CHAPTER 30

Of course, the riots looked worse in the daytime, because there was nowhere the rioters could run to, no shadows they could hide within. Smoke curled up in the sky in random places, marking the districts that had seen the worst of it. The charred remains of fires that had been lit in the night revealed an easy trail to follow, allowing those in the sky to piece together the various waves of flash mobs and all-out riots that had come and gone, ebbing and flowing like the tide.

This morning, the news was reporting that more districts had their power under control than not, but there were still enough outages to allow mobs to go around unchecked, the security cameras on the corner of most streets didn’t work, and neither did the cameras on the inside and outside of gas stations and convenience stores—brazen thugs roamed the streets with open defiance of the officers in riot gear, pushing the police back more often than not.

The Bat Hawk slipped quietly over these districts, but in the daylight the chopper was clearly visible. Terrell Drive was relatively untouched, it seemed. Besides one blackened car-b-cue, there wasn’t any damage at all down this placid neighborhood.

Batman found no reason at all to be subtle, not now. There was no place he could hide an advanced prototype SC-220 Bat Hawk in the daytime, anyway. He alighted the chopper in the front yard of what his GPS told him was 7 Terrell Drive, a two-storey house that had been repossessed by the bank, it seemed. The grass had grown up and wooden boards covered the windows and doors.

As he swept from the Bat Hawk, he glanced to his right and saw a woman and a little girl exiting the neighboring house. The woman waved the little girl to go back inside, but both of them remained there, gawking at him.

At the front door, Batman did a quick search under the door with his fiber optic camera, and found no obvious trap on the other side. The whole house appeared dark and empty. Batman quickly checked around the edge of the front door for any sign of wires that might trigger some trap. Once satisfied, he stood up and used the three prongs on each of his gauntlets to pry the plywood away from the doorway, and found a rusty steel door on the other side with a Maglock. The lock pick gun made short work of it, and he stepped to one side and swung the door open.

The door moaned on its old, unlubricated hinges. But otherwise, nothing happened. He peeked inside. “Hello?” His voice echoed, but no one responded. Slowly, he stepped inside. The air smelled of dust and neglect. The walls were bulging and peeling from old water damage, and pieces of the ceiling were on the uncarpeted floor. There wasn’t a single light besides what came from the doorway behind him, so he had to use his night-vision to look around.

The walls were bare except for four light switches and a few old nails where paintings or some family’s portrait had once hung. Wires spilled from a hole in the ceiling at the far end of the living room like the entrails of a gutted beast, and broken glass had been swept into one corner but otherwise left alone. Motes of dust danced in the shaft of light from the doorway.

Batman’s feet crunched on crumbled sheetrock, and he got no more than three steps inside when a voice spoke from behind him. He spun around, the GTEM gun automatically drawn and aimed at the source, which were speakers that were mounted just above the door.

“All right, listen up,” came the voice of the Riddler in that slight accent. Is that Russian? Latvian? “The building you are in has two stories—you are currently downstairs, obviously, and you can see that there are four light switches that do not correspond to any light down here on the first floor. Above you, on the second floor, there are four lamps with perfectly good light bulbs in them, and with numbers one through four written on them. These lamps must be turned on in the order they are numbered. The light switches down here correspond to the four lamps upstairs. Here’s the riddle: how can you find out which switch goes to which bulb, and be sure to light them in order? You only get one try, and the door leading upstairs will close behind you and seal itself once you pass through it on your way back down.

“These switches must be turned on in an exact sequence. Do not switch them all on at once, not unless you think you have the correct sequence in mind, or else the C4 I’ve rigged all around you will detonate, and not only will you die but Gotham City will be without the answer to its current power problems. Worse yet, if you don’t find me soon, the Anglo Nuclear Generating Station will have some serious problems to contend with.

“Do not try to run, because a proximity sensor has already marked you in the area, and if it detects you retreating then the C4 will automatically detonate. It’s all riding on you now, my clever friend, whoever you may be, but I think I know who you are. No clever word hints in anything I’ve said will help you. You’ll just have to figure this one out. If you succeed, you will be rewarded for your efforts. It’s your life and the life of Gothamites everywhere, or else your death and the destruction of them all—all or nothing! Good luck!”

There was a brief bit of static, and then the speakers died. Batman looked around him. He must have triggered some sort of motion sensor by walking in here, and the sensors had activated the speakers. The question plaguing him now was, just how serious was this C4 the Riddler had been talking about? So far, he had never bluffed about anything he said or threatened; for all his sick, twisted behavior, the Riddler was a man of his word, perhaps pathologically so, so there was no doubting that C4 riddled these walls and floors.

