Batman (8 page)
Authors: Alex Irvine
Typical headstrong Robin—ready–fire–aim. Batman hoped it didn’t get them into trouble, and hoped he’d read the chess puzzle correctly. They wouldn’t know until Tim got back to the central room and assessed his next move.
This troubled him, the way it always troubled him when Robin seized on the first course of action and plunged ahead. Even worse, if the Riddler
had
expected Robin, he would also be expecting Robin’s aggressive approach. More than likely he had built that anticipation into his planning.
Either way, there was nothing to be done about it now.
Damn it.
Pulling the tooth he’d recovered from a compartment in his Utility Belt, he approached Alfred, who greeted him with an expression of concern.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, Master Bruce, you look a bit seared and blackened.” He studied the damage Batman had sustained. “I trust all goes according to plan?”
“Depends on whose plan you mean, Alfred,” Batman replied. He took off his cowl, and was Bruce again. “Someone left a welcoming committee for me in the bank vault. It definitely appears to be the Riddler, and he has Robin dancing to his tune, as well. He’s keeping both of us occupied, leaving him free to commit whatever crime he has in mind.”
“And what might that be, sir?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out,” Bruce said. He held up the tooth. “This is our latest clue, such as it is.” He moved to a lab table he kept reserved for chemical analysis, and set the tooth down. He didn’t do much of that sort of study, but maintained facilities necessary for just about any conceivable path of investigation. In this case, however, there might be a simpler way to proceed.
The most straightforward way to identify the tooth would be to place it in a three-dimensional imaging array, get a good picture of it, and run that picture through a database of teeth from all of the recognized animal species. The imager only took seconds to capture a good likeness, and then Bruce connected to the database at Gotham University’s biology program. That, in turn, linked to every major educational database, from Ohio State to Oxford. He entered a matching query and waited while the program compared the tooth to the thousands of different tooth types encountered across the animal kingdom.
“If I may say so, sir,” Alfred commented. “This is a bit of an unusual prologue for the Riddler, is it not? It seems we have three separate paths along which to follow him.”
“That we do, Alfred,” Bruce said. “The trick is figuring out how they’re related, and then figuring out where he’s made a mistake.”
“If he has made a mistake, Master Bruce,” Alfred countered. “What if he has not?”
“He always does sooner or later, Alfred. If he didn’t, he’d be perfect and I’d have been dead a long time ago.”
Suddenly the computer chimed.
NO MATCH
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Alfred said.
Bruce broadened the search to include similar features. The tooth he was working with was about six inches long and an inch and a half thick at its base, slightly curved, with deep quadruple roots and slight serration on the convex side of its curve. It looked like it might have come from any kind of large predatory animal, yet there weren’t too many animals with six-inch teeth.
The new search came back with more than a thousand matches. Apparently this tooth had certain qualities that existed in just about every large predatory animal on Earth.
“It must be a mutant of some kind,” Bruce said. “Bred from a known species, but different enough to dodge identification.” He looked again at the roots, and saw that there was plenty of tissue there for them to recover usable DNA.
Working together, he and Alfred scraped a tissue sample off the root, chopped it into a fine paste, and mixed the paste into a glue medium for electrophoresis. This process separated the organic material based on the size of its molecules, isolating the DNA. When he had a viable sample, Bruce keyed a short sequence into a computer terminal.
Then he powered up the DNA sequencer built into his bioresearch station. It was based on commercial SMRT models that read DNA base pairs in real time, by tracking the frequencies of light they emitted when they were exposed to nucleotides stained with fluorescent dyes. He inserted the sample into the sequencer and started the process. The sequencer hummed and clicked. It would take several minutes to isolate enough base pairs to get a reliable species identification.
“Where is Master Tim now?” Alfred asked.
“He’s exploring Arkham City,” Bruce said. “The Riddler has been busy under the steel mill, and Robin’s taking a look around.” He neglected to mention the likelihood of traps.
“I trust he will remain in close contact,” Alfred said. “One can only imagine what mischief the Riddler will have planned.”
“You know Robin,” Bruce said. “Always trying to prove himself. I told him to stay in touch, but it’s a safe bet that I’ll need to take the initiative.”
“As always, sir, yes,” Alfred said.
Another
ping
, and the DNA sequencer completed the first stage of its analysis. A long string of base pairs scrolled across the terminal screen. What appeared on the screen was a greater surprise than the explosion at the bank.
SPECIES: HUMAN
“Surely a mistake?” Alfred wondered.
Bruce didn’t answer, but he didn’t think so. As soon as he saw those words, he had a feeling he knew what was going to come next.
Based on the sequencer’s confirmation, he linked the device to DNA databases used to track known individuals—particularly those who had committed major crimes anywhere in the world. Here again the links were impressive, from the Department of Homeland Security to Interpol.
It wasn’t long before a new window popped up on the screen.
IDENTITY CONFIRMED: WAYLON JONES
Killer Croc. There was no question about it.
Batman ran the check again to be sure. Because of his access to Gotham City Police Department records, he had extensive DNA records from Jones, dating all the way back to Croc’s first brush with the law, and his first tour inside Blackgate Penitentiary. The database software recovered and displayed old mug shots demonstrating Jones’s gradual transformation over the years from a brutal human with a skin disfigurement to the mutated monster he had become.
Prison records and police reports appeared behind the images, telling a decades-long story of violence. It started with assaults, escalated to murders, and then reached new heights with reports of cannibalism. Current whereabouts were said to be unknown, but Batman had a few places he knew to look. Pretty soon, he thought, he might have to start looking there.
