Chapter Six
"And now, we have breaking news coverage that a known terrorist calling himself 'The Joker' and his gang is holed up in one of the Gotham City Banks with ten hostages, threatening to blow it sky high if Don Maroni doesn't transfer £50 million to an unspecified bank account".
Bruce Wayne stopped halfway through his fifth set of pull ups as the reporter on screen swapped for live coverage of the Gotham City Bank. It was surrounded by police and SWAT teams, red lasers held steady on its dark doors and windows. A red, spray-painted smiley face came into view from its position on the chained front doors, with a ransom letter written in what looked suspiciously like green wax crayon. A joker card was taped next to it, grinning manically. This was the fifth bank the so-called Joker had hit in the last three weeks, each getting more and more vicious, but he hadn't taken hostages before.
Bruce grimaced. He'd been trying to focus on the mob, and had come up with a brilliant scheme involving marked bills and perhaps the police to track their money and hit them where it hurts. He'd been ignoring the Joker as of yet, because he was only targeting mob banks. But it was looking more and more like this Joker was currently the bigger problem, especially if the bastard was now taking hostages.
"This reporter wonders if the mysterious masked vigilante sighted twice in the last two weeks will turn up tonight to save these people, and prays he will".
The camera zoomed in again, scanning over the windows, catching a slight movement in one of the windows. Suddenly, a bright light shot out of it, and an echoing crackle then burst of static was torn from Bruce's TV. The sirens were turned off, and a deafening silence fell over the street. Bruce watched as Detective Gordon came on-screen, staring up behind the cameraman.
The camera swivelled to look behind itself, and projected onto the building opposite, was the foyer of the Gotham City Bank. Ten people were tied up on the floor, six women and four men, with thugs in clown masks standing around then with guns. Bruce frowned. Those masks looked awfully familiar.
"Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to the Circus!", a voice called out from off screen, "I must warn you now, these acts are neither safe nor fake, and anything you see in this establishment must not be repeated by anyone except trained criminals!". A cackle burst fourth, and a tall, slim man with shaggy, green hair falling chaotically around his face moved into view. His face was mostly in shadow, but even in the darkness Bruce could tell there was something almost too-pale about it.
The tall man tilted his head slightly to look sideways at the camera, and Bruce realised it was makeup. His face was layered in greasepaint, white skin and cold black eyes, with a red semi-circle stretching from both corners of his lips towards his ear lobes. The man's cheeks were rough, and with a sick sense of realisation, Bruce realised there were two scars stretching from both corners of his mouth to his ears. The man's pupils seemed so blown that Bruce couldn't even tell what colour his Iris's were. The projected face smirked widely, "Where even the slightest drop in concentration could lead to, ah, death".
Bruce narrowed his eyes, "Alfred! I'm going out tonight!".
•
"So, what I'm trying to get at is that until the money is transferred to this account, Don Baloney, I will shoot one of the hostages! Yes, that's right folks, one every ten minutes! And then we initiate plan B", he grinned, "and B, stands for Boom", The Joker shrugged, palms up, looking innocent, "It's not too difficult to tell which is the cheapest option, considering the fact that there's $500,000 cash in the vault. I'll give you One. Hour. To get the money into the account, before I start to get impatient". The Joker leaned in toward the camera, "Good luck", and the projector turned off.
Bruce crouched on the roof of the building opposite, scanning the windows of the Bank. There was one open on the corner of the third floor, and if he timed it right, he could hopefully swing in without being seen.
The window had been a bad idea.
There were no thugs in the room, but someone had set up a large bowl of water just under the window, and Bruce's boots were now squeaking. This was not a good start.
His sodden clothes stuck to his skin wetly, steps squelching too noisily. Despite this, he crept along the quiet corridors almost silently. Bruce had just pushed open the doors to the foyer when he realised it was too quiet, and dark.
A breathed voice tickled his ear, "It's polite to knock". Batman spun on his heels, feeling exposed in only his balaclava and black woolen jumper, but he couldn't see. It was too dark, the police had cut the power, leaving only the phone lines intact. Something moved behind him, and Bruce spun again, unable to pinpoint any of the thugs location. He closed his eyes, listening carefully. A slight swish of clothes to his left preluded a sharp jab, and Bruce smirked when his hand hit soft flesh.
