Happy Day After Halloween! I hope you all had as good a yesterday as I did!

To celebrate my favorite holiday, here's chapter 4. Please review! I'd really like to know how you feel about what I'm doing here.

When the van was loaded and darkness fell over the city, Billy stopped to smoke a cigarette. He'd considered them ready for the last half hour, but Jackson was still fumbling around, making changes and running back and forth from the house with anything he thought might come in handy. Like a chicken with its head cut off. He was nervous about doing this on his own turf, with so much room for error. Billy felt very mild, however, filled with a strange and wonderful tranquility. So if they got caught, then what? That slimy drug dealer, Andy, would never call the cops on his own op.

"The fuck is Jess?" Jackson asked him once he decided they had everything. He glanced at his watch. With a shrug, Billy looked up to the light in her bedroom window, and smiled when it was flicked off.

"Looks like she's coming down." Billy didn't think they needed Jess in on this, but Jackson was adamant about the distraction portion of the plan. Apparently Andy was a paranoid guy, befitting his plant of choice, but he was known to let girls lower his defenses. Well shit, if that was all it took, the fucker deserved what he had coming.

When Jess exited the house Billy had to look twice, bathed as she was in the flattering glow of the porch light. She was beautiful. He forgot that, more often than not. Usually she invoked a vague disgust, tinged with pity and anger. But tonight she'd outdone herself, dressed in a tiny black dress and purple heels, offset by straight pale hair and bright red lips. Her almond shaped eyes were made up like a pinup girl, making her lashes look huge. Rarely did he see her put this much effort into her physical appearance, but goddamn if the girl didn't clean up well.

Jackson noticed, too. "Holy fuck," he muttered to Billy as she approached. "We live with that."

"Shut up," Billy replied, jabbing him with his elbow. His partner's wolfish grin didn't quit, however, and Billy had to resign himself to the possibility that his roommates might want to sleep together. He couldn't think of a more utterly irritating scenario.

"Ready?" Jess asked bracingly when she'd reached them, unaware of their reaction to her.

"You sure as hell are," Jackson replied, eyeing her appreciatively. Jess threw him a weird look. Okay, good, they wouldn't sleep together.

She glanced down pointedly at the masks they each held and frowned but said nothing. Billy and Jackson were dressed in black tonight, and armed with the white and green clown masks they'd received in Gotham. It seemed appropriate, somehow fulfilling, very empowering. Billy in his black hoodie and Jackson in his leather jacket. Their uniforms.

Jess drove the van, while the men crouched in the back. Jackson went over the plan vocally two more times on the ride over, until they both had it burned in their brains. For the first time, Billy started feeling the nervous energy his partner had been wrapped up in. His fingers started tapping, his leg bouncing restlessly, his stomach becoming a painful pit of anxiety. There was the excitement, of course, the promise of money and solved problems and power. The rush of doing the dangerous. But sometimes adrenaline took on an edge of fear.

They parked in the alley behind Andy's little house, with its slanted gutter and cluttered back patio. The back of the van was not fifteen feet from the door - as they'd planned it - and Jackson and Billy left the van doors open when they climbed out. Jess met them around the side, a flush in her cheeks.

"Two minutes," Jackson whispered to her, "and we're opening the storm doors to the basement. We'll keep as quiet as we can, but if he hears something, you make sure he doesn't come down."

"Got it," Jess said, her voice steady. Jackson glanced at Billy bracingly, and they donned their clown masks. The blond turned and strode confidently around the house to the front door, a little wiggle in her hips, which neither man could help but watch.

"Damn," Jackson muttered once more. "I'd forgotten that Jesster."

"Yeah, well," Billy said, tossing his black duffel to the ground and going on his haunches to unzip it. "Bruises and sweatpants don't make for the best look. Too bad she likes psychos." He couldn't keep the bitterness from his tone, nor the sneer from his masked face. Jackson said nothing to that, but started pulling on the black leather gloves Billy tossed him, and reached into the van to lift out four containers, a gallon each, of hydrobromic acid. HBr + H2O. A proton, an ion and a water molecule in perfect, destructive sync. Joker would like that. This shit could burn skin, so they both assumed it would be pretty effective on plants known for their delicate temperament.

