CHAPTER 20

Switching on the active stealth systems was his first priority. Next before lift-off, he checked the trouble-board; all of the systems showed green. With the turbo-shafts on, the special four-bladed rotor began turning. The Bat Hawk lifted easily off the ground. Once he was in the air, Batman pushed the cyclic left and forward, which dropped the Bat Hawk incredibly fast, putting him well below most radar. He referred back to the flight training he’d taken over the last couple of years to control the power and the lift.

Winds were ten knots—not bad.

At this point there was no telling whether or not the Riddler had any victims tied up in another trap, or that Bruce had even interpreted the clues correctly, for that matter. He tried to maintain a cruising speed of 160 knots, but had to change that a few times, as well as his altitude, which alternated between 2,000 and 3,000 feet. News choppers and police helicopters popped up on his radar, and since he was flying without lights on he had to be very careful. This was the first time he’d ever had to fly like this, moving through the buildings in such a way that kept him from getting too close to the other aircraft in the sky. The helicopter’s air-collision-avoidance systems should alert him of any impending dangers, though.

The Bat Hawk moved quietly over Sprang River, and then around the Knights Dome Sports Arena, its sign flashing the next home game of the Gotham Knights. Not too far away now were the quadruple smokestacks of Parnes Industries, the red lights blipping every three seconds to warn aircraft.

He checked his radar, found a single police chopper flying two miles ahead of him over Port Adams, and swooped in low to avoid detection. The Bat Hawk’s exterior was sprayed with infrared-suppressant gray paint, just as many modern military aircraft had been. So, combined with many other active stealth systems, he was fairly certain his presence in the air was secret.

The helicopter came in over the dark complex of Parnes Industries, its parking lot completely deserted this time of night. It was impossible to make out any structures without the night-vision screen on left side of the helicopter’s control panel. He switched between NV and IR, and on infrared he spotted a pack of small animals running fast as he came in for a landing. Feral dogs, he thought. This area has always been crawling with them.

Since no one else was around, he landed the Bat Hawk in the dead center of the parking lot and went through shutting down the systems. He kept all exterior lights off. He flipped on his HUD to survey the area around him. The four smokestacks and their adjoining silos loomed over him like the legs of giants. Two of them were still lightly puffing away the remnants of some of the chemicals it had generated throughout the day—one of the reasons that the EPA and WE were petitioning for Parnes to take responsibility for itself.

Batman waited for the sound of the propellers (as slight as the sound was) to completely fade so that he could listen to the area all around him. The directional mic caught numerous, soft sounds coming from the main facility directly behind the Bat Hawk, sounds of various machines settling from a hard day’s work. About 150 yards to his right was the part of Miller Harbor that Parnes Industries leased from the city. Moored there was the large Parnes freighter with Optima Expectans painted in large red letters on the side.

The Bowery was not all that far away from here, as the collapsed roof and broken windows on an old three-storey building fifty yards away testified. Charred spots on the stone marked where flames had once licked. Yes, if nothing was done, then very soon the Bowery would consume this entire area. Very soon, indeed.

The GTEM gun was already in his hand and held at ready-low. He moved carefully for the closest cover, which was a large tanker parked at the far end of the lot. Here, patches of grass and a few planted trees were the only things to conceal him on his way over to the freighter. It was an ultra-large container ship, loaded down with the usual large, rectangular steel containers of various colors.

The harbor was full tonight, with various ships and boats prowling the black waters. One such was a small yacht, which had a party going on with music thumping. There was a large container ship blowing its horn, carrying numerous fuel tankers away from the harbor.

Batman found stairs leading from the dock up to the large freighter’s deck, but at that moment a pair of late-night watchmen were walking up and down them carrying small boxes, so the steps weren’t an option. Batman set the GTEM gun to magnetic grappling, aimed it at one of the canisters high above, fired it, and pulled himself up.

The deck was quiet. He heard someone laughing on the other end of the ship, but other than that there was only the sound of boats honking to one another in the night as they entered and exited the harbor.

