The System Trapped Us In Our Old Lair To Kill Him, But It Just Pushed Him Into My Arms

The air in the Cave was stale, thick with the scent of dust and damp stone. It was a smell Tim Drake hadn't realized he’d forgotten, but it hit him the moment he bypassed the old security lock, the rush of it a physical blow of memory. He pulled the Red Robin cowl back, letting the cool, still air touch his skin. Nothing had changed. And yet, everything had.

Oracle’s summons had been characteristically brief and unsettlingly urgent: Cave. High-priority alert. Go now. No further details. It was enough to send him across the country without a second thought.

He moved through the cavernous main hangar, his boots silent on the concrete floor. A fine layer of grit covered every surface. The decommissioned T-Jet sat under a heavy tarp, a sleeping giant from another lifetime. On the wall, a faded poster of the original team curled at the edges, their younger faces bright with a confidence that felt impossibly naive now. He saw his own face, a boy in a Robin suit, wedged between Bart and Cassie. And next to them, Conner.

A tightness formed in his chest, an old, familiar ache. It had been years since he’d seen him. Years of brief, stilted comms calls and missed meetups, their lives pulling them onto violently different trajectories.

His feet carried him, as they always had, to the tactical center. The heart of the Cave. The grand holographic table was dark, its surface a dull, dusty black. This was where they had won their wars and planned their futures. He ran a hand over the cool, smooth surface, his fingers tracing invisible lines of old battle plans. So many nights had been spent right here, long after the others had gone to bed. The initial purpose of strategy and mission prep would inevitably dissolve, bleeding into something else entirely. Something quieter, more essential.

He could almost see it now, a ghost image projected from his own memory. The low, electric hum of the table, the cool blue light painting shadows across Conner’s face. He remembered the way Conner would lean against the console, his arms crossed over his chest, listening with an intensity Tim rarely saw him give to anyone else. He’d ask questions, not about the mission, but about Tim. About the pressures from Batman, about the weight of the cape. And Tim, who never spoke of such things, would find the words flowing out of him as if the Cave itself were pulling them free.

He remembered the exact shape of Conner’s smile in that blue light—small, private, a thing reserved just for him. It was the memory he always came back to in the darkest hours. The ghost of that smile was more real to him than almost anything else. He closed his eyes, his palm flat against the cold table, trying to hold onto the image, to the feeling of uncomplicated trust and a closeness that had defined his entire youth. The silence of the Cave pressed in, heavy and absolute.

A faint whisper of displaced air, followed by a soft thud just outside the main entrance, broke the oppressive silence. It was a sound Tim knew as well as his own heartbeat. He didn't need super-hearing to identify it. He turned from the holographic table just as Conner Kent stepped through the chiseled stone archway.

The years had been kind to him. More than kind. The lanky, sometimes awkward teenager was gone, replaced by a man who seemed to fill the entire entrance. He was broader in the shoulders, thicker through the chest, the simple black t-shirt with its iconic red 'S' stretching tight across his torso. He wore his power with a quiet ease now, a stillness that hadn't been there in his youth. But his face… that was the same. The same dark hair, the same strong jaw, the same blue eyes that found Tim’s across the hangar and held them.

"Tim," Conner said. His voice was deeper than Tim remembered, a low rumble that seemed to settle in the hollow of his own chest.

"Conner." The name felt foreign and yet perfectly familiar on his tongue. "Oracle sent you, too." It wasn't a question.

Conner nodded, taking a few steps into the hangar, his boots scuffing against the dusty concrete. The distance between them felt charged, a chasm of unspoken years. "She didn't give me much. Just the coordinates and a priority one." He stopped about ten feet away, his gaze sweeping over the room before landing back on Tim, taking him in. "Red Robin suits you," he said, a faint, almost hesitant smile touching his lips. "You look… good."

