"Miss Moretti, I'd like to show you something," Scarecrow said, in that same low voice. It was devoid of its usual iciness, but still sent shivers down her body. Something about Crane had changed, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what.
"Whatever you say, Doc." She had crossed a line, insulting him so openly, and now she was going to pay. Real smart move there, Elena, she thought, cursing her loud mouth.
He opened the heavy wooden office door for her, and let her exit first. It was a gentlemanly gesture she had not thought possible of him. Suspicious, she followed behind him at a safe distance until they stopped at a set of ancient looking elevators. As they entered the musty smelling elevator, she heard the jingle of keys, and saw him select a small, bronze key and insert it into a slot on the wall and turn it. The doors closed in front of them with a dull thud- so final sounding.
She was filled with a sense of foreboding, and she hesitantly looked to her right and saw Scarecrow staring at her intently. She flushed under the intensity of his gaze, which seemed to be amplified by the unsettling blue color of his eyes. "Looking for something?" she asked, daring to meet his gaze.
A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, but he did not reply.
"What? No clever retort?" she asked. If she was going to be punished for taunting him, she might as well make the most of it.
"None that you would comprehend," he replied.
The elevator came to a jerky halt, and she heard the faint ring of a bell as the doors opened. They were at the basement, beneath the walls of Arkham. It was even dirtier and unkempt than the upper levels, and she could see paint chipping along the walls and brown water stains from where it had flooded. There was a persistent smell of mildew along the corridor as well, to complete the pleasant effect.
"If you're trying to impress me, you're doing an awful job," she commented.
"Oh, Miss Moretti, we haven't even gotten to the best part." There was a hidden threat in his words, and Elena felt the crazy impulse to make a run for the elevator. But where would she run to?
Scarecrow strode along the hallway, Elena matching him step for step until he stopped in front of a door to the right. "Please," he said, opening the door and stepping away from the entrance, "Take a look inside."
She steps through the doorway when she is assaulted by the shrieks of a young man. The entire room is padded, but still he is strapped down to a bed, where he writhes and foams at the mouth. "Getawayfrommegetaway!" he spits, squirming desperately as he tries to free himself from the restraints along his head, chest, waist, arms and legs. Elena feels a hand at the small of her back, and looks over her shoulder to see Scarecrow standing behind her, a triumphant look upon his face.
"Don't be afraid," he whispers in her ear so that she can hear him over his patients' screams, and she flinches away, to his amusement. He pushes her forward, and she gingerly approaches the man's bed. The man's shrieks become louder and higher as she gets closer, and she sees his eyes roll back into his head, so only the whites of his eyes are now visible. Elena knows, as she listens to the man's pleas and begs for mercy, that Crane is only attempting to intimidate her, but she knew there was something much more sinister in that look he gave her in the elevator.
Unwittingly, she had gotten too close, and the man suddenly grabbed ahold of her hand and would not let go. She tried to pry her fingers away, but fear had improved his strength, and there was nothing she could do to stop him from twisting her fingers. He was close to breaking her left hand when Scarecrow advanced, and with alarming strength, pulled the patient's hand off of her own.
The door was sound proofed, so once it shut silence returned to the halls of Arkham.
"Do you know why I showed you that man, Elena?"
The use of her first name startled her, and it showed on her face.
"I believe we know each other well enough to skip such formalities, am I correct?"
"I'm not afraid of you."
"Oh, but you are Elena." He grabbed her wrist, and pulled her closer to him. "Your face is flushed, you are sweating, and your heart rate," he said, holding up her wrist, "Is skyrocketing."
Her mind went blank. He had her.
"And that's good," he continued, "That you're scared. You'd be a fool if you weren't. Because you know Elena, you'll end up just like that man if you don't cooperate from now on. Is that understood?"
She stared at him defiantly, and replied in an icy tone to rival his, "And you'd be a fool to think you can manipulate me that easily."
Scarecrow sighed, in mock disappointment. "I guess we haven't learned our lesson yet. Come along."
Scarecrow grabbed her arm and tugged her towards a set of double doors at the end of the hall. Crane was not the type to manhandle patients, preferring to outwit and outsmart them in order to get what he wanted. His other half- Scarecrow- enjoyed just the opposite. Scarecrow pushed open the doors, and welcomed her to Crane's and his greatest project to date by declaring, "This is where we make the medicine."
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light, and the sight that met her eyes was horrifying. The two of them were standing on a balcony overlooking a workshop of sorts. Over fifty inmates in ghastly orange jumpsuits were sitting along workbenches, wearing surgical masks as the stirred mystery liquids in different sized glass beakers and test tubes. Another handful were pouring some sort of substance into an opened pipe along the basement floor, flowing with rushing water.
She looked to him in confusion, and with a sneer he turned and walked down the metal steps, gesturing for her to follow. Tiptoeing down the stairs, she saw many inmates give her unfriendly looks, but upon seeing who she was with, they all cast their eyes elsewhere and got back to work.
"Gotham is at a tipping point, Elena. For years it has threatened to succumb to destruction, but never quite has. I am here to change that." He stopped at a metal gate hidden in the corner of the room where excess water drained, and rapped on the bars with his knuckles three times. "More powerful than any drug ever created is fear. It is the most primal instinct we feel as a species, and we do nearly anything to avoid it. It can even cause death, if one isn't too careful. And now I have discovered a way to spread it to all of Gotham. I have bottled fear. And in a few months, the entire city will know what fear truly is."
His speech stunned her. He's really drugging the entire city. Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit.
"What do you want, Crane?" hissed a serpentile voice from within the metal gate they were now at.
She jumped backwards, not realizing anyone was actually living in the sewer, and ran into Scarecrow, who prevented her from leaving.
"Or is it Scarecrow?" asked the monster, evaluating Elena and the doctor through blood red eyes. That was really the only way to describe the man, or at least, that was what Elena assumed he once had been. His overly muscular body was covered in sickly green scales, and a large hand gripped the re-enforced steel bars of his prison, with vicious looking black nails. He was wearing large blue overalls, but that was the only human thing about him. She saw the black pupils of his red eyes dilate as they focused on her.
"What did you bring?" he inquired, in a harsh, rasping voice.
"Dinner," Scarecrow said simply, and before his words could register with Elena, he pinned her arms behind her and forced her towards the gate.
"No!" she cried, furiously trying to kick and claw her way free from Scarecrow's grip. But all of her attempts were futile, because even in his small frame, Scarecrow was much too strong for her.
"Don't worry darling, I won't eat all of you," said the lizard man. "Just a hand, or two." And to prove his point, he grinned, displaying his mouthful of jagged yellow teeth.
"Stop! Let me go, Crane!" she screeched, causing Scarecrow to twist her arm behind her back tighter.
"I'm not Crane," he said coldy. With one arm he held her, while he withdrew his key chain from his waistcoat pocket with the other. Dangling a large, iron key in front of her, he jeered, "Scared yet?"
So… I've been on a writing spree when I really should be working. Oh well :O Let me know how you guys are liking it in the review box, please. Don't be shy, I don't bite (unlike Killer Croc) HA! Sorry, bad joke. But yes, please review, follow, etc.!