CHAPTER 32

Moving at 235 knots, nearly its top speed, the Bat Hawk crossed to the other side of Gotham River. Twenty minutes later, it was flying over small, rural communities. Batman looked out the window on his left. A few flat, green fields slipped underneath him. He was a little over eighty miles outside of Gotham City limits. Whereas in an automobile all signs of city life appeared to slowly slip away, at this speed the appearance of the countryside was abrupt and jarring.

Dead ahead about ten miles were the expansive facilities of Anglo Nuclear Generating Station. Anglo’s reactor containment buildings were some of the largest in the world, at about 2.8 million cubic feet enclosed. The three containment domes that housed the reactors rose up from the earth like great, pregnant swells, and were made of four-foot-thick concrete. The facilities housed three pressurized water reactors from Zenith Powered Engineering, each with an original capacity of 1.32 gigawatts electrical, and typical operating capacity 70%–95% of that.

The whole thing supplied electricity at an operating cost of 1.33 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour, including fuel and maintenance. It was pivotal to the entire coast, providing power to numerous cities and important military bases. ANGS’s backup power was at Gotham Light & Power itself, which it supplied most of the power to—GL&P stored surplus energy to feed back to ANGS in case of emergencies, like now. However, if Batman didn’t hurry, then power would be cut altogether, and ANGS would revert back to its backup pumps, pumps that, unbeknownst to anyone else, was under the riddleworm’s control.

The power had to be cut from both ends—GL&P’s computers had to agree with ANGS’s computers to sever the connection, a fail-safe put in place to make it harder for cyber terrorists to shut one or both of them down. A perfect plan, except in this one instance where the riddleworm had secretly borrowed a hole into Hard Target’s security system, gained control over the backup pumps, and could shut them off at the Riddler’s will.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had estimated that if ANGS suffered a meltdown, it would give off a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of 11 miles, meaning that anyone within that radius would have serious and immediate problems with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination. The NRC declared an ingestion pathway zone, which pertained to the dangers of taking in foods and liquids contaminated by radioactivity, up to 90 miles.

Time was short, and the stakes were higher than they’d ever been for him or anyone else in Gotham. Batman had to hope that Lucius could stall all parties involved long enough for him to arrive on scene. He dropped below radar range, flying just above the treetops. So far, no more Harriers had appeared around him, even though he was now entering restricted airspace. If found here, he would no doubt be blasted out of the sky, with nowhere to hide until he reached the ANGS facility.

Batman dialed Lucius again on his wireless communicator. His CEO answered halfway through the first ring. “Yes?”

“It’s me. I’m here. Where are you?”

“I’m walking over to Unit One. They’re going to start shutting the systems down from there.”

“Stall them.”

“Mr. Wayne…I can’t do that.”

“Lucius, did you tell them what I told you?”

Lucius sighed. “Yes, Mr. Wayne, I informed them of that possibility. But so far neither myself, nor my team, nor Anglo’s team, nor the government’s computer specialists have found any sign of the worm’s interference in the manner that you describe.”

“It’s a crafty piece of code, Lucius. It’s got control of the pumps, and if you sever the connection between ANGS and GL&P, it’ll cause a meltdown! You have to tell them to keep looking for—!”

“Mr. Wayne, at this point, it looks to us like we risk total meltdown if we don’t cut the power—”

“Stall them, Lucius! Do whatever you can to hold them off until I get there.”

“Mr. Wayne, don’t worry, I have been assured that this whole facility is protected by the National Guard,” Lucius said. “They’ve kept a few guards on standby here for a while, even before this all happened. Now there are even more, and I’ve been told that there are helicopters all around and a jet protecting this facility during this crisis. We are well protected here.” He said all of this in a neutral tone, probably so that others around him wouldn’t think he was warning a vigilante about the dangers he faced.

There was a beep coming in over the communiqué, which indicated Lucius was sending him either a text message or an e-mail that included a file of some kind. Batman sent it to the Bat Hawk’s computers, and pulled it up on the small screen on the console beside his left knee, superimposing another window over the one showing GPS information. It was a series of pictures taken by Lucius’s cell phone, showing the overall look of the area from ground level, and it also showed the number of guards in Lucius’s party, including the ones escorting him and the rest of his team over to Unit 1.

“Thank you, Lucius,” he said, and signed off.

Batman hit a button on his gauntlet, which brought down the eye-screen and its HUD. Ten minutes ago, the batworm had gotten through a critical part of Anglo’s security, partially by copying and mimicking the same exploits the riddleworm had used. He now had an entire map and schematic of Unit 1—grids, pipelines, power cables, emergency escapes, windows, staircases, everything. Coupled with Lucius’s photos, these would be integral in planning a fast, tactical entry.

ANGS was now just a mile away, but already the massive containment domes dominated the view outside the Bat Hawk’s windshield. All at once, two blips appeared on his radar. Batman shot toward Unit 1 without hesitation, but had to pull up to an altitude of one hundred feet to clear some of the taller towers and other structures, then dropped back down as the area flattened out. Now there were crisscrossing roads below him, all of them filled with as much traffic as a small town. And a small town ANGS was, complete with a small grocery store and gas station, for common use of employees who lived on or near the premises, as well as for times of crisis when all workers were needed and couldn’t leave, such as now.

Batman looked up. The first helicopter was now visible, rising up just on the other side of the farthest containment unit, Unit 3. It was an Apache AH-64A, one of the most perfect aerial combat copters ever created. A quick examination of it via his sensors showed Batman that the Apache was carrying AIM-91 Stinger air-to-air missiles. Not good.

