Chapter Fifteen- Black Mask Friday
The Question crashed into her quarry, bringing him to the ground, his carbine bucking up and away from his body. The sound of the gun-fire was near-deafening, and she felt a stray shell-casing leave a painful scorch mark across her epidermic mask, eroding it a little, exposing her natural skin beneath.
But the pain in her cheek was but one of a thousand signals her body was desperately sending to her body. In the span of a few heart-beats, she was pinning the thug who had discovered her hiding place, her gloved hands clawing desperately, knocking the gun away.
He had hit her above the shoulder, near the neck, rupturing muscles and tendons. Her right arm was now functionally useless, tingling and cold, as blood began to well up. The bullet had gone straight through, and she could only hope that it hadn't hit anything too important. Her heart was pumping in over-drive. She forced herself to calmness, remembering techniques she had spent months practising after the death of Jim Gordon to help her deal with her rage.
Her body worked on automatic, nonetheless. She slammed her left fist into the hired gun's solar plexus, driving the wind from him.
She didn't have time for this. There were men coming for her, now, converging on her position. Dozens of well-armed men. The darkness had bought her a few seconds, and all of those seconds were now up.
She hauled the thug up, striking his nerve-clusters in his arms and chest to keep him reeling from agonising pain, unable to do much. She swept herself behind him, ignoring her own agony as she forced her stiff right hand to work, to pick up his discarded weapon. Her nerves were sluggish, but responsive. Good. Arm might heal if get to doctor soon, she thought.
By the time she was knocking the guard out, her brain had run through a million things, and barely eight seconds had passed. Eight seconds too many, she knew. Gun-fire began to zip past her. She had anticipated the high likelihood of discovery, despite her best efforts and research. She just had to hope she could achieve her objective before they could stop her.
She forced her sluggish limbs to respond, trying to run, firing the bucking carbine clumsily in the vague direction of the others. She knew her heart was pumping blood and her wound had not been properly bound, but she didn't have time. She had to get to where she going, find cover, achieve her objectives.
She gritted her teeth as she slammed her left shoulder awkwardly into a locked door. They weren't far behind. The door stubbornly refused to give way. The pain from her gun-shot wound was catching up to her as her adrenaline levels began to ebb. She had to find Black Mask or his private computer, dress her wound, pass out for a few hours, or better yet find a crooked sawbones to patch her up. But she couldn't do any of that. And now as she shot her way through the door, she found she was stuck in a dead-end, some box-like office with a dead box-top computer and scattered office furniture.
She ran to the back of the office, cursing the lack of windows to the outside at this ground level. She began throwing things at the door, boxes, chairs, even hauling and overturning the desk. But she knew she was trapped, like a rat.
The thugs came slowly, warily, their guns out in front, unwilling to risk their necks to be the first to bring her down. Somewhere above and beyond them was their boss, the Black Mask, the man she had risked seemingly everything tailing here.
She rummaged in her pockets, forcing her brain to think. She was The Question, not just a crazy revenge-mad detective. That had to mean something. She had tricks. She could make it out of this, like the Dark Knight always had.
Until the one time he hadn't.
She husked, coughing, feeling short of breath. Dizzy. Thinking becoming impaired. Not good.
"Throw your gun down, r we'll machine-gun the whole room!" a thug yelled out. "You're completely surrounded!"
"Shut up, I'm thinking!" she shouted back, rapidly losing patience. Time. She needed more time. But it was trickling away, like blood from her shoulder.
And then she heard it, just as she was putting together an improvised thermite charge to burn her way out...
Black Mask began to laugh wheezily, his voice distinctive and known to her. He had, in his arrogance, come to see her killed personally. "Well well, looks like when you put out bait, all the rats come sniffing around for it. Who the fuck are you meant to be, huh? I thought Gotham only had room for one nutcase at a time."
She didn't answer him, instead spraying the darkened warehouse with the last of the ammo in her carbine.
"Anyone who approaches is gonna get it!" she yelled, resisting the urge to cough or pass out. That should buy her a few more seconds.
She lit the thermite, and stood well back.