After counting down the minutes, Billy headed to the storm doors. Jess hadn't come back, so she was inside the house, hopefully laughing and flirting very loudly.

As if in response to this thought, a gale of laughter floated through an open window, male and female, and he heard Jess's giggling chatter. He smiled under the mask and bent down with lock picks in hand to work at the rusty iron padlock on the chain around the cellar handles.

Picking locks was astonishingly easy, a fact few people knew. Once you knew what to do, it took very little skill to actually do it. But people looked at you like you were a fucking boss if you showed them you could. So he usually kept the simplicity secret.

After a moment the padlock fell away, and Billy lifted up one door to stare down into the blackness beyond.

One of the amazing gadgets Jackson had picked up with their fuck-loads-of-money were two basic pairs of night vision goggles, which the men affixed over their masks. Billy grinned at his partner in crime (though he couldn't see it under the plastic clown face). They looked like terrifying loony splinter cells infiltrating an enemy base.

The plants were in the night-phase of their daily cycle, and they glowed green through the goggles. There were twenty three of them, each around five feet tall, each planted in its own white tub and arranged in neat rows under huge grow lights. The smell was dank, in both senses of the word, soil and pungent marijuana clouding thick in the air. The plants were just starting to bud, furry and beautiful, and each man chose a large favorite to set aside. The rest, however, were about to be destroyed.

"We'll probably need more acid," Billy said, and Jackson immediately retreated to grab a few more containers from the van. Billy, meanwhile, went about ripping the stalks from their dirt and throwing them on the grown, plucking a few buds here and there. When Jackson returned, they started going about the real work.

In the end, they used up seven gallons of hydrobromic acid, poured copiously into the soil at the base of each sticky stalk. Probably way more than necessary, but better safe than sorry. The plants didn't stand a chance.

Now it smelled like acid and rot, chokingly thick. Jackson and Billy each grabbed a plant in its little soil tub-remarkably heavy-and got the fuck out of the basement, crossing the yard in darkness and silence to load them into the back of the van. A bit of free income. A bonus for a job well done.

They closed the heavy white doors and ripped off their masks, grinning freely now that getaway was imminent. Jackson let loose a high pitched whistle, the signal that Jess should head back to the van.

In the ringing silence that followed, a dog started to growl.

"This isn't conspicuous at all," Blake said sarcastically when Laurence popped the trunk door of the little hatchback outside the Taco Bell where he worked nights. He climbed into the rear, shut himself inside, and knelt back there while Blake started the car. Blake glanced to the rearview just in time to see Laurence flip him the bird.

"No one's here," he said, waving at the darkened fast food restaurant. "I closed up by myself."

"That's fucking initiative," replied Blake. He was feeling edgy, a little mean. That was good. Mean was good. Laurence ignored him.

"So where's this guy gonna be?" he asked, and Blake quickly checked the itinerary as he pulled out of the parking lot. Tom, one of the Twenty he was in touch with, was a bit of a genius when it came to computers, and he'd said hacking the good doctor's email account had been a piece of cake. As the Joker had expected, Strange's plane tickets had been bought online, the confirmation sent to his email, so they had the arrival time for his red eye flight from San Fransisco.

Apparently Doctor Hugo Strange had been asked by Jeremiah Arkham last month if he would consider transferring to Gotham's asylum, in the wake of another psychiatrist's retirement. And, as the two former colleagues were good friends and Arkham was known for its employee benefits and state of the art research facilities, Strange agreed to visit and decide. His identification and arrival would provide perfect means to get past Arkham's tall wrought iron gates without being detected.

"His plane is landing in ten minutes," Blake said. "So we pick him up from the airport. He's renting a car. I've, uh, arranged for it to be this one."

The abundance of the boss's connections throughout Gotham continued to astound Blake, as did this city's profound degeneracy. The guy who owned the rental place by the airport was a money launderer, and he happened to agree with the way the clown ran things (and placed stacks of cash in his hands). It only took a phone call, and Dr. Strange's compensating-for-something sports car had been changed to a four door hatchback with a crook in the trunk.