He had gone as far as he dared. He was very close to Unit 1, and just below him he saw a caravan of vehicles just now parking out in front of it. Lucius and his party. Pulling back on the cyclic, he flared the Bat Hawk. After a few more seconds of adjusting his pitch and speed, Batman filled in a prearranged sequence of numbers into the autopilot’s system, which would put the Bat Hawk on a slow, steady arch around and around the facility. His missile- and collision-avoidance systems would do their best to keep the Bat Hawk alive, but he didn’t hold out much hope for the chopper surviving until he finished his business.

And other fighters will be on their way, he knew.

But there was no helping that. He had to do what he knew was right. He had texted the same information to Gordon, and yet so far it seemed like nothing was getting done. Gordon might already be appearing in front of the committee to face the accusations Mayor Walden and others were now making, and since no other law enforcement officials seemed to be responding, it was up to him to finish this.

Another helicopter had appeared off to his right about a mile away. Batman had now climbed to two hundred feet, just to be sure that he cleared all the sensitive areas of the compound.

The Bat Hawk was just now picking up their radio chatter. “Voodoo Two, this is Voodoo One, I have a bogey in sight. He came in fast, although he has slowed down now close to a hover. It is a black chopper. Repeat, it is a black chopper, and it does not appear to be one of us. Confirm.”

“Copy that, Voodoo One, I confirm Tango. I see him.”

The Dark Knight opened the cockpit door, and stood at the edge, the wind off the propellers buffeting him as he steadied himself against the edge of the door. Then, he put his feet together, pitched forward, and plummeted towards the earth. Two hundred feet below him was the top of Unit 1, with a large metal staircase going around and around it.

It wasn’t until his HUD informed him he had dropped a hundred feet in altitude that he activated his cape and brought up his variometer so that he could watch his climb and sink rate while gliding down to the roof of Unit 1.

The Bat Hawk’s radio interception protocols were still running, and it transmitted to his earpiece what the U.S. chopper pilots were saying. “Voodoo One, did you see that? We’ve got a jumper…but it looks like he’s hang gliding now!”

“Roger, I see him. Base, this is Voodoo One, you might want to advise all troops on the ground that we have a jumper landing on top of Unit 1. I would fire, but it’s a small target and I’m not close enough to ensure against hitting my backstop, which is Unit One itself.”

Batman rolled his body to the right to gain some distance from Unit 1, then turned quickly to his left to get the angle he wanted for the safest possible landing. His feet out in front of him, he skidded to a halt this time, the dome roof being rounded and big enough to give him a decent runway. He deactivated the power in his cape and ran twenty yards to his left, to the staircase that would take him down. Just one flight down, the stairs had a cage built up around so that no one could fall off, but there was a locked gate door there, as well. His lock pick gun once again made short work of this obstacle, and he ran down the steps on a steep, arching trip around and around the giant reactor building.

After circling Unit 1 twice, there was no longer any cage top to the stairs. He finally came to a door on his left that was once again locked. One helicopter had now dropped down low enough to follow him, monitoring. He continued listening to their radio chatter to see if or when they would open fire on him.

“He’s on the south side of the building now,” said Voodoo One. “Repeat, intruder on the south side of Unit One! It looks like him, it looks like the Batman! Base, do I have permission to open fire?”

“Negative, Voodoo One, you are weapons tight right now! Do not, repeat, do not fire on that facility! We have military SWAT at the front and rear entrances of the ANGS compound and they are now on their way to Unit One. They’ll handle the intruder from there if he gets that far!”

Good to know, Batman thought. He came to a red door on his left, and once again used the lock pick gun to get through the lock, but a keypad beside the door required a code, as well. Within thirty seconds, the Dark Knight had ripped the panel off the keypad, pulled the code sequencer from a pocket on the right side of his utility belt, plugged it in, and had gained access. As soon as the light turned green he ripped the sequencer from the panel and stepped into Unit 1.

* * *

“BASE, THIS IS Rook, we’re not finding anything out here, not even a flock of pigeons,” Manzanita said. “RTB?” They had been soaring around the area for nearly half an hour now, and she had become increasingly frustrated. Manzanita had never lost a target she had been sent after, whether friend or foe, and this first bit of defeat cut deep.

“Roger that, Rook. You are cleared for return to base on…hold that thought for a minute, Rook.” Ten seconds passed, then, “Rook, Base. Your bogey has been spotted one hundred nineteen miles west of you!”

“A hundred miles?” she asked. “How did he get that far without being spotted?”

“Unknown. The chopper has been confirmed to be flying circles around Anglo Nuclear Generating Station! Coords are being sent to you now! Rook, you and your team are ordered to move and lend additional aerial support.”

“Copy that. With pleasure, sir!” Manzanita howled like a wolf, and shouted to her wing mates, “Pig! Guts! You’re on me!” Guts had just finished blasting the last of the drones out of the sky with clean shots and had rejoined Rook and Pig. They shot towards the sky and stopped only once they reached an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. “Going hypersonic!” she shouted. “Mach five! Here we go!” Their Harriers burst forward, gaining speeds five times faster than the speed of sound. They would be at ANGS in seven minutes.

* * *

THE CORRIDOR HE was in was noisy, and hot. Flashing red lights were above every single sign that indicated which level he was on. Batman had walked brazenly through one hall that was filled with workers in lab coats and overalls. One of them had already approached him, waving a clipboard at him and shouting, “You can’t be in here!” Batman had quickly tazered him and retracted the electrodes, looking into the fearful gazes of the technicians around him before he walked up to one and said, “Don’t let them shut off the power. Whatever you do. If something happens to me, do not let them shut off the power!” The technician had quailed and nodded, throwing his hands up defensively as if he expected to be struck. Batman didn’t know if the demand would sink in, but he had to try something right now, anything.

Via his radio interception, Batman heard someone say, “Uh, that’s a roger, we have confirmation that the Batman is in the building. Repeat, Batman is in the building. He is considered armed and extremely dangerous—”

Armed and dangerous? Have they noticed I don’t use a gun, or noticed that I’ve never killed anyone before?

