Just Breathe: A batsis story

3 - Escape 2.0...

Chapter 3

Alyna quickened her pace down the metal hall that was pulsing a dull red as an alarm blared throughout the facility. Eventually, she found the slightly dented training room door. She hastily picked the lock with the same rusty nail she used to uncuff herself before opening the door and running into the room. "Okay, here we go Alyna, put on the suit, cut the probe out of your neck, and re-escape. Easy-peasy..." Alyna planned out loud in an attempt to calm her nerves.

The first step wasn't too difficult but the second was taking longer than Alyna had hoped, as she finally pulled the circular tracker out she felt a slight pull at the nape of her neck as a wire trailing after the tracker slowly came out of the incision she made with her dagger. As the wire came loose Alyna could feel her powers return almost immediately. She hypothesized the wire was connected to her brainstem and stopped some of her powers from activating, after all, she was still able to heal.

"Alright, time to get out of here," Alyna muttered as she pulled the hood part of her suit up. Unaware that someone was watching her from the doorway of the training hall.

"Not so fast," a masked figure said from behind her. Alyna whipped around and took a fighting stance with her daggers pointed towards where she heard the voice come from. All she could see was the periodic outline of a rather muscular man thanks to the flashing red lights. "I have some questions you're gonna need to answer,"

"I don't answer to you..." Alyna declared as the figure disappeared from the doorway, whoever was there meant business. But so did Alyna. She could hear the shuffling of feet from behind her and judging by the rhythm of the steps she determined they were about to strike at her. She turned around just in time to block a metal staff from crashing into her spine. The sound of her daggers on the staff was like nails on a chalkboard and a few sparks from the two metals rubbing against each other illuminated the bluebird on the chest of the man's suit. He pulled back before disappearing into the darkness of the room. "That's my trick," Alyna thought with a roll of her eyes before smiling like the Cheshire cat and turning invisible.

"What the..." Alyna heard the man blurt out in surprise, causing her to laugh softly, its echo making locating her difficult. "Who are you?"

"I said," Alyna said from behind him as she knocked him unconscious with the blunt end of her dagger, "I don't answer to you..."

Meanwhile, Batman and the rest of his birds were busy fighting their way through Xenon Corp. However, Batman was getting worried about Nightwing since he stopped responding through the comms her forced everyone to wear fifteen minutes ago.

"Everyone fan out, find Nightwing, and report back in immediately," Batman barked into the comms.

"Don't bother, I found him," Red Hood responded. "Someone knocked him out cold on the third lowest level. Other than a large bump on the back of his head, he seems unharmed,"

"Get him back to the cave and have Alfred assess him," Batman ordered as he punched a Xenon Corp. grunt in the face, knocking him out.

"Ughhh, can't Robin do it?" Red Hood complained, not wanting to miss out on the action.

"No way am I missing out on this, have fun babysitting," Robin laughed through the comms as he slid down a stairwell railing taking out several grunts with mini batarangs.

"What did we discuss earlier? When I give you an order, follow it, now GO!" Batman yelled into the comms angrily. "And Robin, I think this is enough for you tonight, go back to the cave too, I'll finish up here,"

"Wow, don't get your panties into a twist, Bats," Red Hood quipped just to piss Batman off, and of course get the last word in as he made his way back up the stairs and out of the laundromat. He waited a few seconds for Robin to appear before jogging back to the Batcave, arguing with his younger sibling the whole way. 

Alyna overheard their arguing and decided to follow them covertly. Although she was extremely tired from last night's torture and the amount of blood she lost earlier while getting that damned tracker out of her neck she managed to follow them all the way to a rather posh neighborhood before losing their trail.

"Damn, I lost them..." Alyna thought with a pout, as she turned around and headed back towards Gotham, she was too tired to fly at that point and could tell her invisibility was about to wear off so she decided it was best to find a place to crash for the night. And to make matters worse it started to rain, heavily. "At least it's washing away all this blood..."

"I said NO!" Alyna heard someone shout from around the corner of the street she was walking down. In front of a small building with a large decorative teacup on its roof, was a woman and the same two men Alyna found cornering that boy from yesterday. She could tell from the position the woman was in that one of the men had just punched her and was no doubt trying to rob her.

"Well, well, well, it looks like we meet again..." Alyna said from directly behind the men. She heard them both gasp out of shock as they spun around to face her. Only for them to be met with nothing but a crumbled piece of newspaper being blown down the street by the wind.

"What the hell? Who said that?" the man with the switchblade yelled out. Alyna stayed quiet as she swiftly went behind the two before tapping their shoulders and jumping out of the way of the knife. Unfortunately for the other thug, he wasn't as quick and his buddy accidentally slashed him right in the shoulder.

"Ahh fuck! You cut me!" he shouted as he gripped his shoulder in pain, blood seeping out between his fingers.

"Shit, where the fuck is this bitch?"

"I'm right here," Alyna said before pushing him into his now bleeding partner and laughing lightly at how pathetic they looked.

"Let's get out of here!" They yelled simultaneously as they rushed down the street away from the woman and Alyna whose invisibility wore off right as they rounded the corner of an alleyway and ran out of sight.

"Thank you," Alyna heard the woman say from behind her, Alyna turned around to face the woman and noticed the black eye she already had forming.

"No problem," Alyna whispered before starting to walk in the opposite direction of the men.

"Wait, please let me repay the favor!" the woman said as she followed Alyna down the street.

"I'm fine, thank you though," Alyna murmured just loud enough for the woman to hear. Despite her best efforts to fight off the exhaustion, Alyna's vision was starting to go black at the edges, the cold of the rain was seeping into her bones, and she wanted nothing more than something warm to drink.

"My name is Maggie, I live above the little cafe back there, I think it's best you rest there for a bit, those men might still be out there," Maggie pleaded. Alyna wasn't sure she could trust Maggie after all. What kind of person lets some weird teen soaked to the bone in a skin-tight acrobatics suit into their home?

"Please, you can trust me," was the last thing Alyna heard before the darkness at the edge of her vision took over and she blacked out, yet again.