Chapter 7: Park Vision
The cold of the selenite core seeped through Dick’s glove, a counterpoint to the fever burning under his own skin. Arkham Asylum’s silhouette was a jagged cutout against Gotham’s bruised night sky. He moved across the rooftops not as Nightwing, but as a shadow wearing a stolen maintenance uniform, the core and the seed heavy in his pockets.
He knew the blind spots. He’d helped design some of them.
The intake wing’s rooftop access door yielded to a compact laser cutter. The air inside was a sterile cocktail of ammonia, bleach, and human misery. His soles squeaked on linoleum polished to a sickly gleam under flickering LEDs. He passed padded cells, the sounds within a low symphony of moans and fragmented prayers.
Ivy’s cell was at the end of a specialized containment corridor. The air here was different. Even through the powerful filtration system, a hint of loam and decayed roses persisted. Her window was a hexagon of reinforced glass six inches thick. Inside, she sat on a bare cot, clad in Arkham’s standard issue grey smock. She looked like a wilting flower in a concrete vase.
Her head lifted as he approached the security terminal beside her door. Her emerald eyes found him in the gloom. No surprise. Only a slow, viscous smile.
“You’re late,” she whispered, her voice carrying through the intercom grill as if she were right beside him.
He didn’t answer. His fingers flew over the terminal, inputting a sequence of overrides he’d extracted from a panicked IT director two days prior—a man who now dreamed only of thorns and sunshine. Alerts flashed and died, subsumed by a logic bomb that would show a maintenance loop for the next twelve minutes.
The series of locks—magnetic, hydraulic, chemical—disengaged with a series of solid clunks. The door hissed open.
The smell that rolled out was overpowering. It was the heart of a greenhouse after a lightning strike, ozone and wet soil and a sweetness that made his jaw ache. She stood, unfolding to her full height, the drab smock doing nothing to diminish her presence.
“You have it?” she asked.
He held up the selenite core. It caught the hall light, casting fractured green dots on the wall. Her eyes drank it in. She stepped forward, through the doorway, and into his space. Her finger, cool and smooth as a leaf, traced the line of his jaw.
“And my welcome gift?” she murmured.
He produced the seed-pod. It pulsed with a faint, inner luminescence in his palm. She took it, her fingers closing over his, and a shock, pure and electric, went straight to his groin. He hardened instantly, painfully, his breath catching.
“Good boy,” she breathed, and the words were a brand.
She led him. He was supposed to be extracting her, controlling the egress, but he followed like a dog on a scent. She moved with an alien grace through Arkham’s labyrinth, pausing only to lay a hand on a locked door or a camera housing. Vines, thin and whip-like, sprouted from the seams in the concrete, twining around mechanisms, pulling them silently apart. The building itself yielded to her.
They exited through a rusted service door into a forgotten courtyard, then over a wall into the choking embrace of the Foundry District. The humid, chemical-tainted air was a relief after Arkham’s sterility. She didn’t head for the obvious safehouses. She led him down, into a grating that opened onto a forgotten arterial tunnel, a relic of Gotham’s industrial guts.
The drip of water was a constant rhythm. The floral scent from her grew stronger, clashing with the rot and the rust. They walked for what felt like miles, until a faint, greenish light glowed ahead. The tunnel opened into a cathedral space.
It was a collapsed section of Robinson Park, the earth having swallowed a greenhouse long ago. The ceiling was a dome of twisted roots and broken glass. Moonlight filtered through, illuminating a nightmare garden. Carnivorous plants dripped viscous sap. Thick moss coated every surface, muffling sound. Vibrant, poisonous orchids glowed with their own sickly light. In the center, a small, black pool reflected the chaos.
Ivy sighed, a sound of deep contentment. She shrugged off the Arkham smock. Beneath it, she was naked, her skin patterned with subtle whorls like grain in wood. She turned to him.
“Now,” she said, and it was not a request.