In fifteen minutes they were at Mickey's Rent-A-Car, and Blake headed in to see if the good doctor had come by yet. Mickey, a suave yet unalterably common man, informed him that his plane had arrived late, and advised that he hide in the bushes until Strange was unlocking his new car.

Everything was going off without a hitch so far, Blake reflected as he knelt in the dirt behind a shrubbery a yard from the parking lot. But he couldn't let himself breathe, not yet. Not until the boss was sprung and Arkham's gates were disappearing behind them. Things had a way of getting extremely fucked up, even when plans were laid this carefully. Especially when plans were laid this carefully. The best made plans of mice and men aft gang agley. Scottish proverb. The boss had taught him that.

Blake's first glimpse of Hugo Strange as he walked briskly from the terminal towards Mickey's made him sigh in relief. Balding and bespectacled, the doctor was tall but very thin. Frail looking. Blake rubbed his own tricep, over the definition there, flexed to feel the muscles bunch under his hand. This guy would be easy, he told himself. Those glasses would hurt when he slammed his face into the ground, too.

Strange was in there a long time, doubtlessly arguing with Mickey about the vehicle exchange. His penis was big, goddammit! No way would a guy with a penis his size drive a four door hatchback!

In the end, however grudgingly, the doctor slumped out of the office with keys in hand. Keys. Careful of those. Don't let him swipe at your face. The best laid plans of mice and men.

The doctor turned to flip the bird at Mickey's shop, then headed towards the car. Blake's heart started pumping, his adrenaline buzzing through his dyed brown skull. He stood, felt the gun in the waistband of his jeans, and smiled.

Strange was at the car now, fumbling with the keys in the dark. Blake left his hiding place and strode up behind him while the doctor was still cursing in German.

WHAM! His nose made a sickening crunch as Blake slammed it into the roof of the car. Strange let loose a strangled gargle, sliding down against the door of the car as his legs gave out. Saying not a word, Blake lifted him forcibly under the arm pits and forced his wrists into handcuffs. By then, the doctor was recovering from his shock, trembling uncontrollably, barking panicked what? who?'s and twisting to catch a glimpse of his assailant, which Blake avoided. Blood was gushing from his broken nose, staining his impeccably pressed dress shirt. Blake reached around and snapped off the ID badge Strange had pinned to his breast pocket, slipping it into his jeans so it wouldn't get blood on it, too.

He grabbed his gun and forced it against the doctor's temple, which stopped the alarmed protests and half-words pretty quick. The trembling continued though, getting more violent.

"Keep quiet, keep still, and you might get out of this alive," he told him as Laurence popped the locks from the inside and pushed open the back door. Strange was thrown unceremoniously into the back seat, face first with his hands behind his back, so roughly he lost his breath. But he was being cooperative. Probably out of sheer terror.

With Laurence's gun to the back of his head and Blake behind the wheel, the doctor was veritably kidnapped. They sped out of the parking lot and onto the highway, north towards Arkham Asylum.

"Where - where are you taking me?" the doctor asked from the back seat. His German accent was thickened with fear, but probably quite pronounced anyway. Blake threw a glance towards his partner in the rear-view.

"Gag him," he said, and Laurence dutifully stuffed a sock into the doctor's bloody mouth and wrapped it in place with duct tape. "Blindfold, too." Another sock obscured Strange's vision, so he set about pathetically mumbling and whimpering.

"Jesus," said Laurence, delivering a blow to the back of Strange's head. "Shut the fuck up." Their captive's body went limp and a quiet groan escaped in the wake of the pistol whip. But they heard no more from Doctor Strange that night. They left him unconscious along a seldom-traveled stretch of highway, laying in the dust at the side of the road.

In fifteen minutes, the foreboding crags of Arkham Asylum rose from the hill before them, deep black against a star pricked sky. Blake studied the gates as they got closer - even more intimidating than he'd imagined. Tall, black wrought iron, tipped with spikes and coiled with barbed wire. Each post was at least a solid two inches across, set three inches apart, and digging six feet into the earth below. No way of getting over, under or between.

