Disclaimer: Refer back to First Chapter, First page.
Chapter 25 (Realities and Nightmare's)
Robin's body felt groggy, his heavy eye lids had a hard time opening. His first blinks took in blinding light, then slowly his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Where am I?
Robin looked around himself. He was standing in a black void. The room he was in had no lights he could make out but there had to be light because he could make out small forms of objects. That over there looked like a packing crate, maybe that over there was a chair. Robin began stretching out his arms and muscles, running a silent check of his bodies physical well being. Everything was very week and tired, but it all seemed to be in working order.
Robin noted his jeans had a rip in the knee and his white shirt was dirty and tattered on the edges of his sleeves. A rather loud yawn escaped Robin's mouth. Wow am I tired. I could sleep forever with how weak I feel. Thought Robin calling his hidden deep reserves of adrenalin and energy to keep himself awake and alert.
Let's see, I remember being in the town of Denten. I can only guess that I'm still there. Maybe. I was playing pool, then Steve started a fight, I….I can't remember what happened after that, I must have been knocked out.
A person's voice started calling to him: "Richard…Richard…Robin…..Robin where are you?
Robin began looking around for the person belonging to the voice. "Who are you? Called back Richard; standing now on a vastly empty voided cliff. All around below, he noted nothing but bottomless smoky gray clouds.
"Richard what's wrong?" Called out the voice to him again….It's intensity sounding like it was growing closer to him.
Richard continued to look around the smoky gray cliffs. Repeating the question he'd just been asked. "What's wrong? What do you mean? You called to me? Who are you?
The unknown voice took a worried tone, then confusion. "I didn't call to you? You called to me…."
Suddenly a bright light hit Robin's eyes. The intensity of the light hurt his eyes. Richard's unmasked eye's blinked, he tried to shield them with his arm, but the light remained bright as ever.
Then just as the light suddenly went out and Robin was once again pitched into the void of darkness he again heard the voice calling to him. This time what started out as a calling to him of his name; irrupted into sudden screams, in his ear's "Richard…Robin!
The chill of his name being cried out like this made his body feel electric. Shiver's and goose bumps crawled over his arms and neck. Richard turned around in circles looking for the voice. Nothing, there was nothing but darkness.
A much smaller voice asked right next to him. It's breath hot and quick on his neck: "Are you afraid of the dark Richard?"
Robin spun around. There was nothing next to him. He spun around again. Expecting to see someone.
Suddenly the scene changed…Richard now standing in the old circus tent he and his parents used to work in when he was younger. Looking down at his hands, his old gloves of his costume were gripped into fists. His ears ringing with the screams of people and his own; young voice, crying out as young version of himself watched helplessly. Richard stood frozen in the crowed circus tent. Watched as his mother's falling form tumbled to the ground…Falling in terrible slow motion...falling to her death. Robin's mind raced, his heart pumping terribly fast. Feeling his own chest beginning to hurt as his cries and screams faded into the crowd of others screaming.
There was a shattering thud as Robin witnessed his mother's body; arms spread out to him. Screams calling from her to him, to save her as she hit the ground and her body lay still in a puddle of red blood. Robin then heard his screaming voice, herd his own cries over the whispering voices of the crowd. Robin's hands reaching to clench his own chest.
Richard sank to his knees; coughing and spitting up blood, his cries of pain and loss giving way to more violent coughs of blood and tears. Robin's eyes were full of tears. His vision was beginning to blur. He moved his hands to wipe away his tears and noticed his gloved hands drenched in red blood. Blood on my hands…my blood, my mother's blood…her blood on my hands.
"Robin…Richard looked up in surprise. The voice again suddenly calling out to him "Raven" was that Raven's voice. Recognizing the voice of his friend, Richard called out to it; willing for her to find him "Raven"…Standing up he looked around for where the direction of the voice came from. Richard finally saw Raven running towards him.
"Raven, Raven, what's wrong?" called Richard out to her, concern filling his voice.
Raven's form stopped and looked at him. Cocking her head to take in his blood stained form she asks him: "Robin what's wrong? I never felt such a strong un daunting feeling that something was really wrong with you before? I woke up sweating; calling your name."
Robin looked at her, confusion still plastered over his face. "What is going on?"
Looking around himself he failed to see Raven pull a big long; sharp pointed steel pin, from out of thin air. As Robin turned around to once again face her, the image of Raven stuck the steel pin deep into his left arm.
"Ah," cried out Richard…
"Darn I missed," came the voice of another….
Then once again the image of Raven was yelling his name…"Robin"
Again Richard felt pain shoot through his body making him go into spasms all over. Richard fell to the high dirt ground within his mental mind. His body going into spasms all over, so strong grew the spasms that his body took on a fetal position.
Through cries of anguish, Richard heard voices again. Voices talking not to him but to someone else or each other…..Who's there, who are you?
"I'm not sure he's going to make it"
"Should we stop?"
Richard's eyes grew heavy, his head swaying and then suddenly he gave up; laying his head down on a cloud made of gray smoke, passing out into unconsciousness.
