by Marv Wolfman
“This would be a good time to leave,” he said.
She smiled seductively and lifted her hands, which were still handcuffed together.
“The master of understatement, as ever,” she said, laughing. “You lead, I’ll follow.”
They ducked into an alleyway and Batman stopped. He checked his gauntlet display again.
“There are four more tanks to deal with, and it appears I’ve only got one more set of missiles. We’re going to have to do this fast.”
He fired his final missiles, and the third tank answered with a loud, explosive roar. His fingers quickly danced across the touchpad and the Batmobile spun again, but this time it lurched ahead, speeding around the exploded debris and pulled to a rolling stop in front of them.
“Ivy, now! Inside.”
The hatch slid open. Batman lifted Ivy and placed her inside. Her seat belt automatically buckled her in, restraining her. For good measure he removed the cuff from his hand and attached it to a steel bar in the car’s inner compartment. Ivy wasn’t going anywhere. She leaned back and with her free hand slid her finger along the Batmobile’s padded walls.
“Wonderful toy you’ve got here,” she said. “What will it turn into next?”
Batman positioned himself behind the wheel, gunned the engine, and the car shot forward, zigzagging to avoid the missiles that arced toward them. Even though she was strapped in, Ivy gripped the seat in front of her for added protection. She squeezed shut her eyes as the Batmobile careened around a corner. Once she felt the car slow down she reluctantly opened them again.
“Who taught you how to drive?”
“Did I forget to tell you to hold on tight?” Batman said. He spun around the next corner and hit the gas, increasing speed, then making another sharp right, and then another, coming in behind Scarecrow’s final three tanks. “This is going to get loud,” he said.
She stuck her index fingers into her ears and leaned back, closing her eyes yet again. The handcuffs forced her to lean to the left at an awkward angle.
“Do your worst.”
* * *
The Batmobile stored nearly nine hundred rounds of promethium-coated bullets which, aimed properly, could do significant damage—even against a tank. And all he needed was to slow these juggernauts down long enough for an escape. Anything more would be gravy.
As the tanks began rotating their turrets the 180 degrees they needed to face him, he targeted their optic sensors, external mantlets, and periscopes, then set his guns for automatic fire. The Batmobile’s absorption baffles prevented Batman and Ivy from being permanently deafened by the roar. Within seconds the tanks were effectively blind.
He slammed his foot on the gas and shot forward. His gauntlet comm vibrated and a moment later the police commissioner’s face appeared on its holo screen.
“I don’t know what you did to shake the hornet’s nest, Batman,” Gordon said, “but we need more of it. We’ve spotted a transport deploying more tanks around Panessa Studios.”
Panessa Studios? Batman thought with a frown. Coincidence, or does Scarecrow know? But he just nodded to Gordon. “Not to worry. I’ll deal with them, Jim.”
Gordon responded with an exasperated smile. “It’s been non-stop all day, and I keep thinking everything’s getting worse instead of better. It’s hard to keep going. How do you do it?”
“By keeping my eyes on the goal,” Batman replied. “We want Gotham City safe from fear, and if Scarecrow is anything, it’s fear. We have to take him down. Everything else is extraneous.”
Gordon nodded. “You know, I never questioned going on the offensive against the Joker. I mean, he was insane, deadly and, God, every bad thing I can put on the list, and then probably more. But even if his tactics were unpredictable, they were still the strategies of a human being. I can’t even begin to understand what Scarecrow is about.”
“Scarecrow is human, too, Jim. And we’ll stop him the same way we stopped the Joker.”
“I know he’s human. But his weapons aren’t bullets and subterfuge—they’re chemical and toxic. Shields can stop bullets. A well-laid-out plan can skirt almost any deception, but how do you stop airborne poisons? It scares the piss out of me.”
“I may have the solution here with me,” Batman said, turning briefly to Poison Ivy. She was humming that same song again. “And I’m bringing her to you now.”
