So: Chapter 9/12. Wow. This one is so close to being concluded. Yay conclusions! PLEASE tell me what you think about all this in a review, I could really use some feedback. I gotta know how you all feel about moving on into the next game canon! Cuz I'm getting excited. There's real potential for action, in that installment. (I just loved Arkham City, it was a fabulous game... totes enjoying the Catwoman dlc, now that I have Live.) I wanna throw my people out into the world and make them all do things.
*Also there is potential for smut. In the future. Maybe. Perhaps. You'll have to find out. Mwahaha.
I love you. Review.
Chapter Nine: The Mirror's Edge
25 September 2009, Friday
Three months and five days after the Joker Rebellion
Countdown to breakout: six days
I woke up on my couch just as the sun was peeking through the overcast skies outside.
My head throbbed terribly, and even the weak morning light stung my gritty eyes like tiny daggers. When I swallowed, my tongue felt like cotton and my throat had the consistency of sandpaper. My breath tasted stale and my stomach was already rolling. My body was achy and stiff. The pounding behind my eyes was merciless. I must have been asleep for at least twelve hours.
I was still in my lab coat; my ID badge dug sharply into my ribcage where it had become trapped between my body and the cushions. I felt grimy and disgusting, and I was sure I smelled no better than a city alleyway.
I'd spent four and half hours in the bar, yesterday. Drinking. And drinking. And... drinking.
Vaguely I remembered the odd, knowing stares of the other bar patrons as I'd sat down to order a drink in full Arkham regalia. I remembered ignoring them, and how eventually they ignored me, too. The rest of it was a blur, but one that ended with me worshipping my own porcelain throne for several hours upon arriving home.
But I had premeditated the whole ordeal upon exiting Intensive Treatment, the day before. My car was still at Arkham. I'd walked the bridge to the mainland and taken a cab the rest of the way.
My boss was dead, I was juggling conspiracy theories about the morality of one of my colleagues, my Rogue patient was as confounding as he was arrogant, my job was hanging in the balance of a financial nightmare...
I had needed to get drunk, badly, and so I had done so.
And now, here I was: a pitiful grease stain on my couch. I needed a shower. And coffee. I considered my pantry for a moment, trying to remember if I had anything by way of simple carbohydrates... I felt my stomach lurch dangerously and perished the thought.
I made to move, grimacing past my throbbing headache, but my limbs failed me at the last second and I slid ungracefully off the couch, landing on the wood panelling with a jarring thump.
"Eeeuuuurrrgh." The sound that escaped my throat was distantly reminiscent of a whale's death rattle.
It took an immense effort, but I managed to drag myself into the shower. Then I brushed my teeth, put on a pot of coffee, palmed some ibuprofen, and threw a load of laundry into the wash. I did my best to not think of what exactly was all over my lab coat as I stuffed it into the machine.
Ultimately I returned to the couch, bleary-eyed and aching. The house was quiet, save for the distant hum of the washing machine and the trickle of percolating coffee in the kitchen. I lifted my gaze to the digital clock on my cable box. Seven-sixteen in the morning. The sun was still trying in vain to break through the morning cloud cover, and I could see the wind whipping through the flag on the corner of the block. The weather had not let up at all, this season. The cold spell that had arrived in late autumn now appeared to be the harsh grip of an early winter; once it had set it, it refused to let go. Gotham winters were notorious for being frigid, but this felt different. This was a merciless cold, one that belonged at the poles and not in north-eastern America.
The silence began to burn my ears. The corner of my eye twitched.
Too much nothing.
Already too nauseous to handle any further stress, I snatched up the remote and flicked on the TV, turning the volume down low so I could hear without it grating on my migraine.
I was met with a helicopter's view of the asylum.
"-and the bidding prices have continued to rise."Vicki Vale's high-pitched yet slightly nasal whine accompanied the aerial view of Arkham. "Quincy Sharp is now unavailable for comment, but he has stressed that the future of the Arkham programme is secure, and that plans for constructing New Arkham are already in motion. Our sources..."
I had startled, taken aback by that last piece of information. 'New Arkham?' He already had plans for a new precinct? Since when?
