Chapter 51

Of the three body parts that had been transported, zero remained. The titans who had been guarding the decoys had also been attacked. Albeit from robotic minions that looked vaguely similar to Deathstroke. Not an identical version of himself like he had done before.

Which seemed to imply a limit on his resources.

This seemed to only be a stalling tactic, as the robotic minions didn’t even attempt to enter the convoys. Only attack the Titans in order to keep them busy.

Busy from what you may ask?

From offering the Titans who were guarding the three body parts any help. I had been guarding the right leg. To which Deathstroke didn’t send a robot, he sent Ravager. A pretty strong opponent that even I would find a bit difficult in order to take down.

Thankfully that didn’t really come to pass. Which is a good thing, considering I highly disliked fighting opponents that I knew little about. Information is the strongest resource imaginable in a fight, and I definitely didn’t have that on my side.

Besides, I ultimately came out ahead in that transaction with the information I received in turn. Especially the information that I would be obtaining from her in the future, even if she didn’t know it.

She had been suspicious yes, but she had also been prideful. Which meant it wasn’t too hard to trick her. I simply needed to check both boxes. The first being her suspicion.

I didn’t intend to fight her, which made her suspicion grow. But this was mitigated by asking information from her. Obviously getting something in turn, making it more of a transaction than a robbery. Another way I mitigated her suspicion was by planting a tracker on the inside of the box.

The best way to trap someone who’s on the lookout for traps, is to give them a decoy. Their suspicion is rewarded, and their relief is evident as they disarm it. Not to mention that this checks the second box. Her pride.

It takes an extremely intelligent and naturally suspicious person to find and disarm a trap without letting their guard down. Instead, they double down, and are even more on guard. This wasn’t the case with Ravager.

She was prideful. The moment she found the trap and disarmed it, she had won. In her eyes she had come out on top of that situation, and that’s exactly how I’d like to keep it.

Unfortunately, my teammates weren’t as…fortunate as I had been.

Those that had been handling the robots had only gotten a few scrapes. It also didn’t take Cyborg long to realize something was up and realize that communications were blocked. But it mattered little, as he simply tracked each of our previous locations with the signals that constantly came from our communicators.

Starfire and Beast Boy quickly covered miles of ground in order to check up on me in worry. A fact that lightly annoyed me, considering the minor bruises they had accumulated on the journey. Which meant I had to check them over before making our way over to the other two.

Robin had been roughed up, and his entire convoy had gone up in flames. Despite his surroundings, he didn’t look too worse for wear as I patched him up. Which was a good sign.

It seems he had been attacked by another minion under Deathstroke. This one was also likely human, and called himself Red X. Though Robin seemed to believe that he was more of a mercenary than someone who was aligned with Deathstroke.

I also noticed Robin was rather quiet during this whole situation. Likely because the other leg had been taken from under him. Causing me to frown lightly at the distant look he was currently sporting.

He flinched as I nudged him.

“Calm down. Just take a breath and get some rest. Afterwards we can come at this again with a different approach.”

I wouldn’t tell him about my suspicions about the information being leaked until after we got back to the Titans Tower. This wasn’t the time or place for it. Especially when not all the Titans were together.

Aqualad was the last Titan for me to check up on. And he was by far the one in the worst condition. Kid Flash was attempting to staunch the flow of blood and seeming a lot more panicked than Aqualad was.

I ignored Kid Flash’s panicked comments. He wasn’t in the right mind and was high on his emotions. Aqualad was much calmer and informed me of the severity of his wounds, as well as the one who did them.

Deathstroke himself.

Even while I was cleaning his wounds he continued to give us as much information as possible. Likely because he knew he’d be confined to the Titans Tower for a while. There was only so much I could really be expected to do after all.

Deathstroke inflicted a number of cuts, broken bones, and even gun shot wounds. Miraculously, none of which were fatal or even too severe.

…Yes, how very…lucky…

Hmm.

Even still, Aqualad’s wounds could easily become severe or fatal without proper care. Which meant that he had to be actively airlifted by helicopters back to the tower. To which the Justice League themselves would send over professional doctors from Atlantis to help treat him.

Of course, I’d still be the doctor on hand in case anything went south. And to be quite honest, I was glad because of it. I didn’t know the true depths of the difference in Atlantean physiology, and only today had I just caught a glance.

It was interesting, to say the least.

After we went back to the Tower, most of the Titans went to Aqualad’s side. Who was currently unable to remain conscious. There were four who notably didn’t. The first was me. Considering I had already given him the amount of care I could and that other more qualified individuals were working on him, there was no reason for me to hang around.

The second was Raven. She’s mentioned before she didn’t do so well in crowds. Combined with her natural shyness, it wasn’t exactly surprising that she was choosing to stay out of this. Especially with the fact that Aquaman himself was coming.

It would seem that the Justice League would likely be getting more involved in this case.

The third was Robin. He was the most shocked out of all of us when informed of Aqualad’s condition. Yet instead of rushing to his side, he simply retired too his room.

He likely blamed himself for what happened to Aqualad. Such was the burden he bore as a leader. Even now Kid Flash put a small bit of blame on his back, though it’s likely something he’d take back after his emotional high.

This wasn’t something anyone could have foreseen.

The fourth…was Galatea.

No one thought much of it due to Aqualad’s condition. But it was pretty alarming to me when no one greeted us or even showed up when we had arrived. Nor did she leave her room despite all the noise that was happening around the Tower.

Which left me to check up on her.

Unlocking her door was…a bit of a hassle. Thankfully it was already somewhat loose. No doubt due to Galatea herself.

Inside Galatea’s room lied the person herself. Sweating up a storm with half lidded eyes and squirming about. Traces of vomit was located in a trashcan next to her. Her condition had been much worse than I had expected. She not only had been keeping her condition a secret from the rest of the Titans, but also the extent of it from me.

