Welcome back to Arkham. Another long, twisted corridor lined with doors to lunacy. The walls are the same stone, the floors the same concrete. The smells are the same; sweat, fear, decay, all man's primal enemies. Above and below you can feel the same hollow emptiness about the place, the soullessness that creeps out of the walls and into your veins and arteries until your heart pumps it's around your body even after you have left. This place is unmistakably Arkham. But still, there is that about this corridor that is different.
At first, you don't notice it, but this corridor is silent. If you know Arkham, then you know that nowhere here should be silent. Least of all this corridor. The doors to all the rooms but one bear no names. An extra set of steel gates bar your path as you walk down the corridor. A sign; a bright yellow thunder flash over a black skull; warns you that the gate is electrified. It takes a second look for you to see that the floor is electrified as well - by virtue of a thin steel mesh ingrained into the floor. And then there are the guards.
Arkham attracts a distinct caliber of staff to it's hallowed, haunted halls. Guards who's methods are too violent, too base for the left wing politics of the justice system find a niche for themselves here. The value of the punitive beating has never been forgotten in Arkham. They are, to a man, hard men. Physically and mentally, they are predisposed to stand at the mouth of madness without flinching, and to look straight into the eyes of the worst of humanity - before smacking it in the face with a billy club. The depravities and debasements visited on the inmates of Arkham are only matched by the depravities and debasements that those inmates themselves would commit if they were let free. A dangerous status quo exists, where the cruel and violent guard is a necessary and tolerated evil to protect the good men and women of Arkham who's vocation it is to heal it's tortured inhabits. Every once in a while a guard will go bad, step over the line. Usually they end up as inmates.. twisted mirror images of their former selves, whatever dementia they have succumbed to inflamed by the bitter irony of their situation. Others, those who command the respect of their fellow guards even after they cross the final line, are more lucky. For them there is a quick death.
Knowing this, you would expect the guards in this corridor to be as they are everywhere in Arkham. Calm, cold, efficient. But even the hard men of Arkham are rattled when their tour of duty on this corridor comes around. Eyes dart furtively from TV monitor to TV monitor, studying the graining close circuit TV footage minute by minute. Hands rest on radios, billy clubs and (in some places) pistols or shotguns. There is no idle banter. No talk of wives, children, sweethearts or mistresses (for the good badmen of Arkham can afford them all). Not here, not in earshot of the only occupied cell on this corridor. Not if you want to sleep nights without a gun under your pillow.
The ping of the lift as it arrived on the floor could have been the bugle cry before Armageddon to these men. Safeties popped on pistols as the doors moved slowly, slowly open. They were not clicked back into place until the single occupant of the lift revealed himself.
"Gentlemen." said the doctor, inclining his head in greeting to the massed guards ahead of him in the corridor.
"Sir" replied one of the guards. The Doctor recognized him as Pat O'Hara. The O'Haras were a fine old Gotham family, respected for the long line of good cops they had produced. The pride of their line had been Police Chief Clancy O'Hara. A testament to the uniform until his last day, and a legend within the uniformed ranks of the force to this day. But in every family there are the bad apples and the O'Haras were no exception. Pat O'Hara was nothing like his late sainted uncle Clancy. A short, pot bellied man with blackened teeth and breath that would cut a warhorse down in the midst of battle, Pat hadn't inherited the genes that had produced the fine physical specimen his uncle Clancy had been either. Despite his apparent lack of physical conditioning however, Pat was as feared as any O'Hara, any cop and certainly any prison guard had even been. In a place like Arkham, reputation was everything, and everyone knew the story behind O'Hara and how he had been drummed out of the GCPD.