The man went down, something cluttering to the floor next to him. Bruce blindly fumbled towards where he thought his face was, feeling out the outline of a pair of goggles. He ripped them from the wounded man's eyes and pressed them to his own. Yes. Night vision goggles.
He's triumph quickly soured, however, when he realised the room was almost full of muscle. There had to be at least thirty men with goggles and guns aimed at him. Bruce raised his hands, allowing one of the me to get close, before he struck. Gun shots fired out, and Bruce was weaving around the bodies before he could think clearly.
There was no longer any real need for the goggles, the blinding shots were lighting up the room like some sort of sick strobe, but neither was there any time to remove the cumbersome objects. "WHAT DO YOU FOOLS THINK YOU'RE DOING!", a man screeched out from the doorway, and the thugs paused.
Bruce grabbed the nearest one and pulled it in front of him, panting. There were two bullets in his left calf, one through his right shoulder, and he was surprised he could stand straight. The man in the door way hit a switch, forcing the emergency generator to weakly light up half the room. Bruce cursed and dragged the thug into the darkness, watching wearily as the new light revealed the man to be the Joker.
"You. Do. Not. Shoot. Him", the clown growled as he stalked into the room, each word on a step. Bruce pressed himself against the far wall, watching the clown advance on one of the thugs. The man swallowed nervously when the Joker grabbed his collar, the gun hanging limply in his hands as he was shaken, "Who started it? Who started shooting". The thug trembled and said nothing, his mouth floundering uselessly.
The Joker snarled and dropped him, "Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter", he mumbled, before brashly calling out to the shadows, "You're alive! Aren't you?".
Bruce panted, one hand around the thugs's neck, the other clutching his shoulder. Warm blood was dripping slippery between his fingers in a steady plit, plit, plit on the floor. The Joker titled a hip thoughtfully, "Yup, I can hear you breathing. One of the strong, silent types huh?". Bruce leant gingerly on his damaged leg, wincing then frowning angrily. There was no way he'd be able to get past them all on this leg. Not a chance.
The Joker began to prowl towards the shadows, hands held up in a pantomime of harmlessness, "Why don'tchu step on out here, let us talk, like men!". Bruce pointed the unusual gun from the thug straight in front of him, aiming carefully. The nozzle aimed at his target, and he pressed the trigger.
A bullet plunged into the light switch, drenching the room in darkness. The Joker cursed, leaping towards the figure against the wall. He pressed the man back against the plaster, ripping the balaclava off to reveal a face. The wrong face. It was a thug, the one that had been held hostage. The joker smiled as he turned his head slowly, "Clever. Very clever. You took his armour, yes? So any one of the thugs in this room could be you? The only problem with that, is that you're the only one bleeding".
The Joker cackled as he levelled his eyes with one of the thugs to his right, "Come on, don't make this too easy for me". The thug leapt to the left, out the door and down the corridor. Eyebrows raised, the Joker twirled his gun around his finger, "Gee, you think it was something I said?".
Bruce was moving as quickly as he could with his left leg almost dragging behind him uselessly. This was bad. Somehow, he was going to have to get the hostages out and to safety without bleeding out. That would all be so much easier if the hostages were where they had been on the TV. He needed to stop, to rest for a moment, or he was going to pass out.
Falling into a wall to his left. Bruce peeled back his hand from the shoulder wound. Grimacing, he ripped away part of his sleeve to try and crudely bandage the ripped flesh. He'd just finished, when the emergency lighting flickered on, and the corridor was half-bathed in a sickly yellow light.
A speaker crackled in the ceiling, and Bruce glared up as the Joker's voice filled the corridor, "Hello and welcome to Joker's funhouse!". "I would like to take the trouble of welcoming our final contestant to the field! May we all give a warm welcome to the 'Masked Vigilante'!", Canned applause echoed down the silent corridors, and Bruce pulled himself to his feet.
"You really should come up with a better name, by the way, 'Masked Vigilante' sucks", the Joker paused, "Anyway! Your first task will be revealed as soon as you make your way to the safe, and if you don't get there on time, you may be short-changed on a few hostages". Bruce snarled, pulling himself to his feet and limping down the corridor, the Joker's laughter echoing tauntingly through the halls, "I've set up such a nice surprise for you when you get there".
