My Life is Horrific Chapter 27 — Gotham City (Patreon)

Gordon kept one hand on my shoulder and the other on his flashlight as he guided us through a maze of dark corridors, down two flights of stairs, and through a steel door that he locked behind us with three separate bolts. 

The space beyond opened up into what had once been the basement level of a parking garage, but the cars were long gone and in their place someone had assembled a makeshift command post out of salvaged desks and a collection of battery-powered equipment.

About a dozen men and women occupied the space, most of them wearing some version of plainclothes over body armor, all of them armed, all of them carrying the particular exhaustion that came from weeks of operating behind enemy lines with no reinforcements and no extraction plan. They looked up as we entered, and the reactions ranged from cautious curiosity to open suspicion.

"Who the hell are these two?" a young detective near the front called out, rising from behind a desk covered in maps. He was maybe late twenties, dark-haired, square-jawed, the kind of face that belonged on a recruitment poster, and he was looking at me and Wednesday like we just killed his dog. 

"That's what I'm trying to figure out, Blake," Gordon said, guiding us to a cleared space near the central table and pulling two folding chairs from a stack against the wall. "Sit down. Both of you. Start talking."

Wednesday sat without comment, crossing her legs and folding her hands in her lap. She looked at me and raised an eyebrow, which I understood to mean this is your problem.

I sat down across from Gordon and chose my words carefully. "I'm James and we have a friend in common."

Gordon's eyes narrowed. "Who."

"Batman."

"Where is he?" Gordon asked. "If he's planning on showing up fashionably late you can tell him we don't have the time for that."

I held his gaze. "He's not going to be able to help us this time, Commissioner."

Gordon looked away as he understood the meaning, rubbed a hand over his face, and let out a sigh that seemed to take something out of him on the way out.

"Well," he said quietly. "That's not good."

He sat down in a chair across from me and planted both hands on the table. "If you really are friends of his, then I'm going to assume you know how screwed we are."

I nodded. "Bane has control of the city. He's got the bridges blown, the police trapped underground, mercenaries on every corner, and a nuclear bomb that's going to turn this whole island into glass. How close am I?"

Gordon confirmed it with a grim nod and stood, walking us over to the central table where the rest of his team was gathered, a mix of detectives and uniformed officers who looked like they hadn't slept properly in weeks. "Everyone, these two say they're connected to the Bat. This is James and..." He looked at Wednesday.

"Wednesday," she said, offering nothing further.

"James and Wednesday. They're offering to help."

Blake stepped forward with his arms crossed. "Commissioner, with all due respect, they're kids. I don't know where they came from or what they think they can do, but we're talking about an army of mercenaries with military-grade hardware and a nuclear weapon."

A couple of the other officers nodded in agreement. Though a fat sergeant near the back muttered something about babysitting duty.

"It doesn't matter," Gordon said, leaving no room for debate. "If they want to help, we need it. We need every body we can get right now."

I stood up and put both hands on the table. "Listen, all of you. We don't have time to argue about credentials. How long until the bomb goes off?"

Gordon looked at his watch, then at a hand-drawn timeline pinned to the wall behind him. "Best estimate, less than twenty-four hours. Could be less."

"Shit," I said.

Wednesday leaned forward slightly in her chair. "What type of nuclear device are we dealing with? What was the original yield estimate? What is the delivery mechanism?"

Gordon looked at her with a mixture of surprise and uncertainty. "It's... it's a nuclear reactor core that was converted into a bomb. Wayne Enterprises built it as a clean energy project. I don't know the specifics beyond that. I'm a cop, not a physicist."

"Do you have experience with explosives?" I asked Wednesday, though I already knew the answer.

"I have extensive experience with various types of explosive devices," Wednesday replied. "However, nuclear weapons operate on principles fundamentally different from conventional ordnance. I would need to physically examine the device before I could determine whether disarmament is feasible."

A few officers stared at her. Blake's mouth had opened slightly.

"Right," I said, turning back to the table where Gordon had spread a map of Gotham's streets marked with patrol routes, barricade positions, and two circled areas near the waterfront. "Where's the bomb?"

