Part 2 – A Matter of Choice
"My goodness, he's quick."
The storm had abated some time in the night. The day had arrived with disorienting suddenness, bright, sunny and clear. It was warming up fast. Carver had regained consciousness shortly before dawn, but had been unable to move much on his own. His pilot and Robin dragged him out of the shade as soon as the sun appeared. Carver knew it would be hot and humid soon enough, but right now it was still cold. His body ached from the cold.
They had been just sitting, warming up enough to get the numbness out of their limbs, when Robin suddenly cocked his head like he heard something. The next instant, he had bounded across to a tree and swung up into it. His movements were smooth and graceful, almost like he was performing ballet, Carver thought.
Robin had almost vanished from view now, Carver could just make out a patch of red between the leaves of the tree Robin had climbed up. Actually, it had looked less like climbing and more like well choreographed leaping, turning, swinging, leaping again. Like a circus performer on a high wire or a trapeze. Carver could not know how accurate his perception was.
"I'd never make it up that tree, even on my best day," the pilot said, sounding impressed.
Carver grunted but didn't actually answer. He didn't like Robin being so far away. Out of reach. Out of his control. Not that it mattered. Carver couldn't overpower a field mouse right now. He had to face it, no matter how much he didn't like it.
Robin had won.
It was unfair. The stupid pilot and the stupid weather and the stupid plan were at fault. If not for all of that, Carver would have taken Robin down easily. But it seemed that even the wind and rain were on the bird's side. Carver couldn't compete with nature itself. He simply couldn't.
He was defeated, and was now willing to admit it.
Batman would probably show up any minute and take them away. Carver and the pilot would go to prison, the bird would be going home. Going free.
It made Carver angry, just thinking about it. It wasn't fair! Everything had been so simple before. It should have been easy. The hard part should have been catching Robin in the first place. Everything after that should have just been tying up loose ends. Fly him to a new location, turn him over to Carver's employer. That was it. Done. Finished. Everybody's happy.
But no. That wasn't what had happened at all.
Dammit. Damn it all.
Robin wasn't as relaxed as he looked from below. In fact, he was very tense. He barely noticed the renewed heat in his stings, and only hissed absently when his raw left hand brushed against the rough bark of the tree he was perching in. He was busy.
Crouched low, peering upward uneasily, Robin knew he was in trouble. He'd heard something. Something airborne. But it wasn't the Batwing. It was a helicopter, glinting bright white in the intense morning sun. It was flying low, sweeping back and forth overhead in a search pattern.
It was looking for the plane. Carver's employer had come to find them.
Robin's heart beat fast in his chest, so fast it actually hurt. He knew he was experiencing panic. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what was going to happen to him. He had no idea what to expect. All he knew was that his only chance of escape had been Batman coming and finding him.
It would be idiotic to try and run away now, to try and survive in the wild and wait for Batman to show up. For all he knew, the tracer may have been destroyed in the crash. He could die out here waiting for help that would simply never come.
Robin's mind railed against the notion of allowing himself to be captured. His heart rebelled against the very thought of being stuffed in another metal container and shipped for hours in the dark to parts unknown. Like all of humanity, Robin's deepest fear was the unknown. He knew that imagination was a powerful thing, and could easily destroy him if he let it get away. So he tried not to think about anything more than just the next few minutes.
The chopper would land wherever it could as soon as the people in it spotted the plane. That was inevitable. Though the brush seemed thick from the ground, from the air the plane was virtually out in the open, shiny white from the heavy rainfall. The chopper would land, people would get out and come here. They would probably have medical equipment. At least Carver would get help.
They would recapture Robin. If he struggled, it would likely go hard for him. Best to just give in immediately and hope they would think he'd given up. That might buy him an advantage later on.
He knew that intellectually. It was the only thing to do. But emotionally... he was like a wild animal, violently despising all forms of captivity. And some part of him was reluctant to go up in the air again so soon after crashing and getting stuck out here.
Robin felt himself trembling against the branch and sinking lower in the leaves as though they could hide him. He couldn't believe the extreme terror coursing through him all of a sudden. It completely blanked out the white-hot pain in his arm and hand, not to mention the painful throbbing in his chest.
He was exhausted, running on little sleep, no food and no water. He'd been running for almost two days, with only a short nap and a few periods of marked unconsciousness making it less. He didn't have what it took to prevent this mindless fear from taking over.
But he couldn't let it run rampant for long. So he crouched on the branch, shaking like the leaves around him, fighting for control of himself.
Robin realized the fear hadn't really settled in until he got a look at one of the people in the helicopter. He didn't recognize the person per say, but he knew the type. He knew it all too well. Shudders of revulsion ran through him and he thought for a moment he'd fall out of the tree.
Geez, get a grip, you idiot!
The anger directed at himself soothed his frayed nerves. Once the fierce mental outburst occurred, it wasn't so hard to get his fear under control. All he had to do was breathe. He was in no real danger. Not yet anyway. It didn't matter who was in that helicopter.
What mattered was what he knew about them. For some reason or another, they had wanted him alive. Carver had been extremely clear on that point. They were using Robin as a lure for Batman. They wanted Batman, not Robin. Maybe once they had Batman within their grasp, maybe then he'd be in mortal danger. But until then, they wouldn't dare kill him.
A shiver ran down his spine, telling him that he was lying to himself.
With the kind of personality he'd just caught a glimpse of, there were no guarantees. There was no predicting. There was no logic or reason. Beyond this point, anything was possible.