Give it up, began to drift tinnily through the speakers, and Bruce sped up, running through the pain. There were so many flights of stairs and doors. Most of the metal doors were left propped open, but Bruce had to break through all of the closed wooden doors he came through. It was taking too long.
As if on cue, the Joker faded out the song and sniggered into the microphone, "What's taking you? Seriously, you might want to hurry up, it's just a couple of doors!". Bruce roared as he smashed through the last one into a wider corridor. There. The safe was at the end, and three people were kneeling in front of it, tied up and blindfolded. A couple of masked black thugs stood around them, the muzzles of their guns trained on the hostages.
They all turned at the same time, bringing their guns up to fire as Bruce crouched and zigzagged towards them. Bullets skittered around him, but Bruce sent a silent prayer of thanks when he reached them and disabled their weapons without being shot. He carefully knelt next to the hostages (there were two men and a woman), untying them and pulling the gags free. He left the blindfolds on though, "P-please don't hurt us", the woman whispered, face screwing up in fear. Bruce breathed slowly, "It's okay, I'm here to help you-", a slight scuff behind him meant he dived aside just in time.
An axe thudded into the floor in the space he'd just been, and as the hostage screamed, laughter crackled from the ceiling, "You didn't think it'd be that easy, now did you?". A huge, muscled man wielding an axe glared at him from under a clown mask. It was one of the ones from the video earlier. "Task one! A big, scary man who's twice your size is here to attack you, what do you do?", the speaker taunted, and Bruce twitched. There was something too-familiar here, he didn't like it.
The man suddenly ripped the axe from the floor, coaxing another hiccuping squeak from the female hostage. He raced towards Bruce, weapon extended, and Bruce neatly sidestepped, allowing the clown to run head-first into the wall behind him. A nasty crack resounded through the hall, and the clown crumpled.
A small, silver camera in the corner of the room caught Bruce's eye as it swivelled from the unconscious man to him, "Well, that was a bit of an anti-climax", the Joker sighed, "Fine, fine, take those hostages to the front door, you can let them go there, but don't forget about the other seven! You have to find the others too, remember!". Bruce grit his teeth, and hobbled back towards the hostages, reaching down and pulling them to their feet.
"Hold onto me, I'm getting you out of here", Bruce growled out, trying to disguise his voice, and began to make his way back up the corridors.
•
Jerome smirked and spun around in his chair as he watched Bruce lead the blindfolded hostages up the long stairs towards the door. This was more fun that he'd hoped! Bruce was playing along so nicely, and it was obvious the years apart had been kind to the billionaire. His body was tightly muscled, and even through the black trousers, the Joker could see his thighs flex impressively. Even with the blood loss, his strength must be incredible.
Flicking a switch, the screen swapped from Bruce to another cluster of hostages. There were eight this time, but no thugs around them, and as soon as Bruce had dropped his charges off with the police, he'd fall straight into the next challenge.
Jerome leant back, grin lining up with the red artificial grin across his cheeks, this was going to be such fun!
•
It was Detective Gordon who wordlessly accepted the hostages from Bruce at the door. Although he didn't recognise him, one long look up and down Bruce's torn facade earned a terse nod from the intelligent Detective, and Bruce was allowed to retreat back inside, gritting his teeth as the doors swung back and relocked as soon as his back was turned.
Somehow, the unspoken blessing from Gordon rekindled the fire inside him, the burning desire to achieve justice coursing through him and concealing his body's pain. The slight fuzziness around his vision was easier to ignore, and when the lights went out, Bruce was ready.
He pulled the night-vision goggles back down over his eyes. Painted on the floor in front of him in neon green paint, was an arrow. It pointed out from the foyer into into the depths of the bank. Bruce lifted the night vision goggles to look at the blank space in the floor, before replacing them to watch the arrow swim back into existence. That had been painted hours ago. This was planned. This whole operation had relied on him showing up, but for what purpose?
