Auroral » Titans

28|| Asylum

Sophie's eyes fluttered open to the warm glow of pale sunlight. She blinked slowly as the haze over her brain began to fade away. 

She dragged a hand over her face and brushed her blonde hair back. Her limbs felt heavy and the warm dip of the couch tried to lull her back to sleep. 

Every part of her wanted to close her eyes again but the voice in the back of her head was screaming at her that something was wrong. 

The sitting room was empty and faint voices carried from down the hall. 

Slowly she sat up. A chill met her bare arms as her blanket fell to her lap. She stared down at the fluffy blanket and mindlessly picked at the fake fur. She didn't remember falling asleep with a blanket.

"-We have to go now." Rachel's voice carried down the halls. Echoing off of the empty walls.

Sophie frowned and looked at the hall Rachel's voice had come from. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes before she rose to her feet. The ground felt cold beneath her feet, sending shivers up her spine. 

She wrapped her arms around herself to keep out the cold and made her way down the brightly lit hall. The sound of quiet arguing grew louder as she rounded the corner leading to the living room.

"-I'm not risking all of our lives on his word." Dick spoke sternly.

"What's going on?" Sophie asked as she came to a stop in the archway. She looked between the small group. 

Rachel was standing, arms crossed over her chest. Gar was sitting forwards on the sofa. Dick was seated in on of the arm chairs, a familiar stoic expression on his face; and Kori stood just behind him.

They all looked over at her. Dick opened his mouth to speak but Rachel quickly cut him off. "My mother's alive, Dr Adamson is keeping her at some asylum. We need to go get her."

Sophie's lips tugged down into a frown and she glanced over at Dick. "Dr. Adamson said that she was alive?"

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean he was telling the truth." He looked back at Rachel. 

Rachel huffed and turned to Sophie with pleading eyes. "Sophie please. We need to find her." 

"Rachel." She sighed and Rachel's face fell. "We need to make sure he's telling the truth, that this isn't some kind of trap."

Rachel clenched her jaw and spun around to face Gar. "You think we should go, right Gar?" 

He pressed his lips into a straight line and shrugged a shoulder. "I'm sorry Rach." He looked up at her with sympathetic eyes. Rachel shook her head before she stormed out of the room. 

"Rachel." Gar quickly rose from his seat and went after her. 

Sophie hated seeing her like that, but she rather Rachel be angry then dead. She ran a hand through her hair before she walked further into the room. "So what's the plan."

Dick looked up at her. Stress was written across his face, from the frown on his lips to the crease between his brows. "We do what we do best."

"Oh," Sophie smirked as he walked over to her. "So, get in to fist fights?" 

"Funny." He scoffed and brushed past her.

"Someone's gotta be." She joked before following after him.

Kori smirked as she fell into step beside Sophie. "One minute you two fighting and the next your cracking jokes." She shook her head. "I don't get you two."

Sophie chuckled. "It's just a bat-family thing."

****

"Public records show that the facility where Rachel's mom is being held is closed and abandoned." Dick said. 

He sat at the steel desk Sophie had been occupying the night before. The large wall mounted monitors around them showed various schismatics for the asylum.

"Doesn't look like either one to me." Kori said and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Clearly." Sophie muttered and leaned over Dick's shoulder. "Fourteen exits, twice as many security camera's and IR sensors. Then you've got the armed guards on top of that." She said as she tapped a few keys on the keyboard and brought up live footage from one of the buildings cameras.

"Exactly." Dick glanced over at her, the ghost of a smile on his lips. She caught the smile in her peripherals and quickly took a step away from him. A familiar warmth rushed to her cheeks and she couldn't help but hate it.

Dick chuckled before he turned his attention back to the monitor. "Thermal scans show upwards of ten security personnel patrolling the inside of the building. There's no heat signatures in the outer buildings, but another dozen are patrolling the grounds."

"Ok." Kori said slowly. She turned on her heels and began to pace behind Dick and Sophie. "So option one, we walk up and knock on the door. Or option two, I blow the door down. Or option three-"

"-The tunnels." Dick said as he tapped away at the keyboard. The image on screen switched from the camera feed to the building schematics. He highlighted a network of tunnels that ran beneath the building.

"They connect the main asylum to the decommissioned outbuildings. We use them to get past the ground patrols." He explained.

"What do we do about the guards inside? I don't think all of us will be able to sneak through without getting detected." Sophie stated.

"We'll be out numbered." He glanced up at her with that familiar twinkle in his eyes. "But we've faced worst."

Sophie playfully rolled her eyes before she turned to leave. "I'm putting on my suit for this one. I have a strange feeling this isn't going to end well."

"Always so optimistic." Dick called back before she had disappeared down the hall.

Sophie made her way to her room and pushed open the bedroom door. The room was bland, simple white walls, beige curtains pulled closed over a large window, and a queen sized bed in the middle of the room. The room felt sterile to her, like something you'd see on display at ikea.

Her black duffel bag sat on the end of the white bed. Clothes were tossed around it in two separate piles. Shoved at the very bottom of her duffel bag was her sleek black suit.

The black kevlar weave was starting to show it's age. The once invisible seams were starting to show and four years worth of knife slashes and bullet dents were starting to peel away the layers of armor.

She knew Alfred would be appalled by the state of the suit. Sophie smiled softly before she placed the old costume down and began to change out of her clothes.

She was halfway through lacing up her boot when a rapid knock came from her door. "It's open." She called back before she rose to her feet and grabbed her face mask from her bed.

The wooden door opened and Dick stood in the doorway. His eyes were dark and his whole body was tense. "Rachel and Gar are gone."

The moment he said those words all of the color drained from Sophie's face. It didn't take a genius to realize where they had gone. 

"Shit." She grabbed the rest of her things from the bed and jogged over to Dick.