But hey, Blake thought as he checked his appearance in the mirror and straightened Strange's ID on his button up, we've got that part taken care of. I fucking hope.

Huge spotlights at the top of the gates illuminated the guardhouse as they pulled into the dirt courtyard; Blake could see the shadow of the lone security man pacing back and forth inside. He reached down to feel his gun again, drawing comfort from it even though it wouldn't be used, and once more glanced in the mirror as he slid glasses onto his nose. Then, slowly and surely, he pulled up to the grounds entrance.

"Identification," the guard said, strolling out of the gatehouse with a dubiously curious expression. The night of this scheme had been carefully chosen - it was the first shift of this new security guard, Lyle Bolton, who had been brought on after his predecessor's murder at the hands of a patient.

"Doctor Hugo Strange," Blake said in the best German accent he could muster, and handed Bolton the ID. He noticed, as the guard took it, that a drop of blood had smeared along its backside. Lyle neglected to see it, but he studied the ID for a long time - no picture, thank Jesus - looking distinctly suspicious. Blake's fingers curled around the handle of his gun.

"We weren't expecting you until tomorrow, Doctor Strange," he said finally, handing the card back to Blake. Blake shut his eyes in annoyance, realizing he'd have to talk himself into the grounds.

"Jeremiah promised me a room in ze asylum," he said. How would this fucking accent fool anyone? "I would like to experience ze comforts of my new possible home. Also," he grinned, "it saves me a hotel fee." Against all odds, Bolton grinned back. What an idiot.

"Sure, I get it," he said. "No problem. I'll just confirm with the guys upstairs and we can let you in." That wouldn't be good. The lie would be revealed in ten seconds and he'd have armed men on his ass before crossing the threshold.

"I'm quite tired," Blake said, throwing out a gloved hand to stop Bolton from reaching for his walkie. His other hand tightened on the gun handle. "I'm sure it will be alright if I..."

"It'll only take a sec," Bolton replied amiably, taking the walkie from its holster. Blake sighed. He understood what needed to happen, but that didn't make it easy.

There was a long, terrible moment, after Blake aimed the gun, when their eyes met. A victim and his unwilling killer. The guard's hand clenched weakly at his radio, and Blake's decision was made.

The silenced bullet ripped through Lyle Bolton's skull in half a second, and he was on the ground in another, spasming as blood began to pool around his head. Blake put his gun away again, staring at the body with disappointment. He hadn't wanted to do that. He'd wanted to let this guy go home to his girlfriend or his wife, maybe even a kid or two. He'd wanted this guy to be a lazy idiot.

He was sorry. That was what separated guys like him from guys like the Joker. No matter the things he did or the number of corpses he made, the faces of his victims stayed in Blake's mind. You didn't really desensitize from that. Taking lives was easier by far than forgetting them. And by the way, twelve. To this date, he'd killed twelve people. It had been eleven, now it was twelve. Number of people he'd hurt, he'd lost count, but not the murders. He'd never lose count of those. He'd never forget the details of their faces. They even haunted him at night sometimes.

Guys like the Joker, they didn't get that. They did whatever they wanted without the uselessness of guilt hanging over them. It made them subhuman, yeah, but it also kind of elevated them above. Like some deity, something more than a person. The boss had called it enlightenment. In the deepest, blackest corners of his mind - where he kept his hatred, his frustrated lust, his id - Blake almost envied guys like the Joker. To be that unhindered, especially in doing what you had to do...

Then again, what was he thinking? There were no guys like the Joker.

Laurence was out of the car and in the guardhouse. He must have pressed the right button or flipped the right switch, because soon the gate was opening ahead of them, slowly, into darkness.

As Blake steered past Lyle Bolton's body and onto Arkham grounds, he heard the guard's radio buzz to life.

"Base to units. Come in, units. 2400 check. Please respond."

Lyle, of course, wouldn't answer. And if anyone came down to check, the body would be pretty conspicuous. Blake sped up, deeper into the darkness surrounding the high stone building. Their time limit might have just gotten a lot shorter. His dyed hair and itchy beard had proven wastes of time. And he'd killed someone he hadn't wanted to. But, as you had to, as you learned to, he suppressed the sinking in his gut and focused on doing what they were here to do.