The camera cut to Vale herself, standing bundled against the wind at the entrance to the Arkham bridge, on the mainland side of the bay. The sun was rising off in the corner of the shot, illuminating the thick haze of clouds on the skyline. This was a live report, I realised.
"... that profits gained from selling Arkham Island will fund the construction and outfitting of the new facility. The location of the precinct has yet to be unveiled, but-"
Feeling queasy, I flicked the TV off and tossed the remote onto the floor. In the quick silence that followed, I heard the coffee pot click off. Unsteady in all senses of the word, I shuffled to the kitchen and poured myself a mug of flat,black caffeine; then I sat down at my small dining table with the steaming cup in front of me, wrapped my hands around its warmth.
What is going on? I may have whispered the question aloud. What is happening? Why is this happening? And what am I supposed to do about it?
Numbed by my inability to answer those questions, I spent the next half hour sipping coffee, nibbling toast, and making myself presentable. I seemed to have fallen into a kind of stupor and my mind, for once, was blank. My body was going through the motions; my thoughts were elsewhere, disengaged from the present. I imagined it was a little like being a ghost.
I left for work early, once my lab coat was clean and dry. The small part of me that was conscious of the present reasoned that an early start meant I could leave before late evening. It further reasoned that leaving early meant I had more time to think. The rest of my brain pessimistically pointed out that I wasn't capable of much thinking, at the moment, and that such was unlikely to change very soon.
I'd called a cab, since I didn't have my car. A light rain had started up and traffic was slow, even this early in the morning. The cabbie had the radio on, and despite myself I couldn't help but listen. It was the Jack Ryder show. He spent a while repeating the same information I'd heard on the news, but then he began a conversation with a studio guest that had just arrived. That was when my attention was caught entirely, and I was suddenly awake. My focus zeroed in on the words emanating from the cabbie's radio, and my eyes stared unseeing out the backseat window.
"Well, Frank, nobody's talking about it but I won't keep quiet, I won't," Ryder started saying.
"What are they not talking about, Jack?" the man called Frank replied. He sounded much more laid back than Ryder, and talked with the air of an old-school politician. Frank who?
"I did some digging, Frank, and you know what I found? Ground has already been broken on the New Arkham project, they're already building."
"They are?" Frank sounded very surprised. Then, "How did you find that out?"
"My sources have asked to remain anonymous, but they're building, Frank, they are. And I'll be honest, here, I don't see how that's possible. Arkham Asylum is suffering financially but Sharp still has money to pay for construction? Remember those employee budget cuts, Frank? I think it's suspicious, I really do. You don't just cut payment to your employees to build something without consulting the board. It's just not right. It's irresponsible."
"Well, how do you know they didn't discuss it with the board?"
"We'd hear about it, wouldn't we?"
"Not necessarily, Jack..."
"So you think they kept it a secret? Why hide something like that from the public?"
"Well, maybe they wanted to wait, to be sure about-"
"Slashing paychecks seems pretty sure, wouldn't you say?"
"Jack..."
"I'm serious, Frank. I think it's fishy."
"Well-" Frank cut in with a stronger voice, "Well I think it's a good thing, what Sharp is doing. Arkham's a mess, you've seen the footage. It's unsafe, it's unclean, the quality of the security is the worst it's ever been... I think Quincy's right to start a new project and sell the island. And if he had to cut a few paychecks to do it, by all means. You gotta think about what's good for the city."
"You're talking about things like the Joker Rebellion," Jack sounded irked.
"Sure," Frank seemed to shrug. "Arkham is old land. Hell, it was old when the asylum was first founded by Jeremiah himself. If there's anything to blame for all the baddies breaking out, it's the land."
"The land."
"Yeah. The land."
"But if this is such a good thing, Frank – work with me here, Frank – why would they keep it from the public? Why wouldn't they let us be there to give them support?"
"I think it's up to the public, anyhow," Frank went on, brushing aside Ryder's pressuring. "Election day is tomorrow, after all. It'll be pretty obvious where the support is, once the votes come in. I think Quincy can do us some good, and the rest of Gotham just might think the same."
