Cathy reached a shoulder-height brick wall that served as a fence to the next apartment complex. It wasn't going to shield her completely, but at the moment, it was a safe haven. She crouched behind it to pause and calm her racing heart, feeling like a soldier trapped behind enemy lines.
Keep a clear head, keep a clear head, I just need to find an exit, she coached herself. The phrase kicked into repeat in her mind, over and over and over until the letters merged to form one long train of a mantra. Keepakleerhed, keepakleerhed. Even in her mind her words were breathless.
Once-familiar surroundings were now strange and perverse. Nothing had changed really since Arkham commenced—dimensions and architecture remained the same—but it all somehow gained a twisted appearance within that time, like the trapped inmates were a contagion deep inside the city, spreading just underneath the tar, mortar, and concrete. Turning this place into a prison was an infection just beneath Gotham's skin, damaging it from the inside out. A city was never meant to be a prison. Hard to believe that she once walked these streets with no fear.
She imagined watching Gotham City from a helicopter, taking in the enormous skyscrapers of the fancy end, and then the run-down, greyish spot across the bridge: Old Gotham, now known as Arkham City. In the center of it all would be that eyesore, Wonder Tower. That was probably how it got it's name, because it was a wonder it was even commissioned at all; it looked like a danger to low-flying planes.
Cathy could have used a bird's eye view now, she had no idea where she was going. Chilly air stuck tightly to her skin like a new layer, one which stubbornly refused to come off. Still, she rubbed her cheeks vigourously, both to warm her face and her hands. Her nose went numb long ago and her lips were cracked and rough.
Hugging herself to keep heat inside her jacket, she looked skyward to try and find a landmark. The courthouse was definitely close by because the vertical, red blinking logo of the Monarch Theater was in sight. Or rather, the 'M NARCH THEA R'. She couldn't tell from this far away if the missing letters were burnt out or smashed in.
Opposite to the theater, on Cathy's left side, was a pink and blue neon-blinking sign inmistakeably in the shape of a woman. Cathy turned away from the Live Nudes sign distastefully. She hadn't seen or heard any women around in a long time so perhaps the sign was advertising an empty building, but still, Cathy didn't want to imagine what any woman stuck in the City would be subjected to.
YOU ARE UNDER CLOSE SURVEILLANCE a sign plastered on another building warned her. There were dozens like it in the City.
Listening hard for voices and hearing none, Cathy slipped out of her spot and continued slinking by. The lack of prisoners so far made her feel a little more agile, maybe even just a tiny smidge braver, but then again, the air maintained something eerie. Criminals were still in there, everywhere, and it was only a matter of time before she'd spot an orange jumpsuit. She couldn't afford to slip up and be seen.
Yellow and black stripes appeared up ahead near an alcove in the City wall. Caution strips! An exit! Cathy's heart leaped. She wanted to sprint for it, and even felt the spark in her feet, but fear and desperation didn't make her that stupid.
The area around the alcove was empty, making the whole thing feel like a trap. Carefully, Cathy approached, hiding wherever possible; in the shadows, behind a dumpster, behind the hollow shell of a burnt car.
The alcove was just twenty feet away. Using the same strategy as before, Cathy plucked whatever trash on hand was good enough to throw. She had no idea what she was grabbing off the ground near her feet, it was simply a mound of warped metal, probably deformed due to it's proximity to the burning car, but it would make an excellent clattering noise.
Winding up, Cathy pitched the object and sent it spinning through the air. It's clang upon landing echoed even better than the plastic crate. After a bounce or two, it skittered to a halt beside more piled garbage. Cathy ducked behind the car and waited, bracing for a spray of bullets or an authoritative shout.
None came. Did the TYGER guards even patrol the exits?
Nobody appeared. Evidently, the streets in this surrounding area were just as empty as the last one.
Cautiously, Cathy slipped out from behind the car and made swiftly for the alcove before she had a chance to change her mind. Upon reaching the halfway point between her goal, the sight of bright orange startled her. Eyes widening, she froze in her tracks, nearly slipping on the slick street. Two prisoners were already in the alcove!
...Only they were lying down.
Cathy's body tingled, trying to force her to turn around and find another exit, but she didn't know where another would be. She could search for days and still not find another one. Maybe this was the only one.
