A/N: It's been a long time; I apologize! But here's the next chapter and hopefully it tides everyone over. I don't own Gotham, but if I did, it wouldn't be off the air for three months midseason.

Chapter 13

There was a raucous crowd of zoo-goers restrained only by yellow police tape and three young, baby-faced GCPD uniforms. Escorted by the manager of the entire park, Jim Gordon jostled and forced his way between a third-grade class on a field trip—the teachers murmuring concernedly amongst one another as the children tittered, wrapped in too-large winter jackets portending the months to come—and some out-of-towners with cameras swinging from their necks as they craned to see past the people in front of them into the hyena habitat.

The manager and the former detective stooped awkwardly and side-stepped underneath the police cordon and towards the railing preventing those same tourists and school children Gordon passed just moments before from falling into the pit before him. Gordon frowned and tried to process the reality of the habitat itself: no railing in the world could have prevented the fate now awaiting one of his youngest Strike Force members.

From the top of a constructed cliff erected to look like the crags of some far-off desolate canyon, one of his hand-picked team members spun slowly upside down, the tips of his fingers dangling tantalizingly out of reach of the hyenas' jaws beneath him. Blood dripped down his arms and abdomen, a horrific amount of knife wounds releasing blood without remorse from all over his body and staining his uniform and kit.

Gordon closed his eyes and swallowed down his disgust. It was impossible to tell whether the man was unconscious or dead; Gordon wasn't sure the distinction was worth contemplating as he might die of blood loss before they moved him to a hospital. Without looking at the manager, he put a hand over his mouth and swept his suit jacket out of the way with the other before resting it on his hip.

"How long has he been there?"

The manager coughed into a handkerchief, tucked it back into his pocket, and looked anywhere but the body (Gordon couldn't take his eyes off it). "It certainly wasn't there when we closed yesterday evening, Captain Gordon. One of my interns found it this morning when he was opening."

"Is there any way to the top of those rocks? I want to recover the body." Gordon exhaled heavily. The art of understatement. He needed to recover it.

"There are officers on their way up already. But it is not stable. At any time it could—"

An ominous crack echoed through the habitat and over the crowd gathered just beyond its edges. Gordon tore his eyes from the body and looked up where an officer was trying to tread lightly and ease out to the edge of the rocks. He was frozen in place, pupils wide in fear that one wrong step could send the whole false façade crumbling beneath his weight. But Gordon knew better: it was not the false rocks cracking, but the strain on the rope threatening to part entirely. The officer shuffled forward slightly and a second crack was followed by a series of loud pops.

If he'd felt the need, Jim could very well have spent the next minutes contemplating how curious it was that time seemed to move at different speeds—often in rapid succession. As it was, he was distracted by the slow-motion parting of the rope as each individual thread stretched and then separated in frays. The top of the rope swung back and forth impartially; the remained curled over, a hay-colored noodle oblivious to the fate of the man previously suspended by it. The painfully long split-second that sealed the Strike Force member's fate transitioned to a fast-forwarding of the next minutes in Gordon's mind as the body thudded to the ground and the pack of ravenous hyenas descended upon the corpse of a hero.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, its timbre edged with resignation, a voice told Gordon it was the fate of all good things in Gotham to suffer similarly. He watched as the hyenas quartered one of the most promising young members of the Gotham City Police Department and tried not to consider two of the five Strike Force volunteers had now paid the ultimate sacrifice in less than a week, and that the last three were all-too clearly earmarked for the same fate.

"Your donation is completely unnecessary, Mr. Wayne, but it will not be forgotten. Your family has always been incredibly generous to this museum, and on behalf of our entire staff and patrons, I cannot begin to thank you enough."

Bruce Wayne smiled, embarrassed at the overzealous gratitude, and shrugged. "You're letting me wander around completely alone for half a day. The least I can do is compensate for all the lost contributions to the Foundation. I heard you had something of a tragedy not too long ago?"

The curator nodded sagely and waved for Bruce to follow as she turned and walked slowly across the massive lobby of the Gotham Museum of Natural History. "It is a tragedy, plain and simple. We worked for years to convince the owner of those pieces to allow them to be used for a special exhibit and then the night of all those killings…someone stole the centerpiece."

The elderly woman, stooped with age, eyes large behind thick glasses, punched the elevator button and ushered Bruce inside with her. They rode in silence up to the third floor.

Bruce gestured for her to exit first and then stepped out onto the walkway curving around to the far side, the lobby kiosk and marble floor stories below sitting silently. He looked up at the ring of skylights and furrowed his brow. "And that's how the burglar got in and out?"

Following the invisible line extending from his finger across the space to the skylights opposite, the curator nodded. "Yes. The glass was cut perfectly and the pane left on the roof. They will replace it once the investigation is done. Have you met Mr. Smith? He's been very insistent that the police are close to finding the thief."