Best laid plans and all that.

Staring out the rain streaked windowpane and picking at her nails, Jess decided to give up on ever feeling normal.

It was undue stress, and it certainly wasn't helping anything. She found herself lately, time and again, comparing the way she felt and lived now to the way it used to be. How she used to be able to smile at strangers, and watch mindless cartoons, and enjoy music that made her want to cry. How she used to wear pink and green and electric blue. How she used to shout and shop and run and read. How she used to miss her mother and think about her friends.

It was hard, now, to remember a feeling of happiness back then. She was sure she'd had it, though, or at least had what she'd mistaken for happiness. That was, comfort. Ease of life. Hilarity.

Gotham had shown her a new kind of happiness. For what was bliss if not the rush of adrenaline, the warmth of camaraderie, the freedom to do what you wanted, when you wanted? The freedom of taking and faking and making love. What was bliss if not the taste of greasepaint and the smell of gasoline?

She'd fought for her life, lost everything she knew was real, and started out new. But that had been ripped away, too, before she was halfway from her cocoon. She'd spent the last month crawling out of it, flexing gossamer wings in the open air, white as larvae and glistening. But now her wings seemed to be gaining color, and strength. Was she starting to rediscover herself?

And as a woman remade, what room did she have for those old emotions and actions? Why should she feel a sense of empathy or guilt?

You can't pick up the pieces of an old life. You can't move forward when you can never go back.

You just can't.

It made it easier to decide once and for all that she was not who she'd been. So fuck the old values. They meant nothing now.

Andy was precisely as greasy as she'd been led to believe, tall and bony, with unruly black hair and a horrible goatee. He smelled like body odor, alcohol and, of course, obscene amounts of weed. He was also a complete imbecile, one who laughed loudly at his own jokes and thought he was the utmost expert on everything.

Nothing worse than an idiot who thought he was clever.

It made it easy to want to destroy him.

The way he'd stared at her when she'd entered his home made her scalp shrink and bile rise, but she'd forced her face into a mask. A pretty, vapid, horny mask.

"I've been drinking," she'd giggled at him first thing, adopting a stereotypical sorority girl inflection. Like omg noway I loooooove Panty Droppers.

"Nothing I like more than a pretty girl who's been drinking," Andy had oozed in reply. And she laughed like omg that was the funniest fucking thing she'd ever heard.

Jess had "accidentally" bumped into him last night at a bar, their introduction facilitated by the man who worked for Andy and bought coke from Jackson. She'd introduced herself as Claire, and procured his number with the understanding that she was always to ask before coming to pick up. She never stopped by unannounced for business, never. And then, squeezing her ass, he'd said, "But if it's for something else, you can drop by any time."

The more he drank at the bar, the pushier he'd gotten - groping and whispering and trying to flirt. In accordance with Jackson's plan, Jess had denied him at every turn, but always with a flirtatious smile. "He'll want it even more if he can't get it right away," Jackson had told her before leaving her at the pub. Andy didn't know Jackson or Billy, and they wanted to keep it that way. Instead, she'd been introduced as someone with mutual friends.

It hadn't been difficult, to tell the truth, to flirt and lie her way into this group.

People were kind of easy like that.

Andy came up behind her, distracting her from the rain, and wrapped his arms around her waist. He handed her a pipe loaded with weed. It was their second one of the night - she'd already been there ten minutes. Surely that was enough time for the boys to do what they were here to.

"So," Andy said over her shoulder, into her ear, breathing too heavily, "what do you want to do?"

Jesus fucking Christ she hadn't been that heavy on the flirting. This guy couldn't keep it in his pants.

She chuckled throatily, sex in every reverberation, and leaned back against his lanky frame. He felt slimy, and smelled as though he rarely washed.

At that moment, a shrill whistle wafted through the window she'd opened. Her signal.

"Actually, I gotta get going," she said. "It's my bestie's birthday party." She handed the pipe back and stuffed her baggie of green into the purse she was carrying. Andy made a distinct noise of disappointment and attempted to hold her closer, but she broke away.

"I'll see you soon though," she said, heading for the front door. He followed close, fingers brushing against her hips, her ass.