The Batman carried on down another flight of stairs, hearing someone approaching and speaking in an officious tone. He readied a flash-bang in his hand and stood to one side of the hallway, utilizing the “dead space” behind a large circuitry tower, allowing them to pass before he proceeded downward. He kept his position unknown down the next three halls by paying attention to the interplay between the flashing lights and the shadows they cast—each flashing light would diminish a technician’s or a security official’s eyesight in these dark confines, and, thanks to his knowledge of chiaroscuro, the Batman was able to make the most out of some of the slightest shadows.

He came to another flight of stairs, at the bottom of which were three technicians and two security guards in military fatigues, each one armed with an MP-5.

Before any of them could react to the suddenness of his appearance, he flung the flash-bang to the ground, and activated his eye-screen’s flash suppressor and the sound dampener in his ears at once, just as they were raising their guns to take aim. Batman moved behind a row of large servers just as the grenades went off, blinding and deafening everyone in the vicinity.

In the confusion, he grabbed one technician by the collar of his lab coat and dragged him down a corridor. Still mostly blind and deaf, he thought he was talking to somebody rescuing him. “Don’t worry,” Batman said. “We’ve taken out the threat. You’re safe. But there might be more. I need you to focus, sir. Focus!”

“O-okay…what…what’s happening…?” His hands were trembling. “Oh…oh, God…”

“If you were going to shut off the power to the reactor, and had to do it quick, which way would be the quickest?”

With quavering voice, the man confirmed the route to an emergency elevator, which Batman had already marked on the map that his batworm had provided him by rooting around for ANGS’s schematics, and had it pulled up on his heads-up display. While he did this, the technician went on, “There’s…there’s f-four keys that need to be turned simultaneously…the head administrator’s key, and the k-keys of the three deputy administrators. B-but they’re on their way t-to do that n-now, so—”

“Listen to me,” Batman went on. “If you were going to stop someone from turning off the power, how would you do that?”

“Wh-why would you want to—?”

“Just answer!”

“Th-th-there is no way…no way except…except to lock everybody outta the room…the room where the main p-power station is…” Batman dropped him to the ground and walked away. “Wait…officer…soldier…I still can’t see! Where am I? What should I do?”

“You’re safe where you are,” he called back. “Don’t move from that spot!” He brought up the map to the main power station, and made his way down one more flight of stairs, running past a group of confused technicians who didn’t know if they should attack him or quake in fear. Batman came to the emergency elevator, which would only ever be used in an evacuation. It was large and could hold almost twenty people all at the same time. Another keypad was meant to keep him from gaining access, so he whipped out his sequencer again and ripped the panel from the wall by prying it with the blades on his gauntlets.

While the sequencer worked, Batman heard the sound of rapid footsteps. He pitched two smoke bombs down the two corridors behind him, and heard what sounded like more men of action shouting, “Take cover, take cover!” Using echolocation, Batman’s HUD revealed to him the shapes trying to make their way down the hall in a bounding overwatch pattern—SWAT teams.

The keypad finally chimed, and as the light turned green the doors parted. There was no car waiting on him, but that didn’t matter. Just as the first of the SWAT officers were coming through the smoke and gaining their bearings in the hall, Batman leapt through the opening and descended into the darkness, the doors shutting behind him as the first shots rang out. One bullet hit him square in the back, barely knocking the wind out of him.

I’ll have to give Lucius a raise for the Tango armor, he thought, switching to night-vision in his pitch-black decent.

* * *

WHEN MANZANITA ARRIVED with Pig and Guts in tow, she saw at once their black war bird. It just so happened to be circling towards them when they dropped down to around five hundred feet. “Tally!” she said. “I’ve got visual! Bogey is moving around at about two hundred feet off the ground, but it looks like he’s dropping now that we’re here.”

“He’s gonna try and play the same hide-and-go-seek game,” Pig said.

“No doubt,” she said. “Target that chopper!”

“Targeting now—”

“Hold on, we’ve got more chaff!” Guts said. The targeted chopper belched out another cloud of the tiny aluminum and/or plastic pieces.

Then, over their radio came a hail from the other friendlies in the area. “Attention, United States Air Force group, this is Voodoo One, speaking for Voodoo Group! We are seeing you now. That’s us on your scopes. At least, that was us until the chaff made things difficult; that and the intermittent jamming makes ELINT all FUBAR. I take it you’re after this guy, too?”

Manzanita said, “Copy, Voodoo One. My call sign’s Rook. We’ve been following this bad boy all the way from Gotham. What’s the status?”

“Uh, no obvious signs of aggression yet, Rook, although there has been some interesting activity. The pilot punched out a few minutes ago.”

“You mean the driver ejected?”

“Uh, you could say that,” said Voodoo One. “He did a swan dive right out the front door, then opened up a small parachute or a collapsible hang glider, or something like that, then landed on the roof and went inside. Voodoo Two is up here with us, and has confirmed that it is the Batman. At least, it certainly looks like him.”

“Then, what’s that chopper doing flying around like it still has a purpose?”

“We think it’s on some crazy autopilot routine. Every time we try to get tone on it, it moves fast or disperses more chaff,” said Voodoo One. “This chopper’s tricky, but it’s generally maintained between one hundred and two hundred feet AGL. So far, it hasn’t scanned for any serious weaponry, but we’ve still been maneuvering whenever it angles in a way ideal for targeting so that we don’t send my chopper back to the taxpayers.” He meant he didn’t want to get shot down.

“Copy, Voodoo One,” Manzanita said. “We’ve been ordered to move in to engage. Watch our six if you would, this thing has been known to release small drones. I’m not sure yet if any of them are deadly, so just watch out.”