Taking care to tread as lightly as possible, she risked a closer look. Perhaps the two prisoners were knocked out and abandoned after a territorial brawl. It was doubtful that they were sleeping by choice, no one would choose a bed of cold, snowy, spacious concrete, not when there were a million and one corners, crevices, and materials for makeshift shelters.
Cathy collected a few pebbles from the ground and aimed for the bodies. They plinked and skittered, and one even managed to hit a prisoner on the cheek, but the men did not stir. Not even a twitch. Out cold, definitely. She tip-toed to the mouth of the alcove. It was better to pass through now before the two woke up.
She almost stepped on the stripe line before she found something else painted on the floor. The word DANGER appeared twice in bold white letters above the strip. A bad feeling bubbled in the pit of her stomach. She searched the alcove walls but failed to see anything out of the ordinary that made the word DANGER necessary.
Her neck prickled as well. Somehow she couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching her. The prisoners being the closest thing in sight, her eyes instinctively darted on the man lying on his stomach to her right.
His eyes were open, staring directly into her own.
Cathy jumped, clapping a hand to her mouth. Her legs wheeled back, hurling her into another burnt out car. The prisoner continued staring, didn't even blink. They may as well have been glass eyes, for they did not see a thing. With a sickening lunge in her stomach, Cathy suddenly knew. The men were not unconscious. Acid burned in her throat. The urge to puke rose like a tidal wave in her body, but she kept a hand stamped over her mouth to ride it out, trying to look at anything but the two dead bodies before her.
Able to get a miniature hold of herself after a nauseating half-minute, Cathy stiffly unfolded her arms and forced herself to carry on. Avoiding the prisoner's ceaseless watch, she approached the alcove again but spotted something that she missed the first time. An odd, security camera-like device stared at her from the ceiling with it's souless eye. It tracked her movement when she stepped side to side to test it. Were the TYGER guards watching her? Hopefully they would notice her lack of Arkham City uniform. Maybe they'd allow her through.
When she stepped onto the caution strip, an odd whirring noise froze her in her tracks. It was hard to pinpoint just where the mechanical noise was coming from, but it sounded like it was winding up. It seemed to be coming from the camera. Did that mean someone behind it had seen her? Or was this what the DANGER was warning against?
Cathy took a step back uneasily. The whirring noise died down and everything was calm again. Suspicion peaked, Cathy bent down to pick up a dirt clod. She tossed it underhand into the alcove. Like a shot, the camera sprang to life, lined up, and the dirt clod exploded into a cloud of dust. Cathy sprang back in shock. It happened so fast that she hadn't seen ammunition come from anywhere, the dirt clod merely burst into black mist. It wasn't a security camera, it was a device meant to keep prisoners inside—at all costs.
She backed away quickly, spun around, and left the exit far behind. There was no leaving this place! She had to find another one, she had to look for another exit.
The Solomon Wayne Courthouse was straight down the street. Beyond it, peeking above the tall buildings, she noticed with dread that there were less stars than before, and the once black sky was lightening. Dammit!
With her bag thumping on her back, she quietly ran for courthouse. As a pillar of justice it had to be a stronghold for the innocent left behind, it had to. Perhaps even her neighbors were inside. While that brainless oaf Mayor Quincy Sharp did commission for Arkham City's go-ahead, he wouldn't have let a government-operated building be taken over by the very people sentenced within it.
Nobody stood on the enormous stone steps of the courthouse's entrance, but it was too out in the open, elevated, and in line with another street. Cathy wasn't going to take the chance in trying the front door. Squeezing past a few broken bars in an iron fence off to the side, she entered the sideyard complete with benches and a few trees planted in rectangular holders.
Slipping into the narrow alley behind the building, she found a heavy, metallic back door. Testing the handle, it actually swung open. That wasn't good news. Still, Cathy needed to find somewhere to hide during daylight hours. A small hiding spot was all she needed; a room to barricade herself in, a nook behind broken furniture, an abandoned office, anything.
Entering and then closing the door behind her, Cathy twisted the knob to prevent a click, She stepped into a heavily damaged passageway. Silence. Absolute silence.
The light inside was dim but just enough was visible. She dared to take a few slow steps forward, on alert. The passage led to a set of double doors, and a gaping set of basement stairs to her left. A damp smell wafted from deep below, making the basement seem like a cavernous mouth. She couldn't imagine why anyone would go down there...which made it the perfect place.
