[Fateverse Side Story: NC Bundle] Andante
The Ringmaster: Chapter 3 of 13
Warnings: Crossovers, fateverse, sci-fi, reference to contract-style killing, experimentation on prisoners, brief swearing.
Disclaimer: Recognizeable characters belong to DC/Marvel.
Timeline: Two days after Adagio.
It is edifying, but not completely necessary, to have read the Dark Nights: Metal event.
Visit The Fateverse Glossary for important terms, concepts, and people.
Notes: See postscript; linked footnotes may open in a new tab.
Andante
The redhead reminds him of a very young Barbara Gordon (if Barbara had ever been built like a Crossfit Barbie). She walks like Clark: powerful in her space, open but ready, softness coating strength.
“Your boys will be in very, very good hands,” she assures him with a smile. “Here at the Fridge, we’re experts with the precision application of Nullres, and failing that we’re thoroughly equipped for physical pacification. In the entire history of the facility, we’ve never had an inmate casualty in-house, even with the catastrophic break-in five years back.”
“In-house,” he echoes, prompting.
She tosses her hair in a half-shrug. “Well, some of our inmates work, and sometimes that work takes them out into the Timestream, and sometimes they die out there. Don’t worry; Dr. Grouchy made it pretty clear that you won’t be granted the lab you need if we fuck up, so everyone is on their A-game today.”
She leads him to a corridor with small cells that face the cryogenic storage chamber. The walls separating the cells are opaque, but the near and far walls are transparent (the near one bears white-lettered signage warning them to stand back and not attempt physical contact with inmates). The door of the cell has a drawer in it of the type Bruce has seen used both to pass items to a prisoner and to handcuff a prisoner through a door.
In the chamber beyond, an enormous mechanical arm swings toward them with a suspension chamber, which it slots delicately into the far side of the cell in front of them. He knew, intellectually, that the Fridge was gargantuan, but it’s very different to see it with his own eyes. Hundreds of frozen inmates, at least thirty of which are Jokers. It almost makes him want to fill the place with concrete.
“I can see why the old grump picked this one for you,” the Auditor says as the reanimation sequence runs. “For a mass-murderer and occasional serial-killer, he’s a good boy. Very well behaved if you’ve read his ethical diagnostic profile and act accordingly.” When she touches the near wall with her hand, a readout flares to life.
Jack Weiss DCR991-μ[ 1]
Category 4 violent psychopath
Mass-type 3, current count 677
Serial-type 9, current count 6
Codependent helper archetype, high-drive
Empathy response low
Hesitation response zero
High compliance
Type nine. His serial targets are varying designations of the same subject.
“His target profile is young Bruces under eight,” she explains unasked. “So you’re safe.”
Under eight. Embryonic Batman subjects. Kill them before they can watch their parents die.
“It’s been his primary use since apprehension, in fact,” she goes on. “We send him in when there’s already a Bruce Wayne but a Batman would catastrophically destabilize something. In his mind, he’s doing them a kindness, and he’s always very sweet and gentle about it. It’s some of the only reliable tuning we can do near the entropy cloud.”
Bruce slants her a look, but she seems to ignore it. Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised at her attitude…she’s a mass-type seven herself-occupational killer with more than fifty confirmed kills.
The pod opens and the Joker steps out. He pauses to smooth a hand over his hair, then strolls forward with his hands behind his back.
“Work?” he asks with a personable smile.
“In a way,” the Auditor replies. “This is Theorist 905, and he needs your help for a project. You’ll be remanded to his care. Now, I’ve told him nice things, so be good, okay?”
Joker looks at Bruce. “Always. Tell me, Batsy, how many baby birds have you got?”
Type nine. Fitting Bruce against his target profile to decide how to shape their interactions.
“A long time ago-from my perspective, anyway-I had two,” Bruce says honestly. “One of them took up the cowl when I left.”
Still smiling, Joker puts his hand into the drawer that cuts through the cell door. “Little Dickie Grayson, eh? He’ll do a good job.”
