SIX BUGS

He lifted one finger to where his mouth would be, forbidding her to speak. He dragged her to the closest bathroom and shoved her inside. He turned to the shower, twisting the knob on full blast. Perhaps, in another life, he would be starting her water as a sign of kindness after the evening she had just experienced. That wasn't this life, however, and she wasn't a stupid teenager with a crush. She was in the bathroom with a killer. She was about to run for her life when he stepped in her way and turned on the sink. He seemed dead set on wasting water. Or perhaps he was planning on using some old torture technique.

"You have a lot of nerve calling me a murderer when you rub elbows with psychopaths," Red Hood leaned his back against the door.

Red Hood.

Here.

In my house.

Olena covers her face with her hands. "Calm down, calm down..." Cold, wet, at wit's end, and with a criminal in her house. The evening's events were beginning to catch up with her, replaying over and over in her mind.

Red Hood watched her, unmoving from his position. From his comfortable perch, one would think he was here on a friendly visit. "I have half a mind to shoot you now."

"You aren't helping," she whispered, crouching low over her knees. She needed to breathe. Think, no, no. Don't think. Breathe. Breathe unless you want hypoxemia. Or was it hypoxia? Doesn't one lead to the other? Shouldn't I know this?

"Hey, Olivia, are you listening to me?"

She held up a lone finger as if she were pointing to the sky. Mr. Hood was having none of that. He shoved her hand away. "I won't wait. I know you were at that meeting tonight with those crooks. You may think you can sway me with this damsel charade, but you are no better than them."

Damsel! That got her to raise her head. "Fine," she gasped, "since you so obviously knew about that meeting, why didn't you go in and kill everyone? We both know you could."

"Because I had a better idea." He crouched down, so he was eye-level. "I'm going to use my own little mole." She would have to wish him well in his efforts if she had liked him but seeing as she didn't she remained silent. The way he had said it, the way he watched her, the way he was keeping silent now brought the whole picture together.

"Me," she whispered with hands tightening over her knees. "Wait. How did you know I wouldn't kill you?"

He just laughed. "Here's how this is going to work. You go on with your little life as normal. You hear anything valuable, you tell me. You have another meeting, you tell me. If one of them takes you to dinner, you tell me."

"And there's no alternative?"

"Unless you consider execution an alternative."

"Well," she dragged out, trying not to think about the threat seriously. He just said he would kill her. In all honesty, that didn't sound too horrible. She had a biology test first thing in the morning, and all of her relatives were already dead. The woman didn't consider herself suicidal, only less fearful of the idea of death than most.

He cut off what was to be said. "I've visited death before. Wouldn't recommend it."

The red man stood over her. His body language seemed to be asking her a question. She needed to clarify one thing. "Why are we in my bathroom?"

"I found six bugs in your living room with there possibly being more. The landline is probably tapped. Be careful with what to you say from now on."

"You searched my house?"

"For almost an hour."

She sucked in a breath while her face warmed. Normal people don't do that. Normal people have good intentions. Normal people watch football. "Get out of my house!"

"Hey," he got in her face, "You forget who holds the gun in this relationship-"

"What relationship? This is blackmail!" Her hand was reaching out to shove him, but he moved before she could touch him.

"-and I can kill you if and when I please. Shut your mouth! Don't cry to me, you liar!"

Heartless as a block of wood, that's what he was. With his helmet being as red as blood and a robotic voice as flat as a dead heartbeat, Olena found herself cold. She was shivering uncontrollably. Red Hood had not turned the hot water on full-blast, that much she was sure of.

She fought through her frigid state and evaluated. He would have killed her already if he cared to. He had turned on the water as not to be heard. Perhaps Gordon had bugged her house. Or... It could have been her new boss... Either was better than her current company. She wanted him gone.

Olena opened her mouth to scream, but he was anticipating that. He stopped any sound and gripped her jaw painfully tight.

