"A breakout," Batman repeated, a note of tension in his voice. "Are you sure?"

"I'm not certain," said Toby Mawson. "But with a place like Arkham, you can't be too careful."

"You're right." Batman paused. As always, he was wearing his suit of black body armour emblazoned with the symbol of the bat, and his cowl covered his face with a fierce glare and pointed ears.

It was night, and they were standing in Toby's office in his apartment, the young doctor having just relayed the hints of a breakout he had received from the Arkham inmate, Lock-Up.

Breakout.

The word gained all kinds of new terrible meaning when applied to Arkham Asylum. Escapes were regular in a place that housed criminals so inexplicable and devious. No matter what precautions were taken, someone always managed to bypass hem and celebrate their new freedom with havoc and destruction.

Large-scale breakouts were rare, but they happened often enough. Last year, the Joker had planned an escape that had freed every single one of Arkham's inmates. Thankfully, they had been confined to the island on which the asylum was situated, and Batman had stopped them. But even then, a few had escaped Batman's grasp and had made their way to Gotham to spread chaos. Even with the strongest precautions and the greatest vigilance, damage was always done.

Batman suddenly turned to the door, his cape swirling. It unnerved Toby how in the darkness, Batman could remain perfectly motionless, appearing to be more a dark statue of a blurred shadow than a man. The Dark Knight pressed a button on his wrist and raised his hand to his ear.

"Oracle," Toby heard him say. "I need a list of the..." His deep, rasping voice trailed off as he left the room. Asking for the most likely inmates to escape, Toby guessed.

He came back into the room several moments later. The space in his cowl for his eyes flashed, a screen of glowing white covering the gap in that peculiar way.

"What is that?" Toby asked, gesturing to the luminous orbs.

"Uplink to the Batcomputer," Batman said shortly. "I use it to detect things human eyes would never be able to see."

"Like what?"

Batman turned to Toby and looked him over. "Your heart is beating at 127 beats per minute. You're feeling anxious. You need to consume 633 more calories to reach your daily guideline limit." He paused, appearing to look closer. "And you used to smoke."

Toby stood there in stunned silence, before looking down at himself. Batman appeared unconcerned and looked at Toby's printer. After a moment, to Toby's surprise, it blinked into life and whirred. Several sheets of paper were printed out, and it immediately turned off again.

Batman handed the paper to Toby. "These are the files I have on several inmates in Arkham. I need you to investigate, see what they know about a breakout."

Toby flicked through them, examining the names. Anarky. Firefy. Bane. The list went on.

"Will one of them be the person planning the breakout?" Toby asked.

"Not likely," Batman replied. "But if there is an escape being planned, you can guarantee that these inmates will be involved." He paused and raised his hand to his ear again. There was the faint sound of a voice coming from it.

"Alright," he said. "I'll be there." He turned back to Toby. "Don't interview them all at once or ignore your duties as their psychiatrist – it'll look suspicious. And if you find anything out, let me know." He gestured to the table. Toby turned to look at the small signalling device he had used to call Batman to him tonight.

"I'll see what I can..." Toby said, turning. He trailed off to find himself completely alone in the room. Batman was nowhere to be found.

Toby sat in his office, looking at the list in his hands again. He had arranged his schedule so his meetings with them would appear random. It irritated him. He wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on inside Arkham as quickly as possible; he didn't want to even be near the asylum while a breakout was being planned. Still, he trusted the Batman, and begrudgingly accepted that this was the right course to take.

Sighing, he stood up and went to see his first patient of the day.

Toby had heard about Mark Desmond even before he had taken his alias of 'Blockbuster'. The man had been an extremely skilled chemist, creating many of the drugs Toby prescribed to his patients. Until one day, for reasons no one was quite sure, he had developed a formula for himself.

The man had been transformed into a monster. As Toby walked, he examined the photographs in his file. A huge body, twice the size of an ordinary human, rippling with muscles and skin so hard it seemed to be made of rock.

He had gone on a rampage, seemingly out of control. He killed criminals, cops, civilians, even his own family. It seemed like he was unstoppable, and would tear the entire city to pieces, until Batman had stopped him.

