Post by sunofdarkchild on Dec 12, 2023 13:56:29 GMT -5
The Dark Knight was massive in person. The exceedingly long black cape wrapped around him and extended all the way to the ground, hiding his true figure and making him look like a shadow rising from the rooftop on which they stood. He was well over six feet tall, but the pointed ears extending from his cowl made him appear at least eight feet in height. His face was almost completely hidden in shadow.
When Batman spoke, it was in a deep voice, a voice that was at once loud and clear and with a hint of a rasp. It had the commanding presence of Darth Vader's voice, but without any mechanical enhancements.
"You're the one who sent those clues to the police." It wasn't a question.
She nodded. Her homemade costume and cape seemed so cheap now that she was in front of a real superhero.
"Why?"
"You think I like having a world-class psycho as my dad? I want to see him rot."
There was a gust of wind, causing her cape to billow spectacularly. Batman's cape, made of a heavier material, moved very little in comparison.
"What do you call yourself?"
"Well," she said uncertainly, "the Spoiler."
Batman shifted slightly, bringing his face slightly into view.
"I like that."
The water had fallen over the entrance to the cave for tens of thousands of years, and would continue to fall until erosion finally collapsed the entrance entirely many thousands of years hence.
This small waterfall had seen an unusually clad figure pass through it thousands of times, but never one dressed as the girl who staggered into the cave now, pushed down by the weight and force of the water.
Stephanie Brown looked comical in her poncho, and was so soaked she might as well have not worn it. The paper on which had been written the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates she had used to find the cave was practically destroyed by the water, and the large sack she carried under the poncho was as drenched as she was.
Others would explore the same coordinates in search of the fabled bat-cave in the coming years. But by then the clear signs that a large vehicle had driven through the area that led Stephanie to the right place would be claimed by wilderness.
Stephanie removed the hood of her poncho and ran her hand through her sopping-wet hair. She was used to being soaking wet, as her home-made Spoiler costume had never used water-proof materials, bit she didn't like being stuck in wet clothes and often caught cold if she went roof-hopping on a rainy night.
She did not get far into the cave when she stopped and gasped.
The batmobile was naturally parked closer to the cave exit than the other equipment that made up Batman's secret headquarters. With is distinctive black paint, oversized sports-car mixed with battle-tank look, and an exhaust that looked like a miniature jet-engine. It was by far the most famous car in the world.
And it was no more. The engine, a proprietary, revolutionary piece of technology that provided greater horsepower than a military vehicle twice its size, had exploded days prior, taking with it the entire front half of the vehicle and reducing the back half to a slag of melted black metal. A large fin with scalloped black edges was embedded in the rocky cave wall behind the car, having been blown away from the rest of the batmobile by the explosion. The blast had been so powerful that smoke still rose from the vehicle.
Further into the cave, much of the weapons and technology created by the Batman had suffered the same fate. Containers and consoles were reduced to melted slabs, or in some cases destroyed entirely, giving no hint as to what they originally were or contained.
Not everything was destroyed. There were containers with things such as batarangs and grappling hooks that still stood. Stephanie grabbed what she could and stuffed them into her sack, along with various tiny bat-shaped darts. She even found something relatively high-tech still functioning, a collapsible taser gun.
At the end of the cave, next to the staircase which must have led up to Wayne Manor itself, stood what she had truly come there for- the batcomputer.
The console in front of the screen was completely intact. Perhaps Bruce Wayne had watched too much Star Trek and was wary of the console exploding while he was using the computer. Stephanie had never seen anything with so many buttons. So fascinated was she by the workings of the machine in front of her that she almost missed what was displayed on the screen behind it.
The screen was an OLED panel, exactly twenty-one feet wide and nine feet tall. It was designed to display dozens of images at the same time in a manner that a mind that worked as fast as the world's greatest detective's would have access to the maximum amount of information at once. Now, it was completely black except for three small words written in white barely a foot from the bottom.
KNIGHTFALL PROTOCOL ENABLED
Stephanie set her sack down in the chair Batman had used for decades when he sat in front of this computer and its predecessors and looked over the console. She pressed what seemed to her to be the most likely to be the startup button. It was a long shot, she knew, but still, she had to try.
The three words disappeared with the button and were replaced with five new ones.
knowledge is of no value
Stephanie's head tilted in confusion as she stared at the saying, which only remained on the screen for five seconds before it went completely black.
She sighed in disappointment. The batcomputer, a system a decade more advanced than any other computer in the world, was dead, its untold terabytes of data lost forever. It may not have exploded like the batmobile had, but it would be left in such as state that nothing could be recovered and the secrets of its hardware and processing power could not be recreated.
