A Fiery Escape

My day passed as if it were any other day. But it wasn't. It was my last full day with my sanity. Maybe.

Late into the night I remained awake, resting on my cot. I was in a constant state between crying and fretting. They aren't going to help you. They're going to escape themselves and laugh their asses off tomorrow while you become a useless, brain dead sack of bones. I hoped that the voice was wrong, but I wasn't even entirely sure I believed Eddie and Roman could get me out of here. Especially considering how last minute this whole thing had become.

With each passing minute, I had less and less confidence in getting out of here. The lights were out on category nine, and had been for a while now, which meant it had to be well past midnight. I didn't know what they could be waiting for, but each second that passed now was more precious than the last. They lied. They never wanted to help you. They were only messing with you, the naïve little girl who they knew trusted them. But I didn't trust them! Not completely, anyway. I mean, sure I-

My train of thought was broken by a very loud explosion somewhere near, if not on, category nine. At once, it was as if hell had literally broken loose. People were screaming from their cells, sirens around the hall began emitting a whooping sort of siren, and the sprinklers were now showering everything in a sheet of rain.

I jumped off my bed, trying to get a good view of what was going on out in the dark hall. There were red emergency lights flashing, and I could see people moving in their respective cells, but it was hard to make out anything else with water running down my glass wall. Through a clear patch near the side of my wall where the torrent of rain droplets had missed, I could make out what looked to be a man sprinting past my cell. He looked like an ordinary sort of man, until I saw his face. His entire face was burned. He kept sprinting past my cell before I could get a better look at him.

I glanced around at the other cells and saw that Bane was now standing calmly by his glass wall as well. His eyes shifted to mine right before every single cell door on category nine opened as if on their own accord. I stood there, watching now as a flood of inmates sprinted past my cell, not in the direction the burn victim had come from, but towards where he had ran.

Moving as discreetly as I could over towards my door, not wanting to draw attention to myself, I wondered if this was Eddie and Roman's escape plan. It had to be. Well what do you know, they actually did it. Out of the shower of rain and the cluster of people in the hall, I saw Roman coming my way.

"Come on! What're you standing there for?!" Roman's voice took any uncertainty I had from me. I quickly came back to reality and realized that the escape was happening. I reached out and grabbed Roman's hand and immediately we began running.

The crowd of inmates was streaming through the double doors that led towards the route to the lunchroom. I looked back and saw fire engulfing the double steel doors I had come through my first day on category nine. How dumb I had been back then. My biggest fear had been the inmates, when I should've been worried about the doctors. My eyes scanned over the crowd behind us as Roman guided me through the slower inmates at lightening speed. I caught sight of Eddie and my eyes met his green ones. He looked absolutely triumphant as a toothy grin lit up his face.

Someone had propped the steel double doors open with a chair so they couldn't automatically close and lock the inmates in. As soon as we passed through them however, we were met with a harrowing sight. Security guards were coming through the doorway at the end of the corridor. Fire behind you and entrapment in front of you. There's nowhere to run, Violet.

"What're we going to do?" I asked frantically, my nails digging into the flesh on Roman's hand.

He squeezed mine in return, watching as Bolton led his men forward, tasering and beating the fleeing inmates ahead of us. "We take the stairs."

Immediately he threw himself through a doorway I had never even noticed before. It blended into the wall, probably only used by security personnel. Roman violently kicked the door open and practically carried me down the stairs. My short legs couldn't keep up with his long ones and honestly, for a moment I was afraid of tripping and breaking my ankle.

We were passing a dark metal door with a "2" painted on it when the doors above us started opening and the yelling started. I didn't know whether the screams were from guards, inmates, or both, but I decided to just focus on the stairs beneath my feet. Finally we made it to the absolute bottom of the staircase; there were no more stairs leading down, just a metal door with the word "Ground" painted neatly on it.

"What if there are guards waiting on the other side?" I frantically asked, pulling Roman's arm to stop him from opening the door.

"Don't worry, I took care of that." I guess I'd have to take his word on that since the voices in the stairwell were getting closer. He pulled me through the door behind him. He turned to reinforce the door, but I was too distracted by the burned man standing in front of us.

From the time he was up on category nine to the moment right now he changed out of his scrub set. He was now wearing some black looking jumpsuit with, what looked like, bombs strapped around his waist. He had some backpack looking thing on his back that had a nozzle connected to it, which he was holding in his hand. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it looked like a torch. Great, another crazy inmate. Just what we need. His gaze, which was more like a glare, was focused on me. In his other hand, he held a helmet.

