But he wasn’t going to make it. The Dark Knight could see that with his practiced eye. He was going to fall short of the opening, if only by a few inches. And in this case, a miss was as good as a mile.
Then he remembered something someone had taught him once. A young athlete, with his perfect life stretched out ahead of him, had shared with him his secret strategy in the long jump—a strategy that had won him the decathlon at the Olympic Games.
“I don’t land,” he had said. “I just hang there.”
Batman concentrated on that. He focused on it as hard as he’d focused on anything in his life. And just as that young athlete had recommended, he didn’t land. He just hung there . . .
. . . and hung there . . .
. . . and hung there some more . . .
. . . long enough to make it through the slot and come down on the man who’d given him that advice.
Unable to stand under the weight of Batman’s descent, Freeze crashed over the edge of the control platform and into the freezing engine. In the process, his antithermal suit was ripped open.
In that moment, despite the villain’s best efforts, the mirrors overhead moved into alignment. The beams of reflected sunlight hit the freezing engine. And Freeze was struck by the rays as well, forced to watch as they penetrated his damaged suit.
The telescope was alive with power all of a sudden, an intense thawing beam shooting from its giant lens. Batman turned to Freeze, who was beginning to turn gray and wither.
“You’re losing your cool,” he said.
Freeze’s lip curled in disdain. “I think not. There’ll be no hot time in this old town tonight.” He produced a remote control device. “You’ll get a charge out of this, my friend.”
Pressing a button on the device, he rolled out of the sunlight and fell to the floor. Suddenly, a series of explosions in quick succession wracked the area around the base of the telescope. And with each rapid-fire impact, the giant instrument tore loose of its moorings a little more.
Finally, with a scream of twisting metal and cracking concrete, it slid through its slot altogether, taking Batman, the telescope platform, and a chunk of observatory floor along with it—not to mention the two scientists clinging to the targeting groove.
Together, they began to fall, headed for the frozen river-bank and certain death on the rocks below.
As the wind ripped past him, stinging his eyes mercilessly, Batman’s first thought was to get to the scientists. If he could reach them, he might be able to save their lives.
Sliding down the telescope from the control platform—yet again—he simultaneously sought out the one structure he knew he could count on.
And found it.
Aiming the launcher mounted on his wrist, he fired a double-ended Bat-tether and watched twin grapples shoot horizontally into the air . . . then sink into the arms of the giant sculpture holding up the observatory as the telescope plummeted past.
Batgirl was just helping Robin onto an icy ledge beneath the slot in the observatory dome when they heard—no, felt—a series of explosions. A moment later, the giant telescope, carrying Batman and two other men, plunged past them.
“Now, that,” said her companion, his voice taut with concern, “is what I call an exit.”
The sight of their friend and two innocents falling to their deaths was a compelling, even horrific spectacle. But Batgirl had barely noticed it before something else captured her attention.
Looking past Robin, she cursed softly. “Please tell me he’s on our side,” she said, gazing at the mammoth, muscle-bound monstrosity.
But with his leather mask and the tubes leading from the back of his head, he didn’t look like anyone she wanted to meet in a dark alley, much less in the skies over Gotham.
“His name is Bane,” said Robin.
He coiled and leaped into a spinning roundhouse kick. But the man called Bane knocked him away with a back-handed blow, sending him flying into a snowdrift.
Then the giant began advancing on Batgirl.
She went into a flurry of action, letting Bane have it with a series of punches and kicks. Her whole arsenal, in fact. Unfortunately, it didn’t do any good. He might as well have been made of steel.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Robin stand up. “Don’t worry,” she grunted. “I’ve got him.”
Just then, Bane grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into an ice wall. Her senses left her for a moment. When they came back again, she could taste blood in her mouth—and see Bane bringing his fist back in preparation for a killing blow.
“No,” she heard Robin say. “I’ve got him.”
