FIC: Gotham Nocturne (8/10)
Title: Gotham Nocturne: Chapter Eight
Pairing/Characters: Clark/Bruce
Disclaimer: The boys belong to DC and to each other, but not to me.
Series Notes: Gotham Nocturne is part of The Music of the Spheres, a combined Superman Returns/Batman Begins series. The whole series can be found here.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Amanda Waller and Batman close in on Isley and Crane simultaneously, with explosive results.
Word Count: 2800
Clark woke up slowly, drifting in and out of sleep, aware that Bruce had once again stolen the blankets. The morning sun was streaming through the blinds across Bruce's hair, shadows and brightness interwoven. Clark kissed the back of Bruce's neck and Bruce muttered something sleepily, rolling over onto his back. Clark shifted to make room, since the narrow bed was barely big enough for both of them.
"I should buy a bigger bed," said Clark.
"Mm," Bruce said, slitting his eyes open just enough to see Clark. "I like this bed. My bed's too big. I like getting all tangled up with you." He pulled Clark on top of him. "In so many different senses of the term."
Clark laughed and kissed his lover's neck. "I have to get to work." He slid over Bruce and off the bed.
Bruce made an annoyed sound in his throat. "I see my concerted efforts to make sure you were too worn out to move have failed."
Clark looked up from the shirt he was buttoning. "Man of steel, baby." He dodged a pillow with grace, chuckling.
Bruce propped himself up on an elbow. "I'm going to stay here and get some research done, but I'll come in and grab some lunch with you at the Planet, if you're not busy."
"Sounds good." Clark was staring down at his tie. "Bruce. Thanks so much for coming here."
"You want to talk about it yet?"
Clark's smile was wan. "Not really."
"I won't push," Bruce said. "I'm a very patient man. I can wait, and Gotham will still be there whenever you decide to come back."
Clark finished tying the tie, feeling the knot tighten against his throat. "I know."
: : :
"Did someone order Chinese?" Bruce picked a little carton out of the bag and swung it jauntily by the metal hanger. Lois, Richard, Jimmy and Clark all made absent-minded sounds of enthusiasm as he started to put the cartons on the desk. They mostly ignored him as they started to dig into the food, still arguing with each other.
Bruce had gotten used to being treated like the delivery boy when he came around to the Planet. It was, in a way, a compliment.
Richard was scribbling furiously on a pad of yellow paper. "Any luck getting any of your contacts to talk to you about this Waller woman?" he said, putting down the pad and forking a mouthful of fried rice into his mouth.
Lois and Clark shook their heads in unison. "But Faraday hasn't gotten back to me yet," Lois said. "I think he's trying to dodge me."
Clark made an annoyed sound. "Faraday's not going to leak anything. You'll have to look somewhere else."
Bruce sat down and propped his loafers up on a nearby desk, earning him an abstractedly reproachful glance from Clark. "Clark told me someone tried to throw you off a roof, Lois. Is this connected?"
Lois looked up at Bruce as if she's forgotten he was there. "Uh, well...Jimmy," she said, poking the redhead's arm, "Explain to Bruce what's going on, would you?"
"Well, Mr. Wayne," said Jimmy, rubbing his chin as he tried to keep it simple, "We're wondering why the government is so anxious to get its hands on this Scarecrow guy. Wouldn't it be enough to just let the Gotham police put him back in Arkham after--uh, if," he corrected himself hastily when Lois and Richard glared at him, "--the Batman ever catches him? Why's it so important to have him in federal custody?"
Bruce looked enthralled. "I have no idea, Jimmy." On the other side of the desk, Clark was biting the inside of his cheek.
"Well." Jimmy puffed himself up a little bit, proud to be explaining complicated political affairs to the Prince of Gotham. "See, if the Scarecrow can create specific fears, think of what he could manage to cook up. He could make people technophobic, so they couldn't use their communications devices. Or afraid of guns, so they couldn't use their weapons."
"Uh-huh," Bruce nodded, clearly waiting for Jimmy to get to the point.
"Think of how powerful that would be in a war, Mr. Wayne!"
Bruce looked shocked. "You can't be implying the government would put him to work for them! We'd never use illegal chemical weapons like that."