The shipping containers were each forty feet long and ten feet tall. They were stacked six high in most places. Batman had an idea of what he was looking for, and was careful to steer clear of any run-ins with a couple of crewmen who were walking about with clipboards and doing an inventory of the canisters. At one point, while still ensconced in shadow, he used his HUD to zoom in on the paperwork in the crewmen’s hands and took a snapshot. After quick examination, he found the information he was looking for—shipping container 6009AH was allocated to Aisle 1, Row 4, and was at the bottom of its stack.

It took five minutes to navigate safely and quietly across the ship, and when finally he found the container, he spent another twenty minutes walking around it, inspecting it for more traps. Not likely to be any traps outside of it, he thought. Not on this one. It would alert any unsuspecting crewman who came across it, and that wouldn’t be fair for the police to find your next stage without having solved the puzzle, would it, Riddler? Still, it never hurt to check.

Batman wagered that, if there was a trap, it would be inside the container, waiting on whatever poor soul opened it first.

When he decided that he was as satisfied as he was going to get, Batman found the lock on the container and easily removed it with his lock pick gun. When the lock came away, he magnetized the end of the rope from his GTEM gun, and then attached it to the door of the container. Batman took cover behind another container and reeled in the rope. The container door immediately swung open with a painful moan and something detonated at once. Shrapnel from a small bomb in a paint can shot outwards. Ball bearings, nails, and rat poison from the look of it when he inspected it all a moment later. It had all slammed into the walls of containers across the aisle with enough force to dent their walls.

Somewhere on the boat someone shouted, “What the hell was that?”

Batman peeked around the entrance of container 6009AH, and saw that the IED had been rigged with a giant iron funnel to blow all of the shrapnel outwards, so no harm had come to the other items inside. The container was entirely empty except for a laptop at the center of the room. Batman scanned the walls with his HUD for a full minute before he stepped inside.

He knelt at the laptop, and checked around its edges. Putting his head to the ground, he inspected its bottom, searching for any indication that it was wired to something. Finally, the bat flipped the laptop open, and it turned itself on. He stood up and quickly backed away. It asked for a password, and in the HINT box was written a clue:

You never notice me, yet when I’m gone you’ll know.

I have always been among you, yet wasn’t identified until two years before

America declared its independence.

What am I?

Oxygen, he thought, his mind going to Joseph Priestley, a theologian and educator whose natural curiosity caused him to ask a question it seemed few thought to ask: What do we breathe in when we breathe? This riddle started off like it might have been a rhyme, but the Riddler had opted to forge something that demanded a person know a little something about history, not just plays on words. Batman, fancying that he had perhaps glimpsed a fraction of the Riddler’s mind, wondered if the idea of a man discovering something that was literally in front of everyone every day appealed to the lunatic.

The Riddler obviously values intelligence, and maybe he feels that Joshua Priestley’s curiosity matches his own? Priestley had made major discoveries experimenting with his own equipment, so was the Riddler experimenting on his own? If so, to what end? To simply test the bat?

Batman typed in “oxygen” and hit ENTER, and was granted access to the desktop, which had a background cascading with more question marks:

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

? ? ? ? ? ¿ ? ??

? ? ? ? ¿ ?

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ¿ ?

At the center of the screen was a single icon, and he clicked on it, finding a video player similar to the one aboard the locomotive at Old Parker Station. The image was just of a big question mark, and a short audio recording played over it. “If you want to find the next victim, riddle me this, and listen very carefully. At the end of this riddle you will have one chance, and one chance only, to enter the answer in the field that pops up at the top of the screen. If you get it wrong, the computer will automatically erase its memory. Hope you’re ready, because here it goes:

“You are the manufacturer of brain wave entrainment CDs for companies that sell self-improvement products. You find yourself at the post office frequently, but today you have ten boxes of the entrainment CDs ready to ship out, but you have one problem. Nine of the boxes contain CDs that are designed to put the listener into an ‘alpha’ or relaxed state, and one is full of CDs that are designed to put the user into a deeper ‘delta’ state, for deep sleep. They look identical, and you forgot to label them.

