For Your Eyes Only

Murder was the capital sin in Gotham City.

Bodies were found by citizens every day, with the manner of death being different. The killers who stalked the night proudly had wanted to take credit for it, showcasing the death of innocent as if they were nothing more than a sick move in a game of death. A game that would never truly end.

It was April and by now, Gotham had around two hundred suicides. Street crime was rampant, gangs owned their little slice of territory. If someone crossed into that territory without so much as a second thought, then the life that they lived would be over for good.

It wasn't fair, no one deserved to die alone in a trash-filled alleyway. Every homicide investigation started the same way. A detective and their partner arrived at the scene, looked over the body, and then tried to found who killed them.

If they had a family; that was the worst part of all. As a detective, Gordon understood that every victim had the right to justice and it didn't matter whether they were good or bad in life. The hardest part had been visiting the family and telling them that their child, parental figure, or sibling would never be able to come home again.

He didn't like to be the one making those house calls.

It only served as a painful reminder of what his wife….no, the ex-wife had to suffer through when he was on shift every night. Gordon didn't like to think about that, it was too painful a memory that needed to be buried. Barbara Eileen was free from that now, she had her own life in Chicago with their son; James Jr.

Someday, they'd have to visit. Barbara needed to see her little brother and the calls they both made every night wasn't enough. Maybe when the crime rate went down, they could leave Gotham for a bit, so she could have that sense of happiness again.

Without so much of a second thought, Gordon merely rid himself of those thoughts as he walked into the penthouse apartment. It was too expensive, even for his taste.

Gordon didn't want much out of life to put it simply. All he needed was a place for his daughter to eat and sleep.

The call had been placed at around two in the morning. Gordon should have been home in bed by now. By the time he got back, he did not doubt that Barbara would already be gone for school. One of these days, he'd be home early enough to do something her before she outgrew her teenage years and was off to college; hopefully off to a university as far away from Gotham as possible.

From the outside, Gordon noted the soft thump of rain. The news had indicated that there was a high chance of rain throughout the day and it didn't let up. It always rained in Gotham, casting the city in dark clouds that had no immediate end in sight.

If he wanted sunshine, then Metropolis was the way to go. But, the rain had its charm. It created an atmosphere that was unlike any other. Montoya always said that rain was the white noise of nature, something he certainly agreed with.

Detective Dagmar Procjnow had been the responding detective on scene. Given that her former partner was Thomas Burke, Gordon got the phone call from him. This sent him on the long trek to Saxon Place. If it concerned Batman, then it concerned him now. He wasn't used to working with him in secret. He felt as dirty as some of the cops on the force, even if his goals were entirely in the service of the law. Now, he was effectively the vigilante's eyes in the GCPD.

But, their alliance had benefited both parties. Gordon would have been able to know things, thanks to Batman's ability to operated outside of the law. In some respect, it was just how he had helped the Major Crimes Unit before when they trying to take down Falcone. The only difference now was that Batman was giving the tip-offs in person.

The first thing Gordon noticed as he stepped inside of the penthouse lounge was how the white and black wallpaper had been vandalized with red. He wasn't sure if it was spray paint or dried blood yet, but the same word was repeated across every wall. The letters were written in such a bold way that it was impossible to study each iteration as he passed them.

NO MORE LIES.

His first thought was City Hall. It was the only thing he knew Batman had been involved with recently. Maybe a murder on the orders of this mastermind? The evidence he had been given recently had shed light on a conspiracy involving the blackmail of Gotham's wealthiest by their own Mayor. Hamilton Hill was now using Falcone's old money man to move his money.

Procjnow and Burke were already looking around the room. Gordon caught sight of Burke awkwardly studying a shelf of photo frames rather than the body. He could understand that not everyone had the stomach to study a corpse. The two of them as partners had lasted longer than he expected.

Procjnow had a decade and a half on Burke in terms of age and experience. Burke was still considered the new kid, even if he had been a detective for nearly two years. With him, everyone chose to remember the time he hurled up his breakfast on Allen's shoes after they fished a police informant out of Gotham's Bay.

"Morning Cap," Burke managed through a yawn, running his hand through his closely cropped brown hair. "The vic's name is Clayton Reed. He was an executive manager of the Gotham City Bank. Fifty-two years old and judging his living situation and the photos on his wall, likely separated or divorced. Unfortunately as of now, he's deceased."

