The Wildest Card
It wasn't a rainy night in this gloomy city, the Doctor noted, but the threat of rain was hovering over everything, as cloying and inescapable as the deepening dusk. He had stopped in for just a bit of something to eat, some stretching of the legs, and perhaps some time outside the TARDIS for some fresh air.
Two of three is not all that bad, he consoled himself. He was, after all, in the heart of a fairly large metropolis, one that heavily favored early 20th century gothic architecture, with a hint of something baroque here and there with perhaps a twist of neo-classical this or that elsewhere. To judge by the content of the newspaper he had been reading—that and the spelling—he was in an American city, but not one with which he was familiar. And to be fair to the newspaper, the cars clogging the street and the once-fresh air were as much a giveaway. Not only were they on the wrong side of the street, semantics of "left and right" notwithstanding, they were big, bulky, and honked a lot.
The Doctor had stopped eating some time ago, his tea and the remains of his cheesecake long since having reached the same temperature. The front page of the Times, March 3rd edition, was awash in a story of a multiple murder, with plenty of photographs of shrouded bodies, crime scene tapes, and police shoving at the photographers. The writer of the article didn't seem to have had much luck in milking the police for information, judging by the amount of hedging and supposition in the story. What did intrigue the Doctor, however, was the circumstantial evidence that had been gleaned from talkative anonymous sources.
Evidently the killings were highly stylized, with the bodies posed in various attitudes to suggest either merriment or revelry, and they were all seemingly happy about it. Whether their faces had been painted or whatever had led the author or witnesses to that conclusion, the Doctor couldn't even begin to guess.
The wailing of sirens, a near-constant in this shadow-shrouded city, changed slightly as some of them went past the Doctor's seat and rounded a corner two blocks away, where they evidently found what they sought. The Doctor rose from his seat, placing the newspaper on the table and reaching into his pocket for his sonic screwdriver. Dialing the controls by touch, he kept it pocketed and aimed it in the general direction of the cashier and sent a quick electronic pulse into the cash register. He added in the total for his meal and a quick tip for his waitress and was off to follow the red and blue lights.
His sneakers made very little sound as they whisked him down the busy street to the corner the police and medical vehicles had turned. Dipping into his other pocket, he withdrew a small billfold and flipped it open as he made his way toward the policemen.
"Beg your pardon, but the Captain himself asked me to join you," he said, showing the paper to anyone with a badge. "Inspector Smith of Scotland Yard, on special assignment. Passport and badge right here, if you please. Can you show me to your superiors, please?"
Baffled but mollified by the sight of the "official documents," the rank and file officers waved him on toward those upper echelon police with the proper insignia on their uniforms. The regular police had their hands full with traffic control and securing the area, anyway.
The Doctor found himself tagging silently along behind a few lieutenants, an odd sergeant or three, and one captain. There was an odd smell in the air, and a man in a hazardous materials suit appeared at the top of the stairs to the next floor. His voice was strangely modulated by the transmitter in his hood.
"Sorry, sirs, but until we get done decontaminating, the investigation's going to have to wait."
One of the lieutenants, evidently the senior, cursed. "Fine. Try not to disturb anything more than you have to, though. We need forensics in there ASAP."
"Yes, sir, we know the drill," the hazmat officer said. "We don't even know what this chemical was, but God, it was nasty. We count at least thirteen casualties up here so far."
"Dead?"
"Yes, sir. No survivors yet." The man sounded as though he held no hope for finding any, the Doctor noticed.
A different lieutenant spoke up. "What can you tell from a prelim?"
"Preliminary inspection says that it's similar to last week, sir. Multiple victims, all appearing to have died due to exposure to an unknown chemical agent, all seeming to have died in severe pain."
The lieutenant fell silent. "They look like the last bunch?"
The hazmat officer nodded silently behind his hood.
"Well, neutralize the poison as best you can and let us know when you're ready," the first officer said.
As a unit, the group turned and headed back out the way they'd entered, none but one of the sergeants sparing the Doctor a second glance. "Sir, I need you to step back across the line. This is a crime scene."
"Oh, so it is," the Doctor said, smiling broadly. "I'm sorry. New here and all that. Which way to the nearest line across which to step, please?"
The sergeant pointed and the Doctor obligingly stepped across the line. He had learned a little—far too little to satisfy his ravening curiosity—but enough to know that patience was the watchword. With a little help from his sonic screwdriver, he entered a nearby apartment building and scaled a few flights of stairs until he was directly across from the crime scene. More accurately, the entire floor of the quarantined building was the crime scene.
Setting his screwdriver to scan, the Doctor took very deliberate and very detailed readings as best he could. Filtering out chemical traces of alcohol, carbon dioxide, synthetic air fresheners, and the like, he came across a compound that even he had not encountered before. He saw long-chain molecules in sequences that most certainly did not occur in nature, and short-chain sequences that could only have been invented in a lab belonging to the most irresponsible of scientists.
Adjusting the controls again, he took a second set of readings exactly as he had done before, this time looking for a clue as to how quickly this insane chemical would dissipate. His brow had already been furrowed; by this time it was threatening to compress itself into an unrecoverable tangle of eyebrows and wrinkles. If his sonic screwdriver was right and he was interpreting its readouts correctly, the chemical was already starting to degrade and become inert. Inside of thirty minutes, it would be harmless.
