Field Test
"System breach detected."
The cheerful electronic voice echoed slightly through Applied Science's empty halls. Max and I gaped at each other for a few precious moments before she lunged for her desktop. We were the only ones in the lab at this hour; the Saturday night crowd tends to be pretty thin. Aside from the minimal weekend security staff, there were probably only a dozen other fellow workaholics in the building.
As Max logged in, I killed the armor's experimental flight system and began extricating myself from the nest of oscilloscopes and voltmeters. We were finishing up the fifth major suit overhaul in as many years, swapping out the obstructive cape in favor of an integrated wingsuit.
Five years. Five years since I stepped into that cave. As Bruce's old equipment rose into view, all I can remember thinking is I hope this all comes with an instruction manual.
Bruce, being Bruce, had anticipated this. I found Lucius Fox's contact information on the cave's computer systems and things spiraled out from there. By the end of the month, I was officially on Wayne Enterprise's payroll as a "Security Consultant," apprenticed to Applied Science's head of security and unofficial guinea pig, Sandra Wu. One of Sandra's primary responsibilities was to field-test the black projects slated for Bruce's personal use, so it fell to her to familiarize me with the equipment and further my education in violence. After my stint in the GCPD (and especially after that thing with Bane and the nuclear device), I thought I was ready for whatever she could throw at me.
I was sadly mistaken.
Turns out Sandra (from what I could piece together; she doesn't talk about her past much) had been involved with one of those government alphabet soup programs before Bruce personally recruited her into Applied Sciences. Between her contacts and Wayne Enterprise's relationship with the military, Sandra was able to arrange extensive cross-training with the ISA. Deep surveillance. Signals intelligence. Personal defensive measures. Infiltration. The training regimen gave me a new perspective on the word "exhaustion," both physically and mentally. Even with my experience, it took years to assimilate the new skill set, drilling pain and repetition into muscle memory and cold logic.
Between trips, I was apprenticed to Maxine Gibson, the unluckiest engineer in Applied Sciences. With absolutely no technical background, I did my best to keep up with her, learning by failing early and failing often. It started out small, replacing circuit boards, installing firmware updates, things of that nature. As time went on, I graduated to larger, grander projects: writing software patches, upgrading the Tumblers stored in the lab, etc. While I would probably never be proficient enough to work Design, I knew just enough to maintain and modify the hardware coming out of Applied Sciences.
"System breach de – "
Max killed the cheerful electronic voice as I ripped away the last of the alligator clips. She double clicked on something and said, "That's not good."
I sealed the armor, the click of the Kevlar-backed titanium access panel impossibly loud against the sudden silence. "How bad?"
Max plugged a thumb drive into the desktop, launched a backtrace program, and pounded out a command on the keyboard. The computer chugged for a few moments before spitting out an answer. She frowned at the screen. "Someone just accessed our DOD project files. Tracing now. Call Sandra and tell her we have a system breach."
I punched Sandra's personal cell into the nearby IP phone, cradling the handset between my shoulder and ear. Unlike Max and me, she was sane and refused to come into the office on a weekend. "What are they after?" I asked.
"They're downloading the schematics for the suit, the Tumblers, all of it." She exhaled in a huff of frustration, blowing wayward strands of black hair out of her face. "The trace is jumping all over the place. Taking the drives offline." The desktop beeped at her. "Wait... what? How is he still accessing – "
Sandra's voice diverted my attention from Max's monologue. "Hello, this is Sandra Wu. I am not available right now. Please leave a message after the beep, and I'll get back to you."
"Sandra, this is John. We've got a situation at the office. Give me or Max a call as soon as you get this." I hung up and shook my head. "She's not picking up."
"That's okay, I got him. He's in the building... Gray Zone, forty-second floor. Got him on camera 428." Max put the IP phone on speaker and dialed security.
"Security Desk."
"Hi, this is Maxine Gibson in Applied Sciences. We've got an intruder accessing our secure files. Forty-second floor, Gray Zone, HR cube farm."
