I really shouldn't go giving Jay ideas. He comes up with quite enough of them on his own. 'And how do you envision this working?' I asked him mentally as the guard ordered me out of that hideous vehicle.

Well, he planned all this out with the idea that he was going up against Batman, didn't he? Batsy, as everybody knows, doesn't kill. Hell, he doesn't even do the kind of damage that lasts. It's one thing to throw guys against someone when they know the worst that's going to happen is a headache, a few bruises, maybe some cracked ribs. So when his expendables realize that I take no prisoners, they're not going to have the same enthusiasm. They'll break.

'I'm concerned about you getting broken ...Jay, this is not the Arkham we know.' I looked around at the grounds of a place I had never seen before, getting my bearings. Our Arkham was a sizeable institution in the middle of the Narrows, which was arguably the worst neighborhood in Gotham. This Arkham was set on an island, not far from the Gotham lighthouse in the bay—I could see its beam revolving in the half-light of dusk. Behind the transport was a long drive lined with leafless sycamore trees—it was Autumn here, the air had the bite of October—leading down to a skeletal wrought iron fence and gate flanked by a pair of mournful Symbolist angels holding lanterns in each hand. To the left was the hollow shell of a decayed building braced with girders. To the right was a stone outcropping topped with—a greenhouse? No, it was too fancy for a simple greenhouse. It was a Victorian era conservatory. Above and behind that was a clock tower, part of some other large building.

Directly before me was a red brick building circa about 1925, industrial-Art Deco in style. It looked like a factory, but above the door were the words 'Intensive Treatment' spelled out in long metal letters, some of which were askew or reversed. What I found most sinister about it were the towering smokestacks which sprouted from the building. Something about them reminded me of concentration camp incinerators.

The guard who had ridden shotgun on us from the police station was now telling Jay to come out. "Wha—what happened to your face?" he asked, doing a double take at the scars, and small wonder. It must have seemed as though they had magically appeared during the trip.

Jay' brow furrowed in thought. "Uh—Contact dermatitis," he said, nodding toward the remaining prisoner in the vehicle. "I'm allergic to slapstick."

The guard scoffed. "Guess everybody thinks they're a joker these days."

"I couldn't have put that better myself," growled the Other Joker from the depths of the transport.

Jay was directed to stand to the side by me while four security guards in flak vests and helmets with face shields, their weapons at the ready, flanked the transport. "All right, Joker. Come on out, and don't make any sudden moves." snarled a fifth guard. The odor of whisky hung about him in a cloud, almost visible as a haze in the air. Curiously, he had a long, high-ridged scar running down his face from forehead to cheek, bisecting a dead eye, white and bleary blue. Why would he not bother replacing it with a glass eye?

'That guy is a squealer,' Jay said ominously. 'He may squeal in the opposite direction, but I can still tell and he's still a squealer.' Which did not bode well for the officer's life expectancy.

Other Joker stepped out of the transport like a dignitary emerging from a plane, a conquering general returning home, and greeted the alcoholic guard like he was an old college friend. "Hey, Frank-kay! How's the wife and kids? You miss me?"

"Shut up, clown! There's a lot of people in there who want to have a word with you." The guard stepped within the Other Joker's cordon of guards to clap the clown on the shoulder, roughly, propelling him toward a upright restraint board, two more guards at the ready to strap him down.

"Really, I don't mind walking!" Other Joker huffed as the guard, (his ID badge read 'F. Boles') spun him around, removed the cuffs, and slammed him in place. The orderlies fastened him down with alacrity, and he admonished them with good cheer. "Not so tight, boys. You'll crease the suit!" Said suit was past creasing, as several of the seams were holed and frayed, not to mention solid colored patches had been sewed on top of the original striped fabric, and it was never that great to begin with. But even though Other Joker had a chin like a frying pan handle, although he had body odor like a chemistry lab sink, although his hair did look like a fake grass welcome mat, for all that was wrong and innately ludicrous about him, he had both malevolence and charisma crackling around him like lightning around Frankenstein's monster.

He also had that hearty, falsely cheerful voice common to all children's entertainers, only developed to a degree of such offensiveness that I wanted to hit him in the head with a rock just to shut him up. I communicated as much to Jay, who replied, Don't let me stop you.

'Um--later maybe. It would draw too much attention right now.'

The doors of the Intensive Treatment building opened like the airlocks of a spaceship, and Joker was wheeled in like nothing so much as a dolly of beer. Despite the restraints which bound him, the four armed guards still covered every angle, ready to fire. We were ordered to fall in behind, with one guard behind us. A short, stocky older man barred the way, his hands gripping a cane as if for protection. Other Joker sang out, "Hey, Sharpie! Love what you've done to the place!"