* * *
Gotham City lockup was filled beyond capacity. Gordon was used to that. Whenever the police force showed any sign of weakness or discord, the city’s worst tended to make an appearance. They may have been cowards, but a lot of them were smart enough to smell opportunity.
Batman held onto Ivy’s handcuffed wrist and pulled her inside a large room filled with cops and the few civilian personnel who had decided to stay in the city to help. Working as hard as any of the police, these people were why he continued his mission to save the city. They were Gotham City’s hope and future.
Gordon was on the phone, screaming at whoever was on the other end.
“Civil unrest? No kidding! Look, there’s a war on the streets, and we don’t have the manpower or the equipment to stop everyone everywhere,” He paused for a moment to listen. “Vale, you’re a damned good reporter, and I know you’ve got a job to do but so do I. Still, if you want a quote, fine, here’s one. ‘Against overwhelming odds, the Gotham City Police are doing the best goddam job we can. If people want to help, they should get the hell out of the city before the bad guys close it down, and they’re trapped here.’ That good enough for you?
“And, Vale, why the hell are you still in town?” He slammed down the phone and growled. “Do they really think I’m just sitting around clipping my toenails?” He glanced up and saw Batman walking into the office, pulling Ivy along with him. “Well, well, look who the bat dragged in,” he snorted. “One less crazy for us to worry about.”
“Is the isolation chamber ready?” Batman asked.
“WayneTech’s finest.”
Ivy shook her head. “Oh, good. Another cell. I’m sure you’ll all feel much safer once dangerous me’s been locked away.”
* * *
Batman returned to the Batmobile and pulled away.
With a little more than five hours to go before Scarecrow followed through on his threat, the city was overwhelmed. Those who had been unable to leave Gotham City, or hadn’t made the attempt, were out in the streets, running wild and directionless. There wasn’t a window on Broadway that hadn’t been shattered, a store that hadn’t been looted, or car that hadn’t been overturned then set afire.
The few police who remained were trying to maintain peace, but they only numbered in the hundreds. For every success there were dozens of failures.
Fewer than a thousand firemen patrolled the streets, too, outfitted and wearing their oxygen masks on the chance Scarecrow unleashed his toxins earlier than promised. They managed to extinguish the small fires that could be found on nearly every block, but had to leave the major blazes to burn themselves out. As with the police, there were too few of them to have any real effect.
* * *
Thomas and Martha Wayne had loved this city, and used their immeasurable wealth to help make it as great as it once had been. Believing in the fundamental good of mankind, they tried to rescue the city from the hell that was doing everything in its power to claim it. But in return for their charity, they were unceremoniously gunned down by a nobody with a gun.
Their son, Bruce Wayne, couldn’t embrace their larger, grander vision. He, too, cared deeply for the city, but he had a different approach. He wanted to eliminate all those other nobodies who carried guns. Long ago, as he stood in that alleyway, in a pool of his parents’ blood, he promised himself he would do everything in his power to prevent any other child from suffering as he had.
The mother and father had tried to attain an unattainable perfection. The son only hoped he could help keep the innocent alive.
As Batman sped through the madness, Go
tham City was a city that was teetering on the brink—as it had been for more years than he could count. And as he hurried past the shouting crowds of frightened citizens, he feared Scarecrow had finally pushed it over the edge.
He tapped his comm and Oracle’s face appeared.
“Any progress with the fear toxin analysis?”
“I wish,” Barbara replied. “It’s going to take a little longer than expected. Come by the Clock Tower when you get a chance. I could use some fresh eyes on this.”
“Okay. I’ll see you soon. But I can’t promise fresh eyes. It’s been a long night.” Cutting the connection, he took a long, deep breath and hit the gas pedal.
He’d sleep when he was dead.
9
When a cataclysmic earthquake had leveled much of Gotham City, the Clock Tower downtown was one of very few buildings to survive intact.
