SWAT members were everywhere outside the Royal. "Dammit, he's been here awhile." Gordon cursed as he skidded to a stop. He, Bullock, and Casey scrambled out of the cruiser just as Branden and some off his men ran into the lobby.
"Casey, wait here!" Gordon shouted as he and Bullock ran to follow Branden.
Casey listened. She grabbed her phone from the front and checked it for messages: nothing. A large whoosh above her made her look up. A plane of some sort flew away and behind another building before disappearing.
Batman's? She thought and turned her attention back to the Royal. SWAT milled out of the building they ran into. Branden and Gordon looked like they were talking heatedly as they left. And Bullock and another officer came out with a man Casey had never seen before.
He was tall, considering how his knees bent as Bullock dragged him along, he was wearing a long, purple leather jacket. But the most peculiar thing about him was his face. His face was completely white, his lips painted ruby-red and stretched out to make him look like he was always smiling, and his hair was vivid green.His entire getup made him look like a deranged clown.
Bullock shoved him into a cruiser and shut the door after saying something to the man. The man simply grinned and said something as he looked out the window. And that's when he looked at her.
Their eyes locked. A twisted grin formed on his face, his mouth stretching to show every single tooth in his mouth. Casey felt a violent shiver tear through her and she looked away. But she could still feel his eyes on her and she hurried away, heading into the lobby of the hotel.
Gordon looked up at her entrance. "Casey, I told you to stay outside," he said in irritation.
"I thought I could help," Casey lied. She didn't want to tell Gordon the man in the cruiser spooked her when Branden was standing right there.
Branden scowled and Gordon turned back to him. "Take a team up. Secure any guests and take the criminals into custody."
"I'll be the one giving orders to my team," Branden snapped.
Gordon clenched his jaw and Casey stifled a groan. "Then I'll take a team up," Gordon said. "But I want SWAT to remain on premises in case there are any more of these assassins." Branden nodded stiffly and Gordon turned to Casey. "Casey, I want you to stay down here."
Casey dug through her bag and pulled her I.D. out and clipped it to her coat. "Is there a security room around? I can start going through the surveillance tapes."
Gordon nodded slowly and pointed to the far end of the room. "It's in there. And stay there until I come get you."
"Okay..." Casey dragged the word out before walking towards the security room.
She passed a large chandelier on the floor where medical was processing a man laying on the chandelier. Casey had time to make out the gruesome scar on the side of face before she had to look away. She didn't know him, she didn't want to but she could guess by his clothes he was one of the assassins. Does that make five now?
She found several screens and one computer in the security room. She sat down and logged onto the program and started going back through the footage. At moments, she'd catch glimpses of Batman going through some of the floors but the camera in the penthouse suite caught her eye.
She rewound the tape until she saw goons moving a bunch of televisions into the room. And one by one, three people walked into the room. She recognized the man with the scar who now lay dead outside the window but not the other two: the man in the full mechanical suit or the large man sitting in a chair. But another man walked into the room and Casey realized it was the same man she saw outside except he wore the mask Black Mask usually donned.
What the hell? She paused the video and plugged in a flashdrive. She had to record this...
The mysterious man gestured to the televisions behind him, seeming to say something. After a moment, the man removed the mask and threw it into the scarred man's lap. The scarred man stood up and threw the mask away. He's angry. But the clown man pulled out a gun and fired a couple shots (even one into the ground by his foot,) forcing the scarred man to fall back down into his chair.
Casey let out a gasp when she saw the clown man push the scarred man's chair out the window where he fell to his death. She glanced out the window and watched the medics pull him off the ornament.
Back on the tape, the man in the suit flew out of the window but the man in the chair stayed where he was. The clown man approached the other but he seemed to freeze when the man in the chair stood up. Even Casey froze when she saw how large he was. She had never seen someone so big.
Who are these people? She watched the large man push the clown man down into a chair but the clown man just spun around, his head thrown back in laughter.
After that, the large man disappeared from view and she was left to watch the clown man. He seemed to talk into a camera of some sort. She checked the other videos and noticed Batman running through the halls. He must be talking to Batman, she realized.
She fast-forward until the large man came back in sight before walking out of the penthouse suit. She winced when Batman was thrown into the room, at the clown man's feet—where he sat a desk with detonators lined up before him. The large man punched Batman again but the clown man touched a detonator in warning before he backed off, leaving the Batman to the clown man.
The clown man got up, walking over Batman in the process, saying something before pushing down on a detonator. The left side of the screen lit up and the clown man threw his arms up, laughing. Batman charged up, grabbing the clown man and lifting him up in the air. Whatever the clown man said it must've angered Batman because he slammed the clown man's head down on the desk before throwing him over it. Batman hit the clown man a few more times before the large man came back, slamming into Batman and throwing him outside where she didn't have a camera feed.
