DEAD BEFORE THE DAY IS DONE

Trigger Warning: Torture Scene

Unknown

A steady thud awoke me; my head pounding after my nose had taken a beating. Thank you sooo much Adam. I leaned back in my chair, wincing at the stiffness in my neck before lifting my hand to rub it. At least, I tried to. My eyes flew open and snapped down only to find my hands were tied to a chair by cloth, along with my ankles. "Son of a bitch." I hissed, trying to tug my hands out of the bindings.

"Don't bother."

My head snapped back up, startled by the sound of another voice. It was hoarse, like she had been screaming. There was a girl opposite me who looked far worse for wear. Blood coated her and her face and crusted in her hair. One side of her face was swollen, so much so that you could only make out the brown pupil. The other side was mottled with bruises. "What's your name?" I asked, tasting the blood that had dried on my lips.

"Kira." She replied. "Don't bother trying to get free, he'll find you." She told me, the fear in her eyes obvious. "He'll always find you."

"I'm Nina." I replied, choosing to ignore that last comment and went back to trying to get myself out of the binds. "Well he won't get me. I'm going to get us out of here." I paused. "Or my friends will come get me. Whatever comes first." I shrugged.

"You must be Nina." She said, making my head snap up to face her.

"Excuse me?" I said.

"He talks about you, you know." She spat. I ignored the comment that made my skin crawl. "How will they even know where to find you?" Kira asked.

"My friends?" I asked.

"Yeah." She confirmed.

"They just will." I replied, looking around the room. It was dark and windowless; the only light in the room was the one coming from the grey lamp in the corner. I began to shiver, feeling the cold temperature of the room.

"How? When? How the hell are they going to get down here, hm?" Kira asked, still managing to sound snide even though she had been beaten to a bloody pulp. "Don't you think I've been screaming for hours for help? No one's coming!" She snapped, before her voice was reduced to heart breaking whisper. "No one's going to help us." She was terrified and hopeless. God knows how long she had been down here.

Speaking of which, where the hell was here?

Her whisper only made me more determined. "No, no, I'm going to get us out of here, don't worry." I said, my eye suddenly being caught by the lamp in the corner. An idea came into my head. The bindings around my wrists were only cloth, this was perfect! I began to throw all of my body weight into pushing the chair closer towards the lamp.

"What are you doing?" Kira asked.

"Just watch." I replied, before a voice rang through the room that made my blood run cold.

"God, you still have a voice?" Adam said mockingly from the entrance of the room. "I thought you lost that from all the screaming you did. Mind you, the whispers are a far better improvement. Less painful on the ears and far less annoying."

"What do you want, Adam?" I sneered at him.

"Wait your turn dear, I want to deal with this one first." He replied, coming around to Kira's seat.

"Whoa, hey, hey, what are you doing?" I said, my eyes widening as he cut through her bindings and pulled a syringe from his back pocket. Kira began to scream as loud as she could as he lifted her into his arms. "Let her go, it's me you want! Just let her go!"

"Oh I know." Adam replied, pulling a weakly struggling Kira into his arms. "I intend to talk after I get rid of all distractions and, oh my god, would you please hold still?" He slammed the syringe into her neck and injected something into her.

"Adam, don't, don't hurt her, it's me you're angry with!" I pleaded, my heart pounding with fear as Kira fell limp in his arms.

"Oh hush, I'll be back soon." He replied, carrying Kira bridal style and walking out the door.

"Adam wait please! Don't hurt her!" I screamed after him, struggling in my chair as I tried to get closer to him. "Stop, stop, please! ADAM PLEASE, PLEASE, STOP!"

EARLIER

"Hey Kaldur, what are you doing out here?" Artemis asked, seeing the blonde boy standing outside in the parking lot. The dance was still going outside, but she had left it behind when her friend disappeared after another did.

"I have been trying to call Nina for the last ten minutes." He replied, phone still pressed to his ear. He let out an annoyed groan at the familiar sound of Nina's answer phone, what he had been getting the last few times he called her. "She went out because she had some business with her friend and never returned. I have searched all around the grounds for her, but I could not find her or her friend. Have you seen her?" He asked.

