Even opening it as slowly as I can, it feels like the sound of the ancient hinges on the door screeches like something that just crawled out of Hell, which I suppose is fitting enough, considering our current circumstances, but since we're trying to get in without alerting the Dr. Frankenstein upstairs, any noise is bad noise. I only open the door enough to let us slip in, waving towards Sutton to follow me. Beyond the door, we're met with a staircase, carved out of the bedrock, while the walls are made of the same kind of brickwork as the Old Gotham architecture we saw on the way here.
What is definetly not from Old Gotham are the electric lights that line the walls, the bulbs casting a hellish, red glow across the stone. I'm not an electrician, and what little I know about wiring could be counted on one hand, but even I can tell that this was a half-assed, temporary installation. The lights have been sloppily jammed into the brickwork, and secured with metal screws, the antique foundation already beginning to fall apart from the damage done to it, with some of the lamps almost falling out of their sockets. Wires hang from the devices, forming into a tangled jumble that stretches up along the stairs and out of sight. Whoever put this stuff up wasn't planning on staying long.
"I'm going to cast a Shading spell over us" I whisper back at Sutton "It'll keep us hidden as long as we don't do anything to draw attention to ourselves, so whatever you see up there, try to keep silent, or the spell will fail, got it?" Sutton nods, and I whisper out the magic words, feeling the energy flow across my skin as it takes effect. With that done, we both slowly begin to ascend the staircase...
It's even more silent in here than out in the cave, without even the sound of dripping water to break the quiet. Nothing to keep us company except the sound of our own breathing. The stairs wind upwards in a circling pattern, taking us up higher, from what I can tell even above street level of Old Gotham, meaning that wherever these stairs lead, it must be to one of the abandoned buildings near the fairgrounds.
A hand brushes against my shoulder, and I turn back to see Sutton, who looks like he's about to say something, only to think better of it, and points at his ear. It takes me a second to realize what he's trying to tell me, and I stop, trying to pick up whatever it is he's hearing.
Is... someone crying?
....
Turns out, yes, someone was crying. And for damn good reason.
At the top of the stairs, a stone archway opened up into a filthy, garbage-strewn chamber, lit up only by whatever light spilled in from the tunnel. In the dim lights, I could just about make out the cages lining the walls. And the poor wretches locked inside like diseased animals. And this wasn't some brief, nightmarish background element in a scrying vision. This is the place where the nightmare was real.
I fight back the sudden urge to lose my lunch as I take in the horror before us. There's dozens of them, a few cages having two prisoners inside instead of just one. The cages are cramped and squat, the victims barely able to so much as shuffle around. Most of them aren't even trying, huddled up with their legs drawn up to their chests in a pathetic attempt at some form of comfort. In one of the cages closest to the door, the prisoner inside is crying, I can't even tell what age he is through the grime and filth covering his nearly naked form, but judging by his voice, and what I can see of his build, he can't be older than his teens. If even that.
In the corner of my eye, Sutton stands frozen to the spot, his face gone horribly pale as he gets a first-hand look at exactly what happened to his fellow street people. We both knew it was going to be bad, but you just can't prepare yourself to see it with your own eyes.
We have to get these people out of here.
I make a move towards the nearest cage when I realize I almost did the exact same thing I warned Sutton about. If I do anything physical to release the prisoners, that would disrupt my Shading, and I don't know if most of these people are in any shape to notice what's going on around them, but if any of them are, I'm guessing they'll have a rather surprised reaction to two random guys appearing out of nowhere, and that would tip off Dr. Death and his giant mook. Goddamnit, if I only knew a spell that could create some sort of silence effect, but I don't, the Shading is the closest thing I have to stealth. Maybe if we-
The decision is taken out of my hands by a voice from the next room.
"Jabah, fetch me the boy..." the same, awful voice I remember from my vision says "It's time to test my new compound of someone with a more... malleable physiology..."
Heavy footsteps start to move towards the door on the other side of the room, and in his cage, the kid seems to have realized what's about to happen, his weeping turning into a kind of horrified choke, as he curls himself into a ball in the corner, as if trying to make himself invisible. A massive form appears in the doorway, and I get my first look at the face of our kidnapper...
The giant, or Jabah as he's apparently named, might have been human once, but the thing that stands before us can only be described as a monster. The filthy, oversized coat hangs open on his body, revealing a torso with bloated, unnatural muscle, the brown skin looking like it's stretched too tightly across the flesh beneath, scars and boils dotting the surface. The face though, that's by far the worst. I can't help but compare it to the TITAN-mutated henchmen from Arkham Asylum, but there was a cartoonish quality to those that never really made them look all that scary. Fangs and bone spurs that they somehow just shrugged off when they turned back to normal, they just looked like a rejected Todd Macfarlane action figure.
There's nothing comical about the face of the monster before us. The bones of his face are warped and twisted beneath the tight skin, one eye socket enlarged, making the eyeball within look like it's about to fall out. The jaw juts out like a twisted parody of a masculine face, his brow sunken and deformed, and a nasty-looking surgical scar stretches out across his forehead, the few remaining wisps of hair on his scalp not able to hide it. I can't even guess at what he looked like before, the effects of whatever Doctor Death did to him having erased any semblance of humanity. Even his skin color looks more like a sickly, diseased brown than any sort of normal, healthy human skin.