She stopped the recording as the clown man grabbed a gun. She wished there was chair to sit in because her legs felt weak. She had never seen someone like that before in Gotham, ever. Who was he and where did he come from?
Casey searched the other cameras for anything else but found none. All she had to work with was whatever happened in the penthouse suite. And I hope that's enough to get something.
As she plugged another flashdrive into a port, she wished she had her laptop with her. She doubted they had enough time to get the footage back to the precinct and so she would have to try a face trace on sight. Casey entered her login information and her program booted up. Immediately, she began to isolate the images of both the large man and the clown man. It was a long shot for the larger man because of his mask but it didn't hurt to try.
-x-
Casey ran her hands through her hair for what seemed the thousandth time. She let out a heavy sigh of frustration and tapped a few more keystrokes. "No records found" flashed on her screen. Casey groaned and let her head fall to the desk.
"Is this a bad time?" She looked up to find Gordon lingering in the doorway of the security room.
"No," she gritted her teeth and motioned him to come in. "Did you find anything upstairs."
Gordon sucked in a breath and Casey noticed he looked extremely tired. "Yeah, we found the guests locked away in a room by the ballroom..." He winced when he mentioned the ballroom.
"What is it?"
"In all my years in law enforcement, I've never seen anything like that."
Casey turned back to the cameras and pulled up the remaining online cameras in the ballroom. "Oh." She stared.
It was like someone converted it into an amusement park ride from hell. Large, macabre clown faces grinned at her and she could make out something that looked like an arena. "What the hell is that?"
"Trust me on this, Casey," Gordon said firmly from behind her. "You don't want to know. Now, tell me, what've you got from the tapes?"
"Not much," she admitted. "I was able to isolate some images of the perps." She pulled up her clearest images of the clown man and large man. "I ran both of them through ViCAP(1) and got a hit on this man," the masked man's image centered and his information popped up, "his name's Bane and he's wanted for a lot of stuff. Like, he's a suspected terrorist and mass murder and he's a huge drug trafficker. I'd bet if I sent his information over to Interpol I'd get even more stuff on this guy."
"I know a little bit about him," Gordon admitted. He pointed to the other picture. "What about him?"
Casey sighed again. "And now my trail gets cold. I ran him through everything. ViCAP had nothing, I even went over to Interpol and got nothing."
"How did you get results from Interpol so quickly?"
"Not important, Gordon. What's important is that this man is not in any of our databases. He doesn't have any record I can find. He's an anomaly."
He was silent for a moment. "We can get his fingerprints when he arrives at Blackgate."
"That could work," Casey said. "It might pick something up in ViCAP that the facial recognition missed. But honestly Gordon, I'm not holding my breath."
"I know," he said. "I know."
-x-
Within the hour, they received news from Blackgate that the mysterious man's fingerprints resulted in nothing. Gordon tried to get someone to actually send the prints over to them so Casey could run them through herself but to no avail. All they knew was the man called himself "The Joker."
"Just like a clown," Casey murmured to herself as she looked over the file she put together. She shivered. She hated clowns. And she was glad to hand the file over to Gordon. She didn't want to look at it anymore.
She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her temples. She had gone over every single footage of what happened in the Royal Hotel and put anything that could be used in the file.
But she was tired and wanted to go home so badly now. All the things she saw in there were going to haunt her in her nightmares for a long time. She lay her head down on the desk and closed her eyes. Maybe she could get a quick rest in.
"No time for sleeping on the job, Casey." Gordon's voice startled her awake.
"I'm not sleeping!" She said before yawning. "Just resting my eyes a bit."
"I know you're tired. I am too but I need you to start running everything you can on these two people. He handed her two more files. One was on Bane and the other on the man in the mechanical suit, named Garfield Lynns. "These are the two assassins we identified at the meeting, Bane and Firefly."
"That brings to count of assassins up to seven. Who's the missing eighth?" She took the files.
"A woman named Shiva. She took some people hostage a few hours ago but our sources say she's in the wind."
"So you don't think she's a problem?"
He was silent for a moment. "Go ahead and run her. See what you can get. If she strikes again tonight, I want us to be ready for whatever she has."
"Okay. I will run her as well. Anything else?"
"Just make it as fast as possible."
Casey smiled. "Will do."
-x-
Another hour and two cups of coffee later, Casey finished her search. "Okay, do you now how much information I just compiled in this hour?" She told Gordon when he came back. "A lot. And I wasn't even using my computer which, might I add, is a whole lot more sophisticated than this piece of shit—crap. Anyway, you asked me to get everything on these guys and so I started with Bane since I had a start on him. I went to Interpol and he's wanted for pretty much everything he's wanted for here."