Toby reached the door to the interview room, noting the unusually large number of guards posted outside. He peered through the small glass window, before turning to the closest guard.

"Why isn't he restrained more?" he demanded, shocked.

The man was unconcerned. "It seems he needs regularly doses of the formula to preserve his strength. We take extra precautions, but nothing extreme is necessary."

Toby nodded uncertainly, not quite convinced, and stepped inside.

Mark Desmond didn't look as fearsome as he did in the pictures, most likely due to a lack of the formula, but he was intimidating enough. He looked like an adult sitting in a child's play set, hunching over the table with massive shoulders, reinforced handcuffs chaining his huge hands to the table. His skin had a strange rock-like quality to it, as if he were a golem made of stone. He looked up when Toby entered, his brutish face becoming alert. Despite his imposing physical appearance, from underneath his heavy brow stared dark green eyes, a faint light shining from within them with a hidden malice.

"Good evening, Mark," Toby started, sitting down in the opposite chair and placing his file on the table. He felt tiny, having to look up into his patient's face. "How are you feeling?"

Desmond shook his chains. "Like a caged animal," he rumbled. His voice was like an avalanche, the sound of rocks grinding and scraping together.

"A necessary precaution, wouldn't you say?" Toby asked, raising his eyebrows and looking at the hulking form in front of him. "But I have to say," Toby continued without waiting for an answer. "You don't look nearly as fearsome as your file pictures show."

"I haven't had a fresh dose of formula in months. Longer, maybe." He spoke wearily, like an addict tired of being a slave to the substance he so craved.

"So if you don't take any more of the formula, after a long enough time, you'll return to normal?"

"No," Desmond said, shaking his head. "I will always be like this. I can only grow more powerful."

"Then tell me this - why change? Why become..." He gestured toward's Desmond's monstrous body, "this?"

"I had to become stronger," Desmond said, clenching his fists. "To protect the people I loved."

"How would being stronger protect them?"

"They were being targeted by the Galantes." Desmond's eyes became distant as he thought back to clearly painful memories.

"The crime family?" Toby asked. The Galantes were one of the major Mob organisations, ruling over much of the east side of Gotham.

Desmond nodded. "My brother, Roland, he had stolen something from them. Something valuable. And in revenge, they came for our family, and then our friends. They were being killed, one by one. I developed the formula to defend them."

"But even with it, you couldn't save them, I take it?" Toby had read the file. All immediate family members and close friends killed. All except his brother Roland, that is.

"No," Desmond said quietly. "Something went wrong." He frowned, shaking his head, as if trying to work his way around his thoughts. "I must have miscalculated. I lost control; I blacked out. And I..." He trailed off, his expression becoming pained.

"And you killed her," Toby finished in a montone. "Annabelle Desmond. Your fiancee." Toby remained neutral, but he felt a swell of sympathy for both Annabelle and Desmond - the young couple were to be married a month later.

"I did. I don't remember, but I know I did. All I remember is waking up, myself again, holding her body in my arms." Desmond looked down at his hands, as if seeing it all over again, reliving the tragedy.

"My Belle..." he whispered. "This time, it wasn't Beauty killed the Beast. It was the other way round."

Desmond went silent for some time, and Toby stayed likewise, hoping for the giant to open up and talk on his own. His hopes were fulfilled a long moment later.

"Even trying to save them, they still died," Desmond continued. "Sometimes, it was me, same as with Belle. Other times, it was Galante's men. In the end, I lost them all. Every. Single. One." He emphasises each word, hissing them between his teeth in almost a growl.

"You know why, don't you?" Toby asked. "You tried to fight fire with fire. Fearing the destruction of what you love, you sought out even greater means of destruction. And you found it." He flicked through the file, studying the formula he had used. It was incredible, beyond anything he had seen before.

"Those people were my world, and they were killed," Desmond barked, suddenly hostile. Toby flinched, still wary of the man's strength. "My world ended, and all that was left was ruins."

"You could have restarted. You couuld've built a new life out of the ruins."