“Copy that, Rook. We’ve got your six.”

“Good. And watch your line-of-sight and backstop if you have to fire. Pig, you’ve got Dash Two. Guts, you’re behind him. Stay close, but not so close that we make one big easy target! We messed up last time, let’s not do it again, people! Let’s cripple this thing and cut off this guy’s escape!”

* * *

THE ELEVATOR SHAFT was large enough for him to spread his cape fully and alight on top of an elevator car. As soon as Batman touched down, he opened the maintenance hatch on top of it with no problem, and dropped in on the empty car. A quick hack into the floor selection panel with his code sequencer and he was on his way to Level 6, where the main power station was.

The doors parted for him, and he stood to one side just in case a hail of gunfire was waiting for him on the other side. However, no such threat existed on this level, and when he peeked around the door he found himself staring at a dozen befuddled engineers, all of whom were in various stages of exhaustion, with rings around their eyes and slumped shoulders, no doubt having worked all night to cure ANGS’s systems of the riddleworm.

There were three security officers down the hall, talking quickly into radios and hustling towards the elevator when the doors opened. As they approached, Batman flung his last flash-bang grenade onto the floor and hid within the elevator car until it went off, then stepped out of the car. The technicians had all been blinded and deafened, and were staggering around, screaming and yelling while Batman maneuvered through the shifting crowd of panicking lab coats, making his way to the three officers, all three of whom had obviously had the mental wherewithal to cover their eyes and ears as best they could when they’d seen the flash-bangs, because they were more alert than the others.

Batman got to one officer who was holding a Glock, and he twisted the man’s wrist and thumbed the magazine release to empty the weapon, then pulled back on the slide to eject the one round in the chamber before performing a judo throw to the ground. The guard landed so hard the breath left him, and he was utterly stunned.

The other two had MP-5s hanging from straps around their neck. He managed to knock out one of them out with the auto-injector, but the third officer had apparently not been blinded enough, because he blinked a few times and then tried to aim his submachine gun at the bat. The Dark Knight smacked the weapon down to the ground, where it fired off a short burst before he thumbed the safety on, elbowed the officer in the temple and swept his legs out from underneath him.

While the lab coats were all still staggering around and screaming, he pulled the bodies of the three guards into the elevator car, which was still open and waiting for passengers because he hadn’t removed the sequencer from the panel yet. Batman rounded up the rest of the technicians, shouting into their ears that he was with the military’s SWAT team and that they needed to get out of here quickly. He guided them all into the elevator, few of them able to see anything, and those that could probably only saw him as a dark mass because they obeyed his commands.

Batman took the sequencer out and pressed the button for the bottom floor. After the doors were shut, he stood alone at the entrance to Level 6, his right shoulder singing out agony from where he’d been shot by the Molehill Mobster at Ackerman’s Auto. He stepped up to the elevator’s call buttons, pried them open with his gauntlet blades, and once more hacked into them with his sequencer. He changed the access codes, and left the sequencer attached so that it could randomly select a new pass code every five seconds. That’ll keep them busy.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Now all he had to do was refer to the schematics that his batworm had rounded up for him, and follow the map to the reactor’s central hub.

Radio chatter continued in his ear throughout the operation. “We have confirmation on the intruder!” someone was saying. “He is moving to Level Six! Repeat, intruder is on Level Six! We’re headed up Stairwell A! All officers in or around Level Six evacuate all personnel vital to the plant shutdown!”

Batman made a call again on his wireless. Once more, Lucius answered on the first ring. “Yes?”

“Lucius, where are you?”

“Me and the other technicians are down here on Level One,” he said. “Gotham Light and Power has already punched in the codes to cut power to ANGS. We were just about to take the elevator up to sever the connection from ANGS’s end, but they’re telling us there’s a problem now. Helicopters are flying all around outside, Mr. Wayne. One of them looks pretty familiar.” He added, “I saw armed men coming up. A SWAT team, I think. Could spell trouble for somebody, if they don’t hurry up and get out of there.”

* * *

THE SWAT TEAM spilled onto the sixth floor. Commander Micheal Sloan stopped beside the door. He held up a fist, telling his people to hold tight. He then held up his index finger and bent it crooked, indicating that they were going to enter with a button-hook pattern. Then, signing one, two, and three, he swept in through the doorway, hooking immediately to the left while behind him Corey Shauf went right. The others behind them continued hooking, one to the left, the next to the right, alternating.

The first thing they saw when they entered was a long, dark hallway with flashing red lights. They had reviewed the map of the level before coming up, but they hadn’t had long to do it—the bat was in here somewhere, and God only knew what he was doing.

“I’ve got deep,” Shauf called, indicating that he had the best view of the hallway.

“Roger, Shauf’s got deep,” Sloan said.

Shauf “sliced the pie” by staying far back from the hallway entrance and taking baby steps while he held the butt of his Benelli combat shotgun tight to his shoulder. “Long hallway,” he said, painting the picture for his teammates. “Two openings on the left, one opening on the right, and a water fountain.” He took a few more steps, saw no threats, and said, “Clear! Move up!”

“Moving up,” said Sloan, taking point once again.

Their gear clattered and their boots clicked hard against the concrete floors as they pressed hard and fast to clear every room. They kept close, everyone stacking against the lead operator’s back. The lead operator was a shifting position, therefore the role changed hands at each juncture. Two operators took up the overwatch position at the first hallway, and they maneuvered so that they could adequately “pie” the corner.

Sloan was first to the next corner, of course. The M4 was braced against his shoulder as he peered down the scope. He moved one step at a time to “pie” the corner, until he could see that the whole hallway was clear. “Clear! Move up!” His job was now to stay and hold his aim down the hallway while the others moved ahead. If the bat should peek around the corner, he would have a bead on him.

