Chapter Two: Bait or Cargo?
In the rear of the cruiser, a spot normally reserved for criminals, Gotham City police officer Lena Fischer coughed around the fabric Bane had shoved in her mouth. Lena tried to roll onto her back and get a glimpse out the window as Bane pressed the accelerator to the floor and urged the sedan's engine to furiously gulp up gas and devour the miles to the lower Gotham City Docks and Fish Market.
Bane frequently flicked his gaze to the digital clock on the dashboard as he closed the remaining distance to dock twenty-seven.
Lena strained her ears when the car came to a screeching halt, the large drum brakes squealing before Bane was out of the car and yanking open the passenger door.
Lena began to valiantly struggle and flail her limbs as much as she could when Bane began pulling her from the backseat. She growled and grunted behind the balled-up square of fabric as he yanked her upright. Lena yowled in pain as he held her suspended, the tip of her department issue boots barely brushing the ground.
"You can be bait or cargo," Bane stated as he tightened his grip, his fingertips digging into the soft flesh under her arm pits.
Lena narrowed her eyes as Bane plucked the rag from her mouth. She immediately began spitting out bits of carpet fibers that had been stuck on the fabric.
"Fuck you," Lena screeched and kicked her legs wildly out towards him.
Bane chuckled and abruptly released his hold on Lena, letting her collapse to the ground.
Lena started to shout but felt her words die in her throat when Bane tugged a matte black .38 from the rear waist band of his pants. She blinked and found her eyes nearly crossing as they focused on the short barrel and watched in slow-motion as his finger moved to rest on the trigger.
"No," Lena shouted and ducked her head, unable to go anywhere.
Bane stared down at one of Gotham City's finest, the slightest pressure on the trigger would instantly reduce their ranks by one.
"Bait or cargo officer Fischer?"
Lena looked up and met his eyes, her cerulean blue eyes were a veritable cataclysm of cellular activity, torn between the vast spectrum of emotions she cycled through at once, osmotically raped.
Bane was going to uncharacteristically repeat himself when Lena sniffed hard. "Cargo," she mumbled at an almost imperceptible volume.
Lena blinked hard and struggled to maintain eye contact as she tried to add more strength to her tone. "Fucking cargo," she seethed in a trembling voice.
Lena didn't hear Bane's chuckle of amusement over the rush of blood in her ears.
Lena yelped as Bane hoisted her to her feet by her elbow, putting an even greater strain on her cuffed wrists. Bane half-dragged her to dock twenty-seven and dumped her on the poorly sanded deck where she bounced once and knocked her shin against a fire extinguisher mounted above one of the galley portholes.
Lena struggled to sit up and leaned against a sturdy bench as Bane moved around the fishing boat and freed the lines from the sturdy cleats before he could navigate the boat out of Gotham City's harbor. Bane pushed the throttle and urged the boat to open waters, far enough away from the blast radius and fall-out zone.
Bane looked down at the titanium watch on his thick wrist, his eyes couldn't ignore the blood caked under his blunt fingernails.
Talia's blood.
Bane closed his eyes and clenched his hands into fists until his knuckles turned white as he pushed Talia to the back of his mind, unable to risk diverting energy and attention to seeing her split open chest cavity. He felt a rush of acidic bile race up his throat as he blinked repeatedly to clear the image of her still heart nestled in its torn, opaque pericardial sac. Talia's body had become a fleshy melon having a casual encounter with a sledgehammer.
As Bane urged the boat to its maximum speed and further out to open sea, back in Gotham City, it was a descension into chaos as Gordon and Blake discovered Bruce's and Selina's bodies.
Blake felt a gut punch at the sight of Bruce nearly disarticulated from the blast, shrapnel bits had flown from the initial blast to lodge into the walls.
Gordon knelt by Selina's fallen body, her head turned around stared up at him with unblinking eyes, the skintight legs of her bodysuit filled with liquid shit when her bowels had released upon cardiac death.
Blake and Gordon turned to look at each other, both completely out of encouraging words and anything remotely inspirational. They rushed back to the streets with bodies littering every corner and bus stop bench and hopped back into Blake's hotrod. Blake shoved the accelerator to the floor, not sure where he was driving to or what he could hope to accomplish with Gotham City just waiting to be vaporized by the nuclear fusion reaction.
As Blake and Gordon navigated through the streets cluttered with overturned, burning vehicles and the dead and dying, out on the open water, drawing further away at its top nautical speed, Bane steered the boat as the water grew choppy. He glanced over his shoulder at Lena and caught her attempting to stand. Unsure of what she had in mind and needing to focus on the nuclear countdown, Bane swore in a dead language and set the autopilot on the navigation console before whipping around to Lena and dragging her down a set of rickety stairs to the small galley.
Lena wasn't able to take in much of the tight living space before Bane covered her eyes with an oily rag stained with carburetor cleaner before roughly shoving her to land on a narrow mattress.