A sound from above shocked her out of her reverie and a sudden light caused a colony of bats to be disturbed from their resting place on the cave ceiling. The flying mammals screeched as they passed overhead, moving towards the other end of the cave.
Stephanie grabbed her bag and hid under the console as Harvey Dent and Cressida Clarke, the attaché of Bruce Wayne, appeared in the doorway behind the Wayne family's grandfather clock, flanked by a dozen SWAT officers. The officers entered the cave, holding rifles with green laser sights to help spot targets in the dark.
Stephanie rushed from console to console as the SWAT team surveyed the cave, taking advantage of every moment no one was looking in her direction to move closer to the waterfall from which she entered the cave, until she was behind the charred ruin of the batmobile.
"Clear!" one officer called out, and Harvey and Cressida descended into the cave, gazing in awe at what remained of the Batman's headquarters, especially the large computer console and screen.
"Did you know about this?" Harvey asked, unable to put as much authority into his voice as he usually did.
Cressida shook her head. "Bruce shared many secrets with me, but this wasn't one of them."
Harvey turned to the SWAT team's leader and found his full voice again. "Bag and tag everything."
Cressida scoffed at him. "The irony. The people couldn't stop the crime in Gotham treating the man who did as a criminal."
"Bruce was my friend," Harvey insisted.
"So why are you here instead of hunting down the people who killed him?"
Harvey opened his mouth to respond, but stopped. None of them had paid any attention to the waterfall at the other end of the cave, but out of the corner of his eye he though he saw a disruption in the water, as if, for just an instant, the falling liquid landed on a large rock well above the cave floor.
Duella hummed to herself as she applied the lipstick she found. She grinned as she gazed at her reflection in a mirror, wearing clothes and jewelry worth more than she stole in a typical week.
She practically danced through the aisles between fancy dresses, stopping to grab and examine a pink skirt.
"Hey, this is totally you," she said to Harper as she threw the skirt to the other girl. "Matches your new hair."
Harper made a face at the pink clothes and dig at the side of her head that was now dyed blue. "And you clearly don't know me at all."
Cullen approached with two causal suit jackets. "Ok, so we've got most wanted and wanted most," he said, asking Harper's opinion for which jacket to take.
"Take em both, decide later," Harper responded.
They all looked up as the sound of sirens startled them. The sirens were getting louder.
"Who tripped the silent alarm?" Harper demanded.
Duella shrugged and tossed her old clothes and additional 'purchases' over her shoulder. "Attention shoplifters, please make your final selections and kindly bring them towards the rear exit."
Gotham Academy's main auditorium was as extravagant as any part of the school, with seating arrangements closer to those of a Broadway show than those of a public school. Indeed, school plays there often were close to Broadway in their production values and set design than to the productions of the average school drama club.
Headmaster Millicheck looked very small standing on the main stage, but his voice was strong, helped by the perfect acoustics of the auditorium.
"This has been a difficult time for all of us. For many of us, we have lost a hero, someone we looked up to and admired. For most of us, there is a fear of the future," he said.
"Rest assured, I have spoken to the police, and I have received assurances that our school is quite safe. The mutant gang does not have any activities in this part of Gotham City.
Standing a few spots from Brody together with the other juniors, Stephanie rolled her eyes.
"Moreover," Millicheck continued, "there is absolutely no reason to believe that the fugitives who murdered Bruce Wayne have been in this neighborhood or that they have or will enter school grounds. We are as safe today as we were last month."
"The school administration is here for any student who is experiencing anxiety or depression at this time, and we have increased the number of social workers on staff so that anyone can receive help at any time. But, seeing as we have no safety concerns, starting now, classes will resume their regular schedules, and club activities will be allowed to resume as well. You are the next generation of Gotham's leaders, and no crime outside our walls will stand in the way of our educating you to be the best leaders this city has ever known."
Brody caught Stephanie outside the auditorium.
"Too bad classes aren't canceled anymore, am I right?"
"Sure," Stephanie responded, not looking at him.
"You still think Joker's Daughter and her friends couldn't have killed Wayne, even after they escaped from the police?"
"I do."
"Right. You know better than the whole GCPD."
Stephanie shot Brody a glare which startled him.
"Sheesh. Why are you so angry the last few days?"
"Days? More like the last 15 years," she huffed as she walked away.
Stephanie stepped at the old door which lead to the belfry. After a quick glance to make sure no one was around to see her, she entered a combination on the door's lock and shut it behind her.
