by Marv Wolfman
His breathing slowly returned to normal. He felt his pulse slowing.
But as the Joker’s blood continued to take root, he also knew maintaining control was going to be hellishly impossible.
14
James Gordon’s car crossed the bridge and pulled up to the all-too-familiar bright yellow police tape surrounding the large courtyard for the Ace Chemicals lab complex. Bill McKean moved to open the commissioner’s door, but Gordon stopped him with a wave of his hand.
“How many times have I told you I can open my own door, Bill?”
“Just doing my job, sir.”
“I know,” Gordon said. “But that’s a perk I don’t need.”
There were nearly twenty G.C.P.D. officers positioned around the front three buildings. To do the job right, Gordon estimated he’d need at least 150, but he’d been hard-pressed to get the officers who did come, and was grateful for their presence.
Captain Nolan of the Sixth Precinct stood near one of the hastily assembled barricades, on the phone, checking with his people. George Nolan had put his life on the line at least a dozen times before Gordon had promoted him to captain, and the commissioner would’ve bet a year’s pay that he’d be one of the loyal officers who stayed behind, while so many others took off.
“Commissioner,” Nolan said. “Looks like the shit hit the fan again. Is this damned city ever going to squeeze out a break?” Nolan, who was born and grew up on Park Row, never tried to shake off his Crime Alley beginnings. His vocabulary was as raw as the day he started working for the force, fifteen years ago.
Gordon laughed. “George, I’d give away half my pension to see that happen, but I’m afraid the luck genie would just look at it and laugh. So,” he added, nodding toward the chemical plant, “what do we know?”
Nolan shrugged, and Gordon figured that might be the clearest answer he’d get all night. But the captain continued.
“We know we don’t have enough men to stop a greased pig at a county fair, let alone God-knows-how-many armed killers they got inside. I was hoping you had a plan, sir.”
“I don’t, but I’m praying he does,” Gordon said, watching as a sleek black vehicle crossed the bridge and pulled to a stop in front of them, its turbine engines shutting down with a piercing whine. A moment later its driver’s hatch swung open, and Batman stepped out. It closed behind him and the car automatically initiated its electro-shock defenses to repel any foolish attackers.
The Dark Knight was wearing a different suit than earlier. He frequently adjusted his armor depending on what he was going up against.
“Any word from inside?” Batman asked Gordon.
“Nope—nothing. The facility’s locked down—not a door or loading dock can be opened. From what we can gather, and judging from the number of cars in the lot, we believe there’s still a skeleton crew of workers trapped in there. We’ve tried contacting them, but we’ve gotten no response. We’re not hopeful.”
“I’m picking up heat signatures.”
“We saw them, too, Batman. But at this point we don’t know if they’re workers or Scarecrow’s men. And with all the buildings in the complex, it’s difficult to pinpoint an exact location. We’re going to have to get closer.”
“No,” Batman snapped. “Pull your officers back. If the men in there are still alive, I’ll find them.” Then he added, “When I do, let’s hope they can tell us what Scarecrow’s up to.”
* * *
Gordon’s G.C.P.D. phone buzzed suddenly and he answered it.
“Gordon. Talk to me.” He paused as he listened, and Batman saw his eyes widen for a second. Something startled the commissioner, but he was too much of a professional to show it for long.
He clicked the phone off, then shook his head.
“Just when you think things have gotten as bad as they could…” He looked up. “Scarecrow’s sent out a call to all possible allies in the tri-state area. He’s asking them to come to Gotham City, promising them the city has become the Wild West, and everything’s up for grabs.”
“That’s nothing’s new,” Batman said. “The Joker did the same a few years back, and even the Riddler recruited cohorts in his own attempt to become the top dog. Crane’s looking for more power players to create a distraction. He wants them to keep us busy while he completes whatever he’s planning.”
