Coughing. Frigidly bitter air and unbearable chill -not unlike death's embrace- were all Jason registered as he gasped awake. Soft gel padding pressed against his back, cold metal and a suffocating window ahead. He coughed and jerked, kicking his feet as his breathing sped up.
No number of short hysterical breaths seemed to supply his panicked Frenzy. He braced a forearm against the metal, eyes wide as he saw not glass and metal, but nothing, only darkness and splintered wood beneath his nails.
Flesh. Arms held him tight, warmth to ward off the chill.
He clawed and scratched to be free, but soft chilled breath against his neck eventually stilled him. "-ee-" sharp hacking. "Three things -cough- you can -cough cough- see little wing."
Jason breathed sharply, taking a moment. He was on cold metal flooring, surrounded by pods. His fingers dug into Dick's arm. "P-pods." His teeth were chattering. Breath. Nearby Tim sat on the floor in a daze. Cass was leaning with an arm braced against an open pod, coughing sharply, eyes glazed. Steph was on the floor, arm wrapped around her middle, other fist clenched as she hacked and sputtered for breath. All of them wore tight blue jumpsuits, but that was probably the farthest thing from his mind. "Others." Another short cough to mingle with the cacophony of breathless bats.
He relaxed his grip. "What the hell, Dick. Where are we?"
"I... Have no idea." He shook his head miserably, coughing into his elbow.
Jason shoved his older brother off, rising to his feet and dusting himself off. He blanched. Gone was the armor he'd last recalled wearing. He was clad in the same utterly useless blue skintight apparel as everyone else.
Jason suppressed a cough and stumbled forward, slamming a hand out to a nearby pod to halt what would have been an unnecessary reunion with the ground.
"Does anyone remember what happened?" Tim asked. "I think -cough- Bruce assigned us all to one mission. Top priority. But- I'm-" He doubled over, coughing up chilled air before Cass spoke up.
"Yeah, that." Steph shortly agreed. Her blond hair was damp, small ice crystals clinging to the locks. She coughed into a fist, then found her footing.
Jason snapped his head to the entrance of the room. For there, just as soggy and miserable as the rest of them was Damian. Though he seemed unbearably poised.
"Ugh. Demon's spawn is here to." Tim groaned. "I'm just gonna-" He made a vague gesture to his capsule.
"There's a locked door ahead." Damian supplied, coughing into his closed mouth. "We should perhaps move. If this is one of Waller's facilities, it would be shameful to remain while she plots our recapture."
That was all the spurring needed for the family to collect themselves. "111." Jason read from Steph's back.
And Tim's. Odd. Dick and Cass shared the same blocky yellow letters. Not the identifying numbers of prisoners. Maybe a block number perhaps. But what the he'll were these pods.
"Sometime today perhaps." Damian pressed, thumping his chest with a fist. And Jason could only agree, stumbling away from the tomblike pod he'd emerged from only minutes before.
It became abundantly clear that whatever facility they'd been stashed in was just as much a tomb as the pods. Skeletal remains in lab coats and armored jumpsuits lay scattered about, the vault a very old warzone encapsulated in dust.
No shreds of skin remained clinging to bone. The air wasn't putrid. Perhaps a bit stale, but chilled. Recycled maybe. The other pods contained corpses trapped in ice. Tim confirmed no one else had survived.
"Beginning to think this isn't a CADMUS facility." Tim remarked, shivering violently but no less infatuated with the computer in the main office they'd found. "Vault-tec. Ever hear of them?" He asked, rubbing his head.
There was silence. "Vault was some sort of cryoexperiment. But the dates..." The third Robin pressed his lips together. Steph was perched over his shoulder.
"2077?" She asked. "But... How?"
"I dunno. And that date's the first entry. Atomic warfare-" His brow pinched. "Cryogenic experiments conducted by the military and this vault tech company."
"Participants weren't the most willing I surmise." Damian remarked. Jason had found the pistol on the desk and a few boxes of ammo.
