2. Puzzling It Out
Bruce woke up to find a terse voice mail from Harvey Dent on his phone.
'Bruce,' Harvey's strong voice said coldly, 'I wanted to tell you this in person, but I don't think that would be a good idea. I don't think seeing each other at all again would be a good idea. I was drunk and you rich kids never think or care about consequences, that's what happened and that's all that happened. I don't think you'd count a guy like me as a loss, but if you do, well, cry me a platinum river. The fact is, I'm married, and happily married despite everything. I can't afford to go around Gotham having random affairs with gay billionaire playboys. Like I said before, we're from different circles, so I shouldn't be too difficult to avoid. Have a nice life, Bruce. But of course, a guy like you can't have anything but a nice life, right?'
"Oh, Harvey," Bruce murmured. "Maybe you really are a two-faced politician after all."
Bruce did not call the man back. He could not disagree with the fact that seeing each other again was a bad idea, and he did not want to push Harvey. He had seen the deep guilt in the man's eyes the past night, and hated being the cause of it. He was grateful that Harvey had come to the same decision. He thought that they might still be friends eventually, but right now it would be better to let the emotions involved cool.
Bruce had barely finished eating breakfast when his phone rang. He almost expected to see Harvey's number, but it was the man who took care of Wayne Enterprises for him, Lucius Fox. Apparently, the company's Research and Development department's servers had been hacked. Bruce would have to go in and oversee the new security protocols, reset access codes, and otherwise secure the place.
"It was Edward Nashton," Bruce said to Alfred when he hung up. "Has to be. The R&D department has been underused for years, ever since Wayne Enterprises stopped developing for the government. S.T.A.R. Labs and HalloTech have also been invaded. Nashton must have seen that Batman's armor is military grade, cutting edge technology. He's trying to see if it might be based on a prototype from any of these companies."
"Will he find one such prototype design in Wayne Enterprises' files, sir?"
"No," Bruce said. "I deleted the data regarding every prototype that Batman uses. Still, I don't like him poking around my company files. I'd send him a back-door virus if it wouldn't raise his suspicions."
"Is there nothing you can do, sir?"
"Not at Wayne Enterprises," Bruce said seriously. He smiled a little as a thought occurred to him. "Of course, if Nashton is violating HalloTech, I might be able to send him a little surprise through them. I think I'll be paying Bobby Halloran a visit sooner than I expected to."
Alfred gave Bruce a look. Bruce smiled.
"And maybe I'll ask him to dinner," he said. "You were right, Harvey and I never had a chance. Even if we did … Well, it's over now."
Bruce played the voice mail message on his phone's speaker.
"Oh dear," Alfred said. "The man might have found a more polite way to end things. I'm sorry, Master Bruce."
"Harvey isn't the politest man, especially when it comes to 'rich kids'," Bruce said. "It's just as well. I couldn't have done it again. I felt terrible after last night. It would have been hell to have to be the one to end it, though. He already mistrusted me. At least this way he can't say that I used him and threw him to the curb."
"I hope not, sir."
"You think he might blame me anyway?"
"Mr. Dent has not proven himself to be the most rational of people," Alfred pointed out. "Certainly not when it comes to those with generous means, as you yourself just said."
"I'll have to talk to him and make sure he understands," Bruce said. "But not now. I have to take care of this problem with Edward Nigma Nashton, and then look into this Holiday killer. Romance is the farthest thing from my mind right now."
"If you say so, sir."
"It really is."
"Of course, sir."
Three companies had always been at the forefront of Gotham City: S.T.A.R. Labs, Wayne Enterprises, and HalloTech. Wayne Enterprises was the oldest of the three corporations, but they had lost some of the influence the other two maintained when Bruce Wayne made the controversial move to veer away from weapons development and let their contracts with the military and government go. Given that S.T.A.R. Labs mainly pursued high-end science and technology, HalloTech had the bulk of the government contracts in the country, providing many of the military's standard weapons and equipment. Run by the formidable General Walter Halloran of the US Marines Corp, HalloTech (formerly Halloran Weapons and Technology) was one of the most important and powerful businesses in the country, trailing behind only Metropolis-based LexCorp.
