Knives. Scissors. Razors. Blades everywhere.
Everywhere you looked, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere—in an asylum
full of homicidal psychos. Kevin Boda turned on his heel and quietly made
his way to the door. No job was worth it. No way…
Eyes. Eyes were watching. Rosa Crite was no longer
doing her job at the check-in desk. She was acting the part of doing her
job. It was all poses and pantomime for whoever was watching her. There
were cameras, of course. It was the entrance to the high security wing,
even the staff had a special check-in station before they could pass beyond
Rosa’s desk into the red zone, so of course there were cameras watching all
the time. That was the norm. Not like today. Today, there were other
eyes watching, she could feel it. Rosa played along, pretending to do her
job. She wouldn’t do anything to attract attention. She would wait for her
break, then she would collect her things and walk down the hall, like
always. Instead of going into the break room, she’d walk right past it like
she was going to the soda machine. Nobody watching would think anything of
that. Then she would walk just as calmly and naturally out the door.
Whatever they were planning with those peering eyes, they wouldn’t get her.
No sir, she was going straight home, close all the blinds so that nobody
could see in, and stay there for a very long time. Nobody would see her do
anything for the rest of the week.
Worms! Snakes! Slithering, creepy, crawling—AHHHHHH!
Gavin Worsted ran screaming from the parking lot. “Don’t forget your
nametag?” the thin, bookish figure called after him, picking the combination
nametag/key card from the puddle where it had fallen. “Oh, look at that,”
Jonathan Crane smiled wickedly. “Try and warn a fellow he’s getting a flat
tire, what does he do but leave his ID in a pothole.” A malevolent snicker
followed, while Jonathan slid the card into his pocket. He returned to his
car, adjusted his wig, and turned back onto the main road towards Arkham.
It really was much easier, getting to the Arkham staff
from the outside, as they went about their daily lives. Much easier. Their
guard was up on the inside, but out here in the world, at the laundromat, at
the supermarket, pumping gas at the mini-mart near the asylum, it was
shooting fish in a barrel. The only real challenge was figuring out the
time release on Boda and Crite’s doses. Boda was a 220 pound guard, Crite a
130 pound nurse administrator, and he didn’t know when either of them ate
dinner. It was difficult to be precise about when, exactly, the toxin would
kick in, so he hedged his bets, giving each a phobia that should provoke a
quiet exit rather than the screaming flight Mr. Worsted had just
demonstrated.
So much for getting in. Jonathan Crane’s knowledge of
the asylum procedures let him waltz in through the employee entrance and
passageways as far as Rosa Crite’s desk. Gavin Worsted’s keycard got him
through security station as it had through all the others, and no Rosa Crite
was sitting there to check that his appearance matched the photo on the
keycard. No Kevin Boda was there to relieve, and once again, no Rosa Crite
was there to notice his absense or expect either of them to sign a shift
changeover sheet. It really was ridiculously easy getting as far as Joker’s
cell. Once he got there, however…
“HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA!”
…the situation became a bit more complicated.
It’s not unusual for a man to make some gesture after a
particularly enjoyable date. Most send flowers the next day, but Bruce was
not “most men.” He was Batman. He wanted to do something personal. So he
took a few minutes before his morning workout and set up a new keyword
matrix to sift the autodownloads.
“You made me a search routine?” Selina asked, that
‘you’re so cute when you’re a geek’ smile dancing on her lips.
“Selina, every night the Batcomputer downloads massive
amounts of information from all sorts of public and private mainframes.”
“I know, I remember my first visit to this cave very
well, thank you. You download everything that exists in digitalia and
you’ve got this Gordian knot of algorithms sifting it while you sleep,
tagging all the keywords that pertain to all the rogues and ferreting out
potential targets and clues for you to read through after your workout.
Everything works splendidly (grunt) until some soccer team in Barcelona
calls themselves ‘Demons’ and you have to recalibrate. I get that. I just
don’t quite get—oh my god, a new Bastet temple in Alexandria? When did they
find that?”
Bruce’s lip twitched.
“Four hours ago,” Bruce said coolly, the pride in his
equipment and his subroutines betrayed only by a subtle pat of the control
as his fingers slid to the keyboard to pull the full datastream. “These
digital photographs were sent to the Supreme Council of Antiquities funding
the dig, and it looks like a Mr. Hendawi from the Cairo office will be
writing up the press release later this week once the details are
confirmed.”
