CHAPTER 26
Scarcely believing what had transpired within the last twenty-four-hour period, Jim Gordon sat in his parked, having just heard the breaking news over the radio. Never before had such a convergence happened. He didn’t even know which issues should be addressed first, which demanded most of his attention. The Joker had escaped, initiating a citywide manhunt that frighteningly mirrored the one that had been conducted during his initial run, what many in the press had dubbed his “reign of the city.” A perimeter had been established for a twenty-block radius around Gillian Loeb Memorial Hospital.
The daring getaway had captured both national and international headlines, the whole debacle underscoring precisely what was wrong with Gotham City at this point in its history. Meanwhile, Gordon was answering phone calls from the press and from colleagues, asking him if what Walden was saying about him was true. At the same time, his wife was due to meet him later at their house, and there were at least two news vans parked outside of his home, the reporters waiting inside to ambush him and demand to know what he was doing about the Joker.
Gordon had parked a block away from his house along a sidewalk, and then walked to his house. He came in through the back way, hopping over the fence between his house and his neighbor’s, and made it inside without having to face the reporters.
When Jim Gordon entered his home, the first thing he did was to go on high alert because he flipped the light switch to the kitchen and nothing happened. No lights, no power. Then he recalled the stories of the power outages that had been going on all day, and the text he’d gotten from Sarah, warning him that she and her people believed this was the work of Edward Nygma—he was attacking the power grid again. Nygma had been officially upgraded from serial killer to terrorist in the bureau’s files, and Sarah had said she fully expected him to be at the top of the FBI’s Most Wanted list by the end of the week.
He rooted around in a kitchen drawer until he found the flashlight. Luckily, its batteries were charged and he managed to get upstairs to change his clothes.
While changing, Gordon got a text from his wife. He messaged her back, telling her that he had reconsidered their meeting, that now was not a good time at all to return to Gotham, especially with the kids. In fact, Gordon went so far as to tell Barbara that he was glad they had decided to leave, because she had been right, things were getting worse, and he told her so. He wrote to her: I love you more than you know, so stay away. He sent the text and decided he’d take a shower by propping the flashlight up on the toilet seat.
Fifteen minutes later he was leaving the house again, and receiving a text from Barbara: I want to come. We should talk. You shouldn’t be alone right now. My mother can watch the kids. Stay hopeful.
Gordon thought about giving her an order to stay right where she was, but he knew she would no more listen to him than when he was telling her not to go. His wife was stubborn. That was one of the reasons he’d married her.
Halfway back to his car, Gordon was discovered by one of the news vans roaming the area, probably looking for him sneaking around exactly as he was doing. The van pulled to a screeching halt, and all at once Tamira Dickens from GCN hopped out with a cameraman and a bright light. The two of them rushed him as he was getting within twenty yards of his car.
“Commissioner Gordon! Commissioner! Tamira Dickens, GCN! What have you got to say to the accusations Mayor Walden made against you today? Do you agree that you’ve been ineffectual in your duties and that you’ve been purposely ignoring him and his staff and their concerns? Do you think the Joker’s escape today confirms Mayor Walden’s assertions about your job performance? Could there be a link between the power outages Gotham is experiencing and the escape of the Joker earlier today? Did the power outages play a role in his escape? What is the FBI saying? Are you still collaborating with their offices? What are you—?”
Gordon opened his car door, and swept inside, nearly crushing the hand that had shoved the microphone into his face. Dickens continued shouting at him as he cranked his car and drove off. The light of the camera in his face created such glare that he could barely see, and the cameraman walked in front of his car (on purpose?) and very nearly got hit. No doubt they wouldn’t edit that part from tonight’s news story, and would make Gordon appear to be a loose cannon, literally out to run others over if they got in his way.
It’s all coming apart, he thought, his words to the Batman coming back to haunt him. He tried to stay hopeful, just as Barbara’s last message had advised him.
Gordon drove for thirty minutes until he came to the rendezvous point, where he was supposed to meet up with Sarah. He would ride with her to the surveillance point she had selected for both of them two hundred yards away from the drop-off point at Vincefinkel Bridge.
The rendezvous point was a pier out at One Port Trinity Place, about three miles away from the bridge. Gordon parked his car and hopped out, and walked over to Sarah who stood outside of her undercover surveillance van, which was driven by her assistant Gary Carlisle. She paid him no mind while she spoke to someone on the other end of a Bluetooth and checked weather reports on her smartphone. She nodded towards the van, suggesting he hop in.
They drove for two minutes before she wrapped up her conversation. Many of the streets were dark, while here and there power switched on and off in various neighborhoods. What is Nygma doing?
Sarah was in the front passenger seat, and spun around to talk to Gordon, who sat in the back. “Skies are clear, and we’ve got control of two satellites feeding us live images. I’ve got surveillance teams in place on the north and south side of the drop-off point, and Gotham Light and Power loaned us a utility service truck with a crane, so our people nearest the bridge will appear to be fixing a transformer.”
