Batman (5 page)

He climbed the ladder. Its rungs, like the tank walls, were grimy with the accumulated impurities from decades of steelmaking. When he got to the top of the ladder, he turned the wheel to unlatch the hatch cover.

The wheel turned, but the hatch didn’t open. Robin pushed as hard as he could, given the awkward position he was in. But it didn’t budge. It didn’t even squeak. He shone a light around the edges of the hatch, and saw the bead of a weld.

Ah
, he thought.
So this is where it gets interesting
.

* * *

Hanging by one hand and holding the flashlight in the other, he turned to look out over the tank.

It was twenty feet deep, with a rounded bottom. Three openings high on one wall presumably led toward the smelting and furnace areas, where the water would be needed for cooling. On the other side, low on the wall where the tank bottom curved close to horizontal, was the discharge pipe where Robin had come in. There were no other ways in or out.

Looking back at the three cooling pipe openings, Robin saw something he hadn’t noticed at first glance. Below each of them, drawn in the grime the way a child would write a message on the dirty back window of a car, was a single symbol—a question mark.

The Riddler.

It made perfect sense. This kind of cat-and-mouse puzzle was exactly his style.

Robin took another look at the ceiling. If the only way out of the tank was one of the cooling tunnels, he wouldn’t be able to get at them from the floor. The ceiling was constructed of sheet metal with supporting girders. From the top of the ladder he could just reach the nearest girder. Holding the flashlight in his teeth, he got a grip on the metal support and swung to the next one, jungle-gym style, until he was dangling over the center of the tank.

Taking the flashlight into his hand again, he could use it to see into all three tunnels. The three question marks all looked identical. There was nothing to indicate which tunnel he should choose.

It crossed Robin’s mind to pull out and contact the Batcave, but he didn’t like the idea. It felt too cautious, and he didn’t want them to think he couldn’t handle himself. Batman was always reining him in, and right now Robin had the freedom to tackle this problem any way he saw fit. Was he trying to prove something? Sure. No point denying it. But he was also capable. He’d trained himself well, and he wasn’t afraid of the Riddler.

He could figure this out on his own.

Again he peered into each of the tunnels. They were circular, about six feet in diameter, set in a level row with about six feet between each one. There was no signage—nothing to indicate where they came out at the other end. He shone the light up, but the ceiling above them was no help, either.

This didn’t fit Riddler’s style—he never posed a riddle that didn’t have an answer. That would be relying on chance, something he would never do. To rely on chance was to admit that he lacked control. Therefore, if there was no reason to distinguish between the three tunnels, any one of them would do.

Hand over hand, Robin swung along another girder until he was within a few feet of the middle tunnel. Its interior was filthy, covered in residue, but otherwise unremarkable.
Trust yourself
, he thought. He kicked back to get some momentum, and then pushed forward, letting go of the girder and landing just inside the tunnel mouth. He slid a bit, then froze in place.

No bomb went off, no electric shock stunned him, no poison gas came spewing in his direction.

So far, so good.
Feeling bolder, Robin activated his comm and called Batman… but got no signal.
Okay, then
, he thought.
You wanted me to stay in touch. I tried. Moving on.
Pointing the flashlight ahead, he walked into the tunnel, the top of his hood brushing against the ceiling. Each of his steps echoed quietly. After about a hundred feet he spotted a hatch in the ceiling. This one opened without any trouble, revealing a vertical shaft with a ladder like the one in the holding tank. Stowing the flashlight, he grabbed the first rung and pulled himself up.

The shaft came out in a mechanical room that must have been located near the furnaces. As soon as he was clear of the hatch, it slammed shut. A series of clacking sounds echoed through the chamber, and lights came on from every angle, nearly blinding him after the darkness of the tunnels.

He spun in a circle, bō at the ready, anticipating an attack. None came, but the Riddler had been here. Hanging over a console of dials and gauges was a paper sign.

WELCOME!

All of the lights on the console started to blink. Robin watched them, noting a pattern. Eventually he realized that it was Morse code. The blinking paused, then repeated.
A… V…

Aves or Mammalia

Those were classes within the animal kingdom. “Bird or mammal.”
Robin or bat.
He approached the console and saw that the keyboard had been altered. All of the keys had been removed except for A and M.

Interesting
, he thought.
Two different plans: one for me and one for Batman.
Lined up above the keyboard were some of the removed keys, forming a note of warning.

DONT LIE

Okay
, Robin thought.
I won’t.

He pressed A.

The pattern of blinks immediately changed.