It had been five years ago, in a time when Gotham was besieged on all sides by urban legends. The Joker, The Penguin, The Riddler. You were no one in the Gotham underworld if your name didn't begin with "The", even the families were getting in on the game. Hoodlums and strong-arms dressed in cheap costumes and took names inspired or dictated by their costumed bosses and every crime had a theme. For the GCPD, it was turning into a long hot summer. For Sergeant Pat O'Hara, it had been a long hot year. The girl's name was ? and she and Pat had been apart no longer than 8 hours in the last six months. They'd met in a bar opposite the precinct - a place for old cops run by old cops. The beer was cheap, free if you've had one of "those" shifts and generous donations from the retirement funds of beat cops who fell in the line of duty kept this place open. No cop who walked in was ever less than welcome, even one as dirty as Pat O'Hara. He'd been sat in a booth by himself late one evening, nursing a beer that had grown tepid n his sweaty grasp, still in his uniform. His gun belt sat on the table next to his badge. Nobody engaged him in conversation, and that suited him fine, until ? came along. To say that she was beautiful would be flattery, but there was something undeniably attractive about her. Maybe something a little more to Pat's taste; something dirtier, something sexier - that was what she had. She smoldered here in this bar full of tired cops and middle aged men who drank here because it was one of the safest bars in town. When she sat down in front of Pat, he nearly dropped his tepid beer all over her. That was how it had started. Just a girl in a bar who thought that he looked down, and wondered what could get a big guy like Pat down. He told her and as he poured out his troubles she listened, never questioning, never interrupting. For the first time in a long time, someone was listening to Pat O'Hara When he asked to walk her home she didn't refuse; and neither did he when she asked him to come inside out of the cold and lonely night.
It was the start of what should have been something good for Pat. He got his act together, started pulling his weight and more down at the precinct, and one by one his olds friends and colleagues were friends and colleagues again. Of course, this was Gotham, and the cruel fates of the city had another hand to play with Pat O'Hara. It was a Friday night, and for whatever reason ? had said that she couldn't meet him tonight. Pat hadn't complained, and he used the opportunity to swap a shift with one of the other cops at the precinct. If he worked a double shift tonight he would have the whole day tomorrow free, and hopefully whatever ? had had to do would be concluded by then. The thought of a whole day out, or in, with ? made the double shift fly by. He had been almost ready to call it a night when the call had come in. Someone had broken into the precinct! Pat could hear the gunfire in the background as the dispatcher desperately called for backup. Pat and his partner had taken only minutes to get back to the precinct house, skidding the squad car to an angry noisy halt outside. Pat pulled his as he ran up the precinct steps, and nearly ran headfirst into the Riddler and his gang. They came crashing out of the main doors, the Riddler flanked by two men and three girls all dressed in the same green and black question mark outfit as the Riddler. Pat could see that they were carrying bags from the evidence room; cash, drugs, jewelry - all confiscated from people who had been arrested by precinct cops. The two men were carrying small machine pistols, and they laid down a heavy covering fire as they backed down the steps. The Riddler was first to see Pat, and before Pat had had time to react two of the Riddler's girls were on him.
He toppled down the steps with them on top of him. Nails scratched down the side of this face, and drew blood from the bottom of his left eye. Teeth dug into his shoulder as he hit the ground at the bottom of the steps. He could feel his partner tugging at the girl who had bitten him, but she held firm with arms and legs and teeth and wouldn't let go. In the meantime the other girl was driving her small fists into Pats gut over and over again. She was screaming, manic. "Get her off me!" yelled Pat as his partner fought with the girl whose teeth were threatening to sever his arm at the shoulder. Ignoring the body blows and the agony in his one eye as it filled with blood, Pat managed to get his hand to his gun. Bringing his one arm across he shoved an elbow into the throat of the girl who has still pounding at him. She fell backwards, her breath cut short. Slamming the put of his pistol into the side of the other girl's head, he felt her jaw finally release and Pat's partner pulled her away screaming. Clambering to his feet, Pat could only watch as the Riddler and the rest of his gang disappeared down the street in a van. He bought up his pistol and fired wayward shots as the van quickly shrank into the distance, but the blood that had flooded his one eye left his aim well off. Cursing, Pat turned, and was surprised to see the girl who had had knocked off him still laying on the steps on precinct house. She was had her back to him, and was retching on the steps as she gasped from breath. Pat unhooked a set of cuffs from his belt and walked towards her. Keeping his gun leveled, he snapped the cuffs open.
"You'd best let me put these cuffs on you lady, before we go inside". Pat was amazed how croaky his voice was as he spoke. The adrenalin rush was fading now though, and he could already feel the puffy tenderness in his ribs and guts starting to spread, as well as a hot burning down the length of his back from the fall down the steps. The girl didn't move, she just kept retching, coughing and occasionally sobbing.
