Thursday, August 6, 2009 – 11:10am – Gotham Century Towers; Gotham City, New Jersey

Bruce blinked himself awake, leaving him staring upward at the plain ceiling, as he released a reality-grasping sigh. His nightmares were getting worse.

He had stayed up until dawn in Wayne Tower's subbasement, trying his best to distract himself, especially after he and Lucius had heard the news report around midnight. And now since he had been waking up early, his internal clock was off, making the mere four hours of rough and restless sleep enough for him.

A siren sounded in the distance, making him wince.

He glanced sideways, and, as expected, a newspaper and his usual protein shake rested idly on the small, bedside table. He managed a smirk when he noticed the slight condensation on the glass. Alfred still had some of his tricks.

Suddenly he rolled, his long arm grabbing the paper as he slid into a sitting position. With just once glance at the front page, he tore open the paper to the business section, desperate to busy himself with other things. The police were handling things. He didn't need to worry about it.

And then he was on to the sports section as he sipped on his shake.

While he was doing push-ups, he was mentally doing the crossword puzzle.

But as he stood in front of the mirror of his large bathroom, the shower water running and steam already enveloping the air, he was skimming the obituaries.

On his way to Wayne Tower, he had GCN on the radio.

While he sat at his desk, skimming through files, the news broadcasted silently on the wall-mounted TV.

As he spray painted his miniature jet black in the subbasement, the police scanner on the desk behind him was on. When Lucius joined him, he glanced at the device only once, but didn't question it.

He subconsciously kept this up until dinner, where Alfred found him sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV, eating something he had made himself with chopsticks. At the sight, Alfred didn't know whether to chuckle or worry. Bruce had acted like this for a month after he returned—once he had gotten sick of pretending to be fine with his old silver-spooned ways.

But as they both watched the news in silence, something suddenly made the floor quiver. Static crossed the television screen momentarily before Mike Engle's face returned. Bruce paused in his chewing, his chopsticks hovering above the bowl. Suddenly fire erupted to his left, a small burst a few blocks away as a building went up in flames. With just the slightest delay, the large windows rattled in response. Another spot of fire emerged further away, followed by another and another.

Abandoning the bowl, Bruce stood and slowly moved towards the windows as Engle was interrupted on the screen. As far as he could see, Gotham burned.

Friday, August 7, 2009 – 4:10am – Wayne Manor; Gotham City, New Jersey

He sat stoically in front of the monitor bay. All of the screens showed nearly the same thing, even though they were all different channels. Behind him, the Batsuit taunted him. It had been hours.

He didn't know what to do. He'd never felt so…lost before.

Rachel's words still haunted him. The chaos on the screens beckoned him.

His thoughts suddenly flashed elsewhere, as they had been all evening when he was searching more desperately for answers. And a face who could help him relax always filled the monitors each time before he blinked it away.

This time, however, when he blinked away her face, Gordon's was actually on the screen. It took him a moment to comprehend what he was seeing, but once it sunk in—the formal picture present instead of a candid—he lurched forward, quickly isolating the news feed and turning up the volume.

"…to Mercy General in critical condition. It was reported that he was still inside one of the buildings when the bomb went off—"

"Not Gordon," Bruce couldn't help but mutter as he looked hopelessly at the screen.

Friday, August 7, 2009 – 5:28am – Mercy General; Gotham City, New Jersey

The heart monitor beeped steadily as Gordon slept. Physically, he looked unscathed. But the way he was curled up on his side, the paleness of his skin, and the slight hitch in his breathing told Bruce otherwise. That, and his charts said that he had already gone through surgery.

When the building he was in exploded—the building that they dragged Falcone and Zasz from, the first dead and the second still breathing—he had been lucky enough to be shielded by a metal security door. However, when the second floor collapsed…

He had shattered three ribs, broken his clavicle, and had internal hemorrhaging.

An automatic door opened down the hall, disrupting the steady beeps of the monitor. The only sound Bruce had heard from outside of the room since he had gotten there twenty minutes prior. He cocked his head slightly, listening for the footsteps to fade.

And when his attention returned to Gordon, he spotted the Commissioner's eyes flutter. His breathing caught as he awoke sharply, clearly remembering the night. He tried to cough, but only managed shallow heaves between winces.

Swiftly Bruce stood from where he had been sitting and gently took the oxygen mask from where it had been hanging from the cot to hand to Gordon. Desperate to breathe normally again, the elder man snatched the mask and roughly forced it over his head. Breathing quickly, but deeply, the heaving subsided. Carefully Bruce sat back down again, Gordon's brown eyes following.

The Commissioner stared at the masked man for a long time. And Bruce's shadowed eyes stared right back.

Finally the bed-stricken man shifted, his upper arm moving to reach for the mask. Bruce's eyes flashed with worry, but Gordon only pulled it inches away from his face as he released a sigh, "We were in this together…"

Bruce diverted his eyes.