"Nasty business, that," he muttered. "Strike fast, strike hard, leave almost no trace." Needless to say, his curiosity now raged for satiation.
It took a little over a half an hour for him to find a way across the small space between his building and his destination, but he found it nonetheless. Following his screwdriver and heeding his ears for signs of police, the Doctor cautiously made his way inside.
The entire inside of the building was soaked; the automatic fire suppression system had been set off somehow. Scans of the sprinkler heads indicated heavy traces of the same compound the Doctor had detected earlier. Well, the delivery method has been found. Let's look for whatever set it off, now. And then we can work on the 'why.' If there even is a reason why.
He knew that the sprinkler heads were set with heat-sensitive fusible element, but the trick would be what had set…What?
In the ceiling above him, extending out from a ventilation duct, was an accordion-like length of metal sections, much like the doors to old, manually-operated freight elevator doors or one of those devices someone might use to grab things off a high shelf. The end of the contraption was positioned directly beneath a sprinkler head, but what perplexed the Doctor the most was that the device was evidently a gloved hand holding a disposable lighter.
What is this? he wondered. Is this the work of the vengeful spirit of Rube Goldberg? He contemplated finding the activation mechanism for the sprinkler triggering device, but he decided against it. He could plainly see that the gloved hand—fake, fortunately—had held the burning lighter under the sprinkler and triggered a building-wide deluge.
No, what mattered now was to find out how this poison was introduced into the sprinkler system. That might give a valuable clue or three as to the killer's methods, although the Doctor could tell that whoever this killer was, he was highly intelligent, clever, and resourceful.
But few are more so than I! The Doctor began to make his way back outside when an open door caught his eye. Cautiously, he poked his head inside. "Hello?" he whispered, hoping for either a survivor or a lack of assailants or ghosts.
He was greeted with a mixed blessing. There were no assailants or malevolent spirits, neither were there survivors. A single body, a casually-dressed young man, lay on the floor on his side. The Doctor knew perfectly well that the man was dead; nobody could have survived exposure to that bizarre poison in such concentrations. Still, the Doctor was compelled to at least make the effort to check, just on the off chance the man might be alive.
Drawing a handkerchief from his pocket to protect his hand, the Doctor gently rolled the man over onto his back and immediately recoiled. His stomach churned and threatened to overwhelm him.
The man's face, his eyes open, was contorted into a ghastly rictus of either excruciating pain or unbearable mirth. Abdominal cramping had forced the victim to clasp his hands around his stomach, and for the lives of him, the Doctor still couldn't say with certainty whether it was agony or merriment, although he was leaning heavily toward pain.
Although the Doctor's training in medicine lagged slightly behind his temporal physics (but only slightly) he knew that despite the pain of the man's death, his muscles should have relaxed almost completely afterward. Then again, that chemical agent… Without further analysis, the Doctor had no way of telling what effect it would have on human tissues aside from killing them. It wouldn't do him a world of good, either, and might even cost him a regeneration. Most likely, it would just sicken him severely, but best not to risk it any more than he had.
He stood silently and headed for the door. The police were making their way up to his floor, and it wouldn't do at all for him to be caught here.
He made his way back to the TARDIS without incident, but also without answers. His heart, or both of them, argued to go back in time and stop the killings before they happened, but the laws of time argued against it. If he went back and prevented these murders, he would have negated the very reason for his travel back in time. He would have created another of those interminable paradoxes. However, there was another way around the matter.
As so many of the Doctor's friends had noted, rules were not something that got in his way very often. This was true enough: he rarely bothered with them unless there was no way around them. This time, though, he would create just a the tiniest of hiccups in the ocean of time. Surely of no dire consequence. He hoped.
Tasking the TARDIS' computers to analyze his sonic screwdriver's readings, he aimed the TARDIS for one relative week into the future. March third became March tenth, and the Doctor logged onto the internet and looked for news releases about more such murders. Sadly, he found another one.
Dated March 6th, the entire occupancy of a YMCA, a Young Men's Christian Association, had been slaughtered, both by exposure to poisons and by knife wounds. The Doctor frowned. What possible motive could there be for butchering people who gathered for recreation and companionship? As if there could be a motive for what had happened earlier tonight! The Doctor sighed through his nose.
The article didn't give even an estimated time for the murders. Evidently it was a last-minute add-on to the newspaper's run. This would be less than useless, wouldn't it? He searched through multiple references and different sources, but there was only the most general of time frames given, the earliest of which was about seven p.m.
He tapped his finger impatiently on the console. There was always the option of waiting around the scene all day, but where to start looking? And what would he be seeking, anyway? Or whom?
The Doctor started, a nearly-mad smile spreading across his face. He didn't have to look for anyone or anything! All he needed to do was appear early enough and pull a fire alarm or phone in a false bomb threat—it would annoy the police but it would save lives, he reasoned—and the building would be vacated quickly enough.
Now that the problem had been reduced to mere guesswork, the Doctor pondered the console of his beloved and utterly indispensable TARDIS. To materialize too early would be to waste his efforts, because the building would be full of victims by the time the killer triggered his devices—whatever they were—and that would be no better than arriving too late.
