2:06 AM

The Narrows. The vanguard of Gotham maritime communication as it was known in eras past. Now a three-mile by two-mile plot of hell festering in the Gotham River separating midtown and downtown.

The Narrows made most slums and ghettoes look like amusement parks. It looked like a mausoleum, littered with condemned buildings, derelict cars, and hopeless inhabitants—the rotting carcass of a once prosperous neighborhood of a premier industrial city, now ruled by criminals with an iron fist. Historically notorious for the massacre of the Hawtaw Indians in the seventeenth century and as a mass grave site for the victims of an epidemic of yellow fever in the early nineteenth century, The Narrows had barely evolved since its prominence in the during the industrial revolution, with only select tenements having running water, electricity, and effective sanitation. Most city officials considered The Narrows to be a lost cause that was easier to disregard than attempt to reform. It was the shining symbol of the urban neglect that infected Gotham.

Making matters worse, the batmobile didn't navigate the Narrows' thoroughfares well. The roads weren't surveyed with automobiles in mind, much less one the size of the batmobile. In fact, most of the roads were in disrepair. That said: I made effective use of motorcycles on the streets or went on foot using the high-ground when transiting. The rooftops were optimum in this case, especially considering that I was in no mood to be shot at anymore this evening.

I raced from one roof to another, hurdling the small chasms between each building, breathing rhythmically trying to stave-off fatigue. My thigh ached and my side was on fire from the persistent stress of running and jumping. I could feel blood running down my ribcage again. I probably tore a suture in the previous melee. No matter, I had to push through the pain. I had to stay focused on Madhavi—an innocent girl, no older than I was when my parents were murdered, caught in the machinations of a madman. If I didn't stay focused, she would end up more victimized than she had been already. That was an optimistic outlook. In reality, I'd be lucky to find Madhavi unharmed with as much time had elapsed since Freiss issued his demands. The clock was against me. Worst of all, I could have been running right into...

"...another trap, Batman," Oracle cautioned.

"I have to take that risk," I managed despite being practically out of breath.

"We're talking about a little girl's life here. If you just kick the door in, Freiss may hurt her."

"He already has."

"I mean physically."

"What would you have me do?" I growled into the receiver. "The longer I take, the greater the chances of him killing her."

She went momentarily silent.

I jumped from the edge of a roof, landing two stories below onto the fire escape of another building and sprinted up the ladders.

"Maybe not. Without her, he has no bargaining chip."

"Freiss doesn't need one. Psychos don't bargain."

"Okay, then let's take a moment to consider our options. I'll get Nightwing to follow Ivy. Maybe there's something she hasn't told us."

"No."

"And, I'll have Robin meet you there. He can—"

"No."

Nightwing and Robin would only slow me down. They'd add more deliberation where action was needed, especially Robin. Nightwing was like me by most regards but Robin acted as what he coined the voice of reason. I didn't need to debate his or anyone else's reasoning. In fact, I was wasting time thinking about it.

"Would you just stop for a moment and listen? We need to gather more intelligence. Freiss may not even be holding Madhavi at the safe-house. She could be anywhere. At least wait for the UAV to finish refueling so that I can give you air-support."

"There's no time."

"What do you mean there's no time? Nightwing and Robin will respond immediately.

"No."

"Batman—"

I had arrived on top of the safe-house. "No."

"You're being unreasonable. If you get ambushed again, you may not make it out alive."

"I wasn't ambushed."

Oracle's patience ran out. "Call it whatever you want!"

So had mine. "Batman out." I closed the channel.

Ivy was just a gangster. Her sole purpose in life was monetary gain, not masterminding trap-after-trap in effort to kill me. I highly doubted that she had planned another one. She was deliberately selling Freiss out to save her own skin. She had probably planned to kill him when he had outlived his usefulness. Ivy was trying to tie-up a loose-end. That indicated to me that Freiss was here, holed up somewhere in this sarcophagus of a building. In the off-chance that he wasn't holding Madhavi, neither he nor I were going to leave until I knew her whereabouts.

I crept along the perimeter of the roof being sure to remain out of sight of Ivy's lookouts who were stationed about the block's rooftops. I scanned the building for an entrance and decided on a window on the south wall that flickered with the light of a TV. I anchored my grapnel to a chimney and went over the side, repelling head first to the window and peered in.

