"Who is Harley Quinn?"
A slightly immature female voice emerged from the darkness. Harley emerged from the shadows of the room. She was dressed in a surgical suit, her head adorned with a hat and a transparent mask. Her gloves were well stretched out, without a single wrinkle, everything aside from her face was tightly wrapped up.
First, she removed her gloves, then she took off the transparent mask, and finally the hat. Shaking her hair, she looked at Red Hood surprisingly, and said, "Jason, why has your voice become so hoarse? Have you hit puberty?"
"Also, who is Harley Quinn? I am Harley Quizer. You two weirdos, wandering in the hallway in the middle of the night. If I hadn't dragged you in, you would have died. Do you understand?"
Red Robin and Red Hood exchanged looks, Red Hood looked around and lowered his voice saying, "She might not be Harley Quinn yet..."
"Then why is she in Arkham Asylum?"
"Perhaps she wasn't mentally stable, and her parents sent her here."
Red Robin took a deep breath, struggled to stand up from the ground, and looked at Harley, "We are from the Batman Family in another universe... forget it, you probably don't know what the Batman Family is. So, we accidentally entered here, got hurt by a bunch of lunatics, can you find us a first aid kit?"
Looking at the obviously young Harley in front of him, Red Hood couldn't get angry. He could only suppress the turmoil in his heart, and said gloomily, "Also, you must tell us where the exit is, we can take you out of here with us."
"Why would I want to leave?" Harley turned around and went back to rummage in the cabinet behind her. Red Robin and Red Hood were both feeling a bit nervous.
The first law of Gotham is that you can't trust anyone. An innocent-looking little girl might pull out a gun and shoot you the next second. So when they saw Harley pulling something out of the cabinet, both tensed their muscles, ready to run at any moment.
Fortunately, with the faint light, they saw that it was a first aid kit, with disinfecting supplies and bandages inside.
Harley came over, put down the first aid kit, turned back and walked away, and Red Hood reached out to take the first aid kit on the floor, but the wound on his arm made her gasp.
"You come over and help me change my position. My arm is not injured. I can bandage you up first." Red Robin said while panting slightly. He was currently slumped on the ground, dare not move his legs, but still trying hard to straighten up his upper body to get the equipment in the first aid kit.
"Don't move!" Harley, who was rummaging inside the cabinet, turned her head impatiently and said, "You will make the wound bigger, it will be more troublesome to stitch up later. Don't move, I'll come over and handle it for you."
They looked at each other, they didn't plan to listen to Harley's nonsense, but considering their current physical state, they probably couldn't treat themselves. When Harley returned, they saw her putting the gloves back on, in her hand was a shining surgical knife.
Seeing Harley holding the knife and walking towards Red Robin, Red Hood immediately became nervous. He lowered his voice as if roaring, "What are you doing?"
"Extracting the bullet." Harley stood next to Red Robin's leg, looking somewhat surprised at Red Hood, "You wouldn't want me to use my hands to dig out the bullet, right? Are you two enemies?"
"But, but..." Red Hood stared at Harley with a distrusting gaze. He wasn't worrying about her stabbing his partner, but rather, who would believe a little girl that said she could extract bullets with a knife?
Harley sighed helplessly, then she walked past Red Robin, towards the door, put her hand on the switch next to the door, turned her head and said to the two men, "I'm going to turn on the light. No matter what you see, don't scream, okay?"
Before the two men could react to what Harley meant, the light in the room was switched on. Then, they saw a male corpse lying on the operating table in the center of the room.
The corpse's leg was cut off at the thigh, leaving only the upper half. But since the entire body had been frozen, it hadn't entirely thawed yet, so no smell was emitted. That's why they hadn't realized they were in the same room as a corpse in the dark.
"There was no space in the thawing room downstairs, so I had to move it up and let it thaw at room temperature. I was waiting when I heard noises in the corridor. I thought it was Mrs. Miller, so I turned off the light, I didn't expect it to be you two."
"What the hell?!" Red Hood raised his voice in shock, his breathing rate increasing instantly, feeling his hood was obstructing his breath, he ripped it off revealing his surprised face.
"Oh my god, are you really Jason?!" Harley exclaimed, then she circled around him, looking at his face in confusion. "You can't be future Jason? How did you end up like this?"
"I already told you I'm from another universe." Red Hood retorted quite irritably. Pointing at the corpse on the operating table, he asked, "What's that about, did you kill him?"
"I didn't kill him, it's a cadaver. I'm making up an anatomy assignment."
