ISSUE #3 - Written by D. Golightly
February 2018
February 2018
"Fools on Parade - Part Three"
The air condensed around Robin, and combined with a sudden drop in temperature, alerted him that someone behind him had targeted him yet again with another icy blast. Victor Fries was a genius in the field of cryogenics, but his technology had been bastardized, mostly by himself after his transformation. Several tubes of ice streaked the cityscape, reaching from the rooftops down to the street outside of Bailey’s Jewelry, the scene that Robin and his father had freshly arrived at mere moments ago.
His instincts, honed via the League of Assassins and the Dark Knight himself, overtook him completely. The young Robin, barely shrouded by his black cape with a yellow lining, threw his body to the side, rolled, and sought cover behind a blue mailbox.
He had counted ten assailants before Batman had vanished into the jewelry store and then been cut off by a wall of ice he estimated to be three feet thick. Just like the drugged and deluded Gotham citizens that had been unleashed on the city wearing the Joker’s motif, whom the media had dubbed the Fools, it seemed like someone had also outfitted these ten with Mr. Freeze’s signature weapon. When Robin could get a glimpse of the flash-freezing snipers, he saw calm and calculated operatives lining up their targets with focus. It meant that if these had been drugged like the Fools they were fairly lucid.
He spotted the only Freeze impersonator that had been on the ground about two dozen feet away, lying unconscious beneath a blue coat and hood. All of them wore the same outfit, making it impossible to distinguish one from another. That left nine to deal with, all of them with the higher ground, and he was temporarily on his own.
A sizzle of ice, a flash of blue, and another streak of cobalt energy had nearly taken his head off. Robin swept around the side of the mailbox to shield himself from yet another angle. Robin glanced at the wall of ice sealing off the storefront, and his father with it. He ground his teeth, palmed two batarangs, and spun out from behind the mailbox to deal with the situation.
# # # # #
“Bats, you can’t afford me,” Deadshot replied.
The barrel of the assassin’s wrist-mounted compact machine gun was firmly aimed at Batman’s head. Floyd Lawton had made a name for himself as a man that never missed, but Batman had proven that assumption to be wrong on several occasions. Their paths had crossed more than once, and each time both had come away scarred. For as many sociopaths that Batman had faced in his crime fighting career, he knew that there was one key difference in Lawton’s character that set him apart from most others. He was an opportunist.
“Then why haven’t you pulled the trigger?” Batman shot back.
“Well,” Deadshot said with a small pause, “I didn’t say I wouldn’t entertain any offers.”
In their short conversation Batman had already learned several key pieces of information, which was likely offered subconsciously. Deadshot’s use of pronouns, referring to whoever hired him and drugged the Fools as “they,” meant that a group was targeting Batman. He had let slip that there was no room for Robin in their plan, meaning that the group in question had researched their methods and had a very specific path for him to follow, which in turn implied that he was expected to act a certain way.
Most importantly, the very first thing that Deadshot had said to him that night, casually stating that he hadn’t believed his employers when “they said it would be this easy,” strongly implied that there was an agenda at work.
“You said that you didn’t have orders to kill me tonight,” Batman said.
“I don’t. I’m supposed to contain you while the imitation Freezes kill your little bird out there.”
“And then what? What’s the next step in this twisted game?”
“Oh, it is a game, Batman. You have no idea. But, like I said…I’m willing to step aside if the price is right.”
Deadshot was a well-known gun for hire, but his fee wasn’t cheap. Aside from government work, there weren’t a lot of organizations that would hire him. Local operations like Rupert Thorne and Penguin, who had been busted down by Batman to strictly small time, really couldn’t afford to bring him into their schemes any longer. There was even a rumor among Batman’s informants that he had stopped taking calls from the small fish. The assassin had graduated from wetwork to entrepreneur.
However, if Deadshot had been placed here as part of a larger agenda and Batman was being led somewhere, it was unlikely that he really could be bought off. The Fools, the Freezes, and now Deadshot…the fact that this had been so well planned in advance alluded to the fact that most contingencies had been considered already.
“I can pay you with something more valuable than money,” Batman said. “Information.”
Deadshot laughed. “Batman, I seriously doubt that you know anyth—”
“Eddie is alive.”
The muzzle attached to Deadshot’s wrist wavered slightly. The blood red iris that had long ago served as the assassin’s window to the world remained fixed on Batman, perhaps even more strongly than before. After a moment, he replied, “I should kill you just for saying his name, let alone lying to me about him.”
Whoever was behind the events that had led Batman to this very moment had obviously done their homework, but what they had failed to consider was that Batman would know the impossible. Batman rigorously delved into his opponents’ backgrounds, and with Lawton’s known death wish, he was easily one of the most dangerous men on the planet. Therefore, Batman considered him a unique threat and would make sure that Oracle was always looking for an angle to get an edge in their favor.
Floyd Lawton had idolized his brother Eddie, but in an amateur attempt to murder their father, Floyd had missed his mark and killed Eddie instead. It was a catalyst event that had driven Floyd to never miss again, and in turn had psychologically molded him into Deadshot.