Robert 'Bobby' Halloran, the General's son, felt the burden of his legacy like a tank on his back. He had finally bitten the bullet and gone to take his place at his father's company, when all hell broke loose. The security systems were hacked, he was told, and they were bleeding data. If word of the attack got out, he was told, their shares would drop steeply. Knowing little of stocks, computer security, or anything else, Bobby gave what orders he could, and then retreated to his office to drown his problems. He knew everyone in the building was glaring at him, wishing that he would call his ailing father. He wanted to do precisely that, but felt that it would be some vague sign of failure.
There was a knock on the office door. Bobby cringed, shouted, "WHAT!"
The door opened, and his secretary meekly stuck her head in. "Um. Bruce Wayne is here to see you, sir?"
"Let him in!" Bobby exclaimed, jumping to his feet. He anxiously swept the alcohol bottle off of his desk and hid it in the recycling bin. He shut the drawer where the cocaine he had been considering was stashed in a plastic bag. "For God's sake, let him in!"
Bruce entered the office. He was dismayed by the smell of scotch and Bobby's appearance. The young man was still as boyishly handsome as ever, but his dark brown hair was on end, and his large brown eyes were ringed with dark circles. His tie was loosened to the point of being superfluous, his shirt was wrinkled, jacket slung over the back of his chair, and there was a telltale smudge of white powder on his sleeve.
"Bobby, what the hell?" Bruce asked accusingly. "It's not even noon yet."
"What? Oh, no, this is from a doughnut," Bobby said, brushing his sleeve off. It happened to be true, though he didn't really care whether he was believed or not. "Jesus, Bruce, this is a nightmare! This is my first day here, and we've been hacked, we're losing all our encrypted files, our shares are going to plummet or something … "
"Calm down, calm down," Bruce said, holding him by the shoulders. "Breathe, all right? Wayne Enterprises was attacked, and so was S.T.A.R. Labs. Let's go down to the IT department and figure it out, all right?"
"You know anything about computers?"
"Some things," Bruce said. "Come on. Let's go."
"Thanks," Bobby said in relief. "I was going to call dad but you know him, what he'll think. Besides, he's resting, and he's in a bad mood because he's given up those damn cigars and alcohol and everything before starting chemo. My first day, Bruce. This is my first day."
Bruce eyed his friend. "Do you even want to be working here, Bobby?"
"No," Bobby said. He blew out a frustrated sigh, running his hands through his hair. "Yes. I don't know. I don't even know what I'm doing."
"You should take a business course," Bruce advised. "They have some good ones online. I took some when I was overseas."
"Did you?" Bobby asked, looking up at him. He pressed the elevator button. "You've done a lot, haven't you, Bruce?"
It was a grievous understatement, but Bruce only said again, "Some things."
The elevator chimed, and they got in. Bruce felt sorry for his friend, and decided to help him save face. He took out a pocket comb and ran it through Bobby's short dark hair several times. He untied and then re-tied his tie, and helped him back into his jacket. He was beginning to rethink asking the man to dinner. It was not his fault, but Robert Halloran was simply one of those people that could not break the habit of being taken care of, and being Batman left Bruce no time to babysit.
"Thank you," Bobby said. "I'm a mess. I thought that I would come in and announce my position at the company, and that would be it. The moment I got in, the only thing anyone wanted to know was where my father was. Once they realized that he wasn't coming in, they threw all of this crisis at me. I wasn't ready for this."
Bruce sincerely doubted that, even at the age of twenty-seven, Bobby had ever been ready for any kind of responsibility in his life. Bruce tried to feel sympathy, but he found these problems to be quaintly mundane, compared to juggling two lives and myriad complicated romances.
"Why do you look so calm?" Bobby sighed. "You've always been so zen about everything. Except for … you know … that time. Your parents. But I never even saw you cry. I was a wreck when my mom left my dad. I don't think I stopped crying for more than an hour a day."
