Tuesday, May 29 2042, 23:42:37

XXX

On the business card a Gotham address was printed, the normal string of numbers and a swank street name. Sounded ritzy. Standing in front of the place, though, it was easy to see that it was a rundown stack of concrete slabs that dared to call itself a building. Before the earthquake that destroyed most of Gotham, when the city was young though certainly not innocent, the "building" had still been a crap pile. Now it was just doubly so. It looked like someone had given a toddler some duct tape and said, 'Here kid, piece the rubble together.' Even the rickety door was off, set too high in the wall and at a fifteen-degree angle.

Many men—and a few women—came and went that night, but a few stayed and went in through the front entrance. There they found a set of stairs that went underground. Perhaps it led them to a maze of sewer pipes where one could easily get lost or, even more likely, get eaten. Rumor had it that gallons of alligator Splice had been poured down the drain and the resulting scaly sewer rats hankered after human blood.

All right, that idea wasn't so likely, but something bad had to be down there. The game few who walked through the door didn't come back out again, not a one.

Erin, who crouched in the narrow gap between two crumbling buildings across the street, took that as a bad sign. In the two hours she had staked out the place, the faint drizzle had turned into something nasty and forty people had flounced through that door. Chances were that at least one should have chickened out and run home. Her sigh was more of a troubled groan as she peeled the skintight turtleneck away from her throat and withdrew the business card hidden there against her skin. She skimmed the same deceiving Gotham address once more before flipping it and frowning at the back.

Against a dark background, in white, it read 'a Haven, safe from the Law.' A date and general time was scrawled beside in luminescent ink. Underneath her Halloween ninja mask, she bit her lip. It smelled like a police set up. She'd realized that from the first, when card was handed down through the grapevine to her in some back alley. Let the word out that you'd protect criminals, draw in desperate people on the run, then slam 'em in jail –it sounded like something GCPD would think up. Gotham cops had always been creative like that. They'd made up Batman, after all.

It was probably feds' bait for lawbreakers, but even though she didn't want to, she had to bite. She couldn't keep crashing at random places, hoping they wouldn't find her. 'They' was getting to be too many people. Wasn't it enough that the Law wanted her in the chair?

She released a breath she'd been holding prisoner. "Please be real," was her fervent whisper as she stood. She hugged herself tightly in an attempt to keep what little warmth she had left in her body. Boots clunking, she jogged away from the building's side, leaving the protective overhang and going out into the gray evening's monsoon.

XXX

Behind her, rain poured down from the roof in a waterfall thin as paper. A four-inch wide gap appeared in the liquid curtain, and then a second not a foot away. Hadthe young womanglanced up, she would have seen the lone creature standing on the roof's edge. At first, in the dark, it seemed to be Batman. It was a black, hulking shape stalking his prey through the shadows of Gotham, after all.

But the badge of the Bat, the red symbol on his chest, appeared to have been torn off and replaced with crudely stitched leather. The ears were missing, and the material had been slit in several places, only to be stitched up again with thick cord. Instead of jet boosters in his heels, he made do with combat boots. Upon closer inspection, the suit's material seemed not so much like supple techno-Kevlar as it did cheaply replicated leather. Still, whether his suit was straight from the Batcave or a Costumer's shop window, the man stood out as a threat. Water glistened where his tight muscles pushed up against the leather. He stood oblivious to the slanted downpour that threatened to push him over the edge of the roof he perched upon and down the perilous drop to a painful death splattered across the alleyway below.

The water continued to pour, falling from the roof to the alley floor, coursing around his boots to make two gaps in the narrow waterfall. Rain struck Erin's retreating form as her stalker launched from the roof and landed in the alley in a crouch. The gaps in the wall of water disappeared with a splash the same time he touched earth. Unfazed by the drop's jarring impact, he straightened and followed the woman at a safe distance. The steady rain covered what little sound he made sloshing through puddles.

She stopped before the door, and he fell back a ways, out of the shallow light cast by the lone streetlamp. Muttering something along the lines of 'Screw that,' she turned and hurried around to the back of the building. After debating with herself for a while, she crept up the slippery fire escape and worked open a window nestled in a rotting frame on the second floor.

Her shadow followed

XXX

It was just an ordinary apartment building hallway, lined with numbered doors. Only they were all empty. And unlocked. She checked, every door, as she worked her way down the hall. The accommodations were nothing to sneeze at, bare one-roomers all, but she sometimes found herself staring wistfully at a mostly clean bed made up in one corner. Then, shaking her head, she would step resolutely out of the stained doorframe back into the hall. From there, her confidence died. She could feel breath on the back of her neck and shadowy monsters moving at the edge of her vision. It was a relief to come to the stairwell at the hall's end. She dashed down the three flights sublevel into the underground, glancing over her shoulder the entire way.

