by Peter David
As if he’d totally forgotten about piloting the chopper, Two-Face moved away from the controls so that he could better see out the side. The pilot quickly grabbed control of the chopper as Two-Face made his way over to the cargo hatch. He peered down at the chain and saw exactly what he thought he’d see: nothing.
“Good-bye to that pointy-eared, steroid-eating, rubber-suited, cross-dressing, night rat . . .”
Then a shadow suddenly cast itself over him. The only source of light was through the windshield, and with a berserk yell Two-Face spun. Sure enough, covering the Plexiglas windshield was a familiar black cape.
Two-Face yanked out his guns and started firing. Bullets went everywhere: through the windshield, through the cape, and, unfortunately, through the pilot. Blood spattered the inside of the windshield. Two-Face didn’t care. All that mattered to him was that the cape was gone. But he had no certainty that Batman had gone with it.
The pilot slumped forward on the stick, sending the chopper into a dive. Two-Face was hurled forward. He smashed into the windshield, which was already riddled with bullet holes. It cracked further under the impact and Two-Face scrambled back so that he wouldn’t crash completely through it and be hurled down to the icy water below. He grabbed the pilot’s corpse, wrested it from its position, and tossed it aside. Then he clambered into the vacated seat and regained control of the spiraling chopper.
That was when a fist smashed through the side window, tagging Two-Face squarely in the jaw. His head snapped back, crashing into the cushioned wall behind him with enough impact to send stars exploding between his eyes.
Crouched on one of the struts on the outside of the speeding helicopter, Batman hung on with single-minded determination. “Harvey, you need help. Give it up.”
A sneer crossed the distorted portion of his face. “We need help? Looked in the mirror recently?”
Suddenly he brought his feet up, slamming them squarely into Batman’s face. “Mano a Mano a Bato,” called Two-Face as Batman lost his grip, sliding and having to grab on to the lower half of the strut. Batman took a breath, then hauled himself back up, ripping apart the last remains of the side door that were acting as a barrier to him. He grabbed Two-Face’s foot, flipped him to the floor, and started dragging him out of the helicopter. Two-Face struggled back furiously.
“Dark Knight, huh? Dead Knight sounds more to my liking,” Two-Face snarled contemptuously.
“Surrender,” was Batman’s only response.
Two-Face didn’t even acknowledge the word as his hand fought for purchase against Batman, trying to push him away or strangle him or something. “Two years in Arkham Asylum planning your demise. There’s only one way out of this waltz. One of us dies.”
“I won’t kill you, Harvey.”
But Batman’s actions were contradicting his words. His fingers found Two-Face’s throat and clamped down, adrenaline pumping, instinct pushing him. There he was, looking deeply into the face of the promise he made that he hadn’t been able to keep. The face that had once trusted him, even come to consider him a friend and ally. The face of the man he’d let down.
The face that was laughing at him.
“Batman doesn’t kill? What’s that homicidal gleam in your eyes? That lethal curl of your lip? Oh, too good to be true. A Bat with a taste for blood. We’re just the same.” Turning the screws, he said, “You’re a killer too.”
For the briefest of moments, Batman’s concentration was thrown.
A second later, so was Batman, as Two-Face shoved him away and he vanished from sight beneath the chopper.
Harvey yanked himself back into the chopper and looked at the course in front of him.
There was the Lady Gotham statue, tall and proud and recently refurbished, standing proudly in the harbor.
Two-Face smiled as it all came together. “Hello, my lovely. Ready for your face-lift?” He reached under the seat and pulled out a large iron brace that he used to lock the controls into place, fixing the helicopter on its deadly course. “Let the world be made new . . . in our split image.”
Clutching onto the underside support strut, Batman hauled himself up, up once more toward the open side of the helicopter. He paused there a moment, bracing himself so that he would be able to move quickly, because sure as hell Harvey would be there waiting for him.
With a thrust of his powerful legs, he shoved himself into the cockpit.
No sign of Harvey.
