THE BATCAVE
April 1, 12:35 EST
After locking down the Batcave so no human (or metahuman, for that matter) could enter, Bruce spent the next day analyzing the hair he had plucked from the zombified Commissioner for any known toxins. There were no matches, not even partials.
Bruce knew he needed to eat and sleep, but he physically could not let himself relax. Too much was riding on this, and they were on a deadline.
48 hours. Strange said the effects of the toxin would become permanent after 48 hours.
Dick, who had lost the mask but not the costume, seemed to understand this, and he too hadn't stopped to rest. He was embedded deep in the internet, looking for chemists and labs that had the resources to create a toxin as sophisticated as the one terrorizing Gotham.
After who knows how many hours Dick threw his hands in the air and groaned in exasperation.
"I cannot find a single reference to a compound doing anything like Strange's! I've read just about every theoretical paper, done the math for every combination of chemicals, and nada! I can't figure out how anyone could do this! Not a single lab on the East coast is researching anything even remotely related to a zombie virus!"
"I've gone over Gordon's sample four times, and the computer cannot detect any known chemical compound, or traces of foreign substances. It must be something designed to be invisible. Also, I've been reviewing any methods of distributing a toxin over the entire city. I've ruled out water, there were no unauthorized planes flying over the city today, and I can't find any irregularities in any of the air systems I've examined."
Dick sighed, running a finger through his messy hair, and Bruce felt a tinge of guilt. He knew the teen could function almost as well as he could without sleep, but the parent inside of him wanted his son to not look so exhausted.
"Dick, maybe you should grab a couple hours of rest while I start looking more closely at Strange."
His request was met with a vehement shake of the head. "No, Bruce, I don't need to sleep, I need to fix this. Besides, I don't think I could even if I wanted to."
The last part was muttered, but it rang loudly in the long silence that followed.
Even more hours later, a banging started up that jerked both superheroes away from their research.
Thud. Thud. THUD.
Bruce got out of his chair, his knees popping from the movement after having been frozen for so long. He crossed to the door of the quarantine unit. A moment passed, then…
THUD. THUD. THUD.
He flipped the one-way intercom switch, and Alfred's tortured moans echoed around the cave like angry spirits.
"TURN IT OFF!" Dick screamed suddenly, flinging his chair towards the changing area as he stormed over, hands clutched over his ears, "PLEASE, I CAN'T TAKE IT!"
Bruce cut off the heart-wrenching sound. Walking over to Dick, he put both hands on his shoulders. The boy had tears in his bright blue eyes, glittering like diamonds and threatening to run down his face. His lip was twitching, and he looked almost exactly like the traumatized little eight-year old Bruce had rescued from the juvenile detention center six years ago. After his parents were murdered, Gotham's brilliant foster care system had thrown the tiny, grieving child into juvie because all of the orphanages were full. When Bruce had found out where the boy that reminded him so much of himself had ended up he had done everything in his power to get him out of that awful place. The look he had on his face right now was the same one he'd worn the night Bruce brought him home. Pain, hurt, and grief etched into his face in harsh strokes, shoulders shaking from suppressed sobs. Even though he'd grown and matured so much over the past six years, he seemed to be right back where he'd started.
"Dick…" he murmured, not quite sure what to say or do. Bruce wasn't that good at comforting people, or good with expressing emotion, or dealing with emotional people that needed comforting. He'd improved a lot ever since Dick had come to live with him, but even now he was in awe of the fact that he hadn't somehow accidentally scarred the child.
Well, I let him dress in tights and swing around the city fighting psychopaths instead of having a normal childhood, if that counts as scarring… oh well, at least he's better than I was at this age.
Dick squeezed his eyes shut and dragged his hands over his face. A little groan escaped him, and Bruce fought the urge to pull him into a close hug. He needed to address his feelings. Get it all out (that was one of the first things he'd learned about parenting Dick Grayson, one of the best ways to help him through something was to listen to him, and let him talk himself out. Hugging before talking resulted in crying, exhaustion, and subsequently very long cuddle sessions that lacked efficiency and reason but were oddly… rewarding).
Nevertheless, he couldn't let his partner become emotionally compromised, the stakes were too high. So, while he needed to let him address his feelings, he also had to put them on hold, for the time being.
