CHAPTER 25

Nothing had been left to chance. Everything had been arranged perfectly for the move. Off-duty police officers, who had volunteered to stand guard in shifts ever since the attack, now stood at the front, side, and rear entrances of Gillian Loeb Memorial Hospital. Extra teams of executive protection experts had been hired to come in and control the crowds out front. Already, two teams had run through the throng of reporters and protestors demanding the clown’s head—the two teams had been guarding a false Joker, one of their own teammates hobbled in chains and bent over with a coat thrown over his head and a Kevlar vest strapped to him. That was just the first of the decoys.

It was a sunny, cloudless day. The black, armored sedans were pulled around for each of the decoy teams, and auxiliary teams were waiting on standby for the final deployment.

About seven miles away from GL Memorial, police helicopter pilots were being briefed by the operations duty officer. The ODO went over the map of the area again and again on a seven-foot-wide 3D display, zooming in so that they could see the trouble spots where snipers might be in hiding. Two helicopters would circle the area while one remained hovering directly over the hospital itself, all three of them equipped with advanced surveillance systems.

On the ground, there were three main circles of security. The outer ring was less visible, and it consisted of the CSA team (counter sniper advance), spotters, and undercover officers walking through the crowds, all of them up to a mile away from the hospital itself. The secondary circle was far more visible, including uniformed police and even firemen, all of whom surrounded the hospital. The inner circle of guards were those closest to the terrorist himself, including men in dark suits and glasses talking fast to one another on earpieces and cufflink mics.

The threat assessment had actually been ranked only around mid-level—obviously some people wanted him dead, but it was believed that Roy Higgens was a fluke (a terrible, tragic fluke). Therefore, all teams were advised to remain on Condition Orange.

* * *

DR. KEVIN GODFRIEND stood in the room with the armed officers by the door while two other officers and a large male nurse guided the Joker out of his bed, and under careful watch they pulled the straitjacket over him. Godfried watched with intrigue, and noted how the Joker remained completely docile throughout, even sitting up straight and breathing deeply as they strapped him up and buckled him in.

Beside Dr. Godfried, the woman from Arkham Asylum was here—at least, she had been. She had come to ensure that her patient had all that he needed in terms of care, but now, once he had the straitjacket on and they were finally going to release the real Joker, she had vanished. Godfriend looked around for her, but she wasn’t outside in the crowded hallway, nor was she in the break room. He whispered to one of his nurses, “Where did Dr. Quinzel go off to?”

The nurse shrugged. “I don’t know. You want me to go look for her, Doctor?”

He shook his head. “No, it’s fine.” It’s probably best she’s not around, he thought, but didn’t say. The young psychiatrist gave him the creeps, and Godfriend wasn’t used to getting the creeps from anyone, much less another healthcare professional. One of Quinzel’s eyes had been red and swollen, but it might only have been from the previous eye injury she’d had the first day he met her.

“Stand up,” one of the officers said, stepping back and waving him up. The Joker did as bidden. “Mr. Doe, we are about to go ahead and take you out of here. Do you understand?”

For a moment, nothing happened. The Joker didn’t move. The guards watched him and a couple of them exchanged wary glances. Then, finally, he nodded.

“Now turn around.” The last of the straitjacket’s buckles had been fastened. “All right, walk out into the hallway. Slowly. We have a wheelchair just outside waiting on you.”

Again, the Joker did as he was told. He moved slowly, and in an obviously weakened state, with one guard on each side of him holding his elbows. The injuries he’d sustained could have been worse but for a fluke, and Dr. Godfriend found himself, for once, wishing they’d been a bit worse. The Hippocratic Oath be damned in this case, the clown deserved to die, and if the injuries had been bad enough to hide the truth, then Godfried felt fairly certain that he would’ve allowed Nature to take its course and claimed later to have done all he could.

“Trout Two, this is Trout Four, we’re coming out now,” said one of the dark-suited men into his cufflink. Something must have been said back to him, because he touched his earpiece and said, “Roger that, we have Barracuda.”

Dr. Godfried knew that the Joker, along with all the various impersonators they had used today, had a codename. There were still three other teams with fake Jokers ready to exit simultaneously, so as to confuse any other would-be assassins. Every codename was different—the group exiting out the east entrance had a false Joker named “Cobalt”, while the team exiting out the back had a false Joker named “Stinger”. Which way each team would eventually leave had only been decided seconds ago, just before Dr. Quinzel had suddenly vanished.

