"It's alright, everything's going to be okay now." He looked into my eyes, my horrible orange eyes that were too round and bright to belong to a human, they were monster eyes, freak eyes. And that made sense, it fit in, because I was a freak. Once, I had

been a normal 17 year old girl with crisp orange hair, freckles, and chocolate brown eyes. Now I was a four legged, two armed centauresque creature with orange eyes and brown fur. Fur, I had fur now. And a muzzle, and ears, and a tail. And instead of

freckles, I had a white splotch running down my entire body. Now, I was a freak, an animal. I was locked in a cage for days at a time, only brought out so they could make me run through obstacle courses and record my times in between sticking needles in

my flesh and forcing pills down my throat, only to be rewarded with an oversized dog treat, put back in the cage, and be jammed with more and more needles until they decided to let me out again for a checkup. This had been my life for so long that I didn't

even know the date. And now, it was finally over.

Tears streamed down my fur and onto my muzzle, he had found me, my brother had finally found me. And he didn't care what species I was, he didn't see any of that, he saw me, Julie, his little sister.

"I'm not ever going to let anybody hurt you ever again." James said, his blue eyes piercing through his shaggy blondish brown hair as he looked at me. "Ever." He said, I looked at his face, he looked at mine, we looked into each others eyes, orange and

blue, and for a moment, everything was alright.

And then his brains blew out the side of his skull.

"No!" I yelled, slamming my paws against the cage. It was horrible. There was that bang, so loud, it was so loud, and then, he just fell to the side, it went straight through his head, in one side and out the other, greyish brown fluid and bits of brain

splattered against me as his eyes rolled backwards into his head and he fell to the ground, still clutching that orange Phillips screw driver in his hand. "James!" I yelled, "James!" Oblivious to the fact that, around me, the deserted cement circle was undergoing

a transformation. "No!" I yelled, "No!" Weeping now, my paws clutching the bars. "James!" The metallic walls were lifting up, the lights were coming on.

A man strolled out of the shadows, a gun in his hand. I didn't even see him coming. I was too busy starting at James' corpse. I recognized him though, slowly, as he came closer. The balding man with his hair slicked back, with the brown button up vest and

white shirt, collar flipped upwards, dirty shirts, dirty man, too much gel, too much oil. I could smell it as he came up. Peter, the man behind the entire Sandusky BioMeds facility.

"I, I probably saved you you know." Peter said, "Chances are he would've done something terrible to you in the future." He paused, "He probably would've raped you. Brothers tend to do that." I looked up at him, I couldn't even say a single word, couldn't

even ask Why? He sat down on top of my cage, his legs hanging off the side of it, rocking back and forth.

"You should really be glad you're in here." He said, "I mean, the world is a really cruel place." There was silence for a few more moments. "I mean, look at what happened to you, heck, look at Harvey Dent." His legs swung back and forth, back and forth.

"Really, you should be thanking me. This place is about as safe as it gets." He got off the cage and kneeled on top of my brother's dead body. "You should be thankful." He said, staring me straight in the eyes, I could see his wrinkles, smell him, "Why aren't

you thankful?"

"Can I tell you a story?" He asked, crawling up to my cage and sticking his fingers in it. Then started, without even waiting for me to voice an opinion. "I once saw a father cut his own kid's face up." He began. "He stuck a razor blade in his son's mouth and

just carved him up. I mean seriously, just cut him like a Thanksgiving dinner, he drew that thing back and forth, back and forth, see saw, the kid starts crying out and he's bleeding, the blood is just everywhere, it's dripping down his mouth onto his shirt but

the dad isn't worried, I mean, there's no neighbors anywhere near them, but the mother, oh that bitch just freaks, she just comes at him, and he's just carving the kid up, see saw, see saw, now he's cutting into the cheeks, I mean patches of skin are going

to start coming loose, and the kid is just screaming his head off and the dad's going see saw see saw, and the mom's screaming and he starts to cut into the cheeks and that bitch is yelling and yelling so he takes the knife and rips it out of the kid and she

just screams even more because the knife freaking tears off his mouth practically, and there's bits of lip and skin flying everywhere and she's screaming and the kids screaming and the fathers yelling for everyone to shut up but they wont and he loses control

of the knife and it flies off and cuts her head off, right in front of the kid."

I looked at the man, and he looked at me, security guards were moving in through the spaces where the metal plates used to be but I didn't notice, not the guards, or the lights growing brighter, then fainter, or my vision fading, turning to black, I didn't

even notice the doctor who stuck me with the needle, but I remembered, I heard, I noticed the last words that man ever said to me.

"Do you think that kids all right?"

Arkham

City

Sidestories:

The Untouchable