An hour later Batman stood atop the roof of Northfield Laboratories and surveyed the parking lot below. "There are more cars tonight," he rumbled quietly into his radio.

"There's a mini-bus on this side, too" Red Robin reported from his position on the other side of the building.

Batman frowned. "...Arkham?" Madden had managed to convince the asylum to give him the Joker as a plaything; after that, procuring a load of less lethal inmates to experiment on shouldn't have been a challenge.

"I don't know. There are no markings. It doesn't look like one of their usual carriers, though. There aren't any bars on the windows or other reinforcing that I can see."

"...Mm."

"Can we go already?" Robin hissed beside him after a brief silence had passed.

He glanced down at the teen, annoyed with his impatience but able to understand it. "Fine," he agreed. "But I want to talk to Madden, so don't knock him out until I say so. Also..." The bus glimmered at the back of his mind. "...We'll go in under the assumption that there are guards tonight." It could be that the larger vehicle didn't mean anything in particular, but he didn't want to take the chance.

"Are we sneaking past, or taking them out?" Red Robin inquired.

"The latter." Sneaking past a busload of men only for Madden or one of his techs to call for help or press a panic button would ruin everything, and he had no intention of seeing their outing end so absurdly. "Let's move."

They descended via the same route they had used on their previous excursion, moving with care lest new security measures had, in fact, been put in place. There was nothing to slow their passage until they reached the ground level, where the squawk of a radio gave away a sentinel before he came into sight. All three masked figures halted, and Batman strained his ears to hear what was being relayed. The initial transmission was inaudible, but the response was not. "10-4," a tense voice answered whatever had been said. "Fifteen minutes. Out."

Fifteen minutes... Possibilities as to the meaning of that measurement flew through his mind. Perhaps the plane had been spotted? But surely no one would think that they required a further quarter hour to infiltrate the building. Maybe it was a signal that Madden would be arriving or leaving soon, or that there was a shift change pending. He supposed it didn't really matter; he'd have all of the answers he wanted soon enough. Glancing behind him, he jerked his head at Robin. Go. Work off some of that teenaged angst.

The only sound that resulted from the boy's assault was the gentle thump of the stunned guard's knees hitting the floor. Once the downed man was tucked away in a side closet, Batman issued his orders. "Sweep this level, and maintain the blackout. No one can know we're here until we get to Madden. We'll meet at the same stairs as before." Not waiting to see if there were any objections, he turned away and started down a hall.

"...They were all at the exits and the stairwells," Robin informed him as they came together outside a familiar fire door a short while later. "No one in the corridors."

"Same here," Red Robin concurred.

"Mm..." Batman had flattened men stationed in front of the elevators and at a distant exterior, which matched what the boys were saying. "This is a private security detail, but I don't recognize the company."

"I do," Red Robin said. "They're based in Bludhaven. I've seen them a couple of times before while out with Nightwing."

"They're not very good," Robin sneered.

"Few are against us," Batman opined. "But that's no reason to let down our guard. Now move; we have three more levels to clear before we get to what we came for, and we have every reason to believe that Madden is expecting something to happen."

The basements went much faster than the ground floor had for the simple reason that there were no doors to the outside to be watched. Two dozen black-clad bodies had collided with the cool linoleum before the trio reconvened within sight of the entrance to the anechoic chamber's lobby, but Batman wasn't satisfied. Ten of the fifteen minutes that the first mercenary had mentioned were now gone, and he still didn't have Madden in grasp. But the trap was closing, he thought with a dour smirk as he surveyed the last two men in their way, and there was no way out except past him. With a twitch of his finger, he urged his sons forward and into battle.

A few seconds later he was stepping between them as they bent down to tie their captives. The knob twisted easily beneath his fingers, and in an instant he had launched himself into the room beyond. Six still-bruised and scared-looking technicians turned to look at him with wide, panicked eyes, and memories of the last time he had stood in this place flooded him. There were no armed figures in the room, but he morphed into a whirlwind of fists and fury anyway. How could they continue to help Madden, he raged as he helped them all into unconsciousness, after knowing that he would target innocent people? To put the Joker in a torture chamber was understandable, and perhaps even laudable, but Nightwing had had nothing to do with any of it. "...You all should have quit when you had the chance," he muttered once the full half-dozen of them had been draped around the room. "No matter how good the pay was, you should have quit."

That done, he focused on his primary objective. He swept the chamber with his eyes, then narrowed them and looked again. There was no way he had accidentally knocked the psychologist out, so where was he?

In answer to his unasked question, the door into the silent room swung open. The living version of the photo on Madden's professional website stepped out, so involved with whatever was on his clipboard that he didn't look up until he was well into the control lounge. It was only when he stumbled over one of his laid-out techs that he realized something was wrong. "...Oh, no," he breathed as the color drained from his face. "The guards-!"