Why would she disappear now of all times? Godfriend wondered. Now he was a little more curious. He was growing frustrated at the thought of all these young medical professionals these days, and how they had no real sense of urgency or responsibility as they had in his day.

The Joker eased into his wheelchair, grunting. The man pushing the chair was a nurse, and the chair was surrounded by big in a diamond-shaped formation.

They marched down the hall, Dr. Godfriend right behind them. He would be with this particular patient right up until the moment he walked out the west exit of the hospital. While the Joker appeared enfeebled, the officers in charge of him seemed to believe that he could be faking, and said that the clown had shown a remarkable resistance to all pain in instances where he had even mutilated himself—in fact, for this very reason, the officers had advised all of Godfried’s staff to never let their guard down in front of him.

Cops swarmed around the undeserving monster, and were joined by more as they went down the hall. They fanned out near the elevator, where the doors were kept ajar by an officer holding it open with his arm. When they got into the elevator, Godfried stood to one side, while six officers piled in to smother him in the corner on the other side. None of them had guns, only Tasers, but Godfriend had been assured that that was for the best—if the Joker managed some kind of escape from his bonds, it was better that he didn’t have access to firearms when the elevator came to the bottom.

The ride down was mostly silent. But Dr. Godfried thought he caught the light, familiar sounds of a child’s titter, kept just below the clown’s breath. He might’ve imagined it, but he didn’t think he had.

There was a slight scare while going down when the lights flitted on and off for a second. One time, they stayed off for a full three seconds, and the elevator slowed down. Then, the lights came back on and the ride continued normally. “That was weird,” asked one officer. He looked at Dr. Godfried. “That happen often?”

The doctor shook his head. “Never.”

“Hm.” No one mentioned the phenomenon again.

When the elevator doors opened again, another team waited to receive them, and escorted them towards the west wing.

* * *

YOU CAN’T DO this, you’re not good enough, she told herself. The truth was right in front of her. She could barely put the large garbage truck into reverse. Harley remembered completely how to drive a stick shift from her lesson, she was just too nervous. She looked down at her bare legs, which were shaking uncontrollably. She was dressed in nothing more than a white button-up shirt and her panties. Where had her pants gone?

HARLEEN!

It was Daddy again. He had returned. Just when she’d thought she was rid of him, too. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t…

Harley cleared her thoughts. Right now, there were no ants crawling all over her, and she was finally herself again. The medication had helped. Yet still, even with the schizophrenia temporarily abated, she still saw random streaks of color and generally felt elated whenever she thought about being with Mr. Jay. These streaks sketched themselves across the walls, while at the limits of her periphery small, twinkling lights heliographed and danced, each one owning a personality all its own.

Harley was bathed in the silken bliss of euphoria. Nothing could ruin it.

Until now.

The thing that dampened her spirits was the suddenness of the reality of the situation, of how monumentally impossible it was to do what she was about to try to do.

But I love him, I can’t turn back now.

And that was where her hopes stemmed from. Love. Love conquers all. Her mother and her favorite aunt had told her that. Also, it was in all her favorite movies.

Still, Harley had to contend with what we all must face whenever we come close to seeing a dream realized. Most people turn away at the last second, afraid of failure, afraid of having all hopes dashed. A fantasy is so perfectly formed and utterly uncorrupted in one’s mind. Sometimes, many times, it was better, and so much easier, to just sit back and think of the perfect dream that might’ve been, instead of daring to try and see if it can be.

HARLEEN!

“Shut up,” she hissed all at once. “You don’t control me. You don’t deserve me. Only Mr. Jay deserves me. Only Mr. Jay has what it takes to…to…earn me.”

Harleen Francis Quinzel! her mother shouted. You turn that truck off this instant! Come here and talk to me! Your father and I have been worried sick about you! You’ve made a lot of mistakes recently, and we need to talk this over. As a family.

“Family, Mom?” she laughed, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You want to talk to me about family now? Well, I gotta say, Mom, now’s a helluva time to start opening up to—”

Harleen Francis—

“No, you LISTEN TO ME!” she growled to no one but herself and the fluffy dragon that someone had hung from the roof of the garbage truck’s cab (had she done that?). “I’m free. I’m free of you, I’m free of Dad, I’m free of that bitch Kingsley and her questions, I’m free of Dr. Bates and the way he looks at me—I’ve seen how he looks at me, but I like how Mr. Jay looks at me better! And I think Mr. Jay has more interesting things to say, Mom! He doesn’t lecture me! He talks to me! What’ve you ever done besides side with Dad, even after what he did to me?!”