The stairs leading up to the belfry had a tendency to creek from so many years of neglect. The odds of anyone hearing the noise were miniscule, but she still ascended them slowly and cautiously.
The belfry was even more of a mess than usual now that it had three teenagers living there, with garbage and old clothes strewn about.
Harper and Cullen were fast asleep on a pair of old couches. Stephanie frowned at the site of the fancy denim jacket Cullen was wearing.
Stephanie had no chance to wonder where the third member of the trio of fugitives was as a blade appeared at her throat, causing her to gasp.
Duella put her other arm around Stephanie's shoulder. "Hmmm. Looks like someone took a wrong turn at cheerleader tryouts."
Stephanie took a breath to calm herself. "Put that knife down or you won't be able to use that hand anymore."
"Oh, is that you, baby Cluemaster?" Duella let Stephanie go as the Row siblings stirred, awoken by the sudden commotion. "Sorry," she said sarcastically. "I guess I didn't recognize you in that fancy school uniform. Rocking that skirt, by the way, blondie."
"All the same, could you not pull a knife on our only hope to clear our names?" Cullen asked.
"It's not my fault I was expecting a vigilante in a homemade cape and not little miss homecoming queen here."
"I see I'm not the only one wearing more expensive clothes." Stephanie grabbed the back of Cullen's jacket for a moment to glance at the tag. "Dolce & Gabbana. Guess I know why there was a report of a burglary at the nearest mall last night."
"What would you rather we do?" Harper demanded. "Rob a thrift shop? Maybe we should steal from the poor and give to the rich."
"I'd rather you not bring police to the area you're supposed to be hiding out in when no one is supposed to know you're here."
Duella smiled at her outfit. "I think we can go another week before we have to add to our wardrobes again."
"And if we're gonna be hiding out at the rich kids' school, we need to dress like rich kids," Cullen added.
Stephanie shook her head. "Whatever."
"Speaking of stealing," Duella said, "how'd your grave-robbing go?"
Stephanie sat down on the couch where Cullen had been sleeping a few minutes earlier. "Batman had failsafes for if he died. I was able to get some supplies, but any information he might have had on the Court of Owls is gone. Even the batmobile was blown up."
"So you've got no leads other than a coin with the symbol of some evil bird cult?" Cullen asked.
"Laugh while you can," Duella said. "The Court of Owls controls this entire city. They have eyes everywhere."
"And yet no one has ever seen them," Harper pointed out.
"No one who lived to tell about it," Duella insisted.
"Right, right, right, right," Harper said, "'Speak not a whispered word of them, or they'll send the Talon for your head. Let's just tell the cops a nursery rhyme did it!"
Stephanie took out her phone and glared at it.
"What is it?" Duella asked. "Asking daddy for a clue?"
Stephanie folded her phone and put it away. "No. I knew someone who might be able to help us, but if she's still alive, she's dodging all my calls."
Harvey followed the SWAT officers as they carried boxes full of objects confiscated from the batcave into police headquarters. There was a lot, but less than they had expected given the destruction of so much of the cave's contents.
Commissioner Soto watched the procession with interest. "Looks like Christmas came early for the boys in the labs. Their daddies were dying to get their hands on the equipment Batman used to stop crimes."
"They might be disappointed when they learn most of the cooler toys were destroyed," Harvey responded. "And most of the stuff we did get are useless unless we start training police to throw boomerangs."
"It would get us some good publicity – the world's first police force to use boomerangs instead of guns."
Harvey chuckled. An African American woman who worked her way up the ranks during the final years of the heyday of costumed supercriminals, Soto was the protégé of Jim Gordon, the legendary commissioner who did so much to clean up Gotham's streets together with Batman. She did not fully approve of her predecessor's decision to partner with a vigilante, but she did approve of Batman's non-lethal approach to fighting crime. Her job had become more difficult with the retirement of nearly all of Gordan's elites, cops like Renee Montoya who were truly dedicated to the citizens of Gotham and to their beloved commissioner and would never dream of accepting a bribe.
"By the way," she asked, "have you seen Detective Ford?"
"Uh, not in a while," Harvey replied with a hint of annoyance. "He's been dodging my calls."
"Well, he better not dodge mine," Soto muttered as she took out her cell phone.
A phone began ringing across the room. Harvey looked up, confused, and walked over to Ford's desk, where the noise was coming from. The desk was a mess, covered in papers, files, and mugshots, along with an unopened package. Harvey opened a cabinet and turned over the papers in search of the phone before stopping and staring at the package.