Gordon leaned over the map and pointed. "It's on a truck. Bane keeps it moving through the city on a constant loop, changing routes randomly to prevent us from setting up an ambush. He's also running decoy trucks on similar routes to confuse any attempts at interception. We've managed to narrow down the real one to these two routes through surveillance, but each truck has a Tumbler escort. We don't have anything that can take on a Tumbler in a direct fight."

I studied the map for a long moment, tracing the routes with my finger. Then I straightened up and looked around at the faces watching me.

"Alright. Here's what we're going to do."

I picked up a marker from the table and started drawing on the map. "First priority. The police force trapped underground. There are thousands of officers sealed in the subway tunnels. Gordon, do you have access to explosives? Enough to blow the sewer entrances?"

Gordon nodded slowly. "We've been stockpiling what we can. Enough for maybe three or four major breaches."

"That's all we need. We blow the main entrances simultaneously, here, here, and here." I marked three points on the map. "That gives us a few thousand angry cops flooding the streets at the same time, which is going to create chaos that Bane's forces can't respond to quickly enough."

"Then what?" Blake asked, his skepticism giving way to reluctant attention.

"Then they march on City Hall. That's where Bane is. That's where his command structure operates from. We hit it head-on with everything we've got."

"That's suicide," one of the officers said. "He's got mercenaries, weapons, Tumblers—"

"I'll handle the Tumblers," I said. "As for the mercenaries, they're disciplined but they're not invincible and let's be honest their forces are mostly bolstered by the blackgate criminals."

"Why City Hall specifically?" Blake pressed. "If the bomb is on a truck, why aren't we focusing everything on the truck?"

"Because the attack on City Hall serves two purposes. First, it's a distraction that pulls Bane's forces away from the bomb convoy and gives our intercept team a window. Second, the person holding the detonator trigger will be at City Hall."

The room went quiet again.

"Who?" Gordon asked.

"It doesn't matter who. What matters is that the trigger is there and it needs to be neutralized before they decide to press it early."

Gordon studied me for a long moment, and I could see him deciding whether to trust the intel of a teenager he had met thirty minutes ago. Eventually something in my face, or maybe just the sheer weight of his own desperation, tipped the scale.

"And the bomb itself?" he asked.

"That's the second operation, running simultaneous with the first. Commissioner, you and Wednesday will lead a small team to intercept the bomb truck. Get Wednesday inside, and she'll assess whether she can disarm it on the spot. If she can't, I'll have something ready that should buy us enough time."

"Buy us time how?" Gordon asked.

"The issue with the bomb is that it's an unstable reactor core that's been disconnected from its power source and is decaying toward detonation. If I can build a temporary containment unit, something that can reconnect it to a stable power supply even for a few hours, it should halt the decay chain and give us time to get it back to where it came from."

"And where's that?"

"The Wayne Enterprises Applied Sciences Division. Lucius Fox should be able to walk us through the reconnection process if we can reach him."

Gordon looked at the map, then at me, then at Wednesday, then back at the map. "What about Bane himself?"

I sighed. "I'll deal with Bane."

The room was silent for about five seconds.

"If nobody has anything else," I said, capping the marker, "let's get to work. Clock's running."

...

I found a garage three blocks from the command post that still had power running to it from a generator, along with a workbench, a decent set of tools, and enough salvaged electronics and mechanical parts to work with. 

The Mastered Engineering and Mastered Mechanics skills slotted together in my head like two halves of a blueprint, and I started working immediately, assembling the first of four EMP devices from automotive alternators, capacitor banks stripped from old computer power supplies, and coils of copper wire.

The design was elegant in its simplicity. Each device would generate a focused electromagnetic pulse strong enough to fry the electronic systems of any vehicle within a ten-meter radius, which meant the Tumblers' targeting systems, engine management, communications, and weapons controls would all go dark simultaneously. The Tumblers themselves were heavily armored against physical damage, but their electronics were standard military-grade, which meant they were hardened against normal interference but not against a focused pulse at close range.

I was halfway through the second device when Wednesday appeared in the garage doorway, watching me work with her usual silent intensity.