"Got it, Ms. Gibson. Initiating – "
I never found out exactly what protocol Security would be initiating; all outlet-dependant electronics on the floor died as the building lost power, plunging us into a twilight of emergency lighting.
The emergency generators didn't kick in.
Max's fist bounced off the table. "Shit! What – "
The closest Tumbler, the one designed for non-lethal urban pacification, roared to life.
There was no one at the wheel.
The machine deployed its automatic grenade launcher with a pneumatic hiss.
Wonderful. This was going to be one of those days. "Down!" I roared, pushing Max into the ground.
The launcher's barrel completed a full rotation at chest level, launching the vehicle's full complement of CS gas grenades, evenly dispersing forty-eight canisters across the lab. Three streaked through the space we had just occupied, shattering the desktop's monitor.
I was already in motion when the familiar burn crept into the back of my throat. Snaking one arm around Max's torso, I unceremoniously hauled her to her feet. "Come on, I got you. This way," I gritted, half leading, half dragging Max away from the digitally compromised Tumbler. She pulled the collar of her Gotham Rogues t-shirt up over her nose and mouth, coughing into the cloth as we stumbled through acrid waist-high plumes of tear gas. We got lucky; a few bad bounces created a relatively gas-free corridor that connected us to Shipping, a shrinking gap that I took full advantage of.
There. On the workbench where we left them this morning, nestled in torn shrink wrap and crushed Styrofoam.
The redesigned... helmet, for lack of a better term, had started life as a standard ballistic facemask, the Kevlar edition of those goalie masks used in hockey. Then Max got her hands on them. Now, they incorporated mil-spec gas masks behind the bulletproof material, as well as encrypted communications, integrated panoramic night vision/thermal imaging, and voice scrambling modules. Unlike Bruce's helmet, they provided full coverage, leaving absolutely nothing exposed to incoming fire.
Five fully functional units sat on the table, all built exactly to our technical specifications and all scheduled for immediate RMAs. Don't get me wrong; rigorous tests proved that the masks met our stringent requirements. But somewhere along the way, there was a miscommunication with the defense subsidiary, and the final product had shipped in a cheerful shade of red.
I tossed Max one of the units before slipping on my own, the mask sealing neatly against my skin. Its systems booted immediately and synced with the suit, the HUD injecting alphanumeric and graphical readouts across my field of vision. Untainted air flowed into my lungs as I took my first solid breath since the Tumbler decided to take us out.
Max tugged at my arm. "Let's go!"
I passed Max at a dead sprint and hit the exit as the other Tumblers powered up. Jamming my fingers into the crevice between the sliding door and wall, I pulled the heavy steel slab open, creating just enough room for Max to slip into the elevator beyond. I dove in right after her, the door rumbling closed behind me.
Both of us lay there in the darkness for a moment, trying to get our breathing under control. Max tore off her mask and gasped, "Are you okay?"
"Yeah. You?"
"I'll" – she pulled in another rapid breath – "live."
I pushed myself to my feet and held out a hand. She halfheartedly slapped it away with a groan. "Give me a few seconds. Go. Get out of here. Go get him."
I flashed her a crooked smile that she couldn't see and climbed through the service hatch above us, the world turning into brilliant shades of green as the night vision module kicked in. With a flick of the wrist, I deployed the grapple line built into my left gauntlet, electromagnetic fields accelerating the monofilament into the darkness above. The suit's software confirmed that the line was securely anchored before I activated the servos.
Forty-two floors flashed by, the monofilament jerking to a halt just as I drew even with the appropriate door. Suspended 462 feet above Applied Sciences, I tapped out a single command on my wrist-mounted touch screen. A sonar burst emanated from the armor, an upgraded version of the system Bruce used against the Joker all those years ago. The mask translated the reflected sound waves into visual data, highlighting living tissue through the walls, allowing me a glimpse into the rooms beyond.
I picked up four other people on the floor. Three lay crumpled in the hall just beyond the door. The last one was standing in the large room beyond the hall, in motion.
