ISSUE #4 - Written by D. Golightly
March 2018
March 2018
"Fools on Parade - Part Four"
The air beneath the jewelry store was stale and darkness crowded in. Having secured the drugged snipers that had been dressed like Mr. Freeze outside, Batman and Robin were now willingly taking the next step in a twisted game that an unknown group had set up for them.* As soon as they had entered the cellar beneath the jewelry store, a second steal door had slid shut over their heads, sealing them off in the underground corridor.
* [Last issue, plus Batman faced down Deadshot!]
Robin spun, batarang in hand, ready to strike out in case a trap had just been sprung. “Do we use our acetylene torches to reopen the hatch?” the youth asked of his father and mentor.
“No,” Batman replied. “A waste of time. We move forward. We need to follow whatever path they’ve set for me. We can’t risk someone else stumbling onto whatever this elaborate deathtrap is.” He paused as he glanced at his wrist-mounted display. “Comms are out. We’re cut off from the Cave. They must be jamming all frequencies.”
Robin licked his lips and sheathed the batarang back on his utility belt. He had come to trust Nightwing, who was acting as overseer in place of Oracle for the time being, but he still put more trust in whoever was active in the field with him as opposed to tactical support. Batman had chided him several times over ignoring advice from Oracle as a result.
Now that they were forcibly cut off with communicating with Nightwing or anyone else, Robin was already feeling the gap in their methodology.
“Night vision on,” Batman stated as he tapped his facemask.
Robin obliged and the black world beneath Gotham City suddenly turned green. All ambient light was augmented so that everything through the lenses of his mask looked eerie and sharpened.
Batman began walking forward, stalking into the umbra with Robin staying close behind. His mind was compiling all of the available information, trying to decipher how it was all linked. He knew from Deadshot that a group had targeted him, apparently due to past grudges, implying that he had put them down before. The coordination of the Joker- and Freeze-themed patsies, hiring Deadshot, and guiding them through this elaborate trap implied that they were well financed, well connected, and well organized.
None of the groups he had gone up against before matched the modus operandi of the past 24 hours. The League of Assassins wouldn’t be so embellished in their implementation. Kobra would similarly rely on their own prodigious soldiers instead of relying on someone like Deadshot. The Court of Owls also had their own assassins and would never perform such theatrics.
No, this reeked of the same madness that one of the colorful villains of Gotham was known for. However, he knew it was a group targeting him, which meant he could rule out several likely suspects. The Mad Hatter and the Riddler worked alone. The Penguin might be desperate enough these days to combine his talents with someone else, but who? His own ego would likely have diffused his own efforts when planning all of this.
His rogue’s gallery craved attention. Each of them loved signing their work and challenging him to catch them. So far no one had been the obvious choice for who was behind this, no calling card, and given that they had such a grievance against him to go to these lengths, their anonymity concerned him.
The cellar had quickly fed into a freshly carved tunnel in the bedrock of Gotham, which in turn led the pair of vigilantes into the sewer system. After several hundred yards of silently moving through the darkness, they could no longer mask their footsteps due to the trickle of water moving at their feet.
“The manhole covers are all sealed off, too,” Robin commented as they continued on. “How much preparation did this take?”
“We’re being led somewhere specific,” Batman replied. “According to Deadshot, an old hospital that’s been out of commission for years uptown.”
“And you trust his information?”
“For what I offered him, yes.”
Robin scoffed. “We can’t believe that someone like him would just willingly give up his employers. What did you offer him?”
“A chance for redemption.”
The sewer tunnel led to a spillway, a collection chamber that kept the water levels from rising too high in case of flash flooding. Like the manhole covers, all of the other tunnels feeding into the chamber had been sealed off, except for one. The end of their tunnel dropped off into the spillway, leaving them no other access to the obvious path except to swing across.
Batman extracted his grappler from his utility belt, aimed at the brick ceiling, and fired. The tip jettisoned out, stabbing into the red brick and mortar, pulling the line taut. He yanked back to test the line, and then swung out into the open air to cover the gap.
“Batman!” Robin shouted, but the warning was too late.
As soon as the Dark Knight had reached the apex of his swing, a bulky form launched itself out of the tunnel that had been his destination. Through the green night vision in his lenses, Robin saw a scaled body wrap itself around Batman, dislodge him from his line, and plunge him straight down into the water below.
Robin watched them entangle and then submerge completely. The water must have been several feet deep to hide them entirely. Water violently churned at the base of the spillway as Batman fought for his life against the thing that had attached him.
Then Batman breached the surface, his right arm wrapped around the neck of the creature as it thrashed back and force to try and throw him off, but Batman had his grip held fast with his other hand, pulling his forearm across the thing’s throat. Robin saw clearly now the scales, the tail, and the taut muscles of a truly deadly foe.
