WARNING: The following contains spoilers for "Ladies' Night Out" by Paula Sevenbergen, Rob Haynes, Emanuela Lupacchino, and Wade von Grawbadger in Future State: The Next Batman #2, on sale now.
DC's Future State doesn't offer much hope for Gotham City as the Magistrate continues to enforce a cruel brand of martial law using the Peacekeepers and robotic military units called Cybers. They've done a number on Batman, Nightwing, Tim Drake, etc. leaving the heroes on the run, with the Cybers especially being one of the most lethal forces around. They're expendable robots, but they pack so much power, the rebels, small pockets of a Resistance are getting desperate for a trump card.
Well, that might have just popped up in The Next Batman #2, thanks to a back-up story where Gotham City Sirens just made an epic discovery.
In "Ladies' Night Out," Poison Ivy and Catwoman are taking Dee-Dee Prime, a fembot that Dax Dilton created, for a night on the town. They rescued her from his lair as she's the key to secret intel from Dilton Technologies, but first, she wants to party just like she's seen in Sex and the City. Dilton's been creating droids to have emotions as well, with Dee being his latest experiment, so much so he got her to love him.
But Dee's heartbroken over him getting engaged to Anna, a human rights activist, and she's prepared to flip and leak info. And this isn't just any data -- it's schematics on the Cybers that could help the Resistance defeat the bots. Ivy recruited Selina for the heist at Dilton's home, but little did they know they'd stumble upon Dee. They feel sorry for her and decide she needs to live and feel after being tricked into thinking she might be human, akin to Alex Garland's Ex Machina. However, if backfires because, after an initial skirmish with the bots, the Cybers track them down to a speakeasy run by former P.I. Slam Bradley, shooting up the place. Catwoman's been hit so Ivy now has two missions: she first has to save her friend and she has to get the info to the Resistance so they can also figure out how to destroy the robot legion. We've already seen the Cybers using the Lazarus Resin to power up as pseudo-immortals, and given how Dee has weapons of her own, Ivy suspects Dilton might be building newer, more sinister bots for the Magistrate.
This leaves her worried as she wants him exposed for breaking laws to create these WMDs that Gotham's greenlighting, but she never thought losing her friends would be the price to pay. Still, the sacrifice might be worth it because the Cybers are causing total chaos, to the point the Bat-Family's well and truly broken. Interestingly, apart from schematics, if the Resistance can use Dee as a prototype as well, they might now be able to make compassionate Cybers of their own and turn the tide in their favor as these bots would understand freedom and justice a bit more.