What he did see were two things: the iron bar holding the chopper steady, and Harvey Dent poised over the cargo hatch. It was as if he’d been waiting for Batman to show up.
“This time, have the good taste to die,” he requested in a rather formal tone. And he leapt through the cargo hatch.
Batman moved quickly to the cargo hatch and stared in stunned disbelief as Harvey Dent plummeted toward the dark water below. Then there was a sudden flurry of expanding color, caught in Lady Gotham’s lighthouse beam, and a parachute opened over Two-Face. In an additional bit of whimsy, it unfolded into a giant Yin and Yang.
A shadow loomed directly in front of the copter. Lady Gotham was staring in at him.
Batman grabbed at his Utility Belt to pull out his laser torch, in hopes of slicing through the iron bar and by some miracle managing to change the helicopter’s course. He had exactly one second to realize that his laser torch was gone, dropped down the side of the bank building when he’d severed the chain.
And then there was no more time as the helicopter smashed into the left side of Lady Gotham’s face. Batman was hurled through the cargo hatch as the Blackhawk erupted in a massive fireball, consuming part of the statue’s visage and transforming it, in a matter of seconds, into a damaged ugly parody of itself.
Batman wasn’t conscious to see it.
Instead he was falling. Eyes closed. Body limp.
Perhaps dead. That was . . . if he hadn’t already been dead for quite some time . . .
And he saw them go down, bullets striking them with sickening thuds, twisting in a bizarre distortion of the alleyway . . . he saw them hit the ground, and their eyes, their eyes stared at him, and the accusation that was there . . .
. . . and there were the roses that his mother had been clutching, the roses his father had bought mere minutes before, the last purchase he would ever make . . .
. . . and he was running, running from the bodies lying in state at the wake . . .
. . . and there was the mud and the plunge, the plunge that he remembered, of course, but the details had been hazy for so long and the air was rushing past him . . .
. . . and the bat, the huge one, the one that had come after him . . . screeching at him . . . and something had dropped from Bruce’s hands . . . what was it . . . what . . .
“You’re a killer, too . . .”
The words ripped across his mind, forcing his mind awake, forcing his eyes open . . .
He had just enough time to curve his body into a diving form, and then he split the water. He had to hit it just perfectly. He wouldn’t be much good to himself or anyone else with a broken back.
He vanished beneath the water’s surface, and to any onlooker . . . had there been any . . . it would have seemed impossible that Batman would be resurfacing. Considering the impact with which he’d struck the water. Considering the height he’d plunged from. And his barely conscious condition. And the cold of the water, and its choppiness. And the length of time that he was under.
Impossible.
It was a word with which Batman had only a passing acquaintance.
He broke the surface, gasping for air, arms and legs moving desperately to keep himself above water. Within moments he’d steadied himself enough, and then he trod water and looked up at the ungodly illumination high above him.
Half of Lady Gotham’s once-beautiful face was still flaming, a blazing mockery of all of Batman’s efforts.
He slapped the water in frustration and then, with a sigh, he began the long, unpleasant swim to shore, as th
e burning lady Gotham lit the way.
CHAPTER SIX
Someone was working late at Wayne Enterprises.
Edward Nygma hunched over his device, working at a fever pitch. The only addition to his cubicle was a large pot of coffee which, if he could have figured a way to run an IV line to his arm, he would have attached. His hands moved in a deft, almost-delicate manner. His concentration was complete, the only indication of its intensity being the sweat that beaded his forehead . . . and the steady stream of muttering.
“ ‘Too many questions. Too many question marks.’ I’ll show you, Bruce Wayne.”
Then an officious voice, sounding like a cross between a foghorn and a Rottweiler, snapped from the entrance to his cubicle, “What the hell is going on here?”
Edward looked up at Stickley, his eyes not even fully focussing on him. “I told you your project is terminated,” Stickley went on.