My fingers wrapped around the knife riveted to the suit, bolted perpendicular to my left clavicle, handle down. I slowly pried the doors open with the blade and crept into the hall, retracting the monofilament. The three downed security guards were the first priority; I checked their vitals, looking for injuries that required immediate medical attention. All three were unconscious and, other than a few bumps and bruises, relatively unharmed. I appropriated a sidearm from one of the guards, a Glock 17, and slipped it into the drop leg holster strapped to my thigh.
From my experience with the GCPD and ISA, firearms were an unfortunate fact of life for members of law enforcement and certain extra-judicial entities. The right tools are needed to deal with imminent threats; sometimes, from a psychological and practical standpoint, a firearm is that tool. And with the availability of guns in the United States, I'd like to keep my options open. Even then, I think of my sidearm as a last resort sort of thing.
The two extra mags from the guard's belt went into a pocket. I wore a pair of black trousers over the ballistic armor strapped to my legs, trousers with MOLLE webbing that allowed me to attach additional pouches and expand my carrying capacity. During our endless upgrade cycles, the utility belt had proven... insufficient for all the gear I was hauling around. Plus, the shiny brass color scheme clashed with the whole ninja shtick. So Max and I had axed the thing and replaced it with a more traditional pants and pockets system.
Max's voice crackled in my ear. "Radio check."
"I read you five by five. You alright?" I murmured, firing off another sonar burst. The intruder was still there, in the next room, by the windows.
"Found a place to hole up. Hold on, syncing to your visual feed... You catch up with him yet?"
"Yeah, he's in the next room."
"What's the – "
A bass thump reverberated through the walls, jarring loose a few ceiling tiles. Before the tremors dissipated, I crashed through the door.
The entire back wall of the room was gone, glass dripping from twisted steel. Currents of paper drifted through the room, flowing through intricate paths choreographed by pressure and heat.
It took me a moment to spot the intruder through the swirls of stationary and smoke, a lone figure emerging from one of the cubicles. The hacker was dressed in a black insulated flight suit, the top half unzipped and tied off at the waist, revealing a fitted white t-shirt and unmistakably feminine topography. The rest of her equipment was stacked haphazardly in the corner, abandoned to give her greater mobility. With a casual flick of her wrist, she tossed a cylindrical object onto the pile of gear. The thermite grenade ignited, melting through her helmet, breathing apparatus, and parachute pack. She had kept the rest of her abbreviated HAHO load out: a pair of free-fall boots, goggles, and insulated tactical gloves silk-screened with skeletal fingers.
So that's how she got in. HAHO, or high-altitude-high opening, is a military technique used to covertly airdrop personnel into sensitive areas. She would have jumped out of a plane at an altitude of 35,000 feet, 40 miles away from Wayne Enterprises HQ. After deploying her chute at 27,000 feet, she would have glided the rest of the way to the roof of this building, where security was relatively weak. Nicely done. Credit was due where credit was due.
She saw me coming, of course; my entrance wasn't exactly quiet or subtle. She turned toward me, the moonlight briefly illuminating long blonde hair. A bandana obscured her mouth and nose, but it couldn't quite stop the smile from touching her eyes as she blew me a kiss through the cloth. And then she was in motion, darting through the storm of paper, sprinting for the shattered windows.
I was just gaining momentum when her farewell present rolled to a gentle stop at my feet.
Oh, this was going to be unpleasant.
I kicked the flashbang away and dove into the nearest cube, putting as much material between the grenade and myself as possible. Just before I crossed into relative safety, I caught a glimpse of the intruder performing a graceful swan dive into the night sky, black rope uncoiling in her wake.
And the grenade detonated.
Between the walls and my eyelids, I was spared the worst of the explosion. While I wasn't blinded, the resulting aural blast hammered against my eardrums and roared through my semicircular canal, shorting out my hearing and balance for a few precious seconds.
A high-pitched whine blotted everything out for a moment before ambient noise trickled in and I registered Max's voice. " – going on? John, answer me!"
It took an obscene amount of willpower to stand. "I'm here," I croaked. "I'm fine. She went out the window. I'm going after her."
