The Clocktower is still a giant open space surrounded by screens. As she rolls back in from Milliways about half of them spring to life from their default standby positions. "Milton-Cinnamon-Aaron," she announced, bringing the others up.

"Come on. Let's get you a real briefing."

The charges to scuttle the submarine where Babs had set up her final fallback had already been triggered. The lights were out, skin irritants and tear gas filled most of the compartments, and water was flooding in.

That made it a perfect time to escape. Except for the team of gun-toting mercenaries between Babs and her exit hatch. Judging by the frequency, their radios were stolen from the military. Current front-line gear with the new encryption protocols.

Which meant she could hear everything they said.

"We've cleared the forward compartments and we're moving aft."

"Check on the others," a deep voice responded. "We've lost contact." That was most definitely Roland Desmond. And that he'd lost contact with his other people made Barbara grin wolfishly. She knew what had happened to them.

"We're on it, Mr. D." Babs slid across the ceiling, hand over hand along the rails she'd installed as they spoke, getting into position.

"We're not alone!" one of the men snapped, having caught something out of the corner of his eye. "I saw something. A shadow or something."

"Where?" his commander demanded.

"It swung by overhead!" Babs froze where she was, hanging almost completely still in a shadowed nook above one of the men's head.

"There's nothing here," one of the men complained.

"Check it anyway," the commander growled. Which is when Babs grinned and dropped the smoke grenade. With predictable results of yelling and scrambling. With the lights off the mercenaries were forced to rely on their night vision gear, and the smoke made it impossible to see anything through the lenses.

The panicked yelling and flailing about is perfect cover for a few well-placed shots to the back of the head to take the men down one by one. It's a simple pattern: a quick strike and a swing into another position to line up the next one. One down. Two. Three. Four. Five in as many seconds.

Unfortunately the last one is smart enough to reach back and rip off his goggles. He couldn't see much, but he must have spotted some sort of movement because he opens fire as Babs slaps the the quick release on her harness and drops into the two feet of water that has already flooded the compartment. She's quick enough that he misses and she grins at his mistaken yell of "Gotcha!" He'll get sloppy now.

He rushes toward where her body hit the water before slowly looking around. He's yelling into his radio. "I have everything under control, here. Oracle, or whatever, isn't going anywhere." Which was just about the time Barbara reaches through the rungs of the ladder behind him where she's hanging upside down and jerks his head back into the steel. There's a very satisfying ringing sound.

At which point she sees something red in her peripheral vision. She glances up at her thigh and frowns. "Wow... he actually did shoot me." She's sort of glad she can't feel it. Bullets hurt, and they send you into shock, and she doesn't need to deal with either of those right now.

She winces as the water level rises high enough to lap up into her face. She was supposed to be off the boat... at least ten minutes ago. she really didn't want to have to make this call...

Barbara hadn't really ever intended to use this plan. That was in part because it was bug-nuts insane. But here she was, sitting on a cold metal floor with a few laptops strewn around her and one case she was glad was still here.

It had taken her nearly twenty minutes to get the wetsuit on. Skintight isn't easy to do when you can't move your legs. She starts adjusting the metal braces that let her move around without her legs flailing wildly. Ankles, calves, and thighs cuffed together with a series of bands that will let her lock her legs into one position pretty easily.

Dinah still hasn't checked in yet, and that's worrying. If nothing else, Dinah is a professional, and she knows how serious things are.

Babs finishes locking her legs down and grabs her headset. "Dinah? Come in, Dinah."

Please let her answer this time.

Bruce really was more arrogant than he had any right to be sometimes. His computer security was a rather obvious example of that. Back in Milliways she'd spent hours interviewing Stephanie about the upcoming gang war, so she knows precisely what triggers it.

Tim just quit [DO WE NEED TO GET MATT IN TO DO SOME OOMS FOR THIS?]. That meant that it was almost time. There wasn't any more time to pretend she didn't know whether she was going to do this or not. It was time to get to work.

It takes her a few long nights to work her way through the Batcave's defenses, but she eventually slips through and sets up a program to watch for Steph to access the War Games files. Now all she has to do is wait. When Stephanie opens those files the system will notify her and she can shut the entire thing down at the source.

There's a category four hurricane in the south Atlantic that she's keeping an eye on for the JLA, they're probably going to be needed for the rescue efforts once the thing makes landfall. There's also a rather anomalous set of financial transactions running between Gotham, Bludhaven, and Switzerland that she's tracking down. Then there are the routine data requests: addresses, directions, known associate lists, suppliers. All in all, Barbara's glad that she doesn't have her own team in the field this morning.

It is when things are going about as routinely as they ever do that things tend to get... weird, and this is no exception. It starts with a small red box flashing in the top corner of her screen and cascades from there.

"Warning: unauthorized system access. Warning: primary firewall bypassed. Warning: first wave countermeasures ineffective. Warning..." They keep piling up on top of each other, but Babs is already moving at maximum speed. The keyboard in front of her clatters as she races to keep up with the hacking attempt.

But whatever's trying to get into her system is smart. It's some sort of self-adapting algorithm and it seems to anticipate what she's going to use to respond to it, and it seems to be gaining ground.

Just as suddenly as it began, the attack stops. Whatever the invading code was supposed to do, it has apparently done it. Barbara immediately begins looking to see what it got when her holoprojectors reconfigure themselves and the Oracle mask floats in front of her.

"Hello, Barbara. First, let me say that while we've done some weird things, I'm pretty sure this constitutes the weirdest. I'm... you. From an alternate universe. Take a look at the code, you'll recognize our signature. I also know that our most recurring nightmare is... well, the fact that I brought that up should be proof enough."

"Anyway, the universe I'm in seems to be a few years behind yours temporally. I've heard rumors of a Crisis, and of Spoiler's death, but they haven't happened for me, yet. I'm going to need files. You know the ones and you know why."

"I'm going to do what you would do in my place. Find the sender of this message. He can be trusted to courier data back and forth between us."

There's a long pause and the mask flickers away before the voice continues softly, "With your help I can do what you couldn't."

Barbara sits for an entire minute in her chair in the darkness and the silence before nodding firmly to herself. "Computer: routing trace on this message for point of origin."

She taps a key on the console in front of her, "Zinda. Prep the Aerie One." She glances at the display, "We're going to San Fransisco."

Barbara's up late tonight. This isn't really an unusual thing for her.

"United Airways flight 347 should be landing in an hour and a half. He's seated in first class. I recommend you pick him up before he gets through the baggage claim."

She nods to whatever the response is, "Good luck, and I'll be here if you need me again."

Barbara slides her glasses off and pinches the bridge or her nose as the connection closes. She needs more coffee. And maybe an aspirin.