10:47 PM

The bat mask was the most empowering thing I'd ever put on. I felt like I had the means to take on the whole of Gotham's criminal underworld.

I would sit at my desk and replay the attack on Derrick and then imagine taking the fight to other street-hoods and thugs. I often found myself going through mugshots for potential targets to deepen my fantasies. To be honest, it got in the way of my work. I found myself behind too often because I was preoccupied daydreaming. Most women spend their time thumbing through social media reviewing pictures of past significant other's significant others; I spent my time thumbing through criminal archives.

One day, several weeks after I invaded Derrick's home, two officers from the MCU came down to my office with a portfolio that they needed me to look into. The portfolio contained compiled information on an exclusive human-trafficking ring that operated its commercial headquarters out of our very own precious city. The case was five years in the making with a series of potential leads but no concrete suspects. That apparently changed when a fifteen year-old girl who had been reported missing three years earlier in Kansas City surfaced on the street in Ensley malnourished, drugged, and sexually brutalized. Following communication with the girl, the MCU obtained potential identities with which to begin an investigation. However, with nothing concrete, the leadership pulling MCU-strings were unmotivated to push the investigation without blatant pressure. Seeking to pressure the brass, the two officers hoped that I could find an electronic trail of bread crumbs that identified the ring. I was obliged but disappointed—and perturbed—to find that the GCPD prioritized inter-force social functions over the investigation of sexual-slavery.

If they weren't going to do something about it, then I would…and I had just the means.

After three weeks of electronic research and two conversations with the girl—Annabelle was her name—I had a sure lock on an organization consistent with the data in the portfolio. The organization operated a secure website where it bought, sold, and traded male and female sex-slaves as well as communicated with clients and organization members.

The organization headquartered out of a Temp Agency situated on the very edge of the Financial District and Ohannasett Hill. A Temp Agency was a good cover but it wasn't foolproof.

I was disgusted with what Derrick did to Brittney but this nearly caused me to develop misanthropy towards the whole human race. Why would someone demoralize and brutalize another human being for personal gain?

I wouldn't allow it to go on.

I figured since I couldn't convince the GCPD to mobilize with the data that I had uncovered then I could at least get emergency services to mobilize—and by proxy the GCPD—when I left a room full of perverts full of bullet holes.

The website wasn't accessible until after nine o'clock PM which led me to believe that the servers didn't come online until then. Where there were servers, there were people. If there were people, I could dispense a little justice. If there weren't any people, at the very least I could destroy the system. I just hoped I had the right location and that this wasn't a satellite or a front.

I stormed into the organization's front office after-hours much to the chagrin of a middle-aged woman and a portly, balding man conversing at the reception desk. We all exchanged puzzled looks. Me—because I couldn't believe that a woman would involve herself in such despicable trade. Them—because something resembling a bat just forced its way into the office space. Then it registered in their brains, with a series of curses, that the urban legend was true and they were about to be on a first class trip to Gotham General Hospital—or Blackgate Penitentiary—or both. They climbed over each other trying to get out from behind the desk and into the walkway.

I accelerated from the door to the desk, slamming into it as I reach across and managed to get a glove-full of the woman's haggard, auburn mane and yanking her back with a thud. She squealed and struggled in my grip while I figured out what to do next since there was a chest-level desk in between us. My eyes locked onto a football-sized penguin vase perched at the corner and I snatched it up and smashed it into pieces over her head. I released her hair and allowed her to fall onto the floor unconscious.

I could hear the man running deep into the office-space. "Don't go anywhere. I'll be back," I said to the woman as I turned the corner and raced off through the cubicles after the man. I finally caught sight of him in the final stretch for a stairwell and managed to draw my pistol and let-off two shots before he disappeared through the door. He had been twenty yards ahead of me when I opened fire and I was sure that I could catch him on the stairwell.

I flung the door open and bounded up the stairs towards the sound of his shuffling feet and pathetic wheezing. I wondered if chasing after sex-offenders was going to continue to be the trend with this bat cover since I was already two-for-two. I also wondered if Batman constantly chased after criminals or if he had elaborate ways of taking them down.

Around the fourth flight of six, the stairwell went instantly black except for the light emitted through the small window of the door at the bottom as well as a dim, flickering light at the top. Then there was crunch and a gurgle and the portly man that I had been pursuing plummeted past me in the space between the stairs. With a metallic thrumb like a piano wire being grinded by a razor blade, the portly man came to an abrupt halt about ten feet from the floor hanging by a thin, taut line that was attached at his ankle.

My eyes followed the line up until it merged with the darkness about one flight above me. Then, I swore that I saw something move at the top of the stairs.

Holy crap! Maybe the Batman was here!

A wave of fear and awe rippled through my body. I had that feeling that a child gets the first time it encounters exotic animals in a zoo, sticking its hand out beckoning the animal and then pulling its hand away laughing uncomfortably when the animal comes near.

I just had to see the Batman—to talk to him. What would he do? What would he say? I had to find out.

I reached the top of the stairs and hustled to the open door, realizing that the light wasn't flickering, it was swaying—something had bumped it. I went through the door into another dark room that was possibly used for conferences when the tables weren't upended and slung to edges with the chairs and there weren't bodies—eight or so in total—lying in heaps on the floor. The whole scene looked like a massacre and smelled sulfuric—teargas sulfuric—like the gas chamber in bootcamp.

I approached the body of a man lying on his side, covered in blood and vomit, and checked for vitals. He was alive but unconscious. Whatever—whoever—got him, messed him up badly—messed up everyone in here badly.

I instantly became nervous. What if I wasn't alone?