"Well what are you waiting for, cowards? Get in there!" The Black Mask yelled, and his reluctant goons approached, their uzis, carbines and pistols all trained on the window and the shattered doorway as they came down the steps and across the courtyard of the warehouse.
The thermite blazed like daylight, eating its way- upwards. She had no intention of trying to escape just yet. She just needed the high ground.
A glowing, melting chunk of ceiling and steel infrastructure began to dribble and crumble down on to the floor, widening rapidly. She didn't wait for it to finish, simply jumping on top of the desk and some piled crates, and hauling herself up through the burning hole, thankful once and for all for her reinforced clothes and gloves. It still burned like a motherfucker, leaving scorch marks along her arms, her chest and most definitely on her smouldering, crumbling gloves.
She was up, but the pain was excruciating. She then did something she had sworn to Kat she'd never do again. She injected herself with a solid boost of morphine. She didn't have time for passing out.
She reached in her pocket for a solid cosh, and watched as they hosed the office below with gunfire. Not a moment too soon. This office was, as her guess had surmised, the one next door to the Foreman's. To Black Mask's. She slammed the door open, sending a gun-man flying, and she saw their suprise. She dashed for her target, once again almost dislocating her shoulder as she slammed into the grinning Black Mask, who had been standing outside of his office, directing his goons to corner her.
She punched him hard in the gut, her nerves feeling dull, everything seeming to slow down. She kneed him in the balls. For a kingpin, he didn't have very good personal defence skills. But she supposed he was used to relying on his guns or goons for that.
He failed at her face, and she coshed him, to no effect. Mask was harder than it looked. They grappled, and fell into his office, scattering bags of coke and paperwork as she tried to pin him, her fingers going for his exposed eyes. He howled in agony.
"Tell me who sold James Gordon out!" she screamed at him, aware that she was crossing a line tonight. She didn't care. She'd burned her bridges some time ago. "What did you tell the Joker? Who betrayed him? Who betrayed the Dark Knight?" she stamped hard on his foot, before shifting her grip and slamming his armoured, masked head up and down into the desk, shattering wood.
She didn't dare slow down, even as her sleeve was soaked with her own blood and perspiration.
And still, she needed more Time.
"Ahaha! That's what this is all about for you? You dumb whore!" The Black Mask rasped at her, unable to stop his infernal grinning, even as he retched and tried to get up. While he was recovering, she slammed the door closed, grabbed Mask's gun, and shot him in the leg.
"EVERYONE KEEP THE FUCK BACK OR I KILL YOUR PAYCHECKS!" She shouted so hard it hurt her throat.
Black Mask was at first too surprised to react, but he began to wail. "Another suit...ruined..."
She shoved the revolver in his face.
"GIVE. ME. ANSWERS. NOW."
"You think I knew what was going on in that psycho clown's head? Fuck you bitch. Everyone is dead anyway." He groaned, clutching at his leg. "And still we're haunted by the loonies. You and that fucking monster..."
He blinked his watering eyes, trying to recover clear sight of her. She could see the pure hatred and rage shining out of his cold eyes. She took some of the rounds out of the revolver, spun the chamber, and pointed it directly at his head. "I am here for one thing and one thing only. You got five chances max to tell me some names, or I paint the wall with your fucking brains."
"You'll be dead in a minute, so why not? You want to know what happened?" He leaned close, scooting towards her despite his injured leg.
"They were all sell-outs. Not just Corrigan and that whore you rescued at the docks. Oh, I know about that. Some-one high up- way high up- gave us Gotham PD's encryption keys. The Joker was listening in on the pigs for weeks. He knew everything. We hardly needed any moles. I wish I knew who, really I do. They changed the encryption the day after and I've had to really work to corrupt more squealers ever since." He chuckled.
"I wonder who you are, Faceless. Whats your connection to all this shit anyway?"
"I'm the Question. And I think you finally gave me my Answer."
She clicked the revolver, dry-firing twice point-blank in his face. Black Mask finally flinched. She took the liberty of grabbing him hard by the throat and slamming him hard against the desk, again and again until his eyes rolled up into his head, his own Iron Mask concussing him. She didn't care if he was brain damaged or not.