"You better," he replied. She stopped at the door and turned to face him, knowing at least a hug was expected. As she reached up to sling her arms around his neck, a dog started barking furiously from the back.

Andy turned to look towards the kitchen door.

Their informant had told them about this. Apparently the neighbor was Andy's close friend, and he had a large doberman that would patrol both houses during they day.

They usually kept him in at night though. Usually.

Jess had no idea why she hadn't seen this coming. Chaos dictated life. It was nearly impossible for a plan to go off without a hitch. You had to roll with the punches.

So, resigned, Jess rolled.

She grabbed Andy's face and turned his head to meet his lips passionately. He responded with unmediated enthusiasm, too much tongue, and the most direct pair of hands she'd ever had the misfortune of experiencing. The dog barked three more times, then yelped and was silent. A large car started up and sped away.

She wrenched away from Andy, wanting to gag at the wet look he gave her, but smiled provocatively instead and blew a kiss good bye.

After checking to make sure the men had, indeed, left with the van, and seeing no sign of any dog, Jess walked jauntily towards the bus stop. That had been so easy, it was almost sad. She couldn't believe that less than ten minutes of lying and distracting could reap such enormous benefits. Then again, of course it could. That was crime. That was why people did it. That was why you wanted to get good at lying, cheating, taking. And why not? Guilt? Guilt? There were no laws, no truths. So, conversely, that meant there were no lies. What use was guilt?

Who were the victims? Sheeple she wanted to punch on a regular basis anyway, for the size of their little lemming minds. Or big fat cat corporations who didn't even suffer anyway. I'm sorry, does my total profit come at a mild inconvenience to you? Maybe you should reexamine your stupid little life. Providing punishment, reaping reward. A beautiful justice, even better given its societal perversion, its twisting of norms. A vigilante disciplining the everyday blue collar villain. After all, the only true crime was stupidity.

Andy, he was stupid. Alex, her one true kill, he'd been stupid too. That was the price you paid.

Creative thinking, intelligence, guiltlessness. That's what got you places. Take the Joker. He'd gotten what he wanted. To the very last, he'd gotten exactly what he wanted.

It took her a while to figure out why she was smiling. But when she realized, she smiled harder, flooded with relief.

Because, for the first time in a long time, Jess felt utterly fantastic.

He'd thought , at the beginning of his incarceration, that the worst thing about being behind bars was the monotony. The endless day-to-day. The routine of it. The lack of any variety or stimulation. But as midnight crept closer and Fred disappeared to the basement, the Joker decided something else was worse: even as things were happening right under your nose, you couldn't join in on the fun.

Soon, he had to tell himself. Soon. A month in Arkham Asylum had been more than substantial, and tonight was the night. Freddy had just been whispering into his ear, about how Blakey had infiltrated the grounds and was headed now to the circuit board. And the handyman would take care of the generators in the basement, plunging the asylum into a blackout sure to last at least an hour. There was nothing for the Joker to do but sit back and wait to be free.

And that was the worst part.

His palms itched. His legs twitched and jumped. He couldn't stay still, couldn't stop running his tongue along the slick, bumpy scars on the insides of his cheeks. He paced restlessly, counting the steps until that bored him, then contented himself with scraping his nails along the glass window. He wanted to taste the night air again, feel the rain against his face, smell the smoke and the smog and the blood of Gotham. He wanted to wire a bomb, feel the heat of the explosion behind him. Wanted to see stars and light fires and hold a knife again. Wanted to trace a long line up one of Jesster's thighs. Wanted to watch as the life left Ruth Adams' eyes.

Zsasz was wheezing in his sleep, an ugly, pitiful sound. He'd kill Zsasz one day, the Joker promised himself. He'd stab each of his precious little tally marks and ask him if he liked it.

Jobs just weren't the same when you only gave the orders. The Joker much preferred to do the dirty work, too. Instead of energized and delirious, he simply felt impatient. He couldn't wait to get a knife back in his hand and have a bit of fun for once.

At that moment, the lights buzzed, flickered, brightened and popped into darkness. Blake had done his job on the electrical box.