Bane quickly uncuffed the metal loops from her wrists and just as rapidly secured the linked cuffs to the railing of the diminutive bed's wooden frame. The new position gave Lena more movement to rotate her limbs and took the strain off her joints but left her feeling exposed and vulnerable as she ended up flat on her back, robbed of sight, speak and much ability to defend herself.
Bane left Lena to her cramped, confined solitude and stomped back topside and checked the navigation system before switching the system from autopilot back to manual.
The four-stroke engine of the Thunder HT with upgraded dual bilge pumps flew across the surface of the water, with a charted and determined destination of east-northeast.
The fuel was consumed from the 52-gallon and used up by the 250-horsepower engine in its nautical path towards New York's bustling Port Authority.
As Bane urged the boat faster, downstairs in the galley, Lena bucked her hips and kicked her legs, desperately trying to dislodge her cuffed wrists from the wooden slats of the narrow mattress.
She grunted in pain when a cramp rippled through her shoulder where her rotator cuff was pulled taut with the pressure her tugging was putting on the joint.
Lena screamed when her left shoulder grew tired of her applying so much pressure and popped clean out its socket.
Spectacular pain erupted in Lena's shoulder as the ligaments were stretched to their very limit.
Topside, Bane put the boat back to autopilot and stomped down the few stairs to find one of Gotham City's finest writhing in pain, her beautiful face contorted as small tears developed in her arm muscles and began to swell with immediate inflammation.
Bane recognized the common injury from a lifetime of battle, life stealing and fighting as he fished the handcuff key from his pocket.
Lena couldn't avoid Bane's touch or close proximity and held her breath as he leaned over her to unlock the steel bracelets.
Lena tried to roll onto her side and curl into a fetal croissant when Bane reached for her numb, tingling left arm.
Bane growled with irritation when Lena continued to vainly squirm to avoid him grasping her left hand.
He tired of fighting trying to put her shoulder back where it belonged and snaked out his hand with reptilian agility and captured her left wrist.
"Allow me to help you officer Fischer," Bane commanded in a tone that held but a mere shadow of his capacity. Lena squeezed her eyes shut and moaned as the pain grew more and more nauseating. She coughed and swallowed back a rush of bitter saliva before nodding without opening her eyes.
"Lay back," Bane ordered as Lena winced and flattened out, never releasing his unbreakable hold on her wrist, squeezing hard enough that Lena could feel the pressure tease through the veil of numbness coating her nervous system.
"Breathe in," Bane murmured and held her arm in varying degrees from 30 to 120, easing the angry shoulder joint back into its socket. He alternated telling her when to inhale and exhale until Lena could feel her hand and flex her fingers within his tight grip.
As soon as Lena's shoulder joint had slid smoothly into its socket and the intensity of her pain was alleviated she immediately tried to roll away from him.
Bane continued to hold her arm away from her body, the elbow locked as he stared down at her, watching her try and retreat to nowhere.
"Did they teach you to surrender at the academy officer Fischer?" Bane asked.
Lena felt herself flush with anger that competed with the pain in her shoulder that began to throb in stereo with her heartbeat.
Lena blinked up at him before speaking, behind her fiery irises, she was transported back to taking her law enforcement oaths on concrete steps that were minutes away from being decimated, wiped from satellite imagery.
Lena saw herself five years ago, one hand on someone's idea of a holy book and the other in the air. She mouthed the oath under her breath as Bane narrowed his eyes down at her.
Bane didn't catch everything Lena whispered, only the word "obligation," came through clear.
He pulled her arm a hair more taut, "what did you say?"
Lena held his gaze as long as she could without blinking first. "I was thinking of the oath I took, taking the obligation freely," she breathed. "Defending the city against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
"I'm not your enemy," Bane said in a melodical rasp causing Lena to scoff with laughter.
"You're a criminal and should be in prison for all that you've done, I have obligations to the city, the people of Gotham."
Bane chuckled dangerously and hoisted Lena to her feet, roughly dragging her up the stairs by her good arm and to the stern of the boat as they grew further from Gotham City.
"You vowed to protect that city?" Bane shouted over the engine as he forced Lena to stare at Gotham before the bomb detonated.
Lena struggled to get out of Bane's hold and threw her good elbow back to bury itself in his abdomen, the wall of muscle prevented much more than a minor discomfort.
Bane captured her good wrist and yanked her arm up behind her back until her fingertips tickled the tips of her shoulder blades.
At that moment, the uranium at the center of nuclear bomb triggered a fusion explosion. The multi-kiloton blast sent out a destructive wave of neutron and gamma radiation, reducing all life to nothingness, not enough ashes would remain to rebirth a phoenix.
The four-kiloton bomb detonated, and Lena screamed against the power of the shockwave as Talia's body was incinerated at ground zero, her cremation one among millions, public and spectacular while she was turned to finer grains than that of moon dust, alone.
"Tell me the oath you took for those people," Bane demanded and pulled her arm tighter, applying enough pressure that Lena spoke out of fear he would pull her good arm out of socket.