“There is one difference, however. You remember that the alpha CDs weigh thirteen grams, and because different CD blanks were used, the delta CDs weigh fifteen grams. However, it’s a pity for you, because you can’t feel the difference in weight by lifting them.

“The post office does have a scale that’s just big enough to measure packages only. It costs one dollar each time you weigh something, though, and you want to save money. What is the fewest possible number of uses for the scale to determine which are the delta CDs? Enter the numeral to go to the next step.”

The answer field appeared at the top of the screen. The first thing Batman did was check the Web on his HUD. Nope, not there, this was another Riddler original.

So he did the math. It was a relatively complicated problem. First, he imagined putting himself on the scale, and weighing himself with the boxes in each hand. Does that work? No…no, the riddle specifically said the scale was only big enough to weigh packages.

Batman tried a different approach. He imagined that he labeled all the boxes 1 through 10. Then, he put one brainwave entrainment CD from box number one on the scale. Then, on top of that, he imagined himself putting two CDs from box number two. Then he put three from box number three on those, four from box four, and so on…

Yes, that could work, he thought. There would then be fifty-five brainwave entrainment CDs on the scale. Then, he could pay the dollar and see what the total weight is. If they were all thirteen grams, the total weight would be 715 grams (55 x 13). However, he would know that one or more of the CDs weighed fifteen grams.

Subtract 715 grams from the total weight, and that would give the extra weight for the heavier CDs, he thought. He checked the math several more times, and each time that he hit a dead end he realized there was a way around it using his method.

One, he thought. You can use the scale just one time. Batman typed it in: 1. He paused before hitting ENTER. What if I’m wrong? What if I missed something? What if I missed a pivotal play on words? Another innocent life hangs in the balance…

Surely the riddle was a bit harder than the others, but not so unlikely to solve, especially if the solver had gotten this far already, since they would have to be a natural problem-solver to do so. The answer could be a trap, he considered, and it wasn’t the first time he had thought of that. Batman had checked and rechecked the laptop to ensure that there was no bomb immediately attached to it. But what if it detonates something remotely? Feeling more was lost by indecision than the wrong decision, he finally hit ENTER and waited.

The screen suddenly went blank.

I got it wrong. What did I miss? I don’t—

The screen came back on, and this time with a picture for the desktop’s background. The picture was of one of the four smokestacks of Parnes Industries. It was the primary smokestack, labeled simply with a giant 1 on the side, painted two stories tall. Then, a slideshow commenced. Each picture got closer and closer, revealing the giant silo beside the first smokestack. Then, it got even closer, to the entrance at the foot of the silo. There, the image froze, and then all the pictures recycled. Was that it? Was it that simple?

Batman stood quickly and stepped back out of the container. He jogged to the very tail end of the freighter, no longer caring who saw him. He leapt off the back end, the cape electrified and extended so that he could hang glide to his destination. He soared over the water and the docks, and landed close to the entrance to the silo, where bulk materials from Parnes Industries were stored.

Walking up to the silo, Batman passed by several signs that warned NO TRESPASSING. A twelve-foot-tall chain-link fence topped with razor-wire also attempted to discourage him, but small single-hand bolt cutters got him through just fine. Normally, he didn’t like damaging private property, but there were always extenuating circumstances.

There was a primary entrance at the bottom of the silo—on its door, a sign read WARNING: Due to the high toxicity of materials occasionally handled inside, no smoking, drinking, or eating is permitted beyond here. All entrants must comply with OSHA standards.

The door at the side of the silo was locked, but not good enough to stop his lock pick gun. The door opened up very quietly, which was surprising for a twelve-inch-thick piece of steel. Neither the hinges nor the latch groaned as he pushed it open and stood to one side. Nothing, no trap of any kind waiting on him. Batman peeked inside and found that the silo was completely empty. Nothing here, he thought, his trepidation growing.