Sloan now took up the rear, while Marty Simmons and Miles Kayne checked a closet quickly before passing in front of it.

They passed through the next doorway as quickly as always—in SWAT training, the rule for doorways and stairways was “move up ’em, down ’em, in ’em, out of ’em” as fast as possible. Doorways were commonly referred to as “fatal funnels” because the bad guys knew that you had to come through them, and once you were there, for that moment, the doorway framed you as a perfect target.

Commander Sloan knew all about the Batman, had studied him just as any other SWAT operator serious about his job and with a decent IQ had done, because he had evaded not only standard law enforcement for years, but their most elite units, as well, including one famous incident with a SWAT team while they had been attempting to neutralize the Joker. Sloan wasn’t going to allow that to happen to his team. Not with—

No sooner had he thought that when something went terribly, terribly wrong. A burst of smoke plumed out between them. Sloan had just barely seen the dark silhouette move and fling the smoke bomb, and had just shouted “Contact!” when the explosion sent smoke all around them. Luckily, his team happened to have their masks ready because they had known since their briefing that they would be near radioactive areas. Still, the smoke filled the entire hallway, as tight as it was, and before long visibility went to near zero.

“Contact! Contact!” somebody shouted. That was Kayne.

“He’s got my gun!” somebody else screamed—it sounded like Shauf.

There was commotion all around him, shots were fired, and someone cried out in pain. Somebody else slammed into his chest, falling over. “Man down! Man down!” Sloan cried. A second later, someone reached out to grab hold of the handle on the back of Sloan’s armor (the handle was meant to make it easier to drag a wounded man to safety) and jerked back on it until he fell to the ground. “I’m sorry,” he thought he heard someone whisper before he felt a prick at the back of his neck.

Sloan tried to stand, but the world suddenly lurched, and his legs turned to jelly. His eyeballs felt like they were floating in water, and then he fell back against the wall and started dreaming immediately. In his dream, from a million miles away, he heard someone saying, “Alpha Team, respond! What’s your status…?”

* * *

THE BATWORM WAS doing its job of following the same exploits that the riddleworm was using. It had taken time to map them all, but Batman now had a record of them, and was reviewing them all in his heads-up display while he produced the portable computer jack from the left side of his utility belt.

He stood in front of a massive server, one that was kept cool by three giant fans overhead. On each side of it were four keyholes, where the keys of ANGS’s administrators must be placed and turned simultaneously in order to confirm the power shutdown with GL&P. While the riddleworm had been able to get through all of ANGS’s other systems and feed information back to the Riddler via the Internet, remote power-down wasn’t possible on something as vital as this server, for fear of some hacker gaining remote access to the reactor’s PLCs or other primary control programs. The isolation of this massive server was why the Riddler hadn’t gotten straight to it from the beginning—much easier to slip inside a standard power company and get it to share a virus/worm with its partners than it was to sneak into a heavily secured nuclear power plant. Eventually, the riddleworm had wiggled its way through to this server. Having made it this far, the riddleworm was working on its own now, without need of the Internet, without need of contacting the Riddler.

But the isolation of this power station was also Batman’s single shred of hope. As long as he could defend this position, he could use the knowledge gained from the batworm to close off all the entrances and exits the riddleworm was using. He did this by having portions of the batworm piggyback on the riddleworm’s exploits wherever it went.

This took a bit of time. Meanwhile, over his radio interception, he heard, “We’ve lost contact with Alpha Team! Hostile is still in the area! Bravo Team is preparing to move on up!”

Batman couldn’t just destroy the servers and keyholes all around him, because they would be necessary if the power needed to be shut down in another crisis. While the batworm had copied most of the riddleworm’s tricks, he still couldn’t gain as much access remotely—he had to be here, standing in front of the main console, and hack into it directly to head this invisible arm of the riddleworm off at the pass.

After a few minutes of figuring the system out, he finally gained access to some of the source code of the software that was attempting to defend ANGS from external attacks. However, he found that the riddleworm had observed the internal state of a random number generator, and had therefore been able to work backwards to deduce previous random values. This severely reduced the entropy of generated values, making numerous security keys vulnerable to attack.

Batman’s batworm mimicked the riddleworm’s attacks perfectly in order to gain access to menus he otherwise would’ve been hacking for a year to figure out. In front of him now was a menu that gave him the layout and options for control over various systems:

1 Containment

2 Control Rods

3 Reactor

4 Steam Line

5 Steam Generator

6 Generator

7 Pipe

8 Turbine

9 Cooling Tower

10 Cooling Water Condenser

11 Transformer

12 Fuel Rods

Virtually all of these systems were vital to controlling the pumps the riddleworm had secretly seized control of. The function of a nuclear power plant was to use uranium in nuclear fission to heat water into pressurized steam, which was used to drive a turbine generator. That pressurized steam passed from the steam generator into the steam line at incredible speeds, and if the pumps didn’t push it through fast enough, then there was no way the cooling tower or cooling water condensers could supply sufficient coolant to keep the heat from building to monumental extremes. The riddleworm had spread to nearly all of these systems simultaneously and without anyone knowing it, which again spoke to its sophistication.

Batman selected “Steam Line” from the menu and used the riddleworm’s own tricks, as mimicked by the batworm, to gain access to the pumps. With his portable extrapolation encryption/decryption computer, he could more quickly map out the riddleworm’s “style” of hacking and “teach” it to his computer, which would augment his batworm to be an anti-riddleworm. He had just commanded his batworm to attack the riddleworm and override its commands when he heard in his ear, “Bravo Team is ready and moving up!”

Batman looked at his left gauntlet—the PIaDM had been damaged, having taken a bullet which destroyed the antenna that transmitted the pain-inducing beam. He’d used it against a few of the SWAT operators. Without it, things would be tougher this time around, especially since he was dealing with trained professionals all around.