Bruce followed the curator to the gated-off special exhibit hall and shook his head, even though the petite woman was looking down at the lock and key, not his face. "I have not. Captain Gordon spoke highly of him." Wayne left off the "sort of" he desperately wanted to tack onto the end of his response.

The lock clanked and popped open; Bruce gave the curator a hand sliding the gate open and smiled down at her. "Thank you for letting me in."

"My pleasure, Mister Wayne. I remember your parents very fondly. Just come find me downstairs when you're done looking around—no hall is off-limits."

He waited until she was out of earshot—not far given her age by his estimation—before muttering under his breath, "That's what I'm counting on."

Bruce walked into the richly carpeted special exhibit hall and spent close to a half hour simply walking from case to case soaking in the brilliance and clarity of one of the world's largest and valuable precious stones and gems collections. Beneath each small card noting the type of gemstone, the location and date of its discovery, and the rarity of each, a small plaque noted that the exhibit was on loan from the personal gemstone collection of the Marsh-Morton family. Bruce felt his palms start to sweat as he moved from sapphires to emeralds to fire opals to garnets to alexandrite to red beryl to taafeite and more that he could pronounce but with which Bruce was wholly unfamiliar. Diamonds were dispersed evenly throughout the hall in various colors and clarities.

Finally, after feeling a headache building as he calculated the net worth of each small, perfectly cut and polished stone, Bruce circled around the octagonal glass case in the center of the hall, its velvet display setting acutely empty given the wealth surround it on all sides. The information card described it in succinct words; however, Bruce tuned out everything except '75 carat sapphire.'

Wayne withdrew a pair of nitrile gloves from his pocket and tugged them snuggly over his hands. Deftly, he snaked a gloved hand into the display and withdrew the oval glass piece resting where a priceless necklace should have shone brightly. He hoisted the glass towards one of the display lights, tilting it back and forth. The edges were smoothly cut; too smoothly even, unless the thief used a treated blade of some kind. Bruce lowered the excised glass and surveyed the room. He put the glass back inside the display and took a step back.

He was missing something. Leaving the security of such a vast quantity of wealth to a simple padlock, a sliding gate, and some glass was bordering on gross negligence and incompetence. Bruce glanced into the corners of the room and cocked his head. Walking slowly to the far corner, he shuffled closer to the wall and peered up at the security camera poking out from the shadows surrounding the pillar in the corner. The black lens peered back at him dispassionately. He waved a hand in front of it and frowned. Cameras like these should either be motion-activated or constantly recording to be effective; yet, this one seemed to be nothing more than decoration.

Lowering his gaze, Bruce took a slow step forward and then let himself fall forward. Extending his arms, he held himself in the front leaning rest for a moment before lowering his chest to the carpet. Bruce scanned back and forth, absent-mindedly noting the softness of the threads under his hands and cheek.

There.

In a recess along the far wall, at an angle from the main entrance to the exhibit hall, a small squat cylinder was nestled against the bottom of the wall, out of view from anyone standing in the middle of the room. Wayne's initial thought was some sort of trap or rodent deterrent, but as he lunged forward and wrapped his fingers around it, his initial assumption began crumbling. Bringing the disc completely into the open, Bruce rose to a crouch. He furrowed his brow, spinning the device slowly between his fingers.

Something caught his eye, embossed onto one narrow side. He rubbed his thumb across it and angled the object so the display lighting caught the symbol. As the black-on-black symbol became visible, the temperature seemed to drop in the exhibit hall; goosebumps rose up and down Wayne's arms. The icy grip of indignation coursed through him. He tucked the disc into his fist and stood, walking from the hall in long, powerful strides as if there were something chasing him away.

Quite the contrary, he thought darkly as the elevator slowly rose to his beckoning. His hand clenched around the disc, its symbol burning hotly into his cold palm.

The device was pulling him forcibly to another location entirely.

Gordon's palm pressed angrily against the plastic of the steering wheel, the shrill keen of the horn piercing the morning rush hour unsuccessfully. He eased his pressure on the wheel before reapplying over and over in quick succession. A small voice in the back of his mind—a voice that sounded uncomfortably like Lee—reminded him that the horn was completely ineffective at making a car move forward at a red light, but Gordon didn't particularly care.

He'd warned the Commissioner this was a possibility, made known his grave reservations about bringing back Strike Force. Now two of them were dead before he could blink and the last three were missing as of that morning. Compounding the problem, as it too often did in Gotham, was the lack of evidence or leads.

Gordon laid on the horn again.

As he released it and began slapping the wheel with his palm instead, his mobile phone rang shrilly from the cup holder. The small screen blinked 'UNKNOWN CALLER' ominously.

Eyes widening warily, Gordon accepted the call and placed it on speakerphone. "Captain Gordon."

"Hi there, Jimbo."

The sounds of rush hour and the subway train rattling past a block away disappeared, all sound sucked backwards into the receiver of the phone as the menacing voice consumed his entire focus. Gordon could hear his heart pounding as the silence stretched two seconds, then three.