Instant pandemonium. The Joker stood in the pitch black, laughing as screams rose from every corner of the building. People shrieking, heavy doors sliding open, the sounds of murder and triumph and insanity. The electronic locks fitted in every wing of the building had failed, popped open. The patients of Arkham were loose, for the second time in three years. Madness was flooding the streets again.

"Just like it should be," the Joker said to himself, giggling.

His own door, as the rest of the doors in the high security ward, had not been unlocked by a simple power outage. These had state of the art magnetic bolts on their own circuit, unlocked only by fingerprint scan. But Freddy had that covered.

Croc was slamming on his glass with one huge scaly fist, clearly having deduced that the other patients were free. Zsasz slithered up to his own window and pressed his bony face against it, whispering, "Let me out. Let me out." Calendar Man was singing the Twelve Days of Christmas.

The security men at either end of the hall had flicked on their flashlights, and they were screaming at the inmates to keep it down. Both were highly flustered, and the young one yelled to the old man that he was going down to help in the B Wing. "These fuckers still have locks on them. They'll be fine!"

It just went to show that, when things didn't go according to plan, people stopped thinking.

And so they were left, four psychotic murderers in the dark with a frail old man and his gun. The iron doors between them wouldn't be an issue for long.

It took five excruciating minutes for Fred to get back upstairs. In that time, the guard had taken to strolling down the hall with his flashlight, back and forth and back and forth. The Joker watched the hypnotic beam bounce by nine times before there was a scuffle at the end of the hall and it went out.

The Joker grinned. Fred did that right, at least. He vaguely mourned not getting to kill the guard himself, but it was all a means to the same end.

The janitor was sweaty and wheezing when he showed up at the Joker's window with two glow sticks clenched in his palm. At once, the Joker saw the issue.

"Uh, Fred," he said, his voice low and dangerous, "did you forget something?" Fred got visibly paler, even in the dim light. He started stammering, ran a bloodstained hand over his excuse for hair, unable to get more than a syllable or two together at a time. Growling, the Joker slammed a gloved hand against the window to shut him up. "Where's Winslow?" he demanded.

The handyman was shaking as he told his boss the bad news. Winslow the orderly, the one with the fingerprint necessary to open this door, had apparently fled the grounds as soon as the blackout was in session. It probably hadn't been hard to put together the pieces - the Joker had orchestrated this, everyone surely knew by now. Who else would it be? Who else in this flea infested shit hole had the imagination or ambition?

"One finger," the Joker muttered, chewing at his scars and resuming his pacing. "I just needed one finger, Freddy."

"Couldn't find him, boss," Fred said. "What do we do?" The Joker glanced at the digital wristwatch on Fred's arm, adding its glow to the darkness. They had about thirty minutes until reillumination. Plenty of time, assuming he wasn't working with complete imbeciles. Which was turning out to be unlikely. But he had an ace in the hole. You always had an ace in the hole. It was a fundamental law of the universe that things always went towards entropy. And what was entropy, if not chaos? The trick was to turn that to your advantage.

"Get Blake up here," he snapped. "Now. I need his, uh, brawn."

Fred flipped open his prepaid cellphone and hit the number. He informed Blake quickly of the issue, and told him to race up to the wing. That would take some doing. Even armed as he was with the knowledge of the building's layout, people might notice the interloper. But if he was still wearing his lab coat - and he'd better be - he might attract less attention. Without the contents of Blake's duffle bag, the Joker would have to start getting real creative.

After Fred hung up, he said, "He wanted me to say he's got this, boss. And that he's, like, looking forward to the reunion." The Joker found himself halfway between a smirk and a sneer at Blake's sarcastic sentimentality. He smacked his lips and didn't reply.

As usual, as he should have expected, Blake's performance turned out to be highly sufficient. When not three minutes passed before his tall, broad figure quickly rounded the corner, the Joker let loose a genuine smile and a cackle of satisfaction. Old Blakey. The Joker had forgotten how useful he was.

