Chapter 14: Ghosts
Artemis crept through the darkened corridors of Gotham Academy. Her phone torch spilled across lockers and locked doors. She kept glancing down at her phone screen, hoping for a text from Dick. Where was he? She was worried about him, she admitted.
Gotham Academy was a maze warren. Artemis reached the top of a staircase. There were two different corridors stretching out on her level. But what level was she on? She'd come through the window on the second floor, but she had a feeling that she was more lost than she thought. When she and Bette went to the office they had climbed two flights of stairs and stayed on the first floor. That had only happened two days ago.
It felt like so much longer.
There was a tiny metal etched map stuck to the wall next to the staircase. There were so many names that Artemis could barely make anything out on the map. She was reminded of her nightmare–the small door out in the courtyard and the shadow that suffocated her, and shivered. She looked at the map. She thought she was there, on the left side at the bottom of that staircase. The office was in the middle, to her right. But there was no corridor to her right. She huffed in frustration.
She took the stairs down.
She looked at the shadows of the lockers enlarged up to the ceiling from her phone. She had always felt at home in the night time, but right now she would give nearly anything to see sunlight peeking through the row of windows and sliding off the shiny tops of lockers.
Schools were a strange place at night.
Artemis found more classroom doors, their numbers bold and blocky. She didn't recognise any of the numbers from her classes, but they all began with the number two.
Artemis let herself imagine for a second that Bette was locked behind one of these classroom doors. She shone her torch onto the door she was walking past and the glass window reflected the light and her chin and lips. She imagined that Bette was struggling tied up, that she could see the light and Artemis through the corner of the window, and tried to shout out around the rag muffling her.
Artemis shuddered and continued on her way. She just needed to find the office and search it. One step at a time.
She padded forward until she reached another staircase. She shrugged and went down it, trailing her fingers on the cold stonework of the wall. She felt like she was a ghost. She wondered if ghosts existed. Magic existed so logically ghosts probably did too, right? She thought that if they did exist there'd be many ghosts for each person; everyone killed off parts of themselves to be different people than who they used to be.
Finally Artemis thought she knew where she was. This was one of the staircases she climbed with Bette, wasn't it?
Tree shadows groaned and shook, their leaves pinging against the sides of the windows. The office was in the corridor ahead and to the left, she recognised a few of the posters stuck to the walls, this was it!
Artemis turned the corner to see the office lit up, and two figures standing in the doorway. She ducked back behind the corner, turned her phone torch off, and pressed herself into the wall. Her heart was racing. Something metal was pushing uncomfortably into her back, but she ignored it. That had been so careless of her! When no one shouted or came her way, she took a deep breath and relaxed. She was okay. They hadn't seen her.
They were talking and Artemis stood still and tried to listen.
"Can't we move it forward?" A hushed woman's voice, breathy with nerves.
"No. We will stick with the deadline. I will not be seen as unreliable, or to be spooked by one annoying cop's snooping. We will move forward the night after tomorrow." The second voice sent chills down Artemis's spine. It had a refined accent, and the words were spat out with quiet menace. The cop's snooping. Was he talking about Capooche?
"I… Okay."
"I know you want to ask me. It is natural to be concerned about one's progeny; it is, after all, they who shall inherit the earth."
"H-how is she?"
"Safe. Improving. And she will be as long as your co-operation continues," the man crooned. "Come on," a soft laugh, "you know that above all I am a man of my word."
Artemis itched to just poke her head out from around the corner to get a look. The man, especially, sounded important to whatever was going on. What deadline was going on? What operation was being conducted out of Gotham Academy's office?
They were speaking again, but too softly for Artemis to make out. She looked at her phone, an idea forming. They would see her if she stuck her head out to get a closer look, but surely they wouldn't see just a phone.
Artemis opened the camera app on her phone, and inched the camera out around the corner.
The figures were a bit blurry, but on her screen she could make out the turned back of a man in a suit, and beyond him, half a neck which belonged to the female speaker, the edges were black and grainy from the shadows, but the rest was lit up from the light within the office. Artemis frowned in frustration. She pinched the screen, trying to zoom in on the woman, see some sort of detail that would lead to a clue, an identity, anything that could lead to Bette.
