Levi Martin felt the cold, wet, abrasive ground before anything else—especially on the sensitive underside of his forearms and the back of his scalp. His cropped-close hairstyle invited the moistened chill to spread further than just surface contact.
He rolled his tight shoulders and groaned, raising a hand to his forehead for some sort of stability, and to stem an imagined, dizzying motion. His arm felt heavy and the sensation disoriented him until he realized that gravity was working against him. He was lying on his back. If his body weren't lying on a flat surface, he could have sworn he was floating.
"What...?" he rasped groggily, gritting his teeth. Even his eyelids felt heavy, but he forcefully opened them out of necessity; something was wrong. His blurred vision went in and out thanks to the fluttering, but he was seeing light. Washed out orange light coming from somewhere above.
"What the hell...?" he moaned airily.
Levi turned his neck sideways, expecting a creak of pain that would somehow explain his baffling predicament, but the movement turned out to be surprisingly easy, like he wasn't hurt at all. Carefully rolling over onto his elbow, he bit back a tired grunt—learned by years of training. He held three fingers up to his nostrils to check for blood. His fingertips came back dry, and so did his well-groomed beard and moustache. He checked his exposed arms. Blood wouldn't really stand out on his dark skin in such dimness, but after inspection he didn't find a single scratch on him.
He could feel water seep through the rolled up sleeve of his denim button-down. He mindlessly wiped at a blotchy water stain to dry off the excess, more habit than necessity.
He took in his surroundings to make out some sort of sense, and...nothing but dull, muted orange. Levi's heart seized from the strange environment. He blinked rapidly to rid himself of that single color, for he feared he had come under some type of bizarre blindness in which his eyes only registered one hue and none else. No matter how he shook his head, however, it did not fade, did not clear.
He glanced upward for some sort of respite. A hazy, bright spot glowed from above, sending off a spotlight that faded out until blending with the majority. Levi found another similar orb twenty-five feet further down. And another after it. He looked over his shoulder and saw yet another just behind him, not to mention a row. Streetlamps.
Clenching his abs, Levi heaved himself into a sitting position to allow a better vantage point. Those orbs were streetlamps; he could now make out the darker, old-fashioned wooden poles they were attached to, faded and hiding just out of sight. Casting his gaze down, the glimmer of wet pavement peeked between his legs. He swivelled his head in every direction possible, and would have imitated an owl had his neck had the capacity. Somehow, some way, Levi had found himself smack dab in the middle of a foggy, empty, two-lane road.
A trickle of anxiety spilled in his blood. He didn't recognize this place at all, but most importantly, he didn't know how he came to be there. And if he didn't get there on his own, who abandoned him? After living more than a decade in his current house with his family, he knew every shape and bend and crack of his own neighborhood to know that this one was not his.
Streetlight bled into the misty atmosphere, helping the glow spread further than it would have with the assistance of any other weather phenomena. Levi crushed the heel of his palm into his forehead, desperate to remember what happened last before he woke up here.
Gingerly, the first thing he did was rise onto his feet, swiping stuck gravel off the seat of his pants. The last thing he needed was to be roadkill on top of everything else. His wife was in no way going to appreciate where he found himself in the middle of the night. He enjoyed the occasional drink with his buddies at the bar, but he consciously made certain he never drank until complete blackout.
The clincher to Levi's predicament, however, was that he hadn't been to the bar in a week.
"Hello?" he said tepidly.
The void was quiet.
Though it was clear the hour was nighttime, Levi couldn't make heads or tails if the sun had been closer to setting, or closer to rising. Raising his wrist to his face, he squinted past the glared glass of his dial sports-watch.
Twelve midnight.
All Amber Dunkle knew was that she found herself on a double lane street in the middle of a foggy night. No markings on the road. No cars. No people. The pavement glistened wet in the dewy air, reflecting warped areas of artifical orange from the streetlamps.
