It became obvious before long that if anyone at the asylum knew what had happened to Jason, they weren't going to say anything. Not to Steph, and not to Bruce, who'd been along earlier in the night to try and wring out some piece of info.
She didn't even know what she was doing there, anymore. If the original freaking Batman couldn't get anyone to talk, then how could she?
Still, she wondered around the building, looking for something she couldn't put her finger on. She had a feeling there was something she, specifically was overlooking, but no amount of brains wracking and sleepless nights brought it out.
So she went by the places that were familiar to her, including Jason's old cell.
Baker let her in with a regretful expression on his face, closing the door more gently behind her than he ever had before.
It was so much like it always was that it almost hurt for her to see the cell empty. When she'd watched the surveillance footage in the cave it had been so easy to pretend he was still in there, dreading her eventual visit.
She looked through the cell, doing the same basic investigation as she would have done anywhere else. There was nothing underneath the mattress, or taped to the underside of the desk they'd used for their little poker tournament. His books weren't anywhere to be found, and now that she thought about it., she couldn't remember seeing him reading in any of the more recent footage.
The only thing in the shower was that same bottle of soap, and when she ducked down to look under the bed all she found was a dusty silver tray. From Talia's visit? Steph wiped away some of the dust, buffing the metal while she seated herself on the bed.
She was shocked for second at the severe expression on her cowled face. Geez, she was almost as bad as Bruce. Shaking her head she held the tray to her chest and leaned against the wall, taking some dark satisfaction in the darks streaks of grime left on the white blankets by her boots.
The cell shouldn't be that clean after what had happened in it, right under her nose.
She rested her head against the wall and moved her feet under the sheet some more, a smirk creeping its way onto her face. The tiny bit of levity granted by the action was ripped from her chest all at once, when she remembered that it didn't matter. Being childish wouldn't fine Jason.
Accepting that she wouldn't find anything new there, she left, letting Baker escort her to the infirmary instead.
"I, I'm sorry he's gone." The guard said, his cheeks flaring while he looked anywhere but at her.
"He's not." Steph rested her hand on one of the many beds, and Baker let out a nervous grunt as he left to wait at the door. "He's not." She insisted to the empty room. She knew he wasn't, he couldn't be.
His blood was no longer visible, a new bed pushed over where the stains had been, and she was overcome with a sudden need to know it the little flecks of crimson had been cleaned up along with everything else showing that the boy had ever been there at all.
She gripped the rails at the side of the bed tightly and pulled, the stiff wheels screeching louder than a thousand disturbed bats at sunset. The sound was familiar, grating against her ears as she tossed it across the room with a strength she didn't know she had.
The door slammed open while she stared at the spotless while tiles.
"Batgirl!" Baker cried reaching out as though he was going to try and restrain, her.
She ignored him and clutched the silver tray tighter, marching out of the infirmary, making no secret of the direction she was heading in. It took Baker only a few seconds of following after her too realize it too, and he practically shouted into his radio for backup, only reaffirming her suspicions.
On the night of the 'breakout', she'd heard that same screeching. At the time she'd been so wrapped up in her worry at the whole situation she hadn't given it the thought she should have.
A quartette of guards appeared in her path, Baker was still trying to talk her down. She struck out with the tray, crushing every scrap of the emotion boiling her chest to keep from injuring them further once they were down. There were some specs of blood on the edges of the gleaming silver now, but it could be cleaned as easily as the floor.
Factoring in how the side would be amplified by the extra weight, widened her search area, but there were still only so many places her path that night had intersected with the halls leading to the infirmary and it didn't take her long to cancel out all possibilities but one.
"Please don't." Baker begged, his hands still hovering uncertainly in front of him.
A batarang flew knocking out all the lights with a loud sequence of pops. Baker leaped back, a partial scream on his lips before the hall was filled again with a soft violet light that revealed a smear of hurriedly cleaned blood all across a nondescript mirror.
She didn't waste time looking for a latch, God knew enough had been wasted already. Her armored foot crashed into the reflective glass, effectively shattering it.
Baker backed up, horrified at the room behind.