-S-
In the reality of the warehouse Slade stood off to the side watching with his normal calm exterior. His black heart not even jumping when he witnessed Richard's near fatal screams of agony; take on a ear piercing cry, that made the room's occupants quicken with terror and unnerving heart attack scared panic.
"What's happening" cried one of the medical technicians; who were supposed to be monitoring the patient's heart rate? He looked up at Slade. "His heart rate's going off the charts, he should be dead by all accounts…" yelled the medic; panicking to no end.
Slade turned his masked face; with his calm exterior and unchanged metallic speech, he addressed the medic. "Turn the monitor to a higher wave band and keep your fear and panic in check or I will remove you permanently from your position."
The medic apparently taken by the masked man's calm look took a deep breath and flipped a couple switches. Visibly calming "Understood Sir"
"Good," growled Slade; stepping over towards a gathering group of panicking medics. "You will, stay calm and focused or I will remove you all as well," threatened Slade; keeping his voice void of any emotion. "This is not unexpected nor anything close to what is yet to come."
The group of medics, parted ways and began trying to calm themselves with trained professionalism. It didn't help, thought Slade to himself, that their leader Dr. Bensen was staring in utter horror and screaming out panicking orders; as he tried to asses Robin's dire cries of pain, attempting to stop the boys' coughing up blood.
Slade continued walking towards the doctor; reaching him, he wrapped his hand around the terror filled doctors arm. Dragging the man out of sight of all; whirling on the man with trained patience but voiced commandment. "You will stop your panicking screams Doctor. I will not have your men running around panicked and accidentally killing my Apprentice, because they puncture a vain or stab him in the heart with the wrong drug."
Dr. Bensen's breathing had escalated into tinny gasps, all medical professionalism gone, he tried to regain his unexpectedly lost composure.
"I'm sorry Slade I just hadn't been expecting this kind of reaction from the injection. It was almost instantaneous that his breathing became fast paced, he went into seizures and then the screaming, the terror filled, ear piercing screams!"
"Slade what's wrong with him?" Asked the doctor panicked and worried that already he'd messed up and was killing the very patient he was supposed to be keeping alive.
Slade turned back to take in the scene of Richard; writhing and wiggling, in the arms of six or seven medics that were trying to keep him still; yet turned enough, that the blood he was coughing up would not drown him. Catch in his throat.
"Nothing Doctor," answered Slade, "this is how the treatment starts out. I assure you that it only gets much worse from here. Robin's mind is taking in most of the pressure and turmoil. This is only the physical symptoms of his mind trying to combat and assimilate the images and nightmares of reality that are being brought to his unwilling acceptance."
"Are you telling me," pointing to the patient that was now being sedated and cooled down with ice packs, "that he's having nightmares? That that's the cause of his screams. The cause of all the blood he's coughing up and the cause of his seizures?"
Slade turned and regarded the doctor with a silent nod before stating: "Among other things, yes, but this is only the first process. The next shot you give him will be more physical reactions, and less mental imagery. However, it will not change the reactions we've just now witnessed. This is the first of his bodies reactions to what the process will put him through. The second injection will cause reactions 10 times as bad."
Doctor Bensen's hand had dropped, his face was scrunched up in disbelieving shock and scarred misery. "And the last injection…?" Asked the doctor, fearful that he would not want to know the answer to that/his question.
Slade turned and looked directly into the doctors eyes. "The last injection will either kill him or change his chemical make up into the immortal I was changed into!"
Dr. Bensen began shaking his head wildly. "No, no. We can't do it…I can't do it. I can't possibly keep him alive under these conditions. No…." A choking sound was resulting from Slade's tight clinched fist around the doctors throat.
"You will continue Doctor!"
"What has now been started can not be stopped. Robin will surly die now even if we stop. So you will give him his next injection in another 2 hours and 20 minuets and counting…Or I will kill you and do it myself."
"Is that understood?" snarled Slade tossing the doctor on the floor.
Slade stepped closer to the huddled and shaking form of Dr. Bensen. "I own that boy over there doctor, he is mine to do with as I choose. His life whether I choose for him to live or die, is of mine to do with. Not you, nor his friends, or even Batman will stop me! I suggest you think about your own future and whether you wish to continue living. I suggest you get up and finish the job you started."
"Your patients time till his next injection is counting down. You have much to do in the way of preparations before then."
Slade reached down and picked the doctor up. Brushing him off and turning him around, pushing him towards Robin's body. (Once again passed out and laying unconscious)
Dr. Bensen brushed his hair out of his face and straitened his shirt, before walking confidently and calmly away. Not as one that had just witnessed the scariest sight a doctor could endure, and then being threatened with death.
I'm going to get paid, I'm going to be paid a lot of money, this job will bring me more clients and lots more money. Thought the Doctor over and over trying to tell himself the reasons not to give up or worry about his patients unnecessary treatment.
Just keep thinking of your future and your carrier. Who cares about some stupid kid that chose to get involved with a mad man such as Slade.
Dr. Bensen placed his hand on the young boys forehead. It was still very hot. "What's his temperature?" asked the doctor to one of his medics who was supposed to be monitoring his vitals.
