The Suicide Squad - Strange Voodoo

Rat problem

(Lucy POV)

I don't know how many days I've been here. It feels like forever.

A guy in a suit had removed the handcuffs from my wrists and had taken me to a bedroom. It was pink and white, with fresh, floral-patterned bedsheets and a very spacious bathroom.

"Am I still a prisoner here?" I had asked almost unenthused. The man laughed and placed a comforting, sweet hand on my shoulder.

"You're not. Boss doesn't want you to feel that way, anyway." He said.

"Boss?" I asked.

"The Joker. He ain't all bad." He shrugged. I looked up at him and he smirked. "He's worse."

I couldn't help but smile at the man's weird sense of humor. How could someone who worked for the Joker be so...dry? Maybe that was one side to him. He had silver-black hair, with a beard and kind eyes.

"If I'm not a prisoner here, then I can leave?" I asked.

The man, who later identified himself as Johnny Frost, looked down at the ground for a second before making eye contact with me again. "Believe it or not, kid, you're much safer here." And with that, he had closed the door behind him.

It's not like I was locked in. The doors were open and unlocked, save for the few men who stood guard at random points of the house.

But I needed to figure something out. What did he mean by being safer here? The Joker was here. The most unstable, most dangerous man in the world was here, and my safety was far more guaranteed in his clutches?

I didn't know how credible that claim was. And if it was credible, it almost terrified me to think what dangers could be lurking out there.

____________

(NORMAL POV)

"Any leads?" Waller asked as she walked into the control room where Flagg and several squad members had assembled. Harley, Floyd, and Digger. The only members who had truly been 'eagerly' involved. Harley and Floyd, for their daughters, and Digger for the sheer excitement of yet another mission. Another excuse to have some fun and shave years of his sentence. Oh how he craved the excitement.

"Not one." Flagg spoke dryly. Since their last encounter, Waller had left a bad taste in his mouth. Well, the woman was vile, she always ended up somehow pissing him off but he had managed to savor a bit of respect for her even after all this time.
Right now, however, the respect was there but Flagg no longer felt he needed to suck up to his superior the way he had.

"What about Lucy?" Waller asked.

"That's what I meant." Flagg said. Harley let out a shuddered sigh and began to pace.

"How could she just disappear like that?" Harley muttered, biting her finger as she paced back and forth. "It can't be. People don't just disappear into thin air." Her voice grew more desperate and she looked up at Waller as she brainstorm. "People don't just vanish, someone must have taken her. Can't we tap into any street cameras, anything, to find anything?" Harley desperately asked.

Waller avoided Harley's pained gaze only for the fact that they both shared one thing in common: motherhood. The fear for their children had forged an unspeakable bond but still not enough to penetrate through Amanda's tough exterior.

"Unfortunately, the cameras that actually do work in the city are those far away from the narrows. That's where Lucy was last thought to have been seen, right? Around the narrows?" Waller asked.

"Another one of them corrupt policing schemes?" Floyd asked completely unimpressed.

"Law enforcement in this city is a joke." Flagg scoffed. "Exactly why you got a rat problem."

"If there weren't rats, there wouldn't be cats and I can almost guarantee you we wouldn't have a bat either." Amanda narrowed her eyes at hun. "If I were you colonel, I'd stick to tapping away on that keyboard and focusing away from the city itself. We have a bigger adversary to worry about."

Harley looked at Flagg and then Waller again. It dawned on her that perhaps the city was so corrupt that it permitted certain aspects of crime. Do-gooders like commissioner Gordon and the Bat fought an earnest, honest battle, but this city was meant to be corrupt. Run by the corrupt and eventually destroyed by them too.