"And that's helpful how?" Gordon asked.
"Well Interpol has more info on him than we do in the U.S. He's from Santa Prisca in South America, and I only know that because the earliest records I have of him are him getting out of a prison there when he was an adult. And that's when he seems to start doing all the gross, nasty things international thugs do. Mass records in the drug trade and mass murders, all that jazz. But I did find a nice little nugget Interpol tucked away: he's got three close lieutenants who do his underling dirty work for him: Angel Vallelunga, Sergio and Diego Ortiz. Also know as Bird, Trogg, and Zombie in the criminal underworld. So, if you find those three you'll probably find Bane. And since we know Bane's here to kill Batman and he's a regular buyer and seller of black market weapons my best guess he could be prowling Park Row or Amusement Mile. Y'know, Cobblepot's territory. He's got the best connections for weapons in Gotham."
Gordon wordlessly flicked through Bane's file and Casey plowed ahead.
"The next one is Garfield Lynns. And he was easier to find stuff for considering he's a local. He was employed by the military until a terrible accident with one of his flamethrowers. And please don't ask me how the details were very icky. But long story short, ninety percent of his body is covered in burns and he was discharged from the military. After that, he's done any job he can that uses fire and he is not good at being discreet. Anything that he does, I'm betting it'll be big."
And then she pulled the third file. "Okay, last one and holy crap this woman is hard to find. ViCAP had nothing and Interpol had very little. All I can tell you her name is Shiva and she mainly sticks to foreign soil. It seems she does high-profile government assassinations and that's all I got."
"These are really good Casey." He took all three files. "You did all these in an hour?"
"Don't ask me how I got all of it because I will never tell." She finished the dregs of her second coffee. "Man, that's good stuff."
"No more coffee Casey," Gordon said firmly. "Come with me."
She set her empty coffee cup down and gathered the rest of her stuff and put them back in the bag. "We're going to try and get ahead of these two."
"Before the Batman does?"
"Not only that but before more innocent people get killed. So we're heading over to Old Gotham."
"And what're we going to do?"
"You found Anarky, I'm hoping you could find any of these remaining assassins."
Casey frowned. "With all due respect, sir, but I found Anarky because I had something to trace. I have nothing to trace on any of these guys."
"We'll go through each of the radio channels in Gotham. They have to be communicating somehow."
"That's over a hundred channels. It'll take me a while."
"Can you get a hold of Nygma?" He asked. "He might be able to help us."
She pulled out her phone. "I'm not sure. Maybe? He wasn't at the precinct last time I was there. I think he went home."
"Call him and see if he can help out."
"I'll try." She clicked on his number and pressed call.
"This is Nygma. Leave a message." Damn. Voicemail.
"Hey Ed, it's Casey. Um, I don't know if you've been watching the news but a bunch of stuff been's happening in Gotham and Gordon wants you to come in and help. We're heading into Old Gotham now so if you get this message, please call me. Thanks." She hung up.
"I got his voicemail and left a message," she told Gordon as they got into his police cruiser.
He sighed. "He better call back soon. Do you know what he was doing tonight?"
"All he said he was going to work on his own project tonight." She shrugged. "Whatever that means."
Truth was, she had not idea what Ed did in his office. He gave her assignments and she handed them in when she was done.
She checked her phone again: nothing. "If you want me to find one of them, I could also check for suspicious activity in the market. They have to get their stuff somewhere and there's a chance for a paper trail."
"Do you think that's possible?"
"It's slim." Casey admitted. "But there's always a chance."
"Okay but I want you to follow the radio channels lead first. It's our best bet."
She opened her mouth to reply when a bright light flashed before their eyes. Gordon slammed on the brakes and they went into a spin. "Hang on!" Gordon shouted and jerked the steering wheel. Casey clung onto the door handle for dear life.
They skidded to a stop, miraculously missing another car parked on the street. "You okay?" Gordon asked.
Casey nodded, still too shaky to trust herself to speak.
Another explosion boomed in the distance. "That's—that's coming from the Pioneer's Bridge." Casey breathed out.
"This is Gordon," Gordon said into the police radio. "Two explosions by the Pioneer's Bridge, does anybody copy?"
"We've got eyes on a man in a jetpack using a flamethrower of some sort setting fire to the bridge!" Someone shouted back through the radio.
"You did say Garfield Lynns would do something big," Gordon said.
Casey gulped.
-x-
1) ViCAP is the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. It's basically a big program for law enforcement to compile information on crime, especially murder, and tracking serial killers.
And that's the end of chapter six! We're entering the end game of Origins and the night is just beginning. What with dealing with Firefly and this new criminal the Joker. What is in store for Casey?
Stay tuned to find out!
Reviews, favorites, and follows are love! See ya in chapter seven!