Gordon had to compose himself for a second. The executive manager of the Gotham City Bank was now dead. Falcone and Hill's former money launderer. The man he and Batman had been talking about a day before was now dead; this mastermind must have known something was up.

"You look over the place yet?" Gordon asked with a raised brow, a thin frown curling on his face. "Anything here resembling forced entry? Anything stolen?"

"We did a sweep of the place. Whoever did it left a while ago," Projcnow responded first as she looked over the writing on the opposite wall of Gordon. "There was no sign of forced entry or anything that was stolen either."

That only confirmed his suspicion. That was the mastermind's doing, maybe to cut off Hill's stream of money and cripple his efforts from now. Gordon would have believed that that theory, had he not finally found Reed's body sat behind the oak desk. The banker looked like he had been mauled, a closer second glance made his stomach turn. No, a better way to describe Reed's body was that it had been mutilated.

Carved into his face were several question marks, each with a trail of dried blood running from the. The bloody lumps where his eyes had been stabbed out distracted from Reed's scrunched up features, frozen in death by rigor mortis.

The carnage went south as, through a sliced open shirt lined with dried by dried blood, Gordon found a sharp piece of black metal lodged into the banker's gut. From the visible part of the projectile, he could tell that it had been made into the shape of a bat. Judging by the unpolished and jagged edge, it looked homemade.

Despite what he knew about the money launderer; he felt a strange sense of sympathy for the man. Even despite his criminal nature, he had been brutally murdered. With the news that he was divorced, that meant that the man likely had children and those children would never see their father again.

It took him a moment to realize what had been placed atop the desk, a revolver that presumably belonged to reed. Along with that, there was a green trophy shaped like a question mark and a note beside it that simply read;

TO BATMAN.

"You got any idea why Batman could be involved with this?" Procjnow asked. "This looks like something one of the Arkham freaks would do."

"Haven't a clue," Gordon lied, the uneasy feeling rising in his chest. "What was found in Reed's chest has to be some kind of homage to him. A copycat maybe? Someone wants to be noticed. Did you two talk to the operator who got the 911 call? Did the person on the line say anything suspicious, strange even?"

Projcnow let out a small small, looking toward her watch. When she was finished checking the time, she looked toward Gordon. "Yeah, that was one of the first things Burke and I did. The dispatch operator said she got the call at around one-thirty. She said that she couldn't make out the voice culprit, as if it was scrambled behind something. The person on the other end of the line said that he killed Reed and that was it. They hung up before she could ask anyone else. From there, she sent some officers, who found the body. You know the rest."

A voice on the phone that the dispatcher couldn't make out? Interesting. Gordon knew that Batman had used some kind of scrambler that disguised his voice. He wasn't insinuating that Batman was Reed's killer, no that was an impossibility. Reed's death had been seemed rushed, in the thrill of passion. This might have indicated that Reed knew his killer.

If it were more of a professional than the scene would have cleaned and more spread out. Instead, the scene had been messy and close together. This seemed to indicate that, along with the display of brutality; that whoever had done this wanted Clayton Reed to suffer. It was overkill and an extreme amount of it. It was one of the most brutal scenes he had ever been to. Yet he wasn't surprised. Such was the nature of Gotham City.

Slipping on some gloves, Gordon carefully lifted the note from the table and turned it over. Handwritten symbols were scribbled across the back of it. Some kind of code he hadn't seen before. It was a challenge, just when he thought things were beginning to make sense. He had heard of mob bosses hiring hitmen with sociopathic tendencies. If the mastermind could hire mercenaries, then it wasn't a far stretch to believe he could hire some hitman that was out of work since Falcone's arrest.

"Whoever did this must have been convincing enough to get through the front door," Gordon noted as he reached into his pocket, producing a carton of cigarettes. "Would you two mind going downstairs and asking the receptionist if he saw anyone come up in the past few hours?"

"Sure," Burke nodded, already moving back to the door alongside Procjnow. The older of the two shut the penthouse door behind them. Once the sound of footsteps became inaudible beyond the door, Gordon knew it was safe to act.