Batman walked across the room to the various light switches, and examined each of them for the clue. Behind him, he heard chatter. A few people were walking around in the front yard, ogling at the Bat Hawk, while three young teenagers and an elderly lady had chanced to walk up to the front porch and were peering inside.

“Don’t come in here!” he screamed at them. “Stay back! This whole house is going to explode!”

The silver-haired woman grabbed one of the teenagers by his shirt collar and yanked him away, and she called after the others to follow her.

Batman turned back to the closest light switch, and thought for a second. Is it an enigma, or a conundrum, or neither? he thought. The kind of riddle that it was mattered greatly, because if he got it wrong, if he even started to solve the puzzle in the wrong way, then the explosives could detonate.

Then, all at once, it came to him.

It was relatively straightforward, so simple he’d almost overthought it. Batman walked over to one of the light switches, and flipped it on. He waited five minutes, gauging the time on his HUD’s clock, and then switch it off. Then, he walked over to another light switch and flipped it on, waiting only two minutes this time before flipping it off. Then, he walked over to a third switch, flipped it on, and hurried upstairs.

The door was a heavy steel door, and there was a large mechanism similar to the spring-loaded lock that had shut him in at the silo. He didn’t doubt that this door would lock him downstairs permanently once he passed back through it.

On the second floor, everything was pitch-black, and just as dilapidated as the first floor. A light was coming from an empty bedroom at the end of the hall. There, he found four lamps of the exact same make, brand, and model standing side-by-side. Only one of them was still on, of course, which meant it was the third switch he’d just flipped. Batman walked over to the others, and saw that they were indeed labeled with tickets tied around their midsection numbering 1, 2, 3, and 4. Each lamp had numerous wires coming out from them and going into the walls, no doubt connected to the blasting caps and detonation mechanism of the C4 hidden in the walls.

Batman felt of the other bulbs. Number 2 was the hottest, which meant it was the first switch he’d flipped. That meant, when he went back downstairs, he had to flip that switch second in the sequence. Lamp Number 4 was only a little warm, not nearly as hot as Number 2, which meant it was the second switch he had flipped. Number 3 was the coolest, so obviously it corresponded with the switch he hadn’t flipped at all. Number 1 was the one still turned on.

Assuming he hadn’t missed anything, Batman could now switch the lamps on in the right sequence. He quickly memorized which lamp number belonged to which switch, and hustled back downstairs. By now, even more people were in the front lawn, peeking at his Bat Hawk, and he could now hear sirens approaching.

Batman went over to the light switches, and paused just before flipping on the first one. If he wants to trick me into killing myself, all he has to do is wire the lamps contrary to the solution I figured out, he thought. Then, on the heels of that, he thought, If he just wanted to kill me, he could’ve had the C4 detonate as soon as I entered. That was little comfort, but for now he only had assumptions and the Riddler’s past behavior to work off of.

Batman flipped on the switch that corresponded with Number 1 upstairs, then flipped the switch for Number 2. After switching on Number 3, he paused again, doubting himself, wondering what he had missed, if anything. No, I haven’t missed anything. And he wouldn’t mismatch the switches on purpose. He wants me dead, but only by proving that he’s smarter. He flipped the switch for Number 4, and all at once the speakers came back on.

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

“If you’re listening to this, then you made it,” the Riddler said cheerily. “Congratulations, you’re not one of the league of morons currently destroying the city. You alone are capable of surviving when all else goes wrong. You are the elite, the only one worthy of voting for a leader, the only one worthy of being a leader, and yet how often are your efforts overlooked? How many people could have solved this puzzle and survived? Probably only one person in this entire city, and you’re it!”

He’s obsessive-compulsive, Batman thought, listening to the Riddler prattle on. He literally cannot help himself. He has to leave clues behind in an attempt to prove that he’s smarter than everyone else around him. The fact that he, Batman, wasn’t dead right now proved that. His solution had worked, despite the fact that the Riddler could have detonated the explosives upon his entry.

“But you already know you’re smart. I don’t have to tell you that. What you want to hear, no doubt, is the answer to Gotham’s prayers that I promised you,” the Riddler said. “There is a closet in the kitchen of this house. Go to it. Inside, you’ll find three wall panels that can be easily removed. Inside that, you’ll have the last piece of the puzzle.”