He glanced behind him, at all the gear he had stripped from the last SWAT officer he’d taken down. It consisted of a Kevlar helmet, heavy-duty body armor and an HK416 assault rifle, with a flashlight and flash-bang grenade launcher under the barrel. He had a decision to make. He didn’t like guns, he had a philosophy against using them at all, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

* * *

WHEN BRAVO TEAM surmounted the top of the stairs, they came across a strange, ominous sight. Their comrades were all lying on the ground, some of them slumped against the wall, most of them facedown. Some of them had their weapons disassembled beside their bodies, as if they’d suddenly gone through a field-stripping exercise.

“This is Bravo Team,” said Lieutenant Deon Chandler into his collar mic. “I see Sloan and his team, it looks like all of them. All men are down. But I see their chests moving and I hear at least one snoring. They’re not dead, but they’re down. Repeat, Sloan’s entire team is down! Proceeding inside—wait, there’s sign of movement!”

One of Alpha Team was rolling over, and had begun to crawl. Lieutenant Chandler couldn’t tell who it was because the helmet was on him and the radiation/gas mask they were all wearing obscured so much. He made a signal for a button-hook entry, and his team followed closely behind him. When Chandler got to the downed brother, he rolled him over, and just as he did he had time to look into the eyes through the gas mask and realize they belonged to no one he knew, and Chandler knew everyone on Alpha.

“We’ve got a—!” was all he managed to say before the downed man reached up and ripped Chandler’s mask off. Chandler backed up as the downed man fired two flash-bangs against the far wall. For a moment the dimly-lit hallway, illuminated only by its occasional flashing bright lights, was suddenly so bright, and so loud, that Chandler nearly fell back on his ass. Fortunately, he and every single one of his squad had been flash-banged before, so that they would know how to react in case of weapon malfunction.

But whoever had impersonated one of Alpha moved fast, and in the brief disorientation Chandler felt a kick to his left shin, then to his groin, and then he was slammed up against a wall while he heard other fighting going on in a muffled mess, as though he were listening to a brawl in the next room.

He moved out into what he estimated was the middle of the room, and someone was thrown into him. They collided and fell to the ground. Just as his sight was coming back to him, Chandler had time to spot the black, whirling menace. A cape flapped out in front of him, and as he raised his weapon he realized someone had flicked it to safety. It didn’t fire. By the time he engaged in CQB tactics, using what he’d learned in self-defense courses, the bat was on him, his cape whipped around Chandler’s incoming fist, ensnaring it. The bat held the end of his cape out like a towel, wrapping it several times around Chandler’s wrist before he wrenched it, sending him slamming into the wall.

Chandler took a side kick to his knee, which buckled. As he fell, he felt a small pinprick on the side of his neck. In a few seconds, it was all over with.

* * *

BATMAN STOOD PANTING, his right shoulder now screaming at him to stop this madness. He’d taken two shots at relatively close range, and though both of them had been mostly disintegrated by the Tango layer of his suit, he had been close enough that the force of the bullet’s initial impact was incredibly powerful. Both had struck his left ribs, and had undoubtedly bruised or cracked something.

The Dark Knight took a deep, steadying breath, remembering the meditative techniques taught to him by Cassandra, and then ran back down to the hallway to finish killing the riddleworm.

* * *

“ROOK, WE GONNA dance all day, or are we gonna shoot this bird down?” Pig asked.

Major Manzanita didn’t have an answer for him. So far the black bird had maneuvered incredibly well for a UAV flying solely on autopilot. Apparently, it knew precisely the moment it was being targeted, and deployed small plumes of chaff just when Manzanita was feeling comfortable with firing. The chaff disrupted her aim again and again, presenting her radar with dozens of other targets to follow. She couldn’t fire for fear of disrupting something pivotal to the ANGS facility, and possibly injuring any of the thousands of people working below to prevent the place from suffering a meltdown.

Red-and-blue flashing lights swarmed around the massive structure of Unit 1. Police vehicles were at the front and back entrances and exits. There was no way out for the bat.

The black bird couldn’t keep this up forever, no. At some point, it either had to run out of chaff or run out of fuel. Whichever came first, she wanted to make sure she was the one to clip its wings. “Base, Rook. Do you copy?”

“Rook, Base. We copy, go ahead.”

“What’s the word on the bat? Have they neutralized the threat inside yet?”

“Uh, that’s a negative so far, Rook. Threat is still active, though they have isolated him on Level Six and he is no longer mobile. Keep monitoring that bird, and watch for any outward signs of aggression.”

“Copy, monitoring for signs of aggression. Pig, Guts, what state of fuel?”

“Enough to outlast this bird,” Pig said.

“Same here, Rook,” Guts replied.

“All right, boys, keep it tight, and remember there are still other friendlies up here, so watch out for Voodoos One and Two.”

The black bird now hovered over the top of Unit 2, and occasionally dropped behind it, like the damn thing had been programmed to play Peekaboo. Manzanita maneuvered her jet so that she could be looking down on it from the left-side view in her window, about 150 yards above and to the east of it, and at a forty-five-degree angle.

She got clear enough to target it again, just to see what would happen. It didn’t release any chaff. Manzanita didn’t believe it was out yet. The black bird had done this before, dipping behind large buildings to use them for cover so that it could use its chaff sparingly.

You’re mine, she vowed, watching the miserable little thing vanish behind the west side of Unit 2. Then, it suddenly picked up one of its considerable bursts of speed, leaving two great tufts of chaff behind it while it rocketed back over to orbit around Unit 1 again. “I see you,” she said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

* * *

IT TOOK ANOTHER five minutes—five minutes of tense waiting, but finally it came. The batworm had outdone the riddleworm at its game, having completely mapped out every single one of its exploits and the nodes it had attacked and then creating techniques of its own based on those attacks—the batworm had learned, thanks to the help of extrapolation encryption/decryption technology present in his computer jack.