This information raised more questions than it answered. How was Killer Croc involved with the Riddler? He was a homicidal maniac, pure and simple, living only for mayhem. Not at all the kind of associate the Riddler would want involved in a plan if he had to depend on a choreographed execution.
An even greater question was the one Alfred was first to articulate.
“Who on Earth could pull one of Killer Croc’s teeth?”
The answer was simple.
“Nobody, Alfred—not if Croc was in a position to stop them.” It was possible that someone might have tranquilized Croc, but that was much easier said than done, and would have yielded serious collateral damage.
His mind raced. Why go to so much trouble? And why involve so volatile an element as Jones? What role could he play that another meta-human—a more reliable one—could not? No answer suggested itself, and that sense of frustration escalated. He would have to get the information straight from the Croc’s mouth, so to speak.
That meant finding a monster that made a habit of hiding out in the subterranean wilderness beneath the streets of Gotham City.
Once more unto the breach.
And Croc wouldn’t be the only threat down there—there was Solomon Grundy, as well. Gotham City’s underground was vast, however, and even though Bruce knew some of Croc’s preferred hidey-holes, he couldn’t just expect to take a quick trip down into a subway spur or sewer pipe—especially not if Croc didn’t want to be found.
Ironically, his best bet was the Riddler.
He would provide the answer, or at least a clue. He had let Batman know who his target would be. Now Bruce had to figure out what clue the Riddler had left that would lead him in the right direction.
Was one of the murders a clue?
Bruce glanced over at the app timer. 00:22:31.
The victims had been a software engineer and the contractor who had built the Ace Chemical factory, later adapted by the Joker into one of his favorite hideouts. Killer Croc wasn’t much of a computer user, to say the least, and Ace Chemical wasn’t a place he was likely to go—
especially
when the Clown Prince was still alive. No, his preferred methods were limited to pure physical brutality.
On the other hand, the Joker’s absence had sent shock waves through the whole Gotham City underworld. They had operated for years with the Joker as the lead architect of their schemes, and they might well be carrying on as if the Joker were still alive and in control. It wasn’t easy to shrug off years of status quo. In a strange way, the Joker’s death had probably affected Gotham City more profoundly than any other single death could have.
None of that, however, got him any closer to figuring out where Croc might be. Maybe a fresh perspective…
“What’s your guess, Alfred?” he asked. “Is Killer Croc hiding out in the Ace Chemical plant?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Alfred said. “What would he do there?”
“Nothing that makes any sense,” he replied, glad of the confirmation. “If nothing else, Edward Nigma is all about making sense. So where, then?”
“Dare I suggest that Master Tim might be able to shed some light?”
Bruce nodded, and pinged Robin, but got no answer. With a deep frown, he hoped it was Tim’s independent streak causing him not to respond—that Tim was right, and Riddler wasn’t prepared to kill him and be done with it.
He started to shrug out of the shredded and singed suit he was wearing.
“I’m going to get a change of clothes, and then go find out.”
Filed by
Vicki Vale
“We’re starting to learn more about the identities of the two men killed this morning—exactly one hour apart—on the streets of Gotham City.
“One, Lucas Angelo, was a software engineer with no known criminal record or associations. He was murdered by an arrow fired from the top of a nearby building. Gotham City police have that arrow and it is being analyzed at their crime lab at this moment. They have issued no statement, but unconfirmed reports suggest that a message of some kind was written on the shaft of the arrow. One witness at the scene said the word was ‘Tick-Tock.’ As in a clock, as in time ticking down.
“Normally we wouldn’t run with a single source on a bit of information like that, but the next murder—of Brian Isaacson, a contractor who engineered extensive renovations on the Ace Chemical plant—occurred exactly one hour later. Tick, tock.
“Isaacson was reported to have been shot with a rifle. The source of the shot and the position of the killer have not been determined. Police are scouring nearby rooftops and the upper floors of abandoned buildings in the area, and believe they’re narrowing down the possible locations the sniper could have chosen.
“It is not known at this point whether the same person is responsible for both killings. Nor is it known whether they have any relation to the sighting of Batman at Gotham City police headquarters, earlier this morning.
“We’ve had reports that Batman was at the Gotham Merchant’s Bank building—not the new one in Middleton, but the old landmark in Arkham City. It was partially destroyed by the Joker during the riots that led to the downfall of Hugo Strange, and if Batman was indeed there, you have to wonder if that means some organized criminal activity is occurring. Since Batman’s visit, there have been reports of a four-alarm fire, with four engine companies and two ladder companies responding. We’re staying on that story, as well as new developments in the sniper case.
“These have been pretty quiet months in Gotham City, since the Joker died, but it looks like things might start to get lively again. From the corner of Broadway and Hamm Alley, this is Vicki Vale,
Eye on Gotham
.”
On the other side of door number one, a stairway led down to a junction room with two hallways feeding out of it at right angles. As Robin understood the layout of the steel mill, one of them would travel under the length of the building, and the other would cut across the corner closest to the furnace, potentially leading to another part of Arkham City.
Or
, he thought,
Wonder City
. The old ruin underlaid much of Arkham City, and it seemed like a natural place for the Riddler to concoct his schemes.
He chose the one on the left, running perpendicular to the long axis of the steel mill.
Question marks lit his way as he continued to the end of the passage. He estimated he’d gone a hundred yards or so, at a noticeable downward angle. He was probably forty or fifty feet below street level at this point, and somewhere to the west-northwest of the steel mill. If he kept going this way, he would run into either the Bowery subway station and terminal, or the sewer infrastructure underneath it. Something to keep in mind as he tried to anticipate what the Riddler had in store.