Gordon nodded. “Thanks for inviting me along, despite my current reputation,” he said. “I’m surprised you want to be seen with me at all right now.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic, Jim,” she said, winking her patented wink. “In another life, I might’ve married you, and I don’t have bad taste in men. In fact, I’m very picky, I only go for the best. That’s why I picked Gary to be my assistant when I got put in charge of the JTTF. That’s how I know you’re the real deal and Walden’s full of crap. Trust me, we’re gonna stop this madness before it has a chance to take hold.” Gordon laughed at that. “What’s funny?”
He looked at her. “Now you’re the optimist and I’m the pessimist.”
“We always did balance one another out. If you’re yin today, then I gotta be yang.”
Gordon turned and looked out the tinted windows, out at the cityscape. As they got closer to Vincefinkel Bridge, they cleared some of the crowded houses and the denser neighborhoods, and could see more of the city as it wrapped around the harbor. The power switched on for a few seconds in the City Hall District, and then switched back off. The most striking was the power cutting on and off very quickly at One Gotham Tower off in the distance. Like Christmas tree lights, he mused.
Not all districts were suffering from the power outages, but from here it was abundantly clear which ones were suffering the most. Gordon wondered about the safety of homes and businesses during such massive power outages.
Suddenly, the van took a turn down Charleston Way, whereas the quickest way to Vincefinkel Bridge would’ve been to take Pierce Street. But the reason they weren’t going anywhere near Pierce is because it connected to Jackson Street, where a riot of about forty people had been quelled only two hours ago. Most of those arrested had belonged to the Molehill Mob, two of them had been Suns, and the rest had been opportunists taking advantage of shattered storefront windows.
Gordon had been in constant contact with Chief Clay Chapman all day about that riot and two smaller ones near Park Empire. The power outages had taken out security alarms in most buildings in that area. With the city’s police so short-staffed and ill-equipped, the Mob and the Suns were kicking up a storm. The FBI’s cyber crime specialists had gone to Gotham Light & Power to try and undo whatever it was that together Parasyte and Nygma had implemented.
As if reading his mind, Sarah glanced back at him and said, “I took your request for more federal assistance to my bosses, and I’ve got authorization to bring in more agents, and the National Guard.”
“Thanks. That’ll be a big help,” he said. To himself, he thought, Not really. We’ll be lucky to keep this city from burning to the ground. He was thinking about the Joker, and knew that if the clown made contact with any of his old contacts that had supplied him with materials to make explosives and harbored him while on the run (to this day, Gordon suspected they had only a fraction of the Joker’s underworld hook-ups), then once he started in again on this scene of disarray that Nygma had meticulously created, there might be no stopping him.
In the worst nightmare scenarios, Gordon saw Gotham City becoming an embattled city like those of the Middle East, with too many complex issues and corrupted infrastructure for the government to sort out before the death toll skyrocketed.
“We can’t let that happen,” Gordon muttered aloud while looking out at the blinking lights of One Gotham Tower.
“You say somethin’, Jim?”
He shook his head. “No. Nothing.”
* * *
BATMAN STOOD AT the edge of the bridge, behind one of the large cables, looking like a man ready to jump to his death. He set his GTEM gun to the grappling hook setting, then fired it into the concrete beside his foot. He clipped the GTEM gun to his belt and swung over the side, letting his feet dangle below him.
His cape fluttered in the wind as a ferry coming out from Dixon Dock passed just beneath him. The bat waited for the ferry to pass, then lowered himself a bit more. Using his HUD, he surveyed the area beneath the bridge where the drop-off was scheduled to happen.
With night-vision and zoom enabled, Batman spotted various discarded cans, a shoe, and an empty and overturned shopping cart. The grass around the bridge’s base hadn’t been kept up very well, but it hardly needed to be—grass wouldn’t grow here after a few hundred gallons of toxic chemicals had been dumped in this area by Yolanda Labs, a subsidiary of Parnes Industries that Batman had coincidentally helped to shut down, by recording their nocturnal dumping activities over a two-month period four years ago and handing the footage over to Gordon.
He dangled there for over an hour, just watching the large hill that ran down to Gotham River and listening to the cars swish by overhead. While waiting, Batman checked the GPS on his left gauntlet and made sure the Bat Hawk was still secure in the air, where he’d left it hovering at four hundred feet—the autopilot, hover mode, and collision-avoidance systems would keep the chopper safely out of sight and yet affixed to the same spot in the sky, only moving if another aircraft came on a collision course with it.
Suddenly, there was movement below. Batman zoomed in on the silhouette that had suddenly appeared from behind three trees that had been killed by Yolanda Labs’ dumping. He was a tall, thin fellow in a casual jacket and blue jeans.
Batman watched carefully as the tall man approached the area that had been both bugged and bated—mics were all over the underside of the bridge, and a wrapped package had been placed at the drop-off spot that Lionel Curran had arranged to meet the Riddler at, under duress from Gordon and Essen, of course. Batman watched as the tall figure approached the pile of rocks and picked up the package hidden behind a pile of shale rocks. The man then made a chalk mark on the wall, just as Curran had said he would, according to the details Gordon had left behind Glen’s Bakery earlier tonight.