Its lower floors boasted stunning oversized suites only Gotham City’s elite could afford, while its much-desired penthouse, accessed only by private elevator, housed a luxurious living space, and much more. Hidden behind secret sliding panels lay Oracle’s headquarters—a multi-room citadel from which Barbara Gordon kept a watchful eye on the city, reporting to Batman all the varied problems that required his attention.
When Barbara chose the Clock Tower for her high-tech base of operations, Bruce Wayne’s construction company retrofitted the building to withstand far more than the publicly registered plans recorded, including the most damaging of natural disasters. It had proved to be a fortunate decision for her, as well as the tower’s other tenants.
After the quake, Wayne’s company used their success with the Clock Tower to bid for multiple city contracts to retrofit the rest of Gotham City’s skyscrapers. If all went well, more than seventy-eight per cent of the city’s towers would be refitted by the end of the decade. Thus far they were ahead of schedule, and under budget.
But no one could have predicted the current catastrophe.
Batman entered Oracle’s computer room, a vast digital complex equipped with technology that exceeded the state of the art. Barbara wasn’t anywhere to be seen, so he stepped up to the multi-screen holographic display and began to key in data. The faster he got the answers he needed, the better off everyone would be.
“Excuse me.” Barbara’s voice came from behind him. He turned to see her rolling her wheelchair into the room. “Do I come into the Batcave and start messing with your stuff?”
“Your DNA hasn’t been processed for clearance,” he replied. “You wouldn’t get past the exterior cave without finding yourself hopelessly trapped behind bars.” Then he stepped out of the way as Barbara rolled up to the main terminal and shut down the program load. The computer went blank, then rebooted to a different program.
“First, thanks for the vote of confidence,” she said brusquely. “Second, what you initiated was the wrong program. I was trying to re-spark Gotham City’s power grid and let in the light. You would have made sure that wouldn’t have happened for at least another forty-eight hours. Your bad.
“And third, why isn’t my DNA in your system?”
“I’ve been busy,” he said as new data appeared in thin air, then scrolled down, finally coming to rest with chemical symbols categorized under the heading “Fear Venom.”
“So have I,” Barbara said. The chemical symbols were quickly replaced with bar graphs.
“I can see that,” Batman said. “It looks like you’ve managed to reduce the compound to its core elements.”
Oracle nodded, but didn’t look confident. “Trouble is, there’s nothing in there we can trace.”
“Not in this form,” he agreed, “but what if we’re looking at this the wrong way?”
“Meaning?”
“You’re searching for the toxin. What if we focus on the manufacturing process?”
Barbara’s eyes lit up. “That could work… It really could. You know, if I create a simulation mixing the core chemicals I’ve already isolated, we might be able to get a taggable answer.” She shot him a sideways glance. “Not bad thinking for a detective.” Barbara grinned as she quickly entered more data.
New images filled the air as the chemicals combined virtually, causing an onscreen chain reaction, visibly creating yet a third chemical in the process.
“There it is,” she said. “Why didn’t I think of it? You see that?” She pointed to a bar graph that suddenly yielded a peak. “The reaction emitted a unique radiation spike. Very, very good, Bruce. You ever think of starting a new career in science?”
“I’ll leave that to the experts,” he replied. “Is there any way to track it?”
Barbara stared at the spike and nodded. “I can run a scan of the city, targeting this particular signature. If it exists, it should show where Scarecrow is creating his fear toxin. But before I can do that, I’ll need a few hours to bring the satellites into position.” Her expression turned grim. “Trouble is, the toxin’s set to release in four hours. We don’t have the time.”
“Maybe I can repurpose the ground-based antennas as a go-around, to allow us to access the info sooner. Could that work?”
Barbara’s hands danced across the keyboard, and she grinned as the results scrolled into view.
“It should,” she said. “But we’ll need you to bring at least two of them online. I know of one—it’s employed by Gotham Broadcasting Corporation, at Panessa Studios.”
“I know the one,” he said. “And is there a second antenna that will do the trick?”