Another deep breath, "And then you were gone." The heart monitor was still beeping faster than it had before, but his breathing was leveling out at last. His words coming out more as breaths than anything. "And now there's…evil rising." His brown eyes not hidden by the usual square frames glanced away for a moment as if remembering a bad dream. But before Bruce could worry about what exactly had happened over the past week, Gordon's eyes suddenly focused sharply back on him. "The Batman. Has to. Come. Back."

Bruce's hues returned to Gordon's, their eyes locking once more. "What if he doesn't exist anymore?" he finally whispered, truthfully.

"He must," was the immediate plea, his face looking more pained, haunted, and fearful than ever. It almost made Bruce afraid. Gordon had always been strong, ever since Bruce was just a little boy, shroud in his father's evening coat. And even when Gordon was at his most vulnerable, when Two-Face had his family at gunpoint, he was still strong, still brave. But this… "He must…"

The automatic door opened again, drawing Bruce's attention.

Gordon replaced the mask as he closed his eyes, resting from the vigorous task of talking. This time the footsteps paused outside of the door. Carefully the door handle turned, a nightshift nurse poking her head through the small space she allowed herself. And as Gordon opened his eyes again, the nurse was shutting the door and the Batman was long gone.

Friday, August 7, 2009 – 5:56am – Gotham City Police Department; Gotham City, New Jersey

Though the news didn't know exactly which building Gordon had been hauled out of, the police did. And even though the sun was already above the horizon, Bruce was going to try to find out what the hell happened as quickly as possible.

Batman peered into the dark room from his vantage point on the fire escape. Gordon still remained in his old office and had yet to take up the Commissioner's office in city hall, thankfully. The desk was covered in papers, and the rest of the office wasn't up for a cleanliness award either, but it was void of any lingering detectives or lieutenants trying to take over for Gordon. He tried to silently open the window and was surprised to find it unlocked. Gordon still left it open for him. Slipping inside, he crept around the stacks of folders to hover over the desk, his small LED flashlight already in hand. Whatever papers were on the top were the most recent events—he could start there.

Arkham Asylum blueprints and maps of the island were rolled up and slipped in between two stacks of papers. Three stacks of folders on the floor were patient files of the Arkham inmates. A print-out of an E-mail containing the names of the staff on the island was sticking out between a stack of police reports deemed suspicious over the past week. But the majority of the top layer of the desk contained scattered files of the inmates reported in the news, along with a couple of other familiars.

Batman flipped past the first couple, shifting them so he could get to what was underneath. But he paused when he spotted Harvey Duall's file.

Heavy footsteps approached just past the door and he extinguished the flashlight. They came closer and stopped just outside the frosted window, a silhouette of a tall and wide frame still wearing a hat and trench coat in the building. Batman shrugged his shoulders, allowing his cape to fall around him in case he had to slip away lest the intruder entered. But after a moment, the figure bowed and a file slipped under the door before it lumbered back down the hallway.

Curious, Batman abandoned the desk and silently shifted his way towards the door. Kneeling, he examined the loose pile of folders that had all been pushed underneath the crack. The one that had just been dropped off was the building explosion that Gordon had been, the Ace Chemical Plant. All of the ones underneath were reports on the rest of the destroyed buildings. Making a mental note in that photographic memory of his of the names of all the buildings and their locations, he stood, leaving the files as they were and headed back towards the window.

Only when he reached the ledge, his gloved hand perched at the ready, did he pause and glance back at the desk. He was curious about this Harvey Duall. And he did need to know about him to catch him. He slunk forward and flipped open the file in a smooth motion.

There was still no photo. Only a description under the name. "Caucasian, six foot, 175 pounds, blond hair, blue eyes, very noticeable burn scars on the left side of face and neck and parts of the left shoulder." Batman blinked, stunned. It couldn't be…

"Prognosis: Patient displays dissociative identity disorder, with strong bipolar moods. Claims to be the District Attorney, Harvey Dent. It is still unknown how patient received extensive burns-."

More footsteps. More hurried and lighter this time, and accompanied by more pairs. He flipped the flashlight off and disappeared out the window before they even began unlocking the door.

Climbing back to the roof, he vaulted himself over the ledge and straightened up, glancing around at the surrounding buildings. The Tumbler was less than a half mile off, hidden between dumpsters in the alleyway behind one of the bomb sites: the Museum of Science and Industry. A straight shot from here, rooftop to rooftop—

"Put yer hands up where I can see 'em!" A voice boomed from behind him.

Batman glanced casually over his shoulder to find the same frame that had approached Gordon's office door earlier, a cigar still hanging in his mouth as he used both hands to aim his gun at the vigilante. Now that he could see the face, Batman instantly put a name to it from the files he had skimmed a couple of days earlier: Harvey Bullock. One of the new detective transfers.

