Chapter 9:
"Mysteries Abound"
When Damian awoke, he felt excessively groggy, and every muscle in his body ached. He had the sensation of being upside and when he opened his eyes, he confirmed it. He was suspended by interlocking ankle shackles attached to the ceiling over a large vat filled with long snake like amphibian creatures.
If he had to venture a guess, they were electrophorus electricus, or electric eels. The voltage they delivered was numbing, sending a mild electrical charge of 860 watts per second of amperage shock. Not lethal on its own, but when amplified in water a person would be rendered unconscious and drown.
When he glanced around, he was in some sort of solo structure. The walls were cream in colour and completely smooth and there were no windows, only one air vent high near the ceiling, and a single CCTV camera. At the bottom was a door. There was truly no purpose of this place other than a torture vessel for interrogation, which, Damian, wagered, was why he was here.
Annex, that crazy villain in the operatic mask: Something about those gloves triggered remembrance. Didn't Grayson say that one of his old foes had crazy gloved weapons that generated bursts of electricity from his time in Spyral?
Jake Handles, Damian remembered. But now he was going by a new name.
He reached up and tried to grab the chain that attached to his ankles, maybe he could slip out of the shackles, he thought. But his stomach wrenched with pain and he cringed and fell back down. The electric shock on the roof top had done damage. But he pushed passed the pain and tried again.
Suddenly, he screamed, as the chain electrified, a defensive mechanism from escape, and he dropped, and bounced, his weight causing the chain to swing, the sensation also causing him to vomit, his stomach churning from the electrical circuit.
The vomit dropped into the vat and it seemed to stir the eels into swarming it, to attack it.
Damian moaned, his strength leaving him. And he fell into an unwanted unconsciousness once more.
When he regained consciousness again, he assumed he had only been unconscious for a short while, and reengaged with his predicament, and analyzed his options, and realized that the door below was his only way out. But he had to escape from the ankle shackles first to have any chance of escape.
So, he decided to go the direct route: "Hey, Opera freak!" —purposely not referring to his name— "Show yourself!"
There was a low chuckle heard from an audio system and it echoed the chamber—a truly, sadistic sound, then: "How trite in its originality," a disembodied voice rang out. "Just because I wear this mask, you compare, and nickname me, to the likes of the main protagonist of the stage play, a phantom by any other name by default."
"Face me, coward! I don't want to speak to a voice. I already know what you look it and who you are."
"Indeed, I know you caught a glimpse of me before I rendered you unconscious on that roof top. I'm sure you've already heard tales of me from your mentor, but do you truly know who I am?"
"I've heard stories of a sadistic, murdering, psychopath, whose incompetence caused his own demise."
The chain electrified with a mild shock and Damian strained, clenching his teeth. Then it relented and he breathed out. He swore.
"Know your limits, pretender."
Damian laughed. "This isn't the first time one of you psychos has had me dangling precariously over a dangerous pratfall," he said. In fact, he had managed to wiggle one foot from a boot, from the shackles; they weren't very tight. All he had to do was release his other foot and slip free. But, he'd have to time it right or he'd fall into the pool of eels.
Grayson had taught him well. He was, after all, one of the best escapists Damian knew.
"Limits are for losers, you never know what you can do unless you try," Damian came back strong. "I know who you are—Jake Handles, ex-Sypral agent. Those electro-gloves give you away. I was told about them. I was also told you were dead."
"I would've been, except for a contingency plan. What I didn't take into account, was the poorly built bomb one of my people at the time devised for me. The radio-frequency was ultra-sensitive and it reacted to close proximity of my gloves. Two-thirds of my body was burnt from the explosion and I have two artificial limbs from a building that fell on top of me. But I survived by sheer will."
Damian laughed short. "From what I hear, that makes you the ultimate loser."
"Be careful with your words or you'll find yourself burnt to a crisp. You won't survive being dropped into the vat of electric eels. Be it interrogation, call it an inquiry—why are you dressed up as Nightwing?"
"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass…and I'm all out of bubblegum," Damian quoted the movie line correctly from whence it originated. After Grayson had quoted the line, paraphrased it, he looked it up and it came from an old B-movie horror flick called "They Live", starring a former professional wrestler turned Hollywood star. "But I think I like it better another way: I've come here to kick your ass, then I'll find some bubblegum, I'll chew it, and spit in your face!"
