Author's Note; I don't own the Justice league or any of it's characters, only the ones I've made up.
Chapter 2 The Nightmare begins
When I woke up I was strapped to a metal table in a brightly lit florescent room. There were no windows inside of it and around me I could see various carts with sharp objects placed upon them. I strained against my bonds, trying to break free, when a metal door behind me clicked open.
"Ah, I see you've finally woken up, all the better, it will do nicely for you to see how the rest of your life will ensue." the crackle of his voice alerted me to his presence even before he rounded the table revealing himself to me. Dressed in a white lab coat that had several stains on it that looked disturbingly like blood, his eyes shone with a wild excitement.
Jorgaf pulled a surgical mask from a container by the side of the table and secured it carefully around his face. Drawing a long syringe from his pocket he meticulously filled it with a clear liquid from a jar labeled Substance A. When he was done he turned to me and laughed at me with his piercing eyes, "Did you really think you were dreaming my dear? I'm afraid your nightmare has just begun." My screams echoed through the halls, but there was no one there to hear them.
Three years later
I looked at myself in the dirty mirror of my small confined bedroom. My now eight years of life showed stark differences from the once five year old child that had argued with her brother. My brown hair was shoulder length and raggedly cut. In the depths of my deep brown eyes was a hollowness and sorrow that could only be found in a person who had undergone great tragedy. The face that looked back at me was covered in grime. My arms and legs showed jagged scars, some still red from recent incisions. I lifted up my thin shirt to view my small stomach. Underneath a bandage that had been wrapped around a three inch cut, my ribs could be seen beneath my skin. I was tired, undernourished, and worst of all had almost given up hope of escaping. I'd tried to get away before but it never worked, I was always caught before I could reach the main doors of the building. This time though it would be different.
I slowly unwrapped the cloth from around my waist, and stared angrily at the stitches that now closed up my wound. These were the worst, the times where I couldn't place what it was that had happened to me in the examination room. When Jorgaf put me to sleep there was no way of telling what he was doing to me. At least when I was awake I could know, the pain was bearable then.
He had infused me with metal before, enhancing my strength, only to quickly remove the plates to prevent me from escaping. I had submerged myself in water by his direction to the point of drowning to test some new theory or other of his. I'd run on a treadmill at speeds beyond that of any man could while he watched gleefully from the side, shocking me with electricity if I ever tried to remove my bonds. The one thing he always made sure of though was to remove my superpowers after he'd granted them, he didn't want to risk me finding a way out.
This last test had almost been unbearable, Jorgaf had inserted something into my stomach that gave me the ability to shape shift. When he was done experimenting all the different animals that I could change too he'd removed whatever it was that had given me the ability. He had made one important flaw though in his work, he had let me see the code he had punched in to open the door to the testing room. This was the chance I'd been waiting for, I now had a way to escape.
The door to my cell slid open and Jorgaf smiled in at me with his insane grin that I'd learned to detest several times over. "Come along dear," he said dryly, "You know the drill." and indeed I did, I'd memorized it by heart. He would lead me to one room or another strap me down and then leave for an hour or two to prepare, when he came back the horror ensued. I followed obediently behind him as he led me down the hall and into an examination room to strap me down. What he didn't notice though was the small sliver of glass I'd removed from my bedroom mirror, I held it closely in my palm, feeling the bite of it cutting into my skin. As he left he made sure to give my restraints an extra good tug and then locked the door behind him.
As soon as he was gone I wiggled my wrist from the binding it had been placed in. After so many years of lack of enough food Jorgaf had forgotten how thin my hands had gotten. Quickly I unbound the rest of my body. 'Hurry up! Hurry up! You don't have enough time!' I thought to myself anxiously. 'This is your last chance, you're not going to make it much longer here.' The metal door that would open up into the hallway mocked me with its strength, yet it could no longer keep me locked out. I typed in the code I had know memorized by heart "Come on, Come on," I muttered to myself. "66782951666427." I repeated aloud while pushing the buttons methodically. The door swished open with a satisfying beep and I sighed in relief.