The room was occupied by two Bloodroot-gangsters—neither of which I knew by name or reputation. One sat on the couch engrossed in a televised sporting event and the other shot pool nearest the window, completely uninterested by the TV. The pool-player was my first target; the game-watcher was my second.

To cover the noise of my entry, I timed the opening of the window with the pool-player striking the cue and slipped in, slithering up behind him. When he was distracted by the game-watcher, I seized the pool-player by his throat. He struggled but I muffled his attempts to scream with my free hand.

The game-watcher spit at the TV, "Ah, this is crap! Can you believe this guy? Where the hell did the damn league find this clown?"

I watched him carefully from behind a barely-conscious pool-player as the game-watcher reached for his ringing phone and keyed the text-message inbox. The pool-player rattled until I had restricted enough blood-flow to his head and he went limp. I set him down easily onto the pool table and turned my attention to the game-watcher.

"Oh shit, Nando," he was addressing the pool-player, "I just got a message from T-Don. He said the Bat—" The game-watcher's face went instantly white. He had turned to face his partner but instead found himself face-to-face with me and his comrade fast asleep on the pool table.

He darted for the door, knocking the coffee table over as he did so. I dove over the couch and got him around waist with both arms causing him to topple under the force and weight. I snaked around him in a series of grappling maneuvers until I was up on a knee with him prostrate beneath me and his foot and ankle in my hands. I took a deep breath and jerked his foot in a semi-circle until I heard his ankle break. I was sure the whole block heard him cry out.

I pinned him to the floor facedown with my knee and pulled a set of zip-ties from my utility-belt, binding his hands. I rolled the game-watcher over and I pressed my forehead to his; the armor of my cowl was cold against his skin. "Scream again. I dare you."

The game watcher bit down on his lip trying smother his sobs.

I took a moment and surveyed the room; I was looking for a sign of Freiss' whereabouts. The place was a rat-hole decorated by decaying furniture, rotting food, and an endless supply of cigarette butts. The atmosphere smelled rancid, probably due to non-functioning sewage lines. Criminals had no standards. They were little more than animals rolling in their own waste.

The game-watcher's cellphone caught my eye.

I reopened the last text. It read: Yo da Bat's coming. Screw Freiss. Leave his ass for da Bat. Get outta there!

Freiss was here.

I hustled to the door of the apartment. It was wide open and when I looked out into the building proper, I noticed that the doors to every apartment were open as well. Pretty typical of a tenement with the sole purpose of the production and the storage of drugs, except that—judging by the lack of manpower—it was given over to Freiss to meet the needs of his operation. Poison Ivy left some goons to provide Freiss some muscle when needed it and to keep an eye on him for her.

The lighting in the building's small atrium was scarce, provided by a flickering hallway lamp, a broken skylight, and the glow from the room I had entered. It didn't take much effort to hug the shadows as I began to descend each level, checking every door between me and the ground floor.

The only closed doors were the last two that I came upon: one lead to the street and other to the basement. The basement door wasn't rotting like every other sliver of wood in this building, indicating that it had been recently replaced and there was a faint glow of an icy-blue light shining from beneath it. Oracle had mentioned that Freiss had had a laboratory in the basement of his residence prior to his arrest several years ago. Coincidence? Doubtful. Criminals didn't change much.

I needed to find out what was in the basement but I was reluctant to go charging down there blindly if I could help it. I didn't want to force Freiss' hand and cause him to kill Madhavi by causing him to panic. I contemplated cutting the power to the building. Darkness would either provide me the cover needed to sneak up on Freiss and take him out quickly or provide me with the cover needed to search the basement uninterrupted in his absence. Unfortunately, the layout of building indicated that the electrical elements were all in the basement. Therefore, cutting the power was out of the question. On to Plan B.

I pulled a fiber optic camera from the back of my utility-belt and pushed it under the door. Through the grainy feed I could see that the stairway, walled on both sides, descended along the extreme far-end of the faintly lit room. I didn't see a light switch along the staircase which meant that I was going to descend into the open view of the basement. And, if Freiss was down there, there would be no doubt that he'd see me come down. Not that I had any other options at this juncture. I had to manage the risk by prioritizing my movements when I reached the bottom of the stairs.

First, I'd sidle along the wall to the last step and use the fiber-optic camera to scan the room. Next, I'd locate the light-switches and turn them off—the sudden darkness would confuse Freiss for a moment. Third, I'd use the darkness to mask my movement and seek cover. Last, I'd take down Freiss and then search the basement for his data and—more importantly—Madhavi.