"Listen lady, you've already assaulted a police officer on top of whatever you and your friends got up to in there. Don't make this worse for yourself". Pat holstered his gun and reached down for the girl. He was in no mood to be tender, but still his days of roughing up suspects in back alleys and bars were behind him. Placing a firm hand on her shoulder he twisted her around to face her. Her lime green domino masked had slipped down from her one eye, and she already had a thick bruise growing around her throat from the elbow Pat have shoved there. But still, it was unmistakably ?. Pat took a step back, as he locked eyes with her, and quickly - all too quickly- realization set in. All the interest she had shown in what he had done during the day. The times that she asked him to tell and retell those drab stories from the beat. The way she had absorbed every detail, and her particular fascination with the money and riches that criminals would surround themselves with. She told him how much she hated the fact that they had all that money, all the luxury and splendor that was missing from the lives of so many ordinary Gothamites. But still, she always wanted the stories.
Pulling his gun back out of it's holster, Pat threw threw the cuffs into ?'s lap and raised the gun until it was level with her. Tears mixed with the blood that ran freely from his eye as he looked at her.
"Why?" he asked, and this time his voice croaked with more than just pain from a fall and a beating.
"Why not?" she replied. "Why not? That's the question Pat. That's the great riddle. Why the hell not?"
And Pat couldn't even look at her as he fired.
It had been cold blooded murder; but in that long, hot summer there were enough dirty cops to close ranks around an old friend - or even a new old friend like Pat O'Hara. Those who knew what the girl had done to him, they even sympathized with him. Naturally there was an investigation and the history of Pat and the girl was hauled out for all to see in a steaming hot courtroom in the heart of the city. It seemed so obvious in the light of day, before the commissioner and his board of inquiry. How could he have been such a fool? A pretty face to hide a viper, Pat had been her patsy all along. He hated the way they looked down at him, hated him for tarnishing the badge that they held so dear.
The evidence to make a murder conviction stick had long since disappeared, and O'Hara's partner wouldn't be the one to turn evidence on another cop. The board told him how they would protect the good name of his family, and of his uncle in particular. At the end of it the worst they could do was to serve him with a dishonorable discharge; but that didn't stop them revealing the tawdry history of his girl; her time with the Riddler's gang was revealed, and her spell as one of the Penguin's girls before that. By the end of the hearing, Pat wasn't even left with her memory.
So now here he was, an over weight prison guard to lunatics and madmen. He'd only been out of work for three weeks when he had heard that Arkham was hiring, and how it could be a place for men like him. Men who knew how to treat the criminal, the sick and the evil. Five years since the end of that long hot summer, Pat had found himself in another place for old cops.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I'd like to see him" said the doctor.
"Sure." said Pat. He motioned for the rookie to open up the gate, and popped the safety of his revolver. Two of the guards, armed with shotguns, flanked the doctor and led him down to the gate. The rookie swiped his ID card through it, waited for the buzzer which sounded the deactivation of the gate to stop, and the opened it for the doctor. The doctor stepped through, and quickly shut the fate behind him. "It won't be necessary for you to follow me down to the doors," he said to the two guards who stood astonished on the other side of the gate "You'll only distrub him"
"But you're.." started the one guard.
"I'm the doctor, and nothing more thank you."
The doctor began the long walk down to the door of the only occupied cell of this corridor. As he cleared the section of mesh that electrified the floor he heard the buzzer which now sounded the reactivation of the gates. A few seconds later he was at the door of the cell. The buzzer had stopped and the corridor was silent again. He reached up to the slide panel in the door and opened it, revealing the inside of the cell through the letterbox opening. It was dark, but something moved languidly inside, lolled in a low slung bed draped in shadow before turning it's face to the door and opening it's eyes. Even in the darkness of the cell the luminance, the gleam, of those mad eyes was unmistakable.
"Joker" said the doctor
"Jonathan"
"We've already discussed the issue of first names Joker" said the doctor. "You can't use mine until I can use yours,"
"Then call me Jo.. as in Jo-Ker" it was a pun, and a weak one, but enough to start the Joker chuckling. The doctor didn't know what drugs they had Joker on at the moment, but the unblinking stare in his face told the doctor that there was more than blood and madness in Joker's veins. The chuckles had turned into giggles, and from there it was only downhill.