Tim felt a flush of heat creep up his neck. He was used to analysis, not compliments. Especially not from Conner. "So do you," he managed, the words feeling inadequate. He watched the way Conner’s eyes lingered on him, a careful assessment that made him intensely aware of his own body—the fit of the uniform, the tension in his shoulders. He saw the maturity in Conner’s expression, the weight of his own journey etched around his eyes. The brash, impulsive Kon-El was gone, and in his place was this man, steady and solid as the rock walls around them.

"Any idea what this is about?" Conner asked, finally breaking the stare and walking closer, towards the command center.

"No clue. None of the old alerts match this signature," Tim began, turning back to the dark console. "I was about to try and access the secondary logs when—"

He was cut off by a deafening screech of feedback. The lights overhead flickered violently, then blazed to life with a steady, clinical hum. The holographic table in front of them burst into existence, its blue light flooding the hangar and throwing their shadows, long and sharp, against the far wall. On the screen, lines of red text scrolled rapidly before resolving into a single, stark emblem: the coiled, double-helix serpent of Project Cadmus.

A cold, synthesized voice, devoid of any inflection, echoed through the chamber. "Dormant Security Protocol: CHIMERA activated. External communication links severed. Facility lockdown initiated. All exits sealed."

Tim’s blood went cold. He automatically took a step closer to Conner, his eyes fixed on the glowing red text. Chimera. He knew the name. A defunct Cadmus program designed for one purpose: hunting and neutralizing escaped or rogue assets. It was brutal, adaptive, and utterly relentless.

Before he could voice the thought, the synthesized voice spoke again, its tone flat and chillingly precise. "Scanning for designated bio-signatures. One unauthorized signature detected. Profile match: Project Kr. Subject designation: Kon-El."

The air left the room. Tim’s gaze snapped from the screen to Conner. He saw the shift immediately. It was subtle, but to Tim, who had spent years studying every nuance of the man beside him, it was a seismic event. Conner’s shoulders, which had been relaxed moments before, hardened into a line of solid granite. His hands, which had been hanging loosely at his sides, clenched slowly into fists. He didn't look angry. He looked tired, a profound weariness settling deep in his blue eyes, as if he’d been expecting this his entire life.

"Primary directive initiated," the computer stated, its voice echoing in the sudden, vast silence of the hangar. "Neutralize unauthorized Kryptonian DNA."

The words hung between them, an execution order delivered by a ghost. Kryptonian DNA. Not Conner. Not Superboy. Just a string of genetic code to be erased. A raw, white-hot fury ignited in Tim’s chest, burning away the cold shock. His mind, usually a chaotic storm of possibilities and contingencies, became terrifyingly clear, focusing on a single point: Conner. He saw the threat not as a protocol or a system, but as a direct, physical attack on the person standing less than five feet from him. Every protective instinct he possessed surged to the surface, a visceral, undeniable force. Nothing else mattered.

Then came the sound.

A deep, groaning shriek of tortured metal filled the air as the Cave’s main hangar door, a twenty-ton slab of reinforced titanium, began to slide shut. It moved with a hydraulic finality, scraping a deep groove into the concrete floor as it closed, sealing them in. Tim didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look at the door. His eyes were locked on Conner, cataloging every detail—the tense line of his jaw, the steady rise and fall of his chest, the way the blue holographic light carved shadows under his cheekbones.

The door slammed home with a deafening boom that vibrated through the floor and up Tim’s bones, shaking dust from the ceiling. The main lights and the hologram died instantly, plunging the hangar into a disorienting blackness. A moment later, emergency lights flickered on—faint, red strobes that pulsed with a slow, rhythmic beat, casting the entire cavern in a hellish, bloody glow.

In the pulsing crimson light, they were shadows. The world had shrunk to just the two of them, trapped together in the heart of the mountain. The silence that followed the door’s slam was heavier, more threatening than any sound. Conner still hadn't moved, a statue carved from shadow and red light. Tim broke the stillness, closing the final feet between them until he was standing directly in front of him, his body angled slightly, a shield between Conner and the rest of the dark, silent cave. He didn’t know what was coming, but he knew one thing with absolute certainty: it would have to go through him first.