The doorknob was unlocked. I turned it slowly and pulled the door open just a hair pressing my ear to the opening. I could hear the chattering of caged animals and the labored buzzing of a refrigeration unit. The air had the acidic smell of a hospital combined with the animal musk of kennel. The door's hinges, aged as they were, groaned loudly as I pulled the door open just enough to fit through and then pulled it closed behind me. I descended the unlit stairway towards the bluish hue, hugging the wall to my right. The temperature dropped with each step. Once I reached the bottom I had to turn right to enter the basement.

When I reached the final step, I slid the camera's lens around the corner and spied the room on the screen of my tablet. The basement was a perfect rectangle—perhaps, fifty-feet by thirty-feet—with no exits leading out save a small window on the far side and a series of work stations, computers, industrial refrigeration equipment, and cages. Freiss was not among them. The light switches were, at the very least, reciprocal my position on the wall.

I slid around the corner and hit them. The passive, blue lighting faded to black, leaving the room only barely lit by the LEDs of the four computer towers that dotted the counters. I stuffed the camera back into its pouch and drew my night-vision from another, the room turned instantly green through its feed. To my left, Freiss had an entire kennel. Cages, stacked two and three high, were piled full with an assortment of dogs, cats, and hundreds of rats. All test subjects for Freiss' continued research into cryonics. The animals hardly acknowledged my presence, gazing through me with empty stares as I crept deeper into the basement. I was sure he kept them sedated in advance of further experimentation.

Three stainless-steel counters ran the length of the room: One in front of the kennel, one along the far-right wall, and one between the others. Another shorter counter ran the length of the wall opposite of me. Each had a set of drawers and cabinets for storage and a computer work-station connected in series to a server in the far right corner of the basement. To my right, in the near right corner, was an industrial freezer similar to those found in restaurants. In the far left corner was an object that reached nearly to the ceiling covered by dark canvas. I decided I would start at the right side of the basement at the freezer and work my way down and left, ending at the canvas.

As I approached the freezer, I noticed a laundry cart parked to its immediate left covered with tarp. Lifting the cover revealed partially thawed, discarded animal parts: legs, torsos, and organs. How was he disposing of the remains? An even better question: Where was he disposing of the remains? Answer: He wasn't disposing of the remains, Ivy's hired muscle were. And they were likely disposing of them in the same place that the Bloodroots disposed of the victims that eventually appeared on the missing-persons list. I was willing to bet that two vermin that I left a few floors up could shed some light on that prospect. I'd catalogue that for later.

I opened the heavy doors to the freezer; the air hissed with the change of pressure. On the inside, bodies—frozen stiff—covered in translucent plastic were stacked methodically in neat piles. Was Madhavi among these poor souls? My stomach turned. I pulled the plastic taut over each body and wiped away the condensation trying to find her. She wasn't in the freezer.

I closed the refrigerator and continued my search. I checked the drawers and cabinets of the center counter as I continued through the space. They were full of chemicals, tools, hardware, and publications; all neatly catalogued with a surgeon's precision and easily accessible as Freiss worked.

I stopped at the center workstation—which had two telescoping, hose-like nozzles to either side, each attached to a separate tank located beneath the counter—as I neared the end of the counter and the opposite side of the basement. In addition to finding Madhavi, I needed to acquire all of Freiss' data on the Thawing/Recovery Theorem so that authorities could rescue the rest of the Sanman family. I'd just take it from the server.

I pulled a jump-drive from my utility-belt, plugged it into the server, and then went back to the center workstation to crack Freiss' log-in—it didn't take me long—Oracle could have done it faster, though. There was about 82GB of data, which would take me about twenty minutes to download. I initiated it and moved on.

I walked up to the canvas and regarded it for a moment. It was covering a large, box-shape and was attached by Velcro at the corners. Two rubber hoses from separate tanks, much like the ones accompanying each workstation, entered through the top of the canvas. At the base, heavy condensate rolled out from beneath the material like an eerie mist. I pulled my finger-light from my belt, stowed my nightvision, tore the Velcro open, and shined the light in. My mouth went instantly dry.

Like a statue sculpted by a deranged artist, Madhavi was flash-frozen in an unending moment of cold distress. Through a murky brown, gelatinous fluid housed in a giant glass vat I could see her suspended there with empty eyes and rictus that cried for help—to save her innocence—so that she didn't become a monster…like me. My moment was forever frozen in my mind: Two bleeding, lifeless gunshot victims left to rot in an alley. Her moment was simply forever frozen. A wave of guilt washed over me. I failed her. I let her down. I tried to shake it off with the knowledge that I had found Freiss' data but it didn't evaporate the guilt.