"I have a job for you Joker"
"A job? For me? A Joker job?"
"Yes..." the doctor sighed his frustration. The art of conversation was lost on this lunatic "A very special Joker job"
"An outside Joker job?" The Joker had gotten up from the bed and was at the door now. His eyes, still unblinking, stared through the letter box opening. The doctor could hear the Joker's hands scratching at the metal door.
"Yes. But first we have to do an inside job. We have to get you out."
"Yes. Out." the thought of it sent the Joker hopping from foot to foot "Out and about in the big bad city.. the streets, the lights, the noises, the smells!" Joker held his nose, "Oh mercy the smells and.. my public!"
"I need you to give a very special performance Joker, for a very special audience"
The Joker stopped his hopping, and drew himself even closer to the door. The doctor drew back, as if Joker could have worked his way out through that tiny letterbox, as if the very essence of the Joker was leaking out from around the doorframe and out into the corridor to wash over him and cloak him in its cold embrace. Of course, he was right, because by now.. the Joker was laughing.
"BATMAN!" howled the Joker, "BATMAN!"
Shaking his head in dismay, the doctor walked away.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, in Gotham, it was a windswept and miserable night; and nowhere more so than on the roof of police headquarters. The sun had barely set when Gordon had heard the rapping on his window. He had turned, naturally, even though he already knew what he would find - a white card wedged into the window frame, embossed with the black emblem of the bat. Is was the signal. Batman wanted to talk to him. And so here he was, stood on a windswept roof, his rain coat flapping about around him, waiting for a voice from the shadows.
"It was fear gas Jim," The voice came at last and, as always, it came from behind Jim Gordon.
"Fear gas? But Scarecrows in Arkham, safely under lock and key" replied Gordon.
"It's not Scarecrow using it. Someone must have happened upon one of his stashes somewhere in the city. Possibly during No Mans Land, maybe after during the redevelopment."
"But why didn't the autopsy pick it up? We've had detailed toxicology workups on fear gas for the last two years." Gordon didn't like what he was hearing. He didn't doubt it's veracity for a moment, no more than he would doubt the word of the man who he spoke to. What he didn't like was the thought of another crook meddling with the Scarecrows fear gas. Maybe this time a crook not weighed down by Crane's obsession with fear. Maybe a crook with more smarts, or even worse a real plan. Worse again - someone either further down the dark and twisted path of madness than Jonathan Crane.
"It's been.. spliced.. with a virus. It's a fear virus now Jim. That's what killed the men in the warehouse. They were so convinced that what they were seeing was real that they either shot themselves, shot their friends or just laid down and stopped breathing. That's how convinced they were Jim!"
Gordon was dumbstruck. A second before his mind had been racing with the possibility of a new adversary with access to Scarecrow's fear gas. Now the adversary wasn't a person. It had become a thing, an intangible thing. After the horrors of the Clench, Gordon had thought that Gotham had had it's plague. But it looked like another was just on the horizon.
"When Dr.Rosen was conducting the autopsy he must have come into contact with the virus."
"But Rosen wasn't suffering a fear reaction," said Gordon "He took over a TV station"
"He was psychotic," replied Batman "Or at least in the grip of some kind of psychotic episode. It's my guess that the fear virus mutated and had a different effect on Rosen than on the men who died in that warehouse. It's in the wild now Jim.."
Gordon looked out over the rooftops of the city, his city, the city he had sworn to protect. After everything it had been through; crime, plagues, earthquakes; how much more could Gotham take. How much would it take before someone imposed another No Mans Land on this godforsaken place, one which they would never repeal? When would Gotham have suffered too much.
Almost as if he could sense the thoughts running through Gordon's mind, Batman drew up next to him, his cloak billowing out behind him in the wind. "She's a big city Jim, she can take it." he said, looking out over the same rooftops as Gordon.
"She can Batman.. but can we?"
Batman turned and looked at Gordon, a man he called friend, a man with all the dignity and strength the Bruce Wayne had seen and loved in his own father. He looked into the eyes that had seen a city come crumbling down, and had stayed to rebuild it without a cave or a car or a utility or a secret identity to retreat into. Batman looked at Jim Gordon, and had no answer for him.