Bruce has been studying Jokers for far too long to be agitated or impressed with his new test subject’s guesswork. As of his last scans before the entropy cloud consumed his home timeline (and, by extension, all the remote timestream scanners he’d been successfully using to see beyond the cloud), ninety-two percent of Bruces have two or more children (adopted or otherwise), and of the ones who succeed him as Batman, more than sixty percent are some version of Dick Grayson.
The Auditor straps a wristband onto the proffered hand and starts to lecture. “All right, remember the rules: any kind of tampering with the Anubis fragment will null you, even if it’s somebody else’s fault; any attempt to circumvent custody will null you; failure to comply with directives from your custodian will null you. Theorist 905 will be able to null you remotely, and for this outing you are not authorized to kill.”
“Hope, precious, you know how I enjoy working with the Network,” the Joker says with a condescending little pout. “Why, I’m practically a field agent. Wouldn’t it be awfully silly of me to make an escape attempt?”
The Auditor puts her fists on her hips and makes a stern face. “Jack,” she says. “You’re an inmate. And I’m the Auditor. Inmates who attempt escape get increased sentences and lose walking privileges. Inmates who succeed in escaping get Audited.”
He offers a cheeky Boy Scout salute as she unlocks the door.
“Inmate in transit,” the girl calls out. “You remember the iso pods, right, Jack? We’re going to put you in one.”
His face falls. “Ugh. I hope the in-flight movie’s decent this time.”
“Mind-blowing,” Bruce promises.
There’s a flicker of deeper interest from the Joker, who stretches with the same casual seduction as Selina always used to employ (Bruce quells the accompanying urge to slap the man and tell him to stay on task). “Well, then. I entrust myself to your big, strong hands, Bats.”
Minimum-security is silent as they pass back through it, though Bruce can sense several sets of watchful eyes following their progress. At the end of the hall, the pair of warders stand to attention.
“Inmate in transit!” one of them barks, weapon at the ready while the other motions for them to enter the prison’s front airlock.
Forward past one Nullres field. Several seconds trapped between. Out past the second field.
The isolation pods are perfect for Bruce’s needs-they block all outside vibration, including sound, and limit the occupant’s field of view to a porthole at face height that can be rendered opaque with a single button press.
Three pods are set up in the lab space being loaned to Bruce for this proof-of-concept run, each facing away from the others to minimize the chance of subject contamination.
Subjects One and Two are transported in one at a time without incident.
The facility’s scientific director indicates the central control panel he’s made. “This section controls their outgoing sound, master switch mutes them all. This section is incoming sound, master switch drops them into silence or speaks to all of them at once. Here, window controls-opacity with or without light, and your broadcast button.”
He has visual feeds for all three-one tracking pupillary response and another tracking motion of the right hand-along with basic biometric data and a chronometric histograph. First, he verifies the sound feeds from inside the pods one at a time (One is humming, Two is saying ‘boredboredbored’ like a mantra, Three is just breathing quietly). He mutes them all and flips the switch to speak to them. “A series of flashing lights will appear on the glass in front of you. Focus on the green dot in the center.”
Once the audio feed has been cut again, he turns their windows dark and starts the trance sequence.
Two goes under first again; One is close behind with no outside distractions. Three’s readings are showing significant resistance… He’s thrashing, jaw set in a snarl as he tries to fight the trance.
“His vitals are spiking pretty high,” says the facility’s medical specialist.
Bruce rolls his eyes. He hits the switch to talk to Subject Three. “Relax, Jack. I’m told any discomfort from the process of having your personality subsumed is quite temporary, and will cease immediately when you stop struggling.”
Someone squawks a protest behind Bruce, followed by a brief sound of rustling clothes.
“By Priority Order, no Network employee below the rank of Keeper may interfere in this exercise,” says the Auditor. “You may submit a formal complaint or complaints afterward to the Network Concordat, the Proctor Department of Ethics, your facility head, or the Network Ward Commissioner.”
“You heard what he-”
“I did. And that Priority Order has the grump’s name on it. You either trust the most brilliant Timestream Theorist in the Network to know what’s best for overall stability, or you don’t. But remember that he retunes whole universes.”
