Prologue – January 2nd, 2002

"I dunno about this one, fellas," Joe Chill told his crew. His hands shivered ever so slightly as he loaded his pistol. It wasn't visible to the others, but it made it significantly harder for him to slip the magazine into the gun.

"A contract's a contract, and the boss'll have our heads if we fuck this up," Johnnie replied, pulling the red bandana over the lower half of his face. The other man, Louis, nodded along as he put up a bandana of his own. I guess that's my answer. Joe told himself. Just do it for Hailey. If you can do one thing right in your life, help her.

The van the gang loaned to them sported fresh blue paint and newly minted plates. It was virtually unrecognizable from the vehicle stolen from that poor sap two weeks ago. Joe turned up the dial on the car radio, hoping to calm down and drown out his anxiety.

"Thanks, Tom. We begin our weather broadcast tonight with an update from the national weather service. A winter weather advisory has been placed over the counties of –"

Johnnie turned the channel, shifting between his favorite Jazz station and that hip hop program on the air, who he swore he didn't find attractive. Johnnie's taste was as grating to Joe as the rest of his personality. His presence alone made his heart pick up pace, and the fact he was driving did nothing to calm Joe down. His mind lasered in on anything it could focus on. Does he have to take that stupid bobble head with him on every job we pull?

Joe sighed and palmed his face. The bumpy roads made his stomach lurch, and for an instant he almost got sick in his seat. His feeling improved, albeit only slightly, when they got on the bridge. Arkham Asylum, once a proud and pristine building, full of gothic splendor, now stood darkened and stained atop its rock in the middle of the bay. The bridge connecting it to the mainland would be closed soon, but the three men ventured on in spite of it all.

As they neared their destination, Joe's leg bumped against the duffel bag below him. Shit. Please, God, if you have any love left for me, don't let a damn duffel bag fuck this for me. Chill pulled up the pant sleeve of his washed-out jeans. His hands rechecked the ankle bracelet, making sure that annoying red light was off like it was supposed to be – like they promised it would be. He let out a sigh as his fears were dissipated.

Looking back up over the dashboard, the granite gargoyles' cold eyes peered directly into Joe's soul. Their sneering faces watched over the grounds, as if in warning to those who might do wrong there.

Despite their warning, the van parked on the edge of the main parking lot. The men unbuckled their seatbelts, zipped up their duffel bags, and silenced their weapons. Joe made sure to shut his door slowly, trying his hardest not to let a sound slip from the van. Joe's reflection in the window scolded him, sorrow-filled eyes dropping and pleading for him to turn around and forget this whole mess. His leg, seemingly acting of its own volition, quaked and quivered as it stepped back, right into Louis.

"Going somewhere, Joey?"

"No, nope. Not at all."

Beads of sweat ran down his temple as he felt the barrel of Louis' gun press into the small of his back. Accepting his fate, Joe stepped forward around the van. Pulling his own scarlet bandanna over his face to match his compatriots. The three marauders posted themselves inside an aging security booth, long ago abandoned but still standing. Joe noticed the year 1979 printed on the ledger's freshest page as he got out his matte binoculars out of the bag. Through the lenses, the three men sat and waited as the snow began its slow-release drip from the domineering clouds, obscuring the last gasps of the night's light.

Ancient and unyielding, the main doors to the Asylum creaked open as the thin man left the complex. As his shoes echoed off the stone, he turned and waved back to an unseen colleague. The lab coat clad figure stood out against the asphalt void of the parking lot. His figure hunched as he doubled over, hugging and holding himself, forging a shield against the bitter cold gusts crescendoing with an increasing fury.

His keys jingled and clattered against the pavement, falling from the scientist's hands, now cupped behind his head. The gun Louis pointed behind his head reflected no light, it was an extension of his arm, clad in black and steady with an iron determination. Scientists certainly weren't cut out for this kinda pressure, or at least, that's what Joe always thought. Much to his surprise, the good doctor calmly stopped in his tracks immediately, stiff and still as a brick wall. His eyes peered down at the ticking wristwatch and he let out a sigh. Hot air bellowing like smoke from his lungs, Dr. Johnathan Crane stood in the parking lot, not a man like his supposed captors, but or a basilisk clad in an off-white lab coat.

"Oh bother. Here we go again," Crane tried to turn to face his assailants, but before Joe could do anything Johnnie's pistol slammed down into his temple. The scarlet drops blemished his porcelain skin as he lay unconscious in the snowy lot. His body dragged along the snow towards the van, leaving behind twisted and perverted snow angels – the kind only some terrifying monster could create intentionally.

But Crane wasn't being intentional. He was just some schmuck who put rubber stamps on the loonies for the feds and the city. Who was he in comparison to the hardened criminals abducting him? He was no veteran, but a greenhorn in the underworld – that's the impression Joe got from his looks at least. His body slumped into the back of the van any other man's would have. All 165 pounds of his lanky ass never would've made it on the streets. That huge brain of his was the only thing keeping Mr. Crane, Dr. Crane, from being like all the others crushed under the heel of the mob. I guess being an "egghead" is better than being dead.

The van stopped on the outskirts of town, in the parking lot of a washed-out strip mall closer to the Delaware border than Downtown Gotham City. Joe zipped up the empty duffel bag, the nap sack and duct tape both used already on their captive.