She pulled herself up grimly. They would be coming soon. Her vision was getting blurry. Her legs felt unsteady. She pinched herself, trying to keep herself awake. Despite the morphine, she could feel the pain creeping on her.
Her whole right-arm was throbbing, feeling like pins and needles were stabbing her repeatedly. She took a deep breath, and pulled out her tablet, crouching low behind the over-turned table. She activated the last programme, uploading a worm that would hack Black Mask's servers at this location, copy everything and upload it to a series of pre-set proxy servers, which would then send the rest on to a dozen dummy accounts across the world, before ending up, by a very convoluted path, in the in-boxes of the top agents of the ATF, DEA, FBI and GCPD all investigating the Black Mask's operations.
It was the last thing she could do, she knew. Closing the loop. She breathed slowly, trying not to hyperventilate. Time to go.
She was relieved to see the Black Mask's second-floor office had a window. Her only hope. Beyond she could see the glare of head-lights on trucks, and the flash-lights of more goons coming in from their patrol patterns, converging on her.
She had no choice. She ran, bracing herself for the shatter of glass, gliding through the darkness as she fell into the storage yard beyond. A handful of thugs were waiting, some thirty yards away, turning to face her with their guns.
Her last seconds ebbed away. She readied herself for a crouch-roll, but her shoulder cramped at the last moment. She fell badly, knocking the wind out of herself.
Not that it mattered. They trained their guns on her, walking up to her shivering body slowly, grinning to themselves.
They fired. And fired again.
Harv Bullock was asleep when his smart-phone began to buzz. He groaned drearily, rolling over, painfully aware once again that his wife had left him. The cold side of the bed was a permanent reminder of her absence.
He continued to moan, his joints creaking, as he forced himself awake. He was way too old for this shit. He yawned mightily, before reaching for the phone, slapping it clumsily, so that it fell onto the floor, getting lost amongst discarded clothes, pizza boxes and empty beer-cans.
"Fuck...shit...fuck..." he cursed, fumbling around. He bent over, his joints screaming in protest. He finally picked it up, cursing, thumbing the unlock option, and blearily trying to focus on the screen, reading the message.
He froze, blinking. Seconds passed as he tried to resolve what he was reading. What the fuck..?
"Renee." He knew, intuitively. He felt something stirring deep in his stomach. Anxiety. Panic. Was this..? What?
Sleep-fog evaporated in his brain. He quickly dialled the emergency responder number.
"Hey, Dispatch. It's Bullock. SNI 54567. I need you to send all available units for an 11-99 at 4500 Tangier Street. Yes, on the outskirts. Code Purple. Do it now!" he barked, aware of how unusual this was, but feeling a deep, uncomfortable feeling building in his gut.
Oh god, Renee. What have you got yourself into? He thought.
"Roger that 54567. APB is being issued now. First priority Code 3 response for an 11-99 at 45 Tangier street." She replied crisply. He sighed with relief, but found his hand now shaking. He quickly thanked her and hung up. He was still sat on the bed, naked.
He wished for once that his ex-wife was still here. Someone to let know. Someone to care if he didn't come back. It didn't matter now. He shook, as he read through the rest of what was still coming in on his smart-phone. He responded with a grunt, too absorbed to reply in words.
What had she found? What had she been doing? He blanched as he saw an audio-recording was attached. He debated with himself for a moment before he hit play.
"Tell me who sold James Gordon out! What did you tell the Joker? Who betrayed him? Who betrayed the Dark Knight?" a gravelly voice, female, indistinct, shouting, hard to make out. The quality of the recording was poor, and there were a number of other background sounds that echoed harshly.
He blinked, as the Black Mask's voice came. He recognised it from a wire-tap he'd done with Renee years ago. Nothing had come of things then. It seemed obvious now why. Someone had ratted their operations.
But what the Black Mask said, was so much worse than that.
He groaned. What the fuck had Renee gotten him into now? He'd already been pursuing one vigilante, and now this...
If what was said was true... he checked his e-mails again, his heart pounding. All the others seemed to be cc'd. But he alone had gotten this recording.