The door at the bottom of the stairs, Erin found, didn't have a handle on the inside. She bit her lip. 'How reassuring.' The room within was sparse, except for a small table in the middle trembling under the weight of an antiquated speaker. There was another door set into the opposite wall, but it also had no handle. She stood rooted in the doorframe, unwilling to take another step further.

"Welcome." The voice came out of the speaker scratched and inhuman. Being a victim of parents with good manners, she mumbled a hello back, eliciting a low laugh from her unseen host. "No need to be shy now. Why don't the two of you step inside?"

Two? Blinking, Erin looked behind her and all but mewled at the sight of the black behemoth walking nonchalantly out of the shadows, not at all bothered by being found out. The urge was to stay away from him, and as he advanced, she backed into the room without thinking. Thankfully, he stopped in the doorway, leaning against the frame. He seemed just as wary as she about letting the door shut on them. Being stuck in a room with no way out wasn't a handsome prospect. She relaxed knowing the two of them had at least that much in common.

Then the thought occurred to her that her was standing there to prevent her from leaving, and her serenity shattered. She walked shakily to one wall and leaned against it heavily, sinking down onto the linoleum.

XXX

It took a minute of silence for her to crack. "You followed me?" she asked, clutching at her soaked shoulders.

At first, the dark specter showed no sign of hearing her, but then his head inclined and a quiet laugh escaped him. "You huddled under that overhang for two hours."

She shivered and took that as a yes. Then she was stupid enough to ask, "Why?"

"You were the only idiot smart enough to not walk straight through the front door. Congratulations."

"That doesn't answer my question. Why were you following me?" It was amazing how terror could be covered up by a snippy attitude.

He looked over, somehow seeing her through his eyeless mask, and answered simply, "When the first one gets caught, the second gets away." He pulled a business card from his belt and held it up in the light, turning it about as if it were a jewel he could inspect for flaws. "Though now it seems we're in this together," he sighed and expertly tossed the flimsy bit of paper onto the table at the room's center.

Time went on and boredom set in. No feds ran in, weapons drawn; no more words of wisdom came from the old speaker box; nothing happened at all. Desperate for a break in the monotony, Erin started chatting. "Got a name?"

The man appeared to laugh. "Lady, I'm wearing a mask; does it look like I'm going to be telling random people who I am? Would you like my number too?"

"Sure," she shrugged. "Why not? Just make one up. Make a name up."

"And what would be the point of that?"

"So I don't have to yell 'Hey you' to talk to you."

He reared up in the doorframe. "Look, you've got a cute ass. Normally I'd be happy to talk to you…hell, I'd skip right past the talk. But this is not the right time. I'm not talking, not giving you my name!"

"Well, that's rude."

"Lady!—"

"If I may make a suggestion?"

They both stared at the small speaker box.

"My dear, since you were the first to arrive, for tonight's purposes you may be called One. You sir, are Two, and the good…person that has been waiting so patiently behind you will be Three. Thank you."

The newly named One and Two peered through the doorway at Three, a wraith of a human being standing at the base of the stair. That was the best description of him—or her—that One could come up with. The person was covered head to toe by whatever means possible, including scraps of leather and medical tape, and the end result was a tall, thin, sexless stand-in for a mummy movie. One shook her head and glanced at Two. He wasn't much better. Somewhere in a psychiatric ward, a crazy was missing the soulless monster from her nightmares.

As for One herself, there wasn't much to see, except that she had an excellent figure. Her drenched turtleneck clung to her skin and her leather pants were chafing her ass. Her enormous, soaking wet boots looked comical on the ends of her tiny legs. The dripping opera gloves and Halloween ninja mask added just the right finishing touch. She shivered and hunkered down, knowing that she was going to be horribly sick in the morning.

"Sorry." It was Two's last word.

"Forget it. Just stressed," were One's.

XXX

It turned out that Three was even less talkative than Two. He—or she, it was still impossible to tell—wouldn't even say a word. So, cold and miserable, One closed her eyes and settled down for a long, mind-numbing wait.

Agonizingly slow, a few people filtered in, and were introduced to the number name system by the cultured voice that came from the speaker. Desperate for something to do, One might have done it for their unseen host, but she had already succumbed to sleep.

Together, those gathered made an interesting bunch. They were male, female, and gender-challenged; stony, chatty, and pathetic mewling things curled up in the corners; dressed in black leather, white silk, and pink tutu. There were some surprising combinations apparent in the thirteen masked people in the room when the door slammed shut on its own, all but whacking Two in the ass.

The voice in the speaker box came on in a lousy attempt to forestall a panic. Don't worry. We are merely closing our doors to prevent anyone else from arriving in the middle of things." The second door slid open horizontally, betraying its status as an elevator. "Welcome. You all know your numbers, so we may begin immediately. If you all would step inside?"