The neck grew on the screen, pale and grainy. Too large. Artemis fiddled a bit with the zoom. Finally happy with it, Artemis drew her hand back, accidentally pressing the camera button on her phone. She watched in horror, powerless as the phone's light went off, illuminating the hallway, and then a larger flash as a photo was taken. Artemis froze.
"What was that?" the woman said.
"It appears someone has been eavesdropping," the man said. "Come on out," the woman gasped at something. "We won't hurt you." Artemis heard the distinctive sound of a gun being cocked that echoed loudly through the whole corridor.
She bolted, running back the way she had come.
The report of the gun being fired three times, deafening in the cramped corridor. Artemis flinched at each gunshot, imagining the bullets ricocheting off the walls and lockers like a deadly game of Ping-Pong. But through blind luck or poor aim, she wasn't hit at all.
Her whole body was shaking from the sudden injection of adrenaline. Her shoes squeaked on the floor. Her teeth were gritted from the expectancy of another gunshot and a sudden pain in her back.
As she reached the end of the corridor before the stairwell she had come down before, she couldn't resist a glance over her shoulder to check for a pursuer. The man was standing at the other end of the corridor. He wasn't holding his gun. She could just make him out, a shadow deeper than the rest.
He turned around and walked away from her as slowly and as casually as if he were strolling down a supermarket aisle.
His voice echoed back as smooth as velvet. "Run as fast as you want to, you won't get away."
Artemis shivered, and ran up the stairs taking them two at a time; the only sound her rasping breath and the pad of her shoes against the worn stone.
Everyone was silent when they reached Gotham Academy. They had been silent for some time. The alcohol was slowly wearing off, and Billy had a headache that pulsed with every step. His tongue felt like sandpaper. Worst of all was the knowledge of his father's death roiling around and around his head like a constricting python.
"Well I guess this is it then," he said, standing in front of the wrought iron gates, a chain wrapped and padlocked around it. His voice sounded raspy and he could barely recognise it. It was like everything he said belonged to someone else.
"How are you going to get in?" Alex asked.
Billy looked up at the gates, tall and looking impossibly high. "Uh… with a little help?"
Q and Warren moved over to the gate. Interlacing their fingers, Billy tentatively stepped into it.
"One… two… three!"
Billy pushed himself upwards. For a brief moment he thought he would go shooting upwards into the dark until he vanished, but he only just latched onto the top of the gate with his hands. The metal was cold and gritty from rust. He scrabbled at the gate trying to push himself over. Two pairs of hands pushed his legs up. His pants were sagging down, and Billy reached one hand down to pull them back up. He managed to get his right elbow up over the gate, and he hung like this for a second, until Warren and Q heaved underneath him (Billy felt one of them push against his bottom and felt a surge of embarrassment) and then he was up and over the gate and falling.
The night slid around him as he fell. Air rushed through his ears like he were in a wind tunnel, and everything seemed to slow down, until he felt like he could reach out and pluck a strand from the air. He hit the ground and groaned.
"Shit, are you okay?" Q asked.
"Yeah," Billy rasped. "I'm okay." He pushed himself up and inspected himself for damage. There were tears in his blazer elbows as well as his knees. "Thanks for, you know, helping me out." Billy brushed himself off.
"That's alright," Warren said. "Anytime. It was nice to meet you, Billy."
"I'm sorry about your father," Alex said. Her face was half hidden from the gate bars, she looked like some organic barcode.
"Don't be," Billy said. "He deserved worse than what he got." Billy shivered from a heavy gust of wind. "It's getting cold," he said.
No one replied, and he shuffled back and forth uncomfortably.
"Goodbye, Billy," Alex said.
He nodded back. "Goodbye," he croaked out. He cleared his throat. "See ya," he said as nonchalantly as possible.
The three teenagers walked off. Billy kept expecting them to turn back and wave one last time, but they didn't. Slowly they grew indistinguishable from the darkness, and then all at once, Billy was alone.
