image [https://i.imgur.com/FbDmd4P.jpeg]

“Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

- Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

CHAPTER 1

“Jeez, two days ago I was turnin’ the air conditioning on in my apartment because I was sweatin’ my nuts off,” said Sergeant Lorne Childes. “This mornin’ I got up, an’ as soon as the sheets came off an’ my feet touched the floor, I knew we’d hit winter big time!” He blew into his hands, trying to warm them.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” said Sergeant Henry Mason, Childes’s partner for this stakeout. Mason was in the driver’s seat, and had a cup of coffee in his hands, just holding it, using it more to warm his own fingers than to wake himself up. Though, he could certainly use a pick-me-up. They’d been staked outside the Greenhouse Apartments complex for nearly ten hours, assisting an FBI surveillance team across the street in a van marked RUTHERFORD ROOFING.

It was all part of the new initiative between Gotham’s finest and the feds. Both Mason and Childes had been through the new courses that taught how this new collaboration was supposed to work. This was their seventh stakeout with Sarah Essen’s task force, now dubbed Breaking Point, the main finger of Project Breaking Point. So far tonight, no movement from the guys inside. “My wife likes it cold in the house,” Childes said. “Which means in the winter I walk around bundled up like a friggin’ Eskimo.”

“Glad I’m single,” Mason said.

Childes put his gloves on. He had to. They couldn’t just stay parked with the engine running. That would look too suspicious. Therefore, no heat. Thus, they were freezing.

The leaves in the trees lining Venison Avenue hadn’t even started changing yet, and already people were walking around in the streets bundled up like they would in a blizzard. It’s gonna be a cold one, Mason thought, thinking about the year ahead. All the weather men seemed to agree that, at the very least, they were off to a very bad start.

Next to him, Childes blew on his fingers and glanced out the window, used his binoculars to look at the window across the street. “Who do you suppose is in there this time?” he asked, finally taking a sip from his own cup of joe. “One o’ Cobblepot’s boys? Maybe Falcone’s?”

Mason sighed. “Who knows?” was all he said in response. He was tired of the endless speculation. A year ago, when Sarah Essen had arrived on the scene and Breaking Point had been officially launched as the largest cooperative police force endeavor in U.S. history, all of this secrecy had seemed necessary. Now, however, it had the familiar stink of something else being kept in the dark, like way, way back when GCPD had been stuffed to the rafters with corrupt officers.

Mason was old enough to recall those days. Hell, he’d been one of the new recruits on the force back when Gordon and the bat had started their illegal crusade. Mason’s cousin, Samuel, who’d secured him the job in the first place on a recommendation, was one of the first ones taken down. Fast-forward a few years, Samuel was in the increasingly overcrowded Blackgate Penitentiary and Mason was newly promoted and had a job working for the feds. Well, technically, he was working with them, but increasingly it seemed like they were all working for them.

They can call it what they want, he thought, glancing out the window at the sound of the military helicopter patrolling slowly over Aparo Expressway. They can call it “cooperative,” they can call it “temporary direct administrative control,” they can call it “Breaking Point” or “hacky sack” for all it matters. It was martial law, and for various reasons the government was reluctant to let it go.

A part of Sergeant Mason understood why the government would be so alarmed. After all, it was now more or less confirmed by the government that Edward Nashton, aka the Riddler, had very nearly set off a nuclear holocaust that would’ve made Chernobyl look like a mild inconvenience to the people. The unprecedented cooperation between Nashton and Cobblepot—the information broker who was now working on weaseling his way out of serious jail time—as well as the cooperation between the various gangs in Gotham, had scared the United States government in a way they hadn’t been since 9/11.

“Where do ya think they got this tip from?” asked Childes, never one to end conjecture. He blew into his palms and took another sip. It seemed to be his life’s endeavor to know everything, and if he didn’t know it then he’d speculate until something stuck. “Any o’ our guys?”

“What do you think?” Mason asked rhetorically, and that was all that need be said. It was obvious that this information hadn’t come from just any of GCPD’s undercovers—no, the Shukurs, Dreaded Sun, the Juarez cartel, and the remainder of the Falcone crime family had all but sealed themselves off from new recruits, and they’d ceased communication with any of their low-level street thugs ever since it got out that someone had cracked their secret language.