“I’m not lying, Lawton,” Batman stated. “I’ll make you a trade; turn in your employers in exchange for your brother’s whereabouts.”
Batman’s cape parted slightly as he raised his left arm, and then his right hand to begin tapping commands into his wrist-mounted holographic display that, via Wayne Enterprises satellite, was connected to the massive Cray computers in the batcave. A wire frame image of Eddie Lawton’s face was displayed hovering an inch over Batman’s extended wrist.
“Your tricks aren’t going to—”
“No tricks,” Batman cut in. The wire frame face switched to streaming data and scrolling text began sliding upward in front of Batman’s face. “Edward Lawton, resuscitated in the morgue after a medical examiner noticed brain activity. Severe frontal lobe damage due to extreme oxygen deprivation and trauma from a gunshot wound.”
Deadshot noticeably winced. The gun that had caused the wound had been his own.
“Responsive to physical therapy,” Batman continued. “Definitive language barriers, but he has been breathing completely on his own for the last two years. Considering his condition, his prognosis is rather good. I could go on. Or I could delete this information.”
“You’re a cold bastard. And that’s coming from me.”
“What’s it going to be, Lawton? Are you so loyal to your employers that you wouldn’t consider getting the one thing back that has been driving you mad all these years: your own brother?”
Deadshot hesitated, but then lowered his weapon. “They call themselves the Board of Directors,” he finally said. “Six of them. They have an elaborate plan to put you off your guard, starting with those clown idiots downtown last night and now the Freeze impersonators outside.”
“These Directors,” Batman said. “Who are they?”
# # # # #
“Hands…off!”
Her fist slammed into the teeth of the last man standing, knocking two of them loose. She had already broken his nose and blood was gushing out like a stream. She had taken a few cuts and bruises herself, but nothing compared to the pain she had dished out on the three thugs sent to bring her back to her cell.
After all, Selina Kyle, AKA the master thief Catwoman, had been through a hell of a lot worse.
He slumped to the grimy floor and she stepped over him with her bare feet, intent on escaping. She didn’t know where she was, but it looked like some kind of rundown hospital. They had come for her last night, barely twenty-four hours ago, and she had foolishly let her guard down. Drugged, she had woken up in a tiny cage meant for Rottweilers, but had fought off the effects of the chemicals enough to get her senses back. Two swift kicks was all it had taken to burst out of the flimsy cage.
They had taken her whip, of course, and her claws, her mask, and her boots. She was left wearing dirty hospital scrubs for some reason and they had shaved her black hair. None of this made sense. None of it at all.
She trotted down the corridor and kicked open the dual swinging hospital doors. The only light filling the hallways was what could poke through the boarded up windows. She wondered how long this place had been abandoned, and couldn’t help but smirk when she thought of all the “abandoned” locations throughout Gotham that had served as a haven for people like her.
Catwoman had used her fair share of such buildings before, either for hideouts or as places to lay stash the trinkets she had stolen.
Another thug happened around a corner just as she did, but she reacted much faster. Her cat-like reflexes had been honed to perfection and the muscled guard didn’t even register her striking him.
She pounced up as soon as she saw him, driving her foot into his jaw. The satisfying crack marked his head spinning to one side, and she plowed her shoulder into his abdomen to knock him down. She leapt on top of him, straddling him on the floor, and slammed her fist into his face three more times until he stopped struggling. Then she hit him again, hard, just to make sure.
Selina sprung back up, not wanting to waste any more time. Even though she was fleeing, she was still on the defensive. She simply had no understanding of who had grabbed her or why. She had to get out.
An elevator bank was at the end of the corridor, but the buttons didn’t react when she reached them. Swearing quietly, she was about to slip into the stairwell when she heard footsteps behind her.
“I’m impressed,” a man said, and she turned to see someone wearing purple robes steadily walk toward her. He was bald and had a fu-manchu goatee, and his eyes gave her a look into a sinister soul. “Of course, I don’t know why I would have expected those imbeciles to detain you. I told Doctor Double X to send his duplicates, but he gave me some hogwash about energy conservation. So, I thought I would attend to you myself.”
“Who the hell are you?” Selina demanded as she fell into a fighting stance. She was pissed off enough that his answer didn’t actually matter; she just wanted to knock him down and get to safety.
He bowed and said, “Doctor Tzin-Tzin, an orchestrator of your eventual death.” Then, with a flourish, he slid out a scimitar from within the folds of his robes, brandishing it with obvious expertise. “But not before the Bat arrives.”
“Batman? This is about him?”
“You’re the bait in our little bat-trap,” a new voice behind her said. She spun to see another man wearing a bulky gray suit that seemed to encapsulate his entire body, except for an opaque glass shield over his face. “So, why don’t you be a good little kitty and go back in your cage?”
Something ignited within the gray suit and the glass shield became a window. Fire curled up from within the sealed suit and Selina witnessed in horror as the newcomer’s face was revealed to be a blazing skull, devoid of skin or muscle, but somehow still animated.