Bruce hits the switch again, eyes on the spiking graphs of pulse, stress, oxygenation… “Joker,” he says in a low tone. “Listen to the sound of my voice. Don’t look at the flashes. Don’t think about other people. Only watch the green light and let the other minds slide past you. All that matters is you, me, and the green light. This is very important-it’ll be a big help to me.”
Codependent helper-type. High drive.
Easy as spitting, Barbara would have said.
Subject Three drops into the trance. For a moment, his numbers are misaligned with the other two…stutter, slow, skip, and they’ve synchronized.
Bruce lets all three hear him say, “Good boy,” and mutes all audio again. “Auditor?”
“Kali, translate the synchronized data stream into TMS visuals.”
The Node beeps and projects the image.
Bruce points. “The DC052. Down here, their rebirth, fracturing neatly from the catastrophic locus. These tendrils are their so-called Dark Worlds, all of which are within chronometric inches of each other at a very special locus bubble. Their very proximity has created an entropy cloud that’s made it almost impossible to chart them for more than two millennia of Network Operations; and it has recently expanded to encompass the entire structural trunk as the fifty-two central bundles entangle with peripheral branches. The shockwave let us see proximal events for a moment, but it’s not enough to let us traverse the cloud. But Jokers are entropic loci, just like Wades. If a DC branch gets too perfect, too bright, too good…a Joker is born to knock it off its cheerful pedestal and restore balance.”
One of the scientists snaps his fingers. “Which means they’re directly receptive to large-scale chronitonic waves, particularly those of their home trunk.”
“Charting the unchartable,” the Auditor says. “Congratulations, Dr. Wayne. The Netcon’s going to drown you in grants.”
Bruce watches the simulation as its resolution increases. “Unlikely, considering their general resistance to new ideas,” he tells her absently. “Incorporating a third subject has increased their speed by nearly twenty percent. Imagine what I can do with more of them. How many have you got on ice, serving no other purpose?”
“Sixty-eight.”
“They won’t all take the trance pattern, I think,” one of the scientists says.
“I don’t need all of them,” Bruce dismisses. “There must be some limit to how quickly the artificial locus can receive and relay data, after all. For now, prep tranquilizers; Subject Three’s reluctance earlier may have caused some minor residual trauma, if a certain theory of phasic doppling holds.”
Sure enough, when he turns off the trance signal, all three of them erupt in a shared manic fit, struggling and panicking and trying with admirable determination to break out of their extremely sturdy temporary prisons.
“Subject Three first, I think,” Bruce says as he watches them all.
The isolation pods allow their occupants to receive aerosol drugs, and the facility’s chief of medical uses that feature to administer a sleep gas of sorts.
The other two subjects begin to calm and differentiate again. Subject One is crying; Subject Two is laughing.
Ah.
John’s confirmed kill count is five, all under extreme duress during manic episodes. Joe is a mass-type six[ 2] with a count of three hundred (or so…difficult to confirm deaths with no remains). For John, sharing a mind with a serial killer who targets children must have been terrifying; for Joe, sharing a mind with a prolific spree-killing mass-murderer would have been thrilling.
Assuming they only shared minds with other entranced Jokers, and not with unknown Jokers.
wouldn’t it be funny
sweat clammy at the edges of the cowl
blood from a lucky shot to the mouth
tender, sour pinpricks inside
if you’re right about all thisss…this multiverse stuff
and it turns out there’s dozens
hundreds
thousands of me
sounds
n a u s e a t i n g,
actually.
and wouldn’t it be funny if they all knew you
like i know you
inside
and
out
Brucie
Did they only share those three minds? Or did something else slip in? Could they know-really know-all his worst secrets?
Insufficient data.
.End.
Notes:
1 For Network purposes, a Category 4 violent psychopath is a person whose violent episodes have specific triggers and typically involve death or extreme injury. A Category 3 Mass-type killer conducts killing sprees (with or without premeditation).
2 For Network purposes, a Category 6 Mass-type killer has engaged in multiple events averaging more than twenty deaths each (with or without premeditation).
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