"104" answered the medic eyeing his boss and friend with a scared and worrying glance. "That's down drastically from where it was only five minutes ago."
"Just keep monitoring," ordered the doctor; showing him a look of truthful knowing and glancing over toward Slade's towering form. The medic looked over and then nodded. "Understood Sir"
-W-
Wintergreen had seen this all before. Witnessed some of the pain himself, being part of that same group of test subjects as Slade once had been. But no matter how many times you experience that sight of their blood curdling cries, and no matter how much you try and block out the sight of blood you just couldn't. Wintergreen had his eye's down and his hands gripping the railing bars of the metal stairs.
"He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears" quoted Slade walking up silently next to the form of his older friend and long time comrade.
"Growing skittish are we Wintergreen?"
The old brown eyes of his friend looked up and into the one dark mask covered eye. "I never could, or can get used to those screams. It's like ripping the soul out of their bodies" relinquished Wintergreen drawing his hands to his face to wipe away the sweat that had formed.
"Now now, that's not entirely true…I remember a time; not even so long ago, that you used to relish the sound of a good tortuous scream coming from the throat of a man," slyly prodded Slade. Turning his own knife over in his gloved hands relishing the mental imagery that came with that comment
Wintergreen straitened up and eyed Slade cautiously. "Ok, fine," admitted Wintergreen. "I'm soft for the boy, I can't help be affected seeing someone young and innocent being put through all this."
"Is that what you want me to admit" asked Wintergreen feeling for the first time in a long while that he was suddenly on the wrong side of Slade.
Slade lifted his knife up and let the light reflect off the blade into Wintergreen's eyes. Slade saw the terror of the spooked animal in his friend's eyes.
Noted the weakness' of vulnerability that reeked like odor. "You're growing old my friend."
"Perhaps too old to be left in charge anymore"
Defensively Wintergreen took on an angry face; voice of reason it had a ting of accusation's finger point, "I already told you I was getting too old for this. You Slade, just refuse to listen to me."
Eyes refusing to be bullied by his comrade, "I stated that I thought you should leave the boy alone! That it was clouding your life's other responsibilities with unnecessary distractions, and now look." Hand waving out in gesture to the sight of Robin and the waved to encompass the whole situation "Look at what you're putting this poor boy through."
Head turning Wintergreen took in the point which Richard's laying half dead body resided on the medical table; there was oxygen and other injections being given him; to keep him alive.
The two continued to watch as Robin was hooked up to an I-V bag of saline and repositioned on the table to give his body the support it needed; while other medics continued to place cold ice packs and cloths over his temperature rising body.
"Slade you and I we never really were given a choice but we did sign up for the special unit; knowing full well what it had to do with; human experimentation, Robin he never knew, he's not been given that choice… and he didn't volunteer for any of what your forcing upon him."
Slade turned and glared at Wintergreen. Fists closed around the knife "Wintergreen your attitude is bordering very close to the edge. I'd advise you to keep your comments and thought to yourself if I were you "My old friend!"
Eyes hardening, William Wintergreen did not back down.
"Even I only give your friendship a small amount of leeway for forgiveness in moments of mortal weakness."
The slap would have been harsh and loud; echo, had it been a physical one.
"Robin's destiny has, and always will be for me to find and take in as my servant; into my service as I see fit, and since the day we crossed paths he has proven to be more then someone that can keep up with me."
"Since the day he chose to become my rival a series of events has been set in motion that not you, nor Batman, not even Richard or myself can stop from playing out. So as Euripides I quote Wintergreen: "Let a man accept his destiny. No pity and offer no tears."
"Now choose which way you'll fallow me my old friend and I give you a five minuet head start if it is a choice to leave which you decide and make."
And with that Slade sheathed his knife, once walking off towards Robin and the still shaking and red faced disturbed doctor
Wintergreen stood for a minute thinking; mentally noting the time slipping by from Slade's call of five minutes, he stood a long moment past five minutes thinking that he should leave. Trying to take his leave Will wanted to chance running from Slade, however better judgment and more selfish reasons took over, and he collected himself shoving what little of his heart had caused him to speak up and out against Slade.
This conflict within himself was his weakness of heart and because he was getting old; damn it Slade, you are never going to understand, Will recomposed himself. Walking over he took up spot next to Slade.
After all he was much the same as Slade. The only difference had been his lack to endure the mental strain as Slade had. Otherwise Will too might have been exactly as Slade was now; ruthless, uncaring, and immortal… Void of petty emotions that gave way to better reasoning and less crafty planning. Instead Wintergreen was getting old, and arguing over the life of some miserable; already lost cause, of a boy would never get Wintergreen where he wanted.
Slade knows what he wants and what's best for his organization's survival. If he's chosen this boy as his future successor then who am I to argue? Robin was Williams ticket to retirement, and he'd be damned if he back out now and screw that part of his goals up, 'I've earned it and it's been a long time coming.'
A/N: So the treatment is underway...What's going to happen? 10 times as worse next injection...and the third? Wow what about that, any guesses there? Stay tuned: Next week chapter 26 Convalutional. Might want to check to see what that world means.
Later, dlsky