Nygma gave no response, but that was okay with Stickley. He wasn’t looking for any. Instead he smiled nastily. “For that matter . . . I’m canceling you, Nygma. You deliberately disobeyed me. That was insubordination. But not only that, you roughed up Bruce Wayne and subjected him to your . . . fixations. That was just plain stupid.” He leaned against the edge of the cubicle, interlaced his fingers. His tone changed and he sounded almost conciliatory. “It’s pretty obvious what you were doing, Nygma. You tried a little power play. Thought you’d make an end run around the boss. And, y’know . . . that’s understandable. It’s even okay. Goes with the territory of corporations. But there’s an old saying you didn’t think about. And that old saying is, When you go up against the boss . . . you better win. You didn’t win, Edward. You lost.”
He waited for some reaction, but all he saw was the fevered intensity of Edward Nygma’s gaze centered on him. It was as if everything else in Nygma’s world at that moment had fallen away with the single exception of Stickley.
It was not a location that Stickley found particularly desirable. He turned away gruffly and said, “I’m calling security.”
He got two feet before Edward brought the coffeepot crashing down on his head. Stickley went down without a sound.
“Caffeine’ll kill you,” Ed informed the unconscious body. Then he hesitated, wondering what the hell he should do now. He’d acted totally on impulse . . .
Brain impulse . . . thought impulse . . .
He looked from Stickley to the machinery and back again. A wide grin split his face.
“When you least expect it . . . you’re elected,” he said.
When Stickley awoke, he wasn’t sure where he was at first. He tried to piece together what had happened, tracing for himself the sequence of events that had resulted in his discovery that he was strapped to a rolling swivel chair. He felt a dull ache in his head and a further pain in his neck when he tried to look around.
Then he became aware that there was something balanced on his head. He nodded back and forth, trying to shake it off. It felt like a hat or . . .
There were wires trailing from whatever It was. Wires to a machine, and now enough of his confusion fell away so that he was able to perceive Edward Nygma wearing a similar rig on his own head, making what appeared to be some final adjustments. Nygma must have somehow sensed that Stickley had come to, because he didn’t even bother to look over to his boss (or ex-boss) as he said, “This won’t hurt a bit.” Then he gave the matter a moment’s more thought and added, “At least I don’t think it will.”
Nygma did turn to him then and flashed a brief, if slightly pained grin, as he reached over toward a toggle on the power source. Mustering his ire, Stickley bellowed, “Nygma, you press that button and—”
“And what? I’m fired?”
He flipped a switch.
The TV screen flared to life, and a green glow emanated from it. And hovering there, in the glow, was a holographic representation of Stickley reeling in a prize bass. Then the figures began to waver and tremble.
“Losing resolution,” muttered Edward to himself. “More power.”
He threw a second switch, and immediately warning lights flared to life. But the lead time between the warning and the opportunity to shut down was way, way too short. A white beam lanced out from the TV, into Stickley’s headband. The systems, both in the circuitry and in Stickley’s own neural pathways, overloaded, and the feedback smashed back into the machine and terminated in Edward’s own headband.
If Stickley had been at all aware at this point of what was happening, he would have taken some small measure of rejoicing in the fact that Nygma was screaming as loudly as he was.
But he was not aware of what was happening. Indeed, one look at his glazed, slack expression made it quite clear that he was not aware of anything at all.
But a look into Nygma’s eyes would have told the exact opposite. He looked invigorated, even reborn. The normal glimmer of twisted genius had been accelerated by somewhere around a factor of a hundred.
It was as if his brain had been blown in an infinite number of directions all at once, and was now hurriedly reassembling itself. And from that reassembly came different impulses, different thoughts, a scattergun of personalities and notions, people that Nygma and/or Stickley had met, or hated, or loved, or had made any impression on him at all—all of them bubbling to the surface, struggling for their moment, fighting for dominance.
Sounding much like the host of a game show Edward had enjoyed in his youth, he barked, “Ed Nygma, come on down. You’re the next contestant on Brain Drain. I’ll take what’s inside thick skull number one. What have we got for him, Johnny?”
