The apartment building is dark as she arrives, though the street light still burns. She sees one other vehicle in the empty parking lot. A diesel truck, a red one like Knauer's monstrosity. She exits Pamela's truck, feet padding silently across the pavement as she makes her way to the front doors. They are both shattered. She pauses, thinks it strange, but rationalizes it as some damage left by the firefighters, and steps over the torn police tape and into the lobby.
She is uneasy already, clasps one hand around her Ruger, one around a flashlight, one wrist balanced over the other. There wasn't something strange about this, there was everything strange about this. Something was going on, and she was not leaving the house unarmed. The elevators had been turned off, the lights as well. There was smoke damage even down here, and the lobby smelled of melted wires and burnt drywall. She made her way carefully to the stairwell, kept her arms raised and her handgun before her. Flight after flight, she saw detritus, doors axed through, dropped valuables from fleeing tenants. There had been a horrible fire here, and they would have been very lucky if no one had died from it.
Farther down the register of scents, she smelled gasoline. Arson, that was what this was. But who, and why? And why had it happened while she was conveniently not there? It smacked of conspiracy, and she knew but one person capable of such Machiavellian planning.
She reached the door to her floor, and realized immediately that this was where the fire had started. The walls were black, half burnt to the floor, she could see into each apartment as she made her way down the hallway to her own. She found the door opened, her things inside nothing but cinders. Tears slid down her face as she realized the memories she had lost here, all of her Father's pictures, her Mother's, Gregory's. She stopped to reach for a charred remnant of a picture on her coffee table.
"Glad to see you could make it," said a deep voice, but it sounded effected, like a child playing dress up.
She wheeled about, gun and flashlight raising again.
"I don't think so," Jack whispered, and put a bullet through her hand.
She screamed, losing her grip on the gun, and cradled the hand to her chest. He was on her in less than a second, smashing her head into what was left of the drywall.
She heard him laugh before it all slipped away.
OOO
The halls are red with blood he thinks, skips gleefully along it. There are patients hiding in their rooms, nurses lying dead along the halls, security guards with heads in little tiny pieces all throughout the hospital. He knows where he is going.
He sees the French doors before him, sees his foot contact with the doors handles, the weak wood crashing inward. The secretary is surprised, wrenching back from her desk. It does not take him a moment to realize that she is no secretary at all.
"Diana, Diana, my dear, what has brought you here? Still clinging to your Father's coattails?"
She reaches slowly beneath the desk.
"Ah ah ah. I wouldn't move if I were you."
"Fuck you," she snarls, and darts forward. He puts a bullet between her eyes, and she falls face-first into the desk top, twitching.
There is rustling in the office beyond, the click of a light switch. He grins and steps forward, presses his ear to the door. The middle, to the left. He tries the door handle. Locked.
He puts a foot into it, hears the flimsy lock shatter, takes a second to listen, and fires center, to the left, hears screams as his reward. He reaches behind him, flips the light switch to on, finds his quarries in a corner, and collapsed behind the desk.
"My boys, so wonderful to see you tonight. Betcha didn't think this would happen, did you?"
Standen has taken a bullet to the shoulder, close to the heart, but he is still breathing, but he is not who he says he is. The Major in the corner, Hotchkiss, yes, that was his name, he remembered now, one to the knee.
"General… Vreeland," he says slowly. "I haven't seen you since graduation day, and you, Major, well, you remember the last time we met. I do." He grins.
The Major reaches for his weapon as Vreeland does little but gurgle, clutching his chest. He puts a bullet through his wrist, and watches Hotchkiss collapse again. He adds another to the knee for good measure.
The man is wailing in agony, and the sound is so, so sweet.
"You left me to die, Hotchkiss, and you," he spun on Vreeland, put a bullet in his stomach. "You ordered it."
