but he couldn’t help but be impressed as he watched her work.
Despite everything going on, she couldn’t help the smirk that crossed her face at Tony’s tone of voice. "I’ve got a few aces up my sleeve." She replied, not even looking away from what she was doing. "Fuck, we're moded." She cursed, her fingers flying even faster. She needed to get into the Watchtower systems - but Oracle had apparently updated them fairly recently, as her firewalls were currently hunting her down.
Bruce was confused. "We're what?" He asked.
But she wasn't paying them any attention. Instead, she was hacking through backdoors that she had watched being built, using techniques that she had learned from a hacker so good that most people thought she was an AI. She knew that she had missed a few firewalls that would let Oracle know what was happening, but that wasn’t her concern at the moment. She needed to get in touch with as many Bats as she could. And if she remembered correctly, it was Training Day on the Watchtower. All of her family would be there.
Finally she broke through enough firewalls that she could get to whoever was on monitor duty. She ignored her friends behind her, all of them trying to figure out what exactly was going on. Pulling a bat-approved comm link out of one of the stashes she had hidden around the Tower, she quickly switched it to the JL’s channel for the Watchtower. “This is Nightingale to the Watchtower.” she said as she quickly pasted a domino mask over her eyes to hide her identity. “Repeat, this is Nightingale to the Watchtower, code DG04.”