Then for a moment the emcee eased back and Edward’s own personality . . . what there was of it, at any rate . . . came roaring back to the surface, speaking so quickly that it would have been impossible for anyone overhearing to understand a single thing he was saying. “Stickley, I’ve had a breakthrough! And a breakdown? Maybe. Nevertheless. I’m smarter. I’m a genius. No, several geniuses. A gaggle. A swarm. A flock of freaking Freuds.” Then, switching to what he imagined to be an approximation of Freud’s voice, he continued, “Unt I am experiencing a saturation of the cerebrum . . .”
His mind flared once more, and suddenly he was the short order cook at the greasy spoon Stickley occasionally stopped by for breakfast on the way to work. “Yo, Charlie. Gimmie an order of brain-fry. Extra well. Hold the neurons.”
Too many question marks . . . Wayne’s assessment and caution asserted itself.
Thinking of Wayne grounded him just slightly, and he looked at the slack-jawed Stickley. “Riddle me this, Fred. What is everything to someone and nothing to everyone else? Your mind, of course. And now mine pumps with the power of yours.”
He flashed onto a movie musical that Stickley had fallen asleep watching three weeks ago and, to the tune of “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails,” began to sing, “I’m sucking up your IQ . . . Vacuuming your cortex . . . Feeding off your brain . . .”
And when Stickley had woken up, a British comedy of manners was on . . .
In a clipped accent, he said, “Fred, I must confess you were a wonderful appetizer. Simply divine. But now I yearn for a meal of substance. The main course. A wide and varied palate. Ah, to taste the mind of a hero. A nobleman. A poet. Einstein in a Jungian sauce with a dash of Nietzsche on top.”
He sensed that his mind was starting to peel away completely and, with what little control he had left, he reached over and shut off the machine. The light flickered and died and, with a sigh as if having just physically separated from a lover, Nygma murmured, “What a rush.”
Then Stickley, for what might possible have been the first time in his life, actually did something . . . interesting.
He spoke.
The reason this was interesting was that Edward had had no clue that Stickley would be able to speak, or think, or make himself understood after the treatment. So being subjected to the device wasn’t terminal. Clearly a best-case scenario.
“What the hell just happe
ned?”
Nygma smiled gleefully. “A surprising side effect. While you were mesmerized by my 3-D TV, I utilized your neural energy to grow smarter. And yet, now that my beam is off, your intelligence—as it were—has returned to normal with no memory of my cerebral siphon.” Boisterously he added, “I am a Columbus of the mind. Land Ho!”
It took Stickley a few moments to truly comprehend what it was that Edward Nygma was telling him. Nygma had been . . . what? Puttering around in his brain? Sucking away neural energy? It was . . . it was like some sort of mind rape.
Making no attempt to restrain his fury, Stickley roared, “Bruce Wayne was right, you demented, bizarre, unethical toad. It is mind manipulation! I’m reporting you to the FCC, the Human Experimentation Board, the AMA, the police, the federal government. You’re going to court, to jail, and then to a mental institution for the rest of your twisted little life! But first and foremost, Nygma, you are fired! Do you hear me? Fired!!!”
Cackling with the demented glee he’d once seen a comedian display in a movie, Nygma shot back, “I don’t think so!”
He lashed out with a foot, kicking the chair to which Stickley was tied. The chair rolled back across the slick floor at high speed, Stickley yelling obscenities and totally unaware of his jeopardy until he smashed through the large round window at the end of the corridor.
Stickley shrieked . . . and stopped short.
The chair was teetering on the edge, glass plummeting down and away. Only one thing was keeping him from tumbling off the precipice, and that was the long wire attached to his headband.
Edward Nygma charged up to him, terror and concern on his face. Clearly he had not meant for this to happen, and the potential ramifications for the near fatality had . . .
Then he leaned in close, gripping the wired headband, and Stickley barely had time to realize that Nygma was concerned, not about him, but about his precious machine. With a twisted sneer of contempt he said, “Fred. Babe. You are fired. Or should I say: terminated.”
