This story is based upon the world or worlds and characters created by the imaginative minds behind DC comics of which I do not own rights.

I also do not claim the rights to the poetry used to inspire each chapter.

I do however claim rights to the characters I have created in this work.

Any similarities of characters named or described in this work to real people alive or dead is purely coincidental.


Goddess: Descention

Book Two: Combustion

Prologue: Connections


Lightening Is A Yellow Fork

Of mansions never quite disclosed

And never quite concealed

The Apparatus of the Dark

To ignorance revealed.

Emily Dickinson

(1830-1886)


Gotham City, days after the Arkham escapes

Commissioner Gordon was in his office reading statements… perhaps deciphering was a better word. Over the last few days Gordon and his team had been interviewing witnesses and inmates concerning the asylum escapes. Of the witnesses, the Arkham staff were at least coherent but they didn't seem to know much about who orchestrated the whole affair, all the police could get from them was a definitive timeline. The Arkham inmates however were a completely different kettle of fish. Trying to get the truth from hardened felons in lock-up was difficult enough, from the inmates in Arkham, it was next to impossible.

The insane didn't make for very good witnesses Their own varied insanities colored their testimonies and they made up the parts they didn't understand or know about. Gordon's notebook read like a Picasso; the disjointed and confusing statements made for interesting reading but not much made any actual sense. Everything from angels and faeries to aliens and demons were all responsible for the riot. One inmate insisted it was the 'pod-people' that had taken over the government. Some said the asylum officials planned to raze the entire island and kill all the inmates and make it look like a horrible accident because it had become too costly to care for the patients there. That one interested Gordon because several inmates had testified to similar versions of that story and it was almost plausible.

Gordon personally knew a number of city officials who would like nothing better than to have Arkham Asylum disappear from the face of the earth. Gordon had to admit, if only to himself, that it wouldn't be a bad thing, but it was just dinner-party talk, winsome fantasies and speculations on how to make Gotham a better place… just talk. Some said if they could, they would shut the place down and ship the inmates off to other installations around the country, but secretly Gordon knew a few that would be more than happy to let the blight of Gotham, Arkham Island and it's insane population, sink into the bay never to be seen again.

The Arkham Prison Warden, Administrator Talbot steadfastly refused to believe that any of his people initiated such a ridiculous idea and after all it was just a rumor. But whether it was true wasn't the point. If enough of the prisoners believed the lie, it didn't have to be true to incite a riot.

Gordon had no solid evidence, just a gut feeling as to who instigated the chaos at the asylum and used it to escape; Dr. Jonathon Crane. In many ways Crane was the most dangerous inmate in Arkham, besides the Joker. As the Scarecrow he sought to inspire fear but it wasn't just the burlap mask he wore, the mind under that mask was much more frightening. He saw people as nothing more than test-subjects in his insane experiments. His goal wasn't to kill, though he had no qualms against it and many had indeed succumbed to his toxins, dying horrifying deaths. What he did was study people and the affects his toxins had on them in order to perfect the purest and most absolute form of fear, all in the name of science. He was absolutely insane but he was also highly intelligent. He didn't need his poison to inspire dread, all he needed to do was talk to you, to get inside your brain and once there he could twist it into jelly.

Crane also ran the asylum for years before his illicit experiments were discovered. He, more than any other inmate knew the inner workings of a facility that size, the cost, the personnel, the politics and he knew the labyrinth that was Arkham Asylum intimately. He had years to study the place, to find the hidden tunnels and concealed rooms, the secret labs many of which he himself used. He knew it's twisted passages like he knew his own twisted mind.

Crane not only knew the building, he also knew those incarcerated with him. The more Gordon looked into the case files of the inmates of the east-wing the more dismayed he became: Crane was locked up inside the prison's east-wing with many of his own former patients. Gordon was appalled at such an oversight. Talbot had stuttered and back-pedalled but he could offer no real excuse for such an irresponsible and dangerous lapse in judgement.

After that stunning realization Gordon had personally interviewed many of Crane's former patients. Even with their limited grasp of reality, Gordon soon understood that the prisoners of Arkham saw Crane not as just another inmate, like themselves, but something much more. Many saw him as the doctor he used to be; a person of authority, a leader. They believed what he said because he seemed to offer them something their real doctors could not; a justification for their fears. He believed them, he made them accept that their insane imaginings were real, neutralizing everything the real doctors of the asylum were trying to do to help their patients. For years Crane used his professional psychiatric training to sow fear in the minds of every person he came in contact with. Gordon had no doubt Crane set the whole thing up, probably months ago but he couldn't have done it alone…

Jim Gordon was tired, he had slept maybe four hours in the last forty-eight. He removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose and felt the headache coming. When he looked down at the reports in front of him his glasses still on his desk he noticed one of the lenses had magnified the words beneath it, and one word stood blatantly out… Zsasz.