“Not certain—not yet, but I’ll figure that out well before you’re finished with the first one.”
“Good,” Batman said. “Time’s running out, and if the truth can be told, Barbara, this worries me. Your father said it best. The Joker was a killer we could stop any number of ways, but even if we do everything we can, there’s no telling if we can prevent Crane’s fear toxin from infecting the city. If it gets into the air, we lose.
“This may be beyond us. Beyond me.”
“Then all we need to do is stop him before it’s released.”
“I like how you underplayed the word ‘all.’”
“If I don’t keep a positive view,” she said firmly, “I’ll never find the answers.”
Batman nodded quietly and started to leave.
“Bruce?” There was an underlying urgency to her voice. He stopped and looked back. “Bruce, I spoke to Dad,” she said, quietly, almost sadly.
“And?”
Suddenly she was fighting back tears, trying to maintain control.
“I hate lying to him. I mean, he’d kill me, or maybe it would kill him if he knew I was still in the city. I mean, he just said it again. He still feels as if any harm that comes to me does so because he didn’t do enough.”
Batman looked away, and then glanced back at Barbara.
“We’ll worry about him after we stop Scarecrow,” he said before turning again and leaving. The door slid shut behind him.
* * *
Barbara sat alone in the Clock Tower, replaying all the lies she’d had to tell her father since long before she became Oracle. He never learned that she had been Batgirl, who—more often than not—fought on the street alongside both Batman and his partner, Robin.
Gordon never quite realized that by crippling her, the Joker wasn’t just sending a message to Gotham City’s police commissioner that nobody was safe. He was sending Batman the same message, too. To compound that message, he’d killed Jason Todd, the young man who had donned the Robin uniform after Dick Grayson put it aside to become Nightwing.
Though she was paralyzed by the Joker’s bullet, Barbara’s need to seek out justice intensified rather than diminished. She created her Oracle guise as a way of protecting the city she still loved, and she wasn’t going to give it up now just because some Joker wannabe was out to make a name for himself. Surrender to one lunatic gave an unfettered license to them all.
Yet while she had started down this path to promote justice and truth, in
stead she’d found herself lying to the one man she loved the most, and who unconditionally loved her in return. James Gordon was more than her father—he was unquestionably the best man she knew, and that included Bruce Wayne.
James Gordon never hid behind a mask. Her father never shirked the public eye, and even his home address was listed in the city’s public records. He was too good a man to be treated like this, but Barbara knew no other way around it.
She had long believed she needed to keep secrets from him, in order to protect him. But now, as the city was facing what might prove to be its gravest threat, she was beginning to wonder about the wisdom of her decision. If the worst-case scenario unfolded, if Scarecrow succeeded in creating an entire city paralyzed by fear, she didn’t want to die or see him die with any secrets remaining between them.
But how to tell him the truth after so many years of lying?
10
Back in the nineties and right through to the zeroes, Panessa Studios had been a thriving television and commercial advertising facility employing nearly 150 entertainment professionals.
By 2004, local crime bosses began levying “protection taxes” on Panessa, and Gotham City’s general fortunes started their deep decline south. Studios moved their non-Los Angeles “inner-city” film shoots to New York, Toronto, Detroit, New Orleans, and Vancouver, leaving Panessa bankrupt and deserted.
Wayne Enterprises, using the DBA “PanCo,” quietly purchased the studio and its nine acres of warehouses, soundstages, and back lots. PanCo made a small business out of renting it to the very occasional commercial unit that didn’t have the finances to go anywhere safer. Yet Wayne’s objective for the land wasn’t to restart it as a film studio, but to use it for far more private purposes.
While some of the land and buildings still were open for use, the back two acres and former soundstages 35, 36, and 37 were officially closed. “Condemned” signs indicated mold and asbestos complications. Even the local gangbangers didn’t try to break in—not that they could have made it past Lucius Fox’s security system before the police showed up to arrest them.