"What is this place?" Batman asked noticing the uneasiness in the air. The long buried instincts from living on the streets where bussing in Lylas bones.
"No one really knows for sure." She explained. "The kids I grew up with just knew to stay away from it. Supposedly kids would go in and never come back out."
What once was an arcade now sat abandoned. All the windows where boarded up, there was a spot the ceiling had sunk in and the walls where completely covered in graffiti. There was a vast difference in what it was created to be and what it was now.
"I'll go in and if the kids are there you guys stay here." Phantom instructed. "Let me know if anyone comes this way."
"Are you sure about this?" Red Hood asked. The worry was heavy in his voice, after all it was him who Had wandered her about this place when they where kids and sleeping in an empty building only a few blocks from here.
She nodded in response and silently made her way to the dilapidated building.
Even standing above the hole in the roof, the building below was pitch black and eerily silent. She slowly lowered herself in through the roof, the wind throwing her cape out behind her.
Soft shuffling filled the empty space as her feet hit the floor.
" Who's there?" Phantom shouted into the dark as she pulled her flash light from her belt.
As her light shown around the room she was met with three sets of terrified eyes. Three little girls, all three where dressed in new silk dresses despite the dirt on their face and hair, the tallest and presumably oldest of the them stood in front of the others pushing the young girls behind her.
" Wow, wow..." Phantom said raising her hands in attempt to make herself look non-threatening. "I'm not here to hurt to hurt you."
"Then what do you want?" The oldest girl asked. Her voice was rough and trembling, she sounded as if she hadn't slept in days.
"I just have some questions. Rumor has it you've been running someone's errands, I just need to know who's."
"You need to leave!" She girl growled.
Lyla wasn't exactly the best with people in general but especially kids. She never knew how sensitive was to sensitive or how tough was to tough. She wished now she hadn't been so stubborn and come alone. Jason always had a particularly soft spot for kids in bad situations and Bruce with all his years of "fatherly experience" who know exactly how to deescalate the situation.
" If he even... if he finds out you where here......" The girl continued.
"Who? Is someone forcing you to work for them?" Phantom pushed.
"The bag faced man." The smallest of the girl whispered.
"I can get you out of here, someplace safe, but I need your help."
The oldest girl sighed but dropped her arms from around the other two. "He comes every few days. He leaves boxes and names and takes the money from the last rounds. We're to take the boxes to the names he gives and then retrieve the money a few days later. If we try to fight back or.. or refuse, he... he..." tears where streaming down the girls face as she struggled to continue. The other girls stepped forward, the smallest girl took the hand of the eldest and the third girl began to speak.
" He has a gas, a drug or something, it can... it makes us see things, horrible things. Things out of nightmares. If we fight back he..." She hesitated.
"It's okay, I get the idea." Phantom interrupted. "Thank you. All of you. I promise things are going to get better." She tried to comfort them dispose not knowing what to say.
"Batman, I've got three kids who need some help." She called into her comm.
These girls lives would change forever.
They where another victim of Gotham, just like Jason,
just like her.
YOU ARE READING
A Ghost Girl and a Zombie Boy A Red Hood re-telling.
FanfictionWhat happens when a girl off the streets of Gotham is saved by a Robin with a promise to keep? Lyla has been alone most of life. She's never had family or responsibilities to ties her down. But as she's getting older life is getting harder, until o...