"Full circle we've come, boys. It's amazing how these little things happen. It just so happens I'm transferred here, just so happens you're the administrator, just so happens I find just enough time to put one of your bugs underneath your desk. I still haven't forgot that lockpicking you taught me. My dear, dear associate kept watch at the door, but he's gone now, I'm afraid, as will you be. You thought you were safe here, thought you could lay out all your little plans here, that you'd be unheard. That you'd get me this time, tie up all your little loose ends."
He clucked his tongue, padded his way across the floor, and put all his weight on Hotchkiss' wrist, listened to him wail.
"I've dreamed of this moment, for months. How I'd make you suffer, the way I did, how I'd take away everything you loved, just like you did."
"Fuck you, faggot." He spits at him, and Jack brings the butt of the gun through his teeth, listens to him scream again.
"I'll just have to settle for this."
He brings the pistol down again, and again, watches teeth and nose and cheekbones shatter inward, until there is nothing left of a face but a hole.
He hears movement across the room. Vreeland is dragging himself, from under his desk, leaving a river of blood in his wake. He coughs, bringing up blood, and it is wonderful to watch him suffer, watch him bleed.
"You never liked poor little me, did you?" He clucked again, humming as he weaved his way toward him.
"You were a rabid dog. You had to put down," the man gasps, his voice burbling.
"Looks like it didn't work," he whispered, knelt down next to the useless body and patted his cheek carefully. "Your daughter's dead, you know, and you didn't make a single step to save her, did you? What kind of a monster does that make you?"
The man opens his mouth, and Jack rams the gun down his throat, shatters the back of his skull with a bullet. The blood soaks into the knees of his pajamas, and he rises from his kneel, ejects the spent clip, and snaps another into place. He slides it into his waistband, and whistles as he spins the ring of keys around a fingertip.
He has other places to be.
OOO
She floats in darkness.
There is pressure at her wrists, pressure on her palm.
She wakes with a wail as something digs into the wound in her palm, and the concrete beneath her hand shakes.
She screams, tries to jerk her hand back, screams more when her flesh rips and it does not move.
Her eyes are focused, her adrenaline pumping. She reaches out with her free hand, tears with her nails, hears a hiss and the form turns toward her, some sort of tool in his hand.
"Jack?" She quavers, unbelieving.
"Oh good, you're awake. I was beginning to think I wouldn't have time to enjoy this fully."
He bounces over her, gleefully, wrenches her arm nearly out of the socket, and slams his knees into her wrist, placing the instrument into her uninjured palm. A hiss, and her flesh is torn by metal. It embeds itself into the floor beneath her.
"A bolt gun. Can you believe they were already trying to fix this place up? And after all the hard work I paid him to do." He cackles above her, and she cannot stop screaming, she is in agony.
"How could you do this?" she whispers, trembling, rocking her flesh agains the bolts as she shakes.
He tsks, leans over her, presses a kiss to her open, howling lips.
"You wanted to understand me, pooh. I'm giving you the opportunity."
He moves away from her, down toward her feet. She kicks at him uselessly, feeling dizzy already. Pools of blood leak out around her hands.
"Stop moving," he roars, struggling to pin her feet to the ground. "You're going to break a bone, silly. That comes later!"
He succeeds, knee over her shin, and the gun hisses again, and her foot is planted, stretched and taut along the floor where it is pinned, between the bones.
He succeeds with the other before she can gain the fight again, and she twists in anguish. She is trapped, bolted to the floor, and he is going to kill her, she knows he will. She'll never get out of this alive, and she sobs, tears burning her face and snot choking in her throat.
"Please don't do this!" she screams, looking for him vainly. He is out of her line of sight.
"Shh shh shh, no, I didn't plead. I took it in silence. You're disappointing me, Harley-girl."
He is away in the darkness. She hears metal rattling, and the tremors are agony unto themselves as the bolts remain unmoving against her jittering flesh.
"I found toys, baby, lots of toys. We're going to have so much fun together before you go." He giggles in the shadows, and she screams again, screams and sobs until she can taste blood when she coughs, choking on mucus.