Jimmy gave Bruce a pitying look and appeared to be resisting the temptation to pat him on the head. "When you've worked as long in the news biz as I have, Mr. Wayne, you learn to be a little bit paranoid."
Lois's cell phone beeped at that point, saving Bruce from having to rescue Clark from choking to death on his kung pao mock duck. "Faraday," she mouthed as she went to another room to take the call. Clark and Richard continued to look up information and take notes, with Bruce looking over their shoulders and sometimes saying a word or phrase to Clark that sounded like a non-sequitur but usually made Clark nod and scribble furiously in his notepad.
Lois came back, shaking her head, and tossed the phone onto her desk with an annoyed clatter. It skittered through the papers and files and almost fell off; Clark caught it deftly out of the air and put it back. "That was a very helpful conversation."
"Really?" Jimmy looked hopeful.
"Yeah, just not really in the way I wanted. Faraday told me Waller's the head of a new agency in the federal government--top secret. They call it Checkmate, and it's designed specifically to deal with the new kind of villain out there, like Scarecrow and Dr. Freeze." She paused, looking sour. "It's also designed to 'deal with' Superman and Batman if necessary."
"Wow, he really spilled the beans to you," Jimmy said admiringly, but Lois merely snorted in disgust, kicking her chair away from the desk and sitting down in it.
"Faraday's no whistle-blower," Clark said when Lois looked disinclined to explain further. "Whatever he said, he was authorized to say it. They know you'll pass that information on to Superman."
Lois tapped a pencil against her mouth. "Too bad we don't have a way to warn Batman." Everyone stared at her. "What? He's a possessive freak who hates Superman, but he'd never go along with a plan to use one of his greatest enemies as a war weapon."
Bruce shrugged. "I'm betting he already knows anyway."
Lois sighed. "I'm going to have to dig deeper if I want to find evidence of what they really plan to do with Scarecrow. Richard, how about your contacts?"
As Lois and Richard discussed strategy, Bruce stood up and stretched. "Clark, hon, I have to get back to Gotham. Thanks for having me down."
"Let me walk you to your car," Clark said as the others said distracted good-byes.
In the garage, Bruce gestured for Clark to get in the car. "So...did Batman already know about Checkmate?" Clark asked when the doors were closed.
Bruce's smile was innocuous. "Well, he did by the time I said he probably did." The smile vanished abruptly and his eyebrows drew together. "They've kept this new agency well under wraps. This will take some careful maneuvering."
"I don't like being used as a weapon against you." Clark's voice was mild but his eyes were thunderous.
"If you're any kind of weapon, Kal, it's something ornate and baroque and filagreed...that hides a simple, shining blade in the hilt." When he schemed, Bruce's eyes almost lit from within. "If they try to use you against me they'll be very surprised indeed." He started the car engine. "Be ready for them to call you in soon. It won't be much longer."
"Be careful." The words always sounded lame, but Bruce always smiled as if they meant something.
"As you wish."
: : :
Isley watched Crane place the penultimate vial into place on the stand with delicate fingers. There were about a dozen, each a slightly different color. "And this, my dear Pamela," he said with a smirk, "Is your dendrophobia toxin. Just awaiting final testing."
Isley eyed the moss-green toxin greedily but tried to be nonchalant. "What are the others?"
Crane ran his fingers across the vials lovingly, like playing a harp of fear. "None are my Philosopher's Stone, alas. But it's a nice range: pharmacophobia, or fear of medicine; ereuthrophobia, the fear of blushing; ailurophobia, the fear of cats. This pretty white one is chionophobia--a fear of snow. I'm looking forward to trying that one out," he said, rubbing his long, narrow hands together.
"The purple one?"
"Oh, this one," Crane said with relish, touching the lilac-colored vial affectionately. "This is apeirophobia, which is a fear of infinity."
Isley scoffed. "I'm not sure what a fear of big numbers will get you, but--"
Crane cut her off, his fanatic's eyes glowing with zeal. "'Big numbers'? Pamela, how entirely you misunderstand the concept of infinity. Infinity, the endlessness of time and space, the eternal and limitless void--"
Isley turned away from his babbling and went back to her computer. She had no interest in mystical mumbo-jumbo; the finite would do quite nicely for her.