Wait. Election day was tomorrow? How had I missed that? Wasn't it too early in the year? It dawned on me that I had completely lost track of the date; I couldn't remember what day it was.
"But sacrificing-" Ryder had become increasingly distressed. Frank cut him off again.
"Sometimes sacrifices gotta be made for the greater good. In light of recent events... I'd say it's time for a real change, here. You have to agree with that, at least, Jack."
"Hey, lady." A new voice startled me, and its volume drove a knuckle into the residual ache of my migraine. I realised that the cab had come to a stop. The bay was outside my window. "We're here. You gonna get out, doc?"
It took my limbs an extra few seconds to connect with my brain, and belatedly I started moving to get out. "...Yes, thank you..." I fumbled with my purse, searching for my wallet. As I tried to hand over a twenty, the cabbie raised a halting hand.
"No charge." He gestured to the radio. "Sounds like you guys are in for it, these next couple of weeks." He tipped his cap at me, and his stubble-obscured expression was grim. "Good luck, doc."
"Um... thank you." Awkwardly I climbed out, straightened my coat as I stood. "You too." It sounded like a question. I slammed the door shut and stepped up onto the curb, watching as the cab pulled back into the morning traffic in one swift arc. Then I turned to face Arkham, staring out over the grey water. Through the haze of misty rain, I could still make out the warped shapes of Ivy's vines curled around the mansion and jutting from the island itself, disappearing into the bay like the tentacles of a giant octopus.
Unsafe. Unclean. It pained me to accept that Frank's words held more truth than he could ever imagine. But he was right. Arkham Island was dying. It had been dying for a while.
Maybe it was time to start over. Maybe Sharp was actually doing the right thing.
Thoughts of Hugo Strange wafted across the desolate wasteland of my consciousness. What about him? What about the experiments? The seizures? The nurses? The death of Smith, and Quincy's illness?
I started walking. I didn't know what to think any more.
It was in my email when I booted my computer that morning. An announcement that made me even more confused and distraught than I had thought myself capable. I was losing myself in stress, fear, frustration, hopelessness.
Strange.
Hugo Strange had been "temporarily" promoted to the rank of Assistant Warden.
I had sat at my desk, staring at the message without expression. I was beyond making faces, at that point. After over a minute of still silence, I had simply closed my outlook and started rifling through the paperwork in my inbox; Nygma had not visited my office last night, given the slightly disorganized state of my desk. Everything had been as it I'd left it the morning before. That information had inspired no emotions in me. I was numb, again.
Presently I was filing patient reports with shaky hands. The dregs of my sixth cup of coffee sat near the edge of my workspace, going cold. The heaters were acting up this morning, and so I could faintly see my breathe as I worked. My hands were white and papery from the dry cold.
I set my work down abruptly. Ugh. The coffee was going through my system too fast. I hadn't been able to eat enough before leaving work.
The walk to the restrooms was a bit of a lengthy one. Only a handful of them worked properly, any more, particularly after the cold began to seep into the pipes at night. At least two water mains had burst in this past week alone. There simply wasn't enough janitorial manpower to keep up with the crumbling asylum.
Unsafe. Unclean.
Arkham is dying.
I used the bathroom and then washed my hands – as thoroughly as I could bear – in the freezing tap, stared bleakly into the murky mirror above the sink. In its clear patches I saw the stark reflection of my own face.
The harshness of my appearance beneath the fluorescent lights startled me.
When was the last time I had actually looked at myself in the mirror? Really looked?
Brown hair, pulled back into a austerely practical upknot. Hollowing cheeks from days upon days of barely remembering to eat properly. Deep wells of shadow had gathered beneath my eyes. Wide, stressed, fearful eyes. The irises were a greyish brown, today.
There were cracks in the mirror's corners, a spiderwebbing of fractures that splintered the reflected image, fraying its borders. Frayed. That's how I felt. Splitting at the seams, wearing at the edges...
The metaphor began to uncover an epiphany:
Frayed.