Late afternoon seemed as good a time as any, perhaps around six o'clock local relative subjective time. With a flourish that nearly hid the tremor in his fingertips, the Doctor engaged the TARDIS' engines and the monitors informed him that he had reached his destination. Whether or not he had reached it in time would only be answered by stepping outside, which he did with not a little trepidation.
And he was too late.
He could tell by the smell that he had arrived far too late to be of assistance. The stink of stale water and that metallic odor that he'd first encountered at the last crime scene…his hearts broke.
The worst of it was that he could not go even a bit farther back now, or he would risk his existences overlapping and causing a temporal rift or even spawning a vastly different timeline if he tried to avoid the rift. The Doctor slammed his hand into the TARDIS' door jamb. He had taken his best guess and guessed wrong, and now all those lives he had read about in a future news article were dead and waiting for him in the present.
His head snapped up, his dark eyes blazing. Wait. The article said some had died of knife wounds. The killer wouldn't be here during the deluge; it would expose him to the poison, too. Even if he just finished…killing all these people, he's still here! He's still in the building!
The Doctor had no way of knowing that for certain, of course, but it was a slender straw to which he could cling. Stepping as quickly as he dared, fearful of splashing any of the tainted water on himself, the Doctor drew his sonic screwdriver and set it to scan for life signs. He tried with supreme effort to ignore the bodies on the floor around him. There were children. Too many children…
There! There! I'm not too late! Four life readings were indicated at the opposite end of the level he occupied. It was just a few dozen meters…
"Whoever you are, I'm coming! I'm here to help you!"
One life sign blinked out.
"No! Stop what you're doing! Stop!"
Now two remained. Ten meters, half a galaxy away, never enough time…
"Don't touch anyone else! Do you hear me? Stop it! Stop it!"
The single survivor's readings shone clear and steady as the other life sign flickered and dimmed. The Doctor slowed, his mind going numb even as his feet stumbled to a shambling walk. The last life form stood but four meters away, hidden behind a steel door.
Obligingly, the heavy door swung open to reveal a dark room lit only by street lamps shining through the windows. Three bodies lay motionless on the floor in spreading pools of crimson that seemed black in the half light. Their heads had been pulled back and their necks exposed to a cold, vicious blade that still glittered wetly red in the hand of a shadowed figure.
There was a specter of a giggle, that of a child finding mirth in the madness. "Oh, hello there, what's the problem? Who are you now?"
The Doctor froze, trying to kick start his brain. The murky light and the horror of his surroundings had to have been playing tricks on him, but he swore that the shadow's unruly, ragged hair was green, that it wore an overcoat of purple. The giggle grew into a throaty chuckle and raged upward into the ragged upper registers of hysteria.
"I'm the Doctor. Who are you?"
The laughter stopped. "You're not smiling," the figure said, almost pouting. The bloody knife waved at the shadow's victims. "Everyone else is smiling. See? Ear to ear grins, but you just refuse to smile along.
"Come now, Doctor. Why so serious?"
The Doctor simply stood, slowly shaking his head. "What…"
"Doctor. You're in the house, but I take it this isn't what you ordered? What kind of doctor are you, exactly? Are you really a doctor, or do you just play one on TV? Or do you just like to play doctor?" The figure was perfectly still except for its head, turned just enough to let the cold shine of the street lamps flicker in one shadowed eye. "Let me know when to stop, because I have a million of 'em."
The Doctor barely remembered to put his sonic screwdriver away. "Who are you? What are you?"
The man shrugged with one shoulder. "I'm a smoker, I'm a midnight toker, I get my lovin' on the run. But some people call me Maurice, if that helps any."
Aghast, the Doctor felt some of his own madness seeping into his voice. "What is wrong with you? How can you be joking about this? How can you be laughing in the middle of all this that you've wrought?"
Again the shrug. "It's who I am, it's what I do, it's how I roll. What I live for, kill for, and maybe die for, but I'm not sure about that last one. Not yet. But even if I do, I don't know if I'll know it after it happens. Weird, if you think about it. Ever have a near-death experience, Doctor?"
"Several."
The shadow's smile grew into a grin. "Here. Have another." He reached into a pocket with his other hand and after the briefest of pauses, more sprinkler heads began to spray the noxious chemical.
The Doctor turned and began running for the nearest clear space, one where the water couldn't reach him, or so he hoped. The shadowy figure's taunts followed him. "It serves you right, Doctor! I saw a flashing light and heard some crazy noise and I thought the cops were coming, but noooo! Had to be the Doctor and some insane BlackBerry iPod netbook noisemaker he got at a Kmart discount sale! This is what you get for doing whatever it was you did that pissed me off!"
The only safety the Doctor could find was outside the YMCA, and he found it by throwing himself through a window—thank Time he was on the ground floor—and for the longest of eternities he simply lay there, his muscles convulsing under the influence of whatever vile chemicals were mixed with the water.
He dimly heard rushing footsteps and voices shouting commands to whomever was in the area, but the Doctor didn't care. Even as his body fought to heal itself, his mind began racing through everything he'd seen and heard, random thoughts and disjointed theories bouncing madly off each other as the Time Lord tried to figure out both the shadowed figure and his motives.