"This city," she said after a few minutes. "It has a very unusual infrastructure. The architecture is American but the street grid is unusual. The police force is organized in a way that suggests a city charter from the early twentieth century. And the man upstairs, Gordon, he mentioned someone called Batman without any indication that the concept of a vigilante in a costume was unusual to him."

"We had a deal, Wednesday."

She frowned, the expression pulling her dark brows together by a fraction. "You navigate this place as though you have been here before. You identified the bomb, the identity of the trigger holder, and the weakness of the convoy escort without any reconnaissance."

I kept working, my hands stripping insulation from a length of wire without looking up. "Our deal, Wednesday."

She was quiet for a long moment, and I could feel the intensity of her gaze on the side of my face.

"It is 2016 here," she said. "I found a newspaper. The city is called Gotham, which as far as my extensive reading would suggest does not exist in any geography I am familiar with." She paused. "We are in another world."

I didn't say anything. 

I just kept winding wire.

"This is what your key does," she continued. "It opens doors to other worlds. Other realities. Places that should not exist but do."

"Well done, Wednesday. You figured it out. Now drop it."

She was silent for another moment, then something shifted in her expression, something that on anyone else would have been called excitement but on Wednesday looked more like a predator catching a new scent.

"Thank you," she said.

I looked up from the workbench. "For what?"

"For bringing me to an exciting place." The ghost of a smile touched the corner of her mouth. "I am about to attempt to disarm a nuclear weapon. If we fail, approximately six million people will be vaporized, including us. This is the most engaged I have felt in years."

"Great," I said flatly. "Glad one of us is having fun."

I set down the wire strippers and turned to face her fully. "Wednesday, come here for a second."

She crossed the garage and stood in front of me.

"I wasn't being entirely honest earlier," I said, lowering my voice. "When I told Gordon I could build something to buy time for the bomb. I can't, but I have something else. A device that should be able to disable the bomb directly."

"So what are you building here?" she asked, glancing at the half-assembled EMP units on the bench.

"These are for the Tumblers." I reached into my jacket and pulled out the Sonic Screwdriver, holding it up between us. "I've already set it to the right frequency. All you need to do is point it at the bomb's core assembly and press the button. It should disrupt the decay chain and render the device inert."

Wednesday looked at the screwdriver, then at me. "What is it?"

I flicked her forehead with my free hand.

She recoiled approximately half an inch, which for Wednesday was the equivalent of someone else jumping three feet, and fixed me with a glare that could have etched glass.

"Stop asking questions," I said, pressing the screwdriver into her hand. "Point. Press. Bomb stops. That's all you need to know."

Wednesday looked down at the device in her palm, then back up at me with an expression that made it very clear she was cataloguing this moment for future retribution. Then she turned and walked out of the garage without another word.

I watched her go and let out a small laugh. "She's absolutely insane," I muttered to myself, and went back to building EMP devices.

...

It was almost time.

Blake had done his part flawlessly, placing the explosive charges at the three breach points Gordon and I had identified.

Gordon himself had assembled the intercept team, eight officers in two unmarked vehicles who would shadow the bomb truck's route and wait for the opening that the City Hall assault was designed to create. 

I walked at the front of the column of police officers.

It was a strange sight, honestly. A few thousand police officers in dress blues, some of them still blinking in the daylight after weeks of darkness underground, marching in formation through the empty streets of Gotham toward City Hall with whatever weapons they had been able to scavenge. They looked tired, thin, angry, and absolutely determined, the kind of men and women who had been pushed past the point of fear and into the  space beyond it where the only thing left was the willingness to fight.

"Blake... if I'm too occupied by Bane then I need you to incapacitate Miranda Tate, do you know her?" I asked. 

Blake blinked in surprise and then nodded. "Of course I know her... but why would—"

"She has the trigger, so don't hesitate to put her down," I interrupt him. 

"You can't be serious.... Miranda Tate has the trigger?" he said, keeping his voice quiet enough that only I could hear.

"That's right."

"She's on the Wayne Enterprises board. She's been working with the resistance. She helped us smuggle supplies three times. Why would she—"

"I can't explain it to you right now. Just trust me. If you get the chance, take her down and get the trigger away from her."

"And if you're wrong?"