Batman moved quickly. The sirens were already arriving just outside. He could hear men getting out and hollering. Neighbors were screaming at the police that the Batman was inside, and that he’d said he had bomb or something.

In the kitchen, Batman found the closet, checked for signs of traps, opened it, and removed the wall panels. Batman stared for a moment at the picture of a small puppy, which was nestled in the wall’s pink insulation. It was a digitally-printed image, about 24” x 33” in size, and it showed a Labrador puppy sitting on its haunches, holding a bone in its mouth. Once more, Batman checked for traps before removing the picture.

“GCPD!” someone shouted. “Who’s in here?”

Flashlights were flickering somewhere down the hall.

Batman used his night-vision to stare at the picture of the puppy, trying to determine what sort of clue this might be. Was the Riddler getting lazy? Was this meant to be some sort of joke? Was the bone in the dog’s mouth a pun? What did it mean?

Batman shut his eyes, breathed deeply, and exhaled. Muted were the shouts from Gotham City’s finest demanding someone answer. When he opened his eyes, he thought he might have the answer.

Digital steganography? he thought. Batman took out his own flashlight and shined it on the image, to get the full color of it. With his HUD, Batman took a snapshot of the picture in his hand, then used his left gauntlet to bring the scan up in front of him in a 3D image. He used his onboard computer’s image-processing software to run through a number of possibilities, since digital steganography could be done in a multitude of ways. It manipulated the image using an array of techniques, then, it settled on removing all but the two least significant bits of each color component, and finally gave it what was called “normalization”.

A new image appeared in front of him. The old picture dissolved on his HUD’s main screen, and instead of the Labrador puppy, there was now a picture of someone’s laptop screen, taken while lines and lines of computer code had been strafing across the screen.

“Who’s in here? This is the GCPD! Come out where we can see you, and with your hands up! Identify yourself!”

Batman realized at once what he was looking at: the riddleworm, in its inception. The base code was there in front of him, and it only took about ten seconds of looking at it before he knew what it meant.

“GCPD!” someone hollered, just outside the kitchen.

He reached to his utility belt, took out the two flash-bang grenades from the pouch in the back, and pulled the clips, letting the fuses burn for three seconds before he tossed them down the hallway. He activated the flash-suppressor in his eye-screen, and the sound-suppressor in his antennas. Two seconds later, after the flash-bangs had gone off, the bat walked right out of the kitchen, passing in front of two stunned Gotham City LEOs, and walked calmly out the front door.

“Get that freak!” someone shouted. A man rushed him. In a flash, the Batman had un-holstered his GTEM gun and tazered the man coming at him. He was just some concerned neighbor, and he dropped like a rock, straight as a board and facedown. Two others stood in front of him, but backed away after he retracted the electrodes and moved towards them, not deviating from his path.

The rest of them parted for him. He got inside the Bat Hawk just as the neighbors were helping the tazered man up. He heard someone shout, “This is all your fault, freak! Everything that’s happening is all your—!”

Batman closed the door and switched on the chopper after giving a brief glance to the trouble-board; everything showed green, so he lifted off. Once in the air, he made a rare call to Lucius Fox via the open wireless communicator in his antennas, and prayed that Lucius answered soon enough to prevent total havoc. The phone rang several times, and each time he became certain that he was going to be too late.

It only makes sense that they’ll shut off the power, he thought. It’s the smart move. Smart, except for in this one instance.

“Hello?” Lucius finally said, just when Batman had started to lose hope.

“Lucius! Where are you on the worm?”

“Oh, hello, Mr. Wayne,” he said, his voice lowering. It sounded like Lucius was amid a number of people, and was walking away from them. “We’re, uh, we’re just starting to isolate the worm in many different—”

“You haven’t shut off all power between GL&P and the Anglo plant yet, have you?”

Lucius said, “Not yet, but we’re going to within the hour. We’ve taken a look and it appears some of ANGS’s systems have been infected by the worm, so we’ve shut down ANGS’s primary generators and GL&P has been sharing some of its reserves to keep ANGS’s power going, but the others think we should cut our losses for now, since signs of the worm trickling into ANGS have started cropping up, and I tend to agree that—”

“Don’t do it.”

