Shortcuts
Author's Note: This took a long time to construct and I am not happy with this chapter because of it. But I now feel I have a suitable platform to close down the story arc neatly in the ensuing installments. Enjoy.
There's a word for describing the death-trap we're currently facing, just as there's a word for describing the girl's position at its epicentre. The word for the trap is problematical (thank you Al) and the word for the girl is fucked (a Jason Todd trademark). The girl, a pretty co-ed wearing a Gotham University sweatshirt, is unconscious in what looks like a custom-built electric chair in the centre of a colossal room crammed with all kinds of nasty looking electrical equipment and some lethal looking blades jutting out of all four walls. As in all death-traps, the door we entered through locks behind us (somehow he never thinks about wedging his foot in the doorframe) and we're alone. We both try to establish radio contact from inside the building, but puzzle boy's probably got a scattering field or some heavy-duty shielding in place to block transmissions. We can't get through to an outside line.
"Did you inform Gordon about this midnight stroll of ours?" I ask, thinking I already know the answer.
"No. I could not risk Nigma gaining an audience. It might encourage him to do something reckless just for the spectacle."
"Quite right, Dark Knight." We look up to find Riddler's face grinning at us from a huge projector screen against the far wall. "This is a game of wits, not of stupidity although I don't know why you brought your dense and hot-headed sidekick to the party." He's not my biggest fan ever since I broke three of his ribs and fractured his jaw on our last play-date.
"I'm here for an encore, Eddie; this time I'm gonna snap your neck." Even though he sneers contemptuously, and even though the screen's image is a little grainy, I can see the fear in his eyes and the slight quiver as he fires off a retort.
"I doubt you're even smart enough to know how to end a life." He's afraid of me. And if he's afraid of the kid, then the guy is going to be terrified of Bruce, especially after quipping a line like that in light of what he's done. Bruce is silent. His stare burns into the screen and I know Nigma has pushed him the wrong way. It's a BIG mistake to him pissed at you, seriously pissed at you. Since the big man is too intense to speak, I pose the question on his behalf.
"Why don't you shut your mouth and tell us how your stupid game works, Eddie, before we break the rules."
"Yes, let's get right to it, shall we? The girl you see is alive, but unconscious. I have told her the numerical code necessary to find my next trap and only she can tell you because I certainly won't. The aim of the game is simple; reach the girl without touching the floor and she's safe; try to cheat, touch the floor or use outside assistance to aid your flight, and she dies…horribly."
"I hope you will be able to fully understand why I beat you so badly once this game is concluded, Nigma. At this point, you have no recourse." Bruce growls at our unwanted host. He is gonna tear this asshole limb from limb, no joke. Nigma isn't pleading just yet.
"Did I neglect to mention there is a strict time limit for completion of this ingenious design of mine? You have exactly six minutes to rescue her or she will die anyway. Now…" Eddie leans forward, "Let's see you fail." A digital countdown display appears on the wall beside us and begins shedding the seconds with a regular bleep. We both take stock of the room. The girl in the chair is on a platform raised some twenty feet off the ground. Judging solely from the appearance of the blades and the mechanisms surrounding them, it looks like they're designed to come out if triggered. A look at the floor finds a series of large square tiles covering the length of the room. It's a good bet that stepping on those is the trigger for the blades. The tiles look rigged for electricity and shocks. There are no other platforms, hanging wires or pipes to help us out in navigating this place; the room is actually pretty bare. The ceiling is smooth and has absolutely zero purchase for grapnel guns or handholds. As far as death-traps go, this one's pretty dull. All the while we're looking for the solution; The Riddler is leering at us from his screen. We notice the cameras in all four corners of the room moments later. This is obviously the matinee feature on tonight's program. I'm not seeing the quick and dirty solution here. I turn to the big man aware Eddie can hear us as well as see us.
We communicate in gestures that form part of a secret code only we have knowledge of. Using subtle hand movements and facial tics, the sort that are indistinguishable from involuntary actions, we hold a conference. I tell him I have no idea how to approach this. He informs me he believes he has the answer. Then he makes a gesture I have no clue about, mainly because I gave his lessons on the code plenty of lip service, but not nearly enough study. When I repeatedly shake my head to his gesture, Bruce's shoulders slump and he sighs. He signals for me to come closer so he can whisper in my ear.
"It's a chess problem. There are sixty-four squares on the floor and the girl represents a queen. The blades number fifty, indicating that this is a puzzle that can be solved in less than fifty moves. The six minute time-limit is comparable to Armageddon Chess. I would deduce that we are the white pieces and she represents the black because of the greater time given to white in this particular chess format." Okay, never would've figured that one out. I lean back to point out the obvious snag in his theory.
"How can we make a move if we don't know what pieces we're supposed to be and we can't touch the floor?" Bruce does not even stop to consider before firing back an answer.
"We are ALL the pieces. The puzzle here is not to advance on the queen. The queen has already been captured. It is a case of working out HOW she was captured. He wants us to tell him the sequence of moves to reach her current position, but he wants it backwards."