The small screen on the handheld jack told him of its success in uploading the cure:

round-trip min/avg/max = 0.8/2.3/4.4

SetMain [85]44876/9B{total CorePsy %10 [vig. 7*tty]}

PING excess euphemism(111.148.0.237):57 data bytes

Tempering algorithm…

*/ Main Modules

*/patching

*/

*/cue systems

Include: patch.sys

Include: networkscan.sys

Include: batworm.sys

Include: negateriddleworm.sys

Include: pwr.mdl

*/

*/Filtering...

batworm: upload 100 % complete

The batworm had granted Batman access to the very heart of Hard Target Security’s antivirus code, and saw the “handshake” programs the riddleworm malware had created so that it could “befriend” aspects of the system. He found that, ultimately, it was exactly 11,000 lines of code and, as with Stuxnet, it helped to disable the Autorun function first. Next, he had to close an “air gap”, that is, a functioning space between the PCs that were used to interact with the PLCs and the ordinary business network of the plant that had an Internet connection—this branch of the riddleworm wasn’t connected to the Internet per se, but the other parts of it that had vaulted it this far were sending information from the Internet “up the ladder” to help it with information necessary to adapt to change and the attacks of others. Batman severed this connection with its other parts.

Next, he had to cut off this part of the riddleworm (which had “evolved” into an advanced monster virus) from lower components down the ladder and in other, smaller, almost insignificant systems where those components had sat dormant (perhaps for years?) and recorded the controller traffic and responses. Without this data supplied to it, the most evolved part of the riddleworm could no longer “understand” how to infect the other PCs.

Finally, Batman inserted a powerful new buffer between the Hard Target Security system and this (now isolated) portion of the riddleworm, which completely sequestered the riddleworm. The malware was still there, still digging through the system, and it would take weeks if not months to remove it all, but for the time being it was stumped and could not access the pumps. Lucius and the others could cut the power from Anglo’s end without causing catastrophe.

The radio chatter indicated another SWAT team was being sent in, this one dropped from the roof. It was only a matter of time before they tried the roof, he thought. Time was shorter now than ever, if he wanted to get out.

Before he disconnected his computer jack, Batman left extra bits of useless code that would certainly call the attention of any computer specialist who came to interface with the power station’s main computer. As soon as they looked at it, they would see the bread crumb trail he’d left them to see that the riddleworm truly had made it this far into their system, and once they saw that until recently it had had control over the pumps, they’d think twice before cutting the power until they could be absolutely sure the system was flushed of it.

Batman went to unplug the computer jack. A moment before he did so, the small screen fluttered, and for a moment he felt concerned that the riddleworm had somehow figured out another way to get in, or had perhaps hacked into his jack. However, by holding the riddleworm back, the batworm must’ve unlocked some other key string of code in the attacking program, because it revealed yet another message:

If you’ve made it this far, then you deserve the truth. You deserve closure. You may find me here:

Lighter than what

I am made of,

More of me is hidden

Than is seen.

The answer was immediately obvious. “An iceberg,” Batman whispered. He knew what it meant. He knew where he must go. He listened to the radio chatter for a moment longer, hearing the command post outside calling for Alpha and Bravo Teams. Surely there must be a host of police vehicles waiting for him just outside.

Batman checked his small, flip-top computer screen on his left gauntlet to see if the Bat Hawk was still broadcasting its signal. It was, which meant it had managed to keep itself in one piece. Using the keypad, he gave the Bat Hawk specific instructions to fly to and remain at a specific set of coordinates. He then ran back down the hallway to the elevator, and used the sequencer to summon the elevator again. Once it was there, he hacked into the panel to get him to the top floor. He followed familiar hallways, and whenever he got turned around he conferred with the map on his HUD and the hallway signs underneath the flashing red lights.

When Batman finally came to the door he’d come in through, he paused to listen to any activity on the other side of the door. Using the directional mic, he could make out the sounds of the Bat Hawk’s propellers.

Batman took another deep, steadying breath to collect himself. Then he drew the GTEM gun from his thigh holster, switched it to its grappling setting, and flung open the door.

* * *

WHEN THE DOOR swung open and the bat came leaping out, it was Manzanita who saw it first. “I’ve got eyes-on, eyes-on! Tally! Tally!” She had seen the black bird zip down over the top of the reactor containment building and had got a sneaking suspicion that she knew what for.

The bat came leaping out of the doorway. Because of the chopper’s propellers, it couldn’t be any closer to the Unit 1 building than about forty feet. The bat was in midair when he fired some kind of rope into the side of the chopper, and all at once the black bird shot up vertically, and faster than any other helicopter Manzanita had ever seen before. The bat was dangling from it, but was reeling himself in by the time the chopper reached about three hundred feet AGL.

Manzanita and her two wing men shot full power to their vertical thrusters, but could not match the lightweight chopper’s vertical speed. Wait till you even out and start going straight! she thought. You can’t go up forever. You’ll eventually have to take a bearing—north, south, east, west, or somewhere in between. And you can’t outrun us in those directions!

* * *

HE SWITCHED THE autopilot off immediately, and went up to 9,000 feet before stopping—any higher than that, and he’d need a greater pressurized cabin and supplemental oxygen, and those were two things the Bat Hawk just didn’t have. After he went as high as he dared go, he headed due east at full speed at 240 knots, his body pressed against his seat.

Batman flew straight ahead for two minutes. The Harriers behind him couldn’t hover much higher than a few hundred feet, so they had to take off forward and at an angle at some point if they wanted to gain greater altitude. When he saw them doing this on his radar, Batman pitched the Bat Hawk back down, headed straight towards the earth at 276 miles per hour. At that speed, he’d be colliding with the earth in a couple of minutes.