She was going over her copy of Crane's latest formulas when it happened, the flash of insight that had been lying in her mind like a dormant seed for so long. "Crane," she said, feeling elated excitement growing in her, "Crane, come here and look!"
Crane grudgingly put aside his notebook and looked over her shoulder. "See? Here, and here." She pointed at different places on the graphs and charts. If you switch from adrenaline to dopamine, and if you change the acidity...so..." She looked at him, triumphant.
"So?"
Crane's affected boredom made Isley grind her teeth. "What? Can't you see how it should be possible to change your formulas from phobias to philias? With some adjustments, it would be possible to vary the strength from anywhere between a mild affection to a deep sexual attraction for the target. Your chionophobia toxin, you could change it to make someone like snow. Or you could make someone get incredibly aroused by seeing or touching snow! Think of it!"
Crane's eyebrows twitched into a look Isley had never seen on his face: disgust. "How repulsive," he muttered.
"Repulsive? To make people love that which they should love?" Ivy touched the dark-green vial almost reverently. "To shape the most basic and powerful of human emotions to serve nature? Repulsive?"
Crane's eyes burned with fury. "Take that back," he hissed. "Take that back!" Isley merely looked confused. "How dare you imply your twisted and filthy love has any valid place in science? Fear is pure, fear is transcendent, fear conquers all--" Spittle flecked his lips and Isley drew away from him. "You squalid, sordid, purtrid--"
A speaker by the door buzzed. Someone was outside the building, requesting entrance. Crane and Isley both froze, ideological differences wiped away by the need for self-preservation. "It's probably nothing," Isley said, although her heart was pounding. "I'll go deal with it." As she left the hidden back lab, so stopped to gently touch the leaves of two large and sturdy rose bushes on either side of the door. "I wouldn't get too close to them until I get back," she said to Crane.
She disappeared through the door, leaving Crane to wait and glare impotently at the rose bushes, which seemed to have a great number of thorns.
It was silly to imagine that the bushes were glaring back at him.
: : :
From his perch atop a gargoyle, Batman adjusted his binoculars. In the lot next to Isley's laboratory, Amanda Waller--a gas mask around her neck--was instructing a squad of heavily-armed military types. She must have made some of the same leaps of logic he had, maybe strongarmed Gotham chemical companies into handing over their personnel information.
Or simply hacked in and stole it, as he had.
He didn't have much time. The lab was going to be locked down tight in just a few minutes. Within moments he was on the roof and slipping into the building's ventilation system, making his way unerringly toward Isley's lab.
He reached a vent just as the alarm system chimed, in time to see Isley emerge from a room in the back. He watched her take a moment to adjust her lab coat and take a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. Not the actions of an innocent researcher answering the door. This was going to get ugly.
Waller introduced herself cordially as here on federal business, could she take a look around? "Nice place you've got here," Bruce heard her drawl as Isley showed her around. "I like the daffodils. Very charming." Bruce could glimpse the two of them moving between the fruit trees and vines. Isley was sweating. The rest of Waller's squad was surveying the lab, weeapons at the ready. "So what's behind door number one?" Waller asked, indicating the door Isley had emerged from earlier.
"It's--it's a biohazard lab," Isley stammered. "You can't go in without special protective gear."
Waller snapped on her gas mask. "I'll take my chances. Open the door." When Isley continued to hesitate, Waller marched to the door, planted her body and delivered a kick to the door that rattled the whole wall. Another kick and the door flew open.
Waller started to say something to Isley--then shouted as a writhing mass of thorned branches lashed at her face through the door, wrapping around her arms and shredding her clothing as if it were tissue paper. "Son of a bitch!" Waller yelled as members of her squad leaped forward to try and disentangle her, blood masking her face from countless scratches. One branch wrapped around a man's throat, thorns turning his cries to gurgles of panic.
Isley darted in between the flailing branches. "Time to go, Crane!" Batman heard her shriek. The two of them came flying back through the doorway full of thorns, Crane clutching a handful of vials, Isley clinging to just one.