"How childish. I knew a man who liked that quote. He was just as arrogant as you are and used to make some of the most ridiculous puns."
Damian smiled smugly. "How'd you do it? Did you hire quick-shots for the assassination attempt on Nightwing, then pay off people for the medical side of things? Why not just kill Grayson if you have grudge?"
There was no point in hiding that Grayson was Nightwing. Jake Handles obviously already knew being a former member of Spyral.
"The direct approach, how refreshing. A worthy try, but your attempts to have me reveal certain secrets is child's play."
"Fair enough, it was worth a try," Damian said.
I have to warn Grayson! Jake Handles is alive!
"Then if you're not going to tell me what I want to know, then there's no point in me being here. In fact, this whole interrogation approach is worthless. Besides, my suit is shockproof. The eels wouldn't even hurt me."
Damian folded his arms to the side and then began to swing back and forth, the momentum giving purchase for a sway.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Annex's voice boomed.
"What else? I'm escaping!"
Damian slipped out of his boots and from the ankle shackles and flew through the air, landing with perfect acrobatic form on the floor next to the eel vat. Strains of his hair stood on end as he felt the electrified field the eels generated as a whole when seemingly threatened. Then he ran for the door. Luckily, it wasn't locked. And he bolted out into a hallway in his stocking feet.
The last thing he heard was Annex's voice cursing him.
x x x
Jason Todd had heard rumours of a creepy looking guy hanging out in the residential areas near a rundown part of old downtown Bludhaven and he wanted to check out personally. As a member of a new drug task force assorted with the new Bludhaven PD, he also thought it prudent to investigate other drugs holes in the city, this being one of them.
When he got to the area where the last supposed sighting of this masked person was, there was nothing to see. All seemed normal. The area was a dump, It had grown into an area for desolates and the homeless very quickly, and the perfect locale for drug deals—and had been one of many areas of old Bludhaven that remained standing after the city was nearly destroyed in an all out attack by criminals in a war that cost a lot of people their lives, sending Bludhaven into a virtual hell.
Bruce offered to rebuild the city, and it was beginning to flourish once more, with the New Bludhaven PD resurrected to keep the peace. Buildings were being erected at a steady pace and the landscape was beginning to look like a city again.
Some places still needed work.
He wandered around the area for about thirty minutes and then decided to quit. The rumours were obviously chalked up to someone's overactive imagination. Then he saw a homeless man pushing a shopping cart out of an alleyway. The cart was filled with a sleeping bag and an array of other items. He turned away, but then something struck him, and he snapped back around. Did he just see what he thought he saw?
Going over, he went to the homeless man, with his beat up clothes and long, scruffy hair. In his shopping cart looked like something that resembled—almost identical, in fact—like one of Grayson's escrima sticks. He went to grab it, when the homeless man pushed him back. "Hey bud, all this stuff is mine! Get your own!"
Jason pointed to the item. "That thing, that metal stick—where'd you get it?"
"Found it, in the alley back there. It's mine! Get your own!" The man grabbed it and then held it tight. "Great for hitting unwanted thieves who want to steal my stuff." The man raised it above his head as if to use it to hit Jason.
Jason raised his hands. "Woah, man! Take it easy. You don't want to do that." By the look of it, Jason was right. It was one of Grayson's escrima sticks. But why would it be in the alley? Damian was the last one he knew that was in possession of them, using the Nightwing's arsenal to fight crime in Bludhaven as Dick recovered in Gotham Hospital. He watched the man's hand, which was dangerously close to the trigger button that would generated its electrical charge. "Tell you what, how much do you want for it? Name your price, but he reasonable."
The man looked at it. "You want this? Why? It's just a piece of metal, I think? A metal bar—it's very light, though." Suddenly, the man activated it, accidentally, and the three slots on the top of the escrima stick opened and sizzled, generating an electrical charge with a blue energy. Jason took a step back. Dick's escrima sticks acted like shock sticks, one touch and a person was down for the count at the correct voltage. They were designed and built to be versatile and light weight, but delivered a devastating blow. The man held on to it despite his shock.
"What the hell is this…stick?"