"No, sorry." She replied. "Do you think maybe she went off with her friend?"

"No, she would have called me to tell me if she had." Kaldur replied, calling the number again.

"She could have no signal." Artemis suggested.

Kaldur sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Could you help me look around?" He asked.

"Yeah, of course." Artemis replied. They searched through the parking lot for a few minutes, before Artemis stopped. "Call Nina again." She said. Kaldur did as she said and Artemis stiffened, going closer to the sound. She could hear a phone ringing, was it Nina's?

Her question was answered when she found a clutch bag lying abandoned on the ground. She searched through it and found Nina's phone, confirming that it was her bag. Artemis held up the bag for Kaldur to see, making his eyes widen. Where could she be?

NOW

A few minutes had passed and Adam hadn't returned. I still struggled in my chair until the door opened again. Adam came in, whipping his hands on a rag. My blood boiled in rage. "What did you do to her?" I snarled. "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO HER?"

Crack!

My head had snapped to the side. My cheek stung from the slap. "Would you stop being so dramatic?" Adam said, rolling his eyes as if he was merely irritated. "Honestly, you were always so dramatic as a child."

"I'm being dramatic?" I spat at him, feeling the rage in my bones. "You murdered an innocent girl and for what? Because you're angry that you got slapped around by dad?!" I howled in pain as Adam's fist slammed into my possibly broken nose. He hit me again and my head slammed to the side.

"Shut up! JUST SHUT UP!" He snarled, pulling his fists back. His jovial mood was gone and his anger had replaced it. "Why shouldn't they hurt like I was hurt? Why shouldn't they feel what they feel?" He asked, stopping his punching and getting right into my face.

"Because it wasn't their fault you ass." I replied, before spitting blood into his face. He stumbled back and gave a roar of rage. "What dad did to you was unforgivable!" I shouted over his cry. "But doing this, it makes you as bad as him." I said, my voice almost a whisper.

"Maybe it makes you worse."

He whipped around pressed a scalpel into the bare skin of my thigh. I howled and whined as the pain burned through me. "Don't you ever compare me to him." He whispered as he twisted the scalpel, making me howl louder as the tears ran down my cheeks, before he tugged it out. "A father is supposed to love their child." He said, before trailing the scalpel down my other thigh. "Not treat him like their personal punching bag!" He brought the scalpel up and pressed it into my arms, painting them red with blood. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to block out the pain, tried to think of happier times, of mom and Selina and my friends- anywhere but here.

"And aren't brothers supposed to care for their siblings?" I croaked out, my voice hoarse from screaming.

He brought the scalpel up to my face and pressed it behind my ear. I screamed again and he yelled over it. "Don't you dare twist this! Don't you dare make this about you!" He pulled the scalpel out and I leaned forward, retching in pain.

"Is it not?" I asked. "The girls all look like me, you came after me, what fucking part of this isn't about me?!" That seemed to silence him. He stood back, staring. I stared straight back, glaring fiercely at him.

He sighed and threw the scalpel down, before picking the cloth back up again. He turned away and walked out of the room. "Make yourself comfortable." He said. "We're going to be doing this for a while." At that he left and the door slammed shut behind him, leaving me with my pain.

I leaned forward and abruptly vomited from the pain.

A sob erupted from my mouth and before I knew I was sobbing from pain and fear. Stop crying! STOP CRYING! I thought. Crying was going to get me nowhere. I spotted the lamp again and reverted to my original plan.

I tugged the chair over, managing to shift my body weight to move it, and slammed it into the lamp. It fell down low enough for my fingers to latch around it and press it to the cloth around my wrist. Come on, come on, come on. I bit my lip to keep in my cries of pain from my burning flesh, feeling the blood trickle down my chin. The cloth sound broke and I was able to tug my hand away. The lamp was pushed away and the rest of my bindings were tugged off.