"I'll contact you under the name John Crane. Don't forget it." He released her and left. He was just gone. He was there and then he… She groaned and removed her earrings. She threw her jewelry across the bathroom and was ready to scream. As Red Hood had done her the service of checking the downstairs bathroom of bugs and cameras, Olena graced that room with her nightly ritual. And after she had been a witness to two murders, been in league with super criminals, and blackmailed all night long, Olena did the only thing a nineteen-year-old girl would do in her current situation.

She went to bed. With the blue blankets pulled all the way up to her nose and wet hair, she left the light on. I can't think. My brain hurts. Does this mean I have two bosses? If you count my work boss, that makes three… Oh, wait, if you count my professors that's… I don't even want to know. They're teachers, so they shouldn't really-

She sat up. "The test!"

Immediately she laid back down. "If only they knew the kind of night I've had. They'd understand…"

Olena didn't have the smoothest of mornings.

She woke late which meant she slept through her first three alarms. Her safety measure, the sound system downstairs, was set with a fourth alarm. The blast of hard metal had her falling [un]gracefully out of bed. She was late in leaving for her first class of the day, but Wagner was a miracle worker, and so she made it. Barely. A lung was left back on the sidewalk somewhere, but she made it.

The test had been harder than she'd anticipated. Multiple times she looked up and gazed about the classmates. Were any of them having as hard of a time of it like her? The constant scratching of pens and pencils made her doubtful.

At that moment she looked to the front of the room and met the eyes of her professor. The teacher raised an eyebrow, nodding for her to get back to work. Perhaps he was a slave driver in a past life, or perhaps he was simply an impatient man. Either way, she finished her test quickly and left for her next class.

Her third and final class of the day was English. How she ended up taking such a basic class her second year of college, she couldn't explain. The half-filled report stares blankly back at her. As soon as the blonde paused to think, she thought about yesterday. It didn't feel real. The conscience inside of her warred over a simple question. Would she tell Commissioner Gordon?

Movement out of the corner of her eye caused Olena to lift her head.

The English professor stood up from her desk. "Let's talk about a subject that may help you understand the basics of a persuasive paper. Let's talk about the subject of torture. Jonathan, are you for or against the use of torture?"

A handsome boy, the teacher's pet, sat back from his hunched position. He flicked his dark hair out of his eyes, and it was evident he was a freshman. "I suppose I'm for it."

Professor Sanders folds her arms and her nonverbals make Olena want to squirm in her seat. She could tell which side this teacher was on. "Why?"

"Because it helps keep our country safe."

"Safe? Safe how?"

"Well... Say, like, we need to get information about a terrorist attack before the attack can happen. We can't wait around all day interrogating someone who may not talk."

"But does that make torture alright? Even to the point of killing the one tortured?"

Jonathan answered a little more slowly. "In certain instances, yeah. I wouldn't say it's, like, good all the time. But it's still useful."

Professor Sanders leaned over her desk; hands braced on its top. "Alright. Say you killed someone to gain information to save a city, would you do it?"

Jonathan scoffed. "Yeah."

"To save a hundred?"

"Well, yeah."

"What about ten?"

"...I would."

"What about to save one person?"

No one, including Jonathan, let their real thoughts show. After a momentary silence, Jonathan tried to speak. "I..."

The professor straightened and crossed her arms. "And, suddenly, you're playing God."

No one says anything.

No one moves.

Olena began to wonder if they all ceased to breathe.

The teacher smirked sadly at her students. "I took one side and Jonathan took the other. We each made our case. If you are going to take a stand, don't pull your punches. And, above all, don't shoot yourself in the foot. You will lose ten points every time you contradict yourself in this paper. Make it good. You're all free to go."

Olena stepped into the hall and watched as Jonathan disappeared around the corner at a fast clip. She didn't blame him. He may not be the teacher's pet anymore.