“Croc!” the teen muttered through mashed teeth. He debated whether or not he should leap down to help his mentor, but the creature that looked like Killer Croc started to slow as it lost air due to Batman’s choking grip.
Finally, the fighting ground to a halt as Croc went limp and Batman released him. The Dark Knight was breathing heavily, but still looked tense. Robin realized that something was still wrong, even though the obvious threat had ended.
Just as he was about to call down, the water swirled again in several places around Batman, and two more crocodile men rose up from the sewer water to flank the vigilante. Robin realized that like the Joker parade and the Freeze snipers, this was yet another contingent of assailants doctored to look like Batman’s deadly foes.
Possibly the deadliest yet.
# # # # #
“Batman? Are you there?”
Nightwing ripped off his headset and slapped it down onto the console of one of the world’s foremost piece of investigative technology. From the Batcave he was plugged into dozens of government agencies, databases, and even satellite feeds. Several high profile cases had been solved from this very seat, but right now it was all worthless to him.
“Lost them!” the former Boy Wonder said under his breath. He was already frustrated enough with his busted leg keeping him out of the field. Now he couldn’t even provide operational support. “Damn!”
“Something wrong, Master Dick?”
Nightwing turned to see Alfred Pennyworth, aged yet noble butler to Bruce Wayne, approach with a tray holding milk and cookies. Dick Grayson frowned, but accepted the refreshments.
“You know that I’m in my twenties now, right?” Nightwing inquired as he bit into one of the chocolate chip cookies.
“And yet you still wear your underwear on the outside of your clothes,” Alfred deadpanned. He looked at the various screens that surrounded Nightwing like a womb. “Some trouble with Masters Bruce and Damian?”
“Not sure yet,” Nightwing said as cookie crumbs dribbled from his mouth. He washed the mouthful away with a swig of cold milk. “I lost communication with them just a few minutes ago. They went underground, literally, so I don’t even have CCTV to patch into and get a visual.”
Alfred raised an eyebrow. After years of service to several generations of vigilantes, plus a few spent in the trenches himself, he had seen it all. From backbreaking to young wards with chips on their shoulders, he had experienced just as much trauma as the rest of them. “Should we be concerned?” he asked.
“Well, I know where they’re headed.” He pointed to one screen that displayed a top-down view of a section of uptown Gotham. “Some derelict hospital. I was thinking about sending Duke to scout ahead, but Bruce said that he wasn’t ready to call in the reinforcements just yet.”
Alfred leaned in to look at the picture more closely. “Hmm. Is that…oh, my word! It can’t be!”
Nightwing jerked up in his seat. “What is it?”
“It must be a coincidence! It just must be!”
“What?” Nightwing demanded, turning in his seat to face Alfred directly.
“That hospital,” Alfred stated, “is where Master Bruce’s father used to work! He sat on the board, perfected his skills there, and had several medical breakthroughs, all resulting from those facilities. That hospital is special to the Wayne family, Master Dick. Several of the Wayne Foundation’s outreach programs began there. Doctor Leslie Thompkins even had a practice there just before the hospital lost funding and closed down.”
“Does Bruce know that?”
Alfred shook his head. “The hospital was foreclosed on a year before Master Bruce’s birth. It sadly fell into ruin. His mother formed plans to restore funding and reopen the hospital, much to his father’s delight, but then…”
“They were killed.” Nightwing leaned in himself to look at the screen, seeing the old hospital in a new light. “Do you think there could be a connection between Bruce’s parents and what’s going on tonight?”
Before Alfred could respond, an alarm went off. Several screens on the console flashed and new windows overlapped the monitoring and research ones that Nightwing already had open. It was a priority alert and seeing it made Nightwing’s heart skip a beat.
“Oh, dear,” Alfred said with a whisper.
In the very center of the largest screen, a bold flashing message had appeared that read, “ARKHAM – BREACH.”
# # # # #
For a long moment, there was no sound except the wet inhaling and exhaling of the three scaled beasts and wet trickling into the spillway. Then, with no preamble, all hell broke loose.
The one of Batman’s right lunged for his throat, his jaws wrenching up as a roar bellowed up from within. Batman ducked under his head, stabbed his elbow into his abdomen, and tried to hip-throw the monster into the other two.
But he couldn’t, because his left leg was suddenly exploding in pain, as the claws of another croc slashed into his muscle, nearly reaching the bone. The croc on his right smashed into him awkwardly, his head no longer a target, and the three of them crashed into a pile in the water.