"Get him up," someone said, someone very close to the Doctor.
Well, close as in 'physically,' the Doctor corrected. Certainly not emotionally, because I don't know anyone, and those I do know aren't anywhere nearby. Although given my ability to send the TARDIS anywhere I like, those I know are as close as the door to the TARDIS. No?
Strong but gentle hands lifted the Doctor off the grass and eased him into a sitting position. Paramedics began tending to him and he grinned ever so faintly. They were going to have fits when they took his vitals.
"Sir, are you all right?" A man was kneeling in front of the Doctor, a mustachioed man with wire-rimmed glasses whose face, while caring, was etched with deep lines not of age, but of worry. The lines conspired to make his face a map that one could use to trace the very hard paths the man had trod.
"Think so," the Doctor said. "He's…the man you want…he's still inside, I think."
The man with glasses stood quickly and barked orders at the police, instructing them to set up cordons, to contain the area, and to watch for anyone leaving the building or loitering nearby.
"I'm Commissioner James Gordon, Gotham PD," the man said, kneeling again. "Who are you?"
"I'm the Doctor," the Doctor answered groggily, but he shook his head and appeared to perk right up. "Doctor John Smith, to be perfectly accurate. Look, you…would you gentlemen mind? I'm fine, thank you. Never better. Except for one day about twelve years ago, when I was doing spectacularly well. Never better except for that day."
"What are you talking about? Are you sure you're all right?" Gordon asked, frowning.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I get distracted sometimes. What I meant to say was that the man you want is still in there. I happened to walk in when…when there were still some people left alive." The last sentence stuck in the Doctor's throat. He had been so close.
"Did you see him? What did he look like?"
The Doctor relayed what he could remember, and when he was finished, Gordon was visibly angered.
"What's wrong?" the Doctor asked. "Do you know him?"
"I know him, all right. God damn him!"
The Doctor was taken aback. "He's been at this a while, has he?"
Gordon nodded, his lips tight. "Too damn long. He got out of Arkham a few weeks back and started this again…"
"Um, what's 'Arkham' and what does it do?"
"It's an asylum," Gordon explained tersely. "Where we keep the worst of the worst while we try to figure out how to cure them. Or if they can be cured."
"So he escaped, and I'm going to assume under less than peaceful conditions?"
Gordon nodded. "And none of us knew where he'd gotten to until he started this rash of killings. He's been leaving us hints, taunting us for some crazy reason. Inside each of his kill zones he's left a DVD or videotape with a message."
"Who is he, anyway?"
"We don't know his real name. He calls himself the Joker, wears face paint like some insane circus clown. His preferred MO is knives when he goes hands-on, otherwise he sets up very elaborate, very covert plans to get what he wants." Gordon scowled at the darkened YMCA. "And as you can tell, they work pretty damn well. And why am I telling you all this?"
The Doctor put on a smile that he hoped was a good mix between sympathetic and disarming, which was how he felt. "I'm Doctor Smith. I'm with a group called UNIT, based out of London." He withdrew his psychic paper and showed it to Commissioner Gordon. "I was told I should come help out."
"UNIT? Never heard of them. And what brings you from London, anyway?"
"I'm not sure what their stake in this is, but I was told to help out." He put the paper away before Gordon began to frown at it too closely; it seemed that the policeman was about to see through the paper's illusion.
While his hands were in his voluminous pockets, he grabbed his sonic screwdriver and, working by feel, aimed it at the TARDIS. A few minutes later, he had instructed the TARDIS' computers to send a facsimile to the Gotham Police Department's offices that conveniently corroborated the Doctor's story. Official UNIT letterhead and everything. Preparedness. What would I do without it? On several separate occasions, the Doctor had encountered people who were naturally, mystically, scientifically, or even simply trained to be resistant to the psychic paper's power, so it had eventually occurred to the Doctor to have backup plans in place.
"Commissioner!" A voice, muffled by a hazmat suit, crackled over the radios of the assembled police.
"Gordon here. Go ahead."
"Sir, we have his message. A disc this time. We're running it through decon right now and you'll have it in a few minutes."
Gordon stiffened, then tersely acknowledged the message. "God, I don't want to see this right now."
"There's a lot nobody wants to see tonight," the Doctor agreed. "But with luck, we'll see the end of it soon enough."
Tense moments passed until the DVD arrived from the decontamination team. Gordon took a portable player from his car and inserted the disc. The Doctor could tell from the tiny tics of the human's face just how nervous and agitated he was, but for the most part, Gordon gave no outward signs of distress. Doesn't want to alarm or demoralize his men, the Doctor thought. Good leader. Good card player, too, I'd bet.
The DVD player's screen resolved itself into a shaky, blurry image as the camera operator fiddled with the recorder's settings before turning it to face himself. The face on the screen was undoubtedly the same man the Doctor had seen inside the YMCA, for all that he had never seen the Joker in full light, but the ragged hair and unmistakable voice introduced the Doctor to the face of madness.