"Jimbo? I'm gonna need you to answer me, pal, so I know you didn't—hee hee—crash from shock."

Gordon swallowed, grabbed the phone (turning off speaker) and pressed it to his ear. "I'm still here."

"Good. See, I don'twantyoutoworryonelittlebit." The words spilled out in a single breath, the caller's excitement getting the better of him. "Your prized, uh, what do you call them? Right, 'Strike Force,' is perfectly safe and sound.

"For now." The caller's voice dropped considerably, the threat inherent in the words emphasized unnecessarily.

Jim was still reeling from the familiarity in the cocky, eager voice speaking in his ear. "Where are they?"

The caller tsk'd several times, punctuating his displeasure with a small giggle. "No, no that's not how this works! You're a detective. 'Detect' something for once, why don'tcha?"

Gordon heard the sound of the person on the other end licking their lips and then smacking them together before continuing, "I'll tell you what. I'll feeling generous today, so I'll just leave you with the knowledge that I'm going to tie up all the loose ends…you just can't be in such a rush!"

Jim jerked the phone away as the caller cackled uncontrollably at something funny only to his twisted sense of humor. Gordon punched the button with a small red phone on it, ending the unsettling call.

Silence descended uncomfortably in the unmarked police cruiser as Gordon tried to corral his breathing. Then the car horn began speaking for him even as the light remained red. This time, Gordon let it wail.

Bruce stormed right past the receptionist without waiting for her to buzz him into the office beyond her desk. He turned the handle, slid inside the door, and shut it immediately behind him, deftly flipping the lock and leaning back against the door.

"I'll call you back," interrupted Lucius Fox before placing the phone back in its cradle on his desk. He blinked—the first sign he was surprised by Bruce's unexpected arrival. "Bruce! What can I do for you?"

Noting the second sign that Fox was caught off guard—he didn't rise to shake his hand and greet him—Bruce stepped forward, placed his closed fist on the desk, and deposited the small black disk on the blotter. The matte black Wayne Enterprises logo was turned to face Fox.

Bruce sat in a richly appointed chair across the large desk as low clouds drifted past the window to his left in a wolf-grey sky. "What is that?"

The senior Wayne Enterprises executive adjusted his glasses carefully, stalling for time. Fox picked up the disc and hoisted into the air, turning it back and forth as he studied it slowly. He set the device back down and looked down his nose and over his glasses at the young Wayne.

"It's an electromagnetic interference device. There's an activating button here—you press it and wait for about three seconds. Then, it releases an electromagnetic pulse that disrupts any electronics in a thirty foot radius. We developed it a couple years back for police and Special Operations types in the military. Did your friend Gordon give you this?"

Bruce leaned forward and picked up the disc, studying it anew. He shook his head. "I found it."

Fox pulled his glasses off slowly. He echoed incredulously, "'You found it?'"

"I'd rather not say where, if it's all the same, Mr. Fox."

"Bruce, for the last time—Lucius. And it's all the same to me. But if you think it doesn't concern me that our company's technology is sprouting legs and walking out of Applied Sciences, you're mistaken."

"You didn't seem too nonplussed I wanted to look at the Future Combat Suit."

Fox smiled softly. "There aren't many people I would personally vouch for in this city, Mr. Wayne. You happen to be one of them."

Bruce withdrew his phone, quickly tapped his thumbs in a flurry of movements and waited until Fox's phone chirped happily. "And if I was asking you to let me look at all that tech too? Would you still vouch for me then?"

Fox reached for his PDA without taking his eyes off Wayne. His guest wore a blank mask, his anticipation hidden perfectly. Fox glanced down at the list and back up at Bruce. "How did you—"

"Again, if it's all the same to you, Lucius…"

Lucius Fox's eyes roamed down the list again. Smoke and tear gas pellets, oleoresin capsicum canisters, lockpicks, rappelling hooks, shurikens, a hand-held industrial grade saw, a line-launcher, sonic beacon…the list continued on, at least three dozen items in length and more and more specific as it went.

"Most of this is discontinued and in storage."

Bruce nodded and shrugged. "Or made by some of our less well-known business partners around the globe. That's why I didn't know about the EMP emitter. I guess it's still in production?"

"A best-seller."

"Add it to the list." Fox nodded and typed quickly on his PDA.

"Bruce? What—"

"Let's just say I have a better use for them than mothballs and leave it at that, shall we?" Bruce stood and smoothed his suit. He adjusted his French cuffs and crossed to the door. One hand on the handle, he paused and looked back at Fox with a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. "And Lucius? I might need some place to put it all…mobile storage, so to speak. Easy access in a bind."

Fox jabbed his glasses at Wayne and smirked. "I know just the thing."

Bruce flicked two fingers from his temple towards the executive in an appreciative salute and let himself out as fluidly as he'd arrived. Fox swiveled in his chair and stared out at the clouds.

"A true calling indeed…"