He hated the idea of being dependent on Batman, but right now he was the only one who knew as much about City Hall than anyone. Gordon pulled the red phone Batman had given him out of his trench coat pocket and pressed the single red button in the center of its dial pad, before holding it up to his ear.

"I've bought you some time with the crime scene I'm attending to. It's the top floor of a penthouse suite known as Saxon Place. Won't be long, but if you're quick enough."

Gordon froze as he heard the sound of footsteps behind, the strange feeling of being watched kicked in as he turned and jumped. How the hell he did get here so quickly?

The night was young and with it came the usual burst of crime. It had become predictable for the young upstarts of the city to do hastily thrown together deals in back-alleys; something that only served to make them prey for the natural predator lurking in the shadow.

Tonight had been a busy night for the vigilante, The Irish were up to their usual shtick in the Tricorner; dealing weaponry in exchange for protection. Mickey Sullivan's boys were nothing more than a collection of men broken apart by their dear leader's death. They were a dying breed and nothing more.

The address Gordon had given Batman over the phone belonged to Clayton Reed. He hadn't expected The Riddler to resort to murder immediately like this. On the drive to the penthouse, Alfred had confirmed the WayneTech cameras in Reed's penthouse had gone offline an hour ago. They didn't even know about it.

Batman entered the penthouse the same way he had come in before. It was easier somewhat, with all the security offline. It took serious skill to bypass WayneTech's security system.

He was now certain that it was The Riddler's doing. As he walked into the penthouse, he noted that Captain Gordon was stood before Reed's desk. He jolted around in surprise as he entered the room.

"That was quick," Gordon muttered from beneath his orange mustache. He switched his focus from him back to Reed's desk. "What do you think of this then?"

His gaze landed on the corpse of Clayton Reed. The banker had been carved apart, the wounds were messy. The question marks were done by a shaky hand. As he got closer, Batman noticed how jagged the question mark on his forehead was when compared to the one on his right cheek. It was the mark of a perfectionist.

Following the injuries southward, Reed's shirt had been cut open, revealing purple bruising across his exposed torso. Impaled in his stomach was a batarang; judging by the one half of the projectile that still protruded from the wound.

It was too big to be one of his with an unfinished jaggedness to its edges. Reed's arms dangled by his sides, the skin similarly bruised with blood that was drained around broken nails. There was a hole in the center of his hands, both of them.

Batman glanced back at the desk, finding two indents in the wood surrounded by small dried circles of blood. Behind them stood a green trophy shaped like a question mark, with a pistol left on its side beside it. Between them lay a simple yellow note that simply read, in disheveled handwriting;

To Batman.

"It was the Riddler."

"The who?"

He forgot momentarily that Gordon didn't know what he did. "The mastermind behind the failed heist at City Hall. It's an alias of his. He's the likely murderer of Clayton Reed."

"How'd you find that out?"

"The Iceberg Lounge," Batman gazed back to Gordon, watching the detective's jaw tighten immediately. "I was looking into Cobblepot's involvement in Riddler's operation. I overheard him threatening one of the guests about what this man was going to do to Gotham's wealthiest."

"So, it goes beyond Hill now?" Gordon asked, placing his hands in his pockets. "Christ."

"It must be the next step of Riddler's plan," Batman responded, lifting the note and turning it around. He found a few lines of hand-drawn symbols across it. It wasn't anything he recognized, Batman knew he'd have to run them through the computer if he wanted to find anything.

"This mean anything to you?" Gordon asked then, glancing over his shoulder to view the note himself.

"Some kind of cipher. He wants to create some kind of challenge. He's taunting me for my inability to prevent Reed's murder."

Batman slid the note away into one of his belt pouches, moving around the table to take a closer look at the body. A visible blotch of purple was present, on the back of Reed's neck. It was impossible to cause that kind of bruising from a punch.

Maybe a kick, but that would suggest Riddler had pulled him from his chair. Something bright red on the edge of Reed's broken fingers caught his attention. Lifting his arm by the wrist, several small red fibers; they were a match for the carpet floor. The amount of bruising would have made him hard to move from the floor

Clayton Reed was a big man, it'd take more than Riddler to move him. "Reed had bodyguards," Batman lowered his arm back down and stepped back around the table. "The outer security and alarms were disabled. Riddler could have bribed them to let him inside."