Don’t you blame your father, Harleen! Your father has a sickness. It couldn’t be helped by normal—

“You helped him,” Harley hissed. “You made excuses for him. Now…now look at us. Look at our family!”

Silence.

Neither her mother nor her father seemed to know how to argue with that. Of course, it was because they couldn’t.

Harley saw brighter streaks of color cascading in her vision, and while she felt a migraine starting just behind her eyes and spreading to the back of her skull, she unconsciously pressed the clutch and reached for the stick shift. She knew the timeline for today’s transfer of Mr. Jay. She knew because she was his legal guardian, Mr. Jay was in her custody, and legally neither the city’s government nor the federal government could keep her out of the loop. She had to be with him every step of the way.

She’d known about Mr. Jay’s transfer since the night before last, when it was disclosed to both her and Dr. Bates via private conversation in their offices at Arkham. The night before, Harley had driven the garbage truck under one of the bridges that connected the parking garage to Rupert Avenue. She had parked it there and set orange cones all around (the cones she’d purchased two days before at McNeil’s Hardware), and had slept in the cab of the truck. Surprisingly, the garbage truck hadn’t been moved, such was the subtle power of orange cones, making an object appear to have some kind of official clearance when it really had nothing of the kind.

Power outages had been happening all night, some of the streetlamps switched on and off as she’d slept in a ditch down the street. Harley had seen them, wondering what was going on. This morning, she’d seen the lights on the underground garages around her flickering on and off. She didn’t know what this meant, but she took it as providence, an omen, a good one.

Harley ran over the cones as she came out from under the bridge. Up the road behind her, in the opposite direction that she intended to go, a roadblock had been set up. She was within the police perimeter, just as planned. She looked in the side rearview mirror, and saw that a couple of cops had started jogging behind her, waving their arms.

In the seat next to her, Harley had two Glocks, a deer rifle, and a revolver. The revolver and the deer rifle had been a gift from her father, something to keep his daughter safe at night in the big city, he’d said. She got the Glocks from an evidence locker at Arkham, from the accumulated contraband found in the cells throughout the years—gun parts smuggled in bit by bit, to be assembled later by one inmate or another.

She reached over, and picked up the revolver, a Colt Anaconda .44 Magnum. The thing was heavy to her small hands. These things were meant for men to fire, she understood, but they did just as much damage in a woman’s hands.

* * *

LIEUTENANT TERRY MCADAMS saw it first. The garbage truck had come out from underneath the bridge that connected off-ramp roads such as Rupert Avenue to Hixon Street, which had the two-deck parking garage that was supposed to be closed off. In fact, it had been closed off for the last twelve hours, ever since they got the go-ahead that the prisoner transfer was going to happen today.

He hollered over to Officer Wesley Hurtz. “Hey! I thought you guys cleared the whole deck area!”

“We did,” Wesley said, spinning to look at the garbage truck heading away from them and towards the hospital. “That thing was just parked empty underneath the bridge!”

“You didn’t check to see why it was parked there?”

“I didn’t think…it had orange cones around it and I thought they were working—”

“Christ!” He ran after the truck. “Hey! Hey! Hold it! Stop!” He turned to run to his squad car, and Wesley was jumping in his own.

* * *

NIGEL SCHMIDT AND Rebecca Norquist stood waiting just outside the west wing of GL Memorial. Rebecca had the door open and ready to receive the prisoner on the small, isolated street. Nigel spoke into his cufflink, and said, “We’ve got Trout Four coming out with Barracuda right now. CAT in position?”

“Yes, sir,” came the response from Sergeant Andrew Morgan, who was in charge of the counter assault team. His own overwatch post was on the third floor of the neighboring building, which was a law firm that housed Montgomery-Lynch & Associates.

“TSA scan complete?” he asked.

The head of the technical security advance team, which coordinated all explosive searches, room sweeps, mail and package examinations, answered back, “Yes, sir. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Had a van try to cut through here to avoid traffic on Peachtree Street, but I turned him away at the barricade. Also, there are some power outages happening all around us, but command post says that’s happening all over the city, entire blocks switching on and off, so we’re okay here for now.”

“Copy that. Keep your eyes peeled, I have Barracuda coming to me right now.”

