Batman created by Bob Kane
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to Ryan Hickman. Because he asked.
PROLOGUE
MAKING A MAN
* * *
Wayne Manor / Bristol / 4:24 p.m. / September 21, 1953
“Damn it, boy! Stand up!”
Thomas Wayne shrank once more from the voice. It was a reflex ingrained in him. In all his fifteen years of life, that flinch had been as natural as breath, as unthinking as a blink.
“That’s no way to hold a gun!” Patrick Wayne was a big man in a big town, with strong, wide hands that had, Thomas had no doubt, bent and shaped the very steel that formed the foundations of Gotham City. His voice outdid his size, roaring into the darkness, bounding off the unseen walls in a cascade of echoes that reached into the bowels of the earth. The column of yellow light from the old man’s handheld flashlight hurt the boy’s eyes. “Grip the stock by the trigger with your right hand so you can lift the barrel up by the forestock! And for hell’s sake, hold it across your body with the barrel down.”
Thomas dutifully repositioned his hold on the shotgun. His hands were shaking so violently he was afraid he would drop it. Sweat was pooling between his shoulder blades beneath his collared shirt and sweater vest despite the damp chill of the cave. Some part of his mind registered the fact that his new jeans would be ruined. It was a diversion of his mind. He sensed what was coming next.
The big hand slammed into Thomas’s back, propelling him forward into the cavern. The young man hated the dark. The unseen cavern walls and roof pressed down on him. He hunched up his shoulders, drawing tighter within himself as he stumbled over the loose shale crumbling beneath his feet.
“Hell or high water, boy, I’m going to make a man out of you,” Patrick roared behind him. Thomas knew the mix better than the cocktails his mother had him make for her every evening—and, of late, in the afternoons as well. His father had achieved balanced parts of rage and liquor soured with a twist of disappointment. It never mattered where it came from—who or what had set the old man off was irrelevant, Thomas knew. All that mattered now was that Thomas had become the focus of his father’s displeasure…again. His own manhood had been somehow threatened and now manhood would be impressed on his son at any cost. “Do you think those comic books are going to keep you alive in Gotham? It’s kill or be killed out there—not like that comic book world you live in! And you’re gonna learn how to kill today, son. You’re gonna kill something!”
He could hear them.
Even over his father’s thunderous voice, he could hear the waking bats.
It was afternoon, and he had disturbed their rest. The dim light from the failing Evereadys in his father’s flashlight reflected in a thousand pairs of eyes blanketing the ceiling above them.
The bats were at home beneath Wayne Manor, and in their coming Patrick and his son had upset the quiet balance in the cavern between the world above and the world below.
“Get on with it, boy!”
The cringe was deepening. He couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. He tried to raise the barrel of the shotgun but the foreign thing felt impossibly heavy, and he could not will his arms to move. Tears stung his eyes, welling out and spilling down his cheeks in the darkness.
Thomas tried to speak through shivering lips.
“What did you say, boy?”
Thomas could feel the massive presence of his father looming up behind him as the dimming flashlight shifted in his hands.
“Speak up, boy!” Patrick’s voice shook the cavern.
He froze, but Thomas knew disobedience would only make it worse. He blurted his response loud enough to clear his clenched teeth.
“I—I can’t!”
“You CAN’T?” Patrick raged. “You’re the descendant of knights who fought in the crusades! Waynes have participated in every battle fought in or about America—given their blood for this country. We build the weapons that make this country strong and great…and you tell me you CAN’T!”
The big hand. The strong hand. The hand that had bent the steel of Gotham smashed down across the boy’s face, driving him to the ground.
Thomas lay on his back sobbing. He could taste his own blood from the corner of his mouth where Patrick’s ring had dragged as it drove him to the ground. The side of his face would sting for a while but the pain in his soul would never diminish, only be compounded.
The shotgun lay across his body as he wept; his eyes closed against the darkness of the cavern around him…the deeper darkness of his father standing over him. The watchful darkness of the keening bats beyond.
The big hand. The strong hand.
Thomas felt the gathering of his collar at the back of his neck. It stretched the sweater, dragging him to his feet as the gun clattered on the shale ground.
The hand of Patrick Wayne held his son in an iron grip, dragging their faces within inches of each other. The flashlight flickered as it shone upward, casting both their faces in heavy contrasting shadows. Thomas stared into the eyes of his father.
“You’re a Wayne, boy!” Patrick growled into the face of his son. The words smelled like rotted fruit falling from his father’s scotch-soaked tongue. “There are only two types of people in this world: the hunters and the hunted—and you had better make up your mind right now that you’re going to hunt! I won’t allow the empire I’ve built to be taken apart by the government, and I sure as hell won’t turn it over to a bookworm son with a head full of comic books and no stomach for survival.”
Patrick swept up the shotgun. The polished barrel reflected the dimming light as the man pushed the weapon into young Thomas’s hands.
“Be a man! Show me you’re a man!” Patrick growled into the face of his boy. “Use this! Kill something!”
Thomas stopped shaking, his eyes suddenly focused and unblinking. His lips split apart revealing clenched teeth. His hands gripped the stock without thinking.
