The Last Laugh
Chapter 3: Surveillance
By, Frank Hunter
Patrol that night remained fairly uneventful. Bruce insisted on the need to have eyes over every possible point of interest for a party looking to steal information from Wayne Enterprises or its new acquisition. This meant Wayne Tower, a number of warehouses and data storage facilities around the city, and even Life 2.0's previous headquarters in Old Gotham, where an extensive system of hard files and computer storage still hadn't made the move over to the new office. Bruce had gotten his hands on some sort of high tech, hi-res mini-cameras, Tim assumed from the company's development floor. The things were the size of a pea and picked up images at a resolution sharper than real life. There was no chance in hell that a pigeon would be nesting within 50 feet of any of these buildings without Batman and Robin being in the know. That, combined with Lucius's constant digital surveillance and protection protocols meant the company was pretty much on high alert against any form of theft imaginable.
But the rush to get surveillance in place turned into a fairly disappointing game of "hurry up and wait." In the subsequent two weeks there wasn't a peep from any of the cameras, programs, or alarms, and Tim was beginning to think that maybe the old man was starting to go a bit paranoid.
Right, starting. He smirked as he sat, legs dangling, from an awning high up in the foggy Gotham night. Without any major corporate conspiracies going on, the pair of them had been resigned to keeping up their endless campaign against the city's petty criminals, pimps, car jackers, and street muggers. It was the side of the job that never seemed to make any headway. There was never any shortage of these people in the dark alleys of Gotham, and if they did manage to scare one off or bring the legal hammer down, three more sprung up to take his place. It was for that reason that Tim could really appreciate the so-called "super criminals" that reared their heads every so often. With them, there was a face on the campaign. You bring down Dent, you stop the Two-Face gang. You nail the Joker, the number of psychos in town with white makeup and big red smiles goes down to zero. At least that brought some satisfaction.
Speaking of big red smiles though…
Tim brought the binoculars up to his eyes and peered in through the window four stories down and across the way. The window was miniscule and scummy, but it looked in on the main living area of a tiny apartment that would fit entirely in Wayne Manor's reception room. It was the kind with yellowed linoleum on the floor and a creaky spring bedframe made of steel pipes. Every stereotype about living in the big city rolled into one place, a filing cabinet for a human being. And at that moment, a young blonde woman was stepping through the door.
The apartment was owned by a non-profit company that served as its own sort of independent halfway house for residents just out of Arkham. They'd helped place Harley Quinn in this place without needing much from her. They helped get her a job, too. A low-paying, low-responsibility gig at a SaveMart supermarket just over the bridge, in the outer boroughs. They were, arguably, the building blocks any good person could use to climb up and start developing some semblance of a normal life from.
Robin knew all of this because he'd been prying around in the company's secure database for the better part of an hour.
Sometimes the level of authoritarian rule-bending that went into the role of guardian angel pecked away at his conscience. He tried to remind himself, over and over, that all of this was for the greater good, to prevent terror, to save lives. A certain amount of flexibility was necessary for Batman to do what Batman needed to do. But there had to be limits to it.
Robin opened his fist and looked down at the little device he held there. One of the mini cameras, which he'd set aside from Bruce's stockpile. He'd intended to slip into the apartment before Quinn showed up and position the camera for a clear, inside view of the living room, but a thought had stopped him in his tracks. A vision that had crossed his mind. And the vision was of him and Bruce standing in the cave, staring at the computer monitor and watching a live camera feed. They'd done so much of that over these last two weeks, looking over the vague nothing of locked doors and sealed windows. But in his vision, what they were looking at was the secret, private life of a regretful woman as she did…absolutely nothing. As she slept and showered, as she dressed, ate meals, came, went, and lived her life, fully unaware that the whole thing was an open book to the Batman.
The notion of Bruce's cold eyes scanning over her in every moment of her private life didn't sit well with him. And he knew Bruce didn't take discretion with this kind of thing, particularly if someone like Quinn were involved. And he tried, in that moment, to tell himself that he was being ridiculous, and a hypocrite, and that he was taking unnecessary risks. So he raised the binoculars back to his eyes and scouted out the fire escape that was just outside the window. It would be easy enough to rectify his mistake and just get himself a good angle from the fire escape to stick the little eye, and it could watch endlessly from outside the window. But beyond the fire escape, the woman had now sat down on her tattered, raggedy sofa, picked up a remote control and turned on the television. She hadn't even unpacked her things. The way she sat, still and staring with the same slump in her shoulders as she'd carried the day Tim had seen her at her parole hearing. It steeled his resolve.
This was not a woman that was going to dress up in clown make-up and hold the town hostage. This wasn't a woman that was going to build bombs and slaughter innocents. This was a woman who was broken and heartsick and defeated, and who looked like she needed nothing more than for someone warm to put their arms around her and tell her that, in time, everything could be alright. He wished, for a moment, that he could help do that for her. But instead, he settled on the one thing he could do.
He slipped the unused camera back into his belt. There would be no video feed here, tonight.
Tim watched from the rooftop a little longer until it was grossly apparent that Quinn wasn't going to be doing anything else that night. Feeling proud of his convictions, he put the binoculars away, pulled the heavy weight of his grapple gun from his waist, and dove out into the night. Regardless of what Bruce thought, there were other avenues that would benefit more from his attention that night.