Hello, everyone! Just wanted to thank those who have reviewed and thank you to those of you reading. I'm glad people have enjoyed the first two chapters since this is the first time I've really enjoyed writing a story. Anyways, hope you all enjoy this next chapter!
Disclaimer: I do not own Batman or any DC characters involved. All rights go to their respective owners, I just own my ideas.
There's one thing you must know about living in Gotham City. It is something everyone living there would tell you: "Get use to being uncomfortable." Gotham is not the coziest city to live in and the people there know it. Before Batman showed up a year ago it was common to mistrust every person you walked by on the street, believing that every man, woman, or child could easily rob you blind or worse. Gotham had the worst crime, and with the super villains showing up to fight Batman, everyone would tell you to just get use to being uncomfortable.
Still, with that common way of living in Gotham (uncomfortable), Amber still found herself uncomfortable standing before the doors of Arkham Asylum. She gazed up at the tall, old fashioned building with uncertainty as Harley was practically vibrating with excitement and anticipation next to her. Amber once again directed her gaze to the guard granting them access into the building and wondered if it was a good idea to come along with Harley in the first place.
With a loud creak the guard opened the doors like something out a horror movie and Amber wondered if it was too late to ditch Harley and go back home. Of course it was, as Harley grabbed her hand and dragged a very reluctant Amber inside.
"Welcome," a kind voice greeted.
Both girls turned their attention to a tall woman walking towards them. She had dark skin with her black hair cut into a fashionable bob. Her kind, hazel eyes seemed tight with tiredness but nevertheless, she was making sure any and all the interns felt welcome. She stopped before them and held out her hand for the girls to shake.
"I'm Dr. Joan Leland, I'm going to be one of the doctors overseeing the interns for the program." The woman said.
Harley's smile got bigger (if that was even possible) and enthusiastically shook Dr. Leland's hand.
"Nice to meet you, I'm Harleen Quinzel, but call me Harley, everyone does," Harley smiled. "This is my cousin, Amber," Amber reached out her hand with a small smile and shook Dr. Leland's hand as well.
"Well, it's very nice to meet you and I'm glad that you're interested in the intern program, it's definitely going to be interesting to see what'll happen." Dr. Leland laughed.
"You mean you guys haven't done this before," Amber inquired.
"Yes," Dr. Leland replied. "We've had regular interns in the past but we've never done an intern program. But since we're short staffed currently we need to garner interest in the Asylum to get more doctors to work here."
"Oh," Amber quietly looked around her at the lobby they were standing in.
It was a nice little lobby, if not a bit outdated. The brown carpet seemed dusty as well as the ripped chairs that lined the walls of the room. The ugly, faded yellow paint on the walls did nothing to make the room seem more appealing. In the center of the room sat a large round desk that looked as if it could have at least six receptionists working behind it instead of the one receptionist checking her Facebook. Around the room sat plastic plants and flowers that had suck thick layers of dust on them they almost appeared white.
There was a time when Arkham Asylum was considered one of the best and state of the art asylums in the country. It had won many awards for treatments and how well they treated their patients, but sadly, as the crime rate rose in Gotham, the quality of work and treatments used in Arkham decreased. It didn't help that the original Dr. Arkham passed away during its spiral downfall and his son, Jeremiah Arkham, took over with little to no knowledge of how to run an insane asylum. But besides its problems, the place amazingly has stayed open for more than fifty years.
"Dr. Arkham is currently interviewing another intern at the moment so why don't I give you a tour of the facility?" Dr. Leland said. Harley nodded her head and the two began to follow the woman through one of the doors in the lobby.
The lobby may have looked old fashioned but, to Amber's surprise, the actual asylum was quite clean and technical. As they walked through the different floors Amber noticed that the lower levels had cells with a glass wall and door on the entrance side of the cell allowing you and the patients to freely see each other. The high levels, however, seemed like a prison. Each cell appeared to have no window save for the tiny, barred window on a complicatedly locked, metal door.
"So what's the difference between the downstairs cells versus the upstairs ones," Amber spoke up.
Dr. Leland stopped her conversation with Harley and turned to look back at Amber who had been walking quietly behind them. "Security reasons. The cells on the bottom floors are low security: they're the inmates that post the least threat to the staff or themselves. We can trust them not to break the glass and it helps them feel as if they're not truly trapped which keeps them calmer. The upper levels, however," Dr. Leland paused and gave a tired sigh. "They are the high risk security. Murderers with mental disorders, schizophrenics who attack anything and everyone they see, and..."
"And the ones Batman brings in," Harley finished. "They would be considered 'high risk', right?"
"Exaclty," Dr. Leland nodded. "The people Batman brings in may be, in a sense, sane and really intelligent, but because they claim insanity to the courts we have no choice but to bring them here. Since they still are very dangerous we must keep them in high security cells."
"But didn't Poison Ivy break out just last week?" Amber questioned. "If she was able to break out of your 'high security' cells I highly doubt it makes a difference where you put them in this place."
Dr. Leland's eyes visibly tightened and her lips set into a thin line. "Poison Ivy, if you remember, has ways of persuading the male guards," she turned on her heel and continued walking with Amber and Harley trailing behind her. "Super villains are a lot harder to contain than normal criminals, it has nothing to do with our security but everything to do with who you can trust."
Harley and Amber gave a sideway glance at one another before Harley got Dr. Leland to change the conversation. Amber stayed quiet and glanced at her surroundings, knowing it was best to not push the subject of Poison Ivy's escape, but at the same time becoming concerned about the place her cousin would be working.