The tall man took out another package from his jacket, and placed it behind one of the dead trees before scribbling an e-mail address in chalk graffiti on the underside of the bridge.
Over the radio frequency Gordon had told him to tune in to, Batman heard Sarah Essen make the call. “This is Eagle Eye, we’re seeing him on our cams, now,” she said, referring to any one of six small, bottle-cap-sized cameras they had stuck around the area. “He’s walking away, towards the Ostell Parking Garage. Grab Team B, you are closest, move into position to intercept.”
Batman was about to reel himself back up onto the bridge, figuring he wouldn’t be needed after all. Essen’s team was capable of handling it from here. He would return to the Bat Hawk, and monitor things from overhead.
However, just as he was about to reel himself in, he paused. A crackling sound like severe static came over his radio. “This is Eagle Eye,” said a woman’s voice, sounding almost pitch-perfect like the voice of the woman he’d just heard, only something was a little off about Sarah Essen in this transmission. “Repeat, this is Eagle Eye. We have eyes-on. Target is moving away from Ostell Parking Garage. Repeat, he’s moving away from Ostell Parking Garage, towards Malcolm Way.”
Batman instantly knew what was happening. He’s intercepting their transmissions, rerouting them, and sending his own. He has a voice disguiser, and he recorded Essen’s voice to modulate his own. He’s sending conflicting messages to the teams in the field.
How the Riddler had done this didn’t matter at the moment—Lionel Curran had warned them that something like this might happen—what mattered was that the Riddler had to be in relatively close range to jam and intercept Essen’s people’s transmissions.
Then, all of a sudden, Batman’s HUD drew a red halo around new movement it caught coming from his left periphery. He turned to look, and spotted a younger man with what looked like NVGs. The night-vision goggles were aimed at the retreating fellow who’d performed the dead-drop.
Batman zoomed in on this new figure emerging from behind a collection of tangled and dying bushes, knowing instantly that he wasn’t one of Gordon’s or Essen’s people just by the way he moved. It wasn’t clandestine at all. It was unskilled, unprofessional movement.
“Target is on the move,” Essen was saying. “Grab Team B, do you have eyes on target?”
Batman heard a scrambling noise again. More interference.
“Affirmative, Eagle Eye,” a deep, authoritative male voice answered. “We have the target in sight. Moving to intercept.” That didn’t sound right, either, there was some other strange background noise, and an unevenness in the voice. Another fake.
Batman acted quickly. He typed in a text message on his left gauntlet’s keypad, and sent it to Alfred, to have it safely re-sent to Gordon’s phone. It said: Riddler is hijacking your signals and confusing your team. They have no idea your target is headed for Ostell. You’ll have to pursue yourselves. I have another target in sight, going for him now.
Just as the other target was lowering his binoculars, Batman reached down and squeezed hard on the emergency release on his GTEM gun. All at once, the gun came away from his belt and reeled itself up towards the bridge while he plummeted. The bat sent the necessary electrical current through his gloves to expand his cape, and he soared towards the earth, carried very well on the breeze passing beneath the bridge. He would return for the GTEM gun later.
The target he was after was just now climbing the hill on the north side of the bridge. Batman swooped in low, going to IR imaging so that he couldn’t lose the heat signature. As he came within twenty yards of the ground he put his feet out in front of him, bent his knees, and braced himself for landing. Ten feet from the ground, he killed the current going into his gloves and cape. He landed in a roll he’d trained in urban freerunning, and then sprung to his feet. He was about thirty yards behind his target.
The target was approaching the crest of the hill. Batman bolted for him, casting all concepts of stealth to the wind. Just as the target was coming up onto the street, the bat’s gloved hand reached out, snatched him by the shoulder, and dragged him back down the hill and into the shadows of a thicket of briars that had grown stubbornly around the rest of the dead wood.
The man gasped, and turned to fight. He threw a punch, but the bat raised a quick elbow for the fist to run into. A loud crack signaled that at least one finger of the man’s fist had probably been broken on Batman’s elbow. But the suspect wasn’t done, he swung a haymaker directed at Batman’s head, but a perfect bob-and-weave motion took his head out of harm’s way, and when he stood back up he grabbed the idiot by his wrist and performed a wrist lock he’d learned in aikido before wrenching it harder and flinging the man to the ground. The suspect flopped onto his back hard, his breath coming out in a huff.
Batman pressed a knee into his sternum and said, “Don’t move.”
“Hey, man! What the—?”
He pressed his hand over the suspect’s lips. “And don’t talk.” He took a moment to look around him, to make sure he wasn’t being watched, while also patting the suspect down. He found the NVGs, a bag of marijuana, and a pistol, a Taurus .357 Magnum. Then, with a movement so fast he barely recalled doing it himself, Batman reached into his utility belt, withdrew the auto-injector, and put the man out. He stood up, and picked the man up—the effort of picking up a grown man would’ve hurt his injured shoulder, but currently Batman still had the STACS-equipped batsuit, so lifting the man was no chore at all.