"Can you do it?"
"The queen is the most powerful piece in the game and possesses the greatest freedom of movement; there are simply too many scenarios to deduce the exact path taken to arrive at this juncture. I can make a guess, but if I am wrong there will not be sufficient time to attempt another."
"So what's your REAL plan for this?"
"Distract him so I can engineer an escape. Think you can distract him, Robin?" I grin up at the screen.
"Yeah, I think I can do that."
So Bruce has the trap's solution and has deemed it nigh on impossible. Now, it's time for our back-up plan; divide and conquer. Basically I work the room and become the absolute centre of attention while the big man silently works to free us. In a room this tight and an audience this tough, the chances of Bruce managing to go unnoticed in rescuing her are pretty slim. So I get to work. I look up at Nigma and call out.
"How do we know she's not dead already?" Eddie looks a little dumbstruck by the insinuation his game is rigged. He frowns at me.
"Do you think I need to cheat in order to defeat you?"
"I think you're not too bothered about getting your hands dirty anymore. Why don't you just prove she's alive for us? Give her a little shock." He seems reluctant to act. I press him. "And how do we know your numerical code isn't here anywhere in this puzzle? I say you're full of shit, you lying scumbag. Call my bluff." Eddie's full attention is on me. I catch the cameras shifting position to focus on me and off the big man. Their adjustment is slight, maybe less a few degrees, but it's enough. I have to pitch at the right level for him to make this work. Time for a verbal duel.
"You are an unworthy audience for a man of my talents, you little brat." He snaps in response to my last insult. I shrug.
"What, because I can't get the last side of the Rubik's cube to be all the same colour? Because I can't solve the last clue in the crossword? If that's your measure of intelligence, Eddie baby, you really need to get a life instead of a creepy hobby. Because the girls don't get turned on by a man who can solve a jigsaw puzzle of the sky; they like big, strong men like me." I need to antagonise him enough so that he forgets about everything else but getting one over on me. Since I have a knack for pissing off almost everyone I meet, I'm confident Eddie's only got eyes for me right now, but I can't go too crazy with the insults or it might drive him over the edge. When he responds he growls, doing a pretty good impression of his nemesis.
"You are none of those things, boy. I doubt you can even spell intelligence with your thuggish mind." He's definitely losing his cool with me. So it's time to push him closer to the edge and really get him raging. It's delicate stuff, but unfortunately I'm already running low on material. So I bluntly play my trump card. I scoff at him.
"Yeah? Well, fuck you smartass. I've got a riddle nobody can solve, especially a second-rate hack like you." When he replies, he can barely get his words out. He manages to spit them in short, sharp breaths.
"I can solve any riddle whatsoever. Test me." I have to smile at that; game on, loser. Here's one I made earlier:
"It has no business there, but causes both pain and pleasure in measure. The more you try to remove it, the deeper it goes. Only when it decides to leave does one find relief. What is it?" There's a silence for a second, two seconds, three seconds before he utters a reply. He smiles triumphantly, clearly convinced he has the correct answer.
"The presence of doubt." No, no, no, Eddie; that's far too sophisticated an answer for this brain-teaser. The actual answer is a little more low-brow. I shake my head.
"No, my foot in your ass." He pretty much screams in response to that.
"THAT IS NOT A RIDDLE!"
"It does make a good joke though, huh? Kinda like your trap, dumbass." I finally tear my eyes away from the screen to see Bruce with the girl slung over his shoulder atop the platform. It's anyone's guess how a man as generously-sized as he is managed to evade the cameras and Nigma's attentions while wearing a bat costume, not to mention how he navigated his way to a place impossibly out of reach, but who cares? Time to blow this Popsicle stand. I drop smoke pellets to cover our escape from prying eyes.
"CHEATERS! THIS IS A CHESS PROBLEM, NOT A TEST OF AGILITY!" Eddie yells over the intercom as we use generous amounts of explosive gel to blow the door back open. Once it's hanging off its severely warped hinges, we both rush out into the open air.
"Is she alive?" I ask whilst preparing to radio Gordon and an ambulance to the scene. Bruce is carefully checking her over. Even from where I'm standing, I can see she's not breathing. He isn't frantic or panicked in any of his movements, just clinical. He checks her pulse.
"She's still alive. I'm going to initiate CPR, radio Gordon to get here as soon as possible." The big man states in his matter-of-fact tone before commencing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I do as he asks and then watch him work. It only takes a few minutes to get her coughing and spluttering again. Now that's she's officially still with us, Bruce examines her more closely. "She's severely dehydrated and has probably been in captivity for at least three days. It's a wonder she's still alive."
"Can she give us the code?" I ask only for him to sigh and shake his head.
"Not in this condition. She requires immediate medical attention or this will all be in vain. What's the ETA of the medical team?"
"Two minutes." I tell him. He nods in approval of the time.