Soto approached, also noticing the sound emanating from the cardboard box. Harvey removed the tape and opened the box. What they found inside made Soto audibly gasp.
Wrapped in a blood-soaked plastic bag, next to his phone, was the severed head of Detective Ford. Soto had to look away, fighting her urge to vomit.
Harvey shook his head in shock. "We'd better – we'd better check on his team," he said finally.
"Uh-uh," Soto replied, barely able to raise her voice above a whisper. She quickly dialed another number, and they heard another phone begin to ring.
They turned to the source of the sound. Soto's jaw dropped and Harvey closed his eyes in horror at the site of a cart filled with packages, cardboard boxes identical to the one which contained Ford's head.
"Six members of the GCPD task force assigned to hunt down the fugitives wanted for the murder of Bruce Wayne have themselves been found murdered," the news anchor said. "The gruesome discovery was made earlier this morning. The GCPD declined to comment on an ongoing investigation, but sources within the department say that each of those detectives was decapitated."
Duella turned the television off. "Or they'll send the Talon for your head."
Cullen and Harper shared a look, the same look of horror they shared when they learned that their mother had left them to the nonexistent mercy of their father.
Duella put her hand to her ear. "Oh, I'm sorry, what was that? Maybe – maybe, Duella was right about how dangerous and – say it with me now – how real the Court of Owls is?"
"Why would they kill Ford and his men?" Cullen asked. "Didn't they work for the Court?"
"Because they screwed up killing us!" Duella yelled.
"Ok, let's say they are real," Harper said, "who's gonna believe us?"
"I will."
They turned to Stephanie, who was rubbing her chin in thought.
"Who's gonna believe us that can actually do something about it?" Harper asked again.
Stephanie glared at her. "You're missing the point."
"Point, what point?"
"When was the last time you heard of someone being beheaded in Gotham?"
Cullen and Harper looked at each other in confusion. "How should we know?" Cullen asked.
"I'm willing to bet that when I get in front of something with internet, the last time there was a confirmed beheading was decades ago, before Batman appeared," Stephanie said.
"Don't you get it? The Court of Owls had to retreat even further into the shadows because of Batman, they couldn't rule Gotham the way they did before. Now that he's gone, they did this to announce to those who know of their existence that they're back."
"Well, what are you gonna do about it, baby Cluemaster?" Duella asked as she played with the knife she had held to Stephanie's neck. "What's your grand plan for stopping the secret society who killed Batman?"
Stephanie frowned and looked to the side.
"You said the reason you saved us was because you needed us to figure out who killed Batman. Now you know it was the Court of Owls. What's to stop you from giving us up now that you no longer need us?"
Stephanie glared at Duella's knife. "That's a very good question."
Harvey rubbed his forehead as he stared at the reports in front of him. He had long since tuned out the noise from outside his office. Every public safety official in Gotham, from the beat cops to City Hall, were overwhelmed by the crime wave which followed Batman's death. Even so, he was surprised when Mayor Hill burst into his office.
"Mr. Mayor! What are you doing here?"
Hill had never come to Harvey's office himself before. He considered himself too important to come to those who he believed worked for him and would either insist they come to him or content himself with a phone call. For him to come to Harvey in-person could only mean he was feeling the pressure as much as the rest of them.
"What am I doing? We've got six detectives whose heads were chopped off, the city's going to hell in a handbasket, and you're asking me what I'm doing?"
"I'm sorry, sir." Harvey stood up and offered Hill his chair. The mayor sat down and took a deep breath.
"I don't know what to do, Harvey. I can't just yell at people to fix this. Please, just give me something, tell me you've got some lead that will help us catch these juvenile predators."
Harvey shook his head. "If ever we needed Batman, it's now."
Hill nodded. "I never realized what a difference he made. I couldn't imagine that one man could keep such a lid on things. All this time, I was sure it was my policies that kept crime low."
Previously, Harvey would have pressed the issue and told Hill to never forget what he had just admitted. But now he saw no reason to rub salt in the mayor's wounds.
"Ford and his men weren't able to describe the person or persons who intervened when the suspects crashed the police van. Right now our efforts are on figuring out who their accomplice was."
"Was it that accomplice who killed the detectives?"
"We have no way of knowing that right now. If it was, it seems odd that they let them live during the escape and hunted them down later. Even so, anyone who could overpower multiple armed police officers is dangerous."
Two boys in their late teens climbed over a hedge. The stone structure in front of them was the oldest building still standing in the entire neighborhood and had been declared a landmark by the municipality before either of them were born.
"I don't know about this, man," the more timid of the two, a boy with a green, spiky mohawk, said. "Robbing a church? My granny used to come here."