"What is it, Dick?" He asked again.
"Everything." Dick answered.
"Everything?"
"Yes, everything. The toxin, Wally, Alfred, the burning city, this stupid anniversary! It's all happening at once, and usually I can handle this stuff, Bruce, I know I can handle it! But why am I not handling it? I feel raw and emotional and I know I shouldn't and I'm trying to push it aside but I can't because my only friends in the world are all dead drones and we can't figure out how to stop it and Alfred, ALFRED is moaning and corpsey and dead JUST LIKE MY PARENTS!" The words exploded from him, and once he finished he gave a long, shuddering breath before continuing.
"My mom, my dad, they're gone. And I miss them so much. Bruce…" his voice was almost a whisper, "even now, six years later, I miss them like it happened yesterday. My mom singing while she cleaned our trailer, dad letting me sit on his shoulders as we ran in circles 'til we were dizzy. It's all gone. They were stolen from me, my life, my childhood was stolen from me. And now it's all happening again. Everyone out there," he pointed in the direction of the city, "looks like a rotting corpse, just like they do in my nightmares."
Bruce took in his son's agonized face, cursing Strange and Zucco and the foster system and everyone who'd made his little bird scream and toss in the middle of the night.
"Dick, I know it hurts. Especially today, of all days," Dick sniffed and nodded, rubbing the back of his palm across his eyes to wipe away the tears.
"But I'm here for you. I know how it feels, I've dealt with the pain, I've pushed through. It hurts, but you have to push through too. Face it, grieve, and move on. It's all we can do. And Dick, the world is NOT dead. We can still save it, we will save it. So have faith." He pulled his son into a hug, and they stayed like that for a few minutes until he had regained his composure.
"Okay, I'm a little more traught now, so let's do it." Dick said as they separated. He gave his adopted father a thankful little smile, and Bruce's heart warmed.
"Grab some water and food, we have to keep our strength up." Bruce told him, taking his own advice as he moved to the often-unused pantry at the back of the cave. Alfred usually prepared all their food in the manor's kitchen, but Bruce had installed a fully-functional one in the cave just in case.
Since neither of them really knew how to cook, they boiled some Ramen noodles and chugged a few water bottles, their training diet forgotten. Once full, they cleaned up and resumed their previous stations in front of the Batcomputer, still feeling the effects of a stressful all-nighter, but now refreshed and ready for a few more hours of intense research.
By the time the tiny mammals hanging overhead had exited the cave at sunset, Dick was pretty certain they were still doomed.
He'd been thoroughly background checking every guard in Arkham (he had to get that antitoxin vial in somehow), every visitor who had visited Strange in the year since he'd been incarcerated, and every piece of mail the psychiatrist had received (that part was taking forever, psychos got a scary amount of fan-mail). So far, he was picking up on nothing, not a single connection to the outside world that indicated he could orchestrate a stunt like this on such a large scale.
Bruce had been researching the activity of Strange's known associates. Scarecrow, since the man worked with chemicals and was a mad genius when it came to manipulating compounds to do seemingly impossible things, had been an early guess, but Crane too was locked up tightly in Arkham. One of his underlings could have possibly supplied Strange with the toxin, but Bruce knew he didn't know the names of all the man's apprentices (for some reason talented, bright chemists were drawn to the psychopath, Bruce couldn't comprehend it), and he couldn't possibly figure out the rest while the city was overrun. The few he did know he ruled out rather quickly, and so was forced to abandon that train of thought.
Besides, Scarecrow specialized in the mind, not the body. This toxin mutated its victims.
And then, after a whole day of searching… a break.
"Dick, I have something." Bruce spoke for the first time in hours.
"What!" Dick leaped out of his chair, super stiff, and lunged for Bruce's computer, "what did you find?"
"Harold Barker was a psychiatrist, but he lost his license five years ago because he was filling out false prescriptions and selling them on the Black Market. He then turned to smuggling for income, and has connections stretching from Spain to Peru. Ten years ago, he and Strange worked on a research project together, something to do with hypnosis. They've apparently stayed in contact. A month ago, a ship registered under one of Barker's aliases came into port. It was carrying lab chemicals destined for a Dr. Jianyu Ha. Ha is a brilliant virologist, splitting his time between Lex Corp and contracting for the government, and he has a small lab here in Gotham. He's truly a genius in his field, and if anyone could secretly make a toxin as complex and untraceable as this one, he could."