Batman quickly found himself in a death-grip from one of the monsters and the air was being forced out of his lungs quickly. Soon his lungs would feel like they were on fire and he would instinctively try and take in a breath, but he was submerged, his face pressing up against the first unconscious croc that was now under the water. His mind knew he couldn’t do it breath in, but before long his basic needs would override his cognitive thoughts.
Something thumped on top of them and the croc’s group loosened. He took advantage of the newfound leverage, shoving himself up in the nearly three feet of water, gasping in precious air as he did so.
The croc was flung, no pulled off of him, and he saw a flash of red and yellow out of the corner of his eye. Robin had leapt down into the chamber, landing on the croc suffocating him, and yanked him away.
A roar and a slash brought Batman’s full attention back to directly in front of him. The second croc was still very much unrestricted and now able to come at him without the other impeding an attack. It slashed, growled, and did its best to tear into him. Batman deftly slipped out of reach, his back pressed against the rounded brick wall of the flood chamber, and snatched something from his utility belt.
The croc came at him again and Batman ground his teeth and rushed to meet him. He ducked under the massive and muscled swinging arm of the monster and jabbed two prongs into the thing’s chest. He flipped a switched and electricity danced over the croc’s scaled skin, threatening to fry him.
After a sizzling second, Batman released the trigger on the Taser and let the croc drop into the water to join its brother, also unconscious. He focused on Robin, who had shoved a batarang into his croc’s open maw, but was succumbing to the ferocity and weight advantage of his foe.
Batman covered the distance between them, drove his fist into the croc’s side, kicked out his knee to force him to kneel, and then slipped a pink capsule into his open mouth. The creature gasped as pink smoke began to pour out of its mouth, and it reached for its throat just as it too fell back into the water, no longer a threat.
Robin, breathing heavily, looked up at his mentor and asked, “Carbon dioxide?”
“Mixed with a little bismuth,” Batman replied, his breath also labored. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” the youth said matter-of-factly. He looked at Batman’s torn leg, which was covered in wet, red blood. “You’re not.”
Batman glanced at the wound and reached for his grappler. “I’ll take care of it later. We need to—”
“A moment,” Robin said with a raised hand to silence his father.
He pulled out a fat syringe from one of his pouches, pressed the plastic tip into the wound, and pushed the plunger. A thick gel filled the wound, sealing off the blood flow. Next he used surgical staples to make sure that the abrasion would remain closed, stabbing three metal brackets directly into Batman’s leg.
Despite what had to be intense pain, Batman smirked. “You’ve taken up Alfred on his offer to teach you field medicine,” he said.
“Swallow these,” Robin said, ignoring the remark. “Antibiotics, although who knows what kind of things are crawling around in this place. You’ll need something stronger when we get back to the Cave.” He glanced at the three unconscious mutated men. “They’re running out of rogues to emulate.”
“We’re not far,” Batman said as swallowed the pills dry and then he fired another line up to the sole exit tunnel. The line held and Robin followed suit, and together the vigilantes entered the next phase of the twisted game.
The dank tunnel led them uninterrupted through the underbelly of Gotham. Several cases had brought the Dark Knight into these sewers before as he had tracked gun runners, kidnappers, and even mercenaries throughout the extensive system. This was the first time, however, that he had been led so directly by his prey.
After trudging through a foot of water over the course of several blocks, they finally arrived at a dead end. The interconnecting hatches and feeding pipes were all sealed off, save for small trickles of water, leading them to this one location. Storm drains continued to allow air into the tunnel, but nothing else, and they were much too small for an exit.
The only avenue left to them was directly overhead: a single hatch with a wheel lock that had already been turned for them. All they had to do was reach up and swing it open.
Batman checked his GPS, but it was still being jammed, as well as all efforts to communicate with the above world. His leg was throbbing and Robin looked a little winded. Whoever was behind this had successfully worn them down and isolated them.
“Even though you weren’t meant to follow,” Batman said, “we can still assume that they know you’re with me. They’ve been too careful, too well coordinated to not have been monitoring us coming down the tunnel. They want me alive, though, for whatever reason. They could have easily rigged the spillway with explosives. We can reason that whatever is up there will be designed to incapacitate, not kill, but we still need to be prepared for any situation.”
Robin ground his teeth and said, “I’m ready.”
Batman nodded and then slipped his fingers around the hatch wheel and yanked it down, revealing a pinprick of light from above. Inside the vertical tunnel was a wall-mounted ladder, and they began to climb. A few feet into their ascent, they switched off their night vision since the light was getting brighter.
At the top of the ladder, Batman forced open a door and quickly sprung out, instinctively falling into a crouch and allowing his cape to conceal where his hands were. Robin did likewise, facing the opposite direction, as they had done in so many training exercises before.