"You make one move, and I swear to God—"

Batman flung his cape open before diving off the rooftop as bullets sung past him, tearing through the tri-weave fabric. The gun continued to go off even as he approached the ground, so the Bat rolled into a landing and kept on running. Just as he was about to dash off around the corner of an adjacent alleyway, bullet number six of the handgun landed in his left shoulder, conveniently just under the large titanium plate there. Cursing his luck and the detective's aim, he flew around the corner and slammed against the opposite wall, pausing for a moment to inspect the damage now that he was out of range.

"Dispatch, we got a bogey on foot headin' east in the alleys adjacent to the department," Bullock loudly reported into a radio. "The Batman."

The radio was turned too low for Batman to hear dispatch's response, but he couldn't wait around for it anyway. These alleys were going to be swarming with police shortly, thanks to those two little words. Ignoring the pain that was now radiating in his back, he darted down the alley.

Friday, August 7, 2009 – 6:34am – Dixon Docks; Gotham City, New Jersey

Bruce heard the car approach. He even heard the engine idle for an extra moment before shutting off, the door opening and closing, and light, even steps approaching. But he didn't say anything, and the approaching butler didn't utter a word either. It unusual, but the shock of seeing Bruce back in the suit probably silenced him.

Or he had watched the morning news when he woke up before deciding to find his employer.

While Bruce continued to stare at the list of buildings bombed, a grand total of six ranging from gardens to hospitals, he noticed each step Alfred took. Most of them were even and steady. A couple were off balance, as he stepped around the discarded pieces of the suit.

But nothing hid the, "Good Lord," the elder man breathed after setting down the morning paper and the protein shake to-go, and turned towards his young charge.

Bruce exhaled, surprised that he was holding his breath, and with it came a new wave of pain and nausea.

Oh, that's why…

Shifting in his seat, he leaned back, propping his elbows up on the arm rests.

"Master Way—"

"Alfred, does this list mean anything to you?"

Releasing a pent-up sigh of his own, the butler approached to stand next to the boy billionaire and observe the center screen himself. After a moment of his blue hues scanning the list from top to bottom and back up again, he turned to fetch the medical bag waiting next to the desk, still out in the open from its previous constant use. "From a wordy stand point, if you arrange them a certain way, they spell out something rather familiar."

Amazed that the elder man could find something so abstract from just a glance, Bruce mentally reorganized the list until it spelled out what Alfred had hinted at while the man himself was gloving up and preparing to tackle Batman's most recent injury. Without even a comment or a glance needed, Bruce began to struggle out of the top half of the suit with Alfred's assistance. Dried blood made the tri-weave fiber stick to his skin in certain places, while Alfred found that some of the titanium plates were still sticky and slick from the ominous liquid that flowed like a river down the younger man's back.

Finally, once the suit was off, leaving Bruce bare-chested and in more pain than he started out with, Alfred went straight to work on his shoulder blade while Bruce focused on the screens again, attempting to distract himself. "What would you say if I told you that all of these buildings have been associated with my family?"

At this revelation, Alfred paused in his work of removing the shallow bullet, glancing back up at the screens himself before moving his gaze towards Bruce and then back to the shoulder. "I would say that I think someone is trying to play a game with you," he muttered, digging into Bruce's flesh.

Bruce bit the inside of his cheek and tasted blood as he gripped the arm rests of the chair with a painful force, which only hurt his back even more. But just as quickly did the pain subside as Alfred leaned around Bruce to set the bloodied and smashed bullet on the desk before started the cleaning and bandaging process.

Ignoring the metallic taste in his mouth, Bruce thought aloud, "Bristol Country Club had hosted a variety of events, including several Wayne Foundation fundraisers. The Ace Chemical Processing Plant used to be owned by Wayne Enterprises before they became a 'clean' company and shut down the plant. The Museum of Science and Industry was started by my mother. The North Gotham Hospital was a branch of Gotham General and received the same funding from my father. Aqua was the hotel I bought a year ago." At that fact, Alfred couldn't help but smile. "And Neo-Eden was the Wayne Enterprises biology facility. This is too smart for the Joker. He doesn't know who I am, and the explosives used were complicated. Much more than gasoline and toy bombs."

"Perhaps a new foe?"

"One who has access to this information, can create these types of extensive explosives, and with a sick sense of humor."

"That certainly sounds like the clown." Bruce cocked his head, and Alfred shed a tight smile. "At least, the latter does."

"I don't know where to begin," Bruce muttered, already sounding and feeling defeated. As if the Arkham break wasn't bad enough, now this? None of the inmates could've orchestrated this, especially with what little time they've had.

"Perhaps you should start with the B," Alfred implied with a small smile.

Not feeling the humor, Bruce just sighed as he glanced back at the screen. Among the list, now rearranged, only the word Batman stared back at him now. Between checking the bomb sites and hunting inmates, tomorrow night was going to be busy.