Lena cried out as the nuclear blast sent out a powerful wash of ionizing radiation, third-degree burns blistered those furthest from the bomb's radius. Those Gothamites died the slowest as Lena shouted her law enforcement oath to the city turned radioactive inferno.
"On my honor …. I will never betray my integrity, my ch… ch…character, or the, the, the public trust," she warbled as Bane tightened his grip the smallest amount which caused a lightning bolt of pain shoot to the end of her fingertips, making her nailbeds twinge. "I will always have the courage, the courage, to hold myself and others, ac…countable for our actions," Lena said before trailing off into silence as she watched all life in Gotham end as the city burned, the fire hungry, radioactive afterbirth coated everything.
As Lena coughed hard until tears sprang to her eyes, across to the city on fire, Blake had made it back to the children on the bus. He told them to close their eyes as an energetic, radioactive wave reduced them to near-nothingness, their clothing was quickly slack and flaccid, absent of limbs, life, and flesh. The asphalt was stained with the darker fabrics they had been wearing when they were vaporized by the wave produced from the compressed thermonuclear fuel.
The dark letters from the Gotham University stitched on one of the boy's home residents zippered sweatshirt remained imprinted on the yellow painted line of the road's center divide. The deep purple letters had absorbed the fission reaction of the Uranium-238 and the stained letters were all that remained of his short life in donated clothes.
"Continue officer Fischer," Bane ordered and kept her practically immobile in his hold as he slid his other hand through her hair that was bundled in a loose bun. He squeezed the silken strands and pulled until Lena continued to hiss her oaths to the dying city.
"I will always maintain the highest, ethical standards and, and uphold the values of my community, and the agency I serve. I do solemnly swear that I will, that I will…..," Lena managed before trying to drop her gaze to the choppy water.
While Lena paused to catch her breath, in the inferno Gotham had become, dying in the time it took her lungs to deflate, Gordon asphyxiated on thick ropes of blood-tinged saliva and wet lung tissue as his alveoli fluttered and died like grapes left too long on the vine in the sun. His last conscious thoughts were words of thanks to a god made by wicked men to excuse their own wickedness, that his wife had taken the kids to Cleveland.
His wife's need for space saved her life and that of their children.
"You will what?" Bane growled and tightened his fist in the silky bundle of her hair, the loose strands snagging on his ragged cuticles as he forced her to remain on her feet, facing the death of all she'd ever known, lived and had an identity.
"I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against, against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States," Lena stumbled over, rushing to get her words out over the rush of nausea as she thought of each person in near alphabetical order that were no longer living. Friends and loved ones that were no longer alive because of the masked man that had dragged her to sea to witness their deaths.
"I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter," Lena finished and sniffed hard as she tried to straighten her shoulders and stand further upright in the confines of Bane's hold.
After Lena finished speaking, her breathing rapid, the cold sea air hurting her lungs, she lapsed into silence.
"Who hears your oath now officer Fischer?" Bane rasped; the crown of her head barely kissed the underside of his chin as he continued. Silken strands of her stray hairs snagged in the metal clasps of his mask. "Who are you now without your citizens and city to protect?" he mocked.
"I'm still a police officer," Lena started and felt her anger flare when she heard him give a musical chuckle. "And you're still a fucking criminal," she seethed, angry.
Lena tried to pivot and swing her bad arm towards him. Bane easily blocked her academy taught self-defense techniques and knocked her to the top of the deck. She gasped when a large splinter became lodged in her palm.
She flinched when Bane took a step towards her, a wave of humiliation washed over her at his musical words of amusement. "Don't give up now officer Fischer. You had to have been taught to properly serve," he continued as Lena struggled to her feet and reached for the fire extinguisher that had been double-latched down for safety.
Had Lena been two seconds faster, she would've had somewhat of a chance to mount a defense. Bane easily knocked her back to the deck where she caught herself from landing too clumsily but absorbed the brunt of the impact in her damaged shoulder.
Bane was a lion on the Serengeti, playing with fresh prey, not hungry or eager to end the life of his plaything.
"Do you still wish to be cargo, or would you prefer to die now for your citizens?" Bane asked as he closed the small distance between them, forcing her to crawl backwards, closer to the edge of the stern.
Lena closed her eyes, her thoughts churning madly as she tried to catch her breath. "You're still a police officer," she told herself sternly. "Take this obligation freely, arrest him, make him face justice, make Gotham have meant something." Lena nearly nodded as she looked up and met Bane's eyes. She raised her hands and nodded weakly, "cargo, I don't want to die."
Bane stared at her long enough her bladder tightened, and she was certain she was going to soak her pants with hot piss before he finally nodded and took his eyes off her for just a few minutes to check the boat's course.
"I take this obligation freely," Lena repeated in a slow mantra as she stared at Bane's broad back, encased in a tight long-sleeved shirt, the fabric kissing and licking every line of his upper body.
"Freely," Lena kept telling herself as Bane drew them further from Gotham City where the soil would remain toxic for hundreds of year and anything that did live would have a shortened, deformed life.
A giant mushroom cloud rose, the only witness to their departure.