"Okay, Commissioner, here's the deal," the Joker said without preamble. "See, I know you have an important job to do, so I'm going to keep this simple so I don't keep you from it. All I need you to do is get a message to the bat, and then you can go about your business. Go ahead and turn this off now. It's okay. I'll wait."
"Who's the bat?" the Doctor asked.
Gordon shushed him and continued to glare at the screen.
The Joker continued. "All right, Bats. Now that I've gotten your attention, listen closely. I don't like to repeat myself. But that's okay if you just use the rewind button. I won't mind that so much. I know what makes you tick. Specifically, I know your one inviolable rule. You won't kill. You know, for the longest time I thought that took all the fun out of our relationship. I thought you didn't love me enough to dance my dance, but I figured a way to change that.
"A few hours from the time you get this…well, maybe about forty-five minutes, anyway…something bad is going to happen. Really bad. Stephen King wouldn't write about this kind of bad, but it's the kind of bad that reporters live for. Funny how that works, isn't it? Anyway, on separate sides of town, two more mass whackings will occur at exactly the same time. I won't tell you when or where. That kills the fun. What, did you think I'd drop a bunch of rhyming clues that give it all away like that idiot in the punctuated long johns? Give me some credit, Batman.
"What I will tell you, however, is that at that time, I will be waiting atop the Titan Finances office building on Tower and Wright in beautiful downtown Gotham City. Quite a view, and you'll be able to see both of these heartbreaking tragedies unfolding from there…if you don't break your rule."
The Joker set the camera down, presumably on a table, and stepped back to open his shirt. He licked his lips—which he had been doing quite a bit—and smiled. "See this? This a very complicated, very expensive, and very flashy device full of not only blinking lights but transmitters and sensors. It's like a pocket EKG that monitors my vitals. See how it's blinking? I thought about springing for the speaker so it would go 'beep beep beep' like on 'E.R.' or something, but I was on a budget.
" Anyway, it's keeping track of my heartbeat and at the same time transmitting a signal to the two devices that will trigger those newsworthy events. Now, here's the beauty. Remember that the devices are listening to the signal from my little PDA, my portable death assistant. The signal is like a dead man's switch, but in reverse. Literally a dead man's switch! If, at the appointed time, I'm still alive, Tweedle Boom and Tweedle Blam go up in smoke and take about, oh, lots and lots of people with them. If my heartbeat stops, the PDA shuts down and stops sending. Simple, isn't it, even with all these pretty lights? I love Radio Shack."
Again the Joker licked his lips. He was getting twitchier as he went on, either in excitement or nervousness. The Doctor couldn't say, but either way, his hearts were racing enough for both himself and the Joker.
"Do you get it, Batman? Kill me and the signal stops. Just beat me up, and POW! I live and innocents die. And here's the best part: if you tamper with my PDA with one of your batarangs or if it picks up some kind of interference, say from a jamming signal, it's going to send the detonation command on a separate frequency—or maybe a lot of different frequencies! You'll never know!—and we get the 'earth-shattering kaboom' anyway.
"And did I say 'innocents'? That was so cliché of me. We all know there are no such things as innocent bystanders, innocent children, or innocent this or that. There are just people who deserve it a little less than the guy they were standing beside."
The Joker broke into that cackling laugh of his, the same one that had chilled the Doctor when they had met just moments ago. It was as if he and he alone were privy to the most hilarious punch line in the world. Perhaps in his world, he was.
"I've got you now, Batman, fair and square, and if you want to get me, you'd best get flapping. Oh, and P.S. Pursuant to Evil Villain Rule #3, paragraph two, subsection one, part (a), no cops allowed. Or I trip the switch manually and we'll try again later." The laughter was cut off as the screen faded to black, but there was an audio track still playing. The Joker had edited his DVD to include the libretto to "Die Fledermaus."
"Oh, funny," Gordon grumbled, switching the player off.
"Charming individual," the Doctor said, frowning at the blank screen. "Who is this 'bat man' he's talking about?"
Gordon chewed his lip. "He's sort of a freelance detective," he finally said. "He beat the Joker a couple of times already."
"Think of giving him a call?"
Gordon shot the Doctor a sharp look. "What, you think I wouldn't have done that already? I don't know where he is. I haven't been able to raise him for a week now." He gestured at the gathered clouds and it was only then that the Doctor saw a searchlight lighting up the bottom of the clouds, neatly silhouetting a stylized symbol of a bat.
"Clever," the Doctor mumbled. "I'll have to try to install one of those in K-9. TARDIS-shaped."
Whether or not Gordon had heard this last, the commissioner had removed his glasses and was pinching the bridge of his nose. "So now we have less than an hour to get to Titan Finances without him seeing us or knowing we're on our way. Odds are he has people in place to watch out for us or he's at least got cameras on the streets…God, I don't think we can do this."
The Doctor frowned. "He does seem to hold all the cards."
Gordon glared pure venom at the Doctor. "That's very funny. Unless you've got something useful to add, get out of our way. Special orders or not, UNIT or not, I don't have time for anything other than answers and action. And both of them pretty damn quick."
It took the Doctor a second to figure out what he'd said, then it hit him in a rush of shame. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that; I wasn't thinking. But you're right. I'd best get out of the way now."