Things were moving too fast, falling down around my ears, spiralling out of control. Out of my control. It made me afraid. It made me want to run. It made me feel like I was being torn in two, either half of my mind and body threatening to split off in different directions. Like I had reached a fork in my path. Like I was idling at the vertex of a decision, unable to choose which path to take.
A decision. Change was in the wind, settling in with winter as its harbinger. My mind turned over and over as I stared into the reflection of my own gaze, churning through emotions as thoughts long left unaddressed were finally brought to the forefront. I felt myself on the dawn of a realisation. The fog in my head began to clear, and the diverging path before me finally became apparent. And all at once, the world came into jarringly crystalline focus.
Oh.
I leaned away from the sink, shoulders squaring as the weight of my stress slipped away. The tension in my jaw slackened. My hands, curled into fists, relaxed. The face staring back at me in the cracked mirror was transformed.
I understood. And what was more, I believed.
Breaking the stillness with a sudden chirp that should have startled me but did not, the pager on my belt went off. With a calm hand I silenced it, read the number on its display. An urgent summons from my secretary.
Odd.
Pocketing the device I filled my lungs with an almost painfully deep breath, exhaled meditatively, and then swept from the bathroom in the direction of my office.
There was a nurse standing at my secretary's desk when I arrived. She held herself consciously and with a businesslike sternness that I immediately had a respect for. It took an extra moment to place her, but I recognised her from my first visit to Nygma in Intensive. McAllister, was her name. I never forgot a name. The nurse addressed me as soon as I was within her sight.
"Doctor DeLane." Her Scottish brogue was familiar, even comforting. "Yer patient is en serious condition. He's reactin' voilently to 'is medication an' he won't let anyone near 'em, not eiven fer a sedative. Keeps askin' fer you, only you. I suggest yeh come with me if yeh expect 'im to survive the hour."
I was already walking, and she was already following. Between her presence and the strange peace of mind I had just achieved minutes before, I was unfazed by this turn of events. Instead I took it all in stride – I dispassionately felt myself question Why and How and Could this another trick or another warning – and the potential stress and confusion rolled off me like water on the feathers of a duck. Imperviousness was an odd sensation, but it was welcome.
"Thank you for coming for me," I told the nurse, and that was the last we spoke until we reached triage in Intensive Treatment. It seemed that only moments had passed between standing outside my office and entering the triage ward of Intensive, as I lay eyes upon my patient, being held in place by a pair of guards as he kicked and shouted, time abruptly slowed around me.
There was something inherently cleansing about my work. Something about the rush of adrenaline that comes when I am needed, when my hands are working to save a life, when my thoughts were a lightning show of neurons speaking to each other, when the world was reduced to the planes of the body and the mechanics of life were the only forces that mattered. When there is only a task left before me, an act, a series of events that leads to a definite conclusion. Medicine had a neatness, a sterility of focus and purpose: heal, solve, repair. You were presented with a problem, and you simply had to find the answer.
Isolated on my own plane of serenity, I pushed the guards aside and took over securing Nygma to the exam table. In a moment I took in his symptoms and caught sight of the fresh crimson bloom spreading down the sleeve of his jumpsuit; the diagnosis was inherently obvious.
We stabilised Nygma within minutes– nurse McAllister and I worked together with seamless efficiency. Distantly I had been aware of our audience, a gaggle of onlookers comprised of guards, nurses, and a female doctor I did not recognise. I watched McAllister start an IV without prompt, then move to assign the other nurses to new tasks. She seemed to know exactly what I wanted, almost before I wanted it. She was sharp and focussed, and it was immensely refreshing. The guards, seeing all was calm, returned to their posts in the hallway. But one of the bystanders stood their ground, refusing to be ushered away:
"What exactly happened?"
The insistent voice was instantly grating on my ears. I turned on the loitering observer and found myself eye to eye with the unfamiliar doctor. Not a medical doctor, judging by the queasy tinge to her cheeks as she glanced repeatedly at my gloves, which were slightly gory from dressing the gash on Nygma's arm. There was something about her presence that literally gave me a twitch beneath my eyebrow.
"Who are you?" I asked, sidestepping her question. The woman stood a little straighter.