Most of Waller's squad was battling the unnaturally vicious rose bush; Batman kicked out the vent and leaped into the chaos, trying to cut off Crane and Isley's escape. "Batman!" he heard Waller's voice behind him. "Never mind the damn rose bush," she barked at her team, "Bring them down!"
A thunk, and his shoulder went numb as the armor mostly absorbed the impact of a projectile. He staggered slightly, his hands brushing air where Crane had been, and the two fugitive scientists threw open the door and fled into the night, splitting up. Batman paused for an instant, looking after the fleeing Isley, then went after the more obvious threat. His shoulder was starting to ache already; they definitely weren't using standard ordinance. In the lab behind him, shouts of confusion and a wild thrashing of branches: Batman abandoned them to brush-cutting as Crane made for Amusement Mile through the still night.
: : :
Superman was staring at the lights of Gotham glimmering on the horizon when the little device went off. Startling, he pulled it from his cape and opened it. "Kal-El, get your ass to Gotham right now." Waller's voice was hoarse with fury; Superman already knew why from listening through Bruce's ears. "Batman and Crane are both out there; you will have them both rounded up by the time this night is over." Her voice turned sharp as she addressed someone else: "Don't worry about my suit, just keep cutting!" She focused on Superman again. "We managed to shoot Batman--he'll be slowed with a shoulder wound now." Superman was glad he wasn't talking to Waller in person so he didn't have to hide his wince. "They're heading north toward Amusement Mile. Rendezvous with us there as soon as possible. Waller out."
"Yes, ma'am. Right away, ma'am," Kal murmured to the dead phone. "B," he whispered. "Are you all right?"
Bruce grunted. "Fine. Be glad to see you, though." Kal winced again; Bruce must be pretty badly hurt if he was willing to make that large a concession.
"Soon," Kal said reassuringly.
The lights of Gotham winked at him, coy and hungry, inviting him to unspeakable horrors as if to a dance.
He forced himself to draw closer, until he could hear the rhythm of the city beginning to chip away at the edges of his hearing. Blood and death, the beat of entropy winding down inexorably to nothing, nothing, nothing...
Superman set his teeth and descended into Gotham.
Pairing/Characters: Clark/Bruce
Disclaimer: The boys belong to DC and to each other, but not to me.
Series Notes: Gotham Nocturne is part of The Music of the Spheres, a combined Superman Returns/Batman Begins series. The whole series can be found here.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Amanda Waller and Batman close in on Isley and Crane simultaneously, with explosive results.
Word Count: 2800
Clark woke up slowly, drifting in and out of sleep, aware that Bruce had once again stolen the blankets. The morning sun was streaming through the blinds across Bruce's hair, shadows and brightness interwoven. Clark kissed the back of Bruce's neck and Bruce muttered something sleepily, rolling over onto his back. Clark shifted to make room, since the narrow bed was barely big enough for both of them.
"I should buy a bigger bed," said Clark.
"Mm," Bruce said, slitting his eyes open just enough to see Clark. "I like this bed. My bed's too big. I like getting all tangled up with you." He pulled Clark on top of him. "In so many different senses of the term."
Clark laughed and kissed his lover's neck. "I have to get to work." He slid over Bruce and off the bed.
Bruce made an annoyed sound in his throat. "I see my concerted efforts to make sure you were too worn out to move have failed."
Clark looked up from the shirt he was buttoning. "Man of steel, baby." He dodged a pillow with grace, chuckling.
Bruce propped himself up on an elbow. "I'm going to stay here and get some research done, but I'll come in and grab some lunch with you at the Planet, if you're not busy."
"Sounds good." Clark was staring down at his tie. "Bruce. Thanks so much for coming here."
"You want to talk about it yet?"
Clark's smile was wan. "Not really."
"I won't push," Bruce said. "I'm a very patient man. I can wait, and Gotham will still be there whenever you decide to come back."
Clark finished tying the tie, feeling the knot tighten against his throat. "I know."
: : :
"Did someone order Chinese?" Bruce picked a little carton out of the bag and swung it jauntily by the metal hanger. Lois, Richard, Jimmy and Clark all made absent-minded sounds of enthusiasm as he started to put the cartons on the desk. They mostly ignored him as they started to dig into the food, still arguing with each other.