He had a nasty feeling he knew exactly how Renee had gotten it.
He started to fish around for his pants and shirt. He had to go to work.
He barely glanced at the clock. Just past Two A.M. Black Friday. He thought grimly. Within minutes he was dressed and heading out the door. He checked his side-arm was still secure in his pocket. Bad practice to carry it around all the time, but he didn't trust anyone now, not after this.
He got out his smart-phone, and started to make calls. First he tried to reach Renee, no response. Then he tried Ray. Who else could he even call?
He left a message on the guy's answer-phone, but it was hardly necessary.
He got in his car, and floored the accelerator, as he headed for the address he'd been given. To hell with protocol, to hell with back-up. He didn't know what he was getting himself into, how many there were, or even if it was definitely Montoya.
But he wasn't going to take the chance otherwise. He'd let down Jim once. He wasn't going to ever let that happen again. Not this time.
He sped away into the cold night.
After the excruciating supper was over, Barbara was surprised when Margaret, her step-mother and Jim's second wife, volunteered to show Barbara out. The assumption that she would be leaving this house should have been offensive, but truth is, she wanted to be back. At the home that neither Margaret, nor Jim's first wife Barbara-Keane, had chosen to live at. The house she'd been mostly raised in. The house that was, in some way, now hers.
Ray had eaten little, watching proceedings nervously. He was surprised when Margaret Gordon stood up, but in a way he was relieved. Perhaps, finally, this child who had somehow entered his custody would now get some proper closure, if not the care she deserved.
As they left that stifling room and the unsettling atmosphere, Barbara could feel herself breathe again. As Ray went to get his coat, Margaret coughed.
"Wait. There's something I need to talk to you about. Away from them."
Barbara simply stared, as she wrapped herself up warmly again. Barely two hours in this place, and she was already glad to be leaving it.
Margaret sighed, and she seemed as if she was finally glad at an opportunity to unburden herself. Ray frowned, suspicious, but Babs simply kept an impassive gaze. Her rage had found its peak and she was far past it now. Whatever this woman had to say, she would simply endure, like everything else.
"I think...I think we all made mistakes. Maybe unforgivable ones. I can't...I can't excuse what we did. But I want you to understand, Babs, that I never stopped loving you. I never stopped caring. I don't think any of us did, or ever have." She paused, waiting for some kind of reaction.
Babs stood there, a rock of silence.
Margaret coughed uneasily, and reluctantly continued, unsure how to engage with her estranged step-daughter.
"We- I- tried to help you those first few weeks. We really did. But you...weren't yourself at all. None of us knew if you were really still you...there were all sorts of stories and rumours about the victims of the Joker...how they...were his somehow, once broken. But we- I- didn't believe you were broken. We tried, but you would laugh, or scream..." Margaret's voice shook, but she continued on anyway.
"It was Wayne who saw how difficult things were for us in those first few weeks. I never really understood his relationship with...with your father. Not until then. He saw how much we were suffering, and he promised to help get you the very best care. The very best. The city was offering to pay for a carer too, of course, it was the least they felt they could do after...after everything. But we were torn apart, divided, fighting amongst ourselves and...we just didn't know how to handle what had become of you. Tragedy is supposed to bring families together but..." she sighed sadly. "We fell apart. Wayne's offer was...too tempting. An opportunity to just...put things on hold, sort ourselves out. We had lost Jim, and it seemed like...maybe...we'd lost you too. I thought it would be for only a few weeks at most. I knew it was wrong, but I wanted to believe it would help you. We all did."
She clenched her fists tightly, fighting back tears. "Babs, please. We wanted what was best for you, we really did. We should of...we should of come back to you sooner."
Babs couldn't help it any longer. She was strong now, she knew, stronger and harder, but the walls were still too new, too fresh.
She started to laugh. Her eyes took on a weird cast, and she could see the alarm in their faces.
"Babs..." Ray began, rising from his street. She put out a hand. She stopped laughing.