"Life?" Desmond demanded incredulously. His voice was becoming deeper, harsher, and the muscles in his arms rippled as he clenched his fists. "What life could I have had without her? She was my life! When she died, I died. I killed myself, just as surely as I killed her." Desmond breathed in deeply, seeming to force himself to calm down slightly. "But even then, I knew that it was inevitable," he said in a softer tone of voice.

"It's a fact of life," Toby agreed gently, nodding slightly. "Everyone has to die someday."

"That's exactly the conclusion I came to," Desmond said with satisfaction, smiling a grim, mirthless smile. "It all became so clear. I understood it all."

Toby tilted his head, frowning, thinking that his words had been misunderstood by Desmond. "Understood what?" he asked warily.

"The truth that sits right in front of our noses, but we choose to ignore." Desmond gestured all around him, at the world in general, as much as the cuffs would allow. "Everything dies," he stated. "Everything is destroyed. Our bodies age and decay, skin withering and wasting away. Buildings crumble and collapse, turning to dust. Stars are born and burn for a million years, and then they die. Even the planet itself is dying. Our world is filled with death and destruction, and everyone turns a blind eye." Desmond smirked. "You'd be surprised how many people find themselves in a hospital bed, and they only just come to the realisation that they're going to die."

"That's your justification for the things you've done?" Toby demanded in disbelief. "The world's full of destruction, so it's find to add a little more?"

"Like you said, it's a fact of life. No, not just that," he corrected himself. "It is life. Destruction is always the final destination, the end of the road, the true purpose. The purpose of life is to end."

"There's more to life than destruction," Toby disagreed. "There's creation."

"Why create when it will only be destroyed?" Desmond asked. "Why cling to life, knowing that you have to die? None of it will have meant anything once you do."

"Because we're holding on to something. Something that's worth living for."

Desmond stared at him for a long time, green eyes glaring out with a dark intensity. "I did," he said.

Did, Toby thought. Past tense. He didn't need to ask what it was. He'd had a reason to live, but he'd lost her.

"In the end," Desmond finally said, "everything crumbles, and everything burns." He sounded as if he accepted what he said, but hated it nonetheless, an unwilling slave to fate.

"True, our lives are short, but some things are meant to endure."

"Like what?"

"Ideas? Developments? Memories? We may die, but a part of us lives on in others, in society itself."

"They too can be destroyed." Desmond held up three fingers in his monstrous hand. "Killing an idea is easy. All you need is the right combination of tools, and an idea can be utterly obliterated. Take Harvey Dent. All you needed there was an explosion, a few dead bodies, and a speech." Desmond folded one finger down.

"'Developments'?" he said in disgust. "I see only decay. We tell ourselves we're improving, advancing. Greater technology fills our world, supposedly enriching life. But no one seems to notice that inside, we're dying. We're a part of the system, nothing more, nothing less. We don't live, we consume." Another finger followed the first.

"And memories?" Desmond paused, apparently considering his own. "In time, memories fade and die, just like everything else." Folding the final finger down, Desmond lowered his fist slowly and deliberately. He looked like he wanted to slam his fist into the table, to rage and destroy everything in the room, in the world. But whether it was his own self-control or his imprisonment that stopped him, either way, he sat there, wrapped in a cocoon of torrential violence.

"Do you still remember Belle?" Toby asked quietly.

"Of course I do."

"Clearly, right?" Toby became more intent. "Even when you haven't thought of her in a long time, you can just call up the memories, like that. You remember every detail. As if they were alive, right there in your head somewhere."

Desmond looked at him closely. "How do you know?" he asked curiously.

"I've lost someone too." Desmond waited expectantly, bu Toby didn't reveal anything more. "But I can tell you, it's been a long time, and those memories aren't getting any less clear. I'll hold onto them until the day I die, and so will you."

"Exactly," Desmond said, with a faint look and tone of pity. "We will both die one day. Probably unnaturally, given our lines of work. And when we're gone, what do you think will happen to those memories of ours?"

Toby paused, frowning. "We'll tell others," he said. "Keep the memory alive in other people."

"But you won't," Desmond said shrewdly, or perhaps with understanding. "You've never told anyone before, and you're not going to start." His voice became harsher. "Whoever it is you've lost, they're dead. And when we're gone, it will be as if that person never existed, just like my Belle."