What about Victor Zsasz? He shouldn't have been in the east-wing at all. He had questioned Talbot about that unfortunate occurrence and had been told that Zsasz was brought to the medical wing for treatment weeks ago. Apparently he had taken to re-living his past exploits and re-opened many of his old scars to 'heighten' the experience and the scratches became infected. It was disgusting but it got him in the east-wing; in the right place, at the right time. Talbot said it was just an unfortunate coincidence but Gordon didn't believe in coincidence. If Crane orchestrated the whole thing then he must have gotten word to Zsasz somehow, but why him? Was Zsasz just another diversion?

The thought of Victor Zsasz running loose sent a chill down Gordon's spine. As bad as Crane was or any of the other Arkham inmates for that matter, excluding perhaps The Joker, Zsasz was the most unpredictable. The others were all a catastrophe waiting to happen but their schemes all had a method to their assorted madness', some sort of twisted logic that could be followed but with Zsasz there was no logic. The only certainty that they could be sure of with him out in the world… was a rising body count.

Gordon sat back in his chair and tried to stretch the aches out of his back and shoulders. He reached for his coffee mug only to find it empty. It was as good an excuse as any to stretch his legs, he rose and went in search of a warm pot of coffee, but his mind was still at his desk struggling to find a connection between Jonathon Crane and Victor Zsasz.

When he returned to his office, a lukewarm cup in his hand Gordon found a black folder resting prominently in the middle of his desk as his office door closed silently behind him. He was startled to see the shadow behind it move and gain substance; Batman stepped forward. He always surprised Gordon when he did that, just appeared as if from nothing. Gordon was startled but he didn't mind, if he was here it meant he's found something.

"Evening, Commissioner."

"Good to see you," Gordon gestured with his cup, "Coffee?"

"No thank-you."

"Any luck tracking our newest batch of escapees?"

"I have a few leads"

"Anything you'd like to share?"

Batman gestured toward the folder on the Commissioner's desk, "Just that, for now."

Gordon sat at his desk and opened the file. "This is a copy of one of our own case files from a couple of years ago, the last time Zsasz was loose."

Victor Zsasz killed seven people the last time he escaped Arkham before Batman found him. Seven dead, including a family of four, with two children. Batman came close to the line that time. During the struggle to apprehend him, Zsasz gloated about them, the little ones he'd called them. Batman broke his arm, several ribs and his jaw just to shut him up.

"It's also the connection… between Crane and Zsasz."

Gordon looked up at the man standing in shadow, can he read minds now too?

Gordon turned the page, "Nancy Hollan was a nurse in Arkham, one of the victims you found…"

"She was related to Zsasz' last victims… the family." A grandmother"I found skin samples under her fingernails that matched Victor Zsasz' DNA."

"You're sure?"

"Yes, when the morgue gets the results back from her autopsy they'll find the same thing."

Gordon marvelled at how quickly Batman got his results, DNA testing normally takes weeks. "Hers was one of the three bodies you found in the stairwell in the east-wing."

"Yes." The memory of her and the two guards floating over a pool of blood, and the third eye in the middle of their foreheads ghosted through his mind.

"I don't see a connection yet."

"It's all in the file. She was employed at Gotham General, but two years ago she began training as a psychiatric nurse, quit the hospital and began working at Arkham five months ago."

"She was trying to get close to Zsasz, to kill him?"

"Maybe, but because of her extensive medical training and experience she was stationed in the infirmary, in the east-wing, far from Zsasz, but close to Crane."

Gordon flipped through a few pages and stopped at a list of Crane's activities; therapy sessions, medical examinations and visitors and saw the nurse's name pop up several times. "Seems Nurse Hollan and Dr. Crane got on well together. Pretty bold, or desperate; trying to use Crane to get to Zsasz."

"Crane used her, used her grief and hatred of Victor Zsasz and made her into an unknowing collaborator in his escape plan. I found her fingerprints on a dead guard's key-card. The same key-card that opened the doors to Crane's cellblock. Then, when she outlived her usefulness, he turned her over to Zsasz, who killed her."

Gordon looked back down at the file, "Says here she had a husband…"

"You might want to question him."

"I will, personally, he must have known what she was doing."

"And if he did, she might have told him something that could give us a clue as to Crane's plans after the escape."

"We've heard nothing from any of the other escapees either, with Crane and Zsasz loose I know they aren't a priority but…" Gordon, shook his head, he was getting too old for this.

Batman looked down at his friend behind his desk. He was tired, that much was evident but it was more than that, he almost seemed despondent. Batman needed James Gordon, he was a vital link between what Batman and his allies did and the justice system. James Gordon made Batman's job significantly easier and at a certain amount of risk to himself. Gordon walked a political tightrope by secretly helping Batman and his allies. Thiers was a strange friendship but a friendship nevertheless, built on mutual respect. Batman understood to some degree the stress Jim Gordon was under in running the police force of a large crime-ridden city and he would do as much as he could to alleviate as much of that pressure on his friend as he could. "I have a lead I'm following Jim, we'll find them."

Gordon nodded and was about to say something when his phone rang, he turned to answer it and when he turned back he was startled again to find that he was alone in his office… How the hell does he do that?


To be continued...