"Well, if he works for Lex Corp he has to be evil, right?" Dick joked. Turning back to his own screens, Dick brought up one of the (sadly, very few) letters he'd flagged as suspicious and set aside for further examination. He hadn't found anything obvious, but it had just felt off.
He checked, then checked again, then smirked proudly. "HA! See here, it says Ha! 'I do believe our dear friend Ha has made that breakthrough he's been working towards for years.' This is it! The letter was sent by a dude named Jonas Rossi, he was apparently Strange's college roommate at Berkeley. I thought it was weird cause Rossi isn't a psychiatrist, he's an insurance adjuster in Central City, so what would he be doing keeping in touch with his psychopathic ex-roommate via multiple prison letters when there's no digital sign of him ever visiting Gotham? And why would an insurance salesman be dear friends with a virologist and a psychologist? It doesn't make sense!"
"Barker is using him as a front to contact Strange." Batman deduced, "Strange is the brain of the operation, Barker has the contacts and controls the flow of information and supplies, and Ha creates the toxin. They must be communicating in code through Rossi's letters. Have you checked Strange's outgoing mail yet?"
"Yes, and he has sent letters back to Rossi. But I didn't pick up anything too suspicious about them."
"Pull up every ingoing and outgoing form of communication between Rossi and Strange. Look for codes, run it through the Decrypter, and don't forget a spectrum analysis of the ink."
"I'm starting the programs now, but Batman, these are only scans of the letters, the paper itself could have, like, invisible ink or something on it and we'd never know."
Dick had unconsciously shifted into full Robin mode, and the name slipped out before he even noticed.
Thankfully, Bruce was too preoccupied with the implications of a lack of physical evidence to examine to notice. Running a fully digital investigation as he'd been doing was endlessly frustrating, and he seemed to have finally come to a decision about the elephant that had been in the room since they bunkered down in the Batcave early this morning.
"We need those letters. We'll have to go back to Arkham and retrieve them."
Dick felt relief at the thought of finally doing something, "they're probably in Strange's cell." Dick said, thinking of the floor-to-ceiling paper coverage he'd seen when he'd peered inside. In fact, all the answers to their investigation were probably tacked to those walls.
"We should also drop by Ha's Gotham lab and see what we can uncover." Batman added.
"Yeah, that's good." Dick said, mentally creating a list of tasks to do.
A moment passed, then Dick looked up at his mentor's stern face. He was rocking a five o' clock shadow and intense, focused eyes, his normally perfect "Brucie Wayne" hair still tousled from his time in the cowl the night before, "we're really going back out there."
Bruce nodded. "Yes, we are. It's getting dark, so they shouldn't be able to see us as well as in the daylight. We'll take the car to the city limits, but I'm afraid we'll have to grapple the rest of the way. The streets will be basically undrivable by now."
"They were undrivable earlier too." Dick muttered, remembering the many close calls they'd had on their drive home.
As Batman began gathering addresses, Dick jogged over to the armory and began restocking his belt. He stuffed it with as many miniature explosives, smoke pellets, batarangs, and non-lethal weapons as it could hold, and even then, managed to squeeze a few extra items in. It was the freaking zombie apocalypse out there, and he'd be damned if he was to run out of ammo!
After snapping on his escrima sticks, Dick began the task of re-gluing his mask. As he let it seal itself to his skin, Robin flashed a smile to the newly-cowled Batman at his side. Robin didn't need to deal with all of the crazy emotions Dick Grayson had to. The mask acted as a barrier, a filter, and it let him largely push aside the lingering grief and depression. It allowed him to deal (for the moment) with the fact that at almost this exact moment, six years ago, his parents had fallen to their deaths right before his eyes, and thanks to the current crises he couldn't even visit their graves. He knew he was only delaying the inevitable, and that he'd have to deal with his problems soon, but Bruce had been right earlier, he just needed to push through.
"So, what are we waiting for?" he grinned through his exhaustion, "let's go save the city, again."
A/N: This is a relatively short and slow chapter, but it lays the groundwork for what our boys are facing out there. Don't worry, I promise the action picks up faster then you think...