As much as Bruce was now loath to trust anything the Joker had left for him, he needed to play along just long enough to save the hostages. "The next challenge is just down this hallway", the Joker sniggered, "This time, there's four to save, you feeling up to it?".
Bruce limped down the hallway with determination, his eyes meeting every camera he saw angrily. Then he came to a door. It, like the arrow, was painted invisibly to the naked eye, and the speakers rattled. "Well? Aren't you going in?".
Bruce glanced around the doorframe for any foul play, and coming up empty, he pushed the door open warily. The room was well lit, with eight bound and gagged hostages in the middle of the room, but there was nobody else there. The walls were bare, and there was nothing decorating the room for anyone to hide behind. Bruce didn't like it.
He took one step into the room, and when nothing happened, another. Five strides took him to the hostages. He was just reaching to untie one of them, when the Joker spoke, "I wouldn't do that, if I were you".
"Round two! You have proven your battle readiness and raw strength, but now you must prove your intelligence. Half of these hostages are real hostages! But half are clowns in disguise. If you take the wrong ones out, they will send out a signal setting off a bomb somewhere in the city!", Bruce took a step back. Walking around the group. There were six men and two women, but they all looked terrified. There was nothing separating one from another, all their clothes were the same.
Bruce walked out from the room, back away from the arrows. "Where are you going?", the Joker yelped over the speakers, "Aren't you going to save them?". Bruce was walking with purpose through the corridors, and the Joker only realised at the last moment, towards the control room.
The Joker crooked an eyebrow curiously, but it was impossible. There was no way Bruce could tell. He watched on camera as the masked vigilante kicked down the control room door and barged inside.
Bruce growled. The joker wasn't even there, instead, there was a device with many twisting wires hooked up to the monitors, and a note. It was in the same crayon as the ransom letter, 'Wouldn't disconnect this if I were you'.
"Push the button and speak into the microphone to talk to an employee", The Joker said in an mockery of a public service announcement, and Bruce spotted two buttons on the machine next to a extended microphone. He glared up at the camera in the corner.
"Well I couldn't make it that easy", the Joker's voice teased, "You have to choose. Which button is the right one? And which..", a screen flickered to Bruce's left, revealing a hostage wired up to a pile of dynamite, "...Will blow up the hostage". Bruce just stood there for a while, before sitting down in the chair. A annoyed scuffling ratcheted down the speakers, "And I'll blow them all up if you don't choose!".
Reaching out, Bruce ran his finger over the left button. It was the smaller one, black and inconspicuous next to the bulging red button. Before he could change his mind, Bruce pushed it in.
Nothing happened. There was no resultant explosion, and the hostage in screen didn't change, she didn't even move. Bruce froze, eyes fixed on the corner of the screen. It read 19.03.45. It had read that for the last minute. It was a paused picture.
"Joker", he growled down the microphone, knuckles white. Jerome sat back in his chair, grinning, "You were lucky, weren't you? Tch tch tch, if that had been the wrong one!". The masked man on screen grit his teeth, and pushed the black button in again, "Where are the real hostages?". Jerome quirked a brow, "Real hostages? Back in that room where you left them!", "Those weren't the real hostages. They were all your lackeys".
Leaning forward, the Joker narrowed his eyes, "What makes you say that?".
Bruce smirked, a self-satisfied, devilishly clever smirk, and a lightning zinged down Jerome's stomach, "There were only two men left from the hostages in the video earlier, and there should have been five women. If you want to trick me into blowing up Gotham, you'd need to be more accurate", Jerome narrowed his eyes. This was something new, something he hadn't seen in Bruce before.
Jerome recovered, slapped his forehead, and grinning widely, "Well spotted, Touché!". The masked man onscreen dropped his smile, completely serious, "Where are the other hostages". The Joker chuckled, "I had so much more planned, was really going to make you run, but that was clever. Really clever, so I'll give you a grand total of five hostages for free!". Bruce dropped his hunched shoulders in surprise, before tensing again, "What's the catch?". "No catch! Just a small gift between friends. Let me see, they're on the second floor third door to the right. There won't be any guards, and the front door will be unlocked".
