Chapter One: Hope

"We both know I have to kill you now; you'll just have to imagine the fire," Bane hissed into Bruce's cowled covered ear.

Bane pulled the stainless-steel cord tighter to the skin under Bruce's strong jaw as his billionaire side continued to spew dark arterial blood with each thud of his heart.

Bruce grunted and clawed at the garrote, his Kevlar suit providing a lifesaving firewall.

Bane growled in frustration and beat Bruce to the ground with a series of powerful punches and kicks from his heavy steel-toed boots.

Bane fumbled his fingertips at Bruce's throat, scratching the Kevlar with his uneven nails and ragged cuticles. He continued to grunt as he clawed and tore at the fabric until he reached the vulnerable flesh on the front of Bruce's playboy throat, the exfoliated skin smooth from European spa treatments.

The double doors flew open, and Bane tore his eyes away from digging at Bruce's racing carotid pulse when Selina flew into the room on the Bat Pod. Selina revved the engine and engaged the mechanism for a projectile release. Her latex covered thighs were spread wide, and the seat vibrated as she centered the circular red target to the middle of Bane's broad chest and depressed the trigger.

In the few seconds before Selina pulled the trigger, Bane dug his fingers into the soft flesh of Bruce's throat and dove deep until he could close his strong fingers around Bruce's billionaire spine and lift him into the air, a sudden flopping flesh puppet.

Bane heaved Bruce's warm corpse towards Selina, directly in the path of the incoming projectile.

Time seemed to slow down for Selina as she watched Bruce's bleeding flaccid body flying towards her.

Selina screamed when the soft lead of the titanium projectile slammed into Bruce's toned midsection and aggressively fucked a hole through his Kevlar vest and buried itself intimately inside his descending colon.

Selina screamed as Bruce flopped wetly to the ground, most of his insides on the outside as he landed.

"Bruce!" Selina managed, rooted to the rumbling seat, the engine in neutral as Bane stepped over Bruce's freshly fallen body and reached for her with the startling speed, accuracy, and ferocity of an apex predator.

Selina shook herself to reality a second too late and didn't have any time to process her situation as Bane turned her head like a homicidal chiropractor with an agenda to make everyone multi-jointed.

Selina's eyes when she was alive were staring straight ahead. As her heart ceased to beat, her eyes were left facing the opposite direction, the whites surrounding her irises reddened as her skull filled with blood from the shredded arteries.

Bane didn't bother to look over his shoulder as he pushed Selina's latex clad body to the floor and settled on the Bat Pod, keeping it in low gear as he navigated it out to the deserted streets.

Bane paused the Bat Pod and poached a few fallen soldier's bodies of weapons before he proceeded at a fairly decent pace in the direction he knew Talia had headed.

The large tires of the Bat Pod emitted an acrid cloud of smoke when Bane brought it to an immediate stop.

Bane ran to the crash site that had claimed Talia's life. He reached out a scarred hand and sought a nonexistent pulse or any sign of life.

Bane tried to ignore the jagged ends of the various broken bones that poked through her exposed skin.

As Bane muttered lowly, a sort of poem for the dead, he didn't hear the Gotham City police officer free her .45 ACP department issued firearm.

Bane had his eyes closed as the young officer raised the titanium gun boasting an oversized hammer spur and eight-inch barrel.

As Bane began to pull Talia's broken, flaccid corpse from the tangled wreck of the truck cab, the young officer tried to imbue strength when she finally spoke.

"Let go of the woman and take a step back," Gotham City police officer Lena Fischer ordered.

Bane paused his hands on Talia's dead, shattered shoulders and looked over to see who was speaking.

Officer Fischer's eyes widened as she drank in Bane's masked face and irises that swirled with caramel intensity before she cleared her throat. "Step back, hands on your head. Now," she barked.

Behind his mask, Bane's lips curled into a smile and sociopathic amusement danced in his eyes as he yanked Talia's broken body free from the wrecked cab, ignoring the spilling blood and other thicker bits where the skin split and spilled its contents.

Officer Fischer squeezed the trigger and rapidly fired three .240 grain fully jacketed bullets towards Bane and the dead woman. The bullets traveled at 830 feet per second and slammed into Talia's corpse.

Officer Fischer had the breath knocked out of her as she had to catch the flying dead woman and crashed heavily to the uneven ground. Sharp rocks and branches poked and bruised the backs of her thighs and calves.

Lena coughed and pushed at Talia's dead face that hovered over hers, if alive it would look like they were a breath away from kissing. Lena wrinkled her nose as her struggling let loose Talia's tidal breath, spreading a cloud of onion and garlic from Talia's last meal as her lungs deflated. In Talia's gut, large chunks of sourdough bread stopped digesting when her heart stopped beating.

Lena struggled to sit partially upright as Bane swung his fist low and knocked her into a daze. She heard herself groan as he searched her pockets and vest.

"Nnnhh," she moaned and slapped uselessly at his hands as Bane absconded her belt and efficiently moved his hands over her entire body, finding every hidden weapon or item that could be used to produce harm.

Lena saw her vision turn grey around the edges as Bane looked through her wallet.

"Let's go officer Fischer," Bane grunted as he yanked Lena up and over his shoulder, her arm pulled nearly out of socket and the rounded top of his shoulder biting hard into her belly as he carried her away from the crash site.

Motion sickness and pain competed with each other with Bane's loping gait towards her department issued GPD sedan. Bane unceremoniously tossed her in the backseat. Lena's dry heaves became accompanied by strings of saliva, large beads of sweat sprouted up on her forehead, lower back and under her arms that reeked of anxiety.

Bane rooted around the backseat of the police cruiser and found a muslin rag that he shoved in Lena's mouth and cuffed her wrists tightly behind her back, the steel bracelets bit into her wrists, threatening to call blood to the surface of her pinched skin.

Lena shook her head and tried to speak past the rag that rapidly absorbed the remaining moisture in her mouth. "Na booommm," Lena tried to shout past the fabric, shouting in frustration when Bane slammed the door and slipped behind the wheel with her pick-pocketed keys.

Lena was yelling about the bomb; certain it was near time for total detonation based on what the news had reported, and they were definitely still in the fallout zone.

Bane could hear Lena's unspoken words; they were projected through a veritable silent loudspeaker in the confines of the department issued GPD sedan.

"Doctor Pavel explained there was a time variant of detonation of about two hours and twenty-nine minutes," Bane said as he glanced at the dashboard console.

Bane didn't elaborate on the private conversation he'd had with the Russian nuclear physicist before executing him on the football field. Even someone as brilliant as Dr. Pavel could be wrong once a lifetime.

Lena's vision swam as her gut roiled with nausea and acidic bile burned a hot path up her throat. She wanted to know where he was driving at such breakneck speed, unable to brace for the sharp turns as Bane drove to the edge of the city.

The airspaces were being monitored and too risky to get an aircraft clear of Gotham.

The Gotham docks however weren't as carefully monitored as anything involved with the FAA. An up-to-date permit and photo identification was enough for most harbor masters.

Bane had counterfeit copies of each in addition to a passport, credit card and a deed of sale for an aluminum fishing boat boasting its name in faded royal- blue paint.

Hope.