"Mr. Boyle, you have a visitor."
Ferris Boyle looked up from the magazine he was reading, shocked. "I have a…what?" he asked.
"A visitor," repeated the prison guard. "If you'd like to follow me to the visiting room, please."
Boyle shrugged, putting down the magazine and obeying. On the journey from his cell to the visiting room, he racked his brain to think of who on earth could possibly want to visit him.
Ferris Boyle had once been a rich, powerful, and beloved man, CEO of Gothcorp, the so-called "People Company." Behind his friendly exterior, however, he was a cold, cruel, heartless, and greedy businessman who had only cared about profit, and saw people as a means to that profit, nothing more. The cryogenic department of Gothcorp had employed both Victor Fries and his wife Nora when Nora had been struck down with her incurable disease. Victor Fries had embezzled funds and equipment from Gothcorp, and used the basement of the company in order to conduct his own experiment in cryostasis to freeze his dying wife. When Boyle had discovered this waste of company money, he had got angry and ordered the project shut down. This had enraged Fries – there had been a struggle, and then Boyle himself had pushed Fries into the chemicals that had caused his accident and turned him into Mr. Freeze.
Some time later, Freeze had tried to take revenge on Boyle by freezing him alive, but had been stopped by Batman, who had acquired the security tape of what had happened in the basement of Gothcorp. Batman had given this tape to a journalist, the story had been all over the media, and Ferris Boyle had gone from Gotham's Humanitarian of the Year to the most hated man in the city. He had been found guilty of attempted murder and sent to a medium security prison just outside of Gotham.
But Boyle to this day didn't believe he had done anything wrong. Fries had been stealing his money and his equipment for unauthorized experiments – in Boyle's mind, he had had every right to reclaim his property and defend himself from an unstable madman. Sadly this defense didn't get very far against the emotional appeal of the prosecution, labeling Boyle as "the man with the true heart of ice." Still, Boyle had been in prison a decade now, and was hoping his latest parole hearing would prove successful. Surely that was penance enough for supposedly attempting to murder a woman who was already half dead anyway?
It was a great shock to him then when he saw who his visitor was behind the glass. "Oh…my God," he gasped, staring at Nora Fries. "He…he did it."
"Hello, Mr. Boyle," she replied, quietly. "I'm glad you remember me."
He sat down across from her, still staring in astonishment at her. "You're…alive?" he whispered. "How?"
"You can thank my husband for that," she murmured, glaring at him. "And I can thank you for my husband's current condition, can't I?"
"Look, it wasn't my fault," snapped Boyle. "I told the lawyers the same thing I'm telling you – how the hell could I have known what was gonna happen to him? I didn't know what those chemicals could do…"
"I saw the tape," interrupted Nora, coldly. "Don't bother making excuses to me, Ferris. You would have let me die just to save yourself some money…"
"Just to save myself a fortune," corrected Boyle. "And why not? You were terminal! Do you have any idea how many millions of dollars your husband sank into keeping a terminally ill woman alive just a little longer? How was your half-life in that tube any more precious than money for new research that could have saved hundreds of lives?"
"Don't pretend you care about anyone's life," said Nora, quietly. "Don't you dare pretend you have even the slightest interest in other people. You've only ever cared about yourself, Ferris. Yourself and your money."
She leaned forward, lowering her voice. "You're lucky I never told Victor how much of a disgusting creep you really are," she murmured. "He wouldn't be content with you being locked up in prison if he knew what you tried to do to me in your office that night. He'd rip off your limbs one by one, and then freeze them back onto your body, and rip them off again."
"C'mon, Nora, I was just trying to have a little fun…" began Boyle.
"You tried to force me to cheat on my husband," she interrupted, icily. "I think you might want to rethink your definition of fun."
"Well, I didn't force you to, in the end," he snapped. "Though I never understood what you saw in the Iceman. Anyway, I imagine you wouldn't refuse me now, baby. Sex between you and Victor must be pretty awkward."
She ignored him, leaning back and looking around the room. "It's a good thing Victor doesn't know how cushy this facility you're being kept in is," she commented. "I've been to his cell in Arkham – this place is a palace compared to that. I'm sure he thinks you're confined in similar circumstances, or he would have ended your life years ago. But it's lucky for me that he didn't."
She leaned forward again. "What happened to the laboratory in the basement of Gothcorp?"
He shrugged. "How the hell should I know? It's probably still there. Gothcorp went outta business after I got put in here – nobody wanted to support the company who created a supervillain. I dunno what happened to the building or the equipment, although my guess is it was just abandoned."
"Did you touch anything after the accident, or did you just leave the crime scene as it was?" asked Nora.
He laughed. "Crime scene!"
"Yes. You murdered my husband," she murmured. "You killed him and replaced him with a man who cannot interact with the real world, who cannot feel the warmth of a loved one, or a summer breeze on his face, or even the trickle of tears down his cheek. A man who can only ever be utterly alone, trapped in a cold, empty world of ice and snow. If that's not a crime, I don't know what is."
Boyle glared back at her. "We sealed up the basement after the accident," he muttered. "As far as I know, nothing was touched. Although you and Victor must have got out somehow, but otherwise, to my knowledge, the room hasn't been disturbed."
Nora nodded, standing up. "Thank you, Mr. Boyle, you've been very helpful."
"I'm glad," he replied, grinning at her. "Like I said, Nora, if you're ever in need of a warm body, I am allowed conjugal visits."
She looked at him. "If there wasn't a thick wall of glass between you and me, I'd break off a piece of it and gouge out your eyes," she whispered. "I'm not a violent woman, Mr. Boyle, and I'd never want you dead. I'd just want you to suffer, as Victor has suffered, as I am suffering right now. I would want you to feel what it is like to lose something beyond precious to you. That's justice, Mr. Boyle. And I hope someday you get a taste of what that really means. Goodbye."
It was shortly after this meeting that Ferris Boyle got into a fight with another prisoner over a game of cards. The other prisoner was much stronger, and beat Boyle violently around the head, resulting in severe brain damage. Boyle lived out the rest of his days in a permanent vegetative state, utterly unresponsive to the world around him, staring straight ahead of him with blank, empty eyes. Nobody ever knew what he was thinking about. Maybe it was justice.