After a few seconds he stepped inside. His boots clicked on the flat, paved floor. The area on the floor was about twenty feet in diameter, and the silo capped off at around fifty feet above him. Batman looked straight up, wondering if he would see someone hanging from up there, or else another clue. There was nothing, and there was no one. There were ladder rungs leading all the way up, but otherwise it looked like the silo had recently been emptied out and cleaned for inspection. There were also large vents all around him, each one hidden behind large steel bars. The entire silo was pitch-black without the use of his night-vision.

Batman was just approaching the rungs embedded in the walls when he heard a loud clang! from behind. He spun to find the door had slammed shut. He ran over to inspect, and found that just on the inside of the door, a contraption had been rigged, one using the twist-locks and lashing rods that kept shipping containers fastened to their ships in a storm. A thick, industrial-strength steel coil as big around as his arm had been used as the engine. Batman had let the door swing wide, and as soon as it had touched the wall the spring-loaded door slammed back shut, probably with enough force to kill a man had one been in the way. He remembered to keep himself calm as he searched the door over, finding that both the latch and the lock had been sabotaged by welding, and relatively recently.

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He’s trapped me in here. I walked right into it.

A faint hissing sound started behind him, then all around him.

He inspected the door for any other weakness, but it was solid steel, with no gaps in the trap or the locking mechanism. There was a small radio mounted on the door, too, one just beside the big spring that had trapped him. A sign on one gray button read PUSH ME. Before he pushed it, though, he paused. The hissing sound had ground a little louder. Then, all at once, the vents overhead and all around him whirred to life.

Then, something else happened. Batman suddenly felt…heavy. He couldn’t explain it, but it was like there was water actually cascading over him. He spun around to look, but there was no sign of liquid of any kind. Yet still, he felt like something was pressing down on his head, his shoulders, his whole body. He felt like he was gaining weight. It was a sensation unlike any other he had ever felt before, and yet nothing in his environment was changing.

Batman felt his chest getting heavy, as if someone was sitting on it. He looked down at the radio on his hand and pressed the button. “I told you that if you solved the riddle I’d show you the next victim, didn’t I?” came the Riddler’s taunting voice. “So now you’ve solved that riddle, and you know it’s you. I’m assuming it’s you, Dark Knight. How many people could really solve puzzles like this, and so fast? You are positively astounding. But if this recording is being heard by someone other than Batman, then congratulations on possessing a mind with such celerity and insight, although right now you’re probably wishing you hadn’t solved that last riddle, am I right?” His voice was dripping with amusement.

“Just get on with it, you maniac,” Batman muttered, and when he heard how low his voice was, he was astonished. To him, it sounded like his voice had changed to a deep, deep bass.

“Right about now, you’re probably thinking to yourself, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ That subtle, sibilant noise you hear calling to you are the vents at the top of the silo pulling oxygen out, while vents near the bottom are pumping another gas in. This other gas is an element known as sulfur superhexafluoride,” the Riddler said, as though narrating a documentary. “It is a heavier-than-air gas. It is inorganic, odorless, colorless, non-toxic and non-flammable, like regular sulfur hexafluoride only modified by Parnes, with an octahedral geometry of six fluorine atoms attached to a central sulfur atom. Under standard atmospheric conditions, it weighs many times heavier than air. This stuff will feel like water, only instead of floating in it you’ll be weighed down, and eventually crushed by it. You can probably feel it weighing you down already.

“The thing is, once enough of this gas is pumped in, it can sink boats in water. And Parnes Industries has a veritable wealth of it, which I’ve put to use. Hacking their systems was only part of it, the other half was in the engineering. See, this silo—oh, by the way, your voice will be very, very low, because inhaling this gas is the opposite of breathing in helium, which makes your voice squeaky, so if you’re shouting for help right now and wondering why you sound like James Earl Jones, that’d be why. Where was I…? Oh, yes, the silo! It’s used to mix and test gases for their interactions. Universities that contribute to research for big companies like Parnes also get to use their equipment as part of the deal. But if my words are now reaching out to Batman right now, then you already know that, don’t you, Bruce? Wayne Chemicals has a similar agreement with Gotham University.”