"We'd better get out of this wind." he said.
"Yeah," agreed Gordon, "There's a storm coming".
At first, you don't notice it, but this corridor is silent. If you know Arkham, then you know that nowhere here should be silent. Least of all this corridor. The doors to all the rooms but one bear no names. An extra set of steel gates bar your path as you walk down the corridor. A sign; a bright yellow thunder flash over a black skull; warns you that the gate is electrified. It takes a second look for you to see that the floor is electrified as well - by virtue of a thin steel mesh ingrained into the floor. And then there are the guards.
Arkham attracts a distinct caliber of staff to it's hallowed, haunted halls. Guards who's methods are too violent, too base for the left wing politics of the justice system find a niche for themselves here. The value of the punitive beating has never been forgotten in Arkham. They are, to a man, hard men. Physically and mentally, they are predisposed to stand at the mouth of madness without flinching, and to look straight into the eyes of the worst of humanity - before smacking it in the face with a billy club. The depravities and debasements visited on the inmates of Arkham are only matched by the depravities and debasements that those inmates themselves would commit if they were let free. A dangerous status quo exists, where the cruel and violent guard is a necessary and tolerated evil to protect the good men and women of Arkham who's vocation it is to heal it's tortured inhabits. Every once in a while a guard will go bad, step over the line. Usually they end up as inmates.. twisted mirror images of their former selves, whatever dementia they have succumbed to inflamed by the bitter irony of their situation. Others, those who command the respect of their fellow guards even after they cross the final line, are more lucky. For them there is a quick death.
Knowing this, you would expect the guards in this corridor to be as they are everywhere in Arkham. Calm, cold, efficient. But even the hard men of Arkham are rattled when their tour of duty on this corridor comes around. Eyes dart furtively from TV monitor to TV monitor, studying the graining close circuit TV footage minute by minute. Hands rest on radios, billy clubs and (in some places) pistols or shotguns. There is no idle banter. No talk of wives, children, sweethearts or mistresses (for the good badmen of Arkham can afford them all). Not here, not in earshot of the only occupied cell on this corridor. Not if you want to sleep nights without a gun under your pillow.
The ping of the lift as it arrived on the floor could have been the bugle cry before Armageddon to these men. Safeties popped on pistols as the doors moved slowly, slowly open. They were not clicked back into place until the single occupant of the lift revealed himself.
"Gentlemen." said the doctor, inclining his head in greeting to the massed guards ahead of him in the corridor.
"Sir" replied one of the guards. The Doctor recognized him as Pat O'Hara. The O'Haras were a fine old Gotham family, respected for the long line of good cops they had produced. The pride of their line had been Police Chief Clancy O'Hara. A testament to the uniform until his last day, and a legend within the uniformed ranks of the force to this day. But in every family there are the bad apples and the O'Haras were no exception. Pat O'Hara was nothing like his late sainted uncle Clancy. A short, pot bellied man with blackened teeth and breath that would cut a warhorse down in the midst of battle, Pat hadn't inherited the genes that had produced the fine physical specimen his uncle Clancy had been either. Despite his apparent lack of physical conditioning however, Pat was as feared as any O'Hara, any cop and certainly any prison guard had even been. In a place like Arkham, reputation was everything, and everyone knew the story behind O'Hara and how he had been drummed out of the GCPD.