Perhaps, in these hard-drives I had found the means to save the entire Sanman family but it left me to wonder what Madhavi would be twenty years from now? Would she grow to become a monster like me—in a constant struggle for her soul? Would she embark on a fool's errand too, thinking that she could rid the world of a cancer that it was incurably infected by? Or would she grow to be pox on Gotham that I would have to end? Freiss' data or no, I had failed her like I failed Nightwing, and Oracle, and Robin, and Jason Todd before him. I pounded my fist against the glass. Then the door to the basement groaned. Someone was coming—Freiss was coming.

I disappeared from sight and so did the anxiety. I took cover behind the kennel-side counter and dowsed the light, stowing in its container. Anger caused my veins to run hot and a layer sweat began to collect between my skin and my armor.

Freiss came down the stairs at an even pace, carrying a grocery bag in either hand. The ease of his gait told me that the Bloodroots had not alerted him to my presence. He hit the light switches and the lights hummed into existence painting the room an artic blue again. He set the bags on the end of the center counter and began unloading their contents into the myriad drawers.

Freiss was cold-looking, pale, and bald. He was lean of stature, standing an easy six-feet-four-inches with a thick set of glasses that sat on his head, offsetting his chiseled, aged, and apathetic face. He wore an earth-toned button-down flannel shirt, with brown trousers and work boots. The man opened one of the cabinets and drew-out a white lab coat, which he pulled on, and grabbed a pair of rawhide heavy gloves and then he made his way between the kennel-side and the center counters towards the workstation near Madhavi's prison. I moved reciprocal of him, between the kennels and the kennel-side counter, remaining out of his field of view. He introduced a faint cologne and cigarette smell to the atmosphere as we passed each other and proceeded to opposite ends of the basement.

Freiss stopped at a workstation near Madhavi and resumed his work, alternatingly shuffling through several notebooks that he pulled from a drawer and typing on the computer. He hadn't noticed the download that I had initiated at one of the other client computers. Once I was sure that he was stationary, I crept out from my hiding spot and slithered towards him. When I came within few yards, I rose ominously.

Freiss noticed my materializing silhouette in the reflection of the brush-finished back of the far-side counter but didn't acknowledge me until he saw my reflection in the monitor of the computer. He did a double-take and then whipped around. After the initial start, however, he went cold; seemingly unaffected by my presence as we regarded one another. That wasn't normal. I knew of only a few criminals that didn't fear me. They were of the more dangerous breed. I decided to let Freiss make the first move.

"I thought you were just a story that the locals perpetuated out of sheer boredom." His accent was heavy. "But apparently the reports are true."

My stare was all ice despite the fire burning in my chest.

Freiss continued, "What did you hope to accomplish by coming here dressed as such? To save the child, perhaps, hm? There's nothing you can do, you won't stop me."

Give up, Freiss, popped into my mind but I didn't say it. He wouldn't humor me, anyway.

"You will not keep her from me," he said matter-of-factly. "They've kept her from me this long but that's going to end. Do you hear me?"

I didn't reply. I just stood there and waited for him to make a move.

"Do you hear me?" His voice became heavy. "Do you? She is my wife and she will not be without me." The veins in his face were becoming visible. "She will never be without me! I would see her dead before I let you keep her from me! You will not keep my wife from me!"

Freiss snatched the nozzles from the workstations and depressed their actuators spraying liquid in an arc. I retreated underneath my cape like a turtle into its shell. The first stream made contact, then the second. Once the two chemicals mixed, they flash-froze and so did everything the mixture touched. It overrode my armor's insulation, caused the armor plates to rattle with the extreme temperature change, and sapped the heat from my body causing my muscles to seize. The cooling effect was so intense that it confused my senses: I didn't know if I was freezing or burning.

My body was shutting down. If I didn't do something, I was going to freeze to death. I had to focus to resist the urge to collapse into the fetal position as a last ditch effort to retain body heat and to maintain higher brain function. My instincts told me to stand and escape. Doing so would take me out from the little protection my cape provided and directly into the stream of the refrigerant. I therefore willed myself not to stand but instead remain beneath my cape and arm a smoke grenade.