Bruce had gotten used to being treated like the delivery boy when he came around to the Planet. It was, in a way, a compliment.
Richard was scribbling furiously on a pad of yellow paper. "Any luck getting any of your contacts to talk to you about this Waller woman?" he said, putting down the pad and forking a mouthful of fried rice into his mouth.
Lois and Clark shook their heads in unison. "But Faraday hasn't gotten back to me yet," Lois said. "I think he's trying to dodge me."
Clark made an annoyed sound. "Faraday's not going to leak anything. You'll have to look somewhere else."
Bruce sat down and propped his loafers up on a nearby desk, earning him an abstractedly reproachful glance from Clark. "Clark told me someone tried to throw you off a roof, Lois. Is this connected?"
Lois looked up at Bruce as if she's forgotten he was there. "Uh, well...Jimmy," she said, poking the redhead's arm, "Explain to Bruce what's going on, would you?"
"Well, Mr. Wayne," said Jimmy, rubbing his chin as he tried to keep it simple, "We're wondering why the government is so anxious to get its hands on this Scarecrow guy. Wouldn't it be enough to just let the Gotham police put him back in Arkham after--uh, if," he corrected himself hastily when Lois and Richard glared at him, "--the Batman ever catches him? Why's it so important to have him in federal custody?"
Bruce looked enthralled. "I have no idea, Jimmy." On the other side of the desk, Clark was biting the inside of his cheek.
"Well." Jimmy puffed himself up a little bit, proud to be explaining complicated political affairs to the Prince of Gotham. "See, if the Scarecrow can create specific fears, think of what he could manage to cook up. He could make people technophobic, so they couldn't use their communications devices. Or afraid of guns, so they couldn't use their weapons."
"Uh-huh," Bruce nodded, clearly waiting for Jimmy to get to the point.
"Think of how powerful that would be in a war, Mr. Wayne!"
Bruce looked shocked. "You can't be implying the government would put him to work for them! We'd never use illegal chemical weapons like that."
Jimmy gave Bruce a pitying look and appeared to be resisting the temptation to pat him on the head. "When you've worked as long in the news biz as I have, Mr. Wayne, you learn to be a little bit paranoid."
Lois's cell phone beeped at that point, saving Bruce from having to rescue Clark from choking to death on his kung pao mock duck. "Faraday," she mouthed as she went to another room to take the call. Clark and Richard continued to look up information and take notes, with Bruce looking over their shoulders and sometimes saying a word or phrase to Clark that sounded like a non-sequitur but usually made Clark nod and scribble furiously in his notepad.
Lois came back, shaking her head, and tossed the phone onto her desk with an annoyed clatter. It skittered through the papers and files and almost fell off; Clark caught it deftly out of the air and put it back. "That was a very helpful conversation."
"Really?" Jimmy looked hopeful.
"Yeah, just not really in the way I wanted. Faraday told me Waller's the head of a new agency in the federal government--top secret. They call it Checkmate, and it's designed specifically to deal with the new kind of villain out there, like Scarecrow and Dr. Freeze." She paused, looking sour. "It's also designed to 'deal with' Superman and Batman if necessary."
"Wow, he really spilled the beans to you," Jimmy said admiringly, but Lois merely snorted in disgust, kicking her chair away from the desk and sitting down in it.
"Faraday's no whistle-blower," Clark said when Lois looked disinclined to explain further. "Whatever he said, he was authorized to say it. They know you'll pass that information on to Superman."
Lois tapped a pencil against her mouth. "Too bad we don't have a way to warn Batman." Everyone stared at her. "What? He's a possessive freak who hates Superman, but he'd never go along with a plan to use one of his greatest enemies as a war weapon."
Bruce shrugged. "I'm betting he already knows anyway."
Lois sighed. "I'm going to have to dig deeper if I want to find evidence of what they really plan to do with Scarecrow. Richard, how about your contacts?"
As Lois and Richard discussed strategy, Bruce stood up and stretched. "Clark, hon, I have to get back to Gotham. Thanks for having me down."
"Let me walk you to your car," Clark said as the others said distracted good-byes.