She felt stupid, allowing them to flank her like this. She was still dazed from whatever they had drugged her with, weak and careless. She put her back to the wall and tried to watch both of them, flitting her head back and forth.
“I’ll handle this, Doctor Phosphorus,” Tzin-Tzin said, his voice failing to hide drips of disdain. “We can be more tactful than burning her alive, yes?”
“You’re the one that thought she would be out until morning,” Phosphorus shot back. “Better to just burn off her nerve endings, or maybe melt the tissue off of her feet. She won’t be doing much running then.”
“Selina!” Tzin-Tzin shouted, drawing her gaze back to him, and when she did so, she was enthralled by his movements.
Tzin-Tzin, a master of hypnotic movement, was deftly spinning his sword in a specific pattern. He muttered as he spoke, and while the words reached her ears, Selina was no longer comprehending their meaning. She locked onto Tzin-Tzin’s eyes, lost in the evil she saw there, and her peripheral vision was blurred out by the swirling motion of his scimitar.
Her eyes grew heavier and she felt herself starting to slide down the wall she had her back to. Then everything went dark.
Her last thought was that she had to fight, had to get out, had to warn Batman.
# # # # #
Deadshot scoffed. “The Directors? Well, they all have grudges with you, isn’t that obvious? Of course, who doesn’t in this city. I never saw any of them directly, but I’m to make sure you leave the kid behind and go to the next checkpoint.” He kicked a carpet out of the way that was just in front of the rear exit and against the wall, revealing a cellar door. “Down there.”
“Where am I being led to?”
“Some building they’ve been tailoring for your arrival on Locust and Conway.”
“Uptown.”
Deadshot nodded. “Now, give me what you promised me.”
Batman rattled off a public FTP site. “Check it in one hour. Everything I’ve collected on your brother will be uploaded by then. You should be aware that he won’t be happy to see you.”
“As often as I’ve had you in my crosshairs, I’ve never felt that our paths were really meant to cross, Batman. It’s just business, after all. But tonight.” Deadshot took in a deep breath through his silver mask. “Tonight you made this personal. You’ve been holding onto this information, I know it. You’ve kept him from me. Next time there won’t be a bargaining chip to keep you alive.”
And with that, the assassin turned and walked passed the shattered jewelry counter, into the back room, and through the rear exit. It was one of the rare occasions that Deadshot had turned his back not just on a mark, but on a contract.
As soon as he was gone, Batman tapped the side of his cowl, activating his ear piece communicator. “Did you get all that, Nigthwing?” he asked.
“Copy that,” the former Boy Wonder replied electronically. “Locust and Conway…looks like some derelict building, a former hospital. Been out of operation for decades. I’ll send you the schematics. Want me to send someone in advance or call Gordon?”
“Negative. I’ll collect Robin and continue on down the rabbit hole, if only to ensure that any other traps are cleared along the way. I can’t let someone else stumble on them by accident.”
“Fair enough,” Nightwing said. “You know, my busted leg is feeling a lot better, so I could—”
“No, I need you in the cave. Make sure you upload the medical records for Deadshot next.”
“On it. How long have you had that intel?”
“Almost a year. I’ve been funding a grant to keep his brother alive.”
Nightwing whistled. “No one plays the long game like the Dark Knight.”
“Is Robin almost finished cleaning up outside?”
“Well…finished isn’t exactly the right word.”
# # # # #
“Remarkable devices,” Robin stated as he considered the freeze ray gun in his grip. He ran his gloved fingers down the smooth metal casing and looked down into the barrel. Content, he pointed it back at the drugged citizen and pulled the trigger.
Cobalt blue waves slashed out of the nozzle, coating the legs of the man that had been trying his best to kill him a few minutes ago. He was barely conscious, having taken a batarang to the head, but his eyes were fluttering. His legs became covered in thick ice that was expanding as Robin held the trigger down.
The ice around his body joined in with the mound beside him, inside of which were several other people dressed exactly like him. For a normal teenage kid it would have been a deadly situation to be in, but for Robin, it had been a mere warm-up for what was to come.
He allowed the ice to expand up to the man’s chin, and then satisfied, he finally released the trigger. He had gathered up the snow snipers, as he had come to think of them, dragged their unconscious bodies onto one roof, and decided that icing them up would be better than wasting bat-ropes on these ridiculous assailants.
He smashed the ray gun over his knee and let the pieces clatter to the rooftop. “Nightwing,” he said, tapping the side of his mask. “Where is Batman? He’s taking too long to get out. Does he need assistance?”
“Relax, kid,” Nightwing replied. “He was just doing a little negotiating. He’ll…oh, here he is now. You might want to duck.”
Robin raised an eyebrow in curiosity, but instead of heeding the warning, he stepped to the edge of the roof. The Batmobile, docile since they had arrived on the scene, suddenly sprung to life. The headlights flipped on and a side-mounted turret slid out from an armored compartment, pointing directly at the iced-over storefront. A small chunk! sounded as an explosive charge punched into the ice wall.
Ka-DOOM!