"You're a liar. You didn't want was best for me. You just...just...wanted to be away from a Monster!" she hissed. "You didn't care. You saw the grin and you saw the Joker and you saw how he killed my father and you didn't care, you didn't care, you just turned away because because my hands had his blood and and..." she swallowed, barely able to go on. Memories exploded inside of her, dark flashes.
She turned away. "I wanted to be alone. But I needed my family. And you abandoned me. All of you. You fucking...you... how could you ever have been worthy of my father?" she screamed. "How could you ever have thought for one moment he'd leave me? Or any of you? He saved this whole fucking miserable city, and this is how you repay him? How you...help me?"
She couldn't hold it in any more. It was too much. She ran out the door, into the biting cold, feeling her tears freeze against her weathered, pale face.
Anyone would be angry, anyone would be upset in these circumstances. But the worst part, the part that destroyed her, was knowing they might be right. That she was a monster, deep down. That she deserved to be abandoned.
Margaret made to follow, her eyes wide with concern. Ray stopped her. "Leave it to me." he said gruffly. She flinched, but a hard look restrained her.
For better or for worse, Ray really was her parent now. Maybe some-day Margaret could re-enter her life. But now was not the time. There was a long road to be tread before that gap could even begin to be crossed.
She howled inside, wandering towards Ray's car, letting the black cold swallow her, feeling the harsh winds caress her skin as she stood outside. She wanted to cry, she really did. But the tears came slowly, little droplets when she wanted to force all the sadness out.
Something held it back. Something dark still crouching in her mind, in her heart. A part of her, she knew, a monstrous part. Did the Joker put it there, or did he merely bring it out? A part that laughed at her weakness, at her pain, at her stupidity, at everything. A part that made her think about the same things over and over, tormenting her with repetition of barely comprehensible flashes.
She saw herself in the dress. She saw the tea-party. She saw his grinning, ever-grinning face. She saw her own face. She saw her hands, covered in blood so dark it was black. She saw figures running, too blurry to make out.
She saw herself in the hospital mirror, pale as death, her hair like red worms. She saw her teeth, yellow and worn. She saw it all, over and over.
She was holding herself so tightly it was beginning to hurt. She dug her nails into her arms, trying to draw blood by scratching them. Shaking like a leaf, from anguish and the bitter cold, she barely noticed when Ray put his jacket over her, coming to sit down by her.
"Here we are again, out in the cold." he grunted. "Outside this time. Kinda cold out here isn't it?" he babbled.
She glanced at him, her eyes red and rimey. Why was crying so hard? She thought. Why did it take so much effort to force tears out?
Why didn't it help the ache in her heart?
"Why, Ray? I didn't ask for this. I didn't want to be a Monster. I didn't let anyone down...I...I didn't ask for this..."
He hugged her tightly, so tightly it made her gasp a little. He didn't have any words, he could never find the words. He wasn't a father or a husband or a hero. But he saw she was in pain, and simply acted on instinct.
His instincts had served him well as a detective, from time to time. Now he hoped they would help him be a human being.
She didn't say anything, she simply stared away into the darkness. He held her, stroking her hair softly. He could feel her warmth, feel her body shaking through the coat as he held her. It was an intimate moment.
No, he wasn't a father. But he was doing the best he could. Somehow or another, he hoped it would be enough to help save her.
She sighed, resting her head against his shoulder, letting him hold her. Letting herself float in the warmth, ignoring the cold and the darkness, if only for this moment.
After a while, he spoke. "Let's go inside. Or maybe go home, whichever you prefer."
She nodded, slowly. "I don't...I don't want to see them again Not...now. Too much to make sense of."
He looked at her slowly. "I...understand. Want me to get the car?"
"Yes...yes please, Ray."
As he got in the car and began to fire the motor up, she sat on the side-walk,, and stared out at the suburbs, feeling the wind through her hair, clutching his coat around her tightly.
Whatever she was, whatever she had been, she could be something else. She had to be. Even if she was a monster, she wanted to fight that. Not for their sake, not for Gotham, but for her fathers. For those that could care. For those that did.
It was a cold night, but at some point the night would end. And in the twilight between darkness and dawn, she could hold to that thought.