Bruce raised his eyebrows. He was ashamed to realize that he had forgotten all about the Halloran divorce. Thinking back, he found that he could remember the time very clearly: Bobby had been eight years old, his face round with baby fat still, his eyes two huge saucers that were rarely dry. Bruce had been ten, and Thomas Elliot was eleven. Tommy had ignored Bobby altogether, and in retrospect Bruce thought that he might have been a touch scornful as well. Bruce had been the one to comfort their younger friend, sitting with him for long miserable hours. He had not offered Bobby the patronizing words of comfort the adults did, he only put an arm around his friend's shoulders and sat beside him. Little had Bruce known that a scant couple of years later, his own parents would be gone.
"Have you seen your mother since then?" Bruce asked. He dimly remembered a tall, elegant woman with long black hair that fell to her waist and cool green eyes. He thought her voice had carried a cultured, exotically musical accent.
"No," Bobby said quietly. "I think she went back to her home country, Argentina. I don't know. It's not like she ever looked back, not for me or for dad."
So that had been the accent, Bruce thought, Argentinian. He wondered about her, whether she ever longed for her son. He would have given anything to have another moment with his own mother. He wondered why Bobby had never gone looking for her. Or the General, for that matter.
"I cried when I was alone," Bruce offered. "When my parents died. I spent so much time crying alone that by the time you or Tommy came to see me, I had no more tears to shed. As for now, I've spent years preparing myself to return to Gotham. I was terrified of my own home, my own city. If I didn't keep everything controlled—if I weren't 'zen' about everything—I would fall apart."
"I just envy that you can be that way," Bobby said. "Every time I think I have a handle on things, everything falls apart."
"Have you ever considered that you're the one blowing everything apart, Bobby?"
Bobby frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Just—" Bruce drew a breath. "Never mind."
"No, tell me."
"Forget it."
"You can't just call me a screw-up and say 'forget it'!"
Bruce stopped the elevator and faced his friend.
"I wasn't calling you a screw-up," he said. "But look at you. You've been, what? Drinking? Snorting cocaine? Instead of simply trying to face the situation or learning more about it, you're panicking. This won't be the first crisis that comes up, Bobby."
Bobby looked disheartened.
"I have trouble running Wayne Enterprises, and I don't want to run it, honestly," Bruce said. "I rely on Lucius Fox. My father was a surgeon, he hardly had any time for the company, he was always in the OR. Go to your father, ask him who to trust, who can be depended upon, and then go to these people and learn from them. Don't feel like you have to take everything upon yourself, because you don't. No one runs a major corporation like this single-handed."
"That's good advice," Bobby said. "God, I feel like an idiot."
"You're just overwhelmed," Bruce said. He started the elevator back up. "I felt the same way when I came back to Gotham. Lay off the alcohol and leave the damn cocaine. You'll be fine."
"I haven't had any coke today, Bruce." Bobby rubbed the side of his nose, as if he was regretful of the fact. "I'm trying to quit. Dad has cancer, and it's … it's terrifying. It has me scared, I guess."
"Good. You should be scared of garbage like that."
The elevator chimed and the doors opened. In the IT department, Bruce managed to discreetly plug the USB drive with the tracer virus into the control hub. The employees had gone on break, so it was fortunately empty. He chatted with Bobby for the five minutes the virus needed to upload, and then slipped the USB drive back into his pocket. When they came back, the techs informed Bobby that the virus had finally been thrown out of the system. They would never know that a back-door virus was on its way into Edward Nashton's systems courtesy of their servers.
"See? It's all settling down," Bruce told Bobby as they headed back to the elevators. "Nothing to worry about. We threw the hacker out of our systems this morning, too. It's just an unusually precocious hacker, probably some pasty-faced kid."
"Yeah," Bobby said with an anxious laugh. "This stuff probably happens all the time. I just don't know anything about computers, and everyone was freaking out at me. Thank God you came by, Bruce. You always know what to do."
"You'll learn," Bruce said. He hesitated, and then decided to take Alfred's advice after all. "Actually, I wanted to talk to you. I was wondering if you'd like to have dinner sometime."
"Oh yeah, sure, we should hang out."
Bruce stopped the elevator again and turned Bobby by the shoulders to face him.
"I meant, dinner," Bruce said pointedly. "With me?"
"You mean, like a date?" Bobby asked, dumbfounded. "Since when are you gay? I mean, I always had a crush on you, and you never said anything."