The Doctor slipped away from Gordon as the commissioner began shouting orders at his men. There was nothing left he could do, but by God and his oath of office, he was going to try. The Doctor had to hand him that much: he had guts.
But the Doctor had his TARDIS and 900 years of problem-solving. Maybe it would be enough this time out.
Making sure nobody saw him, the Doctor slipped inside the TARDIS and began calling up maps of Gotham City. Tower and Wright Streets intersected at a point about eight miles from the Doctor's current location. How this lunatic, this "Joker," would travel cross-town a full eight miles in under an hour baffled even the Doctor. Certainly the traffic would hinder the police should they try to drive over there. Cold comfort, that. The police won't be around to force the Joker to trip his devices, but on the other hand, they won't be there to help if they're needed. Once again, it was up to him.
The Doctor pursed his lips, staring at the TARDIS' consoles. Something here was out of order, a dial not reading right or a control a hair out of place. Something.
Idly, he flipped a single switch and the TARDIS' engines engaged, taking the Doctor out of time and space. As if that single switch had unleashed a stampede of thoughts, he slowly began manipulating more and more controls quicker and quicker. He squinted at readouts and monitors, twirled dials and threw levers, acting for all the world like a symphony conductor with an unforgiving sugar high.
Finally, he set the controls to deliver him to the appointed location. Hoping against hope that he'd been able to do enough, he opened the door and stepped onto the roof of the Titan Finances building.
The night air was cooler and cleaner at the top of the building, the Doctor noted gratefully. The fumes and din of the streets below were dissipated and subdued by the gentle breeze and great height. But he was not here for sightseeing, although he could have done a fair deal of that had he wanted to.
"All right, clown, where did you get to?" the Doctor said through clenched teeth. The Joker had to be somewhere out in the open for this bat man to find him. He wanted to be found. He wouldn't hide. So where is he?
"You have the neatest toy!" came that maddened and maddening laugh from behind the Doctor. "Did you get that in Japan? They make all the good stuff over there."
Slowly, the Doctor turned to face the Joker. They were less than ten feet apart. "Who are you?"
"Are we going over that again?" the clown-faced killer pouted. "I'm the Joker."
"And I'm going to stop you."
"I thought you were the Doctor," the Joker asked, feigning puzzlement. "But if you want me to call you 'Going to Stop You,' okay. A bit cumbersome, but okay. Now, you know I didn't invite you. I'm here to throw the greatest pitch of my career and I need a Batman, not a water boy!"
"What?"
The Joker favored the Doctor with a condescending look. "I'm sorry. Was that not cricket of me?"
Now the Doctor scowled. "You're no fool, Joker. You're very smart, I have to give you that. Almost a genius, and I should know because you're talking to one. But you're sick. You're very, very sick and you need help." The Doctor's voice was gentle, coaxing, and he slowly offered his hand.
The Joker snorted through pursed lips. "If 'sick' is the issue, take a look out there," he said, motioning at the city around them. "I'm a symptom, Doctor, not the disease. I just festered out there for a while before the world made me flare up. And who the hell are you, anyway? Nobody asked you."
"You did."
"I did not."
"Maybe not in as many words, but what you did demanded my attention," the Doctor said, slowly walking toward the Joker. "I know you don't really want to kill all those people, do you?"
The Joker was paralyzed by his own laugh. It was a long moment before he had the breath to reply. "Doctor, I was going to try to come up with something witty, but God, that just can't be topped. You're not the bat, but I love you anyway!"
"Glad to hear you're amused," the Doctor said, slowly, silently edging forward.
"You might want to stop moving now," the Joker offered, opening his purple coat and exposing the transmitter. "I can always set this off manually."
The Doctor froze, never taking his eyes from the Joker's. The eyes were the windows to the soul, as the Doctor knew, but he did not like what he saw in the Joker's eyes. It was as if a regeneration had left him tinged with madness, but instead of fading, it had taken root and grown. His own eyes must have seemed that way to Peri, long ago.
"Why are you doing this?" the Doctor asked. Anything to keep the Joker occupied.
"Multiple choice time," the Joker replied. "One, because I can. Two, because I want to. Three, because it's all part of my plan to beat the bat. And you're interfering."
The Doctor shrugged. "It's what I do. Kind of a hobby at first, then it became something of a habit."
The Joker drew a knife from his pocket and began playing with it idly. "You know, the clock's ticking. You know about the deadline? And I do emphasize 'dead'."
"I know," the Doctor answered softly. "Commissioner Gordon played the disc for me. It's why I'm here."
That made the Joker frown. "He sent you, not Batman? What are you, second string? Ferretman? You've got that skinny mustelid vibe going on."
The Doctor began to inch his hand closer to his pocket, but the Joker frowned.
"I am not a happy clown, sir. Keep your hands visible."
"But you pulled a knife," the Doctor pointed out.
"My game, my rules," a shrug, a nod, a lick of his lips. "My knife."
"You didn't strike me as a great one for rules."
The Joker shrugged. "Keeping in mind the approaching death line…oops. 'Dead' line, I meant. There are no rules, really, except the ones I make up on the spur of the moment. And I can change those at will. Except that one I made up about the explosion that will occur in about twelve minutes unless Batman kills me. I happen to like that one."