Jabah looms over the trapped boy, a flash of metal in one hand as he clumsily unlocks the cage, and yanks it open. The boy whimpers like a beaten dog and tries to draw away from the misshaped hands reaching for him, but is quickly pulled out and thrown over the giants shoulders. He doesn't even have it in him to struggle as he's carried away to whatever awful fate the doctor has in store for him.
Not if I have anything to say about it.
I begin to sneak towards the door Jabah just disappeared through, Sutton following closely behind, and peer through the doorway.
Somehow, the next room actually manages to be even worse than the last one. It's the same one I remember from my vision, but this time, it's not just a few glimpses on the edges of my sight while my attention is on a man being tortured to death, I get to take it all in at once. Even more cages line the wall, though this time, they're all empty. I don't know if it's because the prisoners were moved to the other room, or because Doctor Death was...finished with them. A metal bench stands by the far side of the room, the surface covered in splatters of dried blood and other stains I don't even want to guess at, along a scattered few medical instruments like syringes, scalpels, and a nasty-looking saw. One corner of the room is taken up by a large storage tank, several plastic tubes jutting out from the top and into several smaller tanks around it. Overhead, a jumble of bright, white lights hang down from the ceiling, the lights focused on one spot in the middle of the room. A surgical table. The same one Walter Gibbons spent his final, nightmarish hours.
And just behind it, awaiting his next victim, stands the same ghastly figure from my vision. Same blood-splattered apron. Same immaculate scrubs underneath. And that same horrible face, a decaying caricature of a normal human being. Doctor Death grins, showing a row of surprisingly white, healthy teeth, that look almost grotesque compared to the state of the rest of him.
"Ah, excellent, I was worried the child had already expired. I do hate losing out on valuable data. Place him on the table, and restrain him as usual, Jabah. Make sure to tighten the restraints, I don't wish for him to slip away..."
The monstrous giant obeys his master without question, lumbering over to the table and placing the kid on the surface, as Doctor Death turns around, taking one of the syringes from the metal table and gives it a quick wipe with his apron, before picking up a small bottle and pressing the needle through the rubber top, withdrawing it's content into the syringe.
"Don't weep, dear boy. Not many of the human refuse that infests Gotham City are as fortunate as you, you know. They'll whittle away their worthless lives scavening in the garbage like rats, begging for scraps from their betters, until they finally curl up and die in the gutter somewhere, having never been anything other than a drain on society. You, my child, will give your life to contribute to science! Surely whatever discomfort you may experience pales in comparison?"
Okay, time for stealth is now over. I turn towards Sutton, who looks about ready to rush in already, and point to him, and then over to Doctor Death, before pointing at myself, and pointing at Jabah. Sutton looks puzzled for a moment, before realization dawns, and he begins moving around the table towards the madman. Thanks to the protection spell I put on Walter's dog tags, Sutton is almost as resilient as me, but he doesn't have my magic strength. He shouldn't need it to handle Doctor Death though, aside from his disgusting face, he doesn't appear to have any enchancements. Which, however, leaves me to take down Jabah...
Jabah is already trying to secure the first restraint on the kid when Sutton reaches his spot, and turns to me for confirmation. I nod, and in a sudden motion, he lunges forward, and clocks Doctor Death right across the face, sending the crazed scientist stumbling to the floor, the syringe shattering on the ground as it flies from his hand!
"GRAK!"
Doctor Death grunts in pain, and I feel the magic of the Shading fade as the spell is disrupted. Jabah looks up at the sudden attack on his master, but I don't give him the chance to come to the doctors defence. I lash out with my leg, aiming a superstrong kick right at the giants knee, and I hear a satisfying "snap" as the mutated bone cracks under the blow. The giant gives a pained howl as his kneecap breaks, and almost falls over, but instead of falling down as I had hoped, he lashed around and OH SH-
An enormous fist slams into my chest, knocking the wind out of me, and sends me crashing into a wood cabinet behind me, the doors splintering upon impact, and sending a shower of glass shards from the thankfully empty jars inside over me. I gasp, trying to regain my breath, as Jabah begins to limp towards me on his one good leg...
...
Arnold Sutton stared down at his stunned opponent, clutching the side of his repulsive, rotting face. He finally had him, he finally had the fucking maniac that had killed Walter, that had killed so many people Arnold had known, just because they wouldn't have been missed. Just because they were worthless. Arnold felt his anger rise in his throat, and he reached into the coat for his trusty old pocket knife. He could've just slit the man's throat while whatever mumbo jumbo Flagg had done on them was still working, but he wanted the madman to see his end coming. Arnold wanted him to know that it was one of those worthless street rats he threw away like they were nothing but garbage that had been the one to kill him. Good ol' karma.
"You motherfucker, you're going to pay for what you did to us! Every last one of us, you're going to know every one of their names before I finally let you d-"
He stopped, pulling his arm back from his pocket. There was something on his hand. At first Arnold felt a flash of disgust, thinking some of Death's rotting skin had gotten stuck on his knuckles from the punch, but no, that wasn't skin at all. It was... was this paint?!
Arnold looked up as Doctor Death got back to his feet. He was grinning again. On the side of his face, right where Arnold had punched him, there was now a strange, smudged spot where the green decay had been wiped off from the strike. And underneath, Arnold could see a flash of perfectly normal, white skin.
"What the fuck..?"
"Well..." Doctor Death said in a voice that was most certainly not that of the gravely corpse it had been just a minute before "It seems we have uninvited guests. Most intriguing..."