"Shut up, ya big baby," the other one said. When he opened his mouth to speak, he revealed a missing tooth. His arms and face were covered in tattoos. "They just had a big charity drive here. There's a ton of cash in the reverend's office."
"Aw, that's sweet Mervin. I didn't realize you were the charitable type."
They spun around to see a figure in a dark purple costume and cape crouched on the hedge.
"Spoiler!"
"You said she was dead!" the one with the mohawk yelled at his friend.
"So you guys missed me! You sure know what to say to make a girl feel loved." Spoiler leapt down from the hedge. "So what are you donating, Mervin? Some more teeth, maybe?"
"N-no," 'Mervin' stammered. "We-we was just passing through. We weren't planning nothing."
"A word of advice then. Whenever you're 'passing through,' stay away from this church."
"Y-yes!" the one with the mohawk said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Yes, ma'am," they both said.
"Now get out of here."
Spoiler shook her head as the pair of hoodlums clambered over the hedge as fast as they could. With any luck, the discovery that the vigilante who beat them up and put them in jail was back would keep them out of trouble for a full week. But for now, she had bigger problems.
She knocked on the back door to the church and waited. Less than a minute later, a bald man in his late 60s opened the door, and unlike the two attempted burglars, he was overjoyed to see her.
"Spoiler! It's been so long! I was starting to get worried."
"I've been very busy, Reverend Knutland," she responded. "I'm afraid recent events have made the resurrection of Spoiler necessary."
The reverend nodded sagely. "Yes. People are very frightened right now. I've been hearing rumors that the mutant gang is about to expand into Widowstone Creek."
"Not if I have anything to say about it."
"But that's not the reason you're here, is it?" he asked.
Spoiler's shoulders slumped. "I could use some advice."
"Of course. After everything you've done for this church, I'd be happy to help in any way I can."
She lowered her hood, leaving her mask in place. "I recently saved the lives of a group of criminals. Now I don't know what to do with them."
"You can't turn them over to the police?"
"I want to, but if I do that, then the people who are trying to kill them will succeed."
"And the crimes they committed don't warrant the death penalty, I take it."
"No. Years and years in prison for at least one of them, but not execution."
"Then you can't turn them in."
"But they've already committed more crimes since I saved them, and show no signs of stopping! One of them even threatened me when I confronted them about it. Doesn't that make any crimes they commit now my responsibility?"
"Maybe it does, but do you want their deaths to be on your conscience instead?"
Spoiler looked away. "I put on this mask to save the innocent, not criminals."
"Who are we to decide who is innocent and guilty? Just because they didn't change overnight, doesn't mean they can't change. Do you know how many people have entered this church changed men after Batman saved their lives while they were committing crimes? From everything I've heard from the worst of the worst, Batman valued all lives equally, regardless of whether they were innocent or criminals."
"I guess Batman was a better person than I am," Spoiler admitted.
Reverend Knutland stopped looked to the side in thought. "You can't blame yourself for what happened to Bruce Wayne," he said at last. "You should keep protecting these people, even if they're criminals, not to atone for Batman's death, but because it's the right thing to do."
"The right thing can be very hard."
"If it was easy, everyone would do it. But you can come here anything, for anything you may need."
Spoiler suddenly looked up, as if a lightbulb had just turned on. "Thank you, Reverend Knutland." She took out a five-dollar bill. "Here. I missed your charity drive. This is all I have right now."
Knutland pushed her hand away. "You keep it. In your hands, I know it's money that's going to keeping our community safe."
"I need your help," Stephanie said. "I need to break into Wayne Tower."
Duella, Harper, and Cullen looked at her like she was crazy.
"Why?" Harper asked.
"I think any information Batman had on the Court of Owls would be there."
"Why would you think that?" Cullen asked.
"Something Batman once said to me, about how I could find anything I may need at Wayne Enterprises. I think he was giving me a clue about where to go if something like this happened."
Duella shook her head. "You do realize that the first rule they teach you in 'thief school' is never return to the scene of a crime, right?"
"Since when do you follow rules?" Stephanie retorted.
"Since Wayne Tower became the most famous crime scene in the history of Gotham."
"Not to mention," Harper added, "they'll have doubled the security, restored the motion sensors we disabled, and have redundant cameras covering every way in or out."
Stephanie smiled. "Not every way." They all turned to her as she explained. "Bruce Wayne had a private elevator that goes straight from the lowest level of the garage to his office. It's not in any blueprints and bypasses every security camera and guard in the building."
