The Secret Room
Bruce and Selina ran through the plan one last time before Bruce took his hiding spot under the table, and Selina stood just next to the door in the kitchen, completely invisible to anyone entering.
They waited in silence, Bruce hidden by the tablecloth and Cat poised, waiting for their target to enter.
Sure enough, the quick footsteps of Selina's butler, Alfred Pennyworth, started rapidly approaching the kitchen.
At the last second, Selina stepped out from the doorway, tripping both her and Alfred. They went tumbling down, and as quick as she could, Selina lifted Alfred's keys off his belt loop and slid them under towards the table Bruce was hiding under. Selina started fussing over Alfred, acting as though he looked hurt from the fall.
Bruce smiled to himself. That billionaire was oddly good at stealing things. He took the keys and silently went through them one by one, separating any that seemed to be the correct size to fit into the locked door's keyhole.
With eight keys in hand, he clasped the ring and handed it out to Selina, who'd played her part perfectly and was now leaning up against the table.
She took it and Bruce heard her say to Alfred, "I think these are yours…"
"Ah, thank you, Miss Wayne," Alfred replied. "Now, since you're alright, would you mind going to check on Mr. Kyle? It's been three hours and he hasn't caused a commotion… I think something might be wrong."
Selina chuckled at his rare attempt at a joke and nodded, walking out of the kitchen. Alfred watched her go, but a flash of movement caught his eye. He whipped around and saw the bottom of the tablecloth swing a bit, like it had just been moved and was going back to its original resting place.
Slowly, he crept towards it, like a cat stalking its prey. He took the bottom of it and pulled it up.
Surprisingly, there was nothing there.
Alfred shook his head, afraid he was going mad. He marched out of the kitchen, much to the relief of Bruce who'd taken refuge behind the counter.
Certain he was gone, Bruce stood from his hiding place and left the kitchen.
Selina was standing around the corner, waiting for him. "Did you get it?" she asked.
He nodded. "I got eight. Hopefully one is right…"
"But can't you just pick it?" Selina asked.
Bruce shrugged. "But where's the fun in that? Half the fun of crime is trying not to get caught, you know."
She shook her head at his strange opinion. "Whatever. Let's go," and they went off running down the hall.
Selina led him to the familiar brown door. Bruce emptied his pocket full of keys onto the floor and, one by one, they went through them. Finally, on the second to last key, it clicked.
"Yes!" Selina exclaimed. Bruce unlocked the door and pulled it open.
What they found was quite unexpected.
"Selina…how old were you when you saw the staircase?" Bruce asked.
Jaw on the floor, Selina answered, "Six… Apparently my dad increased security…"
Behind the old, wooden door was a massive, stainless steel door with a passcode lock. It had six digits with a keyboard underneath.
Bruce whistled. "No kidding…a six digit lock with thirty-six possible answers for each…that's over two billion combinations."
Selina stepped forward and started punching in random codes. 123456. Nope. MARTHA. Nope. ALFRED. Nope. Selina tried her birthday. Nope.
Bruce asked, "What was that last one?"
Selina answered, "My birthday."
"February 19th?" Bruce asked. She nodded and Bruce told her, "We have the same birthday…"
She raised her eyebrows. "Weird. I don't think I'm gonna get this to be honest," gesturing to the door's passcode lock.
"Where would your dad have kept the code?" Bruce asked.
"No idea," Selina replied.
A few hours later, they were laying around in the study when, suddenly, Bruce got an idea.
He stood from his couch and tossed the book he'd been reading to the side. "I got an idea," he told Selina, already walking out of the room.
She ran to catch up with him and asked, "What is it? Bruce!"
He leaped over the railing of the stairs, dropping down to the bottom floor from the story above.
Selina caught him at the door and asked, "What is it?"
He said, "Wait a sec." Meticulously, he typed, "S-E-L-I-N-A."
There was a pause followed by a loud click.
"Yes!" Selina exclaimed as the door started to swing open.
Behind the now unlocked door was a flight of steps which went down farther than Bruce could see, which was saying something since he could usually see in the dark.
Selina, who still holding a flashlight from earlier, turned it on and shined it down into the darkness.
Bruce whistled at the length of which the tunnel went down. "Come on," he said to Selina.
"What?" Selina objected. "We can't even see all the way down. Maybe it leads to…"
"Where?" Bruce questioned. "Where would it lead to?"
"I don't know…" Selina replied, still hesitantly.
Bruce took the flashlight from her and said, "Well, I'm going." Just as he made it to the third step or so, he muttered, "Scaredy Cat," which caught the ear of Selina.
Groaning to herself, she followed after him, placing a book from a nearby shelf in between the door and the threshold to keep it open.
The stairs were made of wood at the beginning, but they quickly turned into something much studier…concrete?
It was grim and dark and without the flashlight they would've been blind as bats.
Finally, after a full minute or so of descending, the floor leveled out and Bruce told Selina to watch her step.
It was too late.
She tripped as the stairs gave way to the floor, and she would've face-planted had Bruce not caught her.
"Whoa!" Bruce exclaimed, barely making it before she fell.
"Sorry," Selina said, suddenly thankful that the room was too dark for him to see her lightly blush.
"No problem," Bruce replied. "What is this place?" he asked, shining the light around the room.