He sighed, and trudged toward his dorm. He was about to be in severe trouble. He patted his pocket. At least he still had his dorm room key, and the card to swipe himself into the dorm building. It was dark and he stumbled a couple of times on the uneven path.
He heard gunshots. The sound was unmistakeable. There were three. He paused, frozen, but the ensuing silence stretched out. Why were there gunshots at Gotham Academy? Billy shivered and pulled his arms closer around himself. He looked around, but the night time was cold and showed nothing. The darkness reminded him of the lakes he had read about online that were a mile deep beneath their flat exterior. Something was going on, and the worst part was that he had no idea what it was.
He called Capooche, but the rings ran out, a brief crackling silence and then: "This is Martin Capooche, leave a message and I'll try to get back to you." Billy groaned and shut his eyes and then opened them again. It was just as dark as before.
He called 911. His hands were shaking by the second ring.
"911, what's your emergency?" The operator was a woman. She spoke too calmly, Billy didn't like it.
"I've heard gunshots at Gotham Academy."
"Are you in danger?"
Billy looked around him. "No, uh I don't think so. I'm outside."
"Has anyone been hurt or wounded that you know of?"
"I don't know."
"What's your name?"
"Why does that matter?"
"Sir, what's your name?"
"Just get here," he said, and hung up.
The grounds crawled with guards. Artemis peeked out the grounds-facing window of the classroom she had just picked the lock of. A guard walked across, and glanced up at the window she was looking out of. Artemis whiplashed back behind the wall.
She was surrounded by hostile people while she was trapped in a school at night. She could imagine the guards scouring through the school like water flooding a maze.
She nearly laughed from the absurdity of it all. She had sent Dick a text warning him about the man with the gun, not mentioning her stupid mistake that had led to it all happening.
Stupid mistakes were stupid, inherently. But they could get you killed. Artemis cringed, once again remembering what had happened in full. Batman and the Team would never let her hear the end of it if they knew.
Three things were clear to her right now. One: the guards were working for the man who had shot at her. Two: she had to either escape the school soon, or find somewhere to hide where the guards wouldn't find her or she was screwed. Three: the man had something to do with Bette's disappearance. It was too much of a coincidence for him not to. And whatever secrets the man was hiding, he was willing to kill a curious schoolchild to keep it a secret.
The funny thing about secrets, Artemis thought, is the way they have of getting out. Which just made her think about the lies she was telling the Team. She resolved that if she got out of this alive, she would come clean about her family. There was nothing to be ashamed of–it wasn't like she could choose her father and her sister, or decide what they did with their lives.
Artemis checked her phone. It was eleven o'clock, with still no text from Dick. She only had thirty minutes to escape, and meet up with Dick at the rendezvous time in the park. Being on time was looking more and more unlikely… getting there was looking less and less likely.
She checked the hallway by looking out the classroom window. All clear. The door creaked when she opened it like an oak tree in the wind. She didn't know if the guards had access to the school security system, so she decided the best way out undetected was the way she had come in –through the window on the second floor.
She reached the hallway the classroom was on without difficulty, retracing her previous steps like a ghost. She was cautious now, and didn't walk with her phone torch on–anyone ahead could see the light and come rushing, like the bugs to the bright fluorescent lights outside her apartment.
She stepped out to the classroom and saw the guards. They were down the left end of the corridor, facing away from her. She checked their hips. No visible guns. But that didn't mean they didn't have them.
She pulled her hood further down and padded across to the classroom. She opened the door as slowly as possible, wincing at the slight sound, glancing at the unmoving guards. They hadn't seen her. She slipped inside and pushed the door shut, being careful not to let the latch click. She breathed a sigh of relief.
"Hi."
She spun around. Dick was sitting on the teacher's desk, legs swinging back and forth like a child's, face illuminated by a slice of moon. She walked over to him. "What, not going to say hi? I–" he was cut off by Artemis punching him in the shoulder. "Ow." He rubbed his shoulder tenderly.