Steph put her torch away. With the light of a dozen screens lighting up the hidden room she wouldn't need it.
On each screen, viewed from a different angle, was the same boy strapped to a large metal gurney.
"O, Batgirl here." She said coldly, the pool of ice in her chest spreading to the tips of her toes. "I found that evidence." She turned her icy look on Baker.
"I swear to God I never knew this was here."
.
.
.
They were worried about something, running around tossing things into cases. Jok… Jeremiah screeching at his two gigantic lackeys even more than he usually did.
Jason was too focused on not choking on his own vomit to properly gage what he was saying, but he knew it had to be important, so he tried anyway. Latches were unbuckled for the first time since he'd woken up on the gurney, and he was hoisted upright.
He threw up all over the chest of the man holding him and was promptly dropped to the ground.
Well there went his choking problem, the pain of hitting the ground wasn't even an afterthought right then, not with the way his body was convulsing. The asshole Doctors screaming however added just another layer of awful to his drug wracked mind, which he could have really done without.
"Idiots! I don't need him I injured now!"
There was a thump indicating that one or both of the lackeys had been slapped.
"Aw Jerryboy 's not their faul' ya fed me t; much." Jason wasn't sure his words were even intelligible, and they burned his throat, but the freaks renewed shouts, now directed at him could have almost been worth it.
"Get him to the next location!" Jeremiah yelled, storming off. "I'll retrieve the samples myself!"
Jason was pulled up and thrown into a nearby char hard enough to send the thing rolling backwards. They caught him soon enough and his arms restrained quickly to the bindings at the side. The other idiot knelt to restrain his legs.
And, yes they really were idiots, he was drugged, not unconscious.
His bare foot crashed into kneeling guy's face hard enough to rocket his nose straight into his brain, killing him instantly in a spray of blood. The other swore and grabbed a rod off a nearby table, electricity crackling at the end, he jabbed it at Jason, but the boy swerved the wheelchair to the side and kicked the rod, hitting it out of the man's hand.
He caught it between his calves and flipped it before launching it back at the man.
No fucking way was he going to let that thing touch him again. Jason's body convulsed again, and more bile burned its way up his throat. He spat it up before his jaw could lock up again and choke him.
Kicking off against the nearest wall, he threw the wheelchair back, speeding down the hall opposite the one Jeremiah was always disappearing into. Every time it slowed he kicked off again, keeping up the speed until he miscalculated and toppled the chair.
Lucky him he'd gotten away before they'd finished securing his wrists to the chair. He still had to dislocate several fingers to get them free. It took longer than it should have, but then, he didn't have a needle jabbing his neck yet, so he was willing to count it as a temporary win.
Using the slippery walls for support, Jason stumbled forward, urging one foot in front of the other. If he was going to die, and the increasing frequency of his convulsions told him that was a distinct possibility, it was going to be as far from that room as possible.
As far as possible seemed to after he'd counted out one and a half hours that felt more like one and a half days. There was nothing left in him to keep moving, and he pressed against the wall with a weak chuckle, thinking that maybe he'd be a little stronger if he hadn't skipped out on so many meals.
The asylum provided food would have left him even worse off, but he was pretty sure his paranoia in Blondie's case had been unfounded. Her cake really hadn't been that bad.
His legs gave out and he let himself slide to the ground. At least he wasn't tied down this time.
.
.
.
Turned out the visuals on the screens hadn't been live, just multiple recordings of Jeremiahs various attempts at making Jason 'admit to his delusions.'
Bruce himself had shown up along with Tim to analyze the footage in the hopes of the doctor saying something that would give away where he'd been keeping Jason. Well, she hoped, they were so certain of it that they were already discussing what they would do with Jason once they found him.
Steph stood in the hallway besides the mirror she'd ruined with a styrofoam cup of cold coffee in her numb hands. She'd stepped out when they'd started talking about the places they'd send him when he'd recovered from the things Arkham had been doing to him. Apparently there was some 'facility' in Central City.
"Hey, Batgirl?"
