Divination (Joker x Batman x OC)

Chapter 154

After ten minutes of slow climbing on the dome, Harri could feel her abs and legs burning. It was quite a workout. It also seemed that the dome became warmer as she approached the top. Once she was a few feet away from the source of the light beam she was able to go on all fours since the area was flat enough. The light was so bright that she could barely see anything. She crawled slowly over to the light and reached towards it with her fingers.

Before she could even touch it, she felt heat. It was as hot as fire when she moved close enough. It gave her fingers a tingling sensation along with the heat. If this was the way into the time machine, it seemed very dangerous and impossible to enter. Anyone passing through this light would burn up.

She decided she needed to turn around and tell Bruce what she had discovered. She rotated her body and turned opposite to the light, but before the could try crawling down, she noticed a dark ring of glass that she couldn't see before. It was as though her eyes were beginning to adjust to the extreme brightness. 

The ring of transparent glass stretched around the top of the dome as far as she could see. She went flat on her stomach, and after cupping out outer perimeter of her eyes, she looked into the glass below her.

It was dark but she could tell there was open space inside of the dome. She squinted, blocking out the bright light above her as much as possible and allowed her eyes some time to adjust to the dark. She saw water, hundreds of feet down and what looked like a floor surrounding a round pool. It must have been the way in. The only way in that she could see.

She crawled quickly back the way she had come and soon saw the top of Bruce's head. After crawling down for a few minutes she realized that the steepness was increasing and she would have to slide down the rest of the way. She turned a few inches away from Bruce, giving herself space and pushed off with her hands, sliding fast down the dome into the water. 

Before she could surface she felt Bruce grabbing her arm and pulling her head above water.

"Harri!" he said. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah!" she breathed and coughed a few times. "That wasn't as fun as it looked."

She gripped the side of the dome with Bruce pulled her flippers from under his arm where he had been holding them tightly.

"Float on your back, hold on to the rock, and I'll put them back on," he instructed, and she did as he asked.

"Did the boat move?" she asked as he pulled the flippers onto her feet, noticing the boat had moved from beside them to further away in front of them.

"No," he said. "But this rock seems to be rotating counterclockwise very slowly."

"Bruce!" Harri said, grabbing his shoulder. "I saw something!  A way in!"

"Okay," Bruce said as she lowered her feet back into the water with flippers on, looking like he was thinking hard about how to get himself onto the device. "I do have some wall climbing suction cups..they're not exactly lightweight or easy to swim with, and I don't know how well they would work on this material, but I can find a way to carry them-"

"No!" Harri exclaimed. "It's not up there! It's underneath! I saw through glass up there, there's an opening with air I think, like a room, above it and I saw a floor..at least I think it was a floor. But there's definitely a hole in this thing under the bottom, right in the middle."

Bruce pulled his swim mask up to his forehead and wiped his face.

"Right in the center?" he asked.

"Yes!" she answered.