Wax Figurine | T. Drake ✔

[23]

As promised, Bruce began to search for Olivia's parents in order to find out where they were being kept imprisoned. It had been years since they had been sentenced so it was probable that they could have been shifted to another jail due to the overflowing influx of criminals in Gotham's prison facilities.

They could definitely not be in Arkham, because they weren't deemed as dangerous to be housed with the criminals of Joker and Scarecrow's caliber. And even if they were in Arkham Asylum, he would have encountered them more than twice by then.

He remembered all the prisoners being kept there by their ID numbers as well as their names. Besides, Arkham got broken out of so much that he almost always had to look after rounding up the prisoners and sending them back in.

One would think the security systems would be upgraded with that many cases of breakouts but sadly that wasn't the case. The city depended far too much on Batman and his birds for them to actually invest in a proper security system. 

They could ask Olivia for pointers on effective security measures, a thought flickered through Bruce's head while he was searching the database for the McArthurs, a very negligible smile ghosting his face.

He finally found out that they had been moved from Central Jail to a more remote location away from Gotham along with some other of the scientists that had been sentenced in the same case. So finding the details, he made no delay in going over to check whether both of them were alive or not.

Just like Olivia had asked him to.

However, when he reached there and inquired about Ashlar and Gemma McArthur, he was met with a rather strange revelation. Apparently, no one there had heard of or seen the two. Then he asked them to track the inmates out using their IDs and it was then he found out a rather alarming fact.

The warden told him that a year back there had been severe bombings in the area, some of which had affected the prison as well. It not only damaged their records and property but also caused a lot of mortal damage.

There was a high chance that Gemma and Ashlar had become victims of that bombing too.

But of course, he couldn't just leave it at that and had to verify it properly. So he cross-checked that information through his sources and found out that indeed Gemma and Ashlar McArthur had died in the aftermath of those bombings but as there was no other person linked to them on the records, the news of their death hadn't been passed on.

As a result, they had soon been forgotten like the many people who had no other connection outside of prison. 

Bruce didn't know how to convey that information to Olivia. She had clearly wanted to know if her parents were alive and well but that wasn't the case. And if he lied to her, that wouldn't be a permanent solution either.

He didn't want to lie to her and at the same time, he didn't want to give pain to her by telling her that her parents were no more.

So even though he returned to Gotham that very night, he had yet to figure out how to handle that situation. There was only one person who could give him good advice regarding the matter so soon as he came home, he went to his study and asked Alfred to join him.

***

Tim was stuck.

He had come along with the girls thinking they would go to an ice cream parlor and get him some coffee on the way but right then they were in a shopping mall and Tim's flask of coffee had run bone dry but he was forced to tag along.

"You two said nothing about shopping," he muttered darkly, trudging behind them, carrying some of their bags.

"But I clearly asked Liv to tell you..."