I activated the suit's flight system.
Oh, this was a terrible idea.
"Uh, John, how are you...?"
"Field test."
"Oh, no. No! We haven't finished – "
I hit a full sprint and dove through the gap, popping the wings just as I hit the edge. For a brief heart-stopping moment, gravity threatened to pile drive me into the concrete below. Then the wingsuit converted downward momentum to lift, giving my fall direction and horizontal distance.
It took me a few moments to suppress the tremor in my voice, to gather my thoughts and get my vocal cords under control. "Stable flight achieved."
"John, you are an idiot," Max growled, pronouncing each word like it was its own sentence.
Ignoring that statement with the disdain it deserved, I focused on the street below... there. Flight suit, blonde ponytail, motorcycle. Weaving in and out of traffic. She had lost the bandana somewhere along the way; without the mask, she looked oddly... wholesome for someone who just committed several felonies. She was beautiful, in an anonymous movie extra sort of way. To the drivers around her, she was just another club girl out for a night on the town.
"Got her," I transmitted. "Disabling vehicle."
I led with the laser sight, the jittery infrared beam sweeping across her spine and settling on the leather seat, before committing with the directional EMP. The module embedded in my right gauntlet warmed up with a high-pitched whine before "firing" with a soft pop, engulfing the motorcycle in a shower of sparks. All tech within ten feet of her simply died, and she rolled to a gentle stop, ending her journey amidst a fleet of disabled cars and blown streetlights.
Adjusting my trajectory slightly, I flared the wingsuit and bled speed, intending to unhorse her gently, to take her off the motorcycle at non-lethal speeds.
She didn't cooperate. The blonde slipped out of grasp at the very last moment, sliding off the motorcycle and ducking away, her movements a study in careless grace and lazy confidence.
My wings were fully retracted when I blew by her. I twisted in midair to keep her in view and executed a hard three-point landing, the pavement making contact with my left knee, right foot, and left palm as I scraped to a halt.
I was going to have to work on that.
My Glock cleared my holster as she drew on me, a compact 9 mil leaping into her hand. We froze, sidearms leveled at each other, at an impasse. Both her hands cradled the pistol, enveloping the firearm in an excellent high grip.
A professional, then.
She tentatively lifted a gloved hand and tapped her throat mic. "Root, this is Ten. Do you copy? Does anyone copy?" She sighed and gave me an exasperated smile. "EMP?"
"You have something that belongs to me," I said, the mask scrambling my voice into an unrecognizable bass rumble.
"Uh, actually, she doesn't," Max said in my ear. "Not anymore. The EMP fried the flash drive."
At the same time, Ten said, "Yeah, sorry about that." She took note of the insignia splashed across my chest. "Ah, the successor. Nice to meet you. The gimp suit looks good on you... not sure about the mask though." She glanced at something over my shoulder. "Oops, gotta go." She lowered her pistol and gave me an insolent little wave. "TTFN."
And a runaway freight train smashed into my side, taking me off my feet. I caught a glimpse of the 40mm sponge grenade bouncing away before the concrete reached up and slapped me in the face. A burst of white overrode my vision, and an awful roar smashed into my eardrums, as if a bunch of drunken jackhammers decided to throw a dubstep party in my frontal lobe. I indulged in a few minutes of inactivity to process the mind numbing pain.
Okay, John. Enough of that. You're embarrassing yourself.
I pushed myself up on my elbows and shook my head to dislodge the cobwebs. White gave way to color and movement, revealing new pieces on the chessboard.
A Humvee idled between Ten and me, the gunner covering me with the turret-mounted grenade launcher. A helicopter descended just beyond the armored vehicle, one of those black military models.
Two masked figures slid out of the chopper's open door and approached her, rifles sweeping for potential threats. Both were dolled up in full-blown assault kits: body armor, helmets, goggles, balaclavas, the whole nine. Ten threw a couple hand signals their way before they let her approach the aircraft. The three of them strapped in, and the chopper rose into the night sky, banking as it accelerated away from my position.