The ice wall was ripped apart, with shards flying in every direction, even reaching the roof where Robin stood. He winced and yanked his cape up to keep the shards from hitting his face, but the shockwave forced him to take a step back.
After a moment, when the minimal smoke cleared, Batman stepped out from within the jewelry store, surveying the scene calmly. He traced the frozen diagonals of ice streaming from the rooftops to the street up to where Robin stood watching him. Realizing that the scene was indeed clear, he nodded at his young apprentice.
In reaction, Robin yanked his grappler off of his belt, fired a line into the lamp post at the corner adjacent to the building, and swung down to Batman’s level. Within a second of landing just a few feet from his mentor he was calm and collected once more.
“You sure took your time in there,” Robin chided.
“It looks like you had things under control out here,” Batman replied. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, father. What’s our next move?”
Batman re-entered the decimated jewelry store and said, “There are a lot of wheels in motion here. A group has formed to target me and unleashed an elaborate plan to get me into a specific position, without your support. They want me isolated.”
“Why?”
“Grudges, apparently. It doesn’t matter. Whoever they are, they’re risking lives in my city. We’ll put them down. Hard.” He toed open the cellar door that Deadshot had indicated. “The trail leads here.”
“And we’re just going to follow it blindly?” Robin said. “We should take tactical advantage. They assume that I won’t be backing you up. I could scout ahead, or take that Thomas child and—”
“Child?” Nightwing cut in over their ear buds. “He’s five years older than you. But I actually agree with Robin. I could have Duke out there to meet Robin in less than an hour. They could move into a better support position.”
“No,” Batman stated bluntly. “Whoever we’re up against, they’ve gone to great lengths to research our team and our tactics. That means there is a chance that they’ll anticipate bringing in addition help. We follow their trail, obliterate whatever is lying in wait, and bring them all down before someone gets killed.”
Without waiting for additional comment, Batman slipped into the cellar entryway and disappeared into the darkness of the basement. Robin held back in a moment of rebellion, but ultimately he knew that his father was right, and joined him.
“This is a bad idea,” Nightwing muttered, just as something jammed the link and they were forced into radio silence.
TO BE CONTINUED!
EPILOGUE
“Welcome back, Doctor Seltsam!”
He greeted the armed guard and briefly exchanged pleasantries. As a visiting psychiatrist to Arkham Asylum he was always under intense scrutiny, but he had passed all of their little tests and been granted entrance to continue what they thought was research for his master thesis.
Stalking down the hallway, passing the cells containing some of the world’s most deadly men and women marked as “criminally insane,” he had even added a slight limp to his gait. Anything to throw them off from his true identity.
Finally reaching his destination, Doctor Seltsam unfolded a cheap metal chair and placed it directly in front of the reinforced plexiglass cell wall. The sole occupant ignored him completely, instead focusing on the drips coming out of the sink.
“I thought we might begin today by discussing what compels you,” Doctor Seltsam said. “Would that be alright?”
The patient said nothing. He didn’t even blink.
“Hmm. Perhaps we need to dig a little deeper into that psyche of yours, yes? Let me just get my notebook…”
He dug into his brown satchel, which had been thoroughly searched at two separate security stations, and removed a thin and tattered padfolio. He flipped it open, grabbed a pen from his breast pocket, and began to scribble.
“When did you first feel the urge to murder another person?” he asked.
The patient continued to ignore him, which was to be expected, but the doctor continued to scribble furiously, as if the patient had said something remarkable. He clipped the top of the pen three times, and after the third click, stood.
The EMP generator hidden within the pen would disable the security cameras within a twenty yard radius, but only for the next sixty seconds. So far things were moving according to plan, but he had to move quickly.
He pressed his palms against the glass and said loudly and clearly, “Applesauce. Banana cream. Fruit loops.”
The patient’s eyelids suddenly jerked open. He swayed slightly and then pressed his palms against his temples. He groaned, but then the groan changed into something else. Something terrible.
He began to laugh.
The Joker sprung off of his cot and slammed against the plexiglass, startling the visiting psychiatrist. “Hugo, ol’ boy!” he said. “I was beginning to think you would never wake me up! Is it time? My lord, suppressing myself like that was exhausting! Not that I knew it…hee hee!”
Doctor Seltsam straightened his jacket and glasses. “I take it that you were not able to recall any information about our plans?”
“Nope, not an inkling. Your mental suppression therapy worked like a charm. I didn’t even know what Bat-for-brains was going on about when he stopped by! What a doofus. Of course, now that you’ve uttered the trigger words, I remember everything. So…is it time?”
Seltsam nodded and checked his watch. “The Batman is moving into position as we speak, and therefore I will engage the next phase. But first… Yogurt. Carousal. Peanut brittle.”
The Joker’s lip curled and his head jerked to one side. His face continued to contort for another second while Seltsam sat back in his chair, again scribbling furiously as if he were desperate to keep up with what his patient was saying.
“And why do you think that is?” Seltsam said as if nothing had happened.
The Joker, looking confused, noticed Seltsam as if for the first time. “The only thing I think,” Joker said, “is that your head would look just marvelous mounted on a pike.”