"Doctor Farren, Edward's therapist."
My eyes widened for a brief second. Farren. The one that cosigned the order for Nygma's dose of Clozapine, the medication that caused his seizure. A collaborator with Strange.
She acquired a practised look of self-importance. "He was administered his medication before transport, and began exhibiting signs of illness a little while after we began our session. Is there a problem with his dosage?"
"Apparently, miss." McAllister spoke up rather abruptly, and with no lack of condescension. The nurse stared at Farren with hooded eyes, her expression intensely unimpressed. "It's pretty obvious that his medication 'ent agreein' with hem, today."
"His symptoms are in alignment with an overdose," I clarified, marking the therapist's flustered reaction to being mocked. "We have to consider the various ways that this could have occurred. Was the dosage at all increased from its normal range?"
"No, of course not." Farren was suddenly on the defensive. "The Haloperidol dosage has not been altered since Edward's first months in this institution."
"Have you added any other medications to the Haloperidol schedule?"
That one gave her pause, but one of embarrassment. We shared a moment of eye contact that communicated our mutual knowledge of each other's involvement in the Clozapine incident. I may have imagined the muted cough of amusement from McAllister, who was currently clearing away bandage waste from our workspace.
"There have been no alterations," Farren insisted. Her cheeks had reddened. Privately, I admitted that making her crow with denial was rather enjoyable.
"How did he obtain the laceration on his arm?" I tossed out.
"I... I'm not sure. He lashed out several times when the orderlies were attempting to secure him... Perhaps he cut himself."
I absorbed that, then soberly continued, "We have to explore the possibility that this was done deliberately."
"-You're accusing me of-!"
"On his own," I finished. "It is possible he stockpiled medication to take all at once."
"Don't be ridiculous," Farren objected, "Edward is a textbook narcissist. I have never seen anyone with such an overdeveloped sense of self-worth. He had no motivation for suicide."
"Attention, perhaps?" I supplied. "A narcissist loves company when it's focussed on himself. But, you're the psychiatrist. I suppose you would know best." I paused. "But if he didn't do it himself, Doctor Farren, then that makes you or one of your orderlies responsible."
Farren seemed unsure how to respond to that information. She blanched. I added, "Just something for you to ponder. Now, if you'll excuse us, we have a patient to stabilise. I suggest you reschedule your session for another time and continue on with your day."
And I turned my back on her, pointedly, and began to exchange my bloodied gloves for a fresh pair. I eventually heard the swinging double doors to triage waft open and closed again, and the clacking of Farren's heels became muffled by the distance. Just as soon as the psychiatrist was completely out of earshot, McAllister let out a big breath and scoffed.
"Ef she warr my therapist, I'd try ta off meself, too!"
"Surely you've seen enough evidence to stop doubting me, now."
I'd known he was awake; he'd never quite lost consciousness and to spare his system the stress of the overdose we'd forgone sedatives. McAllister had fetched me the stitching equipment before departing to collect a patient report, and Nygma had not wasted a moment to open his big, boasting mouth.
"I remember you saying that there was evidence," I responded calmly, taking my time in formulating my thoughts, "but that things would progress the same whether I acknowledged it or not."
"There is, and it has. Surely you've noticed it all. Hatter's condition, the nurses, the patients, Sharp, the dead Warden, my intellectually stunted therapist?"
"Yes, But none of it is solid. It's all conjecture and speculation. Deduction. It's connections made out of assumptions."
"All of it is solid!" It took less than two seconds for Nygma to become intensely irate, words acquiring a bitter, angry slant. "You see, you observe, and then you deny! You neither believe what you see nor trust what you understand! What more could you possibly require?"
I was silent for a while, concentrating on securing the thick sutures in his skin. Nygma seemed too irked to acknowledge any pain it caused. "You assume a lot," I started again, "in saying that I still don't believe you. I didn't say I still denied the things I was seeing, did I?
He was thrown off for a moment. It was an interesting reversal.
"But you..."