"That or... They wanted to live." Cass said as Dick tried in vain to snatch the second Robin's new toy.
"Mm. Desperate people." Tim confirmed. "I found a way to open that door there." He rose pausing. 'You know this all seems really familiar."
Everyone paused to look at Damian. The boy shrugged. "Kent plays it some times."
"Damian what video game?" Tim asked as Steph picked up a syringe of sorts. It looked like a high tech 'T'
Jason was eyeing a frozen case in the armory as he listened. He wished now more than ever for a lockpick. "Later beautiful." He swore, pressing two fingers to his lips and then the icy glass barring him from the high tech gun.
"I don't recall the name." Damian huffed, small arms folding.
"Well that's helpful." Tim's ire peaked. He paused. A memory, fleeting and dull, but one face. That face. "How the hell did we forget control freak?" He asked sharply.
Jason popped his head out of the armory. "Control freak?"
Steph frowned. "I don't remember-"
"We were fighting control freak." Tim said, scratching his chin. "Said something about taking us out of our element, and there was a blinding light."
"Well crap. I sure don't remember that. But I believe it." Jason was slipping a pistol holster on and cinching it tight. "So what we're in a... A...video-game?"
"I don't know. But we should get out of here." Tim replied. "I'm opening the Hatch."
If Jason thought he was in hell before, that feeling was doubled now.
The gunshots cracked through the small hallway as a wall of massive critters skittered across the floor towards them. Each shot was followed by a continuous scream of terror.
"Jason. Jason it's dead!" Dick cried. Jason unloaded his clip into the gooey corpse of an obliterated radroach regardless.
Steph looked terrified. "Uh."
"We should go." Cass gently pushed Jason forward, the second Robin panting in terror as he cast a backwards glance at that... Thing.
They finally arrived in a large intake room. "Well that's a door." A massive gear shaped slab of metal blocked their exit, the ramp drawn in. Tim studied it. "Let's see if we can get it open."
"If all these bodies are anything to go by, we're screwed." Dick muttered.
"I think this is the control panel." Tim hurried over to Steph. "Big red button." The blond made a vague gesture.
Tim slapped a hand against it.
"Please tell me you didn't just smack the weird red button. "Jason groaned. "Seriously Tim-"
"It beeped." All was quiet. "Looks like it needs a key or something. Look around."
Tim glanced down as his boot snapped something on the floor. His gasp was audible. Not at the ulna he'd just cracked, but at the wrist mounted computer on it's arm.
Cass had found a box of similar ones, taking one out.
"Oh jackpot!" Tim took up the device, and looked for a switch. As it lit up, his eyes gleamed. "This looks like aha." He unplugged some sort of white plug from the back. "Perfect Match. Now to-" There was a click, and Tim paused, locking eyes with Jason.
"Tim if they could hit it and get out-"
"Oh for crying out loud-" Steph slammed the side of her fist into the button. "What now-"
Beep. Beep- bright lights began flashing from a decrepit bulb in the ceiling, alarms drowning out Dick's panicked shout.
Jason whirled on the fourth Robin.
"I'm sorry!" She cried, heart pounding and mortified. Just her luck. The one red button she'd pushed was the cliche self destruct button in every movie ever.
The bridge rattled, and a large arm shifted.
Hope blossomed in her chest. Cass was clinging to her like a monkey.
"Ha!" Steph cried. "See? I didn't get us killed!"
It only took Tim a few minutes to figure out the giant lift. One-eleven graced the rusted metal surface. And as the gears whirred to life, Tim hopped aboard.
The sky was a grayish brown above, two panels pulling apart to admit them. And hell, the sun was blinding. Jason covered his face and ducked his head, eyes burning.
Damian was the first to recover.
Jason blinked, peering past his arm as best he could.
A moment later he understood. The world or wherever they were, was a barren desert, dry as a bone with scraggly yellow plants wilting in the sun. No breeze blew.
"New Mexico maybe? Texas?" Dick asked.
"Massachusetts." Tim replied, voice small.. "Near Boston."
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