“Large number of statues depicting the cat-goddess
Bastet found in the ruins,” Selina murmured as she skimmed the documents.
“thought to belong to Queen Berenice, wife of King Ptolemy III who ruled
Egypt in the 3rd century B.C… first trace of the long-sought location of
Alexandria's royal quarter… would indicate that the worship of the ancient
Egyptian cat-goddess continued during the later, Greek-influenced, Ptolemaic
period!” This last quote was followed by a loud, girlish squeal (which
upset several of the bats overhead) and her throwing her arms around Bruce
with a warm, wet kiss, as if he personally brought about the Ptolemaic-era
worship of the cat-goddess Bast.
“You’re welcome,” he said softly, touching the tip of
his thumb to her lips and then letting his index finger stroke gently under
her chin. “Enjoy your present. I’ll be in the chem lab working on an
antidote for the new fear toxin.”
“You mean just GO?!” Joker asked incredulously. “Just
walk out the door, what kind of an escape is that?!”
“Out the fire exit,” Scarecrow explained again. “It’s
a perfectly good way to get out. I have air transportation waiting.”
“A balloon!” Joker cried. “With my own delightful grin
painted on, so they’ll see us smiling as we float away!”
“A helicopter,” Scarecrow said testily. “A balloon
would be far too slow, and easily shot down.”
“It has no style, I won’t go,” Joker said firmly, and
Scarecrow rubbed his brow. “A Joker escape is an event, sir. It is a
happening. There are expectations. I can’t just WALK OUT THE DOOR.”
“Yes, you can,” Crow insisted, poking at the Joker’s
chest with his index finger. “You put one foot in front of the other until
we’re out on the roof, then we take off, you say thank you, and we’re out of
here!”
“Exactly, saying thank you! No ‘Thank you, you’ve been
a great audience’ before I depart? It’s rude, sir. Rude, I say. I shall
not compromise the integrity of the Joker brand with such an inferior
departure.”
“Fine, what’s it going to take? Banana peels? Banana
cream pie? Leave a bucket of acid balanced on the door when we go? Will
that satisfy you?”
Joker raised an eyebrow, then he clapped his hands and
became all business.
“Okay, if we’re going to do this, we’ll need a hatchet,
a willing chicken, and some snakes.”
“I literally cannot tell if you’re serious,” Scarecrow
said flatly.
“I am always serious,” Joker said, with as grim a
deadpan as he could manage under that permanent grin. Then…
“HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA! Just joshing you, ya lopsided bag o’ hay. Bucket of
acid over the door will do fine. We’ll make up for it next time. Instead
of a chicken—flamingos! HAHAHAHAHA! Harley always did like pink. Set that
up that bucket, and then we’ll go and get you that brain.”
Selina had padded silently into the chem lab and
watched. Unable to see exactly what Bruce was doing at the work table, she
decided to forego the pounce she had planned. A pounce was always fun—but
not if there were samples of fear toxin to be knocked over. So instead
of a vigorous outburst of impassioned felinity, she just quietly cleared her
throat.
“Is that a purr?” Bruce asked without turning.
“More than a purr. I just found… Bruce, the downloads
you tagged for me, the Joshua Bell tour schedule is in there. So is
information on a chocolate tasting tour of Paris. Now, at the risk of
stating the obvious: that’s not art, it’s not jewels, and it’s not cats.
Even if I went for the idea of stealing Joshua Bell’s Stradivarius on the
‘catgut’ angle—which is a stretch—there’s no way to work the chocolate
tasting into a cat crime.”
“Of course not,” Bruce said, turning to face her. “I
didn’t recreate the algorithm for Batman to identify potential Catwoman
targets, Selina, I made it for you.”
“So in with all the cats and Cartier, there’s Joshua
Bell and chocolate—”
“And Irene Adler and Chanel and that Dan Brown book you
were enjoying so much last week and—mph-mm-mmm.”
Caution was tossed aside, and Selina had flung herself
forward to impart another passionate kiss.
Scarecrow had been uncertain what to do about Harley.
On the one hand, she was part of Joker’s shtick. If he was going to observe
the mad clown in action—study the beast in his element, so to speak—he
should provide everything that Joker was used to having. That’s why he had
the Z make him a Ha-Hacienda instead of replacing the lair Batman discovered
the night of the armored car robberies with one of a similar theme.