Harley squatted down beside Red Robin's leg, and picked up the surgical knife. Just as the cold blade touched Red Robin's skin, he involuntarily exclaimed, "Hey, hey, wait! Wait..."
"What are you waiting for, stay still!" Harley was quite impatient. One hand pressed down on Red Robin's leg, the other hand holding the knife. In a matter of seconds, she extracted the bullet. She threw the bullet into the toolbox beside her and asked, "Which universe are you from? The wimpy universe?"
Red Robin's cry of pain was still in his throat when the bullet was already out of his body. His eyes wide open, he looked at Harley who was currently bandaging him up, asking, "My god, how are you so skilled?"
"Because nearly every test subject harbors about eight to ten bullets in their bodies. It would have been quite faster if you hadn't moved about." Harley tightened the bandage then motioned to Red Hood, "Come here. Your wound needs stitching."
Looking at her rummage through her toolbox for a needle and thread, Red Hood gulped. He glanced at the corpse on the operating table and then at his own wound before obediently walked over.
Harley's stitching skills were great too. The wound was sewn tightly with fine neat stitches, and her speed was just as impressive. Not using any anesthesia didn't hurt much either. When she finished, Red Hood expressed his surprise with an 'ah'.
"Is that all?" Looking astonished at the wound on his arm, he found it had indeed stopped bleeding. Harley then wrapped it with a bandage.
The wound wasn't deep, just a bit long. After taking care of it, Red Hood found his arm fully recovered except for a bit of pain when he flexed his muscles intensely.
"Incredible," he commented.
"So why are you two here? Do you guys also have assignments to make up for?" Harley chuckled, crossing her arms and standing in the middle of the room, looking at them.
"Can you explain to us what's going on first?!!!" Red Hood said, noting the leg-less corpse right in front of him while the other two seemed to be acting as if there was nothing, which made him break out in a cold sweat.
"Haven't I already explained? This is a cadaver professor. I'm waiting for it to thaw," Harley shrugged and said, "You're not telling me you haven't even seen a corpse in your Sissy Universe, are you?"
Just as Red Hood was about to retort, he noticed Red Robin finding his feet, leaning on the wall. He quickly hurried over to assist him. Red Robin asked Harley, "Can you tell us how to leave here? It's full of mad killers outside."
"Of course, there are mad killers outside. Who asked you to create such a commotion in the middle of the night?" Harley glanced outside the door and said, "They're gone but they might still be downstairs. I suggest you stay put for now."
"As for an exit strategy..." Harley intentionally dragged her voice. Red Hood and Red Robin both stared at her, and Harley rolled her eyes, "I'm not one for bad deals. What do you propose in exchange for the escape plan?"
"We can take you out with us, it's dangerous here..."
"It's only dangerous for you two. I'm here every night and I'm not half as miserable."
Both were left speechless.
"So what do you want us to do?"
"I have three sets of limb dissections remaining. So how about this, you help me with my homework and I'll tell you a safe exit strategy. Deal?"
Red Robin looked at Red Hood right away, then assured Harley, "Don't worry. He's great at homework. Where's your workbook?"
"I told you it was an anatomy assignment. Even if you didn't attend medical school, you should know what dissection is, right?"
"You're not asking us to help you dissect that corpse, are you?!!"
The prospect of that topped Red Hood in his tracks. He had killed people and seen corpses, but he'd only had short contacts, not wanting to look too long at them. However, looking at the frozen man's cleanly dissected thigh with the skeletal and muscular details plainly visible, he was anything but okay.
The human aversion to dissection stems from their understanding that the structure of the corpses they're seeing is equivalent to their own bodies. Consequently, they often imagine themselves at the dissection table which invokes the feeling of phantom pain due to their associative thinking.
A fresh corpse might not cause that much shock as it looks like a sleeping person. But a frozen corpse invokes an eerie effect, being lifelike yet rigid and cold without any human touch.
Red Hood stepped back, trying to put more distance between himself and the corpse. But to his surprise, Harley shook her head, "No, the cadaver professor cannot be used for limb dissections. The upstairs doesn't have a big enough cutting machine. Come, help me move the materials in the warehouse, and then help me move the machines."
Harley motioned for Red Hood to follow her. He reluctantly obliged, getting only a 'Good luck, bro' look from Red Robin as he passed by.
When they reached the warehouse with Harley, there were no corpses lying on operating tables which was a relief to Red Hood. However, as soon as Harley flicked on the light, the contents of the room came into full view.
There were four gargantuan coolers in the room, two table-style, two upright.
The tabletop ones were filled with frozen human arms, whereas upright freezers were hanging all variations of thigh.
Red Hood froze in his tracks.