Sergeant Mason took his first sip of his coffee and smiled at that thought. The decoding of the various gangs’ secret cant language had been his doing, not the bat’s, and everybody knew it. It was what had gotten him his promotion. Well, that, and working his ass off at night to get the proper schooling to show he had the initiative. It also hadn’t hurt that Commissioner Gordon had given him a special commendation for solving one of the Riddler’s riddles and saving Theresa Fuller’s life.

We can get it done on our own, he thought. We don’t need the bat. A second later, he corrected himself. There were still some things the bat was useful for.

Mason and his pals on the force hadn’t been all that keen on the Batman when he first emerged on the scene, but at least the bat hadn’t come through giving them orders. He played by his own rules, sure, and the part of Henry Mason that had developed a love for law and order in his brief stint in law school didn’t like vigilantes of any sort, but the bat had never once stepped on their toes. Instead, he’d augmented their investigations, in a way that Mason almost found respectable.

But now even that has changed, he thought. Mason realized, as most GCPD officers realized, that the bat was now working more with the feds than he ever had with the police department. It was never confirmed, of course, but how else could they get so much intelligence from sources that no undercovers had infiltrated yet? Mason’s father had been in U.S. Special Forces in Iraq, and the kind of information they were now being provided was similar to information the ground forces in that long war were getting from “the ether,” as his father had once put it. Being on Special Forces, his father had been “the ether,” that is, his units had dug in deep, not played by the usual rules of engagement, and gotten out with vital, actionable intelligence that they wouldn’t have gotten playing by the standard ROE. Batman, it appeared, was running the same kind of campaign. An intensified campaign with less rules than before.

As though reading his mind, Childes said, “Ya know, I heard they’re even lettin’ him have free reign of the airspace. I heard he’s got another helicopter, this one can’t be detected on radar.”

“If it can’t be detected on radar,” Mason reasoned, “then how does anybody know he’s up there, or that the feds are letting him pass through restricted space, or that any of this B.S. is true?”

“You know my nephew Vinny? The one that used to work for the ATCSCC?” Childes asked.

Mason nodded. He was talking about the Air Traffic Control System Command Center, out in Herndon, Virginia. “Yeah, he’s the one does all the systems security for the FAA, right?”

“Yeah. See, he says that the government has this special program now for allowin’ certain flights o’ VIP citizens to pass through,” Childes said, glancing out the window and checking the window across the street with his binoculars. He scanned for a minute, then lowered the binoculars. He glanced at the audio relay on the dashboard, a new addition courtesy of the FBI and donations from an anonymous person—Mason suspected Bruce Wayne, a common contributor to GCPD—and then reclined in his seat, satisfied that nothing was going on.

“So, what, your nephew says he knows for sure that Batman is allowed free reign in the skies over Gotham?”

Childes shook his head, watching a man cross the street with a buggy full of tin cans. “Naw, man. But he said that, like, really rich an’ important people, people who contribute to government work, like the big guys around Microsoft an’ companies like that, they get all this special treatment. Sometimes, your plane gets delayed at the airport because they got a private jet needs liftin’ off ASAP. Got me? An’ you never even know it.”

Mason nodded. He’d heard of such favoritism, but he hadn’t ever considered that the government would put Batman on a list that would—

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

A woman’s voice suddenly cut through his thoughts, coming through the radio on the dashboard. “All units in the vicinity of Martin and Alexis Street, please respond to a four-nineteen at Collier Sporting Goods on the corner of Martin and Alexis,” said dispatch.

“Uh-oh,” Childes said, looking at him. A 419 was a dead human body. Pretty serious. “Whattaya think? We’re close.”

Mason shrugged, and reached out to the radio and called over to folks in the FBI van parked down from them. “Uh, guys, did you just hear that four-nineteen, over?”

A second later, “Yeah, we heard it. You wish to respond?”

“That’s just two blocks over. We’re probably the closest. You boys fine without us for a minute?”

A few seconds went by, then a reluctant reply. “Yeah, sure. Nothing’s really happening here. We got her covered. Go ahead and check it out, over.”

“Ten-four,” said Mason, and then handed the radio over to Childes.

Childes fumbled with the radio, and said, “Jesus, my fingertips are all clumsy, I’m so freakin’ cold.” He called it in. “Dispatch, this is undercover unit One-Eight-C-Y-Z—Charlie-Yankee-Zebra. We are in the area an’ respondin’, over.”