Toby felt pain and anger flare up inside him, but he supressed it, clenching his jaw.

"So that's it?" he asked stiffly. "You're just going to destroy everything and everyone, so the world can feel your pain?"

"Everything will die someday. Why not today?"

"And when it's all done? When everything in the world is turned to ashes and dust?"

"Oh it doesn't end there," Desmond said, his eyes glinting.

"What then?" Toby thought for a moment, something occuring to him. "What about you?" he asked more cautiously.

"I'll be destroyed along with everything. I'm nothing special. I've just been given the purpose of doing it myself." He gestured to his massive, hulking body. "I'm just the tool, the hammer. The Blockbuster." His voice became hard, determined, and his eyes flashed with insanity. "But I won't die yet. Not until I've destroyed everything. Not until the Earth is a barren asteroid in space. Not until the universe itself is returned to the void it came from."

"You're wrong," Toby said, shaking his head. This time, he was the one who felt pity. "There's one thing that nothing can kill, not even you."

"What?"

"Hope," Toby said simply.

"Hope?" Desmond laughed, and it sounded like boulders smashing. Then he grimaced. "Hope died in me a long time ago."

"I think you've lost hope, Mark. It's not dead, you've just lost sight of it. You have so much more you could do, that you could live for. But you can't see that. Because so much in your life has been taken from you. So much that I can't even comprehend it. So much that you can't see any life in your future. Only destruction and death."

"But it's the truth," Desmond said stubbornly. "That's all there is in my future. It's all there is in anyone's."

"Or maybe you're afraid to look into your future," Toby said, staring hard at Desmond with penetrating eyes. "Are you afraid, Mark? Are you afraid that you'll lose something else? I think you are."

Desmond snarled. "How can you be afraid of losing something, when you have nothing else to lose?" he rasped.

Toby knew then that Desmond wouldn't come back. Not yet. "Well, you won't be destroying anything else while you're locked up in here."

Desmond smiled a long, slow, curving smile, liek a razor sharp dagger. "But I won't always be in here," he almost purred.

"You think that you'll be freed?" Toby asked. Then he froze and remembered. "Or you think you'll escape," he realised in a much more tense voice, remembering what Batman had said.

"Oh, I know," Desmond said confidently. "It's like I said, everything is destroyed int he end. And it will be. Even these chains here, and the bars between me and the world. Arkham will burn." A light gleamed in his green eyes, lusting, thirsting for the destruction of his prison, and Toby thought he could see the fire, already burning in his mind.

"It doesn't have to," Toby said, wanting to believe it.

"I want it to," Desmond said simply.

Toby shook his head in disappointment. "Tell me what you know about the breakout."

"I'm not telling you a thing. It won't change anything. You know your destruction is coming. When it will arrive doesn't matter - it's only a matter of time. But it will be soon."

"Mark, please," Toby pleaded. "This isn't abou your own pain; this is about saving lives!"

Desmond looked at him with scepticism plain on his face. "Lives?" was all he said.

Toby leaned forward. "This is your chance, Mark. Your chance to choose hope over despair, and save life rather than bring death. The choice is yours, and yours alone."

For a moment, Toby allowed himself to hope, as Desmond closed his eyes, frowning, as if in conflict with himself, warring with indecision. Finally, his eyes opened, and they were dead, just like Desmond's vision of the world.

"Then I choose death," he said with a note of finality. Toby held back the surge of anger and frustation. He wanted to yell and threaten, and scream and shout until Desmond told him what he wanted to know. But he didn't. All he did was pack up his files.

He stood up and left, leaving Desmond, the Blockbuster, behind him, chained to the table inside Arkham Asylum.

As he walked down the hallways, a sense of foredboding crept up on Toby. The walls of Arkham, which had appeared so strong and stable before, now looked frail, as if a strong wind could blow them over. The security guards no longer looked tough as nails, but were mere children in comparison the unstoppable force they were guarding. Everything was a little less solid, and a little more uncertain, but danger remained as constant as it ever was.

Breakout was coming to Arkham Asylum, and no one was safe.