“I know,” Gordon replied. “But in the past we always had a full compliment of cops to show off our muscle. Even when we’ve faced the ‘blue flu,’ we’ve had the essential manpower we needed. This time, based on what I just heard, the criminals flooding into the city already outnumber the rest of us two, maybe three to one.”
Worried expressions took hold on the faces of the cops who heard their exchange. Then they looked at Batman, and he saw the hope appear again in their eyes. They were praying he’d be able to rescue the city as he’d done so many times before. So he began walking purposefully toward the factory, then turned back.
“I need you all to stand back behind the lines,” he said. “My suit’s protected, so once I’m inside it should be able to temporarily protect me from the toxins. Unfortunately, without protection, you’d succumb to his poisons pretty much immediately. So stay here. Please.”
He turned back to the factory then stopped again as he heard the roar of helicopter blades above him.
Peering upward, he saw a pilot leaning out of the cockpit—definitely male, face covered in some sort of mask but he was too far away for the details to be seen. The man waved at him, and it wasn’t a friendly gesture.
The copter was heavily armed, and its weapons array began to swivel. Cannons shifted into position, and Batman knew from the telltale hum that they were being primed as the craft approached the chemical plant.
If the pilot was going to shoot, Batman didn’t want any of the Ace Chemicals workers—if they were still alive—to become collateral damage. He sprinted across the courtyard, away from both the building and the police. He hoped his actions would cause the copter to follow him.
The first explosion hit.
He braced himself. An instant later it was followed by a second explosion, and a third. But he hadn’t been scratched. Whoever the pilot was, he couldn’t possibly have missed Batman three times. Not with modern targeting guidance.
He looked up.
The city bridge leading to the factory had been blown apart. Cars and busses were plummeting into the river below. Another missile struck the bridge’s suspension towers, shattering them. The deck wobbled and swayed, forcing the suspender cables to pull back and snap. Bridge parts, still on fire, fell into the deep waters. Thick black smoke rose from the ruins.
Batman stared at the carnage. Whoever the pilot was, he was sick enough and twisted enough that he was willing to kill hundreds in order to block further access to the island.
Why the hell didn’t the bastard just put up a “no trespassing” sign? he thought with dark humor. But nothing about the situation was funny.
The copter swooped low, then banked toward him. This time the pilot didn’t wave. He seemed preoccupied. Batman couldn’t see what he was doing, but suspected he was locking in coordinates. And he couldn’t outrun missiles. Even if they missed him by a dozen yards, the explosions would still consume him.
The pilot’s voice echoed from the cockpit, amplified so it could be heard over the screaming blades.
“No more last-second escapes, old friend. No more Utility Belt wonders that pull your sorry ass out of the fire, as they have so many times before.” The copter slowed, then hovered in front of him. The pilot looked up from whatever he’d been doing and stared.
“Remember the Winchester murder? How about the Joker’s centennial attack? Well, this time you won’t be able to grapple your way out of here, or use your Batclaws to grab my landing struts. You see, old man, you’ve used up your quota of miracles. You’ve had a great run, but the ride is finally over. There’s a new mask in town, which means it’s time for you to be retired.”
Batman never expected to one day walk through his front door and quietly and peacefully die at home, but he hoped that when he died it would be while he was helping others live.
Then it hit him. The pilot had mentioned the Winchester murder. That was five years ago, and he and the police had never reported the details. How would he know Batman had used his grapple? And how could he know he’d used his Batclaws to bring down a helicopter with the Joker in it?
None of that was part of the public record.
Who the hell…?
* * *
The pilot checked his head-up display and tapped the controls on the copter’s keyboard system. Batman’s heat signature was locked in. There was no place he could run that a single missile couldn’t search out and destroy him. And there was more than one rocket set aside for the task.
He pressed the trigger mech, but the HUD blinked red and the words “System Override” flashed on the console. He pressed it again, but nothing changed.
The goddam missiles weren’t firing.
“What the hell?”
His comm system crackled and Scarecrow’s raspy voice came through his earphones.