Wasting no time I sprinted down the halls, turning left then right in the map I had slowly learned of the building over the years. Reaching the elevator I ran to its right uncovering the secret staircase I had seen on my last attempted escape, the elevator itself was too risky to wait for, that I had learned. The door panel in the wall was blended in carefully with the rest of the surrounding wall paper but my sharp eyes had quickly spotted it. I pulled it open and ran the three flights of stairs upwards, never once pausing for breath. At the top my breathing was hoarse and ragged but still I couldn't stop, I had reached the main level, all I had to do was open the front door using the same code and make it out of the surrounding wilderness.
As I started to type in the code a second time I heard the elevator behind me start to rise. "Oh crap" I muttered darkly. 'No not this time, this time I'm getting out, dead or alive' I thought determinedly, the hand that wasn't punching in numbers clutched the glass tighter. With a resounding beep the door opened, revealing the luscious green of a forest, a sight I hadn't seen since I'd come here. With that I ran, I ran until I could run no more and collapsed upon the soft ground. I looked back to see the building where I had been kept but was surprised to see, nothing.
'There must be a force field around it shielding it from view' I reasoned. I struggled to stand and jolted when a hand reached down to help me. My heart raced with fear as I looked up suspecting I'd see an evil leer but was surprised to find a boy about four years older than myself. He had dark hair and dark eyes and I suspected that he must be from a native tribe.
"Who are you?" he asked in a foreign tongue. I was shocked to see that I could understand him.
'He's Otoe' I thought 'Like my grandfather, I remember speaking to him in the Chiwere language before he died, I learned it faster then I even did English.'
"Please, you must help me," I replied in a similar tongue, "There is a man after me, he will hurt me if he finds me."
The boys eyes widened, with a sinking feeling I realized it wasn't from what I said but from something behind me.
"Elaine, you are such a naughty, naughty girl," Jorgaf scolded, "Making me run all this way after you. I must admit you were faster than I thought, you didn't think I'd really ever leave you alone did you? I keep video footage of all the rooms of my lab and constantly know where you are, there was never really any chance of you getting away. Now I'm afraid I'm going to have to dispose of you, you've used up your purpose, there is one last experiment you can do for me though and perhaps your new friend would like to participate?"
Suddenly I became horribly clear of what I had just done. The boy behind me had now been sucked into my nightmare. "Run!" I called to him in his language, "It's not safe!" He didn't listen, in fact he drew a bow and notched and arrow in it. He let the arrow fly but Jorgaf merely laughed and blasted it from the air with a laser gun.
"You must get help from your village!" I pleaded with him, "Run! It's the only way, I'll hold him off."
Realizing the dire situation the boy looked at me worriedly, "I'll be back" he promised, then disappeared swiftly into the forest.
"Such a shame, I suppose I'll have to let him go, it would be unwise to tamper with the past, well this far back anyway. A whole legion of people could disappear if I killed him. While that would be enjoyable I would rather not have one of them be me. Besides I only take children that are destined to die. You should consider yourself lucky Elaine, you got to live a whole three years longer than expected. You WOULD have been in a car accident with your family anyway, even if I hadn't been there to cause it, and you would have died then with the rest of them, I simply prolonged your existence. Consider your life as a gift to the betterment of science. There is one last thing you can do for me though. This gun," he stated pulling one from his lab coat, "Will fuse you with the very essence of a tree, you'll essentially become one until I come back to separate your particles. After about five hundred years you'll be able to manipulate nature itself. After I take you from the trees core of course. It's quite a long time to wait but it's better than just killing you. I'll be back to get you in the future, that is if your not cut down for logging." Jorgaf aimed the weapon at me and I did the only thing I could think of, I threw the piece of glass in my hand right at his heart.
His scream could be heard as blast of green light enfolded me from the gun. I felt myself being sucked into an oak tree to my right and closed my eyes. 'Being a tree couldn't be that bad could it?'
I tried to fight the pull but it didn't help. At least I thought, looking at Jorgaf's collapsed form, the mad scientist wouldn't be kidnapping any more children. I smiled peacefully and released my hold on the world for the moment. I felt myself be submerged into the tree's core and felt serene. Someday I would find a way to return to the world, but for now all I wanted to do was rest. I could feel the bright sunlight on my leaves and everything that moved around me appeared to do so slowly, the earth seemed to go to a stand still and creep along at a much slower pace. I could see for as far as my roots grew, but beyond that was a mystery to me. I relaxed into the oak and waited for whatever would come.
