It was cold, so cold. His bare toes were numb, a sharp contrast to the rest of his body. Another hit from a peice of hard stone. If he could have moved them he would have clenched his fists to protect his fingers from more harm. How long had he been there? The clanging of a chain, another hit against his exposed, bruised chest.
The red and black kevlar suit hung from him in tatters, offering no protection from either the cold, the blows, or the laughter that would have frozen his blood if it weren't half way there already. He did his best not to make a sound, not to look at the camera set up in the corner.
Not to beg the people watching to hurry up and save him.
Time slipped by both faster and slower than it had any right to. Trying to keep track of hours and days was impossible when the pain and cold glad every second together in an unending nightmare.
The madman was talking, but the boy on the ground couldn't hear him. He wished he could fall into black creeping at the edges of his vision, sleep, die anything but lie there and take the hits.
The sound of the chain again, again an increase in pain. He bit his lower lip broken in his attempts to hold back his cries.
An engine revved, a puff of crystallised air escaped chapped lips before they were hidden behind a red helmet.
'Not again'
If the bat had listened. If the replacement had listened.
'If I'd killed that thing'
But no, nobody had listened. And he'd stupidly tried to convince someone else to do what he should have done the second he'd come to his senses after crawling out of the earth that monster had stuck him in.
No more, not one more person. Not even the replacement.
A motorbike tore through the streets of Gotham, the winds of the snow storm drowning out the roar of the engine.