"I would estimate that, had I not solved the puzzle when I did, an additional eight hours would have proven sufficient to kill her." You can hear the self-inflicted guilt already pooling in his voice when he speaks, like someone attending the funeral of a loved one who thinks they should've done something to stop it. The fact that we got to her in time means nothing to him; whether we got here with eight minutes or eight hours to spare, he still treats it as failure. It's left to me to rouse him from the darkness. I bend down and grip his shoulder as he supports her in his arms.
"We'll get this bastard, big guy, we'll get him."
It's two hours later. The missing girl, positively ID'd as Melody Richards, an electronics major at Gotham U, is still in critical condition in the hospital but is showing signs of recovery. Bruce and I are in the cave, trying to figure out where Riddler could be broadcasting from. The son of a bitch jammed everything when we were in that room so we got no clues or telemetry of any kind on his equipment. We tried returning to investigate the room, but found the building in pieces courtesy of a custom-made self-destruct charge. We couldn't recover any forensics. Miss Richards is our only hope right now and we don't have word on how long she'll be unconscious; it could be days and that's time we just might not have with this lunatic.
"What does he want this time?" I ask the big man. Despite being full focused on the screen display, he takes the time to answer me.
"Edward Nigma wants to prove he is the smartest man in Gotham city." I roll my eyes, having heard that line one too many times already this case.
"Yeah, but that's what this moron ALWAYS wants; why's he bumping people off instead of teasing us with his dumb riddles?"
"It's not why he's killing people, but WHO he is killing. All three of his victims are the highest ranking members of Gotham's Mensa fraternity. The first victim, Michael Weir, possessed an IQ of one-hundred-and-seventy-six. The second victim, Claire Raymond, had an IQ of one-hundred-and- sixty-nine, only a fraction below that of the first. The third victim, Samuel Allan, had an IQ of one-hundred-and-sixty-four. Judging from the traps in which their bodies were found, all three rooms had problems that could only be solved by those of that intelligence level. Melody is not a member of Mensa, but should be. Her IQ is rated as one-hundred-and-fifty-two. She also is very adept at chess, probably the main reason for her room being chess-orientated. Since the victims follow a pattern of diminishing intelligence, I have compiled a list of the next most probable targets he will subject to his tortures. Daniel Brewster, a physics professor at Gotham University is the next most likely target, given his IQ yielding a result of one-hundred-and-forty-eight." It's always incredible to hear him lay out the whole thing for you, like flipping to the end of a murder-mystery novel. It must be so easy for him to uncover all this. I have to ask.
"What's Bruce Wayne's perceived IQ?"
"One-hundred-and-twenty."
"And your actual IQ?"
"I have no exact figure. It is most likely in the region of one-hundred-and-eighty."
"And what's Eddie's intelligence rating?"
"His files show it to be one-hundred-and-seventy."
"So, in actuality you really are the smartest man in Gotham?" Bruce lets himself smirk slightly at my remark before offering a reply.
"Fortunately yes or our task would become far more difficult."
"What's it like, being that intelligent?" When he finally decides to look at me, he can see I'm genuinely curious. He turns his body towards me and gives the grimmest appraisal of high intelligence I have ever heard.
"Having a high IQ is no different than most other luxuries in life; it is a double-edged sword. Every failing is traumatic, every success is expected and all because you feel you should be able to solve everything. I allow myself to think of my intellect as a tool, not an accolade I should flaunt in everyone else's face. In that way, I keep myself in check." But, you're a genius, Bruce; you're an actual, bona-fide genius as well as the most physically impressive man I've ever laid eyes on. Plus you're the richest man in Gotham. Life should be a little bit of picnic for you. I condense it down to fit out my mouth.
"But, you're a genius. You should enjoy it." He clenches his jaw and shakes his head.
"Not when it encourages mad men like Nigma to play games with people's lives. Genius is a luxury until it is a curse. For me, it became the latter some time ago." He turns back to the screen. "You should go to bed." I roll my eyes at that brilliantly hypocritical statement.
"No, YOU should go to bed. You've been awake for eighty hours." I tell him. He ignores my advice.
"I'm fine."
"Look, I know I'm not exactly on yours and Eddie's level in terms of intelligence…" I begin before Bruce turns to look at me again.
"Don't think like that, Jason. I have never considered your intellect inferior to mine, only of a different sort." As flattering as that is coming from you, it's really not enough to get me off your back, big man. Listen carefully…
"So take my advice and hit the sack. You need sleep as much as I do and a hell of a lot more too." Bruce's eyes say that he agrees with me entirely, but his voice remains stubborn.
"And Nigma?" He reminds me like I forgot there's a lunatic running loose in the city during the past five minutes.
"The GCPD is combing the whole city for him, plus there's an easier place to get inspiration than this computer screen."
"Which is?"
"In your dreams? I bet any money something will come to you in a dream if you sleep for a few hours." Yeah, it's not scientific and it's not got any real basis in reality, but it's still as good an idea as any. He relents.
"Perhaps you're right."
"We will get him, Bruce, we always get them in the end."