A companion to last night's short chapter. Be warned; the end is nigh, at least for this passage in the lives of Arkham's young lost…

-nH

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Chapter 18

Exit, or End

Now Jane could hear the Max ward. Shouts, crashes, stampeding feet. Even the crack of gunfire, she realized with a jump. It was catastrophe up there; surely Angie wouldn't want to enter into that?

"Maybe no good?" Jane offered.

"Yeah", Angie said, dismayed. "Maybe not."

Looking around them, Jane saw that most of the others there were not moving. More accurately, they were not going anywhere. The calm ones were complacent in their relative safety, and the scared ones were too terrified to attempt escape. There was a lot of meandering accompanied by cowering, but no progress. Jane breathed an inner sigh of relief that she'd managed to dodge both those fates, however temporarily she was able to keep this denial up.

"Should we go back in?" she asked, looking back to her room. The familiarity offered some comfort, even if only in minor amounts.

"I guess…" Angie trailed off. Snapping back to herself, she said "Wait – what about the maintenance section? I remember passing by it on a few of my walks earlier this year…"

"Earlier this year?"

"Yes, well. It's not likely that they will have moved an entire boiler-room-janitor-closet or whatever for no reason, so I expect it'll still be there. We can hide out until help comes, or until things die down enough upstairs for us to try to get out."

"Ah…where is it?"

Angie squeezed her eyes shut, seeming to will the memory to surface. For a moment, it looked as though there would be no luck for them at all today. Then, a jolt; Angie's eyes opened, and there was blessed resolve in her voice.

"This way", she said, guiding Jane past the soft statues clogging the hallway. "Past my room, down another hall, around a few corners. I remember because I followed Jonnie here one day, until I realized he was just going to get someone to mop a spill or whatever, and I gave up."

Silently, Jane let Angie lead her. The sounds of human thunder continued to growl above them, and Jane tried to suppress the urge to duck the coming storm. The people she passed who hugged the walls, eyes darting around to catch a million different attackers, were too close to what she truly was for comfort. She averted her gaze, shuffling alongside Angie; it felt like miles, but the time spent was more likely measured in minutes. Finally, Angie slowed their walk.

"Holy…" she breathed, now motionless. After a moment of silence, Jane looked up to follow Angie's shocked stare.

Her vision still jumped and swam, but for a second the sign stenciled on the pale metal door remained clear as crystal. Jane read it in the blink of an eye; it took a few heartbeats for what appeared there to register. When it did, she sucked in a breath, sharing Angie's sentiment. Surprise would be putting this lightly.

"Corridor F", she read aloud, unnecessarily. "This is the maintenance wing? I thought it was upstairs somewhere…"

"No, I said I didn't know where it was…" Angie corrected absently. "I had no idea…I don't think I saw the door up close when I was here before." She shook her head. "Corridor F. This is where my…Crane went crazy…"

"Crazier", Jane said softly.

"We can't go in there."

Jane turned to her. "Why not?"

A pause. "I don't know", she admitted. "I guess I'm just not too eager to run into whatever drove Crane over the edge."

Another moment spent staring at the door. Finally, Jane twitched violently, just once, freeing herself from Angie's arm. She cautiously approached the door, which shifted its bearings sinisterly. It reminded her of a huge mouth, wide and toothless, gaping above a live meal. Nevertheless, she pressed forward, gingerly stretching her neck to peer into the small caged window.

"The lights flicker", she reported. "There are tables folded up and boxes everywhere, but it's a hallway, just a hallway."

"But a maintenance wing?" Angie argued.

"The hallway to a maintenance wing?" Jane countered. The rooms beyond called to her voicelessly. She was drawn, irresistibly drawn in. Her decision became more obvious by the second.

"I think we should go back to your room", Angie urged.

"Okay", Jane relented.

She allowed Angie to lead her back, noting every turn and vandal's marking along the way. She soon trailed behind; Angie turned often to check on her, uncomfortable without her by her side. As the patients again populated the hallway, Angie's vigilance over Jane became necessarily weaker; finally, disappointed but not terribly surprised, she looked back and found Jane gone. Cursing under her breath, she started back after her. The vacant patients stood still as trees, a forest of lost minds. Angel wove her way through them, knowing where she was headed and resolved to see her young friend safe and sound again.

After Jane slipped out of Angie's reach, she made her way with remarkable ease back to the nightmarishly compelling door. Corridor F. The place where Crane was cornered by the Batman, where the last of his sanity had allegedly abandoned him. Some dark, bitter part of Jane hoped he felt just as lost as she had, before she'd assimilated his drug and accepted her new compromised mind.

Are you in there?

She reached out, fingertips brushing the cold steel. She heard no answer from the other side, although the places her fingers touched did shimmer and ripple alluringly. Her gateway lay past this door, she felt it. Her escape, or her end. She moved forward, pushed the disabled lock open before her mind could change itself again. The long dark hallway stretched out before her, and she stepped inside.

The door swung shut with a click behind her. This was it; she was no longer a part of that world, the world out there. The dread she'd forced herself to grow used to increased to sickening heights. Swallowing, she moved past empty rooms and locked doors. She heard no movements inside, and saw no way to release these manual locks. No matter; what she was looking for was not so near to the waking world. She would have to descend further, dig deeper for her exit.

When the door she'd come through became a speck at the end of a dark tunnel, the air grew noticeably cooler. Or maybe that was just her new convincing imagination. Either way, she felt ill. Looking back, Jane realized she couldn't make out her old life at all anymore. She was a nightmare creature in a nightmare world. She turned back to face her dark path, and was jolted out of her reverie.

"Jane", the Scarecrow rasped. "How lovely to see you again…"

Jane's heart began the mad dance to escape her body. This was it; her escape, or her end.