Unfortunately, “everything Joker was used to having” included Harley Quinn
and not some generic henchwench he could pick up at the Iceberg and dress in
tassels instead of straw. Harley was fine as wenches went, but she didn’t
have as flexible a relationship with reality as Joker did. Joker had a way
of going along with whatever he was presented with. If Scarecrow was
hanging around the hacienda acting as if they had already agreed on a
team-up, there would be a team-up. With Harley, you could never be sure.
She might just assume Mistah J had knowingly agreed to all this, or she
might not. If she didn’t, he’d have to explain. That would be mortifying.
Joker telling the whole Iceberg that Scarecrow had come to him for “Fear
lessons.” HAHAHAHA. “A little peer review, eh, Professor?” Not
funny.
On the other hand, Harley might just accept the
situation as easily as Joker did. If she did, she’d be an asset. She
already knew how Joker worked: what he liked, what he didn’t like—and she
provided an alternative target. Even in the interests of science, even in
the service of this current mission to uncover the formula for ultimate
fear, Joker really wasn’t somebody you wanted to be alone with if you could
help it. Harley was a distraction. So Jonathan decided to include her. It
turned out to be the right decision. She was a distraction that knew her
way around a regulation Hacienda. She could look over the invoice left by
the Z and explain which items were expected (tangerine colored chairs, red
stripped curtains, “festive” pillows, barrels of glue, glitter, silly putty,
battery acid, and confetti) and which were the Z’s trademark extras bought
on your nickel to entertain themselves (vintage Donkey Kong machine,
paintball gear for 7, and a brick barbecue pit).
Once the ha-ha-happy couple were settled in—a process
that consisted of Joker playing Donkey Kong for half an hour while Harley
went out to buy Ho Hos and Ding Dongs—Scarecrow began carefully laying out
his plan so Joker could, well, “Joker it up” a little.
Selina stared at the viewscreen, pale with disbelief as
a pair of radiant cut, fancy yellow diamonds were displayed from several
angles in an automated slideslow.
“This is the most revolting thing I’ve seen since that
mummy chamber,” she said hoarsely.
“You’re not still on that Cairo story,” Bruce said,
coming over to her workstation and glancing at the screen over her shoulder.
“Oh no, all done with that. I just mentioned the mummy
because—long story. Temple outside of Belize. There was a jaguar god,
there was a jaguar altar, there was a booby trap and I fell through it onto
a pile of skulls, and there was a mummy. Occasionally, cliché is served and
crime really doesn’t pay. Point is, it was really disgusting for an hour or
two. It held the record for just how icky something cat-related and
valuable can be—until now. These… these are lab-grown diamonds… made from
cats.”
Bruce said nothing. He just stared blankly at the
screen. Selina continued.
“DNA2Diamonds,” she quoted. “They say they’ll make
these lab-grown, heirloom quality gemstones from the hair or ashes of—I
can’t say it—of a departed pet. Now, much as I love Shimbala and Nirvana,
much as I love Whiskers and Nutmeg, I don’t see making them into earrings.”
“It does seem a little odd,” Bruce admitted. He didn’t
say it out loud, but privately it reminded him of the sort of thing certain
League villains had attempted: encasing Superman, Wonder Woman and other
heroes in high pressure, high temperature incubators that simulated
conditions below the Earth’s crust, with the stated objective of pressing
them into uniquely powered gemstones.
“Yep, they’ll do people,” Selina said, as if she was
privy to his thoughts—but really because she was following some line of
thought of her own. “Have grandma made into a broach to match the Fido and
Spot earrings. This is just nuts. I mean technically it is diamonds and
cats, but if I was still working, I wouldn’t touch these things with a
bargepole.”
Joker threw his hands up over his head as if he was
signaling a touchdown, then stretched them out wide, letting out a loud
yawn.
“Bor-ing!” he sang. “It’s just so borrrrrrrring. Hey,
did you hear that, I rolled the ‘r,’ like that French guy that thought he
was Batman. Okay, so, straw-for-brains, why go after this bug eye dude?”
“Bugidole,” Scarecrow corrected. “Dr. Rupert Bugidole,
of the Behavior Sciences Institute, because he is a BULLY!”