A spare piece of cloth was pulled around my thigh as I remembered seeing something like this from TV. In those stupid medical programmes that I had no time for, but Selina secretly had a guilty pleasure for them. I tugged the cloth around it and tied it tightly, before stumbling to my feet. The blood loss made me stumble and nearly topple over, if it wasn't for the nearby table I grabbed, I probably would have.

Come on Nina, we have to get out of here, come on.

"Come on." I whispered, trying to get myself to move. In all honesty, I just wanted to collapse from exhaustion, but the outcome of that didn't seem so appealing. So I stumbled out of there, but not before grabbing the scalpel Adam had discarded.

My eyes scanned the desk and what I found made my lips curl in disgust. Pristine knives lay on the table, the amount so large that I could almost guess he had a collection.

He probably had, the sick bastard.

Focus. I limped out of the wound, my body aching in protest at my stumbling. The hallway outside the small room was dark. The only light I could see came from the few bulbs and even then it wasn't enough to light up the room. The smell of something rotten made me gag, the want to get out of here getting more and more apparent.

I stumbled down the hallway, diverting down the only passage, before my foot got caught on something that made me fall flat on my face. I let out a groan and pushed myself to my hands and knees, turning to see what had made me trip and fearing the worst. To my surprise, it was only a bag, but to my delight, something had fallen out of it. A phone!

A soft cry of happiness erupted from my mouth and I whipped back to grab it. Though I didn't know where I was, I knew something that could figure it out so I quickly pressed the number in and prayed for him to pick.

What I didn't notice in my distracted state was Adam creeping up behind me, in a furious state from my escape. A hand clamped around my ankle and tugged me back. I screamed and the phone tumbled out of my hand. "Hello?" Dick answered.

"Dick it's Nina!" I screamed, biting at Adam's hand as he clamped one of my mouth in an attempt to shut me up. He pulled at my legs as I scrambled to get the phone. "HELP ME! YOU HAVE TO HELP ME!" Adam slammed my head into the floor and the world went black again.

Kyle Apartment
December 9th 2010, 00:17

"What the hell do you mean she's gone?" Selina snapped.

"I am so sorry Miss Kyle, but she left the school and never returned. We found her things in the parking lot, but there was no sign of Nina." Kaldur replied, feeling his exhaustion and worry weigh him down. He and Artemis had found Nina's friend in the football field during their search and called an ambulance for her. The dance was cancelled soon afterwards and the students sent home. However, there was still no sign of Nina.

They had gone to Selina and told what had happened, making the woman pace up and down the apartment in worry. Artemis had left to go speak to her mother, who had called her in a state of worry when she found out what had happened in the school. She was going to return later however.

Kaldur still stood in the room and soon after the door was opened and in came Bruce Wayne with Dick Grayson at his side. "I heard what happened." He said. "How long has she been gone?"

"Nearly four hours sir." Kaldur told him.

He sighed, running a hand through his hair as the phone began to ring. "Excuse me." Selina said, picking it up and walking out of the room.

"What happened?" Bruce asked Kaldur.

"Like I told Miss Kyle, she went outside to speak to someone and never returned. We searched for her and found a friend of hers on the football field unconscious." He replied.

At that moment, Dick's phone began to ring as well. He pulled it out of his suit jacket and raised an eyebrow at the number. "Hello?" He said, before turning away. "Who is this?"

Selina came back into the room, her eyes staring straight ahead. "Selina?" Bruce said. "What's wrong?"

"That was the cops." She whispered, seeming on the verge of tears.

"They found a body and they think it's Nina's."

"I'll try to finish this by end of the year/January time."

Well that was the biggest lie ever.

I am honestly so, so sorry about going months without updating guys and in all honesty I have no excuse for it. Okay, I did have my GCSE's towards the end of the year there, but now they're finished and I hope to upload more. But to be honest, a better excuse is that all my creativity for my YJ stories seems to be going and it's possibly because it's finished or because I just have different interests now. In all honesty, I don't know whether or not I'll be doing a sequel to this, because I don't want to give you chapters that are bad that you've also waited ages on.

Anyway, I hope to have this done for the end of the summer, but please don't hold me to that.