The man he now had in a fireman’s carry was about six feet tall, maybe one hundred eighty pounds, Caucasian, blonde-headed, and somewhere in his mid-twenties. He didn’t fit the description of the Riddler, nor did he look like any thug Batman had come across or seen in his collection of police photos.
It was a short walk back down to the bridge, where Gordon, Essen, and the others were gathering around the area where they’d left their false package.
Gordon was the first to see him, emerging out of the greater darkness as he did. Batman stood behind him at just the right angle to catch his attention, without catching the attention of the other officers inspecting the area. Batman had left the suspect lying behind a set of trees, and walked away in the direction, indicating that the commissioner should follow.
A few minutes later, Gordon showed up with Essen. “I saw him go this way,” he was whispering. They both started when they rounded a set of dried tree trunks and a large sheet of aluminum, which had probably been a homeless person’s roof not too long ago, and found the bat standing there waiting on them. “What did you see?” Gordon asked.
Batman stepped to one side so that they could see the sleeping man on the ground behind him. Sarah walked over and knelt beside him, checking for a pulse. “He’s fine,” Batman said, holding out the items he’d found on him. The wallet had a thousand dollars in fifty-dollar bills, a driver’s license from Los Angeles, and a few condoms. “His name’s Travis Cohen. He’s from L.A. The ID doesn’t look fake, so I think that’s his real name.” Batman had an eye for forgeries.
Sarah Essen stood up, and took the wallet from him, examining the license.
“Well, at least you caught someone,” Gordon said. “We lost our guy.”
“Not your fault,” Batman said. “Nygma was monitoring your communications and sending back false orders to your teams. I can give you the audio recordings of what I picked up so you can hear it. He probably changed a few other commands that I didn’t to pick up on. He jammed and hijacked your frequencies, used voice disguisers to impersonate you, and gave your people the runaround while he probably directed your target to safety.” He nodded to the guy on the ground.
Gordon nodded. “That’s what all the grab teams are reporting, that they were given orders by Sarah to go in different directions. I was with her the whole time, and she never gave such orders.”
“Nygma probably has cameras of his own in this area, hidden all around.” He nodded, appreciating the adversary. “Curran wasn’t lying. Edward Nygma has a presence in Gotham unlike any I’ve ever seen before. He’s monitoring you, the police, but not by corrupt officers like the Falcones or the Joker did. He’s got highly sophisticated methods, he’s technically proficient with a variety of technologies.” He looked up at Vincefinkel Bridge, and then across the waters it traversed. “Cohen here was a lookout for his friend who came to pick up the package, and the Riddler could’ve been watching from anywhere.”
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“What do you think can we do about his technical proficiency?” Sarah asked.
“My suggestion now is that the FBI profilers expand his profile to include known missing persons from Gotham City with genius IQs and who had passionate, questionable beliefs—professors, engineers, university professors with extremist views, hackers for the military or NSA that got fired, et cetera. Shouldn’t be too hard, not after you start cross-referencing such unique, diverse skill sets. An expert hacker and a master engineer? Few people would have a facility for harboring so much knowledge and training. And it might help to include only people of close European ancestry in your profile search.”
“Why European?”
“His accent,” Batman said. “The few times I’ve heard his voice, it strikes me as faintly accented, perhaps an amalgam of Russian, Ukrainian, French, something like that. He once said to me mein freund, and in perfect pronunciation, so maybe there’s German there, too.”
“All right,” Essen said. Then, she cocked her head. “Here’s another question. How come you picked up on his fake transmissions but we didn’t?”
“My equipment is highly advanced,” he said.
The FBI agent raised an eyebrow, as if to ask if the suggestion was that the FBI was behind the Batman in technical proficiency. “Where can I get equipment like that?” she asked. Batman didn’t answer her.
Gordon changed the subject. “So, what’s this Cohen guy’s story, do you suppose?”
Batman said, “Let’s wake him up and find out.”
* * *
THEY TOOK COHEN to Precinct 7, which was the closest police station to Vincefinkel Bridge. The Batman didn’t tag along for obvious reasons. Instead, he had disappeared into the night, using an unknown mode of transportation after he left Jim Gordon and Sarah Essen to drag their prisoner back to the rest of the team.
When Travis Cohen woke up, he was incredibly fearful, and seemed to think he’d been abducted by members of the Mafia, which Gordon didn’t immediately dispel. Rather, he went with keeping quiet and letting Cohen assume a multitude of things while he sat there, cuffed to a steel chair, and squinting in the intense light aimed at his face. It only took a few minutes of cold questioning before the young man started opening up.
“I was just there to…to protect Brad,” he said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Who’s Brad?” Gordon asked.
“Brad…he’s Bradley. Bradley Feldhusen.”
“Spell that.” Cohen did, and then Gordon moved on. Under normal circumstances, a detective or professional interrogator might’ve been best to talk to Cohen, but they were so short on good help these days. “Who is Brad to you?”
“We’re…we’re in the Mob, together.”
“Molehill Street boys?”
“Yeah. Well, no. We’re not from Molehill Street, but we’re in the Mob, get it?”