"I'm not wrong."

He looked at me sideways. "That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I've got. Why would I lie right now?"

He couldn't answer that, so he just nodded, and we kept walking.

We rounded the final corner and City Hall came into view at the end of a broad avenue, Bane's black flag hanging from the upper windows. The steps were barricaded with concrete barriers and sandbag emplacements, and I could see criminals moving behind them, hundreds of them.

Behind them, parked in a perimeter around the building, sat three Tumblers.

I pulled the first EMP device from my bag, a compact cylinder about the size of a thermos with a magnetic base and a thirty-second timer. I armed it, rolled it hard across the asphalt toward the nearest Tumbler, and watched it skitter under the chassis and stick to the undercarriage with a metallic clank. I armed the second and third in quick succession, sending them rolling toward the other two vehicles.

"Three seconds," I said to Blake. "Get ready."

The timers counted down.

The EMPs detonated simultaneously with a crack that I felt in my ears, three overlapping pulses that swept through the street. The effect on the Tumblers was catastrophic. Engines died. Turrets froze mid-rotation. Targeting systems went dark. Interior lights flickered and went out. Three of the most dangerous military vehicles on the planet became three very expensive paperweights in the span of a single second.

"NOW!" I shouted. "ATTAXK!"

The column surged forward.

What followed was a tidal wave of blue uniforms crashing against a line of black-clad criminals in a collision of fists and gunfire. I moved through it my body operating on the combined muscle memory of Bak Mei and CQC while my hands worked the pistol I had taken from the weapons cache at the command post.

The first mercenary came at me from the left and I put two rounds into his legs at close range, the impact staggering him back, before I closed the distance and drove a palm strike into his throat that dropped him. I transitioned the pistol to my left hand, fired twice into a second target's chest as he raised his rifle, then stepped inside his guard and delivered a rising punch to his jaw that lifted him off his feet.

A third came from behind and I heard him before I saw him, pivoting on my heel and catching his rifle barrel with my free hand, redirecting it past my body and firing my pistol point-blank into his head while simultaneously kicking him away. He folded and I ripped the rifle from his hands, slung it over my shoulder, and kept moving.

I moved through the mercenary line like a wrecking ball, each engagement lasting two or three seconds at most. I reached the steps of City Hall and started climbing, stepping over fallen fighters from both sides, and kicked through the main doors into the marble lobby where the fighting was thickest. Officers and mercenaries grappled in close quarters across the floor. 

I pushed through the chaos toward the main chamber where I knew Bane would be, and when I came through the archway into the converted courtroom I finally saw him.

He was enormous. Six foot eight at least, his torso a solid mass of muscle visible even through his tactical vest, that distinctive mask covering the lower half of his face and making every breath sound like a machine. He had an officer in each hand, one by the throat and one by the vest, and as I watched he slammed them both into the ground with a force that cracked the marble tile beneath their bodies.

"Shit," I muttered, looking up at him.

He straightened up and turned toward the doorway where I stood.

I raised the pistol and fired four times, center mass.

Bane moved before my gun even lifted and grabbed the nearest officer, a barely conscious sergeant, and hauled him up as a shield, the rounds punching into the man's chest instead of Bane's body. Then he kicked the officer backward into me like a battering ram, the limp body crashing into my chest and driving me back three steps before I could shove it aside, and in the half-second I was off balance Bane closed the distance and slapped the pistol out of my hand with a backhand strike that sent the weapon clattering across the floor.

Damn it. 

A man that size should not have been able to move that fast. Every strike came from an angle I didn't expect, delivered with power was insane. I was advanced in two martial arts and I was struggling to keep up with his skill.

He threw a straight right at my head and I slipped it by a fraction, feeling the knuckles graze my temple, and answered with a rapid three-punch combination to his ribs that I put everything behind. The first two landed, my fists driving into his midsection with the snapping force of strikes designed to rupture organs, and the third caught him just below the sternum with enough power to make him grunt behind the mask.

He looked down at me, and something shifted in those eyes. "Who are you?" he asked. 

"Nobody important," I said.

"That," Bane said, "is the right answer."

He came at me again, and this time he wasn't playing.