“Yeah, learn a new song already,” Joker yawned. “I
mean, why pick on the bully all the time? Where’s the funny?”
“Bullies dominate, blame, and use others,” Scarecrow
said in his stiffest Professor Crane delivery. “They lack empathy and
foresight, and do not accept responsibility for their actions. They are
concerned only about themselves and crave attention, due to their deservedly
low self-esteem. It is that lack of self-esteem that leads them to put
other people down in order to feel better about themselves.”
“Pbbbbbbt,” Dr. Quinzel replied. “Completely outdated
thinking, Dr. Crane. The typical bully has an inflated sense of self-worth,
a sense of entitlement and superiority over others, which results in the
lack compassion, as well as deficiencies in the areas of impulse control and
social skills.”
“Oh I must object,” Crane said, shaking his head
vigorously. “The supposed ego and sense of superiority is a blind, an
attempt to conceal from themselves their own self-loathing. They despise
themselves for their many inadequacies, and mask it with a superficial
arrogance. They would prefer to interact normally, but lacking the capacity
to do so, they tell themselves that they are above such things.”
Joker sat there, staring into space, as
Harley and Jonathan debated the finer points of paranoia, sadism, borderline
personality disorder, socialization disorder, and negative trickledown.
“It’s just not funny,” he said at last. “Not ha-ha
funny. Not COULDN’T YOU JUST DIE funny. It’s the other funny. The odd
funny. The ‘reason people like you two never had a date in high school’
funny.”
“Heeeey! I went on plenty of dates,” Harley cried.
“Guys named Todd don’t count,” Joker said
simply.
Harley had to think about that for a second… she hadn’t
dated a single guy named Todd, but by the time she was ready to say so,
Joker had moved on:
“The thing is, Craney, when a bully gives some little
twirp a wedgie, that’s funny. Why would you want to ruin it? Cancer
survivors, that’s who you want to go after—or maybe liver disease. Oh, or
maybe those kids with the cleft palates. Basically, anything there’s a
colored ribbon for, that’s some USDA Prime Grade-A funny.”
“Too bad those department store Santas are outta
season, ain’t it, Puddin’?” Harley said. “No wait, not department store,
oh you know what I mean. Those whatchamacallits, the bell-ringers.”
“The Salvation Army,” Scarecrow said absently.
“YEAH THEM!” Harley cheered.
“See, there ya go!” Joker said happily. “There’s
nothing funnier than a heap of dead Santas. They’re like baby seals in red
hats. HAHAHAHAHAAA!”
It wasn’t helpful. Okay, Joker was crazy. Scarecrow
knew that when he began. But “crazy” on its own was nothing. You couldn’t
say a mad man did mad things because he is mad—not unless you were Jervis,
and that was another conversation entirely. But there had to be something
that made the screwy inanity make sense. A guy walking around in a sailor
suit, no pants, speaking unintelligibly and getting into fights—well, he’s
crazy. Until you find out he thinks he’s Donald Duck. Still crazy, but now
the crazy makes sense.
Joker’s crazy didn’t make any sense. It all seemed so
random and so extreme. A put-on. You’d almost think he was a perfectly
sane sociopath pretending to be a madman—except, of course, that that would
be crazy. Ha ha ha.
“Look,” Scarecrow said, exasperated. “Assuming I can
find us some… ‘funnier’ victims, what do you think about the rest of it?”
Joker scratched his head.
“What are we doing to them again? Oh, right, scaring
the pants off them.”
“Without fear toxin,” Crane said quickly.
“Thank Chaplin, something new. Okay, scary, scary,
scary… what’s scary. Oh, HAHAHAHA, I got it, werewolves!”
“I really don’t think—”
“Yeah, you’re right. They shed on the carpet. Okay
what else?”
“Ventriloquist dummies are pretty creepy, Puddin’.”
Joker and Scarecrow considered it, but they decided
Arnold Wesker would take it the wrong way.
“Key-4,” Selina said, scrunching up her nose. “A
paper-thin square of C-4 to slide into a reinforced door to blast it open.”
“Sounds effective,” Bruce noted.
“Pfft, I hate blowing safes, I hate blowing doors.
It’s for amateurs. I like to take the high road.”
“The… high road,” Bruce said, sensing feline logic was
about to enter the conversation.
“Yes, the high road. You crack a safe, you
pick a lock, you show the scowling crimefighter a little leg and suggest
fun and novel uses for a batarang that never occurred to him. Nothing goes
boom.”