It had been five years ago, in a time when Gotham was besieged on all sides by urban legends. The Joker, The Penguin, The Riddler. You were no one in the Gotham underworld if your name didn't begin with "The", even the families were getting in on the game. Hoodlums and strong-arms dressed in cheap costumes and took names inspired or dictated by their costumed bosses and every crime had a theme. For the GCPD, it was turning into a long hot summer. For Sergeant Pat O'Hara, it had been a long hot year. The girl's name was ? and she and Pat had been apart no longer than 8 hours in the last six months. They'd met in a bar opposite the precinct - a place for old cops run by old cops. The beer was cheap, free if you've had one of "those" shifts and generous donations from the retirement funds of beat cops who fell in the line of duty kept this place open. No cop who walked in was ever less than welcome, even one as dirty as Pat O'Hara. He'd been sat in a booth by himself late one evening, nursing a beer that had grown tepid n his sweaty grasp, still in his uniform. His gun belt sat on the table next to his badge. Nobody engaged him in conversation, and that suited him fine, until ? came along. To say that she was beautiful would be flattery, but there was something undeniably attractive about her. Maybe something a little more to Pat's taste; something dirtier, something sexier - that was what she had. She smoldered here in this bar full of tired cops and middle aged men who drank here because it was one of the safest bars in town. When she sat down in front of Pat, he nearly dropped his tepid beer all over her. That was how it had started. Just a girl in a bar who thought that he looked down, and wondered what could get a big guy like Pat down. He told her and as he poured out his troubles she listened, never questioning, never interrupting. For the first time in a long time, someone was listening to Pat O'Hara When he asked to walk her home she didn't refuse; and neither did he when she asked him to come inside out of the cold and lonely night.
It was the start of what should have been something good for Pat. He got his act together, started pulling his weight and more down at the precinct, and one by one his olds friends and colleagues were friends and colleagues again. Of course, this was Gotham, and the cruel fates of the city had another hand to play with Pat O'Hara. It was a Friday night, and for whatever reason ? had said that she couldn't meet him tonight. Pat hadn't complained, and he used the opportunity to swap a shift with one of the other cops at the precinct. If he worked a double shift tonight he would have the whole day tomorrow free, and hopefully whatever ? had had to do would be concluded by then. The thought of a whole day out, or in, with ? made the double shift fly by. He had been almost ready to call it a night when the call had come in. Someone had broken into the precinct! Pat could hear the gunfire in the background as the dispatcher desperately called for backup. Pat and his partner had taken only minutes to get back to the precinct house, skidding the squad car to an angry noisy halt outside. Pat pulled his as he ran up the precinct steps, and nearly ran headfirst into the Riddler and his gang. They came crashing out of the main doors, the Riddler flanked by two men and three girls all dressed in the same green and black question mark outfit as the Riddler. Pat could see that they were carrying bags from the evidence room; cash, drugs, jewelry - all confiscated from people who had been arrested by precinct cops. The two men were carrying small machine pistols, and they laid down a heavy covering fire as they backed down the steps. The Riddler was first to see Pat, and before Pat had had time to react two of the Riddler's girls were on him.
He toppled down the steps with them on top of him. Nails scratched down the side of this face, and drew blood from the bottom of his left eye. Teeth dug into his shoulder as he hit the ground at the bottom of the steps. He could feel his partner tugging at the girl who had bitten him, but she held firm with arms and legs and teeth and wouldn't let go. In the meantime the other girl was driving her small fists into Pats gut over and over again. She was screaming, manic. "Get her off me!" yelled Pat as his partner fought with the girl whose teeth were threatening to sever his arm at the shoulder. Ignoring the body blows and the agony in his one eye as it filled with blood, Pat managed to get his hand to his gun. Bringing his one arm across he shoved an elbow into the throat of the girl who has still pounding at him. She fell backwards, her breath cut short. Slamming the put of his pistol into the side of the other girl's head, he felt her jaw finally release and Pat's partner pulled her away screaming. Clambering to his feet, Pat could only watch as the Riddler and the rest of his gang disappeared down the street in a van. He bought up his pistol and fired wayward shots as the van quickly shrank into the distance, but the blood that had flooded his one eye left his aim well off. Cursing, Pat turned, and was surprised to see the girl who had had knocked off him still laying on the steps on precinct house. She was had her back to him, and was retching on the steps as she gasped from breath. Pat unhooked a set of cuffs from his belt and walked towards her. Keeping his gun leveled, he snapped the cuffs open.
"You'd best let me put these cuffs on you lady, before we go inside". Pat was amazed how croaky his voice was as he spoke. The adrenalin rush was fading now though, and he could already feel the puffy tenderness in his ribs and guts starting to spread, as well as a hot burning down the length of his back from the fall down the steps. The girl didn't move, she just kept retching, coughing and occasionally sobbing.