Bruce was abashed to realize that even his oldest friends still had no clue as to his sexuality. He released Bobby, leaning against the mirrored elevator wall. He laughed, had to.
"Now I feel like the idiot," Bruce said. "I've been gone so long, I never thought to mention it. I've been trying to avoid the press in general, so it hasn't come up. I'm gay, Bobby."
"You should have said so, back then," Bobby said. His hand was hovering near his mouth. "I spent so many days just … God, Bruce, I really wanted you."
"I didn't have anything figured out when we were kids," Bruce said. "I was confused about everything. I came into myself after I had already left Gotham, overseas."
Bobby was chewing his thumbnail, still not over the old habit. Bruce took his hand in his own and pulled it gently away.
"Don't do that," he said. "It's a filthy habit."
"I have a lot of filthy habits," Bobby said quietly, suddenly self-conscious. He had been seeing Bruce as a comfortable childhood friend, but now he looked up at him and saw the man Bruce had grown into. They were only two years apart, but Bruce's maturity made him seem almost parental.
Bruce lowered Bobby's hand from his face, held it in his own. His hands were soft, smooth, unmarked by scars or calluses. Bruce's palms were hard and roughened, the knuckles thick from being broken and re-broken many times over the years. His hands looked enormous compared to Bobby's.
"You really want to have dinner with me?" Bobby asked suspiciously. "What about Floyd Lawton? Now that I think about it, you two were pretty weird at that party. Did you two have a thing?"
"Didn't you have a 'thing' with Lawton?"
"It wasn't serious," Bobby pointed out. "He was a jerk. Hot, but a jerk. You two looked like you had something serious, though."
"We did once, six years ago," Bruce said. "But Floyd Lawton is gone. We won't be together again. He hurt me, Bobby."
"He did?"
"I'm not invulnerable, you know," Bruce said. He pulled Bobby closer, still holding his hand in both of his own. "So? Dinner? Unless you're seeing someone?"
"No, there's no one," Bobby said. He reached up shyly with his free hand and put his palm on the side of Bruce's face. "But let's go out before something serious like dinner. We can hang out."
"Hang out where?" Bruce asked warily.
"I'll surprise you," Bobby said with a grin.
Bruce did not like the sound of this, or the mischief in his friend's eyes. It might be easier to give him some time, however, and Bruce Wayne could use public exposure. He started the elevator again.
"All right," Bruce agreed. "But call me first."
"We'll meet up somewhere," Bobby said. "I'll text you the details."
Bruce was already envisioning a night misspent at a night club or party. He might not be as complicated as Harvey Dent or Floyd Lawton, but Bobby's lifestyle presented its own challenges. Bruce could not see how he could have a relationship with someone whose favorite usage of the night was to completely waste it.
The elevator chimed, and the doors opened.
"I'm going down to the ground floor," Bruce said. "I have to get going."
"Can't you stay?" Bobby asked anxiously. "What if some other crisis comes up?"
Bruce squeezed his shoulder as he pushed Bobby out of the elevator.
"Text me."
"Oh. O—"
The elevator doors shut.
"—kay," Bobby finished, chewing on his thumbnail.
"Harvey."
Harvey Dent sighed. He was up to his elbows in files, a marker in his mouth, but no matter how busy he was, he could not avoid this moment alone with Gordon. He tried to ignore his old friend, but Gordon turned him roughly by the shoulder, and took the marker from his mouth.
"Harvey, you can't just—"
"Oh yeah, thanks for lending me your ring," Harvey said, thrusting the borrowed wedding band into Gordon's hand. "I'm going to stop by a shop at lunch and pick one up. I already reserved one online."
Gordon put his ring back on.
"Harvey, you've got to talk to me."
"Nothin' to say." Harvey taped a picture onto the whiteboard with the Holiday murders mapped out. "Can we get back to this?"
"No. No, we can't. Not until you answer me one question," Jim said. "Where were you last night? Because until you tell me, I'm going to picture the worse: you were passed out drunk, got beat up by Falcone's thugs, developed a heroin habit—"
"Christ, Jim!" Harvey exclaimed. "No! Nothing like that. I … I was with Bruce Wayne, okay? Huh. Probably worse than all of the above, except maybe the heroin."