Turning, she saw her companion leap into the air—and rip away the tubes connecting Bane’s injector pack to the back of his skull. As the tubes flapped about, a milky substance sprayed wildly into the air, hissing where it made contact with the snow.
Bane released Batgirl and hit the ledge, writhing. He seemed to be getting smaller, less muscular, as she looked on—shrinking, amazing as it sounded. After just a few seconds, the man was a scrawny shadow of his former self, struggling in the folds of his costume.
“You should get that suit taken in,” Robin gibed as he grabbed a fistful of Bane’s vest. “No one’s buying baggy anymore.”
As Batman clung to the telescope, he saw the jagged rocks alongside the river rush up at him with dizzying speed. But if he was discomfited by the sight, the scientists were absolutely terrified.
“Grab my belt,” he roared over the rush of the wind, “and hang on.”
Frantic with fear, the scientists did as they were told. In fact, they were only too glad to latch on to something, anything, no matter how fragile a chance it might be.
A moment later, Batman’s grappling cable pulled taut.
The crime fighter felt a tremendous jolt of pain in his right shoulder as he assumed the weight of three grown men, the telescope dropping out beneath them like the trapdoor in a giant gallows.
As Batman and the scientists continued to sink, bending the cable like a bowstring in the hands of a titanic archer, the pain in his shoulder became an electric agony.
But still he held on, jaw clenched, fighting his way past his misery until the three of them reached their lowest point—over an outcropping of rock on the cliff face below the observatory.
Below, the telescope hit the rocks and exploded in a conflagration that threw the cliffs into stark relief. For a split second, Batman experienced a pang of grief for the thing. He—or rather, Bruce Wayne—had meant it to be a symbol of hope. And now it was dashed.
But it was just a symbol. Batman wouldn’t believe real hope had died along with it.
“This is your stop,” he told the scientists.
Freeing himself from their grasps, first one and then the other, he saw them drop safely onto a ledge just a few feet below them. Then, the weight on it reduced dramatically, Batman felt the cable go taut again—propelling him back up toward the observatory like a straight, dark arrow.
Once again, his shoulder was punished—this time by the force of acceleration. Once again, it stood the test.
The Batman soared toward the thickening, gray clouds, past the mammoth statue holding up the observatory. At precisely the right moment, he pressed a stud on his wrist-launcher and allowed the cable ends to spring free.
Then he continued his flight unrestricted. Almost immediately, he could feel gravity resume its claim on him. But by then, he was already shooting past the observatory.
Knowing he would have only one chance to perform this maneuver, Batman concentrated on getting it right. As he ascended past the observatory, he twisted in midair and spread his cape, using every tool at his disposal to change the direction of his flight.
Then, with an ease that belied the magnitude of his effort, he flipped neatly through the slot formerly occupied by the telescope and landed on the observatory floor.
And he wasn’t alone. No sooner had he completed his vault than he saw Robin and Bat
girl flip through the slot as well. They had made it—all of them.
Robin grinned. “Winded, old-timer?”
Batman didn’t give him the satisfaction of frowning at him. “Don’t make me kill you in front of the girl,” he said.
As one, they approached the rubble-strewn control console. Its chronometer was still intact. But the news it gave them wasn’t good.
“It’s almost midnight,” Batgirl pointed out. “And the telescope’s gone. There’s no way to thaw the city.”
Batman stroked his chin. There was a way, he insisted, wracking his brain for one. There was always a way.
Then he hit on it.
“Theoretically,” he said, “the satellites could be positioned to thaw the city directly. But it would take a computer genius.” He eyed his companions. “Know anyone who fits that description?”
“I’m on it,” said Robin.
Clearing the debris away from the console, he began to type. But to no avail. The equipment was dead inside.
“No,” said Batgirl, shouldering Robin aside. “I’m on it.”
She located a couple of broken wires and quick-patched them. Suddenly, the console sprang to life. Without missing a beat, she began hacking.
“Ms. Genius,” she muttered, without looking up. “Madame Genius. Her Geniusness. Which sounds better?”