"You had all these sweet little plans for us, baby, but they weren't realistic. I couldn't take you along. You're a liability. You have a past, a name, ways for people to look for you. You'd slow me down, darling, and you'd never last in Gotham. They'd tear you apart, Sweetpea. Better that I do it, than them."
The dim light glints off metal as he approaches her again, straddles and kneels down above her.
"You've got such beautiful skin, so unmarked. I always wanted to change that."
He slashes across her chest then, and the wound sinks to the bone, a scalpel. She can barely find the strength to scream anymore, as he makes his way across her body, cutting here and slicing there.
"Please, please, stop this. I love you! Please!"
He shushes her, bends down and presses his lips to her forehead, whispering to her soothingly, terrifying and quiet.
"It'll all be over soon, my pet. Just a little while longer. If you love me, you'll let me have my fun."
"No," she sobs, and he slaps her across the face then.
"What did you just say to me?" he hisses, and his hand is tight around her chin, his grip enough to break bones she thinks. She screams again. "I ought to cut your tongue out, you insolent little bitch."
She wails, and cannot think of a time when she has not been screaming.
It is getting hard to breathe through her sobbing, her heart thuds and jumps and races.
"Please," she whispers. "I love you. I won't slow you down. I'll learn, I'll adapt. Please, let me go with you."
He turns her head, runs his fingertips, warm and rough, down her cheek.
"So loyal… so sweet. Even till death."
He is gone again, and she hears the grinding of wood before he returns.
"I'm going to give you a gift, my darling. To bind us forever. See, this knife, this knife is like the one he used on me. Serrated, dull teeth, rusted with blood. See, this knife was too sharp. I want you to see, I want you to see how it felt. I want you to see." His voice quavers, and his eyes glitter above her, and she sees the sadness there, somewhere deep within. She stares into those eyes, and can feel nothing but love for him.
"Yes," is all she can say, and then he is cutting.
OOO
"It's about fucking time!" Pamela screams, racing for the cop car.
"Wasting our time over this bullshit, I should have you locked up for filing a false report. She's probably off fucking some guy."
"She's here," Pamela yells. "I know she's here. I heard screaming, from up there." She points.
The officer sighs in irritation, motions for his partner to follow him. Pamela follows them both.
"Stay the fuck back. You're gonna sit your ass down here, and you're gonna let us do our job."
"Fuck you," she hisses, and races past them through the doors.
They yell after her, race up the stairwell behind her, but though she is not faster she has the lead on them, and gets to the floor before they do, to the apartment before they do.
He is kneeling over her, sawing at her face, and Pamela screams for the police. The man looks up, snarling at her like a dog, and races away, into the darkness, the steak knife clattering to the ground beside Harley.
Pamela rushes to her, kneels down beside her. She is pale, the blood bright red on her skin, her eyes blood shot.
"You scared him away," she sputters, drools through the incision on the right side of her face. "You scared him away!"
"Harley, oh god." Pamela jerks away in disgust.
One officer kneels beside her, the other races into the darkness. He is on his radio, calling for an ambulance, calling for back up.
"Jack!" she screams. "Jack!"
OOO
They must bring a special tool to remove the bolts from the concrete. She fights them with all of her ebbing strength, and must be tied to the stretcher as they take her away.
"Who do we have to contact?" The officer, Daniels, is saying to her, but she can barely hear him over Harley's cries within her mind.
"I'm her next of kin," Pamela whispers.
"I'm not a doctor, but I think she needs help. Anybody that is in love with the guy who mutilates her is cracked, you know it, and I know it."
"I want her taken to the psychiatric ward after she gets out of the emergency room." Pamela looks up finally, face blank and cold. "I'll file the papers with the magistrate, have her put under involuntary hold."
The man nods, and backs away.
"He got away," she whispered. "He got away, scot free."