Bruce took off, out the control room and down the corridor. He hated it, but he had to trust the Joker to save these people. His eyes were getting slowly more fuzzy, and the world was spinning slightly. He looked down to his shoulder, where the bandage was soaked through and dripping. He pushed himself through it, determination fuelling his weak body.
The hostages were exactly where the Joker said they would be. Four women and a man, the same ones from the video earlier. The journey back down was incredibly painful, with the bullets deep in his calf dissing in worse and worse with every step. Bruce had to lean against the doorframe of the bank as he handed over the hostages, and Detective Gordon's eyes lingered on the blood-soaked rag tied around his shoulder, and the steadily leaking holes in his leg. He didn't say anything though, only nodded sharply, and escorted the blindfolded hostages away.
This time, when the doors closed behind the last hostage, there was no knowing cackle from the black disks in the ceiling, there was only silence. Even with the night-vision goggles over his eyes, Bruce couldn't see anything to tell him about the last two hostages. He had to endure the long, painful drag to the control room once again.
"Joker", he snarled into the microphone, "Give me the last hostages now!". It was silent for a few moments, and Bruce was a little worried the man had just left, before the same voice filled the control room, "What's the magic word?". Bruce's hand snapped out to brace himself on the desk as he wobbled, "NOW!". The Joker sighed, "So impatient, one would think you didn't want to spend time with me". Bruce began to growl, low in his throat, and the same lightning zapped from Jerome's sternum downwards.
The Joker wasn't exactly sure how he felt about this new development. It was distracting, and he had a job to do. He needed to finish the job, then he could retreat to think this over. "Fine", he sighed, "One last game, then you can leave, but you can only have one. And you have to choose". A cold smile creased the corners of Jerome's mouth, "You decide which one lives, and you can only save one in time, I'm afraid".
A shard of ice replaced Bruce's spine, "In time?", he muttered, and a huff of laughter came out the speakers, "Yes. In exactly five minutes from when I press this nice, red button in front of me, this lovely bank will be but a smear on the pavement".
"Where are the hostages!", Bruce roared, "I'm going to tell you!", the Joker laughed, "I'm going to tell you where they both are, and you'll have to choose, but first, I'd better give you a bit of a backstory for these two".
"The woman is a thief and a murderer, she's killed countless people over the last two years, and the police have been looking for her for even longer", The joker paused, "And the man is one of Don Maroni's head honchos. He's one of the big-shot cocaine dealers, spreads thousands of pounds worth of product through Gotham's street a year, and lives like a king because of it".
The Joker leaned back and forwards in his chair, the squeaking piercing through the speakers, "He's in the managers office, and she's in the safe. Who will you save?". Bruce stood there for a few seconds, frozen, and the speakers crackled, "I hit the red button two minutes ago, by the way".
Bruce was running. He tore down the corridors like he was completely uninjured, only stumbling once when his leg decided to give way. He went down, down the staircases, underground. Past the still-unconscious body of the clown, and to the door of the safe. It was open, thank god. And crouched inside was a dark-haired young woman. She glared up at him defiantly, and Bruce's breath caught in his throat.
Selina.
He swept her up in his arms, not even bothering to untie her, and took the stairs two at a time. What was worse, was the Joker had taken to counting down the seconds.
"15, 14, 13, 12", Bruce was at the top of the stairs, "11, 10, 9, 8", in the foyer, his left leg threatening to give way, "7, 6, 5, 4", the door, the front door was barely meters away.
"3, 2, 1".
The bank exploded. Glass shattered and a noise like the roaring of a monstrous beast shot over Bruce's head from his position behind one of the police cars. People screamed, and the groaning of the metalwork the only warning before the building started to collapse. Bruce left Selina, running back towards a pair of cops that were standing too close, were going to be crushed by the falling building. He snatched them up in either arm, dragged them out of the danger zone, before collapsing barely five meters into the nearest alley. He could barely move.
Knocked on his ass, singed, bullet-riddled and bleeding, Bruce was a pitiful sight. He barely managed to pull his phone from the back of his torn trousers, and his hand was shaking so badly. Bruce's vision was so fuzzy it was a miracle he managed to call Alfred at all. His arm gave up, falling weakly to the floor and letting the phone skid to a few meters away, squawking.
"Master Bruce? Hello? Master Bruce?".