Stainless steel doors, about three feet across and two feet high each, lined two of the four walls, all hanging on thick, metal hinges. There was a single bulb illuminating the room overhead, but even in the minimal light it was easy to tell where they had entered the building.
“A morgue,” Robin said matter-of-factly. “I thought you said they didn’t want you dead.”
The room was cold, as was its nature given the typical occupants, but the air was also stale and carried a feeling of emptiness to it. Batman cautiously took in the room, seeing a single exit through double, swinging hospital doors.
Stainless steel examination tables filled the center of the room, with a crash cart in the corner that had long ago been stripped of any useful equipment. The morgue looked derelict, but someone had obviously been there recently as a brand new LCD fifty inch television had been mounted on the far wall.
The TV switched on, and Batman ground his teeth as a face came into focus. “Is this thing on?” a squeaky voice said through the television’s speakers. “Testing, testing, one-two-three!”
“Joker…” Batman muttered.
The Joker’s pale face and red lips filled the screen. It was a very tight shot of just him, so close that the vigilantes could make out the contours and skin wrinkles from his constant grin. Batman actually heard Robin go tense and couldn’t blame him in the slightest.
“Batsy?” Joker asked, pressing his mouth onto the camera lens. “Are you there, or are you at home, washing your tights? HA!”
“I’m going to beat that smile off of your face, clown,” Robin stated.
“It’s a recording,” Batman replied. “Look at the time code in the corner. He made this video months ago.”
Joker cleared his throat very loudly and the view finally pulled back to reveal the Joker, standing within his cell at Arkham Asylum and wearing his orange jumpsuit that had been issued after being committed. It looked exactly the same as when Batman had last seen it, merely 24 hours ago.
“Surprised?” Joker asked. “You should be. I’ve spent a hell of a lot of time planning this, and a hell of a lot of money. Granted, I stole the money, but it’s hard work stealing it in the first place, and I hate to let it go.
“So! Here we are. Or rather, here you are. How have you enjoyed my little friends popping up all over Gotham, dressed like some of our mutual acquaintances, hmm? You know, Batsy…we’ve clashed so many times that I’ve really been struggling with how to actually, you know, kill you. You’re like a bad zit – always popping up on prom night! HEE HEE!
“That’s when it struck me! I’ve fallen into a bad pattern. So have all of us, but Nigma is the worst. His tailor knows his stuff, though. HEEEeeee! <ahem> We’re always leaving you clues. Calling cards. I realized that if I actually wanted to see your body dismembered before retirement age that I needed to change things up a bit! Thus began the greatest performance of this humble comedian’s life.
“I recruited some men who very much hate you, minor annoyances really, but oh, they are so passionate. I persuaded them to restore this lovely hospital so that they could inflict their own personal therapy on you, Batsy. They are so enthusiastic to torture you! I really admire that about them, even if they are b-listers.
“But how to get you here? You remember those flash mobs that were so trendy years ago? What better way to get your attention than to drug John Q. Public and dress him up like your favorite baddies? With so many running around, all outfitted like myself (personal fave, Bee-Tee-Dubs), Freeze, and a couple others, you couldn’t help yourself. And now here you stand, exactly where I wanted you.
“With the trap set, I needed to protect it from myself. I know that you know that I know I just can’t help myself. The doctors have a few names for it, all having to do with identity disorders or some drivel, but it boils down to just wanting credit. After all, I can’t have Cobblepot or one of those other buffoons trying to steal the spotlight!
“As soon as those handsome Jokers went rampaging through Gotham, your first stop would be to see me. You’re sooooo predictable, Batsy. Could I save me from myself? Would I spill the beans? You had taken the bait, but the real trap hadn’t been sprung yet.
“So, I enlisted another friend of ours to hypnotize me and block out this entire month of planning. I let him scramble my brains, even though I prefer my brains over easy. I won’t remember any of this, Batman, so when you come to see me…and you will…you won’t be getting any help from me! HA HA HAAAAAA!”
The Joker was clutching his sides due to laughing so hard. Batman, who was so frustrated from having been cornered, was about to advise Robin as to their next steps, but before he could speak, a nearly silent hissing sound caught his attention. “Gas!” Batman warned, but it was too late. The gas must have been filling the room during Joker’s diatribe. His vision was already doubling and Robin was starting to sway.
Batman fell to his knees, struggling to stay up, but was finding it more and more difficult to concentrate.
“I had you fools parading all over Gotham! Ha Ha HAAA!”
His vision was blurred and darkness was creeping in at the sides. He felt nauseous and between bouts of intense laughter he heard Robin stumble to the floor.