“I will not permit you to kill him, Knight. In death he will have nothing left to fear, while I still have so much more to give. Your only job is to keep him away from Ace Chemicals.”
“You swore I could kill him.”
“Vengeance will come. When I say so.”
He started to shout as he heard the comm shut off. Scarecrow was no longer online.
“Damn!” The Knight slammed the console with his fist, yanked the controls, and the copter banked away. Another time then.
It couldn’t come soon enough.
The Arkham Knight watched Batman, standing impotently in the courtyard. He turned to speak to Gordon before heading back to the Batmobile.
“Old man,” the Knight whispered to himself, “I could’ve taken out both you and the cop, and it would’ve been so damn easy. But no. Not yet. Scarecrow wants to play a few more games before then. So go ahead, go inside. See what my men have in store for you. If you survive, fine. If you die, Scarecrow will be pissed, but I’ll stand up and applaud. Whatever happens—between you and me, old friend—there’s going to be a lot of blood involved. Have fun. I know I will.
“This is going to end sooner than you think,” he muttered. “You can trust me on that, Bruce.”
15
The Batmobile roared up a ramp toward the cluster of buildings that surrounded the courtyard. Batman tapped his gauntlet comm to connect to Oracle but received no answer. Not a problem—her satellite-connected heat sensors might be more powerful than his portable unit, but his would suffice.
He saw multiple thermal blips throughout the quad. The captives could still be anywhere, and he needed to get closer to find them. He gunned the engine and sped across the campus.
According to his sensors, two tanks were waiting for him, both unmanned drones. If Scarecrow wanted him dead he would have had his goons driving them, forcing Batman, who avoided lethal attacks, to be cautious, slowing him down, making him an easier target to destroy. But it was becoming more and more apparent that Scarecrow didn’t want him dead. At least not yet.
That must have been the reason the copter pilot turned away at the last moment, instead of blasting him off the face of the planet. The master had jerked the dog’s leash.
Scarecrow only wanted to slow him down.
The obvious question was… why?
The answer, sadly, also seemed obvious. Jonathan Crane wanted Batman to feel fear before he killed him. Scarecrow needed him to see Gotham City succumb to his toxin, to watch his city descend into a state of primitive dread where its oh-so-valued citizens would see enemies everywhere. Where they would mindlessly attack one another, and destroy those they once loved but no longer recognized.
But most of all, he likely wanted Batman to experience complete helplessness as he failed to save what was most important to him. Scarecrow wanted to destroy Batman’s mind before he destroyed his body—neither of which goals the Joker had ever achieved.
It was all too possible. If the fear toxin turned even a thousand ordinary and decent citizens into paranoid murderers who saw demons wherever they looked, those thousand could easily kill many thousands more. And if Scarecrow managed to blanket the entire city with his toxin, nobody would be spared. Driven by inexorable fear, the population of Gotham City would exist for one reason only—to destroy or be destroyed.
They had to stop him.
As the tanks closed in, he ran his fingers over the touch screen and accessed his weapons controls. Twin cannons swiveled into position, their ammo counter indicating that only two missiles were available—one in each turret. There was no leeway for misses.
He double-checked the targeting mech, breathed in deeply, hit the firing icon, and launched the rockets. Nine seconds later both tanks exploded. Perfect hits, but now he was out of major firepower.
The Batmobile ground to a stop, its hatch swung open, and Batman took off at a sprint toward the closest building, only to confirm that its steel door was shut and locked from the inside. He removed a small canister of explosive gel from his belt pouch and sprayed it on the door hinges. Contact with air hardened it into position.
Batman reached for his detonator when a sudden taser blast sent him falling back, involuntarily yelping in pain. Struggling to his feet, he saw three armed mercs rappelling from the building roof. The foremost one fired, and a new taser hit him in the chest, dropping him to his knees where he fought the compulsion to flail like a marionette.
