Chapter Text
Jason’s heart beat rapidly, a wild, staccato rhythm. He sucked in a breath, trying to force some calm back into his body along with the oxygen. His eyes watered and burned as he squinted against the glare of the overhead lights. After so long squashed in the squalid, clammy darkness of the storage container, the bare fluorescent bulbs were blinding and painful. He wanted to close his eyes and shove the heels of his palms against them until the stabbing light receded. Still, Jason forced himself to try to look around, to get a sense of where he was.
He wasn’t sure how long ago he’d been unceremoniously snatched from the Alley and shoved into a storage container, already crowded with dozens of other kids just like him–street kids, runaways, fosters, the kids nobody cared about. The ones no one was looking for.
In that fetid, crowded dark,the hours and days had blended into each other, full of sobbing, retching, and desperate, futile attempts to break down the door. The pitch-darkness inside the container had been broken only by the occasional tossing of water bottles and packages of crackers inside - and the resulting bloody fight over them - and then twice before, opening the container and hauling a few of the kids out. It couldn’t mean anything good that it was his turn now. None of the other kids had come back.
Jason drew in another shaky breath. At least he could breathe here. The air was gritty with dust and the ever-present Gotham smog, but it wasn’t thick and sour with sweat, puke, and too many bodies breathing in too small a space.That was something, right?
He’d known it was a risk, running numbers for Marco after curfew, but there weren’t many other options for a kid like him on his own. Going into the system was a death sentence–or worse–and everyone knew the cops were little better than traffickers, if they didn’t just shoot you on sight for being out past curfew. Better them than the capes, though.
It wasn’t the worst way to keep from starving. Or it hadn’t been. Now, Jason knew with a sickening certainty that weeks of empty bellies or getting sick off dumpster scraps would have been better than whatever the hell this was.
Still wincing from the brightness, Jason flicked his gaze up and down, trying to take in his surroundings. An old warehouse, maybe, once abandoned, but now crawling with goons in dark clothing and scattered with ominous pieces of humming tech. Shit. That tech looked seriously weird–and seriously expensive. Way too expensive for the rotting heart of the Alley.
Panic clawed its icy fingers into his chest. Whatever this shit was, it was serious. Way worse than some gang trying to muscle into Marco’s territory, or even traffickers trying to make some money off a passel of kids. This was Syndicate kinda stuff.
Jason forced another deep, calming breath into his lungs. There had to be some way out. Nobody had put any restraints on him or the other kids that had been hauled out with him, yet. Maybe if he was careful and quiet, no one would notice if he slipped away.
Slowly, silently, Jason edged to the fringes of the small clump of panicked, miserable kids. There was an opening off to the right, hopefully a door. If he made a dash for it…
A purple gauntlet landed on his shoulder. Jason flinched as he looked up. The harsh fluorescent light threw her masked face into menacing shadow, but he recognized her. The Huntress. The young woman was one of the Bat’s newest enforcers, but she’d already made more than a reputation for herself. His stomach plummeted.
“Don’t get any ideas,” she bit out, shoving him forward, closer to the whining contraption at the warehouse’s end.
As he stumbled closer, he could see the limp forms of bodies - kids - slumped against the machinery they had been strapped to. An odd energy was coming off the machinery. Jason could feel it, thrumming against his skin, slipping inside of his head. He should be looking for the exits, the blind spots, figuring out how he was going to slip free of this place. Instead, he just stared, a cold sort of lethargy crawling over him. It wasn’t just him. Around him, the other kids were calming too, their sniffles and protests fading away into the dull emptiness.
As Jason watched, henchmen pulled one limp body free from its straps and tossed it unceremoniously aside. Beside the now-empty spot, one of the kids who’d been taken out of the out container the first time was strapped in place, a tall skinny boy who’d puked his guts up the first hour in the storage container. He looked alive, but barely, his body slack and listless, eyes blank and glassy.
Panic clawed at his insides, shredding the heaviness that had fallen over his senses. He twisted, preparing to bolt out of the warehouse that second, no matter how unlikely he was to get away, but the Huntress was fast. Her arm shot out, snagging his shoulder with an iron grip. Her fingers dug cruelly into his collarbone. “Give this one the sedative,” she snapped.
Jason squirmed, but her grip didn’t loosen. Out of the corner of his eye, one of the dark-clad goons approached, a hypodermic syringe in his hand. A scream rose in his throat, but it never reached his lips. There was no point. Who would hear? There was no one coming to save him.
Just then, the lights flickered.
“What was that?” Huntress snapped. Her head whipped around as she scanned the area. Mercifully, the goon with the needle lowered it, reaching for his holstered gun instead. Jason held his breath, not daring to call attention to himself by trying to wriggle free.
Behind him, though, some of the other kids were taking their chances. Huntress’s attention snapped to the fleeing kids only a split second before her crossbow came up. “Don’t let them leave alive!” she spat, taking aim in the direction of a squealing pigtailed girl.
Jason didn’t think. He threw his head back, as hard as he could, slamming it into her midriff. She let out a grunt, her arm jiggling and her shot going wide.
“You brat!” The powerful backhand sent him sprawling. The taste of copper filled his mouth. Before he had time to do more than blink the water out of his stinging eyes, a boot heel drove into his stomach. Jason gasped, curling around the pain. His hands flew up to protect his head from the savage kicks that followed.
The lights shattered overhead, a spray of glass raining on the warehouse floor. Something whizzed through the darkness. There was a clatter, and the angry hiss of the Huntress’s breath. A whoosh of air, a heavy shape, moving fast, and then the hard thud.