"You think he was here personally?" Gordon sounded skeptical. "That sounds dangerous but likely. I'm assuming you can recognize the violence in this particular murder?"

The vigilante managed to nod. "The kind of injuries Reed received were personal. The crime scene itself is close together. If this was a job done by a professional, then it would be more spread out, to leave behind as little evidence as possible. There are carpet fibers inside of Reed's fingernails, this seems to indicate that he struggled for quite some time."

The eye wounds, the stab wound in his hands…it all added.

"Great." Gordon managed to shake his head as he knelt to analyze the body himself. "It shouldn't be too hard to track down the security firm Reed's men were hired from."

"If my theory's correct, Riddler will be covering their tracks."

"They won't be able to disappear like that, we'll find something." Gordon was determined, Batman admired his optimism, even with what they had seen tonight. "If the note is some kind of challenge, then what's the trophy for?"

Batman lifted the trophy and produced a small torch from another belt pouch, clicking the button on its side to turn on the light. The small beam of light revealed no fingerprints. As he examined it, the faint smell of bleach was still present on the metal hit his nose immediately. Riddler had made sure to take no chances.

There was weight to the trophy. He turned it upside down and found a clear circle indent around the rim of the trophy's base. Batman pocked his light back into his pouch and searched for another tool. A small flathead screwdriver would do the trick. Its head was wedged into the indent and with small pressure, the lid of the base popped off.

Inside was a mash-up of electronics. In the center of it was a port for cables. He turned his screwdriver toward the screws on each side. Once he twisted them loose, then electronics came out, as one complete disc of welded together technology.

"The hell is that supposed to be?"

"Some kind of device. There's an external port for a cable to plug into." Batman clicked the base lid back onto the trophy and set it back down as he examined the drive. "If this is the same level of encryption as the hard drive City Hall, then your computers won't be able to handle the."

"So long as you tell me what's on it, I don't care how you decrypt it," Gordon told him.

Tonight had worn the cop down, Batman could hear it in his voice. In his own way, he was unnerved. He had expected this to have been done on the orders of Riddler, not by the man himself. This had shown him exactly what he was capable of now.

If someone as insignificant as Clayton Reed had been brutally murdered like this, then the kind of torture he had waiting for Hamilton Hill must have been ten times worse. Everyone on the hard drive was a probable target now for Riddler's kind of justice. No, he would ensure they all faced proper justice.

"I'll let you know what I find from the note and this device when I can," Batman nodded his head. "As for the guards, the security cameras may have footage of them from before the murders. You can use those to obtain an identity."

"I'll see what I can do about finding this security firm," Gordon looked away, focusing on the door. "I can have some of my unit stake out some North Refrigeration warehouses. That way we can cover more ground."

It would take both of them to solve this, at least Batman knew he had someone in the GCPD he could trust. He would put Clayton Reed's file of bank transfers somewhere in the MCU would find. That would all bring Gordon's team all on the same page.

"You better go before Forensics show," Gordon glanced away for just a second. When he looked back, he was staring at thin air. "How the hell…?"

The drive back to the cave had been done in remote silence, leaving Batman alone to his thoughts. The murder of Clayton Reed had brought more questions than answers, it wasn't good. With the trophy, Riddler was leaving a calling card that would mark a warning to Hill.

He did not doubt that the other names on the drive were next. Joseph Saint Cloud was one of the more worrying ones, he had turned to crime because he had wasted whatever fortune the family had. The thought of Silver being mixed up in Riddler's brand of violence was worrying. Somehow, he had to keep her safe; he needed to.

The Batmobile shot into the cave, the engine's roar echoing in the massive tunnels below Wayne Manor. Bruce decelerated, bringing the car to a stop on the metal platform. As the color of red neon dimmed the interior as always, he opened the side door and watched as it rotated on the fixed hinge. Bruce exited the car swiftly, he was determined to get on with his investigation.

He had two leads to follow up on, both put before him like Riddler was trying to leave him a bread trail of some kind. It wasn't until he was halfway up the stairs that he realized Alfred stood atop the steps waiting for him. The butler was holding a plate of food up in one hand and the smell of his cooking whiffed it's way to Bruce's nose. He had forgotten how hungry he had become in the past few hours; his mind had become fixated on the investigation and nothing else so human, like sleep or food.