"Listen lady, you've already assaulted a police officer on top of whatever you and your friends got up to in there. Don't make this worse for yourself". Pat holstered his gun and reached down for the girl. He was in no mood to be tender, but still his days of roughing up suspects in back alleys and bars were behind him. Placing a firm hand on her shoulder he twisted her around to face her. Her lime green domino masked had slipped down from her one eye, and she already had a thick bruise growing around her throat from the elbow Pat have shoved there. But still, it was unmistakably ?. Pat took a step back, as he locked eyes with her, and quickly - all too quickly- realization set in. All the interest she had shown in what he had done during the day. The times that she asked him to tell and retell those drab stories from the beat. The way she had absorbed every detail, and her particular fascination with the money and riches that criminals would surround themselves with. She told him how much she hated the fact that they had all that money, all the luxury and splendor that was missing from the lives of so many ordinary Gothamites. But still, she always wanted the stories.
Pulling his gun back out of it's holster, Pat threw threw the cuffs into ?'s lap and raised the gun until it was level with her. Tears mixed with the blood that ran freely from his eye as he looked at her.
"Why?" he asked, and this time his voice croaked with more than just pain from a fall and a beating.
"Why not?" she replied. "Why not? That's the question Pat. That's the great riddle. Why the hell not?"
And Pat couldn't even look at her as he fired.
It had been cold blooded murder; but in that long, hot summer there were enough dirty cops to close ranks around an old friend - or even a new old friend like Pat O'Hara. Those who knew what the girl had done to him, they even sympathized with him. Naturally there was an investigation and the history of Pat and the girl was hauled out for all to see in a steaming hot courtroom in the heart of the city. It seemed so obvious in the light of day, before the commissioner and his board of inquiry. How could he have been such a fool? A pretty face to hide a viper, Pat had been her patsy all along. He hated the way they looked down at him, hated him for tarnishing the badge that they held so dear.
The evidence to make a murder conviction stick had long since disappeared, and O'Hara's partner wouldn't be the one to turn evidence on another cop. The board told him how they would protect the good name of his family, and of his uncle in particular. At the end of it the worst they could do was to serve him with a dishonorable discharge; but that didn't stop them revealing the tawdry history of his girl; her time with the Riddler's gang was revealed, and her spell as one of the Penguin's girls before that. By the end of the hearing, Pat wasn't even left with her memory.
So now here he was, an over weight prison guard to lunatics and madmen. He'd only been out of work for three weeks when he had heard that Arkham was hiring, and how it could be a place for men like him. Men who knew how to treat the criminal, the sick and the evil. Five years since the end of that long hot summer, Pat had found himself in another place for old cops.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I'd like to see him" said the doctor.
"Sure." said Pat. He motioned for the rookie to open up the gate, and popped the safety of his revolver. Two of the guards, armed with shotguns, flanked the doctor and led him down to the gate. The rookie swiped his ID card through it, waited for the buzzer which sounded the deactivation of the gate to stop, and the opened it for the doctor. The doctor stepped through, and quickly shut the fate behind him. "It won't be necessary for you to follow me down to the doors," he said to the two guards who stood astonished on the other side of the gate "You'll only distrub him"
"But you're.." started the one guard.
"I'm the doctor, and nothing more thank you."
The doctor began the long walk down to the door of the only occupied cell of this corridor. As he cleared the section of mesh that electrified the floor he heard the buzzer which now sounded the reactivation of the gates. A few seconds later he was at the door of the cell. The buzzer had stopped and the corridor was silent again. He reached up to the slide panel in the door and opened it, revealing the inside of the cell through the letterbox opening. It was dark, but something moved languidly inside, lolled in a low slung bed draped in shadow before turning it's face to the door and opening it's eyes. Even in the darkness of the cell the luminance, the gleam, of those mad eyes was unmistakable.
"Joker" said the doctor
"Jonathan"
"We've already discussed the issue of first names Joker" said the doctor. "You can't use mine until I can use yours,"
"Then call me Jo.. as in Jo-Ker" it was a pun, and a weak one, but enough to start the Joker chuckling. The doctor didn't know what drugs they had Joker on at the moment, but the unblinking stare in his face told the doctor that there was more than blood and madness in Joker's veins. The chuckles had turned into giggles, and from there it was only downhill.
"I have a job for you Joker"
"A job? For me? A Joker job?"