Seltsam continued to take notes about nothing as the Joker went back to ignoring him again. He had to keep up appearances, for both the Joker and the watching guards. After all, if they knew who he really was the ruse would be over, and Hugo Strange would be locked away right alongside the other patients.
His instincts, honed via the League of Assassins and the Dark Knight himself, overtook him completely. The young Robin, barely shrouded by his black cape with a yellow lining, threw his body to the side, rolled, and sought cover behind a blue mailbox.
He had counted ten assailants before Batman had vanished into the jewelry store and then been cut off by a wall of ice he estimated to be three feet thick. Just like the drugged and deluded Gotham citizens that had been unleashed on the city wearing the Joker’s motif, whom the media had dubbed the Fools, it seemed like someone had also outfitted these ten with Mr. Freeze’s signature weapon. When Robin could get a glimpse of the flash-freezing snipers, he saw calm and calculated operatives lining up their targets with focus. It meant that if these had been drugged like the Fools they were fairly lucid.
He spotted the only Freeze impersonator that had been on the ground about two dozen feet away, lying unconscious beneath a blue coat and hood. All of them wore the same outfit, making it impossible to distinguish one from another. That left nine to deal with, all of them with the higher ground, and he was temporarily on his own.
A sizzle of ice, a flash of blue, and another streak of cobalt energy had nearly taken his head off. Robin swept around the side of the mailbox to shield himself from yet another angle. Robin glanced at the wall of ice sealing off the storefront, and his father with it. He ground his teeth, palmed two batarangs, and spun out from behind the mailbox to deal with the situation.
# # # # #
“Bats, you can’t afford me,” Deadshot replied.
The barrel of the assassin’s wrist-mounted compact machine gun was firmly aimed at Batman’s head. Floyd Lawton had made a name for himself as a man that never missed, but Batman had proven that assumption to be wrong on several occasions. Their paths had crossed more than once, and each time both had come away scarred. For as many sociopaths that Batman had faced in his crime fighting career, he knew that there was one key difference in Lawton’s character that set him apart from most others. He was an opportunist.
“Then why haven’t you pulled the trigger?” Batman shot back.
“Well,” Deadshot said with a small pause, “I didn’t say I wouldn’t entertain any offers.”
In their short conversation Batman had already learned several key pieces of information, which was likely offered subconsciously. Deadshot’s use of pronouns, referring to whoever hired him and drugged the Fools as “they,” meant that a group was targeting Batman. He had let slip that there was no room for Robin in their plan, meaning that the group in question had researched their methods and had a very specific path for him to follow, which in turn implied that he was expected to act a certain way.
Most importantly, the very first thing that Deadshot had said to him that night, casually stating that he hadn’t believed his employers when “they said it would be this easy,” strongly implied that there was an agenda at work.
“You said that you didn’t have orders to kill me tonight,” Batman said.
“I don’t. I’m supposed to contain you while the imitation Freezes kill your little bird out there.”
“And then what? What’s the next step in this twisted game?”
“Oh, it is a game, Batman. You have no idea. But, like I said…I’m willing to step aside if the price is right.”
Deadshot was a well-known gun for hire, but his fee wasn’t cheap. Aside from government work, there weren’t a lot of organizations that would hire him. Local operations like Rupert Thorne and Penguin, who had been busted down by Batman to strictly small time, really couldn’t afford to bring him into their schemes any longer. There was even a rumor among Batman’s informants that he had stopped taking calls from the small fish. The assassin had graduated from wetwork to entrepreneur.
However, if Deadshot had been placed here as part of a larger agenda and Batman was being led somewhere, it was unlikely that he really could be bought off. The Fools, the Freezes, and now Deadshot…the fact that this had been so well planned in advance alluded to the fact that most contingencies had been considered already.
“I can pay you with something more valuable than money,” Batman said. “Information.”
Deadshot laughed. “Batman, I seriously doubt that you know anyth—”
“Eddie is alive.”
The muzzle attached to Deadshot’s wrist wavered slightly. The blood red iris that had long ago served as the assassin’s window to the world remained fixed on Batman, perhaps even more strongly than before. After a moment, he replied, “I should kill you just for saying his name, let alone lying to me about him.”
Whoever was behind the events that had led Batman to this very moment had obviously done their homework, but what they had failed to consider was that Batman would know the impossible. Batman rigorously delved into his opponents’ backgrounds, and with Lawton’s known death wish, he was easily one of the most dangerous men on the planet. Therefore, Batman considered him a unique threat and would make sure that Oracle was always looking for an angle to get an edge in their favor.
Floyd Lawton had idolized his brother Eddie, but in an amateur attempt to murder their father, Floyd had missed his mark and killed Eddie instead. It was a catalyst event that had driven Floyd to never miss again, and in turn had psychologically molded him into Deadshot.
“I’m not lying, Lawton,” Batman stated. “I’ll make you a trade; turn in your employers in exchange for your brother’s whereabouts.”