Over his pursuers’ radio chatter, he heard, “Rook here. I’ve got him in the clear. I can target him!”

“Rook, Base. You are weapons free. Repeat, weapons free.”

“Fox Two, away!” That was brevity code for an AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missile being launched.

A second later, the missiles were fired!

Alarms went off, indicating that he had not only been targeted, but that he had incoming. The sensors confirmed that they were Sidewinders, two of them, much good that that knowledge would do him. He could not outrun them. They were advanced, heat-seeking missiles. While flying over ANGS he had never been in any danger of them because the heat signature of the enormous nuclear plant was too large and his chaff had interrupted all other targeting systems. Out here, it was just him. Him, and the trees.

He had made it only about twenty miles outside of ANGS, and already the Harriers had closed the distance. He had known it could be this bad. He had known this could be his end.

Batman flew the chopper nearly straight down, and finally pulled up to float just above the treetops of the wide, expansive forests that covered this countryside. A small river etched its way across the land to the west. He made sure that there were no roads out here, and checked his sensors one last time to ensure that he was picking up no signs of civilization near him. It all seemed clear for the Bat Hawk to meet its end. Batman push the cyclic forward, picking up speed.

He reached down to pull the cap off the ejection switch. The red light went off, letting him know the lever to his left had been engaged. Batman strapped himself tight to the seat. He reached over, gave the lever a swift tug, and the doors exploded off both sides. The ejection seat blasted out to the side, instead of going straight up (because he’d be killed by the propeller blades otherwise, of course), and he rocketed out to the east while the chopper was still doing 220 knots.

The ejection seat had thrusters of its own, making it pilotable for up to ten miles, as long as the fuel was capped off. It was very navigable, with a cyclic allowing him a great deal of control. However, Batman couldn’t risk flying even ten miles, because the Harriers would find him easy pickings in his small, defenseless seat. He skirted just above the trees for half a mile, then unbuckled himself and leapt from the seat, allowing it to arch downwards on its own, crash landing somewhere he never saw.

In midair, Batman activated his cape, a Sidewinder missile flashing over his head about fifty feet up as he glided over the treetops. Three seconds later, he heard the tremendous explosions, the wind of which shook the trees that blocked his view of the Bat Hawk’s final end.

His speed decreased rapidly, but with his cape fully extended, he couldn’t pass cleanly through the trees. The branches snagged and slapped at him. It was the exact opposite of the smooth landing he’d had atop the reactor containment building. Batman came crashing down through the trees, his head smashing against a large, thick branch that snapped his head back, knocking him half unconscious a split second before he hit the ground. He went reflexively into uke, the jiu-jitsu breakfall, and slid a few feet into a puddle that had collected on the forest floor, at the bottom of an oak tree that his torso slammed against.

Batman lay there for a moment, breathing heavily, the echoing boom of the Bat Hawk’s doom reverberating all around him. He reached up with one hand, his right hand, and the pain in his shoulder suddenly intensified. He managed to get up to his knees, then turned and sat with his back to the oak tree.

He sat there for several minutes, listening to jets fly way overhead and all around him, no doubt confirming his end while he sat there considering his injuries with clinical detachment. He massaged his right knee. He had expended so much energy in the last few yours, both physical and mental, that he could hardly think or act straight at the moment.

Batman shut his eyes and meditated there at the foot of the tree for a few minutes. He went deep, deep within himself, trying to push the pain back.

Then, he heard a voice. Only this time, it wasn’t his father, or his mother, or Alfred or anyone that he would have expected. The words came to him like the same inspiration that had floated to the forefront of his mind when he’d first had the hypnogogic experience that had helped him to solve the Riddler’s very first riddle to him. They were the words of Hammad, the young Shukur gang member he’d tracked to Bailey Park: What you’re doing…I think it is good work. Don’t ever stop.

Batman opened his eyes. Moments ago he had been close to death, and hadn’t even really acknowledged it. He had been close before, and almost never stopped to think about it. The reason for that was very simple; he had always thought that what he was doing was as important as Hammad had suggested, and he’d found the challenge of his work both rewarding and bitterly appealing.

Iceberg. It was the answer to the riddle, of course, and perhaps the answer to everything. Was the Riddler waiting for him there? Was Batman’s journey and investigation close to its end? Why else had he left it there? Another trap, that’s why. You know that, Bruce.

The Dark Knight pushed himself up off the forest floor. Something popped inside his knee, but he had to keep moving. In about thirty minutes, this whole area would be swarming with search teams. He’d seen a river to the west just before he’d jumped free of the Bat Hawk. Batman checked his GPS, found it, set the coordinates, and ran for it. He sent a text message to Alfred and Lucius, telling them he was okay and giving them the coordinates to where he was headed. He told Lucius that he needed an exit, and fast.

* * *

AFTER TWENTY MINUTES of circling the area and scanning for signatures, Major Karen Manzanita finally called it in. “Base, this is Rook,” she said.

“Rook, Base. Go ahead.”

“Base, it looks like this bird is cooked for real. I’m not seeing any indication that he got out.”

“Copy that, Rook. We’re getting the same information from search teams there on the ground. Looks like you got ’im. Bravo Zulu.” That was, of course, more brevity code for a job well done.

“Thanks a lot, sir. Rook, Pig, and Guts are all RTB. Over and out.” She took one last look at the fiery wreckage, and looked at the trail of fire where it had streaked through and burned the treetops before finally plopping down in a clearing and scorching the earth. She wondered who the Batman had been, and what he had been up to.

Another part of her was excited to get back to base. She smiled when she thought of the champagne bottles uncorked in her honor. Karen “Rook” Manzanita, the woman who took down the Batman.

She climbed to 10,000 feet, and led her boys back home.