Delightful you may now exit

Every light in the room went out except for a single bulb in a far corner. Robin went in that direction and found a trapdoor with a keypad mounted on a post next to it. The display on the keypad glowed green and showed four asterisks.

A four-digit code.
Ten thousand possibilities.

He flashed his light around the room, looking for any hint as to what the code might be. He searched around the edges of the keypad—it was astonishing how many people wrote down passwords and entry codes, posting them near the places where they had to be used. Then he broadened his search. He went back to the keyboard to see if its number pad had been altered in any way. All of the keys were gone, and the exposed contacts hadn’t been touched.

So where was the clue?

It had to be here somewhere.

Proud and stubborn though he might be, Robin wasn’t stupid. He was part of a team, and he made the call.

This time Batman answered.

The Gotham Merchant’s Bank stood empty, as it had for months since being badly damaged when the Joker set off an explosive in its underground vault.

The bank still operated out of several other branches, and was still owned by Roman Sionis, an organized-crime figure also known—at least to Batman—as Black Mask. Sionis’s whereabouts were currently unknown. He had been incarcerated in Arkham City after tangling with Robin, but Batman suspected he had escaped during the chaos of Protocol 10’s violent dissolution.

He also suspected that the cryptic note appearing under the timer was leading him to the vault. In fact, he was certain of it. The Riddler had started his gambit by invoking the Joker’s name, and now he was continuing it by drawing them to the location of one of the final battles between the bat and the clown. The logic of it was inescapable. As for the rest of the riddle…

“…something to sink your teeth into!”

No doubt that solution would present itself once he’d entered the vault.

Batman approached from above, snapping a line across Jezebel Plaza. He swung from the museum to the bank’s clock face and scaled the building’s facade to the roof. The steel fire door was open, the stairwell inside strewn with trash and flotsam blown in during the winter. He descended five flights to the ground floor, easing the stairwell door open and scoping out the main lobby.

It was deserted, and seemed to have been that way for some time. Everything was chaos—whatever hadn’t been nailed down had been taken or destroyed by looters. The front door had been boarded up and padlocked. The vault was a floor further down, accessible via another stairway located in the middle of the room.

Voices came from the basement level. He eased the door shut, crossed the lobby, and kept going down. Two, three, four separate voices—the sounds of a group, most likely ransacking the vault.

The basement entrance was open, leading into a reception area that was similarly trashed. Across the room Batman saw the massive steel door was open, as well. Inside the vault he saw two men, armed with rifles and wearing an approximation of military uniforms. Villains had a love of outfitting their goons to look like soldiers. Underneath the trappings, however, they were all just thugs and lowlifes.

He slipped across the room and crouched next to the reception desk, keeping his full attention on the vault. The doorway compromised his view. He could see three men now, but had heard at least four different voices. He could also see that the far end of the vault was still in ruins from the explosion. Where it had once been blocked, there was now a rough opening in the rubble, as if someone had tunneled into the basement.

The subterranean reaches of Gotham City were to all intents and purposes endless—subway tunnels, underground chambers and the foundations of buildings that no longer existed and had long since been built over. Sewers, steam conduits, and even antiquated pneumatic tubes provided miles of unmonitored pathways. A thousand people could move about down here without ever being found… although some of the underworld’s known residents made that an unappetizing prospect.

Solomon Grundy, among others, did not suffer intruders. Thanks to the Penguin, the undead creature had developed a taste for human flesh.

Even so, the subterranean spaces were frequently used by criminals. Staying out of sight was worth the risk to them. Why the Riddler was risking it was something Batman intended to find out… now.

Keeping three of the armed goons in view, he sidestepped out from behind the reception desk and threw three Batarangs in quick succession, aiming one at each. The first and third found their targets. One thug dropped without a sound as the Batarang hit him at the base of his skull, while the other cried out and staggered from the impact between his shoulder blades.

The second projectile whisked past its target’s face and struck fragments from the concrete rubble at the far end of the vault.

While the Batarangs were still in the air, Batman charged into the vault. He zeroed in on the staggered thug, putting him down with a single punch. That left his back momentarily exposed to the one he’d missed, but that was an acceptable risk. When fighting multiple opponents, it was better to finish one off than hit two without taking either of them down.

The priority was always to even the odds.

His cape flared out behind him, masking the outline of his body and making it hard for any other thugs to target him. A burst of gunfire tore through the cloth, the bullets passing between Batman’s left arm and ribcage. He pivoted and the cape struck his opponent with a
snap
, slapping the second thug’s gun out of his hands.

The turn also revealed that he wasn’t facing four men. He was facing six. In the corner near the wall of safe-deposit boxes, a trio of gunmen swung up their weapons.