Batman’s cape parted slightly as he raised his left arm, and then his right hand to begin tapping commands into his wrist-mounted holographic display that, via Wayne Enterprises satellite, was connected to the massive Cray computers in the batcave. A wire frame image of Eddie Lawton’s face was displayed hovering an inch over Batman’s extended wrist.
“Your tricks aren’t going to—”
“No tricks,” Batman cut in. The wire frame face switched to streaming data and scrolling text began sliding upward in front of Batman’s face. “Edward Lawton, resuscitated in the morgue after a medical examiner noticed brain activity. Severe frontal lobe damage due to extreme oxygen deprivation and trauma from a gunshot wound.”
Deadshot noticeably winced. The gun that had caused the wound had been his own.
“Responsive to physical therapy,” Batman continued. “Definitive language barriers, but he has been breathing completely on his own for the last two years. Considering his condition, his prognosis is rather good. I could go on. Or I could delete this information.”
“You’re a cold bastard. And that’s coming from me.”
“What’s it going to be, Lawton? Are you so loyal to your employers that you wouldn’t consider getting the one thing back that has been driving you mad all these years: your own brother?”
Deadshot hesitated, but then lowered his weapon. “They call themselves the Board of Directors,” he finally said. “Six of them. They have an elaborate plan to put you off your guard, starting with those clown idiots downtown last night and now the Freeze impersonators outside.”
“These Directors,” Batman said. “Who are they?”
# # # # #
“Hands…off!”
Her fist slammed into the teeth of the last man standing, knocking two of them loose. She had already broken his nose and blood was gushing out like a stream. She had taken a few cuts and bruises herself, but nothing compared to the pain she had dished out on the three thugs sent to bring her back to her cell.
After all, Selina Kyle, AKA the master thief Catwoman, had been through a hell of a lot worse.
He slumped to the grimy floor and she stepped over him with her bare feet, intent on escaping. She didn’t know where she was, but it looked like some kind of rundown hospital. They had come for her last night, barely twenty-four hours ago, and she had foolishly let her guard down. Drugged, she had woken up in a tiny cage meant for Rottweilers, but had fought off the effects of the chemicals enough to get her senses back. Two swift kicks was all it had taken to burst out of the flimsy cage.
They had taken her whip, of course, and her claws, her mask, and her boots. She was left wearing dirty hospital scrubs for some reason and they had shaved her black hair. None of this made sense. None of it at all.
She trotted down the corridor and kicked open the dual swinging hospital doors. The only light filling the hallways was what could poke through the boarded up windows. She wondered how long this place had been abandoned, and couldn’t help but smirk when she thought of all the “abandoned” locations throughout Gotham that had served as a haven for people like her.
Catwoman had used her fair share of such buildings before, either for hideouts or as places to lay stash the trinkets she had stolen.
Another thug happened around a corner just as she did, but she reacted much faster. Her cat-like reflexes had been honed to perfection and the muscled guard didn’t even register her striking him.
She pounced up as soon as she saw him, driving her foot into his jaw. The satisfying crack marked his head spinning to one side, and she plowed her shoulder into his abdomen to knock him down. She leapt on top of him, straddling him on the floor, and slammed her fist into his face three more times until he stopped struggling. Then she hit him again, hard, just to make sure.
Selina sprung back up, not wanting to waste any more time. Even though she was fleeing, she was still on the defensive. She simply had no understanding of who had grabbed her or why. She had to get out.
An elevator bank was at the end of the corridor, but the buttons didn’t react when she reached them. Swearing quietly, she was about to slip into the stairwell when she heard footsteps behind her.
“I’m impressed,” a man said, and she turned to see someone wearing purple robes steadily walk toward her. He was bald and had a fu-manchu goatee, and his eyes gave her a look into a sinister soul. “Of course, I don’t know why I would have expected those imbeciles to detain you. I told Doctor Double X to send his duplicates, but he gave me some hogwash about energy conservation. So, I thought I would attend to you myself.”
“Who the hell are you?” Selina demanded as she fell into a fighting stance. She was pissed off enough that his answer didn’t actually matter; she just wanted to knock him down and get to safety.
He bowed and said, “Doctor Tzin-Tzin, an orchestrator of your eventual death.” Then, with a flourish, he slid out a scimitar from within the folds of his robes, brandishing it with obvious expertise. “But not before the Bat arrives.”
“Batman? This is about him?”
“You’re the bait in our little bat-trap,” a new voice behind her said. She spun to see another man wearing a bulky gray suit that seemed to encapsulate his entire body, except for an opaque glass shield over his face. “So, why don’t you be a good little kitty and go back in your cage?”
Something ignited within the gray suit and the glass shield became a window. Fire curled up from within the sealed suit and Selina witnessed in horror as the newcomer’s face was revealed to be a blazing skull, devoid of skin or muscle, but somehow still animated.
She felt stupid, allowing them to flank her like this. She was still dazed from whatever they had drugged her with, weak and careless. She put her back to the wall and tried to watch both of them, flitting her head back and forth.
“I’ll handle this, Doctor Phosphorus,” Tzin-Tzin said, his voice failing to hide drips of disdain. “We can be more tactful than burning her alive, yes?”