"To even access the elevator, we need to break into the garage," Cullen pointed out. "Wayne security patrols search all the cars going in."
"Except their own," Stephanie said with a smile. "I happen to know where we can get a Wayne security vehicle equipped with a transponder that automatically opens the gates."
"I can go alone if I have to," she clarified, "but it would be a big help to have someone 'in the chair' monitoring everything from outside."
"I think we can do that," Cullen said. "I can keep the engine running."
"And I could be the one 'in the chair,'" Harper added.
They turned to Duella, who shrugged and gave them a look of resigned boredom. "Whatever gets me out of this attic."
That night, a Wayne security vehicle made its way to the lowest level of the parking garage below Wayne Tower.
"How'd you know about all this," Cullen, who was driving the vehicle, asked. "I mean, where to find the car, the secret elevator, that it's not picked up on security?"
"I once helped another vigilante break into Wayne Tower using this method," Stephanie explained from the back seat. "We used this same car. Then I was the 'guy in the chair' watching and waiting for her to come down."
"That would be the 'friend' who's dodging all your calls?" Harper asked.
Stephanie nodded as she put on a pair of gloves. "Someone got their hands on the Mad Hatter's old mind control tech and put a bunch of business executives under his control to get rich. She was trying to determine if Bruce Wayne was also under his control and snap him out of it if he was. I didn't realize at the time she was actually trying to determine if Batman needed saving."
"Here," she said, handing them each a flip phone.
"You're giving us burner phones?" Duella asked.
"Exactly. I can guarantee these are safer than any other phones you could get."
Harper took out her laptop and began her hacking. "Didn't think I'd be back this soon, did you, Wayne Tower?" A bunch of circles became highlighted on the building schematics. "Looks like someone gave you a brand new set of motion sensors. I'll be accessing those, and your cameras."
"Ok. No patrols on the top floor. You're good to go. We'll monitor you from here."
"Great," Stephanie said as she put on a purple ski mask with holes for her eyes and mouth. "With any luck I'll be home in time to edit my AP History paper."
Stephanie exited the car and made her way to the hidden elevator entrance. She entered the code from memory and the elevator doors opened, allowing her to step inside.
Once Stephanie was out of sight, Harper turned to Duella. "Ok, what's with the team spirit all of a sudden? You never go along with any plan you didn't come up with yourself."
"All right," Duella said, leaning forward between the front seats. "Going along with baby Cluemaster's plan is a part of my plan, one that involves getting the hell out of Gotham. And I was just about to invite you two to join me."
"What about clearing your name?" Cullen asked.
"I'd rather keep it off a tombstone," Duella responded. "And besides, once we check out of we're we'll get new names."
Cullen looked disgusted, and Harper had the same expression when Dulle joked about taking her name.
"Who, kidding," Duella said. "Hate that name. Look, I'm just saying that if proving we're innocent means breaking into a place that we were very lucky to get out of the first time, we are better off running."
"Yeah," Harper said dismissively, "it takes money to run."
Duella smirked. "Got that covered. I grabbed that statue Wayne had on his desk when we were here before and hid it. I did some asking around and it's worth a ton of money. An antiquities dealer over on Brundle offered up a number that splits very nicely three ways."
"And then what?" Harper demanded. "Every way out of the city is a GCPD checkpoint. What makes you think you can dodge that much heat?"
"You're sitting in it."
The Row siblings turned their heads, finally beginning to see where Duella was going. "The police aren't searching Wayne security vehicles. That'd be like searching the President's motorcade. This comfort-ride beauty is our ticket out of G-Town! Come on, I'll even let you pick the radio station," she offered Harper, who was beginning to smile.
Once the elevator began to move upward, Stephanie leaned against the back wall and rubbed her eyes. She had stayed up until four in the morning to finish her history paper once she realized what she would have to do after school that day, and the lack of sleep was beginning to affect her.
The elevator reached Bruce Wayne's office on the top floor in just a few seconds, and she stepped out of looked like a normal wall. A glance back after the elevator closed revealed that the wall was adorned with a set of antique masks, one of which she knew contained the controls to operate the elevator. No one who did not already know about this secret elevator would ever find it or even suspect it was there.
On the way, Stephanie had explained to her current partners why Batman would be more likely to hide useful information at Wayne Tower than in the batcave under his manor. He lived alone at Wayne Manor, making it the obvious choice for the location of his headquarters. Wayne Tower, by contrast, was always filled with people, making it more dangerous to his secret identity to store anything Batman related there. As a result, the police would not search the tower with the same fine comb they used at the manor to find the entrance to the batcave. But this would in turn mean that in the event of his death, anything he kept hidden in his office would not need to be destroyed to be kept out of the hands of the police.
