Fawkes

Always Read the Terms and Conditions

After I ate a small bowl of strawberries, a fruit I hadn't eaten in years, Alfred washed the dishes and stood in front of me.

"Master Bruce will be here shortly, so I must take you to the room you'll be staying in." He was looking at an expensive looking watch on his wrist, and I wasn't used to engaging in conversation with someone with a watch like that. Unless of course I was there to steal it.

I stood up from the bar stool I sat at, pulling my sleeve tighter over my scars and brushing my dark, slightly damp hair from my eyes. Alfred began walking, and I followed him quietly, my new, first-pair-of-non-combat-boot shoes making no sound against the marble flooring. I trailed Alfred down a series of hallways and through rooms that I had no hope of remembering the way back through.

Right, left, left, straight, right again . . . another right? Or was it a left? No—it was straight . . . yeah. No hold on. Wait a minute.

Like I said, no hope.

Finally, the butler stopped at the end of a dark hallway, where a grandfather clock sat unmoving and dusty at the end. I peered at it curiously, and watched as the old, withered hands of Alfred changed the hands on the face so the time pointed at 10:47. I wondered what the time meant, and was about to ask, when suddenly the clock moved to the side as if pulled by some invisible force. I nearly jumped out if my skin, but not actually, because I was trained to be ready for the seemingly impossible.

Alfred glanced at me and gestured for me to continue following him. I gulped, not exactly sure where we were going.

We began walking down a steep staircase, and I immediately knew that this was where the Batman lived. It was harder for me to imagine the cloaked hero up in the mansion above. The mansion covered with windows and filled with light and prosperity. But here, here it was dark and windowless and exactly what the Bat would have wanted.

It was a vast, gloomy cave lit up by computers and glowing things. On the far wall there was a huge cluster of computers, glowing a turquoise shade in the dark. A huge control board sat beneath that, a few feet away from what looked like a training ring, which also glowed.

A giant dinosaur sculpture sat to the far left, and I laughed quietly at it. Of course he would put that there. I looked up on the second level that extended like an inverted veranda along the wall above. Glass walls covered old Batman costumes and other costumes that I failed to identify. The whole place was brooding and mysterious, just like the man who owned it. Alfred led me across the turquoise floor, and I gazed across to another platform that sat by the giant dino—whom I decided to name Jose, just so I didn't have to continue calling him 'the giant dinosaur sculpture' in my head—where the Batmobile was parked. It was hard to look at something so still and quiet, when I'd always been so familiar with the hum of its engine chasing after me.

I tore my eyes away from the vehicle as the butler typed in a code and opened a hidden door in the wall that I wouldn't have noticed if not for the fact that I saw it open. I trudged along behind him, wondering why my room had to be so hidden and secret. He lead me down a dim hallway and to another locked door, which he used a heavy looking key to open. I raised an eyebrow as we walked inside a dark room, no windows there to flood the usual light in.

"Is there no light switch?" I deadpanned, trying to make out the outline of the room.

I blinked when sudden light flooded the room and my eyes. Alfred had flipped on a switch that sat to the right of the door, and once used to the brightness, I looked around the room.

It was medium sized, although compared to other rooms in this house would be considered small. I brushed that fact off because it was still larger than any other room I'd ever had. Although an itching feeling in the back of my mind reminded me that it was in some ways similar to the cells I'd formerly slept in. Dark, windowless, stuffy. At least it didn't have rock walls and a mattress covered in questionable stains.