He writhed on the ground, helpless to stop the barrage of fists that slammed into his face and gut. His stomach was burning and he found it nearly impossible to control his body, still shaking wildly from the taser blast. Focusing as best he could, he forced his legs under one of the mercs and pushed. Surprised, the man stumbled back toward the steel door.
Batman’s hand shuddered as he finally pressed the detonator, setting off the explosive gel that was already in place. Even as the explosion took the merc out of the action, it ripped the door’s hinges from the wall.
The explosion startled the other two thugs, giving Batman the few precious seconds he needed to gather all the strength he could. He activated the Batmobile by remote, and heard its weapons system power up as its AI scanned for targets.
All he had to do now was survive.
Sadly, that was becoming an increasingly unlikely concept.
The weapons honed in on Batman’s signal, then targeted the figures surrounding him, as per Fox’s programming. Rubber bullets slammed into the mercs, leaving the killers unconscious.
Batman stumbled to his feet and through the opened door, and switched his cowl lenses to “detective mode” which could sense heat patterns, movement and sound even through walls nearly a half-foot thick. Though already beginning to recover, he was still trembling from the taser blasts, and knew he wasn’t yet capable of taking on trained fighters. Unfortunately, that was exactly what he would need to do in order to find and rescue the captive workers.
He launched his grapple and pulled himself up to the ceiling, then kicked through a top window and climbed outside, pulling himself onto the roof. This building was the tallest on the Ace campus, and overlooked the entire facility. From this perspective everything looked peaceful.
Removing a small device from his belt pouch, he tossed it high over his head. It was a remote scanner that tied directly into his gauntlet communicator. It hovered for several minutes, sending out sonar signals, and then suddenly beeped.
Accessing the campus schematics uploaded by Oracle, he cross-referenced them with the data provided by the remote. There was a pulsing green light over one of the buildings—the one that housed the pump room. That was where the hostages were being kept.
Now he had to get to them. Several dozen armed mercenaries were going to do their damnedest to make certain he wouldn’t.
* * *
Bruce Wayne had visited Ace Chemicals many times when he had considered buying the factory and especially the land. He gave up the notion when his geologists reported that the grounds were irreparably contaminated, and there’d be no way to ever cleanse it. Over the course of his research he’d checked out every building and knew their layouts by heart. Despite that fact, he still referred to the floor-by-floor schematic Oracle had provided. It never hurt to have overlapping intel—“belt and suspenders,” she’d say.
All Ace Chemicals buildings were crisscrossed with underground tunnels that ran under the campus, accessed through steel gratings. Back in the day, thousands of dollars’ worth of liquor and unstamped cigarettes had secretly moved through these passageways or others exactly like them. This factory, like so many of the others built in Gotham City in the mid-1930s, was designed with that era’s bootleggers in mind, and they served their masters well.
Constructed for Prohibition, the underground network also stretched into the city, reaching nearly every corner, mostly hidden from view. The maze of tunnels, always dark and somber, provided a physical reminder that the booze-soaked Gotham City skin everyone thought they knew so well only served to hide its diseased bones.
Batman planned to put the tunnels to good use. He pried loose one of the gratings and slipped into the darkness, then pulled the steel back in place. Even if the unconscious mercs recovered, they would have no idea where he’d gone.
Inside the warehouse, he made his way up until he found himself peering at the steam pipes that vented the heat created during chemical processing. He stared out through a grating and saw a single thug, pacing back and forth. The sound coming from the vents would be loud enough to cover the Dark Knight’s movements.
He followed the man’s path and took position about ten yards ahead of him, then stood quietly as the merc walked past. In a sudden move imperceptible over the pump’s rhythmic thumping, he pushed the grating aside, grabbed the man’s ankles, and pulled his legs out from under him. The merc fell and Batman quickly covered his mouth with one hand, preventing him from calling out, while he wrapped his other arm around the man’s throat and squeezed until his opponent gasped for air and collapsed.