The last thing he saw was the Joker’s manic face, once more cropped in close to fill the screen, with tears rolling down his white cheeks. He was laughing so uncontrollably that he looked like he might be having a heart attack, were it not for widened grin that had come to haunt Batman’s dreams.
And then everything went black.
TO BE CONTINUED IN THE “HOSPITAL OF PAIN!”
* [Last issue, plus Batman faced down Deadshot!]
Robin spun, batarang in hand, ready to strike out in case a trap had just been sprung. “Do we use our acetylene torches to reopen the hatch?” the youth asked of his father and mentor.
“No,” Batman replied. “A waste of time. We move forward. We need to follow whatever path they’ve set for me. We can’t risk someone else stumbling onto whatever this elaborate deathtrap is.” He paused as he glanced at his wrist-mounted display. “Comms are out. We’re cut off from the Cave. They must be jamming all frequencies.”
Robin licked his lips and sheathed the batarang back on his utility belt. He had come to trust Nightwing, who was acting as overseer in place of Oracle for the time being, but he still put more trust in whoever was active in the field with him as opposed to tactical support. Batman had chided him several times over ignoring advice from Oracle as a result.
Now that they were forcibly cut off with communicating with Nightwing or anyone else, Robin was already feeling the gap in their methodology.
“Night vision on,” Batman stated as he tapped his facemask.
Robin obliged and the black world beneath Gotham City suddenly turned green. All ambient light was augmented so that everything through the lenses of his mask looked eerie and sharpened.
Batman began walking forward, stalking into the umbra with Robin staying close behind. His mind was compiling all of the available information, trying to decipher how it was all linked. He knew from Deadshot that a group had targeted him, apparently due to past grudges, implying that he had put them down before. The coordination of the Joker- and Freeze-themed patsies, hiring Deadshot, and guiding them through this elaborate trap implied that they were well financed, well connected, and well organized.
None of the groups he had gone up against before matched the modus operandi of the past 24 hours. The League of Assassins wouldn’t be so embellished in their implementation. Kobra would similarly rely on their own prodigious soldiers instead of relying on someone like Deadshot. The Court of Owls also had their own assassins and would never perform such theatrics.
No, this reeked of the same madness that one of the colorful villains of Gotham was known for. However, he knew it was a group targeting him, which meant he could rule out several likely suspects. The Mad Hatter and the Riddler worked alone. The Penguin might be desperate enough these days to combine his talents with someone else, but who? His own ego would likely have diffused his own efforts when planning all of this.
His rogue’s gallery craved attention. Each of them loved signing their work and challenging him to catch them. So far no one had been the obvious choice for who was behind this, no calling card, and given that they had such a grievance against him to go to these lengths, their anonymity concerned him.
The cellar had quickly fed into a freshly carved tunnel in the bedrock of Gotham, which in turn led the pair of vigilantes into the sewer system. After several hundred yards of silently moving through the darkness, they could no longer mask their footsteps due to the trickle of water moving at their feet.
“The manhole covers are all sealed off, too,” Robin commented as they continued on. “How much preparation did this take?”
“We’re being led somewhere specific,” Batman replied. “According to Deadshot, an old hospital that’s been out of commission for years uptown.”
“And you trust his information?”
“For what I offered him, yes.”
Robin scoffed. “We can’t believe that someone like him would just willingly give up his employers. What did you offer him?”
“A chance for redemption.”
The sewer tunnel led to a spillway, a collection chamber that kept the water levels from rising too high in case of flash flooding. Like the manhole covers, all of the other tunnels feeding into the chamber had been sealed off, except for one. The end of their tunnel dropped off into the spillway, leaving them no other access to the obvious path except to swing across.
Batman extracted his grappler from his utility belt, aimed at the brick ceiling, and fired. The tip jettisoned out, stabbing into the red brick and mortar, pulling the line taut. He yanked back to test the line, and then swung out into the open air to cover the gap.
“Batman!” Robin shouted, but the warning was too late.
As soon as the Dark Knight had reached the apex of his swing, a bulky form launched itself out of the tunnel that had been his destination. Through the green night vision in his lenses, Robin saw a scaled body wrap itself around Batman, dislodge him from his line, and plunge him straight down into the water below.
Robin watched them entangle and then submerge completely. The water must have been several feet deep to hide them entirely. Water violently churned at the base of the spillway as Batman fought for his life against the thing that had attached him.
Then Batman breached the surface, his right arm wrapped around the neck of the creature as it thrashed back and force to try and throw him off, but Batman had his grip held fast with his other hand, pulling his forearm across the thing’s throat. Robin saw clearly now the scales, the tail, and the taut muscles of a truly deadly foe.
“Croc!” the teen muttered through mashed teeth. He debated whether or not he should leap down to help his mentor, but the creature that looked like Killer Croc started to slow as it lost air due to Batman’s choking grip.
