The Competition Mission Re-Write

Secrets

My head killed me as I came to. I slowly opened my eyes to try and find where I was. But the place didn't seem familiar. The only thing that seemed familar was the Gotham Daily stuck to the celing with a dreaded headline.
Security Footage restored, the thief one step closer to justice.
Below it was an image of me breaking into Wayne Enterprises, thankfully still a little blurry. I quickly stood up, ignoring the spinning in my head and ripped the paper down to read the article. They hadn't identitfied it was me, yet. Though it wasn't me. They just looked and moved exactly like me. It was at that point I realised something else, I wasn't in my uniform. I was dressed like the image showed me, all black with my mask. My uniform was in the corner of the room, folded with a note on it. I slowly moved over to it and picked up the note.
I didn't regognise the handwriting, but it was addressed to me. I flipped open the paper and read.
Hello Grayson,
Thank you for playing my little game. You're not very good at it, but that might be becuase you're always five steps behind. Have fun explaining this next one to your new recruit.
What next one? You know what, think about that later, right now I had more pressing issues. I picked up my uniform and shoved it in the mystery backpack I'd been left with and headed out, remebering to remove the mask last minute. Thankfully outside was more familar territory, still Gotham. In fact, I was only two warehouses over from where I had been with Bruce.
Bruce.
Oh god, what had happened to him? My communications were gone, I had no idea where he was, or what had happened. I quickly moved back over to Warehouse seven and slipped inside, only to be amazed by what I could see. It's like it had been refurbished since I was gone. As if Riddler had moved in. The puzzle was solved, but blood and bits of cape littered the pathways. Bruce had struggled. Of course, becuase it was a puzzle made for two people. And I hadn't been there. I moved through the maze, easy now that everything had been disabled, and found who I was looking for at the end.
"Bruce, are you okay?" I asked as I ran over, crouching down next to him.
He took all of two seconds to scan me and his face changed from relief to anger.
"Where were you?" He asked.
"I don't know, I was knocked out and I've only just woken up. I was in Warehouse Nineteen. And I found these," I said as I pulled the paper and the note from the backpack.
Bruce took them from me and quickly read them over, before pulling a note from his pocket, "And I found this on my cape up in the control room."
Sorry, gotta duck out of this one. Sure you'll be fine.
The handwriting matched mine perfectly, "I didn't write this."
"Well she thought you did," Bruce said.
"I didn't. I swear. I swear on my families graves," I protested, "I'd never walk out on a mission. Not when a life was at risk."
"I know," Bruce explained, "I got her picked up by her father. I stayed behind becuase I knew you'd come back here. I believe you Dick, but the rest of the world is slowly being turned against you. I don't think it'll be long before something big happens. Before they stop teasing and start actually playing the game. This is all the set up, we haven't even rolled the dice yet."

I arrived at school that morning, once again agasint my teachers wishes, and instantly headed over to the younger years area, to the Grade Eleven section, still a year above where I should have been, but where she should be. But despite my search, she was nowhere to be found. Maybe her dad had kept her home after last night. He was protective of her that way. So instead I headed to first class and just spent the day like any other.

By the evening I found myself back at the cave with the team.
"So, now that we're all here," Artemis started witha pointed look at me once I'd sat down, glad to take the weight off my leg, what I wouldn't do to be able to have my crutches in uniform, "We can all hear about our very important missions. Such as me scoping out Dick's flat and Wally going on a date with him."
"It wasn't a date," Wally grumbled.
"I believe you," I whispered back to him and I saw his cheeks heat as he sunk back further into the sofa.
"Right, me first," Artemis continued, "There wasn't too much out of the ordinary. Sparkling clean as I suspected it would be. Nothing really personal, but I suspect that's because of the fire. But there was an odd pack just on the kitchen side. Gas mask, first aid kit, a mask. Batman asked for it on debriefing to examine it, to check there was no hidden explosives. But I don't know, it seemed a little suspicious."
"The reason he didn't want me coming to his place was because it was a tip," Wally chimed in, "Add that to the list of things he's hiding."
"That is odd," Kaldur mused as I refrained from turning red.
I could've fixed that easily if I'd made a mess instead of focusing on how I looked. God damnit, last night really was not my night.
"Well, the date, as you so put it, didn't go well either," Wally said, "He stayed for all of fifteen minutes, got a phone call and dashed."
"Must have been heart-breaking," Artemis smirked.
"Robin, would you be able to hack into his phone and retrieve the call?" Kaldur asked, "He didn't tell us anything about it. But he sure was in a rush to get out of there."
"Plus the news article that came out just after," Conner grunted.
"Huh?" I asked.
"The thief at Wayne Enterprises, a picture came out just after he dashed," Kaldur explained, "And this morning it came out that Lex Corps had been hit last night. Another image, they think it's the same thief. Could be him."
Lex Corps as well. They wouldn't even try to cover up on finding who the thief was. And that's what our recruit thought I was doing instead of trying to save her. Oh god, that note made so much more sense now.
"I can't retrieve his phone call as I wasn't in his system before, but I can set up live monitoring if you'd like," I said in reply to Kaldur's earlier question.
"That would be great," Kaldur replied.
At that we all settled and eventually everyone started peeling off until it was only me and Wally left.
"I really want to believe it's not him," He said, "I don't want to think he's doing all of this. After everything, he doesn't seem the type. But all I'm getting are reasons to doubt him, to suspect him. They just keep coming."
"Trust your gut Wally," I said, moving an arm around behind him, "Sometimes it's better to follow your instincts than the evidence. It's not always correct."
"How can you say that? You always follow the evidence," He bit.
"Not always," I replied, "When we have to hunt Joker he leaves many clues about his location, rarely are they correct. Batman and I have to make a call on a gut feeling, and it's always been correct. When Penguin spent months laying out that a big deal was going to go down at his club, we followed our gut and went down to the North Docks instead. We were right. You're gut is just as valuable, sometimes even more valuable, than your evidence."
"I just, it was going to be fun, getting to know him more," Wally admitted to me, "I'm going to tell you a secret, and you have to promise not to tell anyone okay?"
"I promise," I replied, "You know I'm an expert secret keeper."
"Yeah, I guess I do," He let out a small smirk, "Jesus. Okay. Here goes nothing...