Subject: [OTL]: HellsX 34
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 17:53:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: D Benway <d_benway@yahoo.com>


HellsX [34:45]  Barbara Gordon

Produced by Benway.

See notes for disclaimers.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Dear Daddy,

This is going to be my last letter.

I was so mad at Bruce when I found out. He could have encrypted the
files better, but he's just so damn careless sometimes. All these years
I've been writing to you and living for your every reply, but now I
know it was all a sham. I don't know if you're still alive up there in
Alaska, but I'm not going to ask.

I ran the recognition software on all your letters, and it told me what
I should have known all along. They're not even by the same hand. Bruce
wrote the first ten, but after that it was Dick and Cass and even
Selina. I guess my first clue was when you spelled independence with an
'a' just like Tim does, all the way through.

It was so hard, after they took you away. I wanted to be a Sentinel,
right up until they came for you and shot me and raped me. I aborted
it. Well, Leslie did. I might be damned for all time, but I wasn't
having one of them inside of me.

I also didn't tell you lots of other things, Daddy, like how I'm in a
wheelchair. It hurts. It's humiliating. I weigh 300 pounds and I can't
dance and I smell like piss and I have to wear diapers. I see the
others walking and it makes me want to scream, but I don't. I'm a good
soldier now, just like you were.

I'm in Bruce's army. We hide the ones who can find us, and get them out
of this shithole. We're better at it than you were, because Bruce can
buy his way out of almost anything. Even so, I always have to be on
guard. Bruce is reckless with security. We've set up the network with
disconnected cells like Guevara suggested, but too many people know how
it all fits together. I know, Bruce knows, Cass knows, Dick knows. If
any one of us falls into their hands it all goes down like a house of
cards.

We can't let it fail. I've got over a hundred people in the basement,
waiting to ship out in a container for Bremerhaven. We've got 156 other
safehouses, and over 5000 people in them, waiting to go. Our people in
the government aren't coming through on their promises, and something's
in the air. I think our friends overseas might not be the friends we
thought they were, either.

I'm living here with my doubts and my fears, and my new knowledge that
no-one has seen or heard from you since they took you away that night.
Maybe you are still alive, but I think that you are probably dead. I'm
strong enough to live with that now, and you will always live on in my
heart.

Love, Babs.

[Next: The Ambassadors]