"What do you want?" Exhaustion kept the heat from her voice, but Baker knew the only reason she hadn't had him arrested was that there was no proof he'd known what he was hiding and she wasn't in the mood to fight over it.
"I, when, there were a few guards, the one's that worked more closely with Doctor Arkham th, th, they, they always…"
"The stuttering's not endearing when I hate you." Steph tossed her coffee through the office door of some shrink who'd been dumb enough to leave it open, right into the bin besides the desk.
"They bragged that they knew a p, place." He was watching his hands as he wrung then at level with his chest. "Where Doctor Arkham took the, the 'troubled' patients."
She regretted not having something to crush in her hands. "What?" She demanded, then advanced on him before he could answer, backing him into a wall. "You're only saying this now? When I've been asking for over a week?"
"I didn't think." He was on the verge of tears again. "I thought they were, and they were dumb, I thought they were just talkin' like they were…"
Steph groaned and regretted not being able to pinch the bridge of her nose with the cowl on.
"Okay, Jeff, I get you're freaked out, but if you're serious I need you to focus." She forced herself onto a more relaxed posture. "Can you take me there?"
He shook his head so fast Steph was sure it would screw off his shoulders had he motion carried on a second longer and she had to hold herself back from yelling at him.
"I have, people I have to…" he let out a long shaky breath. "But I can get you a boat."
.
.
.
And a boat she got. The water around the asylum were choppy, splashing her insulated suit with the frigid liquid, and slicking the hand she kept on the humming motor.
If the guard was to be believed – and his associates hadn't been drunk idiots – there was a hidden hatch to a hidden sublevel where she might find Jason.
Her nerves were on fire and not just because she'd left without saying anything to Bruce and Tim. They were busy with that horror show in the mirror room and she told herself she didn't want them distracted if she was chasing a dead end.
She slowed down once she'd reached the south side of the asylum and eased the boat along the slimy walls. Using her night vision it didn't take long for her to reach the find the a cleverly disguised steps leading to a rusted door frame.
Minutes later she was walking through sticky looking halls that reminded her a little too much of that Silent Hill game she'd played with Cass. Every corner she turned down, the eerie prickling under her skin only increased.
Wow, she let her cape fall over her shoulders, draping her in the warm fabric that did nothing to dissipate the chill, and she'd though the dark asylum above had been creepy.
Just when she was beginning to regret not having backup within five meters, she heard a cacophony of consecutive crashes down the hall.
"Where?!" The voice that screamed chased the chill from her bones and replaced it with something warms enough to fry an egg on.
She ran soundlessly towards the sound, past numerous empty rooms set up similarly to the one on the tapes. The one all the shouting was coming from was also the only one that was lit.
She'd meant to get a look at the place before she actually went in, she really had, but sometimes, well, sometimes she didn't mind that people expected her to do dumb things anyway. Meant they wouldn't be as disappointed when she actually did.
Arkham was wiping up a bloody stain on while a man convulsed on the grimy tiles not four feet from him. The hand poking out from some shaft wasn't hard to miss either.
"Arkham!" She growled, cracking her knuckles as she advanced.
The man actually had the gall to look annoyed when he turned his head towards her, it faded pretty fast when her fist crashed into his nose with a crack so satisfying she shuddered.
"Where is he, Doctor?" Her whole body was shaking as she watched him try to crawl away, couldn't have that, huh? She stomped down on his back, and his head slammed into the floor, the sound echoing around the massive empty base.
He growled, and suddenly there was a syringe in his hands, he tried to leap at her with it, but it was pretty obvious he was too used to dealing with people he'd weakened to a degree that they couldn't fight back.
All it took to disarm him was a sharp kick that sent the serum rolling across the floor. She grabbed a fist full of his fancy shirt and hauled him to his feet, slamming him against the wall and tightening her grip around his scrawny throat, feeling the way his neck muscles worked under her hands as he tried to breathe through the hold.
"I asked you where he is, you psychopathic piece of filth!" She shook him roughly, the back of his head banging against the wall.
"You won't find him." Jeremiah chuckled, the sound resembling a rusty chainsaw more than anything.