Jason had no choice. "Sir, I'm Captain J. Todd of the USAAF, and I was dispatched to find a piece of classified military hardware stolen from one of our highly secret bases in Gotham," he lied. "The culprit has been apprehended, but he ditched what he stolen after a thorough manhunt when in Bludhaven. That is what I am searching for. Be careful, prolonged exposure to it when activated, as you just did, can render you impotent."
The man gasped, but either out of fear or something else, he didn't let go of it, as if his hand was frozen. "What do I do?"
"See that trigger switch near the bottom, depress it to shut it down." The man quickly looked for it and managed to find it, shutting the escrima stick down. The man than grabbed his crotch as if he thought immediate exposure had made him impotent. Jason withheld a smirk. "Now, can I have it?" He extended a hand out.
"It's switched off, right?" Jason nodded with a yes. "If you're a member the Armed Forces, as you claim, then you can afford to pay me for it. A thousand dollars in cash."
"A thousand dollars? That's—"
"Reasonable, since this is classified, right? And probably pretty damn expensive?"
Jason sighed. He knew he could just pull out a gun and take it from the man by force, but a lot of people were down on their luck since the economy crashed in Bludhaven, and it wasn't worth the exposure or risk. Besides, he could just get the money back from Dickiebird afterwards. He took out his wallet and counted ten hundred dollar bills as the man watched with awe.
The man exchanged the stick for the money.
With an excited face, the man counted the money. "Glad doing business with you, sir. And I support the armed forces. Great bunch."
Jason thanked him and then left. When he was out of sight, he reached for his cell phone. His first call would be to Damian and ask him why one of Dick's escrima sticks was found discarded in an alley. Had he been in a fight and had to leave it?
But when he tried to turn on his cracked screen phone—it still worked, but his work often left him in need of new phones frequently—it wouldn't turn on. The battery was dead.
He swore. He knew it was low, but he didn't realize it was that low. So, the direct route was the best option, and he went to Damian's condo. He didn't have a key, so he used tools to break in. He had to admit, the kid had good taste.
Picking up the landline, he went to dial Damian's cell. The kid was probably out on patrol, when suddenly he heard the toilet flush. He paused, momentarily thinking it was Damian, but just to be sure, he went for his gun in his jacket and pulled it out. He pointed it at the closed bathroom door adjacent to main bedroom, but slightly down the hall.
It wasn't Damian, it was Jonathan Kent.
Jon held up his hands. "Hey Jason, no need for the gun," he said. "I'm a friend."
Jason put the gun away. "What are you doing here?"
"I should ask you the same thing. But I was looking for Dami, he's not answering his phone. We made plans to go on patrol today. I told my dad what was happening here, and with Dick Grayson, and he kind of wants me to keep an eye on Dami, since his dad is a little despondent after Ms. Kyle left him and isn't around much. Dami is a bit of a hothead sometimes and needs supervision."
"I can attest to that, the hobgoblin can be trouble." Jason picked up the landline, even in the days of cell phones, landlines still had their uses, and dialled Damian's cell, and received his voicemail. "Hey, shortshack, it's Jay—call me back, pronto! I found something you lost." He hung up, and told Jon what he found and where he found it.
"That's not like him," Jon said, and Jason agreed.
Jason then dialled one more number, Barbara Gordon.
When she picked up, she didn't even let him get a word in edgewise when she said, "Not a good time, Jason"—he heard shouting in the background and a man's voice issuing orders. And then Dick screaming—"I'll call you back!"
The call was abruptly ended.
Jon's face looked pale. With his ultra-sensitive hearing, the boy obviously heard the call. "Dick Grayson sounded like he was in pain," he said, "in god-awful pain! What's wrong?"
"Don't know, kid." He dialled Barbara again, but the called went immediately to her voicemail. She had switched her phone off. "Barb, what's happening with Dick? I'm at Damian's new condo. You have the number, I know Damian text it to you. My phone is dead. Call me back, asap!"
He hesitated to make a fourth call: to Bruce. Despite the events that transpired with the Penguin recently—Jason had almost murdered the Rogue villain, but the villain had managed to survive despite Todd's best attempts—they weren't on the best of terms. They had put aside their differences temporarily because of Dick—a truce—but he knew Bruce wouldn't give a damn what he wanted. And besides, Bruce had his own problems at the moment with Selina Kyle leaving him at the altar.
To be continued…