Batman tried walking over to the ladder, but staggered and slumped against the wall. Not only was the air heavier, but it was also sloshing around him exactly like water. The more it was poured in, the more it acted like invisible waves rushing around him. He was knee-high in the invisible gas, at least that’s what it felt like, and he walked as though he were in knee-high surf. It was disorienting not seeing the substance that was doing this to him, and by the time he made it over to the ladder rungs he felt like he was chest deep. The silo was filling up fast, and the heavier-than-air gas was pouring down on him, accelerated by gravity, buffeting him like a fire hydrant.

“With this gas, pressure only compounds. I’ve timed the output of the sulfur superhexaflouride,” the Riddler’s recorded voice went on. “And you’ll have as many minutes as Samson gave days to solve his riddle. After that, there’ll be so much of the gas pumped into the silo that no man alive could withstand its crushing force.”

The heavy gas quickly weighed down his shoulders, pushing him down, down, down. Batman pulled out his rebreather, and hoped that breathing in the oxygen, instead of the sulfur superhexaflouride, would make him a tad bit lighter, enough to make a difference. But even as he went up two rungs of the ladder, he felt the gas piling up over his head. It filled the room faster than water, and pressed against him as though it actually meant him harm.

“It’s time you realized, whoever you are, that I’m smarter than you. Always have been, always will be,” the Riddler was saying. “I don’t mean to castigate you in your last moments on earth, but you very stupidly walked right into your own deathtrap. Not very becoming. All in all, it’s really a rather sad and pathetic end to a person who figured out Morse code was hidden in the power outages. But, that’s the way these things go.”

The sloshing of the gas as it came in through the vents around him only bombarded him as though he were being hit from all sides from incredibly high-pressure hoses. His grip slipped once, and he fell the five feet back to the ground, landing harder than he would have otherwise.

And you’ll have as many minutes as Samson gave days to solve his riddle, the Riddler had said. In the Bible, Samson gave his groomsmen seven days to solve his riddle. That meant Batman had seven minutes at most if the Riddler wasn’t off in his count, and Batman didn’t think he would be, he was too meticulous for that. Three minutes had already been spent orienting himself to the trap.

The fans whirred all around him, and Batman felt heavier by the second. Lying facedown on the floor, it felt like four or five men were standing on his back, pushing him down. He performed a push-up, and already found that next to impossible. His cape was pressed hard against the floor as though an invisible monster had stepped on it. Batman struggled to reach around to his back and switched on the Stacksuit muscle fibers, which gave him an extra boost almost at once. From his wrist computer he dialed the power all the way up, and forced himself off the floor and back up onto the ladder. Using every ounce of strength in his legs, he pushed upwards, and his arms performed pull-up after pull-up on his way up the fifty-foot wall.

The STACS technology was only an assisted muscle suit, so it didn’t take all of the burden off of his arms. Batman still had to exert himself to force himself up the ladder.

He’d left the Riddler’s radio tucked in his belt, and though the vents he climbed past were loud, he could still hear the Riddler’s voice going on and on. He likes to hear himself talk, Batman thought, his hands, arms, and legs trembling from the climb. “No clever riddle will save you from this trap,” he said in his same haughty tone of voice. “No, not this time. This time, the answer to the riddling game is not to play. You shouldn’t have played with me. You should’ve known I was smarter. Of course, you undoubtedly know that now.”

Batman was only half listening. He ground his teeth, pulling himself up, one rung at a time.