His lead hand snapped out in a jab that I parried inward, but the jab was a setup for the cross that followed immediately behind it, a full-rotation punch that I barely ducked under, feeling the wind of it pass over my head. I came up inside his guard and drove a rising knee into his solar plexus, chaining directly into a double palm strike to both sides of his neck that should have disrupted blood flow and dropped him.

He ate it like he was starving for it, his massive frame absorbing the strikes like concrete absorbing rain, and his right hand shot out and caught my throat in a grip that lifted me clean off the ground.

I drove both thumbs into his eyes and he released me, staggering back with a snarl, and I pressed the advantage immediately, throwing a spinning elbow that cracked across the side of his mask followed by a kick to his knee that buckled his leg for just a second. I closed in and threw a seven-hit combination, alternating between hooks to the body and uppercuts to the jaw, each strike landing with every ounce of speed and power I could produce.

Bane took the first four, gave ground on the fifth, caught the sixth on his forearm, and answered the seventh with a headbutt that detonated against my forehead and turned my vision white.

I staggered, and he was on me. A front kick to my chest that launched me backward into a marble pillar. A hammerfist to my shoulder that I felt in my spine. He grabbed me by my throat, lifted me up, and slammed me down onto the marble floor with a chokeslam that cracked the tile in a spiderweb pattern around my body and drove every molecule of air out of my lungs.

Then the punches started.

His fist came down like a piston, straight into my face, the force snapping my head sideways against the stone. Then again from the other side. Then again. Each blow felt like being hit by a cinder block. Blood filled my mouth. My vision blurred. The healing was working but it couldn't keep up with the rate of damage. 

I hope Wednesday's doing better, I thought, as another fist connected with my jaw.

...

Wednesday was not, in the strictest sense, doing better.

Gordon's intercept team had been shadowing the bomb truck for twenty minutes, tracking its route through the streets of the financial district, waiting for the moment when the escort Tumbler would peel away in response to the chaos at City Hall. When the radio chatter confirmed the assault had begun, the Tumbler's driver hesitated, received new orders, and turned off the convoy route toward the fighting, leaving the bomb truck exposed for the first time.

"Now," Gordon said, and the two unmarked cars surged forward.

The first car pulled alongside the truck and matched its speed while the second cut in front, brake-checking the driver and forcing a gradual slowdown. Gordon's officers swarmed the cab, dragging the driver out through the window at speed while one of them grabbed the wheel and brought the truck to a controlled stop against a concrete barrier.

Wednesday was moving before the truck had fully stopped, dropping from the passenger side of Gordon's car and sprinting along the length of the truck toward the rear cargo doors. She grabbed the latch, wrenched it open, and pulled herself inside in a single fluid motion.

The interior of the truck was dominated by the bomb, a massive cylindrical device mounted on a steel frame in the center of the cargo bay. 

Three men stood between her and the device, Bane's mercenaries left behind as a last line of defense, each of them armed with automatic rifles and positioned in a triangle around the bomb.

The first one raised his weapon.

Wednesday was already inside his reach. She grabbed the rifle barrel and redirected it upward as it fired, the burst punching a line of holes in the truck's ceiling, and drove her knee into his groin with enough force to lift him onto his toes. As he doubled over she ripped the rifle from his hands and swung the stock into the side of his head, dropping him flat.

The truck lurched as someone outside did something crashed into its side, and the sudden motion threw Wednesday sideways into the wall of the cargo bay. The second mercenary used the opening to rush her, grabbing her by the shoulders and slamming her against the bomb housing. She drove both thumbs into his eyes, making him release her with a howl, then grabbed the back of his head and smashed his face into the steel frame of the bomb mount twice in rapid succession until he went limp.

The third one was smarter. He had backed up to the far end of the cargo bay and raised his rifle with the clear intention of shooting her from a distance rather than engaging hand to hand. Wednesday grabbed a knife form the belt of one of the mercenaries and threw it, taking the man's finger off before he could fire. 

"AHHHHHHHH!!!" The man screamed. 