Batman took a closer look at the monitor. According to the graphics, the giant orbital satellites were beginning to align.
He imagined a full disk of the sun appearing in the mirror of one satellite. He imagined that solar energy reflected from the first satellite to the second one, and then to the one after that and the one after that, until the last unit in the string beamed a ray of hot, pure sunlight at Gotham.
Suddenly, Batman saw a glint in the dense, gray sky, an ember of faith among the ashes of his city’s despair. As he watched, the ember became a glow, then a narrow, red-gold shaft of light. Then several shafts of light, cutting through the cloud cover like a celestial cavalry.
The giant rays of focused sunlight played over the city. And whatever they touched, they warmed. Slowly, inexorably, life was restored to the frozen canyons of Gotham.
As the beams of sunlight hit the base of the observatory, the ice began to melt off it. The entire cliff was thawing, its frigid sheath running in rivulets down to the river.
Only then did Batman give a thought to Freeze. Turning, he saw his adversary lying amid the rubble, weak and gray with the growing heat. The villain was straining just to breathe.
Batman walked over and knelt beside him.
Freeze looked up at him with hate in his eyes. “Go on,” he rasped. “Kill me too . . . just as you killed my wife.”
Batman shook his head. “I didn’t kill your wife.” He pressed a button on his Utility Belt to provide proof of his claim. “Run Ivy evidence tape 001.40.”
Then he showed Freeze a tiny monitor in his gauntlet, which displayed an image of Poison Ivy. “As I told Lady Freeze when I pulled her plug,” Ivy was saying, “this is a one-woman show.”
Freeze’s eyes opened wide. He screamed his rage, his face streaming with frozen tears like tiny diamonds.
“But Ivy never killed her,” Batman assured him. “Your wife isn’t dead, Victor. She’s alive.”
Freeze’s eyes narrowed. “How . . . ?”
“We found her,” Batman said. “Just in time, apparently. And we restored her icy slumber.”
He spoke a new command and his gauntlet monitor switched images. Now it showed Freeze’s mate, sleeping once again in cryogenic peace.
“You see? She’s still frozen,” he told the former scientist. “Still waiting for you to find a cure for her disease.”
Freeze breathed a sigh of relief. “Still frozen,” he echoed, turning his face away. “Still alive.”
Batman saw his chance then. It was still a long shot. But it was also his only shot.
“I know what it’s like to lose everything you’ve ever loved,” he said.
Freeze regarded him, looking for a lie in his face. But he wouldn’t find one, Batman knew. After all, he did know what it was like.
“But vengeance isn’t power,” he went on. “Any two-bit thug with a gun can take a life. To give life . . . that’s true power. A power you once had.”
Freeze was listening to him. For now, that was all he could hope for.
“I don’t know if you’ll ever find a cure for your wife,” Batman told him. “But I’m asking you now, Dr. Victor Fries, to save another life. Show me how to cure McGregor’s Syndrome, stage one. And maybe you can also save the man your wife once loved—a man who’s buried deep inside you.”
Batman paused, hoping he’d been persuasive enough. He looked into his adversary’s eyes, into his soul, hoping he was right about what was buried there.
“Will you help me, Doctor?”
Freeze stared at Batman. Emotions moved across his face like summer storms. Finally, he unsealed his chest-plate, removed two glowing power orbs, and held them out in his hand. His smile was bittersweet.
“Take two of these,” he said, “and call me in the morning.”
Accepting the orbs, Batman made a call to the cops over his cowl radio. But Freeze stopped him and asked for a favor.
Knowing Freeze’s villainy had been broken, Batman was tempted to grant it. But he couldn’t.
Still, he had a feeling Freeze would find a way to get what he wanted all on his own.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Poison Ivy sat in a barred square of moonlight in her cell at Arkham Asylum, considering the tiny flower she held in her hand.