Finally, the fighting ground to a halt as Croc went limp and Batman released him. The Dark Knight was breathing heavily, but still looked tense. Robin realized that something was still wrong, even though the obvious threat had ended.
Just as he was about to call down, the water swirled again in several places around Batman, and two more crocodile men rose up from the sewer water to flank the vigilante. Robin realized that like the Joker parade and the Freeze snipers, this was yet another contingent of assailants doctored to look like Batman’s deadly foes.
Possibly the deadliest yet.
# # # # #
“Batman? Are you there?”
Nightwing ripped off his headset and slapped it down onto the console of one of the world’s foremost piece of investigative technology. From the Batcave he was plugged into dozens of government agencies, databases, and even satellite feeds. Several high profile cases had been solved from this very seat, but right now it was all worthless to him.
“Lost them!” the former Boy Wonder said under his breath. He was already frustrated enough with his busted leg keeping him out of the field. Now he couldn’t even provide operational support. “Damn!”
“Something wrong, Master Dick?”
Nightwing turned to see Alfred Pennyworth, aged yet noble butler to Bruce Wayne, approach with a tray holding milk and cookies. Dick Grayson frowned, but accepted the refreshments.
“You know that I’m in my twenties now, right?” Nightwing inquired as he bit into one of the chocolate chip cookies.
“And yet you still wear your underwear on the outside of your clothes,” Alfred deadpanned. He looked at the various screens that surrounded Nightwing like a womb. “Some trouble with Masters Bruce and Damian?”
“Not sure yet,” Nightwing said as cookie crumbs dribbled from his mouth. He washed the mouthful away with a swig of cold milk. “I lost communication with them just a few minutes ago. They went underground, literally, so I don’t even have CCTV to patch into and get a visual.”
Alfred raised an eyebrow. After years of service to several generations of vigilantes, plus a few spent in the trenches himself, he had seen it all. From backbreaking to young wards with chips on their shoulders, he had experienced just as much trauma as the rest of them. “Should we be concerned?” he asked.
“Well, I know where they’re headed.” He pointed to one screen that displayed a top-down view of a section of uptown Gotham. “Some derelict hospital. I was thinking about sending Duke to scout ahead, but Bruce said that he wasn’t ready to call in the reinforcements just yet.”
Alfred leaned in to look at the picture more closely. “Hmm. Is that…oh, my word! It can’t be!”
Nightwing jerked up in his seat. “What is it?”
“It must be a coincidence! It just must be!”
“What?” Nightwing demanded, turning in his seat to face Alfred directly.
“That hospital,” Alfred stated, “is where Master Bruce’s father used to work! He sat on the board, perfected his skills there, and had several medical breakthroughs, all resulting from those facilities. That hospital is special to the Wayne family, Master Dick. Several of the Wayne Foundation’s outreach programs began there. Doctor Leslie Thompkins even had a practice there just before the hospital lost funding and closed down.”
“Does Bruce know that?”
Alfred shook his head. “The hospital was foreclosed on a year before Master Bruce’s birth. It sadly fell into ruin. His mother formed plans to restore funding and reopen the hospital, much to his father’s delight, but then…”
“They were killed.” Nightwing leaned in himself to look at the screen, seeing the old hospital in a new light. “Do you think there could be a connection between Bruce’s parents and what’s going on tonight?”
Before Alfred could respond, an alarm went off. Several screens on the console flashed and new windows overlapped the monitoring and research ones that Nightwing already had open. It was a priority alert and seeing it made Nightwing’s heart skip a beat.
“Oh, dear,” Alfred said with a whisper.
In the very center of the largest screen, a bold flashing message had appeared that read, “ARKHAM – BREACH.”
# # # # #
For a long moment, there was no sound except the wet inhaling and exhaling of the three scaled beasts and wet trickling into the spillway. Then, with no preamble, all hell broke loose.
The one of Batman’s right lunged for his throat, his jaws wrenching up as a roar bellowed up from within. Batman ducked under his head, stabbed his elbow into his abdomen, and tried to hip-throw the monster into the other two.
But he couldn’t, because his left leg was suddenly exploding in pain, as the claws of another croc slashed into his muscle, nearly reaching the bone. The croc on his right smashed into him awkwardly, his head no longer a target, and the three of them crashed into a pile in the water.
Batman quickly found himself in a death-grip from one of the monsters and the air was being forced out of his lungs quickly. Soon his lungs would feel like they were on fire and he would instinctively try and take in a breath, but he was submerged, his face pressing up against the first unconscious croc that was now under the water. His mind knew he couldn’t do it breath in, but before long his basic needs would override his cognitive thoughts.
