Happy Halloween!

Just gonna reply to a few reviews:

Shadowsteed- Thanks! Glad you are sticking with the story and are enjoying it so far. Hope this chapter is a good as the past few (If they were really all that good)! Sure took me a while to write.

TheLampKnowsAll- Thanks a lot. I was a little worried that I didn't stay in character very well, but I'm glad that I was worried for nothing. Hope you keep reading!


Jonathan

"I told you to stay where you were." Jonathan said as Zoé sank to the ground, breathing hard. He leaned against one of the display cases and started tapping his needles on the glass.

"I don't take orders when I'm being held captive." Zoé replied between breaths.

"If you had listened to me, then you would still be safe, and you wouldn't have all of Joker's thugs after you." Jonathan pointed out. Zoé looked up at him.

"And why would you want me safe? So that you can use me for your experiments?" She asked. She didn't sound angry. Just curious. Jonathan looked at her in mild surprise.

To be honest, that was how it had been at first. He had started watching her after their first appointment. Other inmates had told him that she was fearless, and he had wanted to see just how far that courage would stretch before her mind snapped.

After his encounter with Batman, he had followed Zoé to the mansion. He knew that Batman would be there as well, so it would be killing two birds with one stone. All that time, he saw her as nothing more than a potential test subject. But when he began to feel drawn to her. And when he felt that spark of anger when Zoé was in trouble, he began to wonder if it had turned into something else.

Zoé watched him patiently, then smiled suddenly and stood up to hug him. "That's okay." She said. Jonathan thought he heard sadness in her voice. "Thanks for helping anyway."

Jonathan stiffened, to stunned to react. He could feel his face starting to heat up, and he slowly raised his arms to hesitantly hug her back. I guess that answers that question, he thought. It had definitely turned into something else. Now he just had to figure out exactly what it was he was feeling about the doctor.

When Zoé pulled away, Jonathan felt a sense of disappointment that he couldn't explain.

"What do we do now?" Zoé asked. Before Jonathan could answer, the handle on the door behind him began to jiggle. The door swung open, and Jonathan whirled to face it.

Batman was stumbling through the doorway, but Jonathan wasn't looking at him. The hallway beyond was hazy. Just moments before he found Zoé, Jonathan had placed a few canisters of his gas into the hallway outside of the library so that when Batman came out and rounded that corner, her would be under Scarecrow's influence. Now that gas was leaking out of the open door and into the main hall.

Jonathan cursed and grabbed his mask, pulling it over his head and yanking his hood up over it. "Zoé! Cover your face!"

Zoé looked at him in confusion, then realization dawned on her face. She pulled her sleeve over her hand and started to reach up to cover her mouth and nose, but she was moving too slow. At this rate, the gas would reach them and she would breath it in. Her hand froze halfway to her mouth and she stared past Jonathan, a look of sheer terror crossing her features. Jonathan had never seen someone so scared.

Jonathan looked in the direction Batman had gone, and then back at Zoé. He needed to go after the Bat and study the effects of his toxin, but he wasn't sure if leaving the young doctor on her own would be a good idea.

If he really thought about it, though, the choice was simple. Not going after Batman could mean that he would miss his chance to figure out how he had broken out of his Toxin's grip. No one else was around, so at least Zoé couldn't get physically hurt as she battled her fears. But he couldn't say the same for her mind,

Without another moment's hesitation, Jonathan turned and ran after Batman,

xxx

Zoé

Zoé never noticed that Jonathan was gone; her attention was completely focused on the hallway in front of her. Or rather, what was in the hallway. Her muscles were frozen, as if an invisible force were holding her captive, rendering her unable to move.

A massive spider crouched just beyond the doorway, watching her with eight large, beady eyes. It's legs were so long that they disappeared past the wooden frames on the door. Zoé was so close to it that she could see each individual hair on it's body.

The spider started to come towards her, it's head shoving through the door, but everything else behind it's head was too large. It strained against the wood, stretching it's head as far as it could to get to Zoé. She may have found it comical it she hadn't been so terrified. The spider's fangs were less than a foot away fro her, and she felt immensely relieved that it couldn't reach her.

Then the wood of the door frame began to splinter and crack. The spider was finally able to fit the rest of it's body through the door, and immediately lunged at Zoé, it's two front legs stretched out in front of it. The sudden movement shocked her into action.

Zoé shrieked and took several steps back, knocking over one of the display cases and shattering the glass. Her pants leg snagged on one of the frames of the case and she tripped, falling onto her back,

The spider continued to advance, slower this time, it's movements careful and calculated. Zoé scrambled backwards until her back was pressed against the wall. She shrank back, trying to make herself as small as possible. As the spider continued to get closer, Zoé could do nothing but stare. It's face was only inches away, it's fangs dripping with venom. The spots where the venom hit the floor began to sizzle and burn, like someone had poured acid onto it.

Zoé turned her head to the side in an attempt to keep her skin away from the spider. She drew her knees up to her chest to act as a barrier and squeezed her eyes shut. It isn't real. She told herself. It isn't real.

The heat radiating from the spider's venom was almost unbearable. Zoé kept her eyes shut, continuing to try and convince herself that it wasn't really there.

Itisn'trealitisn'trealitisn'trealitisn'treal.

After several seconds of nothing happening, Zoé slowly opened her eyes. The spider was gone, and so were the holes in the floor where the venom had burned through. Even the ruined door was back to normal.