With a growl, she tossed him to the ground and repeatedly rammed the steel toes of her boots into his unprotected ribs. She tried not to break any bones, but she didn't try very hard.
"Bet you had fun playing your sick little games with him, huh?" She caught sight of the syringe he'd tried to stick her with and grabbed it while dragging Arkham over to the gurney.
For the first time since she'd met him, he looked afraid.
"I'm not gonna tie you down." She growled, she hadn't noticed how bloody the restraints were, how hard Jason had fought to free himself, and now that she did, any sympathy she could have felt for Arkham evaporated. "Because I," she hit him again, this further splitting his swollen lip, "don't," another hit, this one aimed at his jaw, "have to."
She gripped his shirt again and raised the syringe high above him, delighting in the way his fearful eyes followed the thing he'd used to torture who knew how many people.
"Did you get a kick out of making someone so strong weaker that you?" She asked lowering the needle slowly to his neck. "Wanna see how it feels to be on the other side?" If she could have heard her voice right then it would have given her nightmares.
"He got away!" Arkham yelled, his eyes growing bright and desperate. "These idiots let him get away." His words were slurred and hard to understand past his swollen lips, but she had a lot of practice with that kind of thing.
"Which way." Steph let her glance slide to the puddle of blood and prayed it wasn't Jason's.
"It won't matter if you find him now." Arkham choked out. "He'll be dead before morning, and I need the data."
"Damn you're a bastard." Steph didn't have time work him over for answers on the off chance he even had them. She cracked her staff against his head twice in quick succession and left him there, flicking off the light switch.
The blood was still fresh, no more than a few hours old at most.
She lit the room with violet light again and saw four bloody lines trailing away from the puddle and disappearing down a side hall.
Without a glance at the unconscious monster, she took off after the trail.
There were bloody footprints on the walls every few meters, the lines on the ground zigzagging. She knew before she'd found the chair how he had to have been traveling, seeing the piece of old equipment only confirmed it.
The blood trail stopped even before that, but she could follow along by the marks he'd left in the dust.
"Hood!" She called, more to have a break from the heartbeat pounding in her ears than because she thought he'd hear her. "Hey, I'm coming to find you, just hold on okay."
Eventually a clear an uneven lump appeared, obstructing the otherwise clear tunnel. It took shape as she approached and her breath caught in her throat as she skidded to her knees besides him.
His skin was taught and even paler than before, his skin freezing and covered in marks she didn't want to look too closely at, but he was breathing and there was a pulse under her finger tips.
"Jason." She breathed, burying her hand in long hair that had started to darken at the roots again and lifting his head off the ground. "You'll be okay, okay? We'll get you some warm clothes and a real doctor and…" and a facility in Central City.
Her hand paused midway to her comm. Maybe some other place wouldn't be as bad, but she'd spent so much time thinking Arkham wasn't so bad.
"Come on." With a grunt she hoisted him up and nearly collapsed with relief when he got his feet under them and out a little bit of his weight on them. "You'll be fine," She promised despite the tremors running through him. "I'll make sure you are."
.
.
.
It was almost always raining in Gotham. Thunderstorms that lit up the sky and shook the buildings to their foundations until even the bravest doubted the huge structures would be standing in the morning were almost a monthly occurrence.
Still the one raging outside the clinic left its lone doctor with a feeling, though not quite ominous, was unsettling all the same.
She was so tensed in expectation of something that when she heard a frantic knocking at her door, she hesitated in answering for the first time since she'd set up shop.
With a headshake, she dismissed such childish thoughts, there was someone on the other side of the door, and if they were that desperate then it could be something serious.
As soon as she'd unlocked it, the door blew open with the force of the wind, crashing against the wall with a BOOM as loud as the thunder, a large shape silhouetted against a sudden strike of lightning.
"Doctor Thompson." Stephanie stepped in, decked out in full Batgirl regalia, struggling to hold up the tall, thin figure braced at her side. "Help him, please help him." She sobbed, handing the boy over before backing up, a hand pressed tightly against her mouth.
He wasn't breathing.