"You seem very focused tonight, sir."

He excused the Englishman's dry wit and he reached into his pocket. When he was close enough to him, Bruce held out the note. "The mastermind behind the City Hall heist is known as The Riddler. Cobblepot told me, in an attempt to warn me of some incoming revolution. Riddler knows I have the file. He got into Clayton Reed's penthouse without a struggle and he left me a code to crack

Alfred took hold of the note, flipping it over after a moment to read the back. "You've become quite the celebrity. I'll run it through the computer." His found seemed layered with concern. "Did Gordon find out anything new."

"He knew as much as me," Bruce said simply, moving over to the workbench."One of the members of his unit responded to the call. It was made directly from the penthouse, disguised voice, and said nothing more beyond taking credit."

Now he was home. However, that didn't mean he could relax. Pulling off the cowl, Bruce allowed his skin to taste the cool cavern air. He could feel the smeared paint around his eyes and the damp mess of hair being released by the removal of the cowl itself. He placed both the cape and cowl on his workbench. After that, he disconnected the utility belt and placed it beside the two items.

Taking the trophy device from Reed's apartment, Bruce placed it down and connected it up to the computer. They had already encountered one of The Riddler's encryption before, and this device hadn't been as badly damaged as the drive from City Hall. At least while the trophy decrypted, he had something else to focus on.

The note was what he was more concerned about. The Riddler had acknowledged him after City Hall, but instead, he had made it a challenge in a surprisingly simple format; a cipher coded letter, what few words it had were made all the more important by the effort he would have to go through in order to understand them.

The profile he had been building on The Riddler had been altered drastically over the past two days. He had this planned out, arranging Reed's murder and probably the cipher in such a short space of time after City Hall. He was focused, completely driven by a single goal that would see Gotham's Elite and many others destroyed. He was a control based killer.

"What are you thinking, Master Bruce?"

He realized that he had been staring at the computer screen longer than he thought. "Can you upload the most recent security footage of Clayton Reed's office into the Augmented Reality Chamber. I need to go over things again."

"You're in luck. Lucius sent an upgrade to the system that you'll like. The environment around you can be altered by the headset. I've already had it installed. The transfer for the footage should be done by the time you get down there."

Bruce nodded, brushing away some of his damp locks to re-secure his comm back into his ear. He would continue to discuss things during the simulation. By the time he had walked through the darker corridors of the cavern and unlocked the chamber's steel door, the download had been complete. The room was as cold as it had been before, he needed that chill him down. The headset dangled from its usual wire support."

With hesitation, Bruce slid on the helmet and watched the white room around him disappear and instead shifted into a more recent setting. Reed's office had been reconstructed from the security footage. It was different from the cowl footage, enough angles of the room had created a more detailed image that felt more immersive. This was from before the murder, the place was untouched. He needed to make a few adjustments to the crime scene.

Placing his hands where both knife indents had been on the desk, Bruce could envision Reed sat there, his corpse limp with a scrunched up expression. Clayton Reed had suffered, that was without a doubt. The gun had been placed in a way that built up false hope as if Reed could have grasped it and shot his attacker. Even when he was near death, he had hope that he could live.

"Why is he writing to you?"

Alfred's words snapped him out of his thoughts. Bruce looked at where Reed's corpse had been. Then at the walls. They had been covered in red warnings. No more lies meant no one was safe, not even Hill. "Maybe I'm the only one who is keeping up with him. From City Hall, the GCPD went off in a different direction that didn't lead them to him. He wants a challenge and he's noticed me."

"I don't like it, Bruce. The man isn't like anything you've faced so far. He's no crime lord or pimp. He's an unhinged murderer."

"Better me than anyone else," Bruce looked toward Alfred, frowning. "I'm going to stop him before he takes another life."

"Then we better get to working out this code then, sir."

Alfred was already in the midst of comparing the note's symbols from his place outside of the chamber. In the moment, he forgot he wasn't even really in Reed's office, to begin with.

"What about the wounds, sir?"

"Reed's injuries were akin to torture," Bruce looked up from the cipher, glancing toward Alfred. "He had questions marks cut into his face, a stab wound to the cut with his eyes gouged out. Reed was beaten on the floor and his hands were pinned to the table with knives, leaving him just out of reach of his gun; a revolver."