There was a pause. “I don’t understand. Why not? It’s the only way to cut the link between the worm and the networks linked to Gotham Light—”

“Listen to me, that’s not going to happen. If you cut ANGS off from the rest of the power grid then ANGS automatically falls back on backup diesel generators. Those backup generators power the water coolant pumps. He’s got control of those pumps! I’ve looked at the original code and its intentions. Everything else he’s doing is a smokescreen of endless codes and feints, drawing attention away from the fact that he’s already got control of the backup pumps.”

“I still don’t understand, Mr. Wayne.”

“He’s counting on you to shut power to ‘cut your losses,’ and he wants the backup pumps activated because he found an exploit in them, not the rest of the plant. The pumps circulate water through the reactor to shed decay heat. The exploit he found was in the software and hardware controlling those pumps. If ANGS falls back on those pumps, the air will be uncirculated, and the temperature and pressure of the water will rise. The reactor radiation will split the water into oxygen and volatile hydrogen, and the explosions will be enough to breach the reactor’s containment panels.”

“Mr. Wayne, sir, I really have to say that right now it’s looking a lot better just to sever the connection and cut our losses.” He sighed. “Are you…are you sure about this?”

“Yes! Lucius, do not cut the power between GL&P and ANGS! Do whatever you have to do to convince them, but do not let them cut the power connection to ANGS. You’ll have irradiated steam clouds blowing for dozens if not hundreds of miles around.” he said. “It’ll kill…thousands…maybe millions!”

“You said you saw the original code,” Lucius argued. “What if he’s leading you on? What if he wants you to think that you shouldn’t shut it off?”

“That’s not how this one works,” he said. “This man’s different. He doesn’t want to lie to me, he wants to give me all the information I need, and then he wants me to fail to apply it. He wants to show me that I could’ve saved lives, if only I was as smart as he is.” Suddenly, his radar started pinging. He looked at it, and saw three blips converging on him. They were moving in fast, at around 810 knots, more than 930 mph. No helicopter moves that fast, he thought. Military fighter jets.

Batman had a bad feeling about this. He considered his status with the law enforcement officials of Gotham City, with Mayor Walden, with just about everyone. Combine that with the DHS declaring a state of emergency for Gotham, and it was easy to see why an unknown aircraft in the sky was a major security concern right now. And the cops and neighbors back on Terrell Drive will have made all the necessary calls about me, he thought. And I’m now on course for ANGS, their number one priority right now.

Batman knew that his only hope was to contact Sarah Essen, who had unofficially given him her word that he was technically considered one of the good guys now. He quickly sent a text to Gordon, telling him to ask Essen to get in touch with her people fast and give them the heads up, that he was only trying to help.

He sent the message off, but things were about to get hairy quick. The radar predicted about thirty seconds before the fighter jets would be on top of him. The Bat Hawk’s systems scanned them, even from this far away. Harriers, he thought. Great. The Jump Jets were no joke, they were the model fighter jet for the U.S. Air Force, and if three of them were bearing down on him then there could only be one reason: they meant to engage.

The Bat Hawk was fast, but not nearly fast enough to outrun Harriers. However, what the Bat Hawk lacked in speed it made up for in stealth. They still won’t be able to track the Bat Hawk, the stealth systems are too good. They’ll have to hunt me by sight.

“Mr. Wayne?” He still had Lucius on the line.

“Lucius, just do what you can to stall them.” he said as the put the Bat Hawk into a dive towards the business district of Gotham City. There were numerous bridges, skyscrapers, elevated roads, billboards and flashing signs to lose them in, if he was swift enough.

“Mr. Wayne, you have to understand something, I’m here as a security consultant. I cannot tell the ANGS people, the GL&P people, and much less the DHS authorities standing next to me what to do.”

“You have too, Lucius. The Riddler’s going to blow the plant! It’ll kill millions!”

“Mr. Wayne…I’ll try to talk to them, but they’re pretty set on moving ahead with this. Hell, even I’m pretty convinced the best thing to do is to sever the connection. We have to cut the connection at both ends, so we’ll be heading out to ANGS in a few minutes, out to the Unit One building, where the main power station is housed. It’s the smartest thing to do right now given the—” He broke off, then sighed. “I’ll…I’ll try.”

“Thanks, Lucius. Just do your best. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“What…you’re coming here?”

“If you can’t stop them, Lucius, then I’ll have to.”

“Mr. Wayne, I don’t think that’s such a good id—”

Batman disconnected the call and switched on frequency jammers as the Harriers closed in and swooped around the tallest skyscraper in the area—the home offices of Wayne Enterprises.