In the garage, Bruce gestured for Clark to get in the car. "So...did Batman already know about Checkmate?" Clark asked when the doors were closed.
Bruce's smile was innocuous. "Well, he did by the time I said he probably did." The smile vanished abruptly and his eyebrows drew together. "They've kept this new agency well under wraps. This will take some careful maneuvering."
"I don't like being used as a weapon against you." Clark's voice was mild but his eyes were thunderous.
"If you're any kind of weapon, Kal, it's something ornate and baroque and filagreed...that hides a simple, shining blade in the hilt." When he schemed, Bruce's eyes almost lit from within. "If they try to use you against me they'll be very surprised indeed." He started the car engine. "Be ready for them to call you in soon. It won't be much longer."
"Be careful." The words always sounded lame, but Bruce always smiled as if they meant something.
"As you wish."
: : :
Isley watched Crane place the penultimate vial into place on the stand with delicate fingers. There were about a dozen, each a slightly different color. "And this, my dear Pamela," he said with a smirk, "Is your dendrophobia toxin. Just awaiting final testing."
Isley eyed the moss-green toxin greedily but tried to be nonchalant. "What are the others?"
Crane ran his fingers across the vials lovingly, like playing a harp of fear. "None are my Philosopher's Stone, alas. But it's a nice range: pharmacophobia, or fear of medicine; ereuthrophobia, the fear of blushing; ailurophobia, the fear of cats. This pretty white one is chionophobia--a fear of snow. I'm looking forward to trying that one out," he said, rubbing his long, narrow hands together.
"The purple one?"
"Oh, this one," Crane said with relish, touching the lilac-colored vial affectionately. "This is apeirophobia, which is a fear of infinity."
Isley scoffed. "I'm not sure what a fear of big numbers will get you, but--"
Crane cut her off, his fanatic's eyes glowing with zeal. "'Big numbers'? Pamela, how entirely you misunderstand the concept of infinity. Infinity, the endlessness of time and space, the eternal and limitless void--"
Isley turned away from his babbling and went back to her computer. She had no interest in mystical mumbo-jumbo; the finite would do quite nicely for her.
She was going over her copy of Crane's latest formulas when it happened, the flash of insight that had been lying in her mind like a dormant seed for so long. "Crane," she said, feeling elated excitement growing in her, "Crane, come here and look!"
Crane grudgingly put aside his notebook and looked over her shoulder. "See? Here, and here." She pointed at different places on the graphs and charts. If you switch from adrenaline to dopamine, and if you change the acidity...so..." She looked at him, triumphant.
"So?"
Crane's affected boredom made Isley grind her teeth. "What? Can't you see how it should be possible to change your formulas from phobias to philias? With some adjustments, it would be possible to vary the strength from anywhere between a mild affection to a deep sexual attraction for the target. Your chionophobia toxin, you could change it to make someone like snow. Or you could make someone get incredibly aroused by seeing or touching snow! Think of it!"
Crane's eyebrows twitched into a look Isley had never seen on his face: disgust. "How repulsive," he muttered.
"Repulsive? To make people love that which they should love?" Ivy touched the dark-green vial almost reverently. "To shape the most basic and powerful of human emotions to serve nature? Repulsive?"
Crane's eyes burned with fury. "Take that back," he hissed. "Take that back!" Isley merely looked confused. "How dare you imply your twisted and filthy love has any valid place in science? Fear is pure, fear is transcendent, fear conquers all--" Spittle flecked his lips and Isley drew away from him. "You squalid, sordid, purtrid--"
A speaker by the door buzzed. Someone was outside the building, requesting entrance. Crane and Isley both froze, ideological differences wiped away by the need for self-preservation. "It's probably nothing," Isley said, although her heart was pounding. "I'll go deal with it." As she left the hidden back lab, so stopped to gently touch the leaves of two large and sturdy rose bushes on either side of the door. "I wouldn't get too close to them until I get back," she said to Crane.
She disappeared through the door, leaving Crane to wait and glare impotently at the rose bushes, which seemed to have a great number of thorns.
It was silly to imagine that the bushes were glaring back at him.