Mason cranked the car, and smirked when Childes exulted in the warm air that blasted through the vents. Part of Mason realized that Childes had only wanted to respond to the 419 because it got the air blowing through the car, and that wherever this body was, it was bound to be kept someplace warmer than here.

They didn’t turn on the siren until they were well away from Greenhouse Apartments, and even then they only had to race through three stoplights. Three minutes later, they were pulling into the parking lot between Collier Sporting Goods and Nate’s Title Pawn, which had both been closed for years. Waiting outside was a crowd of twelve or so people that had gathered, and one man who was talking excitedly to the others. Mason knew the look of a man regaling others with his story when he saw it.

When they pulled up, Mason said to Childes, “Cut the siren.” He did, and they both hopped out quickly the instant the car was shut off. Stepping out of the heated car, the chill air hit Mason like a slap in the face. There was a light wind, but it was just bad enough to be biting. “Who called it in?” he shouted as he jogged over to the assembled bunch. One woman pointed to the man at the center of the crowd, who, predictably, was just cutting his excited story short. “You called it in?” Mason asked.

The fat man was well dressed, in a blue shirt with a white emblem on its left breast that declared him an authorized bug killer for P&G Exterminators. He had on a thick black jacket, thick gloves, and a Russian ushanka fur cap. “Y-yeah,” he said nervously, his lower lip trembling. Is he cold, or just frightened? Sergeant Mason wondered. “Yeah, it’s…they’re inside.”

“They?”

“Yeah, all of ’em.”

“All of who, sir?” Childes asked, coming up beside the exterminator.

“All of…of the bodies.”

“Bodies? Plural?”

“Y-yeah,” he stammered, his breath coming out in puffs of white cloud while his teeth chattered.

“Is there anybody else in there?” Mason asked. “Anyone alive, I mean.”

“No…j-j-just me.”

“What were you doin’ inside?” Childes asked. “This place has been closed for two years.”

“The owners of the property…they’re s-s-sellin’ it, but it’s full of r-roaches. Th-they called us to clean the place out. It’s j-just on my route t-today. The owners g-gave us a key to get in through the b-b-back.”

Mason watched him carefully. Part of his ongoing training was how to work through interrogations, both in a controlled room back at the station and out in public with victims and perpetrators. He knew fear when he saw it. This man isn’t cold. He’s terrified by what he’s seen. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“R-Richard,” said the exterminator.

“What’s in there, Richard? What did you see?” Richard shook his head, and Mason noticed that the man was wringing his gloved hands together nervously. Is he in shock?

Childes took his gun out, and said, “We goin’ in, or what?”

Mason nodded. He suspected his partner was probably more concerned with standing out here in the cold than anything else. He drew his own Glock, and together they stepped over to the door, which was left wide open. They paused when they heard another siren approaching, and Mason said, “Hold up.” Twenty seconds later, car number 233 was pulling up to the curb, and Officer Wanda Nielson was stepping out with Drake Almond, the new rookie she’d been training. “Wanda,” he said, nodding.

“Sergeant, what’s up?”

He nodded to Richard the exterminator. “The fella there says he’s an exterminator, came here to clean up, found some bodies. You mind leaving Drake here to watch him and the crowd? Childes and I are going in. Coming?”

“Sure thing,” she said, and with a nod to her rookie, they went about their parts.

Richard suddenly called out, “The power’s out in there, officers! Y-you m-might need flashlights. I’ve got one.” Mason took Richard’s light, and Wanda had her own and Childes took the rookie’s. Before they went inside, Richard touched Mason on the arm. “Th-they’re all in the back, Officer,” he said, shivering. “Through the double doors at the back. J-just…just f-follow the humming.”

Mason stepped inside first, his gun up with the flashlight in the classic “Harries hold,” his gun hand resting on top of his flashlight hand. At once, he noticed a drop in temperature, say only a couple of degrees, but that might be expected since they were inside, away from sunlight. The linoleum floor was torn up, and obviously someone was planning on replacing it with tile because stacks of them were placed in a corner, ready to be laid down. Glass cases that had once held baseball bats, golf clubs, soccer balls and other sports equipment were empty and dust-covered. Motes of dust danced in the beam of their lights as they moved carefully through the dead room. There was a low hum coming from the back of the store, like a refrigerator running.

Follow the humming.