"I feel as if we're not dealing with quite the same person who attacked City Hall," Alfred noted, sounding somewhat disturbed. "It sounds more like the work of a serial killer."

Alfred had a point, the sudden violence. It was a change of behavior that he felt responsible for. Criminals were always prone to outbursts when their plans were usurped. Falcone had been the same. Now he had provoked Riddler into taking a life. Another wave of anger began to wash over him as he continued to think.

"There was a gun here too, a revolver, nickel-plated with pearl grips. Bruce said with a frown, looking down toward the cipher once more."If the marks on the desk were anything to go by, then the gun was just out of reach. Riddler was toying with Reed, even until the end."

"A very sick individual it seems," Alfred remarked. "Why would he suddenly lose his composure and kill Clayton Reed himself?"

"I think he always intended to kill him. Removing the blackmail meant that he couldn't destroy his reputation first. He wanted to show us what he is capable of."

"So what do we know about this Riddler?" Alfred asked then, brow-raising.

"Given Hill's preference for expensive spending, Riddler would have been paid a considerable fee for his services. He's a veteran data-broker of the black market. He left his own copy of a batarang embedded in Reed's stomach."

"Some kind of sign that you and he are not so different. This Riddler wants to make a point as thematically as he can. You both want to stop crime, yet his method is just far more brutal."

The frown on Bruce's face only deepened as he cast the older man a glare. Another wave of anger began to rush through him. "I'm nothing like him, Alfred. I don't resort to taking the lives of criminals to achieve my goals. What he wants isn't justice. It means that I might be the only one he sees as a visible challenge now. He's only going to up the stakes."

"His decision to base himself in Gotham of all places. His capabilities would put him in high demand. He could go anywhere, yet he chose here of all places."

"Maybe he was born here. A terrible childhood could serve as a motive," Bruce muttered, looking away from the older man. "He's far too attached to his plans for Gotham to be an outsider."

It was a possibility. He had never considered that or maybe he had never given Riddler's origin as much thought as he should. Bruce's own childhood had been a content one from what he remembered of the times before Crime Alley. There were other children in Gotham who suffered, growing up in a dangerous system that more often than not left them behind. He had to do more; he could sponsor as many orphanages and as many schools in the city as he could, but there needed to be something else to do.

"It's entirely possible, Master Bruce. However, that unfortunately does not narrow down our list of possible identities. I suppose I have some good news. I've de-coded that little cipher. It's an address."

Bruce was already disconnecting from the chamber. As Alfred began to read out the letter, he was unlocking the door and stepping out into the dimly lit cavern.

Who?
Haven't a clue?
Let's play a game
Just me and you….

"For Your Eyes Only," Alfred spoke carefully, tone neutral. "23rd. Ennis Street. The Abbey Complex. Apartment C32."

As soon as Bruce reached the main platform, he went straight to his workbench, sliding on the cowl and connecting the belt around his waist once more. He would not waste any time, the longer his gaze lingered on the screen, the more of a chance Riddler had of slipping through his fingers.

Alfred was focused on focus on running the address through the computer next. "It's currently being rented by a Stanley Fritz. He was on the City Hall database too, when we were looking for Holly Robinson's false identity."

It didn't take long to load up the City Hall database after opening the personnel file for Stanley Fritz... He was one of the night shift security guards. His rota showed that he was the only one working the night of the heist and he was most likely the guard that Hill had fired.

"What's the connection?" Alfred pursed his lips in thought. "Riddler already had the receptionist as his inside man."

"Fritz was the guard Hill had hired for failing to stop the City Hall heist."

Hamilton Hill was not a rational man. He had been reading up on Gotham even in his absence. It was no surprise at all that he had Stanley Fritz fired just like that. Riddler leaving his address for him to find was a different story altogether. He already knew about his inside man. How else could the guard be involved?

"If he's not connected to Riddler, then maybe Hill. He seems eager to expose things for what they are."

"I'm not sure. It could possibly be tied to Hill, but if this was left by Riddler, I don't doubt the possibility that Stanley Fritz may be in danger."

There was one way for him to truly know why he had left an address. It was a clear invitation for him to unearth something. A visit to the address would be the only way to confirm his suspicions.