"We got a lead," Commissioner Gordon announced. He stood outside on top of the GCPD building. To anyone else it would look like he was speaking to himself, but Gordon knew better.
"Where," a dark figure asked.
"Arkham Asylum, the drugs have been traced to there," Gordon finished. He heard the swish of cape and knew that Gotham's caped crusader was speeding towards the Asylum outside of town.
It had been a crazy two months for Gordon, the GCPD, and Batman. There had been an outbreak of a strange new drug on the streets, however, this new drug had horrible consequences. The drug either left the victim screaming and unresponsive or placed them into a coma-like state. The GCPD had been working hard trying to find the person responsible for the drug but no leads had come up until now.
Unfortunately, Gordon knew that some of the cops in his precinct were involved with working part time for various drug lords to make extra money, so he couldn't trust the information on the lead to anyone else but the one man who wouldn't fail him.
Hopefully, Batman would be able to find who was responsible and stop them before things got worse.
Amber was staring into one of the glass walled cells at what appeared to be a comatose like patient. She wouldn't have even known he was alive if it were not for the muttering he was doing. She stared hard at his moving mouth trying to make sense of what he was saying; it had a rhythm to it, so it's not like he was just muttering randomly.
Amber and Harley were just outside the door that led into wing of the asylum that housed the offices for the doctors. Dr. Leland had asked them to wait there while she checked in on Dr. Arkham to see if he was ready to interview Harley. While Harley had decided to wait outside the door, Amber had gone to look around at the different patients the asylum housed, which is how she came to be standing in front of this particular cell.
"Sc-Sca-Scar-" Amber began to sound out the word she believed the man to be muttering.
"Scarecrow," a man's voice sounded behind her. Amber jumped in surprise and quickly turned around to see a man standing behind her. "He's saying 'Scarecrow." The man continued.
"Oh," Amber replied quietly.
The man was a good foot taller than she was so Amber had to crane her neck to get a good look at his face. He was a handsome man who appeared to be at least in his early thirties. He had very pale (almost sickly) looking skin with jet black hair while two crystal clear blue eyes stared back at her. There was something... odd with this man.
"I'm Dr. Jonathon Crane," he did not hold out his hand for her to shake like Amber was expecting. Instead, he kept his hands tightly clasped behind his back. "You're looking at one of my patients, Mr. Thomas," Amber turned her attention back to the man in the cell. "A few months back he accidentally killed his little sister in a car crash, it drove him absolutely insane so he became my patient. Sadly, my treatments as you can see resulted in a different result rather than curing him,"
"That doesn't explain why he's saying 'scarecrow' over and over again," Amber said.
"No it doesn't," Dr. Crane muttered.
"I think, Dr. Crane," Amber turned her head slightly to look at him. "You may need to check your 'treatments' because I've seen others in this place in almost the same exact state as Mr. Thomas here. It looks a little suspicious, if you know what I mean." She gave him a pointed look from the corner of her eye.
There was something so off about this man and Amber wanted to know what it was. She was very good at sensing things in people, mostly bad things, but also some good. It wasn't any sort of power, but it defiantly did make her a good judge of character.
Jonathon Crane certainly gave off a very suspicious aura. To him, he probably gave off a very confidant (if not a really obnoxious) personality; the kind of personality of someone who could do no wrong. But that is not the case here, obviously he was doing something to his patients that justified a little investigating.
"I'm curious, Dr. Crane," Amber continued, turning her whole body to face him. "If you could show me how you 'help' your patients."
"Are you not here to interview as an intern?"
"No, my cousin Harley is," Amber nodded her head Harley's way. "I'm just here to support her, but once she goes into Dr. Arkham's office I'm afraid I'll be terribly bored waiting for her in the lobby." Dr. Crane looked at her with slight suspicion, but the slight smirk that formed on his face told her that he was considering it.
Amber was not a police officer nor a detective - she wasn't even Batman - but something was very wrong here and it had been eating at her since she entered the building. After seeing the state some of his patients were in (she knew the others she saw were his since they all acted like poor Mr. Thomas) she decided to play detective a bit. So her plan was to find out what Crane was doing to his patients, call the police if necessary, and maybe get some of Crane's patients actual help. If it turned out nothing was wrong then Amber could walk away later tonight feeling good that she at least investigated a little.
"Very well," Dr. Crane agreed. "We can head to my therapy room and I can show you the methods I use to help my patients."
"Great," Amber turned to Harley. "Hey, Harl!
Harley, upon hearing her name, immediately turned her full attention to Amber.
"Dr. Crane here has kindly offered to share with me some of his therapy methods while you're in your interview. That way I can help get a head start on how things are done here at Arkham," Amber lied through her teeth.
"Oh, okay. Thank you, Dr. Crane!" Harley called to the two of them.
As Amber and Dr. Crane turned to make their way to his office, Amber looked back and saw Dr. Leland lead Harley through the door to Dr. Arkham's office.
Okay, so I really wanted to make this chapter and the next chapter into one large chapter, but I just couldn't do it. I felt it was better to cut it up into two chapters (possible three, to be honest) since so much is going to happen. I know that I have yet to put a lot of focus on Bruce/Batman himself but there's a reason for that. Right now it's very important in the story to focus on Amber. I'm really proud of how this story is so far and I'm really hoping you all enjoy it. I really can't wait to get into some of the twists I have in mind but, sadly, those are a few chapters away. This may be a long story with 50-60 chapters, but I might chop it up into three different stories. I'll figure it out when we get to that point. Anyways, hope you all enjoyed this chapter and don't forget to review! Thanks for reading!