Warning for really squeamish readers: this next bit gets a bit graphic. It's not really bad, trust me, but if you really can't handle even the slightest bit of discomfort, I suggest you just skim the first section of this chapter.


Chapter Four

The basement had a leak.

It came from the tiny window in the wall to her left, up high, and looking out to nothing but dirt. That was how she knew she was in the basement — all of the windows, including the leaky one, had underground views.

The windows were set on cement walls; no decorators had been anywhere near this place. The floor was cement too, but she couldn't feel it; her wrists were tied to a metal bar that hung from the ceiling. She must have looked like a female version of Jesus, her naked body in the shape of a cross. Her head was throbbing dully but she was thoroughly convinced that it was the least of her problems.

Daisy had been working at the hospital in Gotham for a couple of months. She was a pretty girl in an idyllic sort of way: long legs, slim waist, full, high breasts. Paired with her blonde hair and blue eyes, she was pretty much a life size Barbie. She had started noticing the way men looked at her when she was thirteen and had to start wearing a training bra. Their hungry gazes had made her start dressing the way she did, in baggy jeans and sweatshirts with her hair tied up off her face. Eventually she'd come into herself a little, but she still wore skirts with modest lengths and never put on a v-neck shirt. She learned in the hospital that her caution was probably well chosen — too many girls got raped these days for her to be taking chances.

She had always been intuitive; she usually knew what people were thinking and what actions they would take. But for some reason, she'd never seen this coming. She wasn't even sure who'd done it. She just remembered some strange things starting to happen. She'd lost her keys at work one day, which never happened, and after she'd looked for them for hours, she'd gone back to her coat in all hopelessness and had found them in her pocket where she'd left them. A few times in the past few weeks, she'd gotten back to her apartment to find papers on her desk shuffled, like someone was looking for something, and she was running out of food faster than she knew she was eating it. She had confided these happenings to her friend at the hospital, who'd told her to get her locks changed. Daisy had booked the locksmith to come over tonight. Well, when he came, he wasn't going to find anyone. When she'd gotten off from work and gone to her apartment earlier today, she'd been hit in the head with something hard (probably the clay vase her mother had bought her; she knew she shouldn't have kept it so close to the door) and had fallen to the floor with an almighty thud. Then her vision had blurred sickeningly, and she was out.

Then she woke up here, in the basement of a building with no windows (or at least not any that were of use) and a rolling table full of ominous looking instruments level with her swinging feet. Also on the table was her nurse's uniform, her keys, her driver's license, and her cat's collar. What the last bit meant, she wasn't sure, but she knew it wasn't good.

The woman hadn't come in until later.

She was tall and athletic-looking, and she'd tied her long black hair into a loose bun at the nape of her neck before proceeding to light a cigarette and stare at Daisy. She wore a full body apron. She'd only arrived a few minutes ago, coming in from the half of the room that Daisy couldn't see, and she'd laughed at Daisy's muffled cries for help (there was a grotesque wad of fabric in her mouth that prevented any real communication). The woman stood in the corner, smoking and watching, until her cell phone rang. She picked it up.

"I've got her," she said. "I'll finish in an hour."

Then she hung up. She walked over to the table with the instruments and picked up Daisy's ID, chuckling briefly.

"Daisy Ryerson," she said. Her voice sounded like it had once been high pitched and girly but had suddenly turned flat and cynical. The result was something out of a nightmare. "How white bread are you?"

She picked through the instruments and selected a pair of tongs, using them to remove the fabric from Daisy's mouth. She tossed it aside, somewhere beyond Daisy's limited perspective. Free of her impediment, Daisy immediately began to scream. The woman seemed unperturbed, picked up a metal pipe from the pile, and struck Daisy across the face with it. She began to spin like a marionette. Her cheek had been ripped open by the force of the metal; she tasted the blood pouring steadily into her mouth and started to cry.