The sliding doors parted, and out came a team of a dozen highly trained officers and E.P. professionals in a tight diamond formation. At the nucleus of them was the most hated man in all of America, sitting in a wheelchair and looking about meekly. Nigel turned around and nodded to Rebecca, who tapped twice on the car to tell Erik in the driver’s seat to get ready. He pulled the car out of park just as the team covering the Joker was coming down the side steps, halfway to them.

Then, all of a sudden, a voice came over his earpiece. “Schmidt, this is McAdams on Brunswick! You got a big frickin’ garbage truck headed right your way!”

He turned to Rebecca and held up a hand, but the look on her face said that she was hearing the call, too. “Say again, McAdams. What was—?”

Several things happened all at once. There was the sound of glass shattering and aluminum crunching, and tires screeched as a big green garbage truck hung a right turn as tightly as it could, nearly fishtailing as it slammed into a parked car up the street, knocking over the parking meter, spilling quarters onto the street before it clipped a lamppost. Everyone instinctively ducked as the first shots were fired out through the windshield of the truck, which had its lift prongs lowered and extended outwards like horns.

“Take cover!” he shouted to Rebecca. Both of them leapt to take cover behind the tires of their sedan.

Snipers fired at the garbage truck, but only one of them went through the windshield. It didn’t seem to hit the driver, because the truck took on greater purpose as it came roaring towards them.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

It had all happened so fast, and everyone was so stunned in that moment, that almost nothing had been done to defend the prisoner. Shots were fired from the truck itself, but they weren’t well aimed. Still, the shots had gotten everyone’s head down enough that the diamond around the clown faltered for just a moment.

And that was all the clown needed.

Nigel’s guts sank as he watched in horror as the Joker suddenly leapt out of his wheelchair, sped through his wall of protectors, plowed through them in their moment of stunned inaction and tumbled the rest of the way down the steps. By the time he hit the ground, his arms were already free of the straitjacket he was in, and somehow he managed to stand up out of it, his feet stomping on the slack of the sleeves as he pulled it off.

And when the Joker’s head and body came out, his face looked invigorated, like a man who’d been trapped underwater finally coming up for air. Two of the men who’d been meant to protect him were immediately upon him. He kicked one in the shin just as a bullet from the approaching garbage truck clipped the other one. “Thanks for the room an’ board, fellas!” he shouted, cackling. Nigel saw the clown’s big, twisted smile as he leapt over the sedan’s hood, laughing like the maniac he was and bolting into the road, on a collision course with the garbage truck. He didn’t even appear injured. In fact, he looked like a man running a marathon, moving with such stunning alacrity that it not only took Nigel by surprise, but visibly shocked Rebecca, as well.

The police snipers, stationed in windows and on rooftops all around GL Memorial had their attention on the garbage truck, and so didn’t yet fully realize that the man running up the street in the red jumpsuit was the man who they couldn’t allow to escape.

Nigel didn’t think, he only acted. He couldn’t allow this to happen! Not again. Gotham City wouldn’t survive another rampage from the likes of him. He rose to his feet, took careful aim, and squeezed.

Just as he did, a bullet hit him in the center of the head, and he knew nothing else. The last thing he saw was what appeared to be a woman, one with a painted face, though slightly familiar-looking, sticking her head and half her body out of the garbage truck’s driver’s side window and firing directly at him.

* * *

“I GOT ’IM, snoogums!” Harley shouted as the door flung open and her love came in to embrace her. Only he didn’t embrace her. He snatched up the two Glocks in the seat beside her as though he’d known they would be there, and ducked his head behind the dashboard as he fired wildly out the passenger side window, now shattered by a hail of bullets.

“I can see that! Now drive, witch!” he shouted.

And Harley did so, but only with the temerity brought on by the greatest love. She had slowed the truck down to what she had deemed a reasonable speed for him to jump on, but now pressed the gas to the pedal. The road on this side of the hospital was slightly downhill, so they picked up speed fast, smashing into a patrol car at the next intersection that had been coming around the corner, no doubt to answer the gunshots that could be heard for blocks around.

“We did it, Mr. Jay! We did it!” she screamed.

“Yeah, uh-huh!” he said over the roar of the police car that they had just finished plowing through. Its siren made a funny noise and he howled with laughter. He continued firing out the window long after both Glocks were empty. He finally flung the pistols to the floorboard and picked up the deer rifle.

“You like my face?” Harley shouted, tears streaming down her cheeks. She had applied a ton of white powder to her face, and a few creams, like the geishas wear. And she’d put on lipstick, a bit of dark eye shadow, just for him. “We can be in matching outfits, snoogums!”

