NightQuinn II: Fear Itself

Bringing a Knife to a Gunfight

Dick and Jason had left the Intensive Treatment building through the same window Batman and Joker had seemingly left. Outside that window was a series of pipes and ledges they had to scale to catch up to the two rivals. They couldn't see either of them up ahead, but there was a trail of blood where Joker had cut himself on the window glass. Carefully, the two brothers scaled the side of the building. Dick was keeping an eye out for Jason, who wasn't as at home with heights as Dick was, but he was managing, he'd gotten used to it as he had with the other hazards of their lifestyle.

At the end of the trail left by the clown prince was another open window, only this time, it was seemingly already open, with no sign of forced entry. Dick and Jason entered, and proceed with caution. They had arrived in some sort of office, someone's study. The air there was strange,  it felt thicker and even smelled slightly of chemicals. Something wasn't right. Jason moved behind a bookshelf in the office and Dick moved in after him. But Jason had disappeared. Again, something wasn't right. He slowly opened the door to the next room, an open corridor with various spray-painted decorations from the escaped inmates, a few crude words and scribblings, but one caught Dick's attention. A frowning face, with an upside down bat signal where the mouth should be. Dick heard someone running in the distance, running away. He looked to see, but couldn't make anything out due to the dim lighting, and the corridor seemed to just vanish into darkness after a while. "Jason?" He called out, receiving nothing in return but a distant echo. He turned and saw something that hit him like a bullet.

Bruce was lying on the floor, motionless. Dick ran over to him, but he was already too late. He turned his father's body over to see a bloody entrance wound from a bullet right in the centre of the bat symbol. Dick says to himself "This isn't real, it's just the toxin." before Bruce's body dissipates into a cloud of the fear toxin. Dick then gets up and looks ahead up the long hallway that was littered with bodies, he walks and walks and walks until he starts recognising the bodies: Jason, Tim, Damian, Barbara, and Alfred. Then, a bloodied Harley stumbles out of the darkness and into his arms. He catches her and she asks him "Why weren't you there for us?"

Dick again tells himself. "I...this isn't happening, none of this is real." His family's bodies start to get up and surround him, repeating the question "Why weren't you there for us?". They start to swarm him and hold him down to the ground, Dick panics and tries breaking free, but to no avail. Then, a hand emerges from the crowd and grabs Dick by the arm and pulls him out.
Dick crashes onto the ground outside Johnathan Crane's office, Jason is standing over him. "Dick, you alright?" It's not often Jason lets genuine concern be heard in his voice, but here it was clear as day. "What happened in there?"

"Jason?" Dick tries getting his bearings on reality. "I was just...you were."

"I know, it wasn't real. None of it." Red Hood tells him. "Can you walk?"

"I can." Dick gets to his feet and looks around. "You see anything while we were in there? Something real, I mean, any clues on where to go next?"

"Nothing." Jason looks up and down the corridor, no sign of where to go next. "We'll split up, you head down the courier one way, I'll take the other."

"You sure? This'll be a lot easier if we're together." Dick says
"It's never easy, but we can cover more ground if we split up," Jason explains. "I'll sweep the way to the elevator, you sweep towards the warden's office, alright?"

"Fine, just watch yourself out there, alright?" Dick says. "There's enough at stake tonight, I don't want you to-"

"I'll be fine." Jason cuts him off. "You just get searching. Good luck."

Elsewhere, Deadshot and Mister Freeze find the lab, and Freeze looks through the supplies available to him. "I have everything I need." He says. "But synthesising a cure will take time, I'll need you to defend me if anyone else comes."