…It was extremely far from ideal, but I was going to need to operate on her immediately.

I was very thankful that everyone was with Aqualad at the moment. As being seen carrying an extremely sick Galatea would pose a lot of questions. Thankfully there was no one to run into between her room and the Lab.

I quickly cleared a table for her to lay on. Causing a few vials and projects to shatter as they were pushed away. It didn’t matter. I could always remake them.

Stripping Galatea out of her leotard wasn’t exactly easy. Having to force her arms up and through the hole sounds a lot simpler than it actually was. Thankfully from there it was easy to remove the rest of her costume.

And that was going to be the easiest step of this entire part. As the next one included slicing her open.

For better or worse, Galatea had regained more of her consciousness at this point. Perhaps due to fighting me when I was trying to push her arm back in order to operate.

She didn’t seem particularly bothered by the fact that she was naked. Though perhaps part of that was simply due to the amount of pain she was in. Or that her mind had become cloudy.

Despite this, she was still immediately against this process. Only after minutes of coaxing her and calming her with the fact that no one else knew she was currently ‘vulnerable’ or could see her, did she allow me to finally operate.

Even then she refused to be put to sleep, or to have any sort of pain relief. She explained in no uncertain terms of where my body parts would be scattered if that happened.

It wasn’t exactly the greatest of circumstances, but I had to work with what I had. And I wasn’t ready to simply let Galatea die.

…I had spent a lot of resources on her. It only made sense that I wanted a sort of return on my investments…

…There was…no other reason.

Thankfully I already knew approximately where the problem was on her body. The Justice League had a sort of X-ray from her already, despite her best attempts. The real problem was cutting into her body.

Normal utensils were most certainly not cutting it. Literally.

Thankfully I was nothing if not creative.

Acid was way too dangerous to use in order to cut her open. Not to mention to me. But a weakened version in order to soften her up was definitely possible. I didn’t exactly have the most sterile environment possible, but my lab was definitely on the same level as the medical floor we had. Though for very different reasons.

I also didn’t have a hospital gown, but beggars can’t be choosers.

In the end, it took about fifteen minutes for Galatea’s skin to soften up enough for me to cut it. Even with that, I needed to apply a healthy amount of force in order to continue. Galatea of course continued to watch over me as I worked. Seemingly entranced slightly with the sight of her being cut open.

Well…it was better than her freaking out, I suppose.

I was meant with a healthy amount of blood, but that was taken care of easily. My eyes narrowed as I finally found the problem area. As expected, what had once been some sort of organ that I was unfamiliar with, had been completely shredded. A shriveled butchered piece of meat that looked well tenderized.

The current impromptu plan was to remove it from her body, and try to connect the rest of the organs away from that as well as possible. As well as I reasonably could at least.

Then hopefully I would be able to experiment on it and hopefully cause it to revitalize. Put it back inside her body again and hopefully everything will be fixed.

But there was one thing that I hadn’t quite expected to find in her wound. Something that the x-rays hadn’t even shown. My hand dipped into her wound with a pair of tweezers before pulling out what looked like a small shard. Barely a few centimeters in height.

It was a darkish color. Almost a greyish black except for one really small side. It seems like the tweezer had pierced some sort of…covering for it. Revealing a strange vibrant green glow. Like that of a glowstick.

…How odd.

There were more of these crystals lodged around the wound, but never where the organ had once been. Hmm, my current hypothesis would be that when something exploded in her chest, the explosion was close to some sort of protected crystal. Perhaps to make her death more certain in case of emergencies?

But in that case, why a crystal of all things? There are much more effective ways than just using a rock. Especially one that didn’t seem to be very tough structurally.

I started to put all the shards I could find in an empty flask that I had lying around. After I had gotten most of them, Galatea groaned in pain before reaching out and pushing the flash off the table next to her.

Surprisingly enough, it didn’t shatter. Though many of the shards had indeed escaped their confinement. I placed the remaining shards into a different container before moving it further away from Galatea in order to not also end up on the floor.

Then came her organ.

It was incredibly nerve wracking. Sweat beaded on my forehead as I was as careful and methodical as I could possibly be. The worst part was my lack of knowledge about this process. All I knew was about Kryptonian physiology. There was nothing about how to perform surgery on someone.

All I had on my side was previous experiences in visiting hospitals, tv, and common sense. At the very least every second of this was providing me more information than I had previously. And the more I have to work with, the better the outcome.

Though currently it was pretty similar to trying to land a plane with the only experience with them being building the goddamn things.

Not exactly a 1:1 conversion.

Hours passed as I continued to work slowly and steadily. During those hours I noticed a strange change in Galatea. Instead of getting weaker or possibly falling unconscious, she seemed…better. Collected.

Which made absolutely no sense whatsoever. She should not be recovering when I haven’t even finished the process. I’ve heard something similar to this happening to people who were about to crash, but it was in regards to hypothermia. Where someone who was undergoing extreme cold would strip out of their clothes due to feeling like they were burning up.

There were also the cases where adrenaline would cause people to ignore their injuries, but…she seemed rather calm.

After safely depositing the…remains of what had once been an organ, I sealed Galatea back up as best as I could before covering her wound with the tree sap. She immediately started to flex her hands. Her fingers stretching before popping as she hummed.

She easily picked herself off the table and redressed herself before starting to walk out of the Lab all on her own. After she left the lab, she didn’t even stumble once. No bracing the wall for help.

It was…really strange.

Even if she had bumped into another Titan member, they would probably not think anything was wrong with her. As she looked completely fine. She kept walking until she got to the top of the tower and…then blasted off into the sky towards the sun.

…Kryptonians were bullshit.