What?

Chapter Three

The first thing I noticed was the pounding in my head. I groaned. My eyes were shut and I felt like I had just run a dozen marathons. My body ached. I could feel a soft mattress underneath me. 'Slade...Detonator...Cinderblock... Probes...' Words ran through my head. Where did the last one come from?

The guys; I must have been hit hard by Cinderblock and the guys brought me back to the tower. I'm in my room on my bed, since the hospital wing's beds aren't nearly this comfortable. I must have had a nightmare, some crazy nightmare where Slade wanted me to work for him. Ha, that's actually a little funny now. I have to get up. He hasn't pulled the trigger. Did the Titans beat him? I slowly opened my eyes. The lights were off and my mask was still on.

I tried to move, but my back and shoulders instantly felt sore, like I had slept on something metal and not a mattress. As I shifted myself up in my bed, I sort of sensed that it was around mid-day, although it was pitch dark, by my feelings of waking from an afternoon nap. I tried to stretch, but even before I did, I noticed how constricted my gloves felt on my arms. Weird, usually they were loose.

I pulled back my sheets and began to climb out of bed. My head hurt, sure, but I was a Titan. I could make it. I reached to get off of the bed, but noticed a wall where the edge of my bed was.

There's no wall by the side of my bed.

My eyes finally adjusted giving me a shock out of my lazy mind set. My eyes widened. My shoes, my pants, arm guards? I brought my hands up to my face and felt the jagged spike on each side of my mask. No!

I looked myself over. The uniform was the same. That was not a nightmare that I had had. I did fight Slade, the Titans did disarm the Detonator, but Slade had injected them with the...probes. That's where that word came from.

Where was I? I got up and began to search for a door. I couldn't find one. Thin lines marked old, large tiles in the room, but I couldn't find any doorknob or a doorway to push at or pull on. I started to panic and found myself shoving at the walls. My heart was beating faster then the speed of sound. I began to sweat and shake, no matter what my mind was telling me to do. 'Calm Down. Just calm down.'

I couldn't.

I tripped over objects and furniture around the room, not caring a bit. My legs got weak and soon I could hear my own breath coming in shallow and rapid. I was letting out small cries and yells. I had to get out. My mind wasn't working. I was becoming claustrophobic. I never get claustrophobic. Yet, here I was feeling as though the walls and darkness of the room was engulfing me into a sea of nothingness. I told myself, 'There has to be a way out, you just have to pause and think about where it would be.' I didn't pause.

I didn't notice that directly opposite of the wall I was pushing on, the wall slid to the side. Not a speck of light streamed in and the place remained dark. A hand came up to my face and placed itself over my mouth. I shifted my gaze up to see the madman whose grasp I was in. I started to scream and thrash. My screams were covered. My thrashing was so out of tune that it made no difference.

"Calm yourself, Robin," he cooed into my ear.

If anything, this comment made me thrash and panic more. I was in a prison with a deadly poisonous gas taking the air out of my lungs. I kicked and punched at him, but I was too weak and disorientated from my previous claustrophobia, which had now been replaced by a growing fear of Slade and what he wanted with me. Soon, I just let my weight fall down until all that was keeping me up was his grasp on my waist and mouth. It didn't make him let me go as I had wanted. My hands tugged at his arms to release me. He didn't budge.

"Calm down, or the Titans will be down permanently, child," he pulled the control up to my eye level.

Despite the fact that my heart was in a frenzy, despite the fact that I was in a most undesired situation and position, and despite the fact that he had just called me a child, my mind began to work again. I stopped thrashing. I stopped my yells. My body started to respond to what my mind had been telling me to do. 'Calm Down. Just calm down... for them.' It was odd. Normally, I would think that something like what Slade had said would send me out of control. It would get my heart pumping so hard it would hurt. But it didn't.