The next thing Stephanie saw was the broken window Wayne had been thrown out of, with the red words written above it. A lump formed in her throat at the sight, and she quickly moved into the adjoining room of the office.
On the other side of the desk stood several bookshelves. That was what she was looking for.
"Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice," she whispered, completing the quote from Anton Chekhov she had seen on the batcomputer a few days earlier. She found four of Chekhov's plays in the corners of the bookshelves, and the novel The Shooting Party in the middle, and turned all five works on their sides.
With the novel turned after the plays, she heard a mechanical sound and the bookshelves began to move apart, revealing a secret compartment with three shelves. The top two shelves contained gas balls, smoke bombs, shaped charges, and a grappling gun while the bottom shelf contained a row of about thirty small black books, along with a gold watch. The watch caught Stephanie's eyes as the object which did not belong, and she grabbed it first. Upon turning it over, she found an engraving of an owl on the back of the watch, the same engraving seen on the coin she had taken from Detective Ford.
She next turned her attention to the books on the lowest row. The book farthest from the edge was lying on its front instead of standing like the rest, and Stephanie reached for it.
As she opened the book, Stephanie was not surprised to find that it was the diary of Bruce Wayne. She was surprised, however, to find that this volume was from when he was a boy, shortly after the murder of his parents.
She flipped through the pages until a particular set of three words caught her eye and began to read from the diary out loud.
"Everyone, even Alfred, believed that a lone thief was responsible for my parents' murder. Joe Chill may have pulled the trigger, but he didn't orchestrate the murder. The Court of Owls did."
Stephanie has to stop. "Oh my God." She looked up at the rest of the journals.
Cullen looked at his sister with an expression of disbelief. "You can't seriously be thinking of taking off with her."
"Just because she's deranged doesn't mean she's wrong," Harper explained.
"True," Duella added.
"Staying in Gotham is suicide," Harper continued.
"Also true."
"I'm so tired of running," Cullen said. "First from Dad, now from this."
"Yeah?" Harper asked. "A six-by-nine cell in Blackgate will fix that. But they'll probably just skip straight to a coffin! And that's a lot less roomy."
"Do you even care about what happens to Stephanie?" Cullen demanded.
"Not particularly," Duella began before Cullen raised his hand to cut her off.
"No one's talking to you," he said.
"I care about what happens to you," Harper said emphatically.
Cullen shook his head. "If that were true, you wouldn't be asking me to run."
"Cullen, what?" Harper asked in shock.
"I wanna stay and clear my name, not only because, you know, I chose the damn thing, but because it's finally my choice," Cullen declared. "You want to go with her, then go. You've both got problems with Stephanie that I frankly don't understand. But I'm staying for Stephanie."
He looked forward and nodded before adding: "And for me."
Stephanie packed all of the weapons and the rest of the journals into her sack before looking through the first journal again. The young Bruce Wayne, she found, had been obsessed with the Court of Owls and blamed the shadowy group for the deaths of many of his ancestors.
"I memorized the entire geography of Gotham," she read, "every building, every street corner, every alleyway. I have scoured the city from north to south, east to west, searching for the court's meeting-places and hide-outs. But the only conclusion I can draw from my searches is this: The Court of Owls is a fairytale, no more than a nursery rhyme made up to scare children like me. The only thing which was real was my obsession with them."
"Despite this, I remain convinced that the court is real and was behind the deaths of my parents and my great-great grandfather Alan Wayne. The Court has made mistakes in the past which have led me to conclude that they must be real. They appear to be more cautious now, but I will wait for them to make another mistake. If necessary, I will force them out into the open. And then, I will have my revenge."
Stephanie shut the journal angrily.
Harper's laptop began to beep continuously, causing her to turn from her brother to the screen, where the green symbols by each of the camera feeds turned red.
"Uh, what's that?" Duella asked.
"Security alert," Harper responded. She pulled out the phone Stephanie had given her and auto-dialed the first number saved to the phone.
In the office, Stephanie was startled by the sudden ringing of her phone and took a moment to place the last journal in her sack before answering.
She heard Harper's voice on the other end. "All the security cameras in the building just went offline."
"Really?" Stephanie asked. "I'm impressed. How'd you even do that?"
"I didn't," Harper responded. "And I don't think security did either, because they just sent out an alert to the GCPD of a possible intrusion."
Another alarm went off on her laptop. "And now the motion sensors are going off on your floor."
"Is it security?" Stephanie asked, looking with alarm at the door to the office.