With Ten safely airborne, the Humvee shifted into drive and eased off the curb, turning to match the curvature of the road.
It didn't get far.
The EMP blast burned through vehicle. I staggered to my feet as the vehicle rolled to a stop, gently caving in the trunk of a parked sedan. And I took off, ignoring the hideous tendrils of pain shooting up my side, sprinting full-tilt at the Humvee.
Gunner first.
I vaulted over the rear bumper and onto the roof.
He heard me coming at the last second and threw his entire body weight into redirecting the launcher.
Too late.
My boot caught the side of the gunner's head. His helmet went spinning away into the darkness. His head bounced off the turret before I got my hands on him. Grabbing two fistfuls of body armor, I hauled the dazed soldier halfway out of the Humvee and pinned him to the steel roof with a forearm jammed under his chin. As he gurgled for breath, I ripped off the balaclava and slapped my right palm against his exposed neck.
The jet autoinjector imbedded in my glove pushed a customized sedative directly into his blood stream. He went limp a half second later. My armor automatically ejected the spent vial and chambered another dose.
I slid off the roof and –
The driver dove out of the vehicle, drawing the Beretta Velcroed to his body armor.
My right hand clamped down on his wrist, redirecting the muzzle away from me, and my left palmed the barrel, depressing the take down lever before rotating it down. Before he could react, I ripped the slide from his Beretta and ducked away, leaving him with half a pistol. Without missing a beat, the soldier hurled the dismantled firearm at my face. I managed to get a hand in the way, but the improvised projectile bought him some breathing room, enough to retrieve a small cylinder clipped to his body armor.
The extendable baton deployed with a flick of his wrist.
Unwilling to be outdone, I pulled my knife and flipped it into a reverse grip.
He came in swinging, 22 inches of steel whipping at my temple.
I darted in, meeting him halfway. My blade turned the blow aside with a screech, and I slipped inside his effective range. Ducking slightly under his outstretched arm, I struck, attempting to drive my elbow into his heart through his armpit.
The baton fell from nerveless fingers.
I drove the pommel of my knife into his sternum before a second elbow strike rocketed into his chin. His teeth snapped together with an audible click and he dropped.
A quick visual check of the Humvee yielded no additional targets.
I broke out the flex-cuffs and slapped the restraints on both men, hands behind their back. Just in case. They –
There was a burst of static, and the Humvee's radiation-hardened radio squawked to life. "Root, this is Ten. Decoy complete. I'm outbound with King and Queen."
An unknown woman joined the conversation. "Got it. I'm accessing the drives. Uploading schematics."
I immediately keyed my comm. "Max, there's a second hacker on site."
"What? How is that – "
The unknown woman cut into our encrypted voice stream. "Sorry, shutting this down."
And the line went dead.
What the... somehow, some way, Root managed to compromise and shut down my SAVILLE protected voice/data streams. We're talking NSA Type 1 encryption algorithms. Classified encryption algorithms. I didn't even know that was possible. Max –
A small fleet of GCPD black and whites converged on me, sirens flashing. An old friend stepped out of her vehicle, and I found myself staring down the business of end of her service pistol. The other cops followed her lead.
Yeah. Definitely one of those days.
I showed her both hands, careful not to make any sudden movements. "Easy, Officer Montoya."
"Put your hands on your head and step away from the bodies," she barked. "Now!"
I kept both hands very still. "I'm afraid I can't – "
Another one of Root's transmissions, this one from the Humvee, interrupted me. "Ten, what do you think you're doing?"
"Biometrics say Ace and Jack are down. We're going back for them."
"Leave them, we got what we came for."
There was a few moments of icy silence before Ten responded. "Fuck you, Root. Ace, Jack, if you guys can hear me... we're coming in hot."
With a fully automatic roar, the Black Hawk reappeared, her occupants laying down a wall of suppressive fire as the helicopter flared to a stop over the disabled Humvee. Everyone on the ground dove for cover as bullets chewed through concrete, steel and glass.
