Lieutenant Cooper checked the briefcase for about the hundredth time since arriving, glanced around at his small team of men and then radioed out.

"Lekmann?" He asked through a sudden burst of static, eyes down as he consulted his watch. The minute hand seemed to drag. He started to reach down to tap the face, wondering if perhaps it wasn't working, but then the radio replied.

"Lieutenant?"

"Are your men in position?"

"Yes sir." The voice came through faintly at first and then strengthened.

"Very good. Don't move until I give my signal."

"Understood. Over and out, Lieutenant."

The radio crackled once and then silenced. Cooper looked at his watch once again and was vaguely surprised to see that time was still moving. There were only ten minutes to go before the rendezvous. His gaze flicked up and surveyed the abandoned warehouse. Everything seemed to be in position.

"Um, Lieutenant?"

That was police officer Davids, sounding as nervous as Cooper felt. At the nod from the other man he cleared his throat a few times and then continued. "When's the Commissioner getting here?"

Cooper had been dreading the asking of that question almost as much, or possibly more, than he had been dreading the scheduled rendezvous. Despite having agonised over it for hours, he still wasn't sure what to answer, so he just opened his mouth and waited to see what was going to come out.

"The Commissioner won't be coming, Davids." That came out sounding far more bitter than he had intended. He modified his tone. "There's been a slight change of plans. Nothing that will affect us tonight," he tacked on hurriedly, seeing the agonised look on his officer's face.

"But Mister Freeze specifically requested the money be handed over by the Commissioner."

"I know what the demands were, Davids!" Lieutenant Cooper barked, his already severely frayed nerves threatening to snap. He shouldn't have to deal with this. Temper not quelled by the way his officer shrank back from him, he thoughtlessly hissed "But there is no Commissioner to hand the money over."

The sudden, almost tangible silence that descended on his team following his words was enough to bring Cooper back to his senses, although once he had he sincerely wished that he could take permanent leave of them. The acoustics of the warehouse meant that his shouted words were echoed back to him, sounding like the toll of a funeral bell. The word repeating itself was horribly relevant.

"Over … over … over …"

He looked around at the shocked, uncertain faces of his officers and wondered what effect this blow to morale would have on their performance tonight. They couldn't afford to be making mistakes, not when there was so much riding on this. He felt a sudden rush of anger at the Commissioner – or rather, ex-Commissioner – for running off and leaving him to cope with this alone. It just wasn't fair.

Forcefully pushing his personal feelings aside, Cooper attempted to soothe the nerves of his team. Taking care to make eye contact with each of them in turn, he brusquely cleared his throat and began "I was hoping to put this off until later, but-"

He was interrupted by the warehouse doors slamming open. As one, Cooper and his men turned towards the doorway to find Mister Freeze silhouetted in its maw.

Mister Freeze was much larger than he had appeared in his recording, his height more imposing and his shoulders broader. What the taped message had also failed to truly account for was his eerie otherworldliness. The face behind the glass of his futuristic helmet was impassive, completely still, the expression made even more unreadable by the frosty condensation that seemed to mar it from the inside. However, the most unsettling thing about his appearance was the huge gun strapped to one of his forearms.

The gun was as anachronistically futuristic as his spaceman costume. Taking up the entire length of his forearm, it was bulky but curvaceous like some kind of water pistol. Tubing ran from it to conjoin with a large pack strapped to the criminal's back, from which thin tendrils of dry ice rose and drifted sinuously through the air around Freeze's head.

As Cooper watched, struck immobile by the strangeness of it all, Freeze began walking fowards. The criminal's personalised suit and gun must have been heavy, because he moved with an awkwardly lurching, robotic gait. Left foot, pause, right foot, pause.

"Mister…" The Lieutenant's voice came out as nothing more than a dry squeak, so he cleared his throat and tried again. "Mister Freeze, we have the money you requested."

Freeze made no answer, he simply kept lurching towards them. Cooper ran his tongue nervously across parched lips and glanced back at the men flanking him. Although they'd been given no order to do so, the tenseness of the situation had them reaching for their weapons. He would have done the same but, although the material of the criminal's suit looked flimsy enough, he had the idea that bullets would have no effect on it.

He thought about calling in the waiting back up and wished he could call on Batman instead. Even if the vigilante had turned against the police, freaks like this were still his area of expertise. Normal people shouldn't be expected to deal with them. But he knew there would be no help from the Batman. They were on their own.

His thoughts were interrupted by Freeze suddenly pitching forwards, no more than a few yards away.

Guns were automatically drawn including Cooper's, despite his misgivings about its effectiveness, but it seemed there was no need for weapons. As if he had fainted, Freeze lay face down on the floor, unmoving. The Lieutenant approached cautiously and when it seemed the criminal was indeed out cold – no pun intended – he went down on one knee and turned the body over onto its back.

It was much lighter than he had expected. Certainly not heavy enough to account for the man's lurching gait or suggest that the gun on his arm was anything more than a prop. It didn't make any sense.

"What's going on, sir?" Davids asked hesitantly.

"I'm not quite sure…" The Lieutenant murmured. On a sudden impulse he made a motion with one arm, ordering his men to "Get back, all of you," before reaching down to the helmet over Freeze's head. Despite the general air of disapproval he could feel radiating from his men, his thumbs found the clasps attaching the helmet to the metal collar of the suit and unlocked them. Gently he lifted the glass construct free and then stared in surprise at the revealed face.

It wasn't Mister Freeze at all. Not the one who had recorded the demands anyway. Whereas the face in the recording had been strong-featured with a square jaw and well-defined cheekbones, almost handsome, this face was thin and weasel-like. The most striking difference however, was that the man this face belonged to was dead. He looked as though he might have been frozen to death, because his lips and skin were tinged an unhealthy blue and his staring eyes were frosted over. He must have frozen to death inside the suit.

Cooper stared at the corpse, unable to comprehend what it meant. The closer he studied it, the more he realised that the weaselly face was known to him. It was one of the force's favoured squealers, a one Randall Christchurch. A lowlife scum who spread his loyalty about like manure, latching onto whatever criminal element seemed the most powerful and then blurting out everything he knew about them at the first sign of personal injury. Although now it looked like old Randall had squealed his last.

Realisation dawned on Lieutenant Cooper then like a bloody sunrise. Leaving the corpse where it lay, he stood and backed away from it shouting "It's a trap! Everybody, draw your weapons, it's a trap!"