“…”
Scarecrow was beginning to think he was being played.
He had stolen a helicopter, broken Joker out of Arkham, and paid for an
entire furnished Hacienda including buying the Z a vintage Donkey Kong
machine. He was supposed to be getting some kind of insight into Joker’s
power to generate fear, but Joker didn’t seem to be taking the scheme at all
seriously. This couldn’t be how he planned his own crime sprees. He was
just… he was having Harley dress up in these little outfits. He sat there,
while Jonathan preferred to stand, as she pranced out in one getup after
another. So far they’d seen her as Morticia Adams, a zombie with a
disgusting amount of gore oozing from a gaping wound in her midsection, Anne
Boleyn after the beheading, and a Lovecraftian Elder Thing (which Jonathan
found strangely alluring and if Harley was anyone else’s wench…)
“Okay, this is the best one yet!” Harley called, before
making her appearance as...
“That Christmas Future guy?” Joker said.
“The Grim Reaper,” Crow corrected.
“The what?” Joker said blankly.
“The Grim Reaper.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Death incarnate. Reaper of souls. See the scythe,
that makes it the reaper.”
“You know, Puddin’, the guy from Bill and Ted’s Bogus
Journey?” the Reaper said helpfully, before breaking into an abbreviated macarena and rapping “You might be a king or a little street sweeper, but
sooner or later you dance with the reaper.”
Joker’s eyeballs rolled up towards
Scarecrow and then Harley without moving his head.
”I really don’t think this is going to scare anyone
without toxin,” Joker said firmly. “Maybe even then. The lemmings are
sheep, but it’s hard to fear a guy who let a couple stoner wannabe musicians
sink his battleship.”
“Puddin’, I think lemmings are actually lemmings.
Sheep are different.”
“Could we possibly get back to the original subject,”
Scarecrow said, ripping the scythe from Grim Harley’s grasp. “Look, the
reaper is DEATH. Everyone’s afraid of death. Here, give me that.”
He hurried Harley through removal of the cloak, donned
it himself. Even without the black gloves and ski mask, the costume was far
more imposing on his tall, pencil thin frame. Giving the hood a final
adjustment, he raced at Joker scythe in hand, and hovered over him poised to
strike, a petrifying apparition that would shrivel the soul to an icy jelly.
Joker peered up at him silently for what seemed like a
full minute, and Jonathan’s spirit soared as he began to realize—incredible as it might seem—impossible as it might seem—yet every
passing moment making the impossible dream seem more and more probable—every moment of silence making it seem all the more likely in fact that—yes—he had in fact—he had done it—was doing it—he had pulled off the
impossible—he, Jonathan Crane, had scared the living piss out of the—
“More cowbell,” Joker said at last.
Scarecrow blinked.
“HAHAHAHAHAAAAA! I get it now, the Reaper. You need
more cowbell, Craney. HAHAHAHA. More—HAHAHAHA—Cowbell.”
Scarecrow swallowed.
“That’s what’s been missing, Johnny-o. That’s what
you’re doing wrong. HAHHAHAHAAA! You’re doing a disservice to yourself and
this whole band—er, yeah, this whole band—you got to get more cowbell.”
Scarecrow did not get the reference.
“So try it again and really, y’know, explore the
space.”
After Ra’s al Ghul and Vandal Savage, he
was probably the least attuned to popular culture.
“Más cencerro, mi amigo.”
At least, pop culture outside of horror films.
“Plus de sonnaille. Mehr Kuhglocke. Mais sino da
vaca. Meer koeklok.”
And since he didn’t get the reference in English, he
certainly didn’t get it in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Dutch.
“Latlh cow-jah.”
Or Klingon.
Bruce reached out to touch Selina’s hand, signaling
that she shouldn’t click past this screen yet. He read the document a
second time. Of all the articles, documents and video that had been tagged
by Selina’s search routines, this was by far the most interesting. An
internal memo at the CIA proposed an investigation and debriefing of
bestselling fiction writer Dan Brown.
“It looks like he put some thermal imaging equipment
into the hands of the fictional special ops agents in his book, equipment
which the real CIA actually does have. They want to know if he got lucky
making it up, or if he really knows something.”