“You know, this is really going to be a poignant day for me,” the Riddler went on. “I found a playmate that genuinely understands what I’m trying to do—I know this because you understand how I think, else you wouldn’t have made it this far—and now, whoever you are, I’m about to eliminate you from the playing field. But that’s Darwinism at its finest, isn’t it? Survival of the fittest isn’t just about brawn, it’s about brains—”

The rest was lost over the loud droning of one of the larger fans he was climbing by. The gas coming in buffeted him like gale force winds. Batman pulled harder, tensing every muscle as he struggled for one handhold after another, for one foothold after another. Without the addition of the Stacksuit, he wouldn’t have made it this far.

And it still won’t be enough.

He instantly rebuked himself for thinking like that. It was only a momentary lapse in hope, and he told himself it wouldn’t happen again. He recalled training with his instructors, the ex-SEAL in particular, and could hear him shouting, “C’mon, Wayne! C’mon, rich boy! You think I have an ounce of pity for you? Think again, you weak puke! Think again! You climb yourself out of this hole right now! You hear me? I said right now!”

“Sir, yes sir!” he shouted through the rebreather mask. Hand over hand as cascades of heavier-than-air gas showered over him. By now the silo had filled up with gas way, way above his head, and the pressure was building.

“Move it, young man.” That was Alfred. Bruce now transported himself back to times when he’d been given ample motivation from people that mattered—another trick taught him by the ex-SEAL. “Come along now, Master Bruce. You can do it.” Then, there was another voice. It was his father’s, a snippet he’d saved from the time when he was extremely young, from what seemed like eons ago. “Stand up, Bruce,” he had said when he’d fallen off his bike. “I can’t keep picking you up myself. Sooner or later, you’ve got to learn to get back up on your own.” Then, there was his mother, a vision of her sitting in her sewing room and petting his head, just after he’d told her he wanted to be an astronaut. “My love, there’s nothing you can’t do.”

“Yes…yes, ma’am…”

“C’mon, Wayne! MOVE IT!”

“Sir, yes sir!”

Inch after agonizing inch, the sweat built inside his body armor. He pulled and pulled until he was confident he was about to tear muscles apart. Then, all at once, they gave out on him. Even with the STACS, he was still ten feet away from the top, which seemed like a million miles under this much pressure. “I’ve yet to see a problem you cannot solve, Master Bruce.” He hung on to the rung with one hand, and reached down with his free hand to un-holster the GTEM gun. He aimed it at the ceiling, fired it, and swung out to the center of the ceiling, where he hung for dear life and reeled himself up to a trapdoor.

If he let go now, he would plummet to his death. Or, if the fall didn’t kill him, he’d certainly shatter his legs, and there would be no climbing out. He would die in here, crushed by an invisible gas.

Now at the top of the silo and hanging by one hand, he fumbled for the handle, and finally pushed it open. His arms quaked from the sustained effort, and almost didn’t perform the task he’d commanded them to. But the door opened upwards and smacked hard against the roof. Batman had to muster everything he had left just to reach the ledge. He was now above most of the sulfur superhexaflouride, and yet he had been so exhausted from the intense climb that his muscles were jelly.

“Come along now, Master Bruce. You can do it,” Alfred said from someplace.

He ground his teeth, and performed one last pull-up to get over the edge of the trapdoor, and pulled himself onto the silo’s roof.

When Batman finally surmounted the trap door, he rolled over onto the roof and collapsed in utter exhaustion. The sweet, sweet lightness of normal air alleviated the burden he had been carrying, and his chest was free to take in as much air as he wanted. With a quivering hand he removed the rebreather from his face and sat there panting for several minutes before he deigned to move again.

* * *

GORDON ARRIVED WITH just two officers, one named Felix Peyton, who he’d never worked with before. The other one was Henry Mason, the officer who had solved the riddle that saved Theresa Fuller’s life. They had done a circle of the large factory of Parnes Industries before finally they caught sight of the helicopter, which looked out of place parked in the center of the parking lot.

