Unknown
Unknown
The cell was cold and cramp, the room silent and foreboding. Huddle in the corner farthest from the cell door, Mika clutched onto her arms with no intention of ever letting go, body shaking from the waves of chill wafting through her body. Her mane of orange curls was matted and caked in dirt and grime, the once vibrant locks now dull and lifeless. Tears ran swiftly down her freckled cheeks, splattering onto the rags she now called clothes, scar and wound marred skin bare and visible for the whole world to see. The only light in the room was the window carved precariously into the ceiling in the center of the room, shadows lurking around in hopes of devouring her battered form. Another night of beatings and tests, of the people dressed in white tearing at her very being, speaking a foreign language she had never heard before she was brought to this place of hell. Mika didn't know how long she had been here, time being non-existent in a place such as this, but she could guess it had been a few months to a year since she was stolen from her home of Vera Oculta. She had been dragged around like some creature, sold from person to person for weeks on end until she landed in a city the other girls had brokenly described to her as the home of sin and death, Gotham City.
This place, this Gotham City, was nothing like Mika had ever seen before and its peoples were no different. Their dialect was like nothing she had ever heard before, not one word of Spanish or Japanese to be heard, and how they dressed was extremely peculiar to her. Her captors spoke to small, flashy blocks and those hurting her stuck tiny sticks in her arms and worked on flat color pictures that were able to move on their own. They were called "computers", at least that's what the one girl who knew Spanish said they were before she died at the hands of the people dressed in white. Each place she had been transferred to just grew in peculiarity, new languages being spoken and mind boggling behavior and things being introduced. She didn't understand what was going, where she was, or who these people were; all she knew was that they didn't care if she bled, cried, or begged for the tests and beatings to stop. These people didn't care about her or the other girls at all.
A scream piercing the air was the thing that ripped Mika out of her thoughts. Her heart began to race as the scream was quickly followed by gunfire and shouts, loud bangs and booms echoing outside the door of the room. She could hear people yelling in the foreign language she only understood in tiny bits, mostly in gruff orders.
"-down jndiudvib ground!"
The intrusive sounds came closer with every second and suddenly, with a shred of mercy, the door of her room slammed opened and blind light that followed pierced her eyes with malicious intent. Mika forced her body further against the cell walls, trying to hide herself in the imposing shadows skulking around the room from the intruders. She had just gone through a time with her abusers, the fresh cuts and bruises on her small body was proof of it, wasn't once a day enough? A looming figure in the doorway stalked forward with precision and silence, the only indicator of there being someone else in the room was the shadow that was a step ahead of the unknown individual. The person, most likely one of her "handlers" as the one girl called them, was coming to take her to the people dressed in white for more tests and blood taking. Mika let out a silent whimper, curling further into a ball to the point her back was screaming for her to stop; she wanted to go home, to see her mammi and papi again. Then, she heard the click of the cell lock and waited for the worst.
Yet, as her heart raced and her eyes ached from spent tears, the person didn't do anything. Grasping what little courage she had left since the moment she watched her home disappear from view, Mika opened her eyes and came face to face with a strangely clothed individual. They were wearing a suit of some kind, with a long black mask with pointy ears covering almost the entirety of their face aside from their mouth. What truly caught her attention was the symbol on their chest, one of a bat.
The strange person reached out their hand, voice deep and foreign, "njnihbuv free njinib."
Mika wanted to understand what this man was saying, to trust that he was good, but she'd learn never trust anyone in the time she had been taken.
Speaking in her native tongue, she shot back with a cry, "No more tests! Please!"
It was quiet for a few moments before the man replied calmly, in a weird but familiar dialect of Spanish, "Los hombres malos se han ido. Estoy aquí para ayudarte."
She gazed at him warily; was this costumed man telling the truth.
He continued with ease, never moving an inch, "¿Cómo te llama?"
No one had ever asked for her name before, not even the girl that knew Spanish. They always addressed her as "kid", never anything else.
"Mika," the child replied shakily, shivering from her spot in the cell. "Are they really gone?"
The costumed man nodded, responding without a shred of emotion, "La policía los está arrestando mientras hablamos. Es seguro."
They were gone, they were finally gone.
"Tienes que venir conmigo," costume man added, once again reaching out to her. "No es seguro aquí."
This was her chance to get out of here, she had to take it. Placing her hand in his, the man cautiously led her out of the cell, her bare feet lightly smacking on the ground. Her side flared up in agony just as she reached the cell door, a cry escaping her lips, hand shooting to cradle the wound freshly seeping blood.