She didn't arrive in this place standing, but when her blue eyes snapped awake staring at an overcast, nighttime sky, and absorbed an unfamiliar territory, she was on her feet faster than if the street sent an electric jolt up her spine. Her wheat-blond hair, pulled back in a sleek, straight ponytail, wheeled behind her as she briskly half-jogged, half-pivoted every so often down the road in search of some hint of civilization. She swore, though, that the time had been somewhere in the afternoon last she remembered.
She halted to a standstill, massaging her forehead to soothe her racing, increasingly puzzled mind, attempting to get all of her memories in order. She recalled she'd been on her way to a gymnastics showcase at Jezebel Plaza. Parked her car in an underground garage. Got out. Locked the door, and then...blank. Nothing surfaced afterwards. Any transition between a grey underground-garage and a blaze of streetlamp orange was missing.
Heart dropping, Amber hurriedly patted her hoodie's pockets for her car keys. Each pressed flat. Was she targeted for her car? Whoever stole it had to have also abandoned her here. Dread froze Amber's blood. She glanced all around herself again, as if monstrous, otherworldly creatures were waiting just beyond her sight in the fog, waiting to encircle her. She didn't recognize this road anywhere in Gotham—that was, if she still was in Gotham.
A tickle brushed her shoulder. With a shrill gasp she whipped around, more on instinct than actually wanting to confront whatever was out there with her.
There was nothing behind her. Nothing but a long stretch of road that disappeared into the misty, tangerine night. The creepy-crawly feeling on her shoulder was too much to take. She reached back, grabbing blindly for whatever touched her. She was met with the pin tips of her hair. She lowered her shoulders in only mild relief. The paranoid feeling of being watched did not leave.
The temperature was mildly cool, but the chill of the unknown was rattling her bones. She yanked up the white zipper of her red hoodie up to her throat. Even if it would do nothing to warm her tension, it benefitted her psychologically by feeling covered, unexposed. Her calves in her black capri-cut leggings were out of luck, though.
Being so petite, even at eighteen years of age, Amber stayed on high alert. A life spent learning gymnastics kept the body limber, but it was certainly no self-defence preparation course. If anything, gymnastics taught her to sprint until her peripheral blurred, and she was ready at a millisecond's notice.
The sound of Deanna Baumbach's sprinting resonated heavily on the wet pavement. The soles of her bare feet burned from the rocky scrape of the terrain, but she was in the midst of a full-blown anxiety attack that left her debilitatingly numb. An overwhelming urge begged her body to curl up into a ball and agonize, but she was already in the flight stage, she had to leave. She had to. She had to keep running. Nothing was chasing her, she could stop on a dime and fall to the ground any second she wanted, but her legs quivered with such adrenaline that she was liable to explode if at a standstill.
Every footfall pushed up an uncontrolled, frightened whimper from her chest. Her chin wrinkled as she blubbered in terror. She had no idea where she was—though no matter where she happened to be in Gotham currently, her safe, warm home may as well have been on the other side of the world.
Afraid of tripping on the hem of her brown peasant skirt, she crushed sections in her fists, bunching them against her thighs. Her fluffy, deep brown hair bounced in her wake, thumping between her shoulder blades in a most unpleasant way that did nothing ease her scorching nerves. The shoulders of her garishly overlarge, dark grey sweatshirt leaned to one side, exposing her black tank-top strap and a portion of her clavicle that heaved with her excessive breaths.
There was a huge gap in her memory, that much she knew. It had to have been huge, considering it was noon when she braved leaving the house for an errand. Her parents were both still at work, she thought she could try it again without supervision. It was just going to be an easy one this time. Deanna had slowly been learning to integrate back into the world, her therapist said to start off slowly. After many months of repetition and slowly expanding her boundary little by little each time, Deanna could now make short, cautious excursions without the onset of a panic attack.
Every bit of her progress drained the instant she found herself on that dimly-lit road, all alone. It was a bad idea to leave the house, she knew something bad would happen to her again, and she was paying for it in a way only her worst fears could have imagined. Though no imminent threat was visible in the eerie nighttime mist, none so similar as the time she had the misfortune to visit the bank on that particular day years ago, Deanna felt just as riled, tight, and wound-up as when the man in a black ski-mask pointed the gun to her head.