“Yeah, I saw that,” Selina said, her fingers still
poised on the next arrow. “I guess you would like that one, for the
same reason I don’t. Night lenses and heat sensors that can spot the warmth
of a body in a darkened room, big whoop, I’ve been getting around that kind
of thing since the Phoenix 9000 was a 6000. But this ‘differential
sensitivity and multi-source integration’… if I’m reading that right, you
can essentially look back in time. So you’re not seeing where the
cat burglar is right now—that’s not going to do you any good because I left
ten minutes ago—but you can actually see where I was. Where I
moved. Do you realize what that means? I’ve got to get a set of Victor’s
frigid-field generators now for my boots! Like my feet don’t get cold
enough this time of year. Not like my costume is insulated. That’s why I
always take the extra time to disarm the heat cameras instead of wearing
those awful cold suits. Now they’ve got thermal lenses that look back in
time, and I have to start toting around frost cores in my boot heels.”
Bruce couldn’t suppress a chuckle.
“Selina, you don’t have to do any of that
anymore. You’re on the other end of the lenses now, remember?”
“…”
“Kitten?”
“I prefer not to think of it that way,” she said
simply.
Joker was disgusted at the Scarecrow’s ineptitude.
Clearly he needed more cowbell. Since there was no cowbell at the new
hacienda (an oversight for which someone would have to pay dearly), Joker just
hit him with the scythe for a while, then kicked him out onto the street.
A short while later, Harley let the hyenas out to play with him and cheer
him up, but he had gone.
Another day in another mood, Joker would have forgotten
the episode completely in an hour or two, but today, for some reason, he
kept finding little bits of straw as he wandered around the Ha-hacienda.
Each new find served as a reminder: Scarecrow.
“A man so lacking in the fundamentals, he didn’t even
bring a chicken to an Arkham escape. What’s the world coming to, Harls?”
“Cheer up, Puddin’. Have another Ho Ho.”
“Nah,” Joker pouted. “Well, maybe just one. I
couldn’t reach him, Harley. These are the ones that haunt you. He had such
potential. If only—heh, heh-heh, HA!”
“Ooh, that sounds like a good one, Mistah J. Ya got an
idea?”
“HAHAHAHAHAHAAA-Right! Why was the Scarecrow not able
to achieve his goals?”
“Not enough cowbell,” Harley declared loyally.
“WRONG! Because he’s not me—HAHAHAHAAAAA! Why didn’t
I think of it before? I can do this fear thing much better than that scrawny old
friend of Dorothy. Pack up the whoopee cushions, Harley, we’re going to try
something new. HA-HA. HA-HA-HA. Oh, HA-HA HA-HA HA-HA HAAAAAA! This is
going to drive Batsy bonkers! HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAA!”
There was silence in the cave, apart from the bat
Walapang warning the other bats off his favorite stalactite, a soft
shuffling from the worktable where Bruce was testing lenses, and a few
frustrated grunts from the gymnasium where Selina was testing out a new
harness. The discussion of the new heat view technologies had escalated
into a bet: Batman was going to build a set as a crimefighting tool,
Catwoman was going to plan a heist to defeat it. If she pulled it off, he
would fly her to Cairo in Wayne One to see the new ruins of the Alexandrian
Temple of Bastet. If she didn’t, she would donate a sum to the Wayne
Foundation to underwrite security improvements at the Gotham Museum of Art.
Not a bet she intended to lose. She had already called
Victor for some basic information about the size, weight, consistency, and
placement of the devices she would need. She had made up “rehearsal props,”
basically, filling rubber balloons with flour or gelatin and affixing them
to her boots, hips, and gloves at key points. After a little practice on
the uneven bars, she would have a better sense how they moved and how their
weight affected her moves. Then she would be able to describe her
requirements to Kittlemeier and—
“Catwoman!” the deep gravel pulled her from her reverie
as she adjusted her balance on the bar.
“No peeking!” she called without dismounting. “We had
an…” She trailed off when she saw his posture standing between the
outcroppings that acted as the doorway to the gymnasium. Words weren’t
necessary, she could sense it. Bruce was gone, there was only Batman,
weighed down with a heavy burden. “Game over. Something’s
happened,” she said, sliding down from the bars without any of her usual
flourish, and walking up to him without any slink or sway in her hips.
He nodded.
“An alert just came in. Arkham escape. It’s Joker.”
To be continued…
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