She backed him against a wall that was a living tapestry of velvety moss. It was cool and damp through his clothes. Her hands were on his belt, her movements efficient, ruthless. She freed his cock, already fully erect, and gave him a slow, firm stroke that made his knees buckle.
“You got this for me,” she said, her eyes locked on his. “You degraded yourself. You used that little tech-whelp like a rag. And you liked it. The power of it.”
“No,” he gasped, but it was a weak protest, swallowed by her mouth as she kissed him. Her tongue was invasive, claiming. She tasted of blackberries and poison.
She broke the kiss, her hands on his shoulders, pushing down. “On your knees.”
He sank into the moss. The earth was soft, yielding. She stood over him, parted the red curls at the junction of her thighs, and guided his mouth to her. “Clean it off,” she commanded, her voice a husky vibration. “Clean her off of you. I want to taste my victory on your tongue.”
The command was obscene. His stomach roiled, but his mouth obeyed. He licked into her, and she was tangy, musky, overwhelmingly alive. Her flavor was complex and dominant, blotting out every other memory. Her hands fisted in his hair, controlling the rhythm, grinding herself against his mouth until she trembled and a thin, sweet fluid coated his tongue. She moaned, a sound that echoed through the cavernous space.
She pulled him up, spun him, and pushed him back against the wall. “Now,” she panted, her eyes blazing. “Now you fuck me like you mean it. Like the animal you are.”
She didn’t guide him. She lifted herself, her muscles coiled with unnatural strength, and impaled herself on him in one vicious, downward plunge.
He cried out. She was impossibly tight, hot, a silken vise. Her internal muscles clenched around him, a rhythmic, milking pressure that stole his reason.
“That’s it,” she hissed in his ear, her breath hot. She began to ride him, setting a brutal, driving pace. Her hips pistoned, taking him to the hilt with each slam. The wet, slapping sound of their coupling echoed off the glass and stone. “This is what you are for me. A delivery system. A perfect, strong little tool.”
His hands found her hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh, trying to somehow steer, to regain some fraction of control. It was futile. She used him, her movements a taunt. His own hips bucked upward, meeting her thrust for thrust in a traitorous, shameless rhythm. The pleasure was a white-hot wire, burning through the shame, incinerating his resolve.
“The core,” she grunted, never breaking her pace. “It goes into the main filtration junction at the Corbett Reservoir. The selenite will fracture. My spores… will bloom in the water. In a week, every tap in Gotham will run green. They’ll drink me. They’ll breathe me. They’ll finally feel the earth they’re killing.”
He was close. The pressure was a tsunami building in his spine. “Ivy… no…”
“Yes,” she snarled, biting his shoulder. The pain was sharp, bright, merging with the pleasure. “You’ll do it. Because when you come inside me, you’re mine. Every pulse, every drop, is a vow.” She slammed down onto him, twisting her hips. “Come for me, Dick. Come and promise me Gotham.”
It broke him. With a ragged shout that was part sob, he erupted. His release was violent, endless, a surrender that felt like his soul being pulled out through his cock. She clenched around him, milking him dry, her own body shuddering with a silent, victorious climax.
He sagged against the wall, spent, hollow. She stayed wrapped around him, her face buried in his neck. They were both slick with sweat and moss.
After a long moment, she slid off him. He winced at the sensitivity, the sudden, shocking cold. She picked up the selenite core from where it had fallen on the moss. She held it in one hand, his still-damp seed in the other.
“Tomorrow night,” she said, her voice calm, satiated. “The reservoir. You know the way.”
He slid down the wall to sit on the ground, his body a collection of useless, trembling parts. He watched her walk to the black pool. She knelt and placed the core into the water. It began to glow, a malevolent green heart beating in the darkness. Tendrils of something algae-like and vibrant began to weave around it.
She looked back at him, her smile beatific. “Sleep, my pet. You’ve earned your rest.”