"Where have you been?" Artemis exclaimed. She had been out there being shot at, worried about him, while he had been lounging here, too busy to let her know he was okay! It felt like hot coals infused her whole body, and steam was hissing from her joints.
"Quiet down," Dick said, glancing at the door. "Someone will hear you."
"I don't care," Artemis said, but her voice was lowered as she glanced at the flimsy wooden door leading out to the corridor and the two guards. "You couldn't have texted me?"
"I did," he said, swinging down off the desk to stand next to her. She was taller than him, she realised smugly.
She checked her phone. Dick had sent her a text less than a minute ago. Behind you.
"Are you serious?"
He tossed something to her and she caught it reflexively. She turned it over in her hands. It was her flashlight she had dropped on her climb to the window. "I was busy retrieving this, and I had to come back the long way round to miss the guards. That's when I heard the gunshots, and checked my phone."
"And you didn't think to reply earlier?"
"I didn't want to distract you," he said.
"Hmm. Speaking of guards, there's some in the hallway." Artemis nodded her head toward the door.
"There's also more than a few below," Dick said. Artemis looked at the window. Dick had put it back in, she noticed.
"Well how do we get out then?" Artemis asked.
Dick shrugged and sat back onto the desk. "For now, we don't."
Outside it had begun to rain. Artemis sighed and hopped up onto the desk next to Dick. This might take a while.
Billy still couldn't hear sirens. What had happened to the police? Were they even coming? He had been hesitant to walk toward the gunfire, so he was hiding behind a tree. He felt rain lightly on his face. He looked up, and that's when it started pouring down in sheets. The tree offered little shelter. He was already sopped; he felt water trickle down the back of his neck like icy fingers. He started shivering uncontrollably.
Billy could see the top of his dormitory over the grey shoulder of the main building. He thought longingly about the hot showers, and crisp sheets that awaited him.
He thought about the gunshots. Maybe they weren't really gunshots. They could have been fireworks set off by some unruly teens. Who was he kidding, they had been unmistakeably gunshots.
He let himself imagine someone, Mr Vasquez maybe, working late at night in his office, glasses set down on his desk, the weak light of a lamp straining down onto the book he had told the class he was writing. Mr Vasquez hearing a noise, had stood up, knocking over the lamp and shattering it on the floor.
"Who's there?" Mr Vasquez said.
No one answered. And he walked out of his office into one of the corridors, floor slippery with light from the moon spilling in through the windows. A tall shadowy figure stepping out. Bang! Bang! Bang!
Billy laughed quietly at his own stupidity. The rain hadn't stopped and now even his jumper under his blazer was sodden and heavy. His legs and arms felt cold and clammy. He felt utterly miserable. His mouth tasted foul, and he hawked up some phlegm and spat it on the ground, his saliva stringing back to his mouth like a spider's web. He brought his finger up and wiped it away.
He looked back, out through the gates of Gotham Academy, hoping to see the blue and white shadow of a police car. Or to hear its whooping siren jump and dip and swerve from a mile away as the car trawled through the sheets of rain. But there was nothing. He could only hear the gentle chirp of crickets, and the drum of rain as it scythed through the tree leaves above him, and the loud tin sound as it threw itself onto the roof of Gotham Academy.
He was getting colder. Billy pushed his hands under his armpits and jigged from side to side. The ground under him was sodden and muddy, and his shoes squelched every time he stepped.
He looked over at the dormitory. Smoke rose up in rings from the chimney and Billy shivered once more. It was dark enough and the rain too heavy that whoever had fired the gun wouldn't see him if he walked over to the dorm. Right? His feet had already begun to move, and ignoring any lingering trepidation, Billy allowed himself to follow.
He jogged through the rain. He fell over once after stumbling. He picked himself back up from the grass without any damage, and continued on. He had to go around the side of the main building to get to the front dorm entrance. He checked his pockets once more for his keys and card. They weren't there. He paused. He checked his other pocket, but only his phone was there. He ground his teeth and put his head between his hands in frustration. They must have fallen out of his pocket when he had fallen over. He took a few deep breaths. It was okay–he could go back and search for them.