"Hey boss," Blake said, looking different somehow. Of course. He'd dyed his hair, grown a beard, like a good little lackey. Great at taking directions, old Blakey. Smart but loyal. Like a border collie. He was pale and energized, a light in the bright green eyes that the Joker understood. Jobs did that. To men like Blake, danger was an addiction, the adrenaline of the process worth the risk, even outweighing the reward. The Joker related to that sentiment.

"Finally, we get a little proficiency," the Joker said, glancing disparagingly at Fred as his right hand man wasted no time in digging the thermite from his black duffle. He slapped on protective face and arm gear, set the baggy on the door handle, right on top of the lock with its fancy fingerprint scanner, and set it on fire with a blowtorch.

The Joker hooted as sparks began to fly and the thermite went up in a burst of chemical reactivity. Thermite plus heat yields Al2O3 and iron in a fiery explosion at temperatures upwards of 5000 degrees Celsius. Steel melts around 1300 degrees. The lock dripped away as though it was candle wax, and in about five seconds a huge corroded hole had replaced the door handle.

In the ringing silence that followed the sparks and crackles of lit thermite, the Joker's cell door creaked open.

He stepped out, into the darkness he'd created, feeling the delirious pull of freedom. Closer now than ever. Now that it came to it, Fred looked terrified. Blake was more at ease, taking off his gloves and mask and repacking the bag swiftly. When he straightened and gave the Joker a triumphant smile, the clown smiled back.

The Joker held out a hand, and so easily it was like second nature, Blake placed his gun in it. It spoke of the strength of Blake's loyalty, to immediately and intuitively give up his only weapon. It was good. You couldn't trust anyone, but you could recognize dependability. Blake had a future in this, if he kept not-fucking up.

"Got a knife," said Blake, as if to underline that last thought. "If you'd rather." Without answering, the Joker turned toward Fred and fluidly raised the gun to eye level. A silenced bullet later, the man was twitching on the ground in a pool of his own fluids. The Joker took a deep breath, relishing it with every cell in his being. That felt good. Even with a gun. It would feel better later, but it felt good now too.

Blake had the good sense not to look anything but expectant at the blase murder. The Joker stepped over Fred's body and bent down to get the glow sticks in his still-clenched hand. As he was rising, he held his other palm to Blake. It took barely a second before he had a knife again.

The Joker slid the weapon from its sleeve. A bowie. Good for stabbing and slicing alike. He smacked his lips, satisfied. Zsasz was gabbing wildly at the escape, and the Joker stopped to turn back to him. Their eyes locked for a long moment, and then the Joker lunged forward and slammed the butt of his knife against the glass. Zsasz flinched away. The clown exploded into laughter, which turned into a crazed gibbering, meant to mock Zsasz's previous appeals for escape. Zsasz retaliated with a snarl and a very rude hand gesture. That only made the Joker laugh harder.

He didn't stab anyone on their journey to the front door, through unused hallways and a pitch black cafeteria, which was slightly depressing. When he'd pictured this night, he'd seen calamity in all corners. But the patients, though raising an awful clamour, seemed not to have found their way from their wards. He blew out his cheeks in irritation when they passed Ward B, its door unguarded but shut tight. Beyond it he heard screaming though, so it couldn't be a total loss.

In the end they waltzed out the huge front doors like they owned the place. It seemed, in this under-staffed, corrupt institution, all efforts had been focused on keeping the everyday, average crazies contained. No one had thought to check High Security, and no one had considered posting by the front entrance.

People really did make this job incredibly easy.

That first inhalation of the night into his lungs, slightly moist with rain, was sweeter than sugar. The great expanse of the yard around him, the lack of walls and straitjackets, the success of a job, the knowledge of what it signified. It meant freedom. It meant doing what he wanted, when he wanted. That was how you lived. Life behind those ominous stone walls, all order and healing and abuse, that was no life. That was just existence.

The Joker was alive again. And he already had some ideas about what to do with all his spare time.

Laurence had the car ready to go in the shadows at the corner of the building. The three men sped out the front gate, past the body of the security guard, as a misting rain began to bead on the windowsill. In the back seat, the Joker stuck his head out of the car to feel the air whoosh through his hair, fill his nose and throat.

As the highway stretched on and Gotham's lights filled the horizon, the Joker began to laugh.