Something thumped on top of them and the croc’s group loosened. He took advantage of the newfound leverage, shoving himself up in the nearly three feet of water, gasping in precious air as he did so.
The croc was flung, no pulled off of him, and he saw a flash of red and yellow out of the corner of his eye. Robin had leapt down into the chamber, landing on the croc suffocating him, and yanked him away.
A roar and a slash brought Batman’s full attention back to directly in front of him. The second croc was still very much unrestricted and now able to come at him without the other impeding an attack. It slashed, growled, and did its best to tear into him. Batman deftly slipped out of reach, his back pressed against the rounded brick wall of the flood chamber, and snatched something from his utility belt.
The croc came at him again and Batman ground his teeth and rushed to meet him. He ducked under the massive and muscled swinging arm of the monster and jabbed two prongs into the thing’s chest. He flipped a switched and electricity danced over the croc’s scaled skin, threatening to fry him.
After a sizzling second, Batman released the trigger on the Taser and let the croc drop into the water to join its brother, also unconscious. He focused on Robin, who had shoved a batarang into his croc’s open maw, but was succumbing to the ferocity and weight advantage of his foe.
Batman covered the distance between them, drove his fist into the croc’s side, kicked out his knee to force him to kneel, and then slipped a pink capsule into his open mouth. The creature gasped as pink smoke began to pour out of its mouth, and it reached for its throat just as it too fell back into the water, no longer a threat.
Robin, breathing heavily, looked up at his mentor and asked, “Carbon dioxide?”
“Mixed with a little bismuth,” Batman replied, his breath also labored. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” the youth said matter-of-factly. He looked at Batman’s torn leg, which was covered in wet, red blood. “You’re not.”
Batman glanced at the wound and reached for his grappler. “I’ll take care of it later. We need to—”
“A moment,” Robin said with a raised hand to silence his father.
He pulled out a fat syringe from one of his pouches, pressed the plastic tip into the wound, and pushed the plunger. A thick gel filled the wound, sealing off the blood flow. Next he used surgical staples to make sure that the abrasion would remain closed, stabbing three metal brackets directly into Batman’s leg.
Despite what had to be intense pain, Batman smirked. “You’ve taken up Alfred on his offer to teach you field medicine,” he said.
“Swallow these,” Robin said, ignoring the remark. “Antibiotics, although who knows what kind of things are crawling around in this place. You’ll need something stronger when we get back to the Cave.” He glanced at the three unconscious mutated men. “They’re running out of rogues to emulate.”
“We’re not far,” Batman said as swallowed the pills dry and then he fired another line up to the sole exit tunnel. The line held and Robin followed suit, and together the vigilantes entered the next phase of the twisted game.
The dank tunnel led them uninterrupted through the underbelly of Gotham. Several cases had brought the Dark Knight into these sewers before as he had tracked gun runners, kidnappers, and even mercenaries throughout the extensive system. This was the first time, however, that he had been led so directly by his prey.
After trudging through a foot of water over the course of several blocks, they finally arrived at a dead end. The interconnecting hatches and feeding pipes were all sealed off, save for small trickles of water, leading them to this one location. Storm drains continued to allow air into the tunnel, but nothing else, and they were much too small for an exit.
The only avenue left to them was directly overhead: a single hatch with a wheel lock that had already been turned for them. All they had to do was reach up and swing it open.
Batman checked his GPS, but it was still being jammed, as well as all efforts to communicate with the above world. His leg was throbbing and Robin looked a little winded. Whoever was behind this had successfully worn them down and isolated them.
“Even though you weren’t meant to follow,” Batman said, “we can still assume that they know you’re with me. They’ve been too careful, too well coordinated to not have been monitoring us coming down the tunnel. They want me alive, though, for whatever reason. They could have easily rigged the spillway with explosives. We can reason that whatever is up there will be designed to incapacitate, not kill, but we still need to be prepared for any situation.”
Robin ground his teeth and said, “I’m ready.”
Batman nodded and then slipped his fingers around the hatch wheel and yanked it down, revealing a pinprick of light from above. Inside the vertical tunnel was a wall-mounted ladder, and they began to climb. A few feet into their ascent, they switched off their night vision since the light was getting brighter.
At the top of the ladder, Batman forced open a door and quickly sprung out, instinctively falling into a crouch and allowing his cape to conceal where his hands were. Robin did likewise, facing the opposite direction, as they had done in so many training exercises before.
Stainless steel doors, about three feet across and two feet high each, lined two of the four walls, all hanging on thick, metal hinges. There was a single bulb illuminating the room overhead, but even in the minimal light it was easy to tell where they had entered the building.