“I get it. New recruits. What were you and Brad there to do?”
Cohen licked his lips. “I’m thirsty. Can I get a Coke?” Within thirty seconds, he had an ice-cold Coca-Cola brought to him from the soda machine outside. After he gulped the whole thing down, Cohen returned the can to the table timorously, and said, “We, uh, we went to pick up the package for Mr. Nygma. That is, I mean, Brad went to do the pick-up, I always just go along as backup for him in case…ya know, just in case.”
“I’m going to get right to the point here, Travis,” Gordon said, leaning forward. “Do you know where we can find either Bradley Feldhusen or Edward Nygma right at this moment?”
Cohen looked up, and for a moment he looked like he would stay true to the Mob and not snitch another word. However, he surprised Gordon when he said, “We were supposed to go to the house in Park Empire. If we got separated, I mean. A friend of ours lives there. That was my and Bradley’s agreed meeting place if something went wrong.”
“That’s good,” Gordon said, though he didn’t like the sound of this one bit. Chief Chapman had just contacted him again about larger riots reported brewing around Parkinson Avenue, and that mobs of people were moving around areas virtually unchecked. Bands of Suns and Mobsters were roving around, texting one another whenever the cops showed up on one street so that they could all migrate to rioting or partying on another street. “Which house?” Gordon asked.
“Two-two-four Belmont,” Cohen said without hesitation. “Can…can I have another Coke? And ain’t I supposed to get a lawyer or something?”
Gordon asked a few more questions, and then stepped out of the interrogation room to find Chief Chapman speaking conspiratorially with Sarah in a corner near the water cooler. Gordon walked over quickly and said, “Parkinson Avenue. We have to hit it now or our lead on the Riddle Killer may vanish tonight.”
Sarah sighed. “Slight problem, Jim,” she said. “Chapman here’s just informed me that the riots have picked up. Some nonsense got started on the Internet about these riots not being about gangs, but rather a long overdue lower-class uprising. Some B.S. about job loss, and some Molehill Mobsters started calling on others in their gang to come help them ‘stick it to the Man.’ Now, the riots have nearly tripled in numbers. We’re talking well over a thousand people in the street right now, some of them Suns and Molehill people, many of them armed and firing at squad cars when they see the flashing lights.”
Chief Clay Chapman nodded emphatically. “I’ve been up all night putting out small fires, but now fires are cropping up all over, I mean literal fires. The power’s out all over that area, too, and some popular blogger on the Internet found a way to blame the blackout on the government, saying they’re shutting them all out like after Hurricane Katrina, and the government and FEMA are about to put people into internment camps, or some nonsense. Then someone said it had to do with the Muslim Center attack somehow. People started Twittering all this stuff, and some people even came from one district over and joined in the riots. Park Empire’s a nightmare right now, Commissioner. Three buildings are on fire, but our fire trucks can’t get to them. The rioters are trashing any vehicles that get close” He shook his head. “This all just kick-started within the last hour. It came on so fast…” He shrugged, flopping his arms to his side and shaking his head his utter defeat.
Gordon was livid. He looked to Chapman. “Call in every SWAT officer we have, even if they’re on vacation! We need them in here with full riot gear! This is Nygma we’re talking about!” He looked at Sarah. “And tell your people in Washington to speed it up on that request for the National Guard, for God’s sakes! We can’t lose this lead on Nygma!”
The chief nodded curtly, and moved to obey.
As Sarah pulled out her cell phone, she said, “Oh, Jim Gordon, I like it when you get pushy!” Gordon gave it some more thought. He had another idea. He turned and walked away from her. “Hey, where are you going?”
“I’m gonna drive over to Precinct Fifteen.”
“Why?” Sarah asked.
“Why do you think?”
She called someone up and ran after him. “Hold on, I’m coming with you!”
* * *
THE BATMAN WAS halfway back to Wayne Manor when he caught the blinking light in the sky. The bat signal had only flashed like that a couple of times before, and it was Gordon’s message to him of an incredible emergency. It meant, if at all possible, meet him atop Precinct 15. If he couldn’t do that, then they would meet ASAP at their rendezvous spot.
The pain in his right shoulder had started to manifest itself in his awareness again. He had been looking forward to resting it, but it looked like Jim Gordon wasn’t through with him for the night.
Batman banked the Bat Hawk slowly to the southeast, and put it at its top speed. He’d be at Precinct 15 in about four minutes. He breathed deeply, and let it out slowly. Batman suppressed his pain once more, and became as focused as any committed soldier with a mission.
* * *
PARK EMPIRE HAD never looked so evil. The rioters had no real purpose, no uniformity, and no formal lines. They were just everywhere, scattered all about the landscape like cockroaches looking for sustenance. Or salvation, he thought, flying over them and seeing the fires that they had set and that some now stoked further. Six men were tossing furniture off of a furniture delivery truck into one fire, the flames licking out the windows and tasting the roof of a pawn shop.