There was a pop as the small charge of the grenade detonated and a pressurized cough followed by a steady hiss as smoke billowed out from beneath the cape in a flapping motion. In the span of a couple seconds, the smoke had covered an area of about ten-feet around me, enabling a retreat beyond the range of the hoses. Once clear, I stood to my feet; portions of my flash-frozen cape fell away in pieces.

Boom! My ears rang. That was a shotgun. Using the smoke to cover my retreat—and despite the cold-induced lethargy—I sprinted towards the stairs, hitting the lights as I passed them, and bounded up to the atrium, three steps at a time. Freiss fired twice more into the dark and the smoke. I was well clear by that time.

I stood in the doorway until sensation began to return to my extremities. The meager light of the atrium casted a long shadow of a bat across the floor of the basement at the bottom of the steps. I knew Freiss could see it; the smoke would have dispersed by now. His mind had to be racing, knowing that I was right at the top the stairs, waiting for him. He was probably trying to figure out how he was going to take me down since the refrigerant hadn't stopped me. He was hoping that the shotgun could end me, hoping that the stories weren't true that the Batman was bulletproof. There was only one way out of that basement and no one was coming to his aid. He'd have no choice but to search for the truth himself.

I predicted that the first thing Freiss was going to do once he turned the corner at the bottom of the steps was pull the trigger. I wasn't going to make myself a target. He'd have to come get me. And, this time I'd draw him into my trap.

I stepped out of the doorway—Freiss saw my shadow dematerialize—and I raced across the atrium to the open door of the first apartment, ditching my cape in front—it was full of holes and useless at this point from all the damage—to act as a lure. I then stuffed a small-yield explosive charge into the space between the open door and the frame and I disappeared into the shadows opposite and just inside. The explosive didn't have the power to seriously injure Freiss nor do extensive structural damage but it was sure to stun him long enough to beat him into a coma.

I heard Freiss reach the top of the stairs, he dragged his boots and breathed heavy as he lumbered about. Freiss stopped after several paces, probably looking for some clue that would betray my whereabouts. Then I heard him take a deep breath and hold it; he saw the cape lying at the foot of the doorway, beckoning him, 'catch me if can'.

The shotgun's wrathful scream reverberated through the building as did Freiss' voice, "Batman, I am here! Come out and face me!" He fired again. "You think you can keep me from my wife? No one can stop me! Not the police or you! Not even death can keep her from me! And, mark my words when I say I will kill everyone—man, woman, and child—in Gotham until I have my wife again! The Sanman's are only the beginning! Do you hear me?"

His singular-purposed pace resumed as he headed for the booby-trapped doorway. I pressed closer to the wall and readied myself. I couldn't take any chances, I needed to be surgical when I struck. My armor would not sustain a gunshot at pointblank range, especially not from a shotgun; it'd be instantly lethal.

Freiss was just outside and fired randomly through the doorway. "Batman!" he demanded as he crossed the threshold.

I hit the detonator. The charge blew up at shoulder-height setting the door off its hinges. Freiss' body shuddered as the shockwave hit him and he was temporarily blinded by the debris. In that same instant, I emerged from the shadows, took hold of the barrel, and yanked it from his hands pulling him the rest of the way through the door.

Freiss stumbled across the room before regaining his balance against a table laden with tools—some of which fell to the rotting floor as he made impact. I set upon him with the shotgun, swinging it like a baseball bat and striking him cleanly in the cheek with the butt. He crumbled to the floor dripping blood from the avulsion. Then, I slammed the weapon against my thigh and broke into two useless pieces at the breach and slung them to the far side of the apartment.

I hoisted Freiss to his feet by his shirt, gritted my teeth, and hit him with everything I had. His head quaked from the impact, his blood spattered onto my face. I vented my anger, frustration, and anguish on Freiss, mauling him until I found some measure of quiet and satisfaction. A fist. A knee. Another fist, followed by an elbow. He tried to retaliate at one point. I intercepted his arm in mid-flight, yanked his shoulder from its socket, and then broke the arm at the humerus for good measure. Then I hit him in the face again.

All that didn't fill the void that I felt for Madhavi but I was determined to take revenge for her—and for every innocent that had ever been wronged in the hell that is Gotham City. I lifted Freiss off the ground and used his body as a sledge hammer to smash the table into pieces. The rest of the tools crashed to the floor.