When Jason dared to peek up from his protective crouch, a dark shape had moved in between him and the Huntress, who was snarling, lashing out with fists and feet at her attacker, her crossbow on the floor some distance away. A wild, unlooked for hope sparked in Jason’s chest. He knew better than to think anyone would bother to try to help a bunch of Alley rats - the police wouldn’t, that was for damn sure - let alone stand up to the Bat’s people, but whatever this was, there was a chance, a single chance, if he could just take it.
With a deep breath, Jason forced himself to move. Gingerly, he picked himself up off the floor. His bruised, battered body protested the movement, but he’d had worse. He could push past this.
Breathing slow through the pain, he crept forward, edging around the pitched fight between the Huntress and her attacker. One of the other kids bolted past him — and then shrieked as one of the goons grabbed him by the arm. He fought and kicked, but the goon jabbed the syringe into his arm and within seconds, his body went slack.
Jason looked away, crawling a few more inches forward. There was nothing he could do.
The rest of the goons were trying to grab the other kids, but Huntress’s dark-clad attacker wasn’t the only new arrival. A handful of other masked figures were keeping them busy enough that there was a chance for the kids to slip through the cracks. Some kind of rival syndicate moving in? Jason didn’t have the time or energy to wonder.
Carefully, he got to his feet, trying to ignore the sharp pain in his ribs. It was only half a dozen yards to the door. He sucked in a hard breath, and started to run, gritting his teeth against the pain he knew was coming.
A purple and black blur out of the corner of his eye made him whip his head to see the Huntress, momentarily free of her skirmish, bearing down on him. He yelped, banking sharply out of her path. But the Huntress wasn’t after him, he realized a second later. It was that damn little girl, the one with the blond pigtails, the one barely a yard from the door.
Swearing, Jason pivoted, his bruised and battered body screaming at him. Snatching up a piece of metal left on the ground, he ran towards the Huntress, swinging his makeshift weapon.
He got one blow in, out of sheer surprise. Then, with a predator’s deadly grace, she sidestepped his next swing, and landed a brutal strike on his upper arm. The tool clattered out of his suddenly nerveless fingers. Jason couldn’t feel his arm, and the part of his brain that wasn’t screaming at him for being an absolute moron decided that was probably for the best.
The Huntress let out a feral snarl and delivered a heeled kick to his chest that sent him sprawling to the ground. Again. Jason’s head cracked against the cement with a painful burst of light.
The purple and black figure blotted out the overhead fluorescent glare as she leaned over him, and Jason was certain he was about to die. He hoped the girl had made it out. And some of the other kids too.
Huntress aimed her crossbow down at his gut. He wanted to squeeze his eyes shut, but they felt frozen open wide, staring up at the woman about to kill him. His mouth gaped, but he couldn’t find breath, let alone words. People always got last words in books. They didn’t just get snuffed out like a candle with nothing to even tell the world they were even there, with nobody left to even care they were gone.
Something metallic whirred through the air, catching the Huntress in the shoulder. She stumbled backwards, hissing in pain. Her crossbow came up an instant later, and she fired, but Jason could hear the bolt hadn’t found its mark. He painfully scrambled to a half-sitting position just in time to see the dark-clad attacker from earlier charge towards the Huntress, even as she aimed a kick in his direction.
The dark figure moved, catching the light, as he blocked Huntress’s kick and swept her off balance. Jason’s blood ran cold. It was the Bat. It had to be. Jason had never seen him, of course, but who else would dare to wear the symbol across their chest?
Everything rearranged itself into a new and sick sense. The Huntress must have been making moves behind her boss’s back, and now the Bat was here to put her back in line.
He had to move. A desperate need to flee churned in his gut, but his limbs felt frozen. If he moved, there was still a chance he could get away while the Huntress and the Bat were both distracted. No, if he moved, the Bat would see him. Would notice him. He wouldn’t survive that, couldn’t survive that. Everyone knew the Bat’s reputation. Death would be a mercy when it was finally granted to him.
Jason swallowed hard against the bile that rose in his throat. Scrambling to his feet, he gathered everything he had for one last, desperate run, ignoring both the pain and panic pounding at his ribs.
He heard shouts behind him as he dashed for the door, but he didn’t slow or glance behind him. This was all or nothing, and while Jason Todd might be a scrawny punk, he was fast and he was scrappy. He pelted towards the door, hearing the thud of heavy feet just behind him.
His fingers scrabbled at the latch, as he shoved his weight against the door, praying it would give. It wouldn’t budge.
Jason swore, throwing himself against it. He felt the metal shift and the door’s bulk start to give way. But just as the crack of light and air sent a rush of hope through him, a heavy hand locked around his elbow.
The throbbing ache around his ribs flared into a white-hot knife of pain as he was yanked backwards. He didn’t have the breath to swear, or even to scream, before two of the goons were on him, one pinning him down, while the other held one of those damn syringes.
“No!” Jason tried to yell, but it came out weak and breathless. He didn’t have the strength to wrench himself away from the iron grip that held him. He let the fight drain out of him. There was no point in struggling when it hurt so much, when it was so useless to try.
He tried not to think of the strange, whirring machinery, of limp bodies of the other kids, of his mother, glassy-eyed and unresponsive, as the needle jabbed into his upper arm.
“There,” the goon muttered to his comrade. “This one won’t be making no more trouble. At least we managed to hang on to some of the goods in this shitshow.”
His friend said something in response, but Jason didn’t make it out. Words were blurring into meaningless sound, as the world retreated into a haze of gray. Distantly, Jason knew he should be terrified, but emotions, like words and shapes, seemed to slip away from him, and he had no strength to grab them back. Everything hurt too badly.It was easier just to close his eyes and let himself fall back into the numb darkness that waited to close over his head.