Gordon and his men got out and peeked through the windows of the chopper before beginning their search of the area. They stuck together, flashlights sweeping the grounds. It wasn’t until they were halfway to the big freighter that Officer Mason spied something moving down the side of one of the big silos. “Commissioner! There!”

The person was only visible by the aircraft warning beacon that flashed intermittently on the side of the silo. They swayed as they half walked, half stumbled down the scaffolding around the side of the silo, and then descended the spiraling staircase. Gordon could spot a swaying cloak around the figure, and knew it was the bat.

“C’mon!” he shouted. They bolted over to him, and when they got there Gordon was almost certain he was going to need to call a doctor. There was no visible sign of injury, but the Batman was swaying back and forth, his legs as weak as water, and he was stumbling and reaching out for any object to stabilize him.

Officer Mason reached him first, and offered assistance by putting Batman’s arm around his shoulders. “Are you all right? What happened?”

“Don’t…don’t go in there,” he said. And to Gordon, Batman’s voice sounded much lower than usual, so low that he wondered if this was really him. “I’m lightheaded. I breathed in some of…some of the gas, and I’m trying to get it out of my lungs…”

“What gas?” Gordon asked.

“It’s still being pumped into the silo…it’s heavier-than-air gas…if you open the side door right now before ventilating the whole thing…all that air will come rushing out at you…just like water under heavy pressure…and it’s liable to knock you over and kill you.”

Gordon pulled out his high-frequency police radio. “I’ll make some calls, and find the people who run this plant. I’ll wake them up and get them down here.”

“The Riddler…he’s got control of the systems…”

“Who was the victim this time? Did you get them out? Are they still in there?”

Batman suddenly took two deep breaths, and let them out. When he spoke again, his voice was a little more normalized. “I don’t know what else he has control of, but he built this thing to be a trap for whoever discovered it. There’s no other victim…none that I can see.”

“What, you mean he just strung you along to get you to walk into a deathtrap?”

“Yes. The only reason…that I got out was because of my power suit…otherwise, anybody else would’ve died within seven minutes. This trap wasn’t designed to mess around, it was designed to kill, but in an elaborate way. It’s not enough for him…to just put a bullet in someone’s head, that’s not controversial enough.”

Jesus, Gordon thought. If I had solved it first, or someone else at the precinct, we would’ve been pulled into a trap we probably weren’t equipped to handle. “Do you need an ambulance?”

“I’m fine,” Batman said, finally standing up straight. He looked at Officer Mason, who’d given him a hand. “Thanks, Officer.” Mason just nodded, still uncertain about giving aid to a vigilante.

Gordon dialed up central dispatch. “Central, this is Commissioner Gordon. Do you copy?”

“This is Central, go ahead. Over.”

“I need a bomb squad and a search team down here at Parnes Industries, and some patrol boats to search the Miller Harbor docks. And I also need someone to find the people holding the keys to Parnes Industries, and their technicians. Find them, wherever they are, drag them outta bed, and get them down here, we could have an emergency situation down here. Call Port Authority and get me a HAZMAT team, since we’re dealing with chemicals down here, and K-9 units to search the shipping containers.”

“Copy that, Commissioner,” a neutral male voice replied It was different from the voice that had originally responded. “Tell your friend there that I am stunned by the alacrity with which he escaped.”

Gordon looked at the radio, then at the officers, then at Batman. He clicked on the radio again and said, “Say again, Central? Who is this?”

“It seems that there is something to be said for brute strength. There was no humanly way possible to escape this time, and yet he did.”

Batman said, “It’s him.” He walked over to Gordon and snatched the radio out of his hand. “Come out where we can see you. Show yourself, you coward.”

“I’m a coward because I don’t show myself? That’s rich, I might ask the same of you. Why don’t you just take off your mask right now, and show everyone around you who you are, coward? No? Didn’t think so. By the by, you might wish to make sure that no one gets a hold of the recording I left inside. I said some things in there that, well, you don’t want people hearing. Something pertaining to one’s identity?”