He retraced his steps to where he thought he had fallen, got out his phone, glancing at its broken screen, before using it as a light to search. The ground was muddy, and his back started aching from bending over to look closely at the ground. He sat down in the mud and thought for a second. There was probably someone at the dorm reception he could get to open the door. Or he could call someone in the dorm to wake them up and come down to get him. That would have to be okay.
He walked around to the dorm, and saw a security guard standing under the lit up outside. Thank god.
"Hi," Billy said and the security guard started. "Thank god I found you, I lost my keys and I wasn't sure…" Billy trailed off as he saw the guard reach down to his hip.
The guard brought up his walkie talkie. "I've found the target," he said.
"What?" Billy said uncomprehendingly. He stepped forward to the guard and then convulsed as something hit him in his chest. He heard a loud clicking sound and Billy bit his tongue as his muscles spasmed out of control and he felt waves of pain pushing through him. He saw the grizzled face of the guard as he fell backwards. There was a dull pain in the back of his head, then nothing.
Dick wouldn't stop clicking the pen.
"Would you shut it," Artemis hissed. "The guards might hear you."
"Okay," Dick said. There were a few moments of silence but for the rain pouring down in grey-metal sheets, then the clicking started again.
Artemis reached across and yanked the pen out of Dick's hand, throwing it clattering into the dark corner of the classroom. Dick reached into the container on the teacher's desk, and looking Artemis in the eyes, drew out another pen.
Artemis threw up her hands, and stalked off to look out the window.
"Dick," she said. "The guards are walking off."
Dick was by her side in an instant, looking down with her out the window. The guards, who had stood in the rain for the better part of fifteen minutes, were now walking away. "What's going on?" she said.
Dick frowned, tapping his fingers in a pattern on the windowsill. "I don't know," he said.
They heard the crackle of a radio outside the door, and they ducked lower at the windowsill. Artemis could see the shadows of the guards through the plate of glass set into the door. Artemis wished she had had the thought to relock the classroom door, she would feel a lot safer behind a door that a pair of curious guards couldn't open if they tried.
"Well I'm glad they caught the little bastard," one of the guards said.
"True. But I like to think what the boss is going to do to him," the other guard's voice drifted back to them, surprisingly feminine and high, like a pre-pubescent boy. "He gives me the bloody creeps."
"I'd watch what you say about him."
"Well he's not here now, is he?"
The bickering guards walked off, and Artemis shared a look with Dick. They were both right here, safe. And so the obvious question remained: "Who do they have?" Artemis whispered.
Billy opened his eyes to a bright light. He blinked and opened them again, squinting. His whole body felt tired and ached like a really hard work out. His whole head pounded, worse than before from the alcohol. What had he been hit with? He grimaced, remembering the pain.
He was tied arms and feet to a metal chair. He looked down and could see a puddle from where his sopping clothes had dripped water onto the floor. A flash of fear flipped his stomach. What did they want from him? Were they going to kill him?
He wet his lips. They were numb from the cold.
"I think you've m-made a mistake," he called out, voice high and scratchy from nerves. "I don't have important parents, so you can go out there and kidnap someone else."
Billy heard soft laughter from close behind him that raised the hairs on his neck and made him shiver.
"That's where you're wrong, William," a man said. Billy clenched his jaw when he heard his name, how did he know it? "I happen to think your parents are very important." The soft, sardonic laughter again. "Well at least one of them."
The man's shoes clicked as he walked around to the front of Billy. Billy gasped. "It's good to see you again, William, even in these circumstances."
Billy looked up at the man in the suit and felt every emotion and memory flooding back down his throat and out unto his tongue. "I heard you were dead." he said.
Billy's father opened his hands wide, rings blinking under the lights. "What did Twain say? The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
Billy grimaced at his father's grin, and struggled in his restraints, rope biting into his wrists.
"Go to hell," Billy spat on the floor.
His father pulled up a chair and sat backwards on it, leaning over the backrest. He tapped his hands against the metal chair, rings clinking harshly. The bottom of his face was in shadow, and Billy could smell cloves on his breath.
"But, my boy," he said, "we are already there."