“You’re the one that thought she would be out until morning,” Phosphorus shot back. “Better to just burn off her nerve endings, or maybe melt the tissue off of her feet. She won’t be doing much running then.”
“Selina!” Tzin-Tzin shouted, drawing her gaze back to him, and when she did so, she was enthralled by his movements.
Tzin-Tzin, a master of hypnotic movement, was deftly spinning his sword in a specific pattern. He muttered as he spoke, and while the words reached her ears, Selina was no longer comprehending their meaning. She locked onto Tzin-Tzin’s eyes, lost in the evil she saw there, and her peripheral vision was blurred out by the swirling motion of his scimitar.
Her eyes grew heavier and she felt herself starting to slide down the wall she had her back to. Then everything went dark.
Her last thought was that she had to fight, had to get out, had to warn Batman.
# # # # #
Deadshot scoffed. “The Directors? Well, they all have grudges with you, isn’t that obvious? Of course, who doesn’t in this city. I never saw any of them directly, but I’m to make sure you leave the kid behind and go to the next checkpoint.” He kicked a carpet out of the way that was just in front of the rear exit and against the wall, revealing a cellar door. “Down there.”
“Where am I being led to?”
“Some building they’ve been tailoring for your arrival on Locust and Conway.”
“Uptown.”
Deadshot nodded. “Now, give me what you promised me.”
Batman rattled off a public FTP site. “Check it in one hour. Everything I’ve collected on your brother will be uploaded by then. You should be aware that he won’t be happy to see you.”
“As often as I’ve had you in my crosshairs, I’ve never felt that our paths were really meant to cross, Batman. It’s just business, after all. But tonight.” Deadshot took in a deep breath through his silver mask. “Tonight you made this personal. You’ve been holding onto this information, I know it. You’ve kept him from me. Next time there won’t be a bargaining chip to keep you alive.”
And with that, the assassin turned and walked passed the shattered jewelry counter, into the back room, and through the rear exit. It was one of the rare occasions that Deadshot had turned his back not just on a mark, but on a contract.
As soon as he was gone, Batman tapped the side of his cowl, activating his ear piece communicator. “Did you get all that, Nigthwing?” he asked.
“Copy that,” the former Boy Wonder replied electronically. “Locust and Conway…looks like some derelict building, a former hospital. Been out of operation for decades. I’ll send you the schematics. Want me to send someone in advance or call Gordon?”
“Negative. I’ll collect Robin and continue on down the rabbit hole, if only to ensure that any other traps are cleared along the way. I can’t let someone else stumble on them by accident.”
“Fair enough,” Nightwing said. “You know, my busted leg is feeling a lot better, so I could—”
“No, I need you in the cave. Make sure you upload the medical records for Deadshot next.”
“On it. How long have you had that intel?”
“Almost a year. I’ve been funding a grant to keep his brother alive.”
Nightwing whistled. “No one plays the long game like the Dark Knight.”
“Is Robin almost finished cleaning up outside?”
“Well…finished isn’t exactly the right word.”
# # # # #
“Remarkable devices,” Robin stated as he considered the freeze ray gun in his grip. He ran his gloved fingers down the smooth metal casing and looked down into the barrel. Content, he pointed it back at the drugged citizen and pulled the trigger.
Cobalt blue waves slashed out of the nozzle, coating the legs of the man that had been trying his best to kill him a few minutes ago. He was barely conscious, having taken a batarang to the head, but his eyes were fluttering. His legs became covered in thick ice that was expanding as Robin held the trigger down.
The ice around his body joined in with the mound beside him, inside of which were several other people dressed exactly like him. For a normal teenage kid it would have been a deadly situation to be in, but for Robin, it had been a mere warm-up for what was to come.
He allowed the ice to expand up to the man’s chin, and then satisfied, he finally released the trigger. He had gathered up the snow snipers, as he had come to think of them, dragged their unconscious bodies onto one roof, and decided that icing them up would be better than wasting bat-ropes on these ridiculous assailants.
He smashed the ray gun over his knee and let the pieces clatter to the rooftop. “Nightwing,” he said, tapping the side of his mask. “Where is Batman? He’s taking too long to get out. Does he need assistance?”
“Relax, kid,” Nightwing replied. “He was just doing a little negotiating. He’ll…oh, here he is now. You might want to duck.”
Robin raised an eyebrow in curiosity, but instead of heeding the warning, he stepped to the edge of the roof. The Batmobile, docile since they had arrived on the scene, suddenly sprung to life. The headlights flipped on and a side-mounted turret slid out from an armored compartment, pointing directly at the iced-over storefront. A small chunk! sounded as an explosive charge punched into the ice wall.
Ka-DOOM!
The ice wall was ripped apart, with shards flying in every direction, even reaching the roof where Robin stood. He winced and yanked his cape up to keep the shards from hitting his face, but the shockwave forced him to take a step back.