"Not that anyone will hear you," said the woman conversationally, "but you'll give me a headache, and I have a lot of work to get done before we're finished here."

"What do you want?" Daisy asked. It hurt to talk; the wound on her face stretched and set pain flashing up through her head.

"Not much. I've got a nice car. A big house. In general, I'm pretty easy to please." She shrugged. "What I really want is to play a game with you. It's called truth, and it's completely idiot-proof, I promise. Here's how it works: I ask you a question, and you tell me the truth. If you don't, I hurt you. Do you understand?"

"Will you let me go if I answer your questions?"

The woman struck her across the other cheek, her face contorting with an unchecked fury.

"Daisy," she said calmly, when Daisy had finished spinning, "I asked you a question and you didn't answer. That's against the rules."

"Okay," Daisy cried. "I understand."

"Good then. We can start. Do yourself a favour and make this as painless as possible. Okay?"

"Yes."

"Peachy. What's your middle name?"

"Anne."

"And where do you work, Daisy Anne Ryerson?"

Oh shit.

Daisy had heard about people like this, abducting doctors for revenge because they hadn't been properly treated. If she said she worked at a hospital, she'd be a goner for sure.

The woman picked up a knife off the table. "I'm waiting, Daisy," she said.

"I work at a pregnancy clinic downtown," said Daisy breathlessly. "I talk to teenagers about — no!"

The woman didn't listen. She reached down and took hold of Daisy's foot with an iron-tight grip, too strong to be real for a person her size. She dug the blade into the big toe and cut straight through the bone. Daisy didn't hear it fall to the floor through her screaming.

"It wouldn't have been fair to take the whole foot," said the woman, wiping her hands off on her apron. "You were pretty close to the truth. How about I give you one more chance, eh? Where do you work, Daisy?"

"I work at the hospital!" Daisy screamed. "The hospital on Fifth Street!"

"Good. Which ward?"

"Psych."

"Excellent. You're better at this than I gave you credit for." She put the knife down and picked up a handheld blowtorch, the kind you got at camping supply stores. "Now we get into the more important questions. You've got to be careful about these ones, because I won't be so nice about them as I have been so far. Do you understand?"

"Yes, yes!"

"Good." She flicked the blowtorch briefly, watching the blue flames rent the air. "You are aware of one Doctor Jonathan Crane, are you not?"

"Yes," Daisy whispered.

"When did you meet him?"

"He came to evaluate a patient once," said Daisy. "I briefed him."

"What was the patient's name?"

Fuck fuck fuck. Daisy didn't remember. Jacob Something, wasn't it? Jacob... Jacob Stewart? Jacob Sawyer?

"Tick-tock, Daisy Ryerson."

"I can't remember," said Daisy in a quiet, terrified voice. The woman turned on the blowtorch and held it dangerously close to Daisy's undamaged foot; she could feel the warmth.

"I suggest you start remembering," she said.

"Okay! Okay." She wracked her brains, watching the flame get closer. "Don't, don't do that! I can't think when you're doing that!"

"Hurry up."

"He — his name was —" Oh, Christ, she had no fucking idea. It may not even have been Jacob.

The flame overtook her foot, and the pain was more than anything she'd ever experienced, more than any one person could surely survive. It ripped through her. She was screaming so loud that she could hear her eardrums moaning in protest.

The flame stopped.

"His name was Andrew Clarke," said the woman coolly. "I thought you would have remembered that, Daisy. I'm very disappointed."

Daisy rested her head back on the bar her hands were tied to and cried.

"Next question," said the woman quietly. "This is very important now, you understand?"

"Yes..."

She was going to die. She saw it as clearly as she saw the cracks in the ceiling.

"You worked with Hallie Matthews, didn't you? The woman from Dr. Crane's asylum."

"Yes. I evaluated her to see if she needed to go back."

"Perfect. Last question." She put the blowtorch away and picked up an axe, swinging it lithely in her tiny hands.

"Who did Hallie Matthews call when she was discharged?"