"That's Warden Sharp to you," the man snapped. "Get this filthy degenerate out of here! Who are these two?" he asked as we passed.

"Here for evaluation," said the transport guard.

"But..." Sharp looked from Jay to Other Joker and back again, his brow furrowing. "Oh, I don't care. Send them to the appropriate department. As for the Joker—I want him securely locked away this time. Otherwise he'll start to compromise my campaign for mayor." He continued to bluster as our grotesque little parade passed the portals and headed for the heart of darkness.

Once inside the building, a short dark hall opened out into an enormous space which made the factory comparison even more apt. It was larger than a cathedral, and at least four stories high. A sort of bunker the size of a house squatted in the center of the space, pierced by a tunnel large enough to drive a car through. Jay and I waited while a lift platform lowered the Other Joker and his guards down to the lowest level, and I looked around some more.

'Someone should have told the architect to lay off the opium pipe', I told Jay. 'Who puts huge gargoyles inside a building?'

I like them, he disagreed. They remind me of Bats.

'He'd feel right at home here, wouldn't he?'

Speaking of whom...

'Yes?'

It's gonna be your job to do all the heroic stuff. I can't be bothered with it and I know you care about that kind of thing.

'Such as?'

Rescuing people. Protecting innocent bystanders, yadda yadda.

'Oh, that stuff. You're only suggesting that because then I won't be there objecting when you kill his henchmen.'

The platform returned, and we stepped on. Further down the huge chamber, Other Joker was going through the tunnel, which turned out to be a very large and comprehensive scanner. His voice carried back to us, "I miss the good old cavity search. It was so much more personal."

'I don't think I should go through that thing'. I told Jay. Given that I was a ghost who could only seem tangible and alive, if I were to go through the scanner, it would almost certainly pick up readings that were incompatible with human life, which would then mean that people would get overexcited. I would not want to expose them to unnecessary stress, especially since it seemed the night to come would get very stressful very quickly.

And I don't think my shoes should go through it either. Jay was telling the truth when he said he didn't have a knife to his name. He had two knives, which the Gotham Police had missed because they were built into his shoes, spring-loaded at the toes. Many quality handmade leather shoes still have a heavy steel shank running through them, and that was all Jay's shoes seemed to be, but this car-wash sized scanner looked to be more comprehensive. If all hell were about to break loose, as it very likely would, Jay would need his shoes. The only problem was that although I could pull a ghostly vanishing, I couldn't bring his shoes with me. I could be invisible, but not tangible at the same time, and to carry something I had to be physically tangible.

I am not a very powerful creature, but even if I only have a handful of supernatural tricks, I make do.

'Okay, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to bug out in a moment, nip around to some corner where there isn't a security camera aimed at me, and come back looking like one of the medical staff. Step out of your shoes now and leave them behind for me to come and collect.'

'Right...'

However, there is more than one way of being invisible. There is the kind where no one can see you, and then there's the kind where no one notices you. At a moment when no one's eyes were on me, I disappeared into thin air, and went off to find some privacy to take on the other kind of invisibility. Any urban or suburban medical facility of size today has on staff at any given time half a dozen or more female nurses, lab techs, phlebotomists, assistants, etc. from a foreign country. They range in age from their twenties to their forties, and their skin can come in any shade of brown, from beige to mahogany. Ethnically ambiguous, they may be from Peru or the Philippines or Pakistan, from Thailand or Trinidad and Tobego, and they're in America because the money is better than in the best hospital back home, and they have parents, siblings, children to support. Human resources offices love to hire them because they work very hard. All of them are functionally fluent in English, although they speak it with an accent. I could pass for Hispanic, if you squinted a little, my skin was beige, and I could fake an accent.

When I walked back around the corner seconds later I was wearing what looked like standard-issue mint green scrubs and sensible square-toes nurse's shoes. My hair was French-braided off my face in a style which would have taken half an hour to do, and my face was clean and unmarked. I wore an Arkham staff ID with my picture and the name B. Chen. Security would be looking for a escaped inmate in a fancy green dancing dress and pink high heels with a bruised face whose hair was loose. Not a staff member whose only touch of originality was that her shoes were pink.

As I passed the knot of security around Jay, they were asking him, "Where did your girlfriend go?"

Jay batted his eyes and smiled at them. "Did you, uh, try the ladies' room?"

No one paid any attention to me as I scooped his unattended shoes off the floor along the way.