“Yep!” he said, and aimed the rifle out the window to fire at a random pedestrian. They had made it two blocks away from the hospital, but were not yet beyond the police perimeter. They were just now coming to the first roadblock and he stuck his head out to fire repeatedly from the rifle.

“Just like Bonnie and Clyde, sweetie! Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

“Yep!” he said, firing just as the police at the roadblock started firing on them. They had just started trying to roll out the road spikes, but one of his bullets clipped the officer running out with them and they sped right along towards the lined-up patrol cars.

“Hang on, snoogums!”

Mr. Jay ducked his head back inside just as Harley took them through. With the truck’s speed now around sixty miles an hour and its lift prongs extended, they parted the cars like they were toys. Harley screamed, exulting in the moment, and laughing so hard she was crying. The tears were streaking the white powder and cream on her face, but she didn’t know, nor would she have cared if she had. She wasn’t just crying from laughter, but from the sheer joy of being with her love. We did it! We did it! We did it! We did it!

Mr. Jay, for his part, had only a slightly humored smirk on his face as he sat back up in his seat, and checked the deer rifle for more bullets. “Ammo?” he said.

“Huh?”

“Ammo!”

“Huh?”

“The shit you put in the gun to make it go boom!”

“Oh! Yeah!”

Mr. Jay just looked at her. “Well?”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I don’t have any!” Harley smiled sweetly at him.

The livid look on his face endeared her to him. It was the rage, the passion that had first attracted her to him. Mr. Jay dropped the rifle to the floorboard with the other guns, and then he pointed directly at her nose. “Get out.”

“What?”

“Get,” he said, reaching around her to open the driver’s side door, “out!”

“But where am I supposed to—?”

With a swift kick, Harley went flopping out of the truck’s cab while the truck was still going full speed. She barely managed to reach out and hang onto the door. She swung out, lifting her feet to avoid hitting a convertible as they sped down Milbury Road. Mr. Jay got into the driver’s seat, and slowed them down enough to turn the corner onto Lexington. Using all her strength, Harley climbed up higher on the door, and reached into her bra to extract the Walther PPK. Just as they hit Lexington, still dangling from the driver’s side door, she fired her first shot from the pistol, and it was directed at a man in a business suit hustling across the street.

“It’s a mad house!” Harley screamed. “A maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad house!”

The garbage truck clipped a car on its right side as Mr. Jay drove them down two more blocks before one squad car happened upon them. The car was coming right them, and might’ve avoided them if the garbage truck’s lift prongs hadn’t been down and extended. Mr. Jay turned the truck enough so that the prongs slammed into the side of the car, but the impact was enough to slow the garbage truck, and the squad car got caught in front of them, making it impossible to move.

All around, people were screaming. Pedestrians ran for cover. One of the policemen, the one from the passenger side, had actually been flung from his door.

Harley started losing her grip during the impact, and finally fell to the street just as the truck was coming to a halt. Mr. Jay dropped to the pavement beside her just as another squad car came zipping around the corner of Venice Lane. The sirens were still going as they screeched to a halt. Mr. Jay reached down and snatched Harley up by her hair, pressing one of the empty Glocks to her head. “Down boy, or I’ll shoot her!”

Harley screamed, “Oh, God! Stop him! Please! Please don’t let him kill me! Oh God!”

The two cops hopped out with guns drawn, and came out shouting at him. “Put the gun down! Drop it!”

“Back up, boys!” Mr. Jay shouted. “Just back it riiiiiiight on up!”

“Oh, God! Don’t let him kill me! Don’t!”

The cops started walking around him, trying to take up flanking positions. “Drop the gun! Right now, drop it! I’ll shoot—”

Then, all at once, Harley raised the Walther PPK, which she had hidden behind her back as soon as Mr. Jay had grabbed her. She had known what his plan was all along. They were a team, after all. They worked together. Now, she raised the pistol and fired at the cop to her right, and, as Mr. Jay dived for cover behind the destroyed police car, Harley dropped to the ground and fired at the other as he tried to draw down on her.

“Got ’im, snoogums!” she said, rolling over and pushing herself off the pavement.

After a few seconds, Mr. Jay peeked around the corner, and then, slowly, he stepped out, looking at their bodies. For a moment, he looked like he was going to stand there forever. Then, he looked up at her. Harley smiled. She had been smiling ever since her love jumped into the truck’s cab with her. She had been smiling when he kicked her out the cab, never doubting that he was trying to get to the driver’s seat as quick as possible to save them both.