Daisy Ryerson realized at exactly that moment what was happening. This woman was some sort of fanatic, a Crane-worshipper. She was going to kill Hallie Matthews.

"I don't know."

The woman seethed. "I don't know who you think you're protecting, Daisy," she said quietly. "Not yourself, surely."

"You're going to kill that girl, aren't you?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"Why?"

"Because her number is up. You're not helping her by not answering. You're just making me more angry. So the worse for her. So the worse for you."

She smiled pleasantly and swung the axe.


Jim Gordon waited in the darkness for the familiar silhouette to appear suddenly on the rooftop. He still wasn't accustomed to these strange night time meetings with the masked man, but he supposed that beggars couldn't be choosers, and he'd been begging for a break for a long time. This man -- whoever he was -- seemed to know what he was doing. Gordon didn't hold it against him that the latest murder was getting away with… well, murder. The masked man was talented, sure, but underneath the costume and the otherworldly gadgets, he was still just a man, and whoever was killing people this time seemed to be the farthest thing from human.

The police had gotten a nasty shock this morning when they found a mangled cadaver dumped just one block down. It was clearly a message, and a taunting one at that. Come and get me coppers. Mwahahaha. Disgusting. They'd had to identify the victim by her dental records, her body was so ravaged; no one would have been able to recognize the poor girl's face. She'd been burned top to bottom. All this, the examiner had told him, before dying of blood loss from the dismemberment and disembowelment. Daisy Ryerson, her name was. She worked at the hospital. She was rich too. If not for that, they would have thought they had another killer in Gotham (and what a joy that would have been). Her house had been completely ransacked, and anything that couldn't be transported was destroyed. Her parents had been notified immediately, and were strongly advised to leave the area, especially after the Fallak case. The killer was going after family members now.

And what were the police doing? Well, what could they do? The guy was a ghost; there wasn't a hair left behind, not a fingerprint. There was nothing but a bloody mess at every scene, or, in the case of this latest, no scene at all, just a ravaged body. The Gotham police were no strangers to kills done in cold blood. They also knew the damage done by jealous rage. But how could one person have such a hateful disposition toward such a wide variety of people? There were the rich and powerful, sure, but then there were the heiresses and the innocent blue collar men who were being killed behind bars. There was no demographic to suggest some sort of past event that would twist into a need for vengeance, no sexual preference that said the killer was getting off on watching their objects of lust in pain. Which therefore left only one alternative: this person just liked killing. Anyone, any time. Kill, kill, kill. That was more frightening by far than some religious nutcase or a serial killer with a need for what they thought was kinky sex. He'd seen those, too. They all went nuts in the end and made a mistake.

He hoped this guy broke down soon. He'd stopped going for drinks after work, and had never before been grateful that he was not a prominent member of upper class society. Money was a dangerous and powerful thing.

And then this Doctor Crane business… that greasy weasel knew his way around the law better than any of the long time nutcases he had in his cells. He had wormed his way out of charges for the incident with the toxic gas. Used a lot of big psychotic words and underwent a psychological evaluation, conducted by someone he probably knew and paid handsomely. Now he was running Arkham and facing an enquiry for the business with that Hallie Matthews girl. Gordon would bet his life -- no, maybe not his life, but his house definitely -- that Crane had something to do with this. He had something to do with everything.

And, of course, there had to be more. Persephone Triton, the city's beloved little rich girl, had been reported missing. Perhaps the first hostage to be taken by the killer… perhaps dead already. It wasn't easy for someone like her to slip under the radar, but somehow she'd managed it. She wasn't even twenty five yet. Gordon worried about the outcome of this one; Gotham couldn't handle Persephone Triton's death. She was too young, too beautiful. The city would mourn, and then it would collapse. It would be soul destroying chaos all over again.

In the darkness, Gordon heard footsteps and sighed, putting on his business face. It made his stomach churn to have to take care of matters such as these. What a plague mankind was turning out to be.