"I'd rather stay here and deal with the giant wasps," Robin muttered to himself.
Robin glared balefully at his new captor.
William Bernard was a tiny man of about four foot two. He was bony and moved in a quick, birdlike manner. He had a round, soft baby face almost devoid of wrinkles, though his shock of white hair betrayed his age, as did his stiff manner. He was wearing an ice cream suit, with matching shoes and bowler hat, and a dark indigo tie with pinpricks of white spattered across it like a field of stars. He was wearing a monocle and gold pocket watch chain and carrying a silver cigarette holder in his right hand, a matching cane hanging over his arm, clearly a fashion piece more than anything. The most bizarre thing about him was, perhaps, his long, thin, hooked nose with its twisting white scar.
Mr. Bernard pulled an indigo handkerchief from the breast pocket of his coat and dabbed at his face.
It was late morning now, and the temperature had skyrocketed. The humidity was terrible. Robin watched the sweat drip down the squishy face, and felt his own sweat sticky on his back. He'd already been ambushed by a number of mosquitoes, but their itchy bites had absolutely nothing on the stings.
He had no words to describe the initial pain he'd felt, but this aftermath he did have words for. If you compared it with a bee sting, which he'd had before, it was like the difference between stabbed with a knife and seeing a picture of someone who had been stabbed.
With the picture, you felt a brief shock as your imagination gave you a faint impression of what it must feel like. Your nerves seemed to cringe in sympathy, or maybe it was your brain filing away the image to tell you not to ever let that happen to you. But that was only a faint, vague impression of what a real stab wound felt like.
That's what the bee sting was. Just an impression, something unreal. The sting of the hawk, that was the real thing. And it hurt like blazes, burning with some kind of internal fire even now.
"We had a devil of a time finding this place," Mr. Bernard told Carver, who seemed disinterested.
Carver had a glassy look in his eyes, like he wasn't really absorbing new input. He was lost out in his own realm of delusion again. Mr. Bernard did not regard the pilot with anything more than contempt.
"So, you're the fool that caused all this trouble," Mr. Bernard said in a clipped way.
"I checked the weather," the pilot said, "and it was supposed to be clear. I don't know what happened-"
"Excuses, excuses," Mr. Bernard waved his right hand dismissively.
He had a large gold ring on his third finger which appeared to have some kind of jewel in it, possibly an emerald. This, among other things, informed Robin that this was a very rich man. The man was clearly accustomed to having things his own way.
"What are you complaining about," Carver growled distantly, "You've got what you want. So what's the use complaining and pointing fingers?"
"My dear Mr. Carver," Mr. Bernard said, his voice full of poorly concealed disgust and doused in a layer of false sweetness, "The problem is this: if you had done as I asked, the bat should have followed you. But now he may well have lost the scent. We have a worm," he gestured towards Robin without looking at him, "but we have no fish."
There were a couple of things Robin didn't like about this situation, aside from the obvious. The first was the total lack of concern for Carver. Mr. Bernard had arrived with three burly men dressed in black suits, military-style boots and tuques. They were nondescript, square-headed, snarly faced men with shoulders the size of a large city humped up so that they hardly seemed to have necks.
Not one of them had given Carver a second glance. They had looked around and immediately identified their target. That brought them to the second thing Robin didn't like.
Though he made no attempt to get away or otherwise struggle, they had piled on him like he was a ferocious crocodile about to snap their heads off. They had sat on him, nearly suffocating him until one of them managed to get him restrained. Metal cuffs bound his hands, and another set had him by the ankles. A belt around his waist had a chain running through it from one set to another. He'd barely be able to stand up, forget walking around.
Finally, they got off him and he lay gasping and wheezing painfully for air. They were standing around him in a cluster, glaring at him like hungry dogs at a piece of meat. Robin didn't like them.
"Don't break him for goodness sake," Mr. Bernard had said at that point, though the concern in his voice was the same one might show for an expensive vase rather than a living thing.
"Now then, what are we going to do about you?" Mr. Bernard wondered.
"Come again?" Carver asked.
"Surely you don't expect to be rewarded for this disaster?" Mr. Bernard said.
"I'm not the one who crashed the plane-" Carver protested, but Mr. Bernard held up his hand.
"Perhaps not," Mr. Bernard agreed, "But you are the one who hired the one who did. And that makes you responsible. You chose to hire a buffoon, and look where it's gotten you."
"But I-" Mr. Bernard held up his hand again, stopping Carver's protests.
"It was a simple choice. And you made the wrong one."
Carver looked truly alarmed now. He lay on the ground, utterly helpless, and Mr. Bernard, his employer, seemed to be threatening to leave him here to die. He looked from Mr. Bernard to the henchmen, to Robin and then back again, panic in his eyes.
"Now," Mr. Bernard said passively, "Let it never be said that I am a cruel man."
As Robin watched, Mr. Bernard produced a silver pistol from his jacket. It was a large piece, beautifully etched with intricate designed along the grip and muzzle. Before Robin could protest or Carver could cry out, Mr. Bernard fired. A single shot, right through the head.
Mr. Bernard put the weapon away without ceremony.
"Now, as for you," he looked at the pilot, "when Batman comes, tell him where we've gone. If I don't get my bat, I will come back for you," he turned to his men, "Come, let us go."
One of the thugs threw Robin over his shoulder. Robin bit back a cry as his full weight came to rest on his cracked ribs. He looked back at the pilot, who sat crying and whimpering, staring at the dead man on the ground beside him, who stared right back with cold, dead eyes...