The Bat Hawk swept over all of these eight blocks of turmoil, anger, and rebellion. Batman had seen spectacles like this before, and not just in Tehran and London, or in cities in Egypt and Syria, but right here in Gotham City. Only they weren’t like this. Dr. Jonathan “Scarecrow” Crane had developed a fear gas that had caused panic and mayhem, but it had been a chemically-induced madness, and it was over relatively quickly.
What the bat was seeing now were the people of Gotham, in all their natural, irrational, primal rage. Flash mobs, spurred on by text messages of unconfirmed rumors, were erupting in all corners of the district. He saw the people he had protected for several years now stepping over their unconscious neighbors, gutting an appliance store and removing TVs, computers, and car stereos. He saw his brothers and sisters turning against the law enforcement officers that had stuck it out when all other LEOs had called it quits on them.
He saw them. He saw them and thought of the Joker’s words to him. Their morals, their code…it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. I’ll show you. When the chips are down, all these civilized people…they’ll eat each other.
Batman ignored the cackles he imagined coming from the clown, and swooped the Bat Hawk low behind a series of shops that hadn’t yet been torched or smashed open. The tallest of them was a two-storey building, where he had opted to park the helicopter for the moment.
The streets were utterly black. Besides the fires that had been lit in various parked cars, in shops, and in random bundles of trash in the street, there was no light. Shouts were either from victims or were cries of exultation of the citizens’ rebellion; it was hard to tell which. A block away, he heard a police bullhorn shouting commands he couldn’t make out. Here, along Parkinson Avenue, the main strip of Park Empire, chaos had engulfed the community.
“DON’T MESS WITH THE MOB!” shouted one young punk victoriously, a moment before he threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of an apartment complex. Batman was perched on the roof of a townhouse adjacent to the apartment building. He pulled out his GTEM gun and flipped on the tazer setting, and then fired on the Molehill Mobster a second before he threw another one. The electrodes went into his right shoulder and he fell to the ground, the fire bomb in his hand rolling harmlessly away from him in a gutter.
Other rioters were around the Mobster, and saw him go down. They looked up just as the Batman glided down to the street level to handcuff the fire bomber. Batman had barely gotten the cuffs on the punk and retracted the electrodes to his GTEM gun before three Mobsters descended on him.
“What’s up, Bat?!” cackled the first to reach him.
He reflexively ducked the first punch and came up with a quick jab-cross-uppercut combination he’d learned from the late Gotham City boxing trainer Nathan Houston. Then, he formed the pensador around his head and slammed both elbows into the chest of the second attacker before he performed a perfectly executed side kick. The third assailant managed to reach an arm around his neck and jerked his head backwards, trying to choke him. The choke wouldn’t have mattered, because the stout, protective armor around his neck prevented any choke from being completed. However, the longer he struggled with this assailant the more he was hindered from defending against other attacks.
Batman kicked backwards, digging his heel into the assailant’s shin before raking downward and stomping his foot. Then, he pushed his butt backwards into the gangster’s pubic bone before he executed a classic judo hip throw. The assailant’s legs went flying over Batman’s head, and he landed on his back in a great huff.
The rioter that he hit with the pensador returned, and Batman quickly head-butted and hammerfisted him in the jaw. The guy was tough, and righted himself once more and came at him. Batman blocked a haymaker with a salute block and delivered an uppercut into the man’s stomach, bowling him over before he delivered a knee to his face, smashing the nose.
His right shoulder sang with pain from all the swinging, but he took two deep breaths and focused on his left shoulder, commanding it to share the healthy feeling it had with the right shoulder, a mind-over-matter exercise Cassandra had taught him.
Batman didn’t have time to cuff them all, or enough handcuffs to do it, so he quickly knocked them all out with a shot from the auto-injector before reclaiming his handcuffs from the fire bomber. He used his HUD controls to briefly check the small apartment for any signs of people inside the inferno. He found no one inside. Probably fled from the riots, he thought. Or out rioting themselves.
Batman pulled the fire alarm, which thankfully still worked on a backup power supply and activated the sprinklers, before he climbed back to the rooftops using the GTEM gun. He saw more thieves pulling food, sporting equipment, TV sets and computers from buildings, but he couldn’t stay here all night trying to quell a riot. Under any normal circumstances he would’ve helped, but unless he saw direct victimization or persons setting more dangerous fires, he had to focus on his mission: Bradley Feldhusen.
The meeting atop Precinct 15 with Gordon and Essen had been brief. They had told him what was at stake here, and he’d just started hearing about the riots going on along Parkinson Avenue and its surrounding neighborhoods. He knew he had many moral and ethical decisions to make tonight, not the least of which was when or if he should intervene when he saw something seriously wrong.
Gliding from building to building, and occasionally using the GTEM gun to elevate him to a higher perch, Batman had to ignore most of the crimes unfolding around him. Sounds of chaos erupted from every direction. Glass shattered as more storefronts were looted and one abandoned police car was overturned. Batman witnessed a mother carrying her infant in a child carrier on her back, and for a moment his cold, calculating, mission-oriented heart ached when he saw that she was among the looters.