“Will you love me?” she asked. The words leapt from her mouth before she had known they were coming, like so many of her words recently.

More sirens were approaching. The two of them stood there for a moment. All at once, Mr. Jay’s head jerked, and he looked up at the sky. A helicopter could be heard approaching. Harley looked up and around, but when she looked back Mr. Jay was gone. She ran around the garbage truck, and spied him dipping into an alley.

* * *

“WE’RE CALLING IT the Tango armor,” Lucius said, as they stepped out of the elevator and into the subbasement, where many of the products of R&D projects were stored, locked, and catalogued. “It’s a prototype, like the STACS was, and I’ve worked on it personally over the last two years. The U.S. government is now using this kind of technology, but so far it’s completely utilized on heavy-weapon-bearing vehicles.”

Bruce followed right behind him, both of their heels clicking on the marble floor, and their voices echoing across the mostly empty expanse. “I guess that means it’s fairly expensive,” he said.

“You’d be right in that guess, Mr. Wayne,” Lucius said, glancing at him and smirking. “Nearly fifteen million dollars just for one suit of this tech. That’s why so far the government is only buying a few of the prototypes, so that they can attempt to engineer it themselves, only for cheaper. We have an understanding with them and a few British scientists who are helping us develop Tango, and that agreement is more or less that we all share whatever breakthroughs we come across in our research of this tech, as long as we keep it all top secret. So far, Wayne Enterprises has done more to develop Tango than any of the others involved in the project.”

They moved around the numerous shelves, passing by several vehicles that had been built basically just so some of the tech could be shown off at last year’s Technology Expo in New York, Los Angeles, Metropolis, and Gotham City. The cars could drive to destinations while obeying all the stoplights and traffic laws, and advanced motion trackers and collision-avoidance systems prevented them from running over anything in the road that was larger than a cat. The cars would all be disassembled soon, and the parts recycled into other projects within the year, and Bruce would probably use some of the tech to create a brand new autopilot for his next batmobile version—if there was a next version.

Another row of shelves held robot parts, and there was even a small gallery where WE’s robotic personal assistants (RPAs) were standing upright, plugged to a wall and recharging. Bruce had tested these robots out himself, using them to help clean around Wayne Manor, but ultimately he hadn’t kept them since any strange thing they saw, they recorded, and if a hacker were to get a hold of the memory banks of any bot servicing his house, then many of Bruce’s secrets could be revealed instantly.

If the Riddler doesn’t do it first, he thought. At the back of his mind, he had been worried that Nygma might just go ahead and reveal his secret, but it seemed he truly did value having the secret all to himself. For now, at least. Bruce wondered how much longer that would last.

As they walked, Bruce winced with every few steps. He kept his right hand in his pocket to minimize the swinging motion of his shoulder, but there was little to be done about the muscles in his right leg, which were swollen and heavily bruised from the previous night’s run-in. Alfred had urged him not to leave his bed today, and Bruce should probably have listened to him, but his usual tenacity (and obsession) had gotten the better of him. Unable to get his last discussion with Gordon and Essen out of his mind, Bruce had been restless, and once again did the opposite of what most people would have done in his situation. He’d taken a mild painkiller since the strong variety would’ve put him off his game, and then gone back to work on Gotham City’s crime problem.

“Here it is,” Lucius said, coming to a small vault about the size of an average closet. He put his thumb on a sensor, and then spoke his full name into a panel beside the door. A second later, the door slid open. And then, the lights went out. A second later, they came back on. “They’ve been doing that all morning,” Lucius said. “All across the city. I heard on the news they think it’s another hacker attack.”

Bruce nodded. He’d heard that, too. What most Gothamites wouldn’t know was that it was the Riddler who had done the same thing only a few nights ago, and therefore it was likely him again. This time, Bruce hadn’t found any obvious messages disguised in Morse code, at least not on any of the streets where he had clearly seen power outages happening. It was also just a little after noon, and the blinking of lights wouldn’t be that obvious until nighttime.

The suit that Lucius was lifting out of its case was a little bulky, but he had assured Bruce that most of that was just extra protection to keep the suit’s sensitive parts from gaining any dust, air, or water damage over time.