"He's not coming," the Doctor said. "Commissioner Gordon can't reach him."
The Joker seemed to deflate, gaping in shock and disappointment at the Doctor. "What? All this effort and the guest of honor can't be bothered to attend? Am I going to have to go through all this again?"
"No, no, you won't," the Doctor said, holding out both hands as if to steady the Joker. "You don't have to do any of it, not even this."
The Joker began sidling away from the Doctor. "It's not a question of 'have to,' Doctor. It's 'want to' that makes me tick. Like your clock, remember? A bit less than eleven minutes, Doctor, and your patients die."
Disregarding the knife, the Doctor began to match the Joker's moves, keeping him in sight and maintaining the same distance. The Time Lord's brain was racing. He had to subdue the Joker, to see him brought to justice, and do so without succumbing to that knife in his hand.
"What, you want this?" the Joker asked, waving the knife in the Doctor's face. "Take it. Use it. It's the only way you'll save all those people, Doctor. Doing a little surgery."
"No. I'm not going to kill you."
"Then you'll be complicit in the deaths of those you could have saved," the Joker taunted, withdrawing and backing toward an open door. "You have all the knowledge and tools you need to save their lives if you just take that one step over your imaginary line."
The Doctor kept up his slow and steady pursuit. "What drives you, Joker? Why do you do this?"
"I am perhaps the world's first sociopathic savant," the Joker said proudly. "People keep putting down these rules, these laws to try to regulate the natural order, but what happens? People keep breaking the laws! That should have been the world's first clue: you can't regulate human nature! Chaos is the order we follow! Not that 'chaos theory' stuff. True, unalloyed chaos! You do what you want, when you want, to anyone you want! That's the law of lawlessness, Doctor!"
The Joker was now in the shadows; the interior of the building, at least on this level, was lit entirely by emergency light. The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver.
"I warned you about that! Jam my signal and those people are as good as dead!"
"That's not what I'm using it for," the Doctor said, setting it to scan and gently sweeping it back and forth. There was no trace of that toxin, nor was there any sign of backup. The Joker honestly did want this bat-man character to confront him and focus solely on defeating the Joker.
"If that thing tells time, you better check it," the Joker warned. "Ticky ticky."
The Doctor paused. I'm going about this all wrong. He wants me to chase him and kill him. Does he want it more than those other deaths? Does he want me or the bat-man to kill him more? The Doctor had one way to find out. He stopped advancing into the shadows. "I don't think I want to play your game."
"I don't think it's up to you," the Joker's voice came, but this time the Doctor thought he could detect a change in the triumphant madness. Wariness, was it? Petulance? The Doctor was out of practice in reading madmen's voices. For a fleeting second, he actually missed the Master and Davros.
"Well, I think it is," the Doctor said, stepping back out onto the rooftop. "Your bat friend isn't coming. I'm all you've got. You want me to kill you? Come here. Make me."
"You have maybe six and a half minutes, Doctor," the Joker warned. "You better come find me."
"Oh, no," the Doctor said. "You set the rules. The rules say I have to kill you to save those lives. But guess what? I'm breaking that rule! It's chaos, remember? You can't regulate human behavior! You can't make rules that govern how people behave, and that includes me! And your bat-man! That's why he's not here even after all your taunting, all your killing and butchery! You're a victim of your own world, Joker, your own lawlessness."
"Do you really think you have enough time to argue with me?" the Joker hissed, sliding out of the darkness, his knife trembling in his purple-gloved hand.
"Do you? The clock ticks for both of us. Now what do you want? You want me to dance to your tune? Come get me. Will you be satisfied causing more random deaths? No, you won't. I know your kind too well for that."
"No, no you don't," the Joker said, licking his lips and cocking his head at the Doctor. "No two snowflakes are alike, and there's no other flake in all the universe like me."
"Yes, there is," the Doctor answered, his hearts racing. "You keep killing and killing but it never satisfies that urge, does it? You kill like a child eats popcorn, just going on and on and on, never getting enough, always wanting that next bite."
The Joker laughed, an abrupt, full-throated onslaught of dementia. "No, no, no, NO! You are so incredibly wrong! It doesn't matter to me how many die! The question is how much will you tolerate before you snap? I can always kill more. Big old city, billions of people in the world. I can always find more, but how many are you willing to sacrifice, playing like you're some kind of moral compass?"
The Doctor cautiously circled the Joker, keeping his attention split between the madman and the knife.
"You are exactly the kind of person I've been fighting my whole life," the Joker said. "You're a slave to your own rules, these arbitrary lines drawn in your consciousness that keep you from taking chances, from doing what needs to be done. You know, it's strange, isn't it? The way our laws work?"
"They work for the best," the Doctor said. "For the most part."
"Then why is it that our legal system allows for the concept of justifiable homicide, where you can kill if the rule makers agree it's 'necessary,' but there's no provision for justifiable ass-kickings?" The Joker paused, eyebrows raised in expectation of the Doctor's answer. "Hm? Tell me that. You know there are people that need it."
The Doctor's jaw clenched. "Oh, yes. There are quite a few of those out there."