The man was then thrown as the truck was hit again. The doors burst open from the impact, swinging wide, and suddenly the cargo bay was open to the street rushing past below at thirty miles an hour. Wind roared in, snatching at Wednesday's hair and dress. The third mercenary scrambled to his feet at the very edge of the opening, and swung a bloody fist that Wednesday ducked under before she drove a strike to his throat and followed it with a front kick to his chest that sent him tumbling out the back of the truck and bouncing across the asphalt.

She turned back to the bomb, pulling the Sonic Screwdriver from inside her jacket, and that was when the truck hit a pothole.

The jolt ran through the entire vehicle, knocking Wednesday off balance, and the screwdriver slipped from her fingers.

It hit the metal floor of the cargo bay with a clatter, bounced once, twice, and started rolling toward the open back of the truck, picking up speed as the road beneath them tilted slightly uphill.

Wednesday lunged.

Her body left the floor in a dive, arms extended, fingers reaching for the silver cylinder as it tumbled end over end toward the edge of the cargo bay and the rushing pavement beyond—

...

Bane's fist connected with my face again, and I felt something crack in my cheekbone that the healing immediately began working on. He was straddling my chest now, his massive weight pinning me to the broken marble. 

I could feel my consciousness trying to slip. 

The edges of my vision were going grey. 

Each hit pushed me further toward the dark.

No.

I slapped both palms against the cracked marble floor beneath me and pulled.

The stone flowed up my arms, spreading across my chest and shoulders and face in a thick grey shell that hardened into solid armor even as Bane's next punch was already descending. His fist connected with the freshly formed armor and he grunted, the impact jarring his hand in a way that made him pull back for the first time.

"What is this?" he asked, genuinely surprised.

I answered with a right cross that connected with the side of his mask hard enough to crack one of the tubes, a burst of gas hissing from the break, and I followed it with a kick from the ground that caught him in the chest and shoved him off me. 

I rolled to my feet and squared up.

We came together again, and this time I had the edge. My fists were concrete hammers and I drove them into Bane's body with combinations that cracked his body armor and staggered him backward step by step. He answered every hit with one of his own, and even through the concrete I could feel the force of his strikes, each one cracking and chipping the stone, pieces of my armor flaking away with every exchange.

But I knew his weakness. 

The mask.

I feinted low, drawing his guard down, and drove a straight right into the front of his mask that cracked the faceplate and sent another burst of gas hissing into the air. He swung a wild backhand that I ducked under, and I came up behind him and grabbed two of the tubes running along the back of his head and ripped them free.

The effect was immediate and Bane's whole body seized, his back arching, a strangled sound escaping the broken mask that was half scream and half gasp. He staggered forward, one hand clutching at the ruined tubes, and when he turned back to face me the intelligence in his eyes had been replaced by raw agony.

I didn't give him time to recover. I closed the distance and drove a four-hit combination into his body, two hooks to the ribs and two uppercuts to the jaw. He tried to block, tried to counter, but the pain had stripped away the skill that made him dangerous. 

I planted my feet, wound up, and delivered a roundhouse kick to the side of his head that connected with a crack that echoed through the courtroom, and Bane went sideways, crashed through a wooden barrier, and hit the floor of the chamber hard enough to crack the marble for the second time that day.

He didn't get up.

I stood over him for a second, breathing hard, then turned and kicked him in the ribs hard enough to send his massive body sliding across the polished floor and into the base of the judge's bench with a heavy thud.

I turned away from him, scanning the chamber through the chaos of fighting, looking for one face.

There. 

Near the side exit.

Miranda Tate was struggling in Detective Blake's grip, his arms locked around her from behind while she kicked and twisted and clawed at his hands. Blake's face was set and grim, holding on despite the scratches she was leaving on his forearms, and when he saw me looking he gave a tight nod.

I picked up a rifle from one of the fallen mercenaries, crossed the chamber, and raised it.

I shot Miranda Tate in the head.

Her body went limp in Blake's arms and he dropped her, staggering backward, his face a mask of shock and horror.

"What the FUCK," Blake shouted, staring at me. "She was restrained, you didn't have to, what the hell is wrong with—"

I walked over to Miranda's body, knelt down, and reached into the pocket of her coat. My fingers closed around a small, compact device with a single button under a protective cover.