As the psychologist started to stir, Johnnie cut the engine while Louis ripped off the potato sack they used for a mask. He shook Crane awake violently, and the words fell out of his mouth, smooth as stone and cool as ice. "Look here, man. All ya gotta do is just sign a few of your little doctor's notes and say what Mr. Carmine wants you to on the stand," he punctuated the point by tearing off the duct tape which covered his withering lips. Though crane was young, his features clashed and mixed in a way where it was hard to tell how old he was, or much else about him for that matter.

His eyes widened with spite as he adjusted to the bright light shone in his face. "Look here, gentlemen. You can tell good Mr. Carmine that if he still wants my help, he can come here personally and apologize for this naked aggression," Crane's words slithered out of his mouth. "I knew he was getting desperate but come on. This is ridic – " SMACK.

The handprint burned into his face and earned his silence for a moment until he straightened his back again. His dignity at least partially reclaimed. He cleared his throat, and his words came clean and free of the vinegar they'd just had moments before.

"Well, I can see you three are clearly not going to take no for an answer," he sighed again, but this time his lips turned into the faintest hint of a smile. "That's quite fine. Really. I assume you have the papers with you right now," it wasn't actually a question, but Joe hardly could tell the difference with the way he spoke.

"Well, we – "

"What am I saying, of course you do. How would the threat work if I couldn't sign them right now, what with all those dangerous weapons trained on me. Fine. Fine. Undo these restraints around my arms and I'll sign whatever you need me to, and with any luck the four of us will never see each other again," Crane sat up further, all emotion drained from his face, though he did bob and bounce slightly.

"There, done," Johnnie's serrated knife made quick work of the makeshift handcuffs binding their prisoner.

"Guys, we're seriously just gonna untie him like that? I don't think – " Joe's protests were cut off before he could finish.

"Just shut up and get Mr. Carmine's papers before you say anything else stupid," Johnnie pointed his gun suggestively in Joe's direction suggestively. "Now, please."

Joe knew when he heard a stupid idea. He knew when to talk back, and this was one of those times. But Joe also knew when it would get him shot in the head, most likely at least. This was also one of those times. So, grumbling as he would, Joe fetched the papers like a good lackey and handed them personally to Dr. Crane, who received him with that same disappearing look of pure glee.

Before he knew what was happening, Joe's skin was pricked with Crane's pen, and the world melted around him. Crane's face churned and burned away to a demonic caricature of himself, or of the stereotypical image of the mad scientist: graying hair; mad eyes; a rabid thirst with a foaming mouth and a questionable suite of scientific instruments and malicious chemicals.

His fellow gangsters turned into something even more terrifying. Johnnie grew a good six inches in height and put on a hundred pounds of muscle. His bandana morphed into a mask of blood across the now stern features of his face. A mustache sprouted, and his hair became clean cut and old-fashioned. The rags he wore turned to riches, to a black-tie suit. Louis' frame shrunk into the graceful form befitting an opera singer, and the garb he wore was to match. His long golden chain shifted into a magnificent set of pearly globes around his crane of a neck, and just like Johnnie, his bandanna shifted to blood. The most terrifying sight imaginable stood before him: Thomas and Martha Wayne, undead and bloodied.

"WHAT?! I KILLED YOU! HOW? GET AWAY FROM ME!" Joe's voice rang for blocks around them, echoing off building and pavement alike amidst the dead streets. "Calm down, man," they replied. The words were lost on him. He was too far gone to tell reality from fiction, to tell that his "turned off" probationary anklet was pulsing on his leg, fast as his heartbeat. This exact thought had deprived him of sleep for decades, and now it was his judgement day. Surely these spirits had come to drag him to his own corner of whatever circle of hell God had condemned him to, but Joe refused to go without a fight.

He cocked his pistol, newer and flashier than that old beat up revolver he used to kill the Waynes previously, but still just as good at shooting people. The action clicked, and with a roar he fired his entire clip into the eldritch horrors standing in his sight.

"I'M SORRY! I'M SO SO SO SORRY! I'M SORRYI'MSORRYI'MSORRY!" The horrors before him collapsed, fresh wounds to join those he'd made all those years ago. Joe screamed and threw his gun, grasping his throbbing head with his grotesque hands. He heard a laughter that sent a chill shaking through his body, from his eyes popping to his tingling spine, the malevolent spirit burrowed deep within his soul and delighted in his terror.

Words, unheard to Joe, commanded him to drop the weapon. Shouting, flashing scarlet and azure, all of it didn't register; the police didn't scare him. For a moment, he heard Hailey sobbing, and tears of his own ran down his face to join her. A single shot rang out in the night, from a gun Joe never even knew was there. He collapsed, rag dolled, and rolled onto the uncaring ground as the black sky overhead came back into focus. Joe's mind was his again, but it was fading fast into shock.

Joe looked down. The blood was on his hands now – no, not now, not just now. His hands had been stained for years. No amount of good works could undo what he'd done, and no amount of crime could undo what he did to Hailey, to his daughter. All those years, his hands were stained, and the stains wouldn't, couldn't come out. As Joe lie there, bleeding on the pavement next to his bloody victims, he saw the truth for the first time in his life. For all his mistakes, for all his actions, he couldn't take back the past. And like so many before him, Joe Chill realized the lessons he was supposed to learn all too late. Hailey, he thought as the sirens split his head open. I'm sorry.