Before descending the stairs, she tested a step. Each plank appeared splintery and warped, but they were solid enough to walk on. The moisture absorbed in the wood even softened their creak. At any other time in her life, the descent would have terrified the living daylights out of her, but this wasn't just any other time in her life.
She was already halfway down when something cold and prickly hit the back of the neck. She inhaled sharply through her nose, freezing in place. The feeling jabbed her neck again and coldly trailed down her spine. Her shoulders lowered in relief when the sensation dawned on her; water. Just water. It was only dripping from the ceiling, that's all it was.
Reaching the bottom, a tiny splash told her that the basement floor was soaked. Her shoes sloshed through collected water draining into grates in the floor. A row of three rusty, dented lockers stood crookedly on her left. Squinting through the dim light, she spotted a holding cell with bars missing up ahead.
Not exactly homey, not even a place one could pay her to spend the night in, but it was better than dying from exposure outside. It took an extra few moments to notice, but to her right was an open door, leading to another room.
She poked her head inside to examine. Another holding cell was in there with a ceiling light switched on inside. A desk stood against the wall at the very end of the anteroom, cloaked in shadow. The light from the holding cell could barely reach that far. Still, she ventured towards the desk. Just in case it held some useful supplies.
"Ah, a visitor," said a male voice out of nowhere.
Cathy stopped dead in her tracks, unblinking. Oh no. She whirled around, expecting someone waiting in the doorway behind her, but the place was deserted. She even backtracked to the open door and poked her head into the room beyond where she originally entered from, but nobody was there.
"Seems I was mistaken," said the voice again behind her. "One of Harvey's new recruits, perhaps?"
Wherever that voice was coming from, this person knew she was there. There was no point in hiding. With a shuddering breath, Cathy inched backwards, returning to the desk to grab the lamp as a weapon, pivoting every so often to search her surroundings.
"Where...where are you?" she replied, sliding her trembling hand over the lamp's neck.
"You need only turn around."
Fear seized Cathy's body. Her heart thumped behind her eyeballs, clouding her vision with white spots. Preferring to face her attacker head-on than get grabbed from behind, she spun on her heel and suddenly came face-to-face with someone else. She jolted back in fright, and the other person did the same. Her back hit the desk and bent her spine backward over it, and...the other person did the same.
Cathy squinted and realized that the person who frightened her was her own reflection. Not even a mirrored one but a transparent reflection in glass, a ghostly image of herself. Panting, she eased her body off the desk. The small of her back throbbed from the collision and she rubbed it to dull the pain.
"I'm sorry, didn't mean to scare you," the voice said coolly.
Cathy still didn't know where it was coming from. She searched the ceiling for hidden cameras or speakers. Finding nothing, she stared into the bulging eyes of her reflection for some sort of visual anchor and noticed for the first time that there was a room beyond the image. Her eyes merely flicked sideways, and there he was. Someone was sitting inside. Despite the figure having been there the whole time, his sudden appearance into her line of sight was startling and nearly caused her to leap into the desk again.
It was so dark inside the room that it was understandably difficult to actually spot the man. He sat on a bench in the back of the cell, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. What little light there was only illuminated his shiny bald head, his rounded belly clad in an orange jumpsuit, and his legs. Odd, black markings circled the dome of his head, all the way around like a headband. Tattoos, maybe. They appeared to be tire tracks or something, but Cathy stood too far away to know for sure, and she desperately hoped that he wouldn't come close enough for her to find out. His eyes were hidden, covered deeply in black shadow.
For a second she had a frightening thought that maybe he had no eyes, but his face seemed to be following her movements. He could definitely see her.
His room was strangely decorated. Papers; several, hundreds, maybe thousands of them, wallpapered every inch of the small space. Every inch. Even the floor and ceiling were covered with layer upon layer. The only flat surface that remained untouched was the sheet of plexiglass currently separating Cathy from him. Upon closer inspection, all of the papers seemed to have a large, black printed number on them. There was no pattern to their placement, each page simply had a random two digit number.
"If I could ask, when is your birthday?" said the mysterious stranger, breaking the silence.
"Um, November twentieth?" Cathy was caught off-guard by the question.
"Ah, Children's Day in some parts," he said wistfully. "Tell me, miss, do you like children?"