Freiss, stubborn as he was, tried to sit up, so I dropped onto his chest with my knee. He coughed painfully as I forced the air from his lungs. I mauled his face with my fist again and again and again, driving his head into the floor. He tried to stop the initial strikes but as he slid closer and closer towards unconsciousness he became less and less interested with defending himself. I continued bludgeoning his face and more blood spattered with each strike. My hands went numb eventually urging me to stop.

Freiss laid there motionless. He was subdued. It was over.

I leaned back on my haunches and took a moment to gather myself, breathing through my nose to counter the effects of the adrenaline. I tried to subdue the angst and the hatred so that I could continue my crusade, not be consumed by it.

Then, Freiss began to stir.

I looked down at his bloodied and swollen face. His eyes rolled back and he was beginning to convulse, frothing at the mouth. I suddenly realized the point where my knee impacted his chest…

No. No. This couldn't be happening. He was going into cardiac arrest!

I pulled a shuriken from my belt and used one of its knife-edges to cut his shirt open. I then wiped the froth from his face and hovered over his mouth with my cheek to verify that he was breathing. He was, albeit labored and shallow.

I drew the miniature defibrillator from my belt and, still hunched over Freiss, I began assembling it. The adrenaline made it extremely difficult; my hands were shaking. Freiss stopped seizing and suddenly I felt an impact against my cowl and my vision went instantly white. I was instantly numb to the passage of time. It was as if I was floating and all I could hear were wedding bells. Nonstop wedding bells, ringing endlessly. I think I heard my mother's voice calling my name, Batman. I hadn't heard my mother's voice in what seemed like a lifetime.

My vision came back as instantly as it left. Colors of gray and brown and red and…Freiss scowling at me with a hammer in his hand; a hammer that he thought was going to end this fiasco.

Freiss duped me. He tried to use my compassion against me by faking a heart attack. He just hadn't anticipated how heavily my cowl was armored. Criminals swore I wore it just for the looks.

Anger swelled in my in chest.

I wanted to end Freiss.

I gripped his wrist in a vice and squeezed until his knuckles turned white and the hammer fell to the floor. With my other hand I grabbed hold of throat and squeezed until I knew that I was not only restricting his airway but also the blood flow through his carotid and jugular. My anger vented as snarls through gritted teeth. I hated criminals. They were animals that prey on the weak and the just. They found satisfaction in the pain and suffering they caused and killing empowered them.

Freiss finally showed me what I was looking for. The thing I needed to really know that he was beaten: Fear. I could see it in his eyes. That passionate look that begged me not to take his life and that look that didn't know if I was going to be merciful. That looked that validated the existence of the Batman. That look that ended this drama. I released his neck and stood, walking to the door. Freiss gasped for air, no doubt feeling lucky to be alive. Just because he was willing to take a life, didn't mean that he didn't fear death.

I hated criminals and everything they stood for…but not enough to kill them. I was many things, but a murderer was not one of them. He didn't know that, though. That's what I used to break him. I wasn't above using criminals' scare-tactics against them.

I opened the Bluetooth channel. "Oracle?"

"You better have good news, Batman. I'm really fed up with you hanging up on me."

"Patch me through to Commissioner Gordon."

"You're really messing with my Zen."

I was in no mood. "Oracle."

She wasn't either. "Standby."

There was a moment of static and then I heard Jim's voice, "Gordon."

"Commissioner, I'm at 1377 MacFion in the Narrows—"

"Batman?" He sounded surprised.

"I've subdued Victor Freiss and found the Sanman girl. It's over."

"Thank god. I'm sending units now. Is the girl okay?"

"I have Freiss' data. The Sanman family will be okay."

"That's great, Batman, but the girl…is she okay?"

Regret pooled in my stomach as I thought of her drifting away in everlasting sleep, suspended there in that icy coffin. "She's…here. Batman out."

I bound Freiss to a stanchion for the police. I was glad that this charade was finally over but I was wholly unsatisfied. I still had so much work to do. Poison Ivy still needed to be brought down, I had Police Captain that needed to have his resignation forced, and the Sanman family had to be thawed. The first two were fairly simple. It was the latter that posed a problem. My gut told me that there were authorities that would make the data disappear if I turned it over to law-enforcement. Ivy did, after all, have tremendous pull inside the GCPD. So I needed to get the data to someone else that I could trust to see that Madhavi and her family found salvation―I'd handle the retribution. This time, I wouldn't fail her.

I left the safehouse the same way I came in and disappeared into the darkness of the City of Shadows.