The man crouched to her height, stating darkly, "Voy a llevarte. ¿Listo?"
Giving him a weak nod, Mika let him scoop her up into his massive arms, her head coming to rest on his chest, hand remaining on her side in a vague attempt to staunch the bleeding. Their trip down the maze of hallways were quiet, neither of them saying a word as silence followed closely behind like a shadow. Finally, they came to a gigantic doorway, flashing lights grazing across her body, a symphony of noises polluting the air. She pushed herself closer to the costumed man, trying to hide from the sea of weirdly clothed individuals rushing about the scene. The man shifted his form, his cloak coming to shield her from the cacophony of people and lights surrounding them and Mika found herself relaxing just a tad. Then the man stopped moving and his chest rumbled with speech and a different, smoke laced voice spoke back. The cloak was brushed away, her protective shield now gone, and Mika was left to stare at a grizzled looking man, gray at his temples and glasses perched on his mustached face. She was quick to shy away, doing her best to act invisible, and the two men conversed quietly above her.
"Mika," the costumed spoke, catching her attention. "Otros me necesitan. este hombre te llevará a un lugar seguro."
Fresh tears spouted from her eyes, Mika crying out desperately, "No, please, please don't leave me! PLEASE!"
"Vas con él. Te ayudará a encontrar a tu familia," the costumed man responded coolly, handing her to the other man.
As she was transferred to the mustached man, screams of desperation and need raced out of her throat, struggling against the man's hold as she called out to the retreating man, "PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME! DON'T LEAVE ME!"
The mustached man carried her away to one of the flashing metal carriages, Mika quickly becoming surrounded by even more strangers who were trying to hold her down as she screamed and flailed her body every which way.
"-waking up! Get Tornado!"
As the strangers restrained her to the soft surface, Mika felt like something was constricting her airways, being to choke as pins and needles assaulted her form.
"-she be waking up so soon?"
Mika struggled to free herself, to breathe, to make the pain stop. Her vision began to darken as a clear mask was placed over her lower face, head growing foggy while her body refused to listen to her. The last thing she saw as the darkness took over was the costumed man walking away. She floated in the darkness, sounds she couldn't recognize echoing about the abyss of black. Her lungs ached for air and Mika searched for somewhere to go, praying that she wasn't going to die this way.
There!
A white slit of light shone to her left, her mind screaming for her to move before her lungs burst. She pumped her body through the sea of darkness, thrusting herself to the slit in hope that she could find her much needed oxygen. She didn't want to die today, she wanted to see her family again!
As she reached the slit, she came to realize just how small it was; at most, her hand could fit in there but not her entire body. She couldn't give up, she had to get out of this hell hole. Shoving her fingers into the slit, Mika took hold of either side of the cut and, with all of her might, pulled.
"-hold her still!"
Her lungs were at full capacity, screaming and thumping against her ribcage in desperation, and Mika knew her time was out. Putting the last bit of strength she had left into her arms, she pulled even harder. That's when the slit ripped wide open and much to her surprise, Mika went tumbling through. She expected to fall onto something hard and unforgiving, for her body to ache for the impact, but the jolt of body meeting surface never came. Instead, she felt as if she had floated onto a soft and warm cloud, her body cradled and comforted.
*Beep. Beep.*
What the hell was that?
Mika moved to see what the noise was, praying it wasn't some kind of bomb or something in the same family of explosives, because it would just be her luck. Her eyelids were heavy, weighed with exhaustion, and to a certain degree, Mika wanted to leave them closed and go back to sleep. Yet she pushed forward, gradually shoving her eyelids open, only to be met by blinding white light, quite a different sight. She let her eyes flutter open, vision blurry and unsettling, the sound growing softer with every passing moment. She could see there were colorful figures surrounding her, blobs of red and with a mess of black and grey on her right while a smudge of black, red, green, and blue stood parallel to the others. Finally, her field of vision settled, and she instantly was on her guard.
Her body was covered in various bandages and casts, making her look like a fucking zombie. But her condition was the last thing on her mind. There on her right, her mind supplied, was the costumed man from that awful night.
'Batman', Mika growled within her foggy mind, anger rising in her aching chest.
Her throat ached but Mika didn't care, she was going to speak anyway.
She glared at the bat-themed hero, growling with pure hatred, "What the fuck did you do to me?"