"With him?"
"Yeah, with him, in his fancy car with the drinks," Harvey said tautly. "With him, sleeping with him without sleeping, you know? We screwed. You wanted to know? There, you know. Can we get back to work please?"
Harvey snatched the marker back from Jim's hand and turned his back on him to face the whiteboard. Gordon did not know what to say. He rubbed his face with a hand.
"Damn it, Harvey."
"I know, I know," Harvey grumbled. "I don't know why I did it. Problems with Gilda. Maybe banging a billionaire was on my deepest, darkest bucket list. Who knows? It's over. It was never going to be anything more than a drunken mistake. Trust me, I'm embarrassed that it got to be that much."
"So, what?" Gordon asked. "You just throw your friendship with Bruce away? Is that why you did it? To ruin it? Or to ruin your marriage? Which one is it, Harvey? Both? Do you just want to throw everything away?"
"Gilda isn't going to find anything out," Harvey said, considering the board. "As for Bruce, who cares? I don't want to rub shoulders with him and his crowd. I was going through a rough time and I forgot who I was for a moment. It won't happen again."
"He was your friend," Gordon said. "Couldn't you have just kept it that way? Did you have to screw it up? Just because he's rich?"
"How do you know he didn't take advantage of me?"
"No one takes advantage of you, Harvey," Gordon said flatly. "You're four years older than Bruce, you come from a darker place. You're a politician, and a husband. Worldly as he is, Bruce is emotionally inexperienced. What did you do? Get in his car with him, get drunk with him? Did you throw yourself at him? Christ, I might have fallen for you."
Harvey blushed, trying to fight down memories of the previous night.
"It's done," Harvey said. "I'm not proud of it, okay? But it's done. It's over. Please, Jim, I feel bad enough. I don't want to talk about it anymore."
"Fine," Jim said. "Fine. I know how you feel. Things between Barbara and I were difficult once. I had an affair not long after getting promoted. I know how it is to snap under pressure and fall so easily for any comfort—for anyone."
"So then you must understand why I don't want to talk about it."
"All right, all right," Jim said. "You ever need to talk, though, just let me know."
"Yeah yeah yeah."
Gordon was distracted by a glimpse of red hair passing through the hall outside. He ran out of the room, leaving troubled Harvey to his troubled thoughts. He ran down the hall, and managed to catch Edward Nashton by the shoulder
"Edward!" he growled. "What the hell is going on?"
"N-nothing!" Edward exclaimed, distraught. "Nothing! It's a … a virus, a … an attack. I'm handling it! I'm handling it!"
Gordon held him in place.
"We never get attacked, we've never gotten so much as a crack in our firewalls. You're supposed to be the best. How did this happen? Is there someone out there better than you? Should we be worried?"
"No!" Edward exclaimed. "No one is better than me! No one is smarter than me! I'm shutting it down. It got a little farther than I thought, but it's—"
"How much farther, Ed?"
"It went through my personal machines and went into the GCPD servers," Edward said quietly. He was frowning deeply. "But its priority was my machines. It was very targeted. A message. Personal. I'll shut it down. The GCPD isn't compromised. Please, just let me get down there."
"All right," Gordon said. "Just don't get too obsessed with this. The last time you got all OCD, you almost brought the NSA down on the station, remember?"
"Yes."
"Are you taking your meds?"
"Yes."
"Okay."
Edward turned and rushed down the hall, practically running down the stairs. He knew exactly who had sent the virus, and why. Batman was punishing him for his quest to identify him. Edward grinned manically. This was turning out to be a very interesting match of wits, indeed.
It took until afternoon to finish flushing the virus out. Edward had lost a lot of data, but he kept everything backed up on his personal cloud server (untouched by the virus) and spent a good deal of his paychecks printing out hard copies of the most important data. Edward was once a digital snob, but working with the old cops at the GCPD had taught him the value of archaic filing: computers could fail and leave nothing but fragments of fried data, but hard copies took actual physical disaster to destroy.
Edward used the excuse of a late lunch break to get out of the GCPD. What Batman had never expected was that the virus he had sent to attack Edward was actually the first lead Edward had in his quest to uncovering Batman's identity.