The room they were in was dark and cold and the air was filled with a thick could of dust. Bruce went over to a desk in the opposite corner and found a couple files and papers strewn about. He picked one off, and, blowing off the dust, read out loud, "Applied Sciences Division…what are these?" he asked Selina.
"No idea," Selina replied. Bruce shined the light at the other side of the room and they saw another door. "I wonder where that goes…" Selina asked aloud. She approached the door and took the handle.
Surprisingly, it was unlocked.
A rush of cold air hit her as soon as the door opened. About the same time, Bruce found a light switch and turned on the lights in the room. Now able to see through the door, Selina whispered in awe, "Whoa…"
In the dim light, she could see a huge, expansive cavern that went on nearly as far as she could see. Bruce came up behind her and asked, "Did you know that there were caves under your house?"
Selina nodded. "A few, but…none like this…"
Bruce aimed the flashlight down at the foot of the door and saw a metal staircase. "Come on," Bruce said, already descending the stairs.
Selina followed suit, taking care to not slip on the damp metal.
They hit the cave floor and Bruce asked, "Why do you have a secret staircase to a cave under your mansion?"
Selina shook her head. "I'm kinda tired of saying this, but I have no idea."
A light squeak alerted the both of them to another presence in the cave.
They paused and Bruce slowly lifted the flashlight up to the roof.
Selina gasped out loud and even Bruce took a couple steps back towards the staircase.
Over the echo of the roar of a waterfall farther down in the cave system, their attention was brought to a new sound. Hundreds of thousands of bats were crawling about on the ceiling.
As the beam of the flashlight hit the bats, they all dropped from the ceiling in a swarm and Selina screamed. They sprinted towards the steps, the swarm of bats now encompassing them in a sea of dark brown wings and high pitched shrieks and squeaks. Bruce batted and swatted at them as Selina ran ahead, holding the door open for him.
He tripped at the bottom of the stairs, scraping his knee badly. Selina rushed down the steps and grabbed his arm, helping him up the steps until they finally reached the concrete room. As soon as the door slammed shut, the bats went eerily quiet, like order had been restored in the cave.
Bruce and Selina slumped against the door to the cave, both breathing heavily.
"That was awful," Selina stated. Bruce hummed in agreement.
"Why did they attack us?"
"They didn't," Selina responded. Bruce tilted his head in confusion and she told him, "My dad taught me all about bats when I was younger. They weren't attacking us. If they were, we'd be covered in cuts and scrapes. No, they weren't angry, they were excited."
"Excited?" Bruce asked.
"Yeah, like a dog when his owner gets home, ya know?"
Bruce shook his head. "What was your dad doing down here?"
"I don't know, and to be honest, I don't want to know," Selina answered, although that wasn't fully true. She did want to find out what her father had been doing, but she had a bad feeling that the room, the cave, the secrets, they were all connected to her parent's deaths.
It could be dangerous, and she sure as hell didn't want to bring Bruce into it.
However, unbeknownst to her, Bruce knew that she was lying. From years on the streets, he'd learned who to trust and who to not, and he did trust her, but he knew she was lying all the same.
Granted, she was good, and if he hadn't been so skilled in spotting a liar, he would've believed her.
Nevertheless, he nodded. "Fair enough, I guess. Let's get outta here."
They climbed back up the stairs and found the makeshift doorstopper hadn't been moved. They sealed the two doors again, as if nothing had ever happened in the secret room below Wayne Manor.
Later that night, Bruce heard a knock at his door. He rose from his bed and found Selina standing there. "Hey, Cat, what's up?" Bruce asked. It wasn't too late at night, only about nine O'clock, but he'd decided to try to go to sleep early.
"Nothing much," she answered, "I just wanted to check on you…"
Bruce smirked. "Check on me? Why?"
"You looked pretty shaken up at dinner, and then you came straight here after you were done…are you okay?" she asked in a motherly tone.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Bruce lied. The thing with the bats had secretly terrified him. He'd felt powerless while they swarmed him and he hated feeling helpless.
It was obvious that he was lying, but Selina didn't push. "Alright. If you need to talk, or something, I'm right down the hall."
Bruce smiled to himself. It'd been a while since someone had given a shit about him and it felt really good. "Thanks, Cat, but I'm good, really. How about you?"
"I'm good, I guess."
They stood in an awkward silence for a few moments.
"Well, I gotta get to bed…" Selina said. "Goodnight, B."
"Night, Cat," Bruce replied. She walked down the hallway, but before she reached her door Bruce asked, "Do you wanna go to Gotham tomorrow?"
Selina raised an eyebrow. "Gotham? Why?"
Bruce shrugged. "Well, I figured since you spent the past few days giving me a tour of your world, I'd show you around mine."
Selina nodded. "Sure, sounds fun. You wanna go after lunch tomorrow?" Bruce nodded. "Cool. Night, Bruce."
"Night," Bruce replied.
A/N: Sorry for the shorter-than-usual chapter, but this wasn't originally part of my outline and sort of just wrote it on a whim. From now until the end of Season 1, I should be able to post every Friday. As for those who were asking if Bruce would grow up to become the Batman in this series, you'll just have to wait and see what I have in store ;) Make sure to review if you enjoyed and/or have any critiques as all assistance is welcomed. Thanks for reading!