She could hear the shrieking and cursing that came from the cells of her fellow inmates farther down the corridor. The Riddler, the Mad Hatter, Maxie Zeus . . . all of them thoroughly mad. All of them hollowed out by this place until they were devoid of hope.
Only the Scarecrow refrained from shrieking and cursing with the rest of them. But he was the maddest of all.
In the whole cellblock, perhaps in the whole asylum, only Ivy was able to cling to her sanity. And what made her different? she asked herself. What made her unique here?
The promise that still lay like a seedling in her breast. The anticipation of spring, lush and green and sweetsmelling, rolling over humankind like a mighty, flower-covered steamroller.
That, and a more personal hope.
She turned to the window, wondering how long it would be until winter arrived. Then she began pulling the petals out of the flower, one by one.
“He loves me,” she said, her words little more than a sigh. “He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me—”
“Not,” a voice interrupted, followed by a click as of a lock opening.
Ivy turned and saw a figure cloaked in shadows. It stepped forward, revealing itself as Mr. Freeze.
“It’s amazing what you can buy around here for a few dozen diamonds,” he told her.
He approached her. Coldly, she thought. But that was hardly a surprise. His aloofness, his hard-to-get quality was one of the things she found attractive about him.
“Freeze,” she said. “I knew you’d come to get me. The same way I came to get you.” Caught up in the nearness of him, she reached up as if to stroke his cheek right through his helmet.
Before she could touch him, however, he grabbed her wrist. His mouth twisted with rage.
“I didn’t have enough to buy my way out of here,” he grated. His eyes narrowed savagely. “Just in.”
“In?” she echoed. “But why . . . ?”
And suddenly, she knew. Somehow, Freeze had found out about his wife—the way she’d really died, at Ivy’s hands.
She became afraid. Very afraid.
“Prepare for a bitter harvest,” Freeze told her, his eyes glinting like daggers. “Winter has come at last.”
Ivy swallowed. This wasn’t the kind of cold embrace she’d had in mind.
Bruce watched morning break in the hills to the east, a glow of ruddy gold sandwi
ched between the horizon and an unbroken blanket of clouds. Then he turned away from the window to look back over his shoulder.
The living room of stately Wayne Manor was filled with pizza boxes, Chinese food containers, and articles of clothing strewn over the furniture. Barbara, who had been up half the night watching over her uncle, was dozing on the couch. Dick was pacing, red-eyed with lack of sleep himself.
They were afraid, all of them. Afraid that Alfred would be lost to them forever. But Bruce was afraid the most.
After all, Alfred had been his world for a very long and very vulnerable time. In a way, losing the old man would be like losing his parents all over again. And he didn’t know how he would be able to endure that.
Bruce squinted as the sun blazed forth, revealed in all its glory. Then that glory faded as it rose out of view behind the clouds.
In the distance, he saw a V-shaped flock of geese. They were headed for warmer climes—unlike the bats in the caverns below the house, who remained all year long in their chittering darkness.
As he followed the geese’s flight, Bruce was reminded of a day long ago. He saw himself as a boy again, standing outside on the estate’s snow-dusted fields, trying to imagine what Alfred could be saying to the stout man in the living room.
It wasn’t until the following week that he realized the man was a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist, in fact, who meant to relieve him of the pain he was feeling as a result of his parents’ deaths.
There had been just one problem. Bruce hadn’t wanted to be relieved of the pain. It was all he still had of Martha and Thomas Wayne and he wasn’t about to give it up.
Of course, the stout man wouldn’t have accepted that. Even at his tender age, young Bruce knew that with grim certainty. There was only one way the stout man would leave him alone.
So Bruce opened up to him—or pretended to. He poured out his feelings of loneliness, of rage, of fear and resentment. Or rather, not his real feelings, but what he thought the stout man wanted to hear.
It pleased the stout man no end that he had cured the boy. He had gone into the arrangement believing Bruce was a hopeless case, but somehow he had drawn him out. In fact, he’d told Alfred that it was one of the highlights of his career as a therapist.
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