The manic desperation was unlike anything he’d ever seen. Shouts of “Don’t mess with the Mob, baby!” went up all around him, and, of course, “Suns! Suns! Suns!” A fight broke out between a bunch of Mobsters and Suns in the streets below him. When he saw one of the punks pull out a gun, Batman tossed down a flash-bang grenade and two smoke bombs. Blinded and scared, they drew the only conclusion they could. “POLICE!” However, one person shouted, “IT’S THE BAT! IT’S THE BAT! MOVE IT, MOVE IT, MOVE IT!”
The fighters dispersed in all directions, and he glided on to the next building, using the GPS on his heads-up display to find what he’d come for: 224 Belmont Drive.
After he’d swooped over three more rooftops, Batman heard the unmistakable screams of a woman in terror. He zeroed in on the attack, finding a girl of about high school age being thrown against a dumpster with her blouse being ripped. Two men had dragged her to this secluded alley, and she was alone, because the riot had driven both cops and rioters blocks away.
The two attackers didn’t look armed, but that didn’t mean anything. Batman tossed down a smoke bomb between them, and in the confusion, while they hacked and coughed, he descended on them and smashed one of their heads against the dumpster before kicking the other attacker’s knee and face-tilting him to the ground, where he landed with a wet smack. The girl got up and ran, which was the smartest thing she could’ve done. A hit apiece from the auto-injector put her attackers out—if they were still here once she got help (either from police or her family), then that would have to be enough justice for now.
Batman ascended to the rooftops again, making his way to Belmont Drive.
Bradley Feldhusen would have to be crazy to return to Park Empire tonight of all nights, he thought as he glided across the street, passing over a car set ablaze. On the other hand, if Feldhusen has a friend that lives here, and he’s afraid enough of being caught, then he might feel that this is the safest place to be in the city at the moment. And he might be right, in his case.
Belmont Drive had been mostly untouched by the riots, although there were shattered windows on the fronts of a couple of townhouses, and one car had been overturned. The power was out around here, of course, not even a streetlight worked. Batman surveyed the scene in the monochromatic green of night-vision, and moved through the backyards of the neighborhood.
At 224, there was a light flickering upstairs. Candles, he thought. Then, there came a wavering light, which occasionally swept over the curtains of windows in the top floor of the house. And a flashlight. Batman watched the curtains part at least twice. Paranoid about the rioting, or paranoid that someone may be coming for you?
He slinked up to the back door, stepping around plastic tricycles and a kid’s slide. Using his directional microphone, he determined that there was no one on the other side of the door, however, he heard murmuring from someplace within. He removed the thin, lightweight triaxial cable out from his belt, and slipped it underneath to view footage from the fiber optic camera. No one was on the other side besides a dog—a Collie—which was fast asleep on the kitchen floor. Animals were only an occasional problem in his line of work, but whenever they were present they were a big problem. So, the Batman kept a small tranquilizer gun in a special pouch at the back of his utility belt. The gun was in two parts for easier storage, but could be assembled quickly.
The lock pick gun opened the door no problem. With the power off in this whole district, the Batman didn’t have to worry about an alarm system. He cracked the door open, and just as the Collie had lifted its head from the ground and started to growl at the door, Batman fired the dart, which injected the fast-acting animal tranquilizer and put it to sleep in two seconds. It yelped once, but hopefully it wouldn’t alert those upstairs.
The kitchen table and countertop were both covered in dirty pots, pans, and bowls stacked high, and the sink was a worse mess. He moved carefully through the living room, where there were more toys, just as there had been outside—signs that children usually lived here, which wasn’t good.
When he came to the stairs, Batman knelt and put his hands on either side of the steps, then walked up on hands and feet, dispersing his weight so that the steps wouldn’t creak. As he ascended the stairs, he heard a news report going on upstairs, but it sounded like it was coming from a small speaker. A cell phone, obviously, since the power was out.
When he got to the top of the stairs, he slinked down the hallway, keeping his back to the left side of the hall and not stepping into the middle of the hall, where the boards would flex more and make sound.
The last door on the left was where he heard the voices and the news report. The door closed. Batman knelt and slipped his fiber optic camera cord in the space between the floor and the door, and activated his directional mic.
Inside, two men were hovered over a cell phone, listening to news reports on the riots. Right then, they had stopped talking to listen to Mayor Walden speaking about the problems. “We are prepared to call in the National Guard, if necessary,” Walden was saying. “Even at this late hour, I have dragged myself out of bed and away from my wife and children to make the necessary calls and decisions to get our city and our communities back in order. The power failures are less now than they were yesterday, and we have some of the finest experts from PortCo Iron Security and Wayne Enterprises working tirelessly on GL&P’s computer—”
“This is B.S., man!” said one of the men in the room. He was young and skittish, wearing blue jeans and a loose windbreaker. “Just a bunch o’ B.S.! He didn’t say he was gonna go this far! He didn’t say he was gonna shut it all down!” He went over to the window, and parted the curtains to glance outside. “Look at this mess. Where’s Travis at? He should’ve been here by now.”