Mason was suddenly very aware of something. It was cold in here. And not just cold like it was outside, but well below that. His breath now exited out of his mouth and nostrils like smoke from a dragon, and behind him he heard Childes’s teeth chattering. Not what he was expecting when he volunteered to answer the call, he thought. He might’ve smirked if it hadn’t gotten only colder and if the humming hadn’t created such an ominous atmosphere.

Behind him, Childes’s teeth chattered louder. Wanda was rigid and walked with her lips tightened. She was a steady aim, and had been in two shootouts during her career with GCPD and had killed one of the bank robbers that had assaulted her. Mason wasn’t worried about her.

His feet started crunching on something. Mason thought it was glass at first, but then he put his gun at low-ready position, his flashlight illuminating not shards of glass, but glistening flecks of colored ice, some of it a dark-red color, some of it green and even black. “What…the hell?” he heard Childes say. Wanda said nothing.

Now, Mason noticed that his eyes had started burning. It was as though the very cold had gotten to them and dried them out. But that shouldn’t be. It was certainly cold this early fall, but not that cold. Then, Mason wondered how much of the motes he was seeing dance in his flashlight’s beam was dust and how much was condensation. He looked up at the ceiling, his light slowly revealing to him that, indeed, a slight bit of icing had started to take over the surface of the entire back side of the store. “What…the hell?” Childes repeated.

“Heads up,” Wanda said, aiming at a set of double doors with her flashlight. The doors were behind the old counter of the layaway section of the store.

They maneuvered around the front counter. The smell of mold and damp hung heavy in the air. Mason signaled Wanda to get to one side of the counter, and for Childes to get to the other, flanking it. Mason stood away from it and at an angle while they readied themselves. Cool steam wafted out from underneath the door, like the effect of dry ice at a rock concert.

He crouched, and nodded to Childes, who’d put his flashlight in his mouth and reached up with his free hand to touch the doorknob of the door on the left. When Childes pushed it open, flecks of ice fell from the doorframe, and as Mason “sliced the pie” to ensure that no one was just inside waiting on them, the other two stood at the side of the door with their weapons at low-ready. All he saw were shelves, and behind them, something hanging from meat hooks.

“Clear,” he said, and held his aim while Wanda pushed the other door open. He stepped through slowly, carefully, aware that his shoes were crunching on ice again, but he didn’t care, because what he saw made him colder than any season in Gotham ever had.

The hum of four generators and the icebox coolers they were powering was the only sound that filled the room. No one knew what to say.

Bodies. Six of them. All naked. Three hanging from meat hooks stabbed into the back, dangling from the chains and fastened to the ceiling. They were frozen solid. Through and through, as though dipped in liquid nitrogen. Strips of them had been peeled away, exposing the insides of some. Most were missing their arms, all were missing their feet and legs, one of them had no genitals to speak of. The head of one man was completely missing, and there was no blood, none at all. The place on his neck where his head ought to have been was a jagged break, dark red in color with a part of the spine sticking out.

Wanda lowered her gun, and Childes kept his gun trained on some vague spot on the wall in front of him before he finally started scanning the room again with his flashlight. Mason scanned, as well, and found two large bathtubs of fuming water against the left wall—a second later, he realized it was in fact liquid nitrogen. A crudely rigged generator and a water pump were beside these tubs, the nozzle at the end of a connecting hose was frozen over, caked with ice and busting open at the middle where the ice had expanded.

Though there were six bodies hanging, there appeared to be more on the ground. Or, at least pieces of others. Blood had run from some of these limbs, while others were solid blocks of ice with no leakage. It was all obviously organic, though indeterminate in the mishmash of detritus. Half a thumb here, an ankle there, something that looked like a thigh, maybe an ear over there. When next Mason’s foot crunched on what he’d believed was ice, he froze from the realization that not only was he stepping all over evidence, but he was stepping all over the remains of the victims.

“Over here,” said Childes, in a voice just above a whisper. Mason walked over to him, and shined his flashlight where his partner was pointing. There were small, empty plastic bags labeled SALINE on the side.

Then, they heard a scream!

Both Mason and Childes spun to look at her. Wanda had backed away from the bathtub, which she’d approached tentatively, and had dropped her flashlight to cup her hand over her mouth. She was weeping, tears flowing from her face. Mason stepped over to her, and said, “What? What is it? What?” She pointed with her eyes, indicating the vat of liquid nitrogen. Mason walked over to it, and peered inside, pointing his gun.

It was the first time he’d ever pointed his gun at an infant, and a corpse at that.