“Show me!” Patrick screamed.
Thomas turned, raising the shotgun up in a quick motion as he had seen his father do a dozen times on the skeet range behind the Manor.
The barrel crossed Patrick’s face in its arc.
Thomas froze—the barrel wavering on his father’s face.
I could make it stop. I could pull this trigger and make him stop. He would go away and stop hurting me…hurting Mother…hurting anyone. Everything would be better if I could make him stop…make him stop…
But the boy’s finger did not move.
Patrick stepped around his son, standing behind the youth as the barrel shifted uncertainly in the air. Thomas could almost feel the hairs of his father’s mustache on his neck, smell the sour breath.
“What are you waiting for?” Patrick urged, his voice rumbling in his son’s ears. “Do you think they’ll wait for you? Do you think they would hesitate a moment if they were after you? Go on, son. Kill them…kill them before they kill you.”
Thomas’s hands began to shake once more.
“KILL THEM!” Patrick screamed.
The shotgun roared. The recoil from the shotgun blast slammed the butt of the gun into the boy’s shoulder, pushing him back as he stumbled awkwardly against the mass of his father behind him. The ceiling exploded in noise and motion, the bats filling the air with their own sound and confusion. The walls of the cavern vanished in the flow of leather wings and the outraged cries of the bats.
“Again, boy!” Patrick yelled. “Do it again!”
Thomas felt the hand on his shoulder. The steel-bending hand…
He had no choice.
Tears streaming down his face, he fired again…
And again…
And again…
CHAPTER ONE
SPELLBOUND
* * *
Aparo Park Docks / Gotham / 1:12 a.m. / Present Day You can’t run…you can’t hide…
Batman dropped down onto the square of cement, landing in a strong crouch, his cape settling around him. It softened his silhouette in the darkness. His right fist pressed against the ground, and he raised his head.
Come out, come out, wherever you are…
It was a nightmare landscape dragged from an M. C. Escher drawing. Iron stairs leading away from the small cement balcony connected in impossible ways with still other stairs. The mind-tortured stairs led to more landings and more impossible stairs, a cascade of metal works extending into infinite space. Hooded work lights hung at cross angles from one another. Their feeble rays barely illuminated the shadowed figures that stood beneath them. Some were on opposite sides of the same stairs as though gravity were a matter of personal perspective. Their shadowy outlines twisted nervously in the dark. Revolver, automatic, shotgun, rifle—a variety of weapons pointed at bizarre angles into the space. Each was different and each was alike in important aspects.
Nervous hands held them.
Nervous fingers twitched on the triggers.
An image flashed through his mind of another time and place far away yet never far from him. Joe Chill’s hands did not shake. They were steady as granite. His eyes as relentless as a glacier…
Batman settled lower into his crouch. The Batsuit was new, and he was pleased at the response. It was essentially a form of power armor, although its ability to deflect damage had yet to be field tested. The exterior of the Batsuit still used a light variation of the Nomex/Kevlar weave, but gratefully much of the weight had been shed by dropping the armor plating. In its place now was a complex set of exomusculature beneath the exterior weave. It was his “muscle” Batsuit, one that could artificially enhance his natural movements and strength. The bidirectional neurofeedback loop maintained a dynamic stability that was tied at once into both the voluntary and involuntary neural responses from his body. That he could use the arrectores pilorum on his body hair as a neural source for control was all the more convenient. The electroactive polymers were liquid bound ionic EAPs, which kept the voltage low throughout the Batsuit and the heat generation at a minimum. Kevlar was always passive; this Batsuit had an active defense, a blast-ion charge reacting to force trauma. The downside was that the Batsuit could bleed if it did not react quickly enough.
The Batsuit could die on me.
I could die in the Batsuit.
A smile played on his lips at the thought.
What a wonderful symmetry.
The cape shifted around him. Its fabric was of the same reactive polymer material and moved as though it, too, had a will of its own. It shifted around him as a living thing. Its original purpose had been as a heat-sink for the exomusculature, but the ever-inventive and adaptive mind of Bruce Wayne had found other creative uses for the cape.
It’s the hunt. Stalk the stalker. Prey on the predator.
Batman raised his head, searching the mad maze stretching to infinity in all directions. His mind raced. Time slowed. He was setting up the game in his mind.
The pieces were clearer to him now. He set each of them up in his mind. Evaluate. Strategize.
Jillian Masters. Anchorwoman for the WGXX news at eleven. She robbed four banks in three days. Walked out each time. Everyone thought she was covering the stories. Turned out she was the story. She holds the automatic sideways and steady. When she moves the muzzle, it stops rock solid. The 9 mm cannon in her arms appears to be an old friend to her.
Aaron Petrov. Head of the diamond exchange. Led the investigation into the thefts throughout the Diamond District. Nobody thought to look in his bags. Assault rifle with cover and good firing position. Clear field covering all the platforms between regardless of their orientation. Hand unsteady. No marksman and unfamiliar with the weapon. Three or four shots before he finds his mark on a stationary target.