“Would you just chill out?” said the other man. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, surrounded by burning candles, with a flashlight sitting beside him. He kept his cell phone close to his face, but he turned the volume down. “You’ve seen what it’s like out there. Travis probably had as much trouble getting through all of that as you did. Hell, he might’ve been arrested by the riot cops out there. Sheldon and Justin just texted me from two blocks up, the flash mobs are kicking off up there, too. If Travis came from that direction, he’s not getting to us anytime tonight.”
“Nygma said the bat was there, too, man!”
The man on the bed snorted. “The bat? He’s nothing anymore, man. Nate’s got his number, and everybody in the street knows it.”
The young man in the windbreaker sighed. “I know, man. It’s just…this waiting. At the dead-drop, Nygma called me and said they were right on my tail. I barely got away. The cops probably took pictures and video of me while I was there, man. My face could be all over the news by tomorrow.” He growled. “This waiting sucks!”
After a few more seconds of getting a feel for the room they were in, Batman reeled the fiber optic cable back into his utility belt. He continued listening to their conversation inside as he reached forward to test the doorknob—it was locked.
Batman un-holstered his GTEM gun, and then reached out with his free hand to scratch at the door. He did so lightly, just barely enough to get their attention.
“What’s that sound?” one of them said. It sounded like the voice of the one wearing the windbreaker.
The other responded, “Probably just Max. That fat mutt always gets hungry in the middle o’ the night an’ wants a snack. The vet said I need to stop feeding him this late.” Batman scratched again. The fellow sighed, and started walking over. “All right, all right, Max!”
The door was unlocked, and just as it opened Batman kicked it so hard his foot almost went through the wood. The door slammed into the man’s face, and Batman swept in, aiming his GTEM gun at the fellow in the windbreaker, who was still by the window. He had just gone for something in his waistband—a gun, no doubt—when Batman hit him with the tazer. Both men went down almost simultaneously.
He moved quickly, giving both men a dose from the auto-injector just behind the neck. A search revealed that it had indeed been a gun the man was going for it; it was tucked in his pants. A quick sweep of the house yielded a few interesting items, including a ledger with money and IOUs listed. Could be their contacts, he thought, and stuffed the ledger in a pocket on the inside of his cape that he’d sewn in for just such gathering of evidence. He also found a number of guns, the serial numbers filed off most of them, which meant they had probably been stolen and/or used in a crime.
With the STACS tech, he could ramp up his load-bearing capacity, which was especially good since his shoulder was still hurting. Batman hefted both men at once, one on each shoulder, and exited the house.
His way out was pocked with encounters with more flash mobs. At one point the riot made it over to him, and Batman had to set his two catches down twice to intervene, once when he saw a few bare-chested men beating and robbing a lone man in the middle of the street. On their chests, he saw the large, blazing sun tattoo that marked them as Dreaded Sun. When they saw him coming, one of them shouted, “I got somethin’ for ya, bat!” One of them even had a gun, a Glock 17 that he fired twice but to no avail against the bat’s armor. He tazed one of them, and knocked the other three unconscious. The one with the Glock, he broke his hand, and dismantled the weapon before throwing the pieces down a sewer.
There was no time to collect evidence and round them all up. He still had a mission to finish and a delivery to make to Gordon. He strapped them to him by the karabiners in his utility belt, and used his grappling hook to get him to the rooftops again. He carried them from one roof to the next.
One more problem erupted just as he was getting his captives into the Bat Hawk. A few more Molotov cocktails were flung into parked cars. After making sure his two captives were secure in the chopper, Batman tossed more smoke bombs down to the street to assist a line of riot police he saw approaching from the west end of Parkinson Avenue, moving slowly and in a tight group with their riot shields up. They were firing tear gas on the mob.
“YOU ARE ORDERED TO DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY!” someone shouted over a bullhorn.
Two men tried to accost a woman, but Batman swooped down to taze one and delivered an elbow to the side of the other man’s head, just as the riot police were coming up to him. The mob started to retreat. The bat stood alone in the middle of the street, cars burning on the left and right side of him, and one building fifty yards east of him was engulfed in flames.
The riot police slowed as they approached him. Batman turned and walked away amid shouts for him to stay where he was. “YOU’RE UNDER ARREST! STAY WHERE YOU ARE!” shouted the man on the bullhorn.
Batman bolted into an alleyway, where he switched back to the grappling hook setting on the GTEM gun, and ascended to safety just as he heard the clomping of heavy boots giving him chase. He got into the Bat Hawk and switched it on, glancing in the back to make sure his captives were still snoozing. Thirty seconds later, he was airborne, gliding over the burning of Park Empire, watching as a small group of rioters defied the police.
Most of the rioters would disperse from this street, and would once again return to the streets where the police had cleared. The police would do this back-and-forth rigmarole all night long, and undoubtedly through the next few days—violence beget violence, any broken jaws of one Sun or Mobster would demand retribution from the others.
As the Bat Hawk gained greater altitude, Batman could see how far the problems reached. In the north and northeast side of Gotham, the power was still switching on and off, still not in Morse code, but as if a child was playing with flipping a light switch up and down. What is he up to? the bat thought, realizing that Nygma had presented them with another riddle.