"I said that your evidence was sketchy. You assumed my denial and ran with it... You've assumed your own inherent superiority to the point of being blind to the contrary. Not very smart of you, in hindsight." I tied off the last stitch, cut the thread. "There is a plague of corruption spreading through the asylum, and it seems to be reaching out for the city itself. I admit it. I see it. I acknowledge it. Congratulations, Edward: you've opened my eyes to something I can do nothing about. At this point, I think I almost would have preferred to stay in the dark."
Nygma blinked at me, jaw loosely ajar, looking distant and confused. He was speechless. I had rendered the biggest mouth of the city speechless.
"I know what you tried to accomplish today, Edward. But if Gotham is about to go the dogs, I have work to attend to in preparation. Don't expect me to come to your aid every time you endanger yourself to prove a point. The game is over, I passed the test, I solved your riddle. It's time for us both to move on."
A number of retorts seemed to cycle through his mind, mouth silently moving to start them but never reaching a decision.
"Go to your session tomorrow and taunt your idiot therapist if you want." I tossed my waste and cleaned my scissors. "Take your medication, or don't, I suppose it doesn't really matter. Enjoy your free meals and central heating while they last. Because if the new precinct is as I suspect it's going to be, then this sad excuse for an asylum will seem like paradise in a few months."
I stored the last of my equipment and peeled off my examiner's gloves. Then I made for the double doors, calling back to him with a final, "Try not to do anything too stupid, Edward."
At nine o'clock that night, long after the office had been deserted, Edward Nygma had his ankles crossed on the corner of the Rogue-Doctor's desk, stretched out leisurely in her creaky roller chair. A few makeshift cables criss-crossed the space between her computer and her phone, connecting the two. The computer was on, displaying the programme he'd spent ten minutes writing that granted him untraceable access to all the phone lines on the island's landline system.
Ah, the Rogue-Doctor. What a conundrum she had turned out to be.
The old desk phone was cradled between his shoulder and his ear. As he listened, Edward idly scribbled across a sudoku tile from a newspaper in the secretary's desk, filling in the solutions as if he'd designed the tile himself.
"Do not fret, Mr Sharp," the deep voice was saying, words flowing with a slow, sickly lilt that could only be attributed to hypnotism. "Everything is under control, I promise you."
"It's not that I don't trust you, Hugo."Sharp's voice was a strained whimper, displaying the intense nature of his physical and psychological suffering. "It's just... the headaches, the pain... They come all the time now."
"Continue to take the medication." Strange's voice became hard, forceful.
"I-"
Sharp was interrupted before he could finish the syllable, and Strange's voice regained its sickly lilt. "It is late, Mr Sharp... You need your sleep."
"...Of course. I need my sleep..." Sharp was suddenly resigned.
"You will hang up, now."
"I... I will hang up, now."
There was a click as Strange replaced the phone to its cradle, but Edward had hacked both the phone line and the voicemail speakers, and so the transmission continued.
"Imbecile," he heard Strange growl to himself.
"I couldn't have put it better myself." Edward finally spoke, loud and unabashed, into the receiver of the Rogue-Doctor's phone. He tossed aside the ridiculously simple sudoku set, now completed.
"What?" A note of panic, accompanied by the harsh swivel of a desk chair. "How dare you enter my office!"
"Oh, I'm not in your office." Edward smirked, mildly amused. "And please, don't insult me by trying to trace this broadcast. You will fail."
"...I take it I am talking to Mr Edward Nygma."
What an abysmally stupid question. "Do you know of any other inmate in your twisted little penitentiary ingenious enough to arrange this little chat?"
"Narcissism!"It was a bark of condescension."A compulsive desire to prove his intellect, and a predilection for riddles..."
Edward's face brightened proudly and he gushed, "You've read my file!"
"Of course." They were a menacing pair of syllables, but the Rogue remained unconcerned.
"Good," he said. "Then let's get started." Edward uncrossed his ankles and sat forward, pressing closer to the desk. Adrenaline coursed through his system, come alive with the excitement of delivering another riddle, of stepping another pace closer to being free from Arkham's walls.
The Riddler spoke, "How do you attempt to understand what is going on in Arkham City when all the answers are... Strange?"