Batman pinned him to the wall before he could finish his sentence. For a long moment he merely stared at his prisoner, studying his pallid and fearful expression. Here was the person who had willfully, seemingly gleefully abused Dick for four straight days; here was the person who had wanted to put Bruce himself through a similar trial as a child. Here, he thought bitterly, was the only man who had ever managed to make a noticeable pacifying change in the Joker. Why, why couldn't he be two separate people, one good, one bad, instead of this awful in-between man?

"You've made a terrible mistake," Hiram Madden wheezed.

"No. You've made a terrible mistake." He could hear Robin and Red Robin beginning to secure things behind him, but he didn't look around. "You should never have dragged innocent people into this, Madden. You should never have gone across the river for your victims. You should never," he shoved against him roughly, "have involved Nightwing."

"You've got to let me go, please..." His eyes darted to the nearest phone.

"Tell me why."

"You don't understand, I need to-"

"Why?!" he roared.

"How could I resist?!" the psychologist protested, his eyes pleading. "Please, let me go-"

"Explain!"

"All right! The Joker is interesting, yes, but Nightwing...he was the perfect specimen. Healthy, vital, happy, right in the prime of life... You would not believe the things I learned from him in a mere four days." Two high spots of color swelled just below the psychologist's cheekbones as he warmed to his subject. "Why, did you know that at one point he stopped actually screaming? I've never seen anyone do something like that before. It was amazing. He acted like he was screaming, but he wasn't exhaling with any great force. It was like his brain knew it was a waste of air, but his body still needed to go through the mo-"

A loud crack filled the room as a heavy gauntlet collided with Madden's jaw. "Shut," Batman hissed, "up." It was taking everything he had not to tremble as he imagined acting Dick in the way that had just been described. I'm so sorry, chum, he lamented. I'm so sorry. But I'm going to make him pay. I promise you that.

First, though, there were questions to be asked. "How are the effects reversed?" he growled. If anyone would have an idea as to how Dick might be able to free himself from his nightmare, it was this sick, twisted man.

But Madden merely shrugged. "I have no idea."

Dual tones of outrage rang out from Batman's rear. "What?!"

"I don't know," Madden said. "I hadn't gotten around to curing him yet. If you'd given me three or four months in which to work-" His head rocked sideways as another painful-sounding smack hit home. When a little of the shock had drained from his gaze, he repeated himself. "...I don't know."

The cowled man could feel every nerve in his body thrumming with wild disbelief. It was clear to him that Madden was telling the truth – he really hadn't put any thought into how he was going to make Dick better after he'd finished destroying him completely – but that only made things worse. "And now?" he pressed in such a gravelly tone that he was almost unintelligible.

"Now you need to let me go. I've answered your questions, Batman, but if I don't make a phone call right now-"

"No. Tell me who you're working over now, damn it! You came out of the chamber right after I walked in; whose numbers are you taking now?!"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you!" Madden shouted. "There's no one in the chamber yet! I was setting it up for my next appointment!"

"...Appointment?" There was only one person Batman could think of who would have a scheduled time with the silent room, but that couldn't be who Madden was referring to. "You don't mean-"

A terrified cry came suddenly from the hallway. "Dr. Madden!" Pounding, desperate footsteps drew near. "Dr. Madden, where are the-" The man broke off, his shoes squeaking as he slid to a halt. "…Oh, god…"

"Batman," Red Robin bade, his voice carrying a hint of dread. "…Look."

Keeping Madden against the wall with one arm, Batman turned. A disheveled figure was clinging to the doorframe, his bloodless expression of utter horror made all the more stark by the livid gash slanting across his forehead. Trails of crimson had rolled south and dripped onto his scrubs, nearly obliterating the legend on the breast pocket which read 'Arkham Asylum'. "…You," he panted, raising one shaking finger to point at Batman. "You have to stop him. He…he's…"

"Escaping," Batman finished for him grimly. "I gathered as much." Dropping Madden, he strode across the room and pushed past the injured nurse. It all made sense now, and he couldn't believe that he hadn't realized it before. The guards hadn't been in place to stop him or anyone else from getting into Northfield; they'd been there to prevent the Joker from getting out once he'd been delivered. It hadn't occurred to him before that the psychopath's sessions would take place in the dead of night, but when else could they possibly have been held? No one could be allowed to see him being led in and out of the building, let alone to the basement containing the anechoic chamber, without Madden tipping his ethically deplorable and likely illegal hand. Fool, he lambasted himself for the second time that evening. You goddamn fool.

But his failure wasn't what mattered now, because in the last ten seconds everything had narrowed down to one paramount objective; capture the Joker. All others musings and missions barring those necessary to save the planet itself would have to wait.

"Batman!" Robin called him back.

He halted a few steps into the corridor. "What?"

"What do we do with Madden?"

For a moment he had no answer. Nothing short of death was too extreme of a sentence for a man who liked to drive innocent people crazy, even if he did ostensibly do so for science. And yet, the punishment ought to fit the crime…

"Give him a taste of his own medicine," he ruled finally. "I'm sure one of the technicians will be conscious enough to put in the code to release him in three or four hours' time."

Screams of denial rang out in Madden's voice, and Batman smiled as he continued on towards his new goal.