The virus had been sent from HalloTech. The coding was seamlessly slipped into HalloTech's defense programs, tracing its way back to Edward's machines through the path Edward's virus had taken. It was so sophisticated that it intuitively bypassed Edward's best rerouting and dummy IPs. Edward had tried to find and replicate the coding, but it had self-destructed the moment he had attempted to break into it.
Edward had no hopes of finding any trace of Batman's revenge virus, but he suspected he could get some valuable information if he found out exactly where it had been sent from and how. He would have to infiltrate HalloTech's IT department, but he thought it would be worth the effort. It might even be a little fun.
Edward took himself to HalloTech. The building was wide, with the front edge staggered like the edge of a mountain stairs, black steel beams honeycombed with yellow-tinted privacy glass. Edward walked past the front of the company twice, looking up at the place. Then, he strolled into the public parking lot beneath the overhang of the wide first floor. He pretended to be checking his phone on his way to the main building while he watched the crew delivering office supplies at their truck.
Edward had planned this intrusion back at the GCPD after some light research. He knew that the men delivering supplies were John Tomaz and Mickey Cahill. He had sent John an urgent text from his wife saying that their youngest child had become violently ill and that he was needed at the hospital, and Mickey was sent a video file of his wife being very inappropriate with his best friend. While the men argued over where to go first (to the hospital or to Mickey's place so he could indiscriminately murder his best friend and cheating wife), Edward slipped one of the unloaded boxes around a car to hide it from view. He waited, and soon the truck was packed back up and on its way.
Edward took up the box of supplies and headed for HalloTech's service door. He removed his jacket, leaving himself in khaki slacks and a red polo shirt, the staple uniform of any delivery man. He held the box against his chest, so no one would notice the lack of a company logo on his shirt. He opened the door with the rolled-up jacket, then hung it on the handle inside. He had disabled the parking lot's cameras remotely, but he still did not want to leave fingerprints just lying around.
The delivery men had been coming and going. Edward had a cap on to hide his face from the inside cameras and had also put in contact lenses to replace his glasses. He was a rather plain man, and it was useful to have features that were easily forgotten. He strolled down the stairs with the supply box, down to the IT department's level. While there, he played the role of a wannabe-geek, which gave the staff a chance to show off their skills. As a fellow techie, Edward knew how rare a chance to impress was.
"Yeah, I heard about this morning's big attack," Edward was saying now. "That was crazy! How did you guys shut the attack down?"
They all shared a look.
"We—"
"About that—"
"Uh—"
"Well, we had a disagreement about that," one of the techs said over the others. "We had several protocols running and—"
"It could only have been my—"
"Yeah but I also—"
Edward inhaled through his nostrils. There was nothing worse than misguided arrogance! These morons were so far beneath him that it was almost physically painful to speak to them.
"Wow, sounds confusing," he said, playing dumb. "Didn't you guys see it go down, though? Weren't you monitoring it?"
The chattering ceased. The techs all shared sheepish glances.
"No," said the man who was given to taking charge of conversation. "The CEO's kid has been running things, and he's pretty hard to take. He came down here, so we used that as an excuse to take a break."
Edward considered this.
"The CEO's kid?"
"Robert Halloran," the man said. "Yeah, he's an incompetent idiot and an ass. He came down, we split—"
"And Bruce Wayne."
"Bruce Wayne?" Edward echoed, ears pricking up.
"Yeah, Mr. Halloran came down here with Bruce Wayne," said the woman that had spoken up. She was twirling a strand of hair with a wistful and lascivious look on her face. "I remember. He was so tall. Big guy, not fat, but … powerful, you know? The magazine pics don't really show that very well."
The men looked irritated.
"Yeah, Wayne and Halloran were down here," Mr. Take-Charge said. "But they didn't do anything. I mean, those two trust fund brats? Ha! Anyway, by the time we got back, someone's counterattack had shut the intrusion down."
Edward chatted with them a little more, and then made a fast exit. He took his jacket back up at the door, and strolled through the parking lot. He dumped the cap at the first trash can he found. He grabbed a meal at a food truck on the corner, and headed back to the GCPD. There was research to be done over lunch.