"Yes..." the doctor sighed his frustration. The art of conversation was lost on this lunatic "A very special Joker job"
"An outside Joker job?" The Joker had gotten up from the bed and was at the door now. His eyes, still unblinking, stared through the letter box opening. The doctor could hear the Joker's hands scratching at the metal door.
"Yes. But first we have to do an inside job. We have to get you out."
"Yes. Out." the thought of it sent the Joker hopping from foot to foot "Out and about in the big bad city.. the streets, the lights, the noises, the smells!" Joker held his nose, "Oh mercy the smells and.. my public!"
"I need you to give a very special performance Joker, for a very special audience"
The Joker stopped his hopping, and drew himself even closer to the door. The doctor drew back, as if Joker could have worked his way out through that tiny letterbox, as if the very essence of the Joker was leaking out from around the doorframe and out into the corridor to wash over him and cloak him in its cold embrace. Of course, he was right, because by now.. the Joker was laughing.
"BATMAN!" howled the Joker, "BATMAN!"
Shaking his head in dismay, the doctor walked away.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, in Gotham, it was a windswept and miserable night; and nowhere more so than on the roof of police headquarters. The sun had barely set when Gordon had heard the rapping on his window. He had turned, naturally, even though he already knew what he would find - a white card wedged into the window frame, embossed with the black emblem of the bat. Is was the signal. Batman wanted to talk to him. And so here he was, stood on a windswept roof, his rain coat flapping about around him, waiting for a voice from the shadows.
"It was fear gas Jim," The voice came at last and, as always, it came from behind Jim Gordon.
"Fear gas? But Scarecrows in Arkham, safely under lock and key" replied Gordon.
"It's not Scarecrow using it. Someone must have happened upon one of his stashes somewhere in the city. Possibly during No Mans Land, maybe after during the redevelopment."
"But why didn't the autopsy pick it up? We've had detailed toxicology workups on fear gas for the last two years." Gordon didn't like what he was hearing. He didn't doubt it's veracity for a moment, no more than he would doubt the word of the man who he spoke to. What he didn't like was the thought of another crook meddling with the Scarecrows fear gas. Maybe this time a crook not weighed down by Crane's obsession with fear. Maybe a crook with more smarts, or even worse a real plan. Worse again - someone either further down the dark and twisted path of madness than Jonathan Crane.
"It's been.. spliced.. with a virus. It's a fear virus now Jim. That's what killed the men in the warehouse. They were so convinced that what they were seeing was real that they either shot themselves, shot their friends or just laid down and stopped breathing. That's how convinced they were Jim!"
Gordon was dumbstruck. A second before his mind had been racing with the possibility of a new adversary with access to Scarecrow's fear gas. Now the adversary wasn't a person. It had become a thing, an intangible thing. After the horrors of the Clench, Gordon had thought that Gotham had had it's plague. But it looked like another was just on the horizon.
"When Dr.Rosen was conducting the autopsy he must have come into contact with the virus."
"But Rosen wasn't suffering a fear reaction," said Gordon "He took over a TV station"
"He was psychotic," replied Batman "Or at least in the grip of some kind of psychotic episode. It's my guess that the fear virus mutated and had a different effect on Rosen than on the men who died in that warehouse. It's in the wild now Jim.."
Gordon looked out over the rooftops of the city, his city, the city he had sworn to protect. After everything it had been through; crime, plagues, earthquakes; how much more could Gotham take. How much would it take before someone imposed another No Mans Land on this godforsaken place, one which they would never repeal? When would Gotham have suffered too much.
Almost as if he could sense the thoughts running through Gordon's mind, Batman drew up next to him, his cloak billowing out behind him in the wind. "She's a big city Jim, she can take it." he said, looking out over the same rooftops as Gordon.
"She can Batman.. but can we?"
Batman turned and looked at Gordon, a man he called friend, a man with all the dignity and strength the Bruce Wayne had seen and loved in his own father. He looked into the eyes that had seen a city come crumbling down, and had stayed to rebuild it without a cave or a car or a utility or a secret identity to retreat into. Batman looked at Jim Gordon, and had no answer for him.
"We'd better get out of this wind." he said.
"Yeah," agreed Gordon, "There's a storm coming".