Batman continued to catalogue the obstacles between him and his opponent on the other side of the twisted board. Whom he sought was obvious to him. Spellbinder—the former Fay Moffit—had somehow managed to get a release from Arkham Asylum six weeks before and promptly vanished. Fay wasn’t the first to take on the Spellbinder racket. She had learned the hypnotism powers from her lover and the previous Spellbinder—a third-rate criminal by the name of Delbert Billings. She won the title after retiring Delbert with a shot through the head. Now she had used her talents to convince a number of the upstanding citizens of Gotham to do her robbery for her…again.
Old story…not even an interesting one. Just a test of the new Batsuit…with a walk in the park.
He continued listing off the opponents, in his mind.
Angel Jane-Montgomery, socialite with a shotgun…William Raymond, fireman with a full-automatic…Diana Alexandria, pop-music celebrity with a grenade launcher…James Gordon…
Batman frowned beneath his cowl.
Gordon would require some finesse.
Batman closed his eyes.
The cowling over his head was also new. Using it had required considerable training, but it had been worth the trouble. The sensors at the edge of the cowl eye openings read his eye closure, activating a subsonic imaging system—like the sonar of a bat—that communicated directly to an implant connected to his optic nerve. The image was still unclear in its details, but he had adapted to it, and it gave him a field of vision that he could interpret three-dimensionally in all directions around him. It was like having eyes in the back, side, and front of the head, a tactical awareness that extended in all directions.
Justice is blind. Batman’s lips parted over his set teeth.
The sonar imager had one additional advantage. It was based on sound, and the light-bending illusions of Spellbinder’s Fun House would vanish.
Too easy…
Batman sprang, the synthetic muscles of the Batsuit enhancing his powerful legs. He shot across the open space, spinning through the warped light of the mirrors fixed throughout the hall.
Gunfire erupted from every direction. The assault rifle spat slugs from its muzzle, issuing deep, loud “chuff” sounds with every burst. Several cries of rage and fear pierced the cascade of gunfire—for Batman suddenly looked to be everywhere at once, his dark form flying through the mirrored space of the illusions and suddenly multiplied a thousandfold.
Mirrors of safety glass were holed by the rain of lead. Several shattered loudly, the round glass of their pebbled remains falling like glittering snow among the now-swinging worklights.
It’s a place to start.
Jillian Masters swung her 9 mm automatic around just as Batman dropped his shoulder toward the cement platform. His tensed shoulder muscle translated into the exosuit, which tensed as well, buffering the impact as he rolled. The 9 mm barked only once before Batman’s momentum carried him to his feet, striking her gun hand with the back of his forearm. The enhanced musculature of the exosuit struck the handgun with such force that the weapon tore a long gash down the newswoman’s hand.
Chuff…ping! The slug from the assault rifle kicked off one of the metal stairs.
That’s one, Aaron.
The other enthralled citizens continued to fire, but the maze was still in their way, throwing off their aim. The mirrors continued to suffer the worst for random carnage. More shattered with each passing moment.
No more time.
Batman grabbed the wrist of the enraged newswoman, rotated his body around and then threw her to the ground next to one of the metal stairs. She rolled quickly face down, pushing herself up with her hands. Batman quickly dropped his knee down on her back as he reached for his Utility Belt.
Chuff…clang! The strike was on the stairs only a few feet away.
That’s two, Aaron…you may be better than I thought.
The Dark Knight pulled a long, black strip of plastic from his belt. Grabbing Jillian’s hands, he wrapped the plastic strip around both her wris
ts and the metal riser for the stairs. With a quick pull and a ripping sound, Jillian was secured to the riser.
Zip ties. Sometimes simple is best.
Chuff…crack!
But Batman no longer knelt where the cement was chipped by Aaron’s third round.
His black shape rushed again, bounding from platform to platform…Montgomery, Raymond, Alexandria…
Gordon. Where’s Gordon?
Aaron Petrov stood sweating on the platform. A single work light remained, shining down on his glistening hairless head. He shouted into the darkness.
“You can’t have them! They are mine, and you can’t take them from me! You can’t…You—you can’t.”
Aaron looked up.
The light vanished as darkness enfolded him.
Batman stood up. Aaron Petrov was bound hand and feet beneath him, whimpering and sobbing like a child.
“FREEZE!”
He was waiting for me. He’s behind me. Service automatic. Gordon was always a great shot. Somehow I’ve always known in my soul that he will be there when I die. But not today…
Batman began to turn slowly.
“I said FREEZE!”
Batman stopped. “Calm down, Gordon. You’re being played by Spellbinder.”
“Like hell!” Gordon answered. There was a quiver in his voice. “Spellbinder’s tucked away in Arkham…I saw her there myself yesterday before…before you…”
He’s angry. He’s in pain. What’s he seeing? What’s Moffit convinced him to see?
Gordon’s words cut like the shattered glass that lay around them. “How could you? You bastard, you killed her!”
“Who? Who did I kill, Gordon?”
“You can’t even remember her name?” Gordon’s voice went cold. “Barbara. My little Barbara…You put her in that wheelchair, and now you’ve finished the job!”
“Gordon, think! Joker put her there…remember? She’s still alive, Jim.”
“I ought to just put you down right now!” Gordon screamed.
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