: : :
From his perch atop a gargoyle, Batman adjusted his binoculars. In the lot next to Isley's laboratory, Amanda Waller--a gas mask around her neck--was instructing a squad of heavily-armed military types. She must have made some of the same leaps of logic he had, maybe strongarmed Gotham chemical companies into handing over their personnel information.
Or simply hacked in and stole it, as he had.
He didn't have much time. The lab was going to be locked down tight in just a few minutes. Within moments he was on the roof and slipping into the building's ventilation system, making his way unerringly toward Isley's lab.
He reached a vent just as the alarm system chimed, in time to see Isley emerge from a room in the back. He watched her take a moment to adjust her lab coat and take a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. Not the actions of an innocent researcher answering the door. This was going to get ugly.
Waller introduced herself cordially as here on federal business, could she take a look around? "Nice place you've got here," Bruce heard her drawl as Isley showed her around. "I like the daffodils. Very charming." Bruce could glimpse the two of them moving between the fruit trees and vines. Isley was sweating. The rest of Waller's squad was surveying the lab, weeapons at the ready. "So what's behind door number one?" Waller asked, indicating the door Isley had emerged from earlier.
"It's--it's a biohazard lab," Isley stammered. "You can't go in without special protective gear."
Waller snapped on her gas mask. "I'll take my chances. Open the door." When Isley continued to hesitate, Waller marched to the door, planted her body and delivered a kick to the door that rattled the whole wall. Another kick and the door flew open.
Waller started to say something to Isley--then shouted as a writhing mass of thorned branches lashed at her face through the door, wrapping around her arms and shredding her clothing as if it were tissue paper. "Son of a bitch!" Waller yelled as members of her squad leaped forward to try and disentangle her, blood masking her face from countless scratches. One branch wrapped around a man's throat, thorns turning his cries to gurgles of panic.
Isley darted in between the flailing branches. "Time to go, Crane!" Batman heard her shriek. The two of them came flying back through the doorway full of thorns, Crane clutching a handful of vials, Isley clinging to just one.
Most of Waller's squad was battling the unnaturally vicious rose bush; Batman kicked out the vent and leaped into the chaos, trying to cut off Crane and Isley's escape. "Batman!" he heard Waller's voice behind him. "Never mind the damn rose bush," she barked at her team, "Bring them down!"
A thunk, and his shoulder went numb as the armor mostly absorbed the impact of a projectile. He staggered slightly, his hands brushing air where Crane had been, and the two fugitive scientists threw open the door and fled into the night, splitting up. Batman paused for an instant, looking after the fleeing Isley, then went after the more obvious threat. His shoulder was starting to ache already; they definitely weren't using standard ordinance. In the lab behind him, shouts of confusion and a wild thrashing of branches: Batman abandoned them to brush-cutting as Crane made for Amusement Mile through the still night.
: : :
Superman was staring at the lights of Gotham glimmering on the horizon when the little device went off. Startling, he pulled it from his cape and opened it. "Kal-El, get your ass to Gotham right now." Waller's voice was hoarse with fury; Superman already knew why from listening through Bruce's ears. "Batman and Crane are both out there; you will have them both rounded up by the time this night is over." Her voice turned sharp as she addressed someone else: "Don't worry about my suit, just keep cutting!" She focused on Superman again. "We managed to shoot Batman--he'll be slowed with a shoulder wound now." Superman was glad he wasn't talking to Waller in person so he didn't have to hide his wince. "They're heading north toward Amusement Mile. Rendezvous with us there as soon as possible. Waller out."
"Yes, ma'am. Right away, ma'am," Kal murmured to the dead phone. "B," he whispered. "Are you all right?"
Bruce grunted. "Fine. Be glad to see you, though." Kal winced again; Bruce must be pretty badly hurt if he was willing to make that large a concession.
"Soon," Kal said reassuringly.
The lights of Gotham winked at him, coy and hungry, inviting him to unspeakable horrors as if to a dance.
He forced himself to draw closer, until he could hear the rhythm of the city beginning to chip away at the edges of his hearing. Blood and death, the beat of entropy winding down inexorably to nothing, nothing, nothing...
Superman set his teeth and descended into Gotham.