“I’m going to find you, and when I do—”

“You’ll what? Break every bone in my body? Beat me to a bloody pulp? Hm, I wonder at your equal parts genius and brute. So far you’ve proven yourself quite the escapologist. I find all of this highly enervating, don’t you? I think you do, too, you just won’t admit to it. You know, in the old days of feudal Japan, they used to have a saying: ‘May your enemies be great enough to keep your skills sharp.’ Many times, a samurai warlord was measured by how great his enemies were, not by what friends he had. Consider this a test, then. I know I do. See you around, Caped Crusader.”

A brief bit of static sounded the disconnection. Batman stared at the radio in his hand, giving it a baleful look, the look that had been known to quell any police officer who approached him to put him in cuffs. Gordon knew that look well.

However the Riddler had managed to hijack the signal, it was over now. Batman handed the radio back to Gordon, who took it and radioed his original commands back to central dispatch, and they actually received them this time. “What happened here?” he demanded from the bat.

Batman had walked away from them, and was now facing the harbor. Gordon had known the man a long time, and right now he emanated that feeling of deep thought, though he was just as motionless as ever. A light, directionless wind stirred his dark-blue cape. When he finally spoke, he said, “The power outages were Morse code. He’s still able to access grids through Gotham Light and Power.” He sighed. “I went off a few hunches, and that’s when I contacted you. But by the time I found a booby-trapped shipping container, I had to act fast because I thought he had another victim inside the silo, so I couldn’t wait. But it was all just a set-up. He wanted the pleasure of luring someone to their own death.”

“Well, you made it out, so screw the son of a bitch! You beat him.” Gordon said, and walked over to him. “Not only that, but Sarah’s located twenty-seven members of Parasyte. She thinks that’s all of them. They’ve coordinated with Interpol and gotten all the warrants, and they’re moving in right now.”

Batman said nothing.

Then, Gordon heard sirens. He and the other officers turned to see the blue-and-red flashing lights, and Officer Mason went over to flag them over. Gordon reached into his pocket to get his cell phone to call Sarah and the police chief. When he looked back to ask Batman if there was anything else they needed to know about the silo, he was gone.

Gordon thought he felt a light gust of wind, and could just barely make out the sound of a helicopter taking flight about a hundred yards to the west.

* * *

THE CHAT ROOM sure was quiet tonight. Lionel found that odd. NessyLives wasn’t on, and that was unusual because he pretty much never left chat. BibBoBoTheGreat was also a regular, but tonight he was quiet. The strange thing was, most of them were signed on, and had been talking up until about fifteen minutes ago when all activity in the chat room had suddenly ended.

Fibber Øptïc: hey, where u guys at? Fall asleep or s0mething?

The next few minutes passed in total silence. Lionel figured they must have all gotten really busy all at once. So he busied himself with a job he had come up with himself. This one, which would upset various credit reference agencies, was his own pet project. Several years ago, his mom had been denied a loan because of some ridiculous loophole in her credit report, something that wasn’t her fault yet kept her from being able to repurchase her childhood home before some other family bought it, smashed it to the ground, and erected a small hotel in its place.

Lionel was just about to get to work when he heard a loud noise upstairs, and then the sound of several sets of feet roaring through his house. He was just standing up to go and get his pistol when the basement door flung open and men with guns came running down the steps, shouting, “Gotham City SWAT! Down on the ground! Down on the ground, now!”

“What…I don’t…?”

They moved towards him, MP5 submachine guns aimed.

Terrified, Lionel’s feet froze to the floor. As they approached, he felt something warm spread between his legs. He continued peeing himself even as they pushed him to the floor and cuffed him. As he was dragged off the floor and read his Miranda rights, it slowly started to dawn on Lionel what had happened, why the others hadn’t been responding in chat, and what it all meant. No…no, please, not all of us. Please, no. We were so careful. It can’t be. How did we screw up? How?

He continued asking himself that question as he was flung into the back of a squad car and driven to an undisclosed location.