The 77/p Tango armor had an interesting property. It could disintegrate high-velocity projectiles once they interacted with a magnetic field generated around it. Once the magnetic field detected the incoming projectile, the suit’s internal computers alerted the tech to prepare to dissolve the projectile. In an instant, the suit was ready to defend itself. Tango functioned off of the high-voltage charge from his batteries. When an incoming object penetrated the plates, it closed the circuit to discharge the capacitor (which had been readied by the magnetic field disturbance), dumping a great deal of energy into the penetrator, which vaporized parts of it and turned the rest into a plasma, significantly diffusing the attack.

This was a better option than another kind of deflective armor that Lucius had offered Bruce some years ago, a kind that had used a gyroscopic electromagnet to deflect bullets. A problem with that had risen when the deflected bullet had hurt someone else. He had returned the suit to Lucius, telling him that he was willing to put his own life on the line to do what needed to be done, but not anyone else’s. The Tango armor here wouldn’t deflect, but would almost completely disintegrate incoming projectiles.

“When you remove some of these outer plates,” Lucius was saying, just as the lights dimmed again, “you’ll be free of some of the extra bulk. But I’m afraid it’ll be tough to fit much more tech into any suit that supports a lot of other systems. Not if you still want dexterity and efficiency of movement.” It was his way of telling Bruce he had a decision to make: it was either the Stacksuit technology or Tango, both couldn’t fit in the same batsuit without making it cumbersome, or at least clumsy in tight spaces.

“I understand,” he said. The STACS had been very helpful, and without it he would’ve died in that silo at Parnes Industries, no doubt. But, unfortunately, Batman was now far more likely to run into hoods carrying advanced weaponry than he was to come across another elaborate deathtrap. Gordon and Essen were closing in on the Penguin, and therefore Ngyma wouldn’t be far behind.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Just this morning he’d read the headline on GCN concerning Mayor Walden’s accusations against Jim Gordon. Things weren’t looking so hot, but they still had the FBI on their side. At least some things are still in our favor.

“Are you sure this tech works?” he asked Lucius.

“Oh, it works just fine. It’s got a limit of the number of impacts it can take, but it should be fine unless you’re just standing in front of a gun turret, which would eventually eat away at the armor. The price tag is the only thing keeping it from going into widespread production,” Lucius said. “It’ll probably never see the light of day, but you know as well as I do that R&D is usually meant to open new horizons—some of the technology in the Tango armor will undoubtedly show up in other products from Wayne Enterprises years from now, but for now it’s just collecting dust.”

“So, then, this is a piece of tech that could go missing for a while without anyone noticing?”

Lucius shrugged. “Can’t guarantee that,” he said. “But it’s been a while since any of our teams have worked on it.”

Bruce had a large suitcase at his side, one that was supposed to be filled with equipment he was taking for spelunking over the weekend—he carried it around the office enough that people in the building were used to seeing him with it. He unzipped it and helped himself to Tango’s pieces. One by one, he set the pieces carefully inside. Portions of the armor were still in delicate stages of construction, but Bruce had the interlocking ceramic plates to cover those portions back at the cave.

When he was finished and had zipped up the luggage bag, Bruce reached into his left pocket and withdrew a USB key. “I have a serious favor to ask of you, Mr. Fox.”

“You mean this wasn’t a serious favor?”

Bruce smiled. “These power outages are no coincidence. I think someone has serious control over Gotham Light and Power, and GL&P are probably going to try and keep it from being public knowledge for as long as they can, but I don’t think their secret will last longer than twenty-four hours.”

Lucius looked at the USB key in Bruce’s hand. “And so…”

“And so, when they go public, I think the tech support and computer security guys for Wayne Enterprises could be of great help. After all, we’ve dealt with hackers before,” he said, smiling. “I’d like you to offer your assistance when the time comes, and I want you to go into GL&P with a team of our best security experts. When you get close to one of the computers vital to their network, I’d like you to insert this USB key. And I’d like you to upload what’s on it to GL&P’s network.” Lucius started to reach for it, and Bruce pulled his hand away. “This is very serious, Lucius. If you get caught doing this, the implications for you are—”

“I think you and I are well beyond that, aren’t we, Mr. Wayne?” He held out his hand, and Bruce eventually handed it over. “Any computer vital to their networking, you say?”

“Yes. Just make sure you bring the USB key back. I’ll do the rest remotely.”

Suddenly, the power went completely out, and they were cast into total darkness for the better part of a minute. When the lights came back on, the two men stood looking at one another.

“Mr. Wayne, how serious are things for the city right now? In your professional opinion, I mean.” That meant in his opinion as a vigilante with his finger on the pulse of both Gotham’s criminal and law enforcement communities.

