Trickery (A Damian Wayne Story)

Tazer

I've been shivering for hours, curled in on myself because I know how dangerous prolonged exposure to low temperatures can be. I'd first passed the time by counting, keeping track of the minutes. I'm not sure when Slade will be back, but I can bet he won't want to leave me alone for very long. When I had hit ten minutes, roughly when accounting for my percentage of error, I started to move. Curl my toes, flex my fingers, take inventory of the bruises and other aches and pains.

All of it's manageable, of course. I wasn't trained to be a wimp. My jaw hurts, naturally, and my ribs are bruised, most likely. My head pounds too much, and sometimes if I look too suddenly or try to focus too hard on something the edges of my vision blur. It's not a good sign, and neither is the mysterious electric shock contraption Slade has fixed around my ankle. It was the first time I'd noticed that I didn't have my boots anymore. Just the same socks I pulled on this morning, out of the clean laundry basket Alfred had placed on my bed.

I'm without any weapons or gadgets, my com unit, my phone. All predictable and if they hadn't removed those things I would have certainly lost all hope in them. I also don't have the lock pick I usually stow in my boot. Not that anyone's cuffed me or anything.

The room I'm in is completely bare. The door is sealed, only a handle on the outside. I'm in a sort of freezer, probably specifically designed as a torture chamber. They're not going to kill me in here, though. They wouldn't. What fun would that be? They just want to slow me down, do damage while they're busy.

Questions is: What are they busy doing?

Last I heard Mother and Slade weren't on good terms. And to top that, I watched Mother die, and left Slade to drown.

After three hours Slade comes back in, slamming the door open. Mother is right behind him, staring down at me, shivering on the floor. I sit up taller, test my toes, double and triple checking that they're still there.

And then I act, jumping up, sending my heel into Slade's dumb face. He falls back, a surprised yell escaping his lips. I spin to punch Mother, but she's not where my fist was meant to be. She latches hold of my arm from the side, bending it up and around to my back.

"You got slow," she remarks, her voice right by my ear.

I ignore her and use the position as leverage, jumping up, ignoring the pain in my shoulder in order to double kick Slade's chest as he clambers to his feet. I let gravity help, planting my feet as they come down and bending over to send Mother over my shoulder in one swift motion. In seconds she's on top of Slade, her handgun in my posession, pointed directly at the two idiots.

Slade pushes Mother off him, props himself up on his elbows. He's glaring daggers at me, but Mother is just grinning.

"He's better than I had hoped." She looks at Slade gleefully for a moment, before her expression turns serious, "Finish this." I feel my body seize, dropping to the floor in a series of convulsions. I was hoping the cold had frozen the device or something, but I was foolish to wish for such a miraculous thing. I watch Slade bend down to pick me up, and the electricity keeps flowing, the pain fading along with the world around me.