"And in two minutes, you'll lose your reason and your 'justification' for doing either of those things to me," the Joker said. "Maybe I just haven't prodded you enough."
The Joker lunged with his knife and the Doctor sidestepped, his hands coming up to block. "Joker, you don't want this."
"No, I want something more, but I'm going to keep on you until I get it, and if I don't get it, lots of other people will. You better make your choice, Doctor. Them or me! Do you kill one or let hundreds die? Which gives you the moral high ground?"
The lights on the Joker's device began flashing faster; the Doctor assumed it to be some kind of countdown. "Compared to you, Joker, the Cybermen have the moral high ground! What makes you think you have the right to choose who lives or dies? What gives you the right to decide?"
"I have the right because I have the ability!" the Joker screamed, laughing all the while. "I can do it, that's why! Maybe your rules say I don't, but read the fine print. They're your rules! Not applicable vis a vis moi! Bet you didn't know I spoke Irish!"
The Doctor spared a glance at the Joker's apparatus and broke off. He stopped fighting and simply stared at the maniacal clown face as the lights burned steadily, no longer flashing.
The Joker paused and pursed his lips. "There's no 'kaboom.' I specifically designed this for a 'kaboom,' now what the hell?" He looked about wildly.
"My rules most certainly do apply to you," the Doctor said, breathing heavily from both exertion and fear. "Now hand over the knife."
At first so faint, the sounds of sirens and approaching helicopters began growing steadily louder. "Plan B it is, then," the Joker said, dropping the knife and sighing.
"What?"
"B. As in 'killer' B." The Joker pointed to a small digital timer on the device. "Now. Do you believe in the sanctity of life so much that you'd save mine, even after I did all this? You have ninety seconds to decide!"
"What?"
The Joker shrugged and leaned forward, conspiratorial to the last. "You see, I know the Bat would have let me die, so this wasn't really for him. This was to entertain the bomb squad after they pulled it off me. Last laughs and all that, you see. But now I see that you're one of those goody two-shoes—and I love the color heliotrope, by the way, nice choice!—who says life is oh-so-precious no matter whose it is. So here I am! Save me if you can! Or if you will, because you know I'll be at it again."
The Doctor aimed his sonic screwdriver at the device and held it for a couple of seconds as the Joker glared first at his device then at the blue tip of the screwdriver. "That's your tricorder thing, isn't it?"
"Not quite, but sort of," the Doctor said, pocketing it. "You can get rid of your toy now. It's quite beyond repair. And in answer to your question, I do believe that life is sacred, even yours. And nobody is beyond redemption. Ever."
"You come right out of a Hallmark made-for-Lifetime-TV movie, you know that?" The Joker charged the Doctor, hands grasping for the Time Lord's slender neck.
This time, the Doctor met the Joker's charge head-on, but latching his hands around the Joker's head and clenching his eyes shut as he concentrated. Seconds later, he released the green-haired villain, whose wide, staring eyes focused on nothing as the Joker fell to his knees.
"You're confused, twisted," the Doctor said sadly, softly. "I just gave you a little dose of clarity. Maybe it will be sufficient light to guide you out of that madness."
Booted feet were stampeding along the darkened hall toward the roof, and the Doctor chose that moment to make his expeditious retreat. By the time Gotham's SWAT members had burst onto the rooftops, all they saw was a catatonic Joker staring into infinity as the faint grinding wheezes of the TARDIS faded into the sounds of the night city.
None but the Joker could hear the maddened cries of tortured, gleeful laughter railing against the darkness.
Later, much later, Commissioner Gordon stood alone atop the Titan Finances building, thinking aimless thoughts. A shadow partially detached itself from the night and spoke.
"Your men did their jobs perfectly."
"Who was he, friend? What did he want?"
"I don't know who he was, Jim," the shadow said. "He wasn't from Earth, that much is for certain."
Gordon turned to face the shadow. Only the whites of the bat's eyes were visible, and those not so much around the dark pupils of his penetrating gaze. "How do you know?"
"I managed to get inside his craft, back at the YMCA," the shadow answered. "I looked at some of the tech inside it. Eons beyond anything we have. It looks like a 1960s English police box, but on the inside…it's beyond words. It travels instantly through space—I was in it when he arrived here—and the inside is somehow larger than the outside."
"What do you mean?"
"Ask Professor Hawking," the bat said with the sense of a wry smile. "It's beyond me, but it has the ability to travel through time, as well."
Gordon snorted. "How do you know that?"
"I watched him. When he left the Y, he did something before he came out here. On my way out, I saw that he'd dipped slightly into the past and sent some faxes."
"What? How?"
The bat shook his head. "It's how your men knew to defuse the bombs set on the Brighton 33 express line and under the Kronos Towers apartments. He used his ship's computers to send Gotham PD the locations of the bombs."
"But how could he have known?"
"He read tomorrow's papers," the bat said, stepping back slightly into the shadows.
Gordon looked out over the city, his city, saved from death and madness once more by an anonymous, faceless guardian. "But…will he be back? Do you think we'll see him again?"
There was no answer. Gordon spun back to face the bat only to find that the night had reclaimed its favored son. He was alone again, with only time and the night to keep vigil with him.