She made her way to the bus stop just outside her building, continuing her Monday ritual. She took her lunch at a cafe just a few blocks from her job, ordering her usual. The large window at her booth was her television. She watched the people walking the street, but not seeing them. Her mind replayed her last class again, and again. Was torture ever alright? Was execution? She wanted to vehemently say it was never okay, but she didn't. She couldn't. Why would Red Hood do what he does unless there was a benefit? She wasn't naïve enough to assume the tactics didn't hold merit. If they all lived in a perfect world, torture wouldn't even be needed.

But the world wasn't a perfect place.

She sighed while she stared deeply into her coffee cup, the rest of her sandwich forgotten. No, it wasn't perfect, but that didn't make the moral stuff any easier to decide on. How do lawyers and politicians do it? She squeezed the bridge of her nose.

Someone knocked on the window.

Olena opened her eyes to see blue eyes staring right back. Exhausted blue eyes. "Tim?"

He nodded and entered the cafe. He bought himself a cup of coffee before striding over. "Hey, I was on my way back to my car when I saw you. Is this seat taken?"

"Ah, no," she dragged out the last word, gesturing for him to claim the seat, "Wow. What are the chances?"

"I know. I was looking forward to dancing with you once more last night, but you disappeared during the auction. Bruce was worried."

"Mr. Wayne was worried?"

"Okay, I was the one worried."

She hummed. "That's more likely."

"Where did you run off to? Not a socialite?"

"Gosh no, I always avoided those things like they were the plague growing up."

"Then why go to Bruce's?"

Olena made an uncommitted shrug, looking out the window at all the life passing by. She had crept on hundreds of people from this very seat, guessing the stories that the momentary strangers lived. It was almost tradition, in a way, to people watch.

"I have to keep up appearances, you know?" Literally, she wanted to add.

"Yeah, I kinda get that. Your parents were prominent social figures. They gave a lot to Gotham." Out of the corner of her eye, she could see he was watching the people, too. He continued. "They shouldn't be forgotten, but do me a favor. Stay true to yourself. Don't let others define you," he smiled around his coffee cup.

"How's that a favor?" She sipped from her cup, finding it was already turning lukewarm. Bummer.

Tim's cell went off, and he was quick to silence it. After glancing at the screen he stood and pushed his chair back under the table. "It's a favor because I like you and I want you to like you, too. I'll see you around, Jasia."

He walked out and waved from the other side of the glass, phone to ear. When he was out of sight, Olena shoved her cup away and laid her head on the table. Her phone vibrated, and she jumped. Unlocking it, she read the text from an unknown ID.

'Save this number. It's John Crane.'

"Who..?" Oh, wait. It's him. She had almost forgotten with her crazy morning. Sighing, she saved his number putting his first name as John Crane and his last name as Captain Obvious. That made her almost smile when she texted back, 'Aye aye, Captain.'

She loved her own inside jokes. Her phone immediately vibrated.

'Don't make me come after you.'

It was hard for her to take his threat seriously at the moment. It was like she was texting a stranger she would never see again, but she needed to remember that this guy was a criminal. 'Wouldn't dream of it, Sir.'

'Delete this conversation.'

She rolled her eyes in response but did as he demanded. She took a sip of Tim's still hot coffee and made a face. He drank his black. Bleh.
Setting the cup on her almost empty cup, she saw what lay under. A nicely folded twenty dollar bill. That cheeky little raven fellow! She would have to get him back. They weren't dating so this was war.

She stood and left for work, ready to gain some normalcy back in her day.

Author's Note: And the plot thickens. This chapter

was a fun to write. It may be just me, but I enjoyed

the meeting from Jason. He got rid of some bugs, he

can't be all evil. Did you notice this chapter was longer?

Finding the line between what is right and wrong, what is

necessary and what is ethical can be so hard in the world.

Jason is an interesting fellow due to his sense of justice.

Thank you Keviana for catching all those misused words in

chapter two. Take an oreo to go!