Eight, a fearless idiot in a leather jacket, was the first to come forward. He almost stepped on the sleeping One, who was tiny enough for his weight to snap her in two, but she was snatched it away in time. Cradling her in his arms, Two glared at the brute. Too arrogant to notice, Eight strode into the elevator. The rest followed, then hurriedly made room for Two's terrifying blackness and his tiny burden as he entered. The door slid shut, and they began their long descent.

XXX

One woke abruptly, going from a dream about being safe and warm into the arms of a waking nightmare. She had tumbled to the ground in panic before she realized it was only Two, that there was actually a human being in that suit. He looked down at her and jerked a thumb down the short hall towards a door that the rest of the group was passing through. "This century?" he asked and walked away.

Stiff and sore from sitting slumped in soaked clothes for hours, One stood slowly and hobbled after him. For some reason, he stopped abruptly in the doorframe. She caught up and peered around him, suddenly understanding. Someone had gone and played urban jungle, complete with monkey bars, in an underground cavern. It was a maze of metal poles and catwalks, every surface shining like new chrome. The pit over which the silver contraption hung, however, was the sort of black that suggested it didn't have a bottom. There were two platforms on either side. On the far end, there was a cheery gateway portal. On the home team side, the group stood, their collective jaw dropped.

A woman better dressed than others recovered first and shrugged, creating the sense of being unimpressed. "Well, at least we know it's not GCPD. They can't afford this crap."

Stumbling in a bit further, One glanced up and was startled to see how high the stalactite littered ceiling was. It made her wonder how far underground they had been taken.

"Stretch out your muscles. Now."

She mistook the advice for her own thought at first, but then she glanced over to see Two, who still leaned in by her ear as though he had something more to whisper into it. Behind his soulless mask, she could see a caring-type emotion in his eyes. It shocked her. She was surprised she could even recognize the empathy for what it was. She couldn't remember ever being shown kindness, and she never would have to expected to find it in a stranger who could make Satan run in terror, screaming like Michael Jackson.

Two sighed and explained, "The point will be to climb across that thing to the other side. I can't catch you if you fall."

"But you'd try? Why bother?" she murmured back.

"…I've got a soft spot for small ladies." He left and commandeered a large space on the platform where he began to stretch. Shrugging, One followed his example.

XXX

It did turn out that they were supposed to get to the other side of the cavern—in a goddamned race, no less. As to why, the current theory running through the group was that they were the guests of some rich idiot society that would be betting on them like horses at the derby. One didn't mind much. She would buckle on a saddle and let their host ride her if it would get her the freedom she needed. She'd sunk down to the bottom a long time ago.

That was why, despite her stiff muscles and tiny body, she was going to win. The only way she could go was up. Or six feet under.

As One took her starting place by one of the metal planks that led to the monkey bars from Hell, their host went over the rules one last time. "Race to the other side on my mark." That was it. He didn't mention if they'd be penalized for killing the competition or how many winners there would be. 'Three of thirteen racers, or just the one?' That was the question on One's mind when the word "Go," echoed through the cavern and she dashed down the metal plank, not caring to look down.

'How many? What if it is just the one?A Haven safe from the Law'—she needed it, and she would kill for it. But her bet was on Two being the first one to reach the other platform, unless someone stopped him. Would that someone be her?

Her plank ended up ahead, and she put on a little extra speed she didn't know she had to launch her self off the end into the tangle of steel poles. She didn't stop to take in her situation but forged on ahead, eyes open. She spotted another plank off to the side and worked towards it. It was narrower than the first one, but her feet were small enough and the going was a lot faster running on a plank than it was squirming and shimmying through a suspended metallic bamboo forest.

The plank was hung lower than her current position, and looking down at it gave her the opportunity to stare into the black abyss below. Gathering her scant courage, she leapt to one of the vertical poles that the plank hung from and slid down it fireman-like. Arms spread out, she ran towards the other side slower than she would have liked, but then this plank shook a bit more than the first.

In fact, it could shake a great deal, and did, when someone else landed roughly behind her. The impact knocked her down, and she clutched at the sides of the plank in a vain attempt to stay on. Vain because the man in the leather jacket kicked her like a football he meant to punt halfway to Brazil. In any case, she went flying as only a stupid mammal without wings could: screaming, straight down into the bottomless pit of Hell.

GRRR! This thing sucks for some reason, and it can't manage to handle Chapter 1 in one piece, so I need to post it in TWO fricking parts!

Sigh...okay, girl, winning smile...ahem...TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR THE CONTINUED ADVENTURES OF "CHAPTER 1"! WILL THIS TINY STRANGER WITH A SHADY PAST PLUMMET TO HER DOOM? OR WILL SHE BE SAVED? AND HOW?ALL THIS AND MORE, ON THE NEXT EPISODE OF "WHAT DREADHAND?"!