After a moment, when the minimal smoke cleared, Batman stepped out from within the jewelry store, surveying the scene calmly. He traced the frozen diagonals of ice streaming from the rooftops to the street up to where Robin stood watching him. Realizing that the scene was indeed clear, he nodded at his young apprentice.
In reaction, Robin yanked his grappler off of his belt, fired a line into the lamp post at the corner adjacent to the building, and swung down to Batman’s level. Within a second of landing just a few feet from his mentor he was calm and collected once more.
“You sure took your time in there,” Robin chided.
“It looks like you had things under control out here,” Batman replied. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, father. What’s our next move?”
Batman re-entered the decimated jewelry store and said, “There are a lot of wheels in motion here. A group has formed to target me and unleashed an elaborate plan to get me into a specific position, without your support. They want me isolated.”
“Why?”
“Grudges, apparently. It doesn’t matter. Whoever they are, they’re risking lives in my city. We’ll put them down. Hard.” He toed open the cellar door that Deadshot had indicated. “The trail leads here.”
“And we’re just going to follow it blindly?” Robin said. “We should take tactical advantage. They assume that I won’t be backing you up. I could scout ahead, or take that Thomas child and—”
“Child?” Nightwing cut in over their ear buds. “He’s five years older than you. But I actually agree with Robin. I could have Duke out there to meet Robin in less than an hour. They could move into a better support position.”
“No,” Batman stated bluntly. “Whoever we’re up against, they’ve gone to great lengths to research our team and our tactics. That means there is a chance that they’ll anticipate bringing in addition help. We follow their trail, obliterate whatever is lying in wait, and bring them all down before someone gets killed.”
Without waiting for additional comment, Batman slipped into the cellar entryway and disappeared into the darkness of the basement. Robin held back in a moment of rebellion, but ultimately he knew that his father was right, and joined him.
“This is a bad idea,” Nightwing muttered, just as something jammed the link and they were forced into radio silence.
TO BE CONTINUED!
EPILOGUE
“Welcome back, Doctor Seltsam!”
He greeted the armed guard and briefly exchanged pleasantries. As a visiting psychiatrist to Arkham Asylum he was always under intense scrutiny, but he had passed all of their little tests and been granted entrance to continue what they thought was research for his master thesis.
Stalking down the hallway, passing the cells containing some of the world’s most deadly men and women marked as “criminally insane,” he had even added a slight limp to his gait. Anything to throw them off from his true identity.
Finally reaching his destination, Doctor Seltsam unfolded a cheap metal chair and placed it directly in front of the reinforced plexiglass cell wall. The sole occupant ignored him completely, instead focusing on the drips coming out of the sink.
“I thought we might begin today by discussing what compels you,” Doctor Seltsam said. “Would that be alright?”
The patient said nothing. He didn’t even blink.
“Hmm. Perhaps we need to dig a little deeper into that psyche of yours, yes? Let me just get my notebook…”
He dug into his brown satchel, which had been thoroughly searched at two separate security stations, and removed a thin and tattered padfolio. He flipped it open, grabbed a pen from his breast pocket, and began to scribble.
“When did you first feel the urge to murder another person?” he asked.
The patient continued to ignore him, which was to be expected, but the doctor continued to scribble furiously, as if the patient had said something remarkable. He clipped the top of the pen three times, and after the third click, stood.
The EMP generator hidden within the pen would disable the security cameras within a twenty yard radius, but only for the next sixty seconds. So far things were moving according to plan, but he had to move quickly.
He pressed his palms against the glass and said loudly and clearly, “Applesauce. Banana cream. Fruit loops.”
The patient’s eyelids suddenly jerked open. He swayed slightly and then pressed his palms against his temples. He groaned, but then the groan changed into something else. Something terrible.
He began to laugh.
The Joker sprung off of his cot and slammed against the plexiglass, startling the visiting psychiatrist. “Hugo, ol’ boy!” he said. “I was beginning to think you would never wake me up! Is it time? My lord, suppressing myself like that was exhausting! Not that I knew it…hee hee!”
Doctor Seltsam straightened his jacket and glasses. “I take it that you were not able to recall any information about our plans?”
“Nope, not an inkling. Your mental suppression therapy worked like a charm. I didn’t even know what Bat-for-brains was going on about when he stopped by! What a doofus. Of course, now that you’ve uttered the trigger words, I remember everything. So…is it time?”
Seltsam nodded and checked his watch. “The Batman is moving into position as we speak, and therefore I will engage the next phase. But first… Yogurt. Carousal. Peanut brittle.”
The Joker’s lip curled and his head jerked to one side. His face continued to contort for another second while Seltsam sat back in his chair, again scribbling furiously as if he were desperate to keep up with what his patient was saying.
“And why do you think that is?” Seltsam said as if nothing had happened.
The Joker, looking confused, noticed Seltsam as if for the first time. “The only thing I think,” Joker said, “is that your head would look just marvelous mounted on a pike.”
Seltsam continued to take notes about nothing as the Joker went back to ignoring him again. He had to keep up appearances, for both the Joker and the watching guards. After all, if they knew who he really was the ruse would be over, and Hugo Strange would be locked away right alongside the other patients.