“A morgue,” Robin said matter-of-factly. “I thought you said they didn’t want you dead.”
The room was cold, as was its nature given the typical occupants, but the air was also stale and carried a feeling of emptiness to it. Batman cautiously took in the room, seeing a single exit through double, swinging hospital doors.
Stainless steel examination tables filled the center of the room, with a crash cart in the corner that had long ago been stripped of any useful equipment. The morgue looked derelict, but someone had obviously been there recently as a brand new LCD fifty inch television had been mounted on the far wall.
The TV switched on, and Batman ground his teeth as a face came into focus. “Is this thing on?” a squeaky voice said through the television’s speakers. “Testing, testing, one-two-three!”
“Joker…” Batman muttered.
The Joker’s pale face and red lips filled the screen. It was a very tight shot of just him, so close that the vigilantes could make out the contours and skin wrinkles from his constant grin. Batman actually heard Robin go tense and couldn’t blame him in the slightest.
“Batsy?” Joker asked, pressing his mouth onto the camera lens. “Are you there, or are you at home, washing your tights? HA!”
“I’m going to beat that smile off of your face, clown,” Robin stated.
“It’s a recording,” Batman replied. “Look at the time code in the corner. He made this video months ago.”
Joker cleared his throat very loudly and the view finally pulled back to reveal the Joker, standing within his cell at Arkham Asylum and wearing his orange jumpsuit that had been issued after being committed. It looked exactly the same as when Batman had last seen it, merely 24 hours ago.
“Surprised?” Joker asked. “You should be. I’ve spent a hell of a lot of time planning this, and a hell of a lot of money. Granted, I stole the money, but it’s hard work stealing it in the first place, and I hate to let it go.
“So! Here we are. Or rather, here you are. How have you enjoyed my little friends popping up all over Gotham, dressed like some of our mutual acquaintances, hmm? You know, Batsy…we’ve clashed so many times that I’ve really been struggling with how to actually, you know, kill you. You’re like a bad zit – always popping up on prom night! HEE HEE!
“That’s when it struck me! I’ve fallen into a bad pattern. So have all of us, but Nigma is the worst. His tailor knows his stuff, though. HEEEeeee! <ahem> We’re always leaving you clues. Calling cards. I realized that if I actually wanted to see your body dismembered before retirement age that I needed to change things up a bit! Thus began the greatest performance of this humble comedian’s life.
“I recruited some men who very much hate you, minor annoyances really, but oh, they are so passionate. I persuaded them to restore this lovely hospital so that they could inflict their own personal therapy on you, Batsy. They are so enthusiastic to torture you! I really admire that about them, even if they are b-listers.
“But how to get you here? You remember those flash mobs that were so trendy years ago? What better way to get your attention than to drug John Q. Public and dress him up like your favorite baddies? With so many running around, all outfitted like myself (personal fave, Bee-Tee-Dubs), Freeze, and a couple others, you couldn’t help yourself. And now here you stand, exactly where I wanted you.
“With the trap set, I needed to protect it from myself. I know that you know that I know I just can’t help myself. The doctors have a few names for it, all having to do with identity disorders or some drivel, but it boils down to just wanting credit. After all, I can’t have Cobblepot or one of those other buffoons trying to steal the spotlight!
“As soon as those handsome Jokers went rampaging through Gotham, your first stop would be to see me. You’re sooooo predictable, Batsy. Could I save me from myself? Would I spill the beans? You had taken the bait, but the real trap hadn’t been sprung yet.
“So, I enlisted another friend of ours to hypnotize me and block out this entire month of planning. I let him scramble my brains, even though I prefer my brains over easy. I won’t remember any of this, Batman, so when you come to see me…and you will…you won’t be getting any help from me! HA HA HAAAAAA!”
The Joker was clutching his sides due to laughing so hard. Batman, who was so frustrated from having been cornered, was about to advise Robin as to their next steps, but before he could speak, a nearly silent hissing sound caught his attention. “Gas!” Batman warned, but it was too late. The gas must have been filling the room during Joker’s diatribe. His vision was already doubling and Robin was starting to sway.
Batman fell to his knees, struggling to stay up, but was finding it more and more difficult to concentrate.
“I had you fools parading all over Gotham! Ha Ha HAAA!”
His vision was blurred and darkness was creeping in at the sides. He felt nauseous and between bouts of intense laughter he heard Robin stumble to the floor.
The last thing he saw was the Joker’s manic face, once more cropped in close to fill the screen, with tears rolling down his white cheeks. He was laughing so uncontrollably that he looked like he might be having a heart attack, were it not for widened grin that had come to haunt Batman’s dreams.
And then everything went black.
TO BE CONTINUED IN THE “HOSPITAL OF PAIN!”