“About as serious as they’ve ever been, I’d say.” They started back to the elevator, and halfway there Bruce’s phone buzzed. It was Alfred, and he had texted him a link to the headline news on GCN. Bruce expected to see more upsetting news about Walden or Gordon, or that some other development in the Riddle Killer investigation had splashed into the public eye, or even that another hit piece had been done on the Batman. What he saw instead caused him to stop just short of stepping into the elevator with Lucius. “No,” he whispered.

FIVE DEAD AND TEN INJURED IN DARING MIDDAY JOKER ESCAPE!

“Mr. Wayne?”

“No,” he said again. Bruce’s world sank. All his previous hopes to ensnare the Riddler and bring him to justice were instantly depleted.

The story said that an unknown person, believed at present to be a woman, had rammed a garbage truck through police barricades and smashed through half a dozen squad cars to get to the Joker, just as he was being brought out of Gillian Loeb Memorial Hospital. Halfway to the transport, the garbage truck had made a daring, and desperate, push to get to the prisoner. The driver had reportedly fired from the window, hitting a couple of officers, and the Joker had managed to get in during all the chaos.

Three cops had been killed in a head-on collision with the garbage truck, two others were shot dead, while several more were badly injured.

“Mr. Wayne?” said Lucius from a thousand miles away.

“No…no…no, no, no, no, no.”

* * *

“HEY, MR. JAY, wait up!” Harley cried. She was huffing and panting after having chased him for five blocks. Mr. Jay had ducked into an underground parking garage, and was now dipping between cars and generally paying her no mind.

All around them, they could hear the echoes of sirens wailing from one end of the city to the other. It sounded as though the whole world had become a siren. Harley, sobbing for fear of being left alone, ran as hard as her little bare feet would allow her. A stitch was in her side from the constant push. “Mr. Jay! Please!” He just kept moving. He’d already unzipped his red jumpsuit and pulled the top portion off, tying the sleeves around his waist and glancing over his shoulder at her, looking annoyed. “Mr. Jay!”

All at once, he halted. Then, he turned around and looked at her. Mr. Jay stood about thirty feet in front of her, hardly panting, while Harley was wheezing. For a moment the two of them just exchanged uncomprehending stares, until finally he started walking towards her. He came at her in a slow, methodical fury. There was a shard of glass in his hand—Harley didn’t even know where he’d gotten it, perhaps from the broken windows of the police cars?—and he raised it when he was just two steps away from her.

“I’m your harlequin!” she cried. “Your Harley…Quin!” He reached out and snatched her by her hair, and twisted her head sideways, putting the glass shard to her neck. “Get it? It’s…a joke!”

The shard went into her neck, but stopped just an inch inside. Harley went limp in his hands, giving herself to him. “I’m…I’m your Harley Quin…” She sniffled, not realizing until now that she was crying. “Please,” she said. “Please…please love me.” She closed her eyes as she felt the shard slide deeper into her neck.

Then, slowly, she felt the grip on her head ease. Harley opened her eyes, and looked deeply into Mr. Jay’s eyes, those that looked green on some days and blue on others. He drank of her, and she of him. Harley wanted to utter poetry, as silly as that was, but she couldn’t. Her heartbeat must have been close to killing her. She felt…light. She felt alive. She felt like she was floating and living and laughing and crying at the sheer ecstasy of it all.

Harley looked at Mr. Jay’s scars, and not just those on his face. Some were small, others were great, most were invisible. She reached out to touch them.

A few moments passed while sirens whined outside the parking garage. The whole world was going crazy outside of them. Meanwhile, a man and a woman gazed at each other.

She saw his hands suddenly moved. One hand grabbed her by her chin and turned her face away so that she couldn’t see what he was doing. Then, she felt the glass shard enter her face. It started at the left side of her mouth, and cut deeply into her, almost giving her the full Glasgow smile he was known for. She felt blood fill her mouth and pour down her throat, while blood also spilled down her neck and onto her white button-up shirt.

“Thank you,” she whispered tearfully, blood still spilling out of her face.

After a few seconds, he released her. Mr. Jay walked away from her and swiftly put his foot through the window of a red Toyota Camry. No alarm went off. While Harley bled from her branding, she watched her love hotwire the car. He got inside, and was about to shut the door when he paused and looked back at her. “I’m not gonna wait around all day.”

Her vision was clear. There were no more ants or strange streaks of color. Harley ran around to the passenger side and hopped in with Mr. Jay, and she never heard either her mother or her father again.