Gotham's Ghost

Chapter 11

Batman caught the boy gently as he fell, and immediately a chill reminiscent of the Lazarus pits washed over him, as if he was touching death itself. But before he could start any sort of medical attention, Robin called urgently from the front of the building,

"Batman, this warehouse is coming down!"

Making a decision in an instant, Batman scooped the too-small boy up in his arms and ran toward the exit. Robin knew that there was no way B would leave the kid behind, so he ran and helped grab the boy, taking some of the weight and sprinting in stride with his father. The walls crumbled around them, raining bits of debris on their heads.

"B, look out!" Robin shouted as shoved the kid towards his father and rolled to the side to avoid a falling steel girder. Robin managed to slide out of the way, but Batman was weighed down by the kid and was just a second too slow. The end of the girder scraped the side of the boy, which would certainly leave a nasty mark, but there was no time to waste. Batman jumped up and continued running, with both of them just barely making it out the door before the whole warehouse collapsed in a cloud of dust.

"So." Robin said as he stared at the destroyed pile of ruins. "What now?"

"Now," Batman stated grimly as he called the batmobile to their location, "We go home."

Danny woke with a start on something soft. He attempted to sit up, only to find he was strapped to some kind of medical bed. With a sigh, he laid back down, closed his eyes, and assessed his current injuries. There was a large bruise that hadn't been there before... his vocal cords felt raw, but healed from the previous dissections performed on him by the GIW... his head ached from all the screaming, but besides that, he couldn't sense any other injuries that needed attention.

He was still in his 'ghost form', as he had taken to calling it, so he attempted to relax and direct his healing to those areas. Taking deep breaths, he absently wondered what sort of dissection it would be this time. However, before he could sink deeper into his dark thoughts, the door opened, allowing a rush of cold, damp, air, as though from a cave. Danny tried not to move, though his eyes scrunched tighter at the thought of more pain.

Deep down, hidden somewhere in the dark recesses of his mind, a thought bubbled up. 'This shouldn't have to happen.' It whispered. He quickly crushed it with: 'Yes it does. You deserve this. You asked for it. Dirty ghost.'

"I know you're awake." A voice, dark and black, wafted over him. "We film this room constantly."

Danny could feel his heart rate speeding up, though it really just looked like an average human heartbeat now. Fear coiled around his core, and he started breathing faster and faster.

"Hey, easy kid." The voice came again. "Let's just start with a couple questions." A calmer gray now. "You're safe here. We won't hurt you."

Danny dared to crack his eye open and was startled to see a large black blob huddled in the corner. Opening his eyes fully, he stared in confusion at the blob, surely it couldn't have spoken? Then it moved and Danny jumped as high as one can while strapped to a medical bed.

"Let's start with a name, hmm?" The blob straightened and came closer, moving into focus. He appeared to have some blue detailing on him, now that he was closer.

Danny was silent.

"That's alright. Let's start with me." The blob continued. "I'm Nightwing. I'm friends with Batman." Clearly that was they wrong thing to say, if the kid's attempt to yeet himself across the room was anything to go off of. Nightwing sighed and walked out of the room, locking the door securely behind him. He needed to have a little chat with Bruce.

~Line Break brought to you by Bill.~

"What on earth do you do to that kid?!" Nightwing stormed into the cave angrily. He tossed his domino mask to the side, and didn't notice that it smacked into one of the monitor screens as he confronted the other two bats seated in front of the supercomputer.

"That 'kid' has bloodily killed three people in the past month." Robin replied testily. "Not that they all didn't deserve it." He mumbled under his breath.

"Those are some of the worst trauma signs I've ever seen." Nightwing continued.

"He was hit with a girder as we were escaping the warehouse." Batman tried.

"That doesn't explain the scars!" Nightwing continued. "He's young, likely around your age, Dami. He shouldn't be that beat up." He sighed. "I think Timber's theory about him being a Shadows operative could have some merit to it."

"Aww, thanks Dick." A voice came from... inside the computer?

"TIM?!?" Dick asked as all three bat's heads whipped around trying to figure out where he was.

"Yeah, I was working on an update, but I needed to access this panel, so I got in here, but then I got stuck." His muffled voice explained. "Could you hand me my coffee?"

"What?" Dick said. "Y'know, maybe I should leave you in there for an extra hour or two, just for good measure. Maybe then you'd actually get some sleep."

But before there could be any Tim extrication, they heard a strange, whispered sort of laugh from the cell video's audio. The kid had clearly heard everything, which was weird, seeing as his cell was on a different level of the cave altogether.

"Look, we've got to be gentle with this." Nightwing sighed as Damien attempted to pull Tim out of the computer. "If we aren't careful, we won't get the information we need."

"I need a blood sample to test for a meta gene." Batman grunted.

"Good luck with that. I couldn't even get within five feet of him." Nightwing snorted.

Batman frowned.

"Look, I'm not saying we can't get anything out of him." Nightwing spoke a little softer. "We just need to make him more comfortable. He is a kid, after all."

...

Danny was confused. He had never been on a table for this long without a white-suited man coming in to experiment on him. The only sign of life was that strange man-sized blob that had been here when he woke up and the funny conversation he had overheard. He leaned forward slightly and, to his surprise, phased right out of the straps holding him down.

"Oof." He hoped the blob didn't hear that.

He gingerly picked himself up off the floor where he had fallen and looked more closely at his surroundings. Now that he was fully awake, things were a lot less blurry, and he noticed it was a bit off. Unlike the GIW, the bed looked like an actual medical bed instead of the usual operating table, and his surroundings weren't all a blaring, harsh white.

Which means that this wasn't the GIW's doing, Danny realized. So since it wasn't them, it had to be the League. That meant this was a test.

And he was not going to fail again.

Merry Christmas.