The sensation of weight in his clasped arms, supported by his lap, was the first thing Casey Glenn was aware of. Before even thinking of opening his eyes, he stirred uncomfortably. Automatic instinct kept him from letting go of the gentle but noticeable heft he was, for some reason, holding onto.
Even though there wasn't the slightest hint of wind, he knew he was outdoors; there was a very low hum in the air, the rustic kind that wasn't bound by man-made walls.
His head lulled forward and he startled awake, his heart kickstarting like a motorcycle engine. The large roots of an oak tree crested the ground on either side of him. The color of the dead grass was washed out by a streetlight nearby.
Baffled by the feeling of weight, Casey glanced downward at the load in his arms. He gasped and his legs kicked back, the tree at his back acting as a barrier to keep him from going anywhere. A little baby's face, sleeping in complete tranquility, peeked from a bundle of soft, white cotton sheets wrapped around it with care.
Casey had enough sense of mind to not release in shock. Fighting hard to still his spike of anxiety, he stared down at the baby. It was all he could do. Had he unconsciously kidnapped it? God, he hoped not. Did he save it? Did he find it? He glanced upward to the canopy of branches and darkly green leaves hovering over the two, as if the answer would be there. No. It wasn't making sense to have done this on his own. Somebody left him there, and in turn, also ladened him with the mysterious child. He pondered if perhaps he and the little one were both the unfortunate victims of a kidnapping gone wrong and were subsequently bailed on.
Due to such a bizarre circumstance, he started questioning his memory, as though he didn't know his reality anymore. The more his eyes adjusted to the stark change in environment from where he last remembered, his situation began to seem more and more like one of those painfully realistic dreams, the kind in which it took maybe a full half hour after waking to discover that the dream's events never happened.
The last thing he recalled was parking in a car lot, on his way to Jezebel Plaza to buy some lightbulbs, until his vision went black and he found himself sitting against the lumpy bark of the tree.
The baby stirred, arching its little chest, hiccupped sweetly, and then stilled in it's slumber again. Couldn't have been more than five months old.
Casey's arms numbed, shooting a discomfort that spread across his shoulders. He twitched, desperate to hand off the child to somebody more responsible, more able to care for it until the police could be notified. There was no hint of civilization anywhere, though, except for the single two-lane street to his left.
Casey watched the night sky with a growing sense of unease. The place was so otherworldly, in a paranoid sense. It looked normal. In fact, it was normal. But the lack of people, or cars, or even a visible house made the area appear desolate, like the road went on forever in the distance, stuck in a constant cycle of lamplight giving birth to another mile the more one tried to reach the end.
Using the most precise, delicate movements he could make, all the while watching the baby's face for signs of disturb, Casey cradled it in one arm and braced the other on the tree behind him for stability. He rose carefully from his sitting position. The last thing he needed was to soothe a screaming baby without the necessary tools, such as bottles or pacifiers.
Casey descended the lawn's dipping bank, stepping onto the sidewalk right underneath the spotlight of a streetlamp. He searched his right, and then his left. Sighing heavily, he raked a hand through his limp brown hair dumbfoundedly. If he just knew where he was in Gotham, he could navigate. Checking on the baby one more time, he tugged up a section of blanket to fashion a small hood over it's tiny head and reluctantly held the little thing closer to his chest, determined at least to keep it safe until he could flag down some help.
He started down the sidewalk, looking for a street sign.
A/N: This story idea came to me while I was vacationing in Costa Rica back in February. Yeah, figure that one out...
Sorry about the delay to anybody who was waiting on this. I'm juggling three stories right now, and, as I predicted, it ended up being a bad idea to start so many at once, but of course I decided to go along with anyway. Because I not so smart, you see.
Don't worry, though! None are on the backburner, I'm still commited to presenting each one, including this one. Thanks, Johanna Crane, for making me remember there were people still interested in this one and giving me that necessary kick in the butt. And thanks to killakenny and Fef for being the first to be interested :D