I held it up so Blake could see it.

The detonator.

Blake stared at it, then at the body, then at me. His mouth opened and closed twice before he managed to speak. "How did you know?"

I didn't answer. I just slipped the detonator into my own pocket and pulled out the radio Gordon had given me.

"Wednesday," I said into the receiver. "Status."

A brief pause. Then her voice came through, flat as ever despite whatever she had just been through.

"The device is inert."

I closed my eyes and let out a breath that felt like it had been building for hours. My knees went weak for a second and I had to brace a hand against the nearest wall to keep from sitting down.

"She did it," I said to Blake, who was still staring at me. "Bomb's dealt with."

I straightened up and looked out through the shattered windows of City Hall at the street below, where the battle was still raging but the tide had clearly turned, the police force overwhelming Bane's mercenaries through sheer numbers and fury.

"Guess we just gotta clean up the rest of these assholes now," I said.

...

It took the rest of the day and most of the night.

The criminals fought hard in pockets throughout the city, but without Bane's leadership, without the Tumblers, and without the threat of the bomb to keep the population cowed, their resistance collapsed piece by piece. Gordon coordinated the cleanup, directing units through the streets, securing key positions, and funneling the remaining enemy combatants toward Blackgate Prison, which was already being prepared to receive its old inhabitants back.

I found Wednesday near the waterfront as the sun came up, sitting on a concrete barrier overlooking the river with her hands in her lap and the Sonic Screwdriver held between her fingers. She was dirty and bruised and her black dress was torn in a few places, and she looked more alive than I had ever seen her.

"Ready to go home?" I asked.

She looked at me for a moment then nodded.

I slid the Key into a nearby door and turned it, the bolt disengaged with that familiar deep thunk. I pulled the door open and the light of my garage spilled through from the other side.

We stepped through together, and the door swung shut behind us.

The notification was already waiting.

_____________________________________

Key to the Unknown

Mission Complete

Time: 1 day, 4 hours, 37 minutes.

_____________________________________

[Rewards:]

[Batcave — A fully equipped subterranean command center and laboratory. Can be placed at any location of the user's choosing. Includes vehicles, weapons, forensic equipment, computing systems, and training facilities.]

[Venom (No Side Effects) — A refined version of the compound used by Bane. Grants dramatically enhanced strength, speed, and durability when administered. This version has been purified of all negative side effects including addiction, psychological instability, and physical dependency. Can be used safely.]

[$1,000,000 (Tax Free)]

_____________________________________

...

I read the notification and a grin spread across my face that I couldn't have stopped if I'd tried.

A Batcave. A full, actual, legitimate Batcave with everything in it. Vehicles, weapons, a goddamn supercomputer, all of it, and I could put it anywhere I wanted. Under my house. Under the school. Under a mountain. Anywhere.

Venom with no side effects meant I could juice myself into something approaching superhuman physical capability without the risk of turning into a rage-addled junkie. Combined with my existing healing factor, my Osmosian abilities, and my accumulated combat skills, that was going to make me a damn powerhouse.

And a million dollars in cash that Uncle Sam couldn't touch. On top of the inheritance I was already sitting on.

"Nice," I said, grinning like an idiot.

Wednesday was standing beside me in the garage, her arms crossed, "Who are you talking to..." she said. 

I cleared my throat and schooled my features. "Umm no one... just... yeah shut up..."

She studied me for a moment longer, her eyes narrowing. "This experience was acceptable," she said finally, which from Wednesday was the equivalent of a standing ovation. "You may take me to another world at a future date."

"I'll pencil you in," I said. "Right after I sleep for approximately forty-eight hours."

Wednesday hummed, turned, and walked out of the garage toward the stairs.

I stood alone in my garage, surrounded by music equipment and the faint smell of motor oil, and shook my head slowly.

A Batcave. I had a Batcave.

Things were looking up.

(AN: And Gotham is saved, no thanks to Batman, who is canonically dead in this timeline. James stepped up, led the resistance, beat Bane in single combat, and Wednesday disarmed a nuclear bomb. Now they just have to go back to high school on Monday and pretend none of this happened. Hope you enjoyed.)