"Good job, Lynns. I owe you one." Roman sounded happy despite the fact we weren't out of the fire yet. Great time to be funny Violet.

"How about fifty million ones?" Lynns had said it so quietly that I didn't think Roman had even heard it, but his sudden tight grip on my forearm told me differently.

We continued past Lynns, who just stood there watching us with an unnerving aura about him. I didn't like that guy and I doubted Roman really did either judging from the glare he sent his way. Then why did he ask for his help? I don't know, okay? Just shut up.

"So where are we going now? We can't just walk out the front doors?" I ask. We'd been walking through the halls, away from Lynns, but it didn't take long to see what he'd been doing down here. There were charred bodies practically lining the hallways. If the sight of charcoaled guards wasn't enough to make me feel sick, the smell of them was.

"We aren't going out any doors. We're going out through the sewer." Just like old times, how sweet. "There's an elevator that'll take us down to the sublevel up ahead. From then on, we're home free." He made it sound so simple.

"Why the hell does the sewer extend out this far? Arkham is an island?" That didn't really make much sense to me. Couldn't they just, I don't know, dump the waste into Gotham Bay? That's kind of what I assumed they did anyway.

"It's used as a cage for one of the prisoners." A cage? He pulled me around another corner. We were on a strip of hallway now that had double doors leading out to the grounds out back. But straight ahead of us was a set of steel double doors, which were so common throughout this asylum. I figured that's where we were heading since going out back would lead us nowhere. "Luckily for us, he isn't down there at the moment."

Yeah, lucky us. He grabbed my hand with urgency, the red lights flashing down the otherwise darkened hall were a clear sign we needed to keep moving. Just as we were about to walk through the end steel doors, a voice behind us stopped us in our tracks.

"Freeze, Sionis." No. Not now Jerry! I was slightly behind Roman, so I acted as a human shield, if need be. I say this because at that moment, Jerry was standing in the doorway we had just come from pointing a gun at us. Well, more like Roman, but still. "Let her go! Violet, step away from him." He motioned his hand towards himself like he wanted me to stand by him.

I turned and glanced at Roman, who quite obviously hadn't expected this to happen. He met my eyes and I could immediately see something I wasn't used to seeing in them: panic. It's never that easy. We were so close, too. I was thinking about trying to plead with Jerry, but that would be useless. Maybe if I acted like I was actually being kidnapped against my will or something that would work. I wanted to tell him to save me but dammit, something inside of me didn't want to throw Roman under the bus.

"Jerry. Please, please, I need to get out of here tonight." I began pleading, thinking about how nice Jerry had been to me this entire time. I started walking forward, much to Roman's distress. He tried reaching out and grabbing me, but I threw him off. You don't have time for this. We're doing things my way right now. "Strange. He's going to operate on me today, Jerry. He's going to lobotomize me." His gun lowered a little now, I was about half way back down the hall, Roman on one side and Jerry on the other. I was caught in the middle-as always. "Please, I need to get off this island. You know he'll do it."

Jerry lowered his gun almost completely now. I heard Roman shift somewhere behind me. The red lights were still steadily flashing, which meant somewhere above us there was most likely chaos. In the darkness behind Jerry I saw a shadow shift. Lynns? Jerry started, "Violet, listen, you're a good girl, you don't-" Whatever else he was going to say was drowned out by a gunshot.

I blinked in shocked silence as I watched bits of Jerry's skull shatter from the point blank shot to the back of his head. He collapsed, dead onto the floor.

"Thought you went this way." Two-Face's half smirking face shocked me. No. This was not good. He just killed Jerry. This is what happens when you forget how dangerous the people around you are.

"Violet, move!" Roman roared from behind me, but in the second it took for him to scream this out, Two-Face fired another shot. Behind me, I heard a body hit the floor.

A/N: Yeah, I just went there. I don't know if this is true or not, but I recently read somewhere that in the Arkham Unhinged comic, Firefly was Black Mask's right hand man. I've never read that comic, so maybe someone more familiar with it could confirm this? Either way, I thought that was a cool little fun fact that I could incorporate into this story. Plus, I just couldn't pass up the chance to mention the supposed $50 million bounty Firefly had been in on (*spoiler* even if it hadn't exactly been Roman who offered it) in Arkham Origins. As always, let me know what you guys think!