Zoé placed her hand onto the floor to push herself up, and sliced her hand on a shard of glass that she hadn't noticed was there. She yanked her hand up and cursed under her breath, pulling her sleeve down over her hand and using it to mop up the blood that had began to flow from the wound. Then she pressed the fabric against the cut itself. When she thought the blood had stopped, the tore a strip of fabric off of her jacket and tied it around her hand as tightly as she could stand, letting out a small gasp of pain. The entire time, she kept a wary eye on her surroundings in case the spider came back.

For the first time, Zoé realized that Jonathan was gone. She stood up shakily and looked around, clutching her injured hand to her chest. Where had he gone? Had he left her there? Had all of that been planned?

Moving as quietly as she could, Zoé moved out to the center of the room, trying to see if Jonathan was still there. She turned in a full circle, stopping with her back to the statue. If Jonathan was there, she hadn't seen him. Zoé was, once again, on her own.

She lowered her hands, wincing when she accidentally flexed the injured one. It was throbbing painfully now, and she tried to ignore it. The spider still hadn't shown up, and so far, everything seemed normal.

Was that really a hallucination? She wondered. It had seemed so real. But looking back at it now, Zoé realized how ridiculous it had been. Spiders don't get that big. It isn't natural.

The silence in the room was deafening. It was eerie how there wasn't a single person there. When Zane had brought Zoé here on her first day, the place had been bustling with activity.

The floor squeaked behind her, and Zoé went stiff. She clenched her right hand into a tight first, ready to swing at whoever was sneaking up behind her. When she was able to hear their , she spun around with her fist raised, freezing before she could attack them. Jonathan stood in front of her, his arms crossed. He looked pissed about something.

"Do you always attack people before you know who they are?" He asked. Zoé crossed her arms, mimicking him.

"Do you always abandon people after drugging them?" She replied. Jonathan raked his hand through his hair, messing it up even more than it already was.

"You seem fine now." He said, a look of mild interest crossing his face. "What I don't understand is how. I released a concentrated amount of gas into that hallway, specifically for Batman. Your mind should have been broken. But it looks as if you were able to completely rid yourself of the toxin in your system."

Zoé frowned, lowering her arms. "Was it not supposed to wear off?" She asked.

"Not without leaving behind some permanent damage." Jonathan said with a shake of his head. "Yet, you seem perfectly sane."

"You talk as if you planned for that to happen. Like it was an experiment."

"No. You weren't supposed to come into contact with the toxin."

Zoé fell silent for a moment, looking down at the floor thoughtfully. There was no way that had been a coincidence. It was to convenient. But since her only options were to either stay with him and be as safe as one could be with a criminal or go on her own on an island swarming with insane inmates, she had no choice but to believe him.

xxx

Jonathan

Jonathan knew that Zoé didn't believe him, and it didn't bother him. It didn't change the fact that he was telling the truth. Jonathan didn't lie.

He was glad that she hadn't asked him where he had gone. To be honest, he was to disappointed with the outcome of his encounter with Batman to talk about it. Just thinking about it sent a spark of rage through him.

It had started out fine. When Jonathan got to the center of the room, the best possible spot for observation, Batman had been going around the room in a systematic circle. As he fought through his fears, Jonathan couldn't help but taunt him, pointing out just how powerless the Dark Knight really was. Pointing out that it was Jonathan who was in control.

A group of Joker's men burst into the room, and Batman fought them off easily. Jonathan yearned to know what it was batman saw when he looked at the men. Once the thugs were down, Batman resumed his circling. He would occasionally stop and crouch behind things, out of Jonathan's sight, but he wouldn't stay there long before he was up and running again.

His behavior was strange, nothing like anything Jonathan had seen in past experiments. The man didn't seem scared. Maybe a little agitated, but not scared. The only reason Jonathan could tell that he had been drugged at all was because of the way he kept crouching down behind things, as if he were hiding from something.

The Bat suddenly stopped and pulled out his grappling hook, aiming it up towards the bell tower and shooting the wire, flying up and out of Jonathan's sight. He had seemed normal, almost as if he were no longer hallucinating, which meant Jonathan had not learned anything. That was when he had decided to go back to Zoé.

Now, as they stood across from each other, Jonathan began wondering what was so special about this girl. Something had been drawing him to her as the night dragged on, and even when he wasn't with her, his thoughts constantly returned to her, again and again. Maybe that was why he had been unable to learn anything when he was watching Batman. Why he had found it so difficult to focus.

Zoé finally looked back up at him, her face deliberately expressionless. "I believe you." She said slowly, sounding as if she were trying to convince herself more than she was him.

Jonathan nodded, even though he knew she didn't mean it. He also knew why she didn't actually believe him - He was a criminal. She wasn't bout to believe the word of a criminal.

"I need to go to the Intensive Treatment building. There is something there that I have to do." He said. He had discovered something there when he first came to the asylum. It was a tunnel in one of the elevator shafts that led to an opening, almost like a cave. He had been using it as his base of operations. If he could get there, he could stock up on toxin for his final confrontation with the Bat.

"Lead the way." Zoé replied.


I tried something new with this chapter, with the whole switching-between-point-of-views thing. I'm not sure how it worked out, but I need some practice with it since I'll be doing that a lot with the sequel (Which, by the way, I'm so excited to start writing!). Anyway, hope you liked it, and sorry it took so long!