It was over in matter minutes. Dashcam footage would later reveal that the helicopter landed practically on top of the two unconscious men. As Ten hosed down the area with the Hawk's minigun, the other two hauled their fallen comrades into the chopper and lobbed a couple grenades into the disabled Humvee. I missed all this because every time my bright red mask popped up for a look, Ten loosed at least twenty rounds my way.
I considered falling back on my directional EMP, but two small words stopped me: collateral and damage. Dropping a helicopter out of the sky probably wasn't healthy for those in or under it.
There was a muffled whump as the Humvee went up in flames. Ten spent another ten seconds saturating the area with bullets before the helicopter banked away.
Oh no, I'm not done yet.
As soon as the chopper's fuselage obstructed her field of fire, I deployed another grapple line, nailing the fuselage just behind the right wheel. The monofilament yanked me into the night sky, away from the sirens and overly aggressive officers.
My presence did not go unnoticed; the Black Hawk dipped quite obviously as it took on my weight. I was almost in striking distance when Ten poked her head out the door and caught sight of me. She gave me a dazzling smile and hooked the line with the blade of her Karambit.
The monofilament parted on the edge of her knife. Momentum carried me close enough to brush the fuselage with a hand before the chopper leapt out of reach. She twinkled her fingers at me as I fell away.
And then she was gone.
I activated the suit's flight system on pure instinct, and the next thing I knew, I was half a mile away, crashing gently into the pavement.
Yeah, definitely have to work on that.
I brushed myself off and took in my surroundings. Now where was... ah. I was just outside the Port of Gotham, a couple blocks away from an Applied Sciences equipment cache. This particular one contained a Tumbler, as well as a spare suit and a miniature armory.
As the Tumbler's system booted, I pulled out my smartphone and dialed Max's cell. The handheld device synced to my helmet's comm system via Bluetooth, and Max's voice chirped in my ear once more. "You alright?" was the first thing she said.
"Yeah. The wings work, by the way. You?"
"You're an idiot, you know that? Yeah, I'm good... yes? Oh, okay. Hold on, Dad wants to talk to you."
There was a faint rustling before Lucius Fox said, "Hello, John."
"What did they get?"
"Everything from Applied Sciences, plus the Northern Lights project. We never found the second intruder. Any luck with yours?"
"Yeah, planted a GPS tag on their chopper."
I could hear his grin over the line. "Good work. Tell you what, we'll get the hardware set up on this end, and I'll let you know if there are any developments. Go home and get some sleep."
I hesitated. On one hand, closure. On the other, sleep. I made up my mind. "Okay, will do."
"I'll be in touch. Max, do you...?"
Max rejoined the conversation. "Thanks, Dad. Yeah, Steph and her team have things covered for now, so I'm headed home as well. You coming in tomorrow, John?"
"Yeah, of course."
"Alright, see you tomorrow then."
"Later, Max."
"Night, John."
She hung up. I shifted the Tumbler into drive and headed home.
Home was one of Bruce's former safe houses, this one located in the suburbs outside of Gotham, up in the hills. Gated and secluded, the property was just far enough away from prying eyes to avoid awkward questions about armored vehicles coming and going at all hours of the night.
I pulled into the garage, and the floor rumbled beneath me, lowering the Tumbler into a concealed subterranean level; beneath the cozy one-story house lay a fully equipped armory and garage, with enough room to comfortably house a couple Tumblers, a test range, and my complete arsenal.
I headed upstairs after stowing my equipment and fell asleep almost immediately.
Max called the next morning just as I was finishing breakfast. "You're trending on Twitter."
"What?"
"You online?"
"No."
"Well, someone posted footage of you to Youtube, and hashtag Iron Bat has become a thing. Because of the new helmet design and color, I guess. But I prefer the name GCN is using."
"What's that?"
"Just turn on the TV, John."
Cradling the phone against my ear, I dug the remote out of my sofa cushions. GCN popped up immediately; the network was broadcasting a blurry video of me, no doubt taken from a smartphone. Splashed across the bottom of the screen was a single question: WHO IS THE RED HOOD?