Cathy didn't want to answer, instantly filling with regret by blurting out her real birthdate. The man seemed to be waiting patiently for a reply. His hands were clasped in front of him in a conversational position, as though he were conducting an interview. Maybe he was, in some twisted way. Cathy kept her lips clamped shut and tightened her grip on her bag's shoulder-string for comfort.
The man's voice was whispery and gentle, so soft that Cathy almost strained to hear it. His words flowed like a lullaby, easy and calming. But something was wrong with it. Something that made Cathy want to get as far away as possible. Beneath it lied a subtle, inhuman quality—the gentleness in his voice was predatory.
"I see that we're having some difficulty communicating," the man said enticingly after hearing nothing from his guest for an extended time. "I promise not to tell anyone you're here, if that's what you're afraid of. You see, I'm a prisoner, too."
Cathy eyed him warily. "I can see that. It says so on your jumpsuit."
"What I mean is we're both here under circumstances we couldn't help."
Cathy's heart revved nervously. "You don't know that," she bluffed, "I could be in Arkham City for the exact same reason as you." Sicko's probably booked for a huge number of reasons, she thought, disgusted.
The man started chuckling. Cathy involuntarily shivered. It was the most chilling laugh she had ever heard in her life. Instinctually, she took a step backward.
"Oh, I doubt that very much," the man said in his whispery tone. "I don't consider myself a boastful person, but I can admit that I employ a rather...unique approach to my methods."
Cathy itched to ask what he meant by "methods", but judging by the fact that he was currently in a holding cell of a courthouse, she didn't have to stretch her imagination too far. To add, why was he in there in the first place? Was he forgotten? Left behind during the evacuation to starve and die?
"You know," the man said, shifting position and breaking Cathy's train of thought, "November the twentieth was only a couple days ago."
Though Cathy knew weeks ago that her birthday was coming up, the shut-down of Park Row was a more pressing concern. Still, she had been twenty-one for days now, all without her knowledge. Something stirred inside her, like the biological calendar in her body ticked from twenty to twenty-one and installed a new mind-set. How trivial a birthday seemed when one was trying to ensure that they'd see many more in the future.
The man got up onto his feet. Adrenaline rushed through Cathy like opened floodgates. She wanted him to sit back down, stop from getting any closer. The man stepped into the light and she finally saw him in his entirety. His eyes, so bright and pale that they appeared to be colorless, stared dead into her own. He was much taller than she previously thought, standing at a guaranteed six feet and over. He lumbered towards her, dragging his right leg like it was dead weight. There appeared to be a heavy, platform boot and leg brace attached to it, stunting his walk.
"You could stay here for a while," he continued effortlessly, inching closer to the glass barrier. "We can make up for your lost time and have a celebration of our own."
Cathy didn't hear the last word, she was already sprinting and halfway out of the basement. Panicked bursts of noise escaped her throat, pushed out everytime her feet slapped the moist floor. Nearly throwing herself onto the staircase, she climbed, desperate to widen the space between her and the man in the cell.
Her foot caught on a step and sent her careening forward. She yelped from surprise and her knees hit hard on the stairs. She threw out her hands to catch the step above, breaking her fall. Her palms scraped on floor gristle and greasy water, but she barely noticed. She was on her feet again, and threw all power into her legs, yearning for the courthouse's back door. She didn't hear anyone behind her but still felt like somebody was chasing her, as if the man's presence continued looming over her shoulder long after he was out of sight.
Once she reached the landing, her sneakers squeaked and slid on the tiles. Leaping for the heavy door to the rear of the building, she violently threw it open. Cold air and a flurry of snowflakes blasted into her face. Wrenching the door shut behind her, she stepped cautiously away and panted, watching it, aware of the horrors beyond. She knew that the man wasn't going to give chase - if he had any way of getting out of his cell he would have done it while he had her as a captive audience - but the thought of him still followed her.
His words, soft as they were haunting, still hissed in Cathy's ears. She wanted to dig her fingers inside, pick out his voice piece by piece, but she knew she'd never be able to reach far enough. It had nestled so deep inside her mind that it was guaranteed to linger long after he was gone.
A/N: The new game's here today, I'm so excited! If Maxie Zeus makes any appearance in it, or gets his own Arkham Game makeover like the other villains, any resemblance to the way I'm going to write him here is completely coincidental. I've had this story and characters plotted out for a while.