"No. There's no security on the top floor yet."
"Understood," Stephanie said. She put the phone in her pocket and bent down to pick up her sack. She had barely turned to leave when the office door opened, making her freeze in place.
The figure which stood in the doorway was straight out of stories told to misbehaving children. It was covered from head to toe in a black outfit that appeared weathered from many years of use. Its mask featured golden ridges on its brow that sloped upwards like the crests above an owl's eyes. Its own eyes were covered by a pair of dark goggle lenses. On its back was sheathed a large sword, and on a sash across its torso were kept many knives and daggers of various sizes.
Stephanie hoped that her ski mask hid enough of her face to conceal how white her skin had gone from this newcomer. "You must be the Talon," she said with all the false confidence she could muster. "I admit, I didn't expect to see you return to the scene of the crime. I love me my cliches, but I thought you'd be above that."
The masked man continued to stand there silently.
"A man of few words, huh? That's going to make banter a little difficult. Do you mind if I call you Tally?"
Alarms began to sound outside the car, causing Harper, Cullen, and Duella to look around them.
Harper picked up the phone again. "Hey, what's going on?"
Stephanie slowly reached for the phone in her pocket at the sound of the voice faintly coming from it. "I think I just met the Talon," she said robotically into the phone.
"Security is on their way up to you and GCPD's already inbound!" Harper yelled. "You need to get out of the building now!"
"You go. I'll meet up with you later," Stephanie replied, hanging up the phone. Her eyes were fixed on the Talon the entire time. "You're much more polite than expected, letting me talk on the phone like that. Why is that?"
"We gotta go help her," Duella said. The Row siblings looked at each other and nodded. All three of them opened their car doors at almost exactly the same time, but as the Rows began to run towards the elevator Stephanie had used, Duella took Cullen's place in the driver's seat and started the engine.
The Rows turned back to her.
"Duella, no!" Cullen yelled.
"Your junior vigilante's about to become the meat in a cop-Talon sandwich!" Duella yelled back. "This is your last chance to stay alive!"
Cullen turned to his sister. "You can go with her if you want."
"Now without you," Harper responded.
"Duella," Cullen said, "You can't do this. You can't just abandon her!"
"Why not, Cullen? Everyone abandoned me! Enough times for me to know that no one would ever come save me."
Duella put the car into drive and drove off.
With her gone, along with their only means of escape, they turned their attention back to the elevator.
"Were you watching when Stephanie entered the code?" Cullen asked.
"I sure was," Harper responded.
"You're not drawing your sword," Stephanie observed as the Talon continued to stand menacingly in the doorway. "You didn't expect to find me here, and now you don't know what to do."
"Is it because you don't kill people unless you have orders to do so," she wondered, "or because you know who I am and have orders not to kill me?"
The elevator arrived, bringing with it no chime like normal elevators that were not meant to allow vigilantes to sneak in undetected. But there was no mistaking the voices that emerged when the elevator doors opened.
Both Stephanie and the Talon turned their heads towards the new sound, Stephanie mouthing 'oh shit' to herself. She looked at the Talon from the corner of her eye. He was starting to lean in the direction of the other room and reach for the sword sheathed on his back.
Stephanie bolted, slinging her sack over her shoulder as she ran into the other room. A split second later, the Talon began to move as well, crossing the room with astonishing speed. It was only the combination of her moving first and being closer to the doors that allowed her to reach and close them before the Talon.
The Talon immediately began banging on the doors, attempting to break them down. Fortunately, Bruce Wayne was not one to cheap out on his doors, and the wooden structures withstood the pounding with Stephanie bracing against them with all her strength.
"Gimme those swords!" she yelled, gesturing with her head toward a set of antique swords displayed on one of the walls. Cullen and Harper each grabbed a sword and handed them to Stephanie, who slid them through the door handles, ensuring they could not be opened from the other side.
"Time to go," she said, beginning to move towards the elevator.
"Can't go that way," Harper said. "Our ride's gone, and with it, our only way past security."
"And we definitely can't go this way," Cullen added as the Talon banged on the doors again. "Looks like we're trapped."
Stephanie tore the plastic coverings off the broken window. "There's one way."
"How?" Cullen asked. "Are we supposed to climb?"
"No," Stephanie replied, reaching into her sack, "we fly."
She held up the grappling gun and pressed the trigger. A cable shot out of one end and latched into the back wall. A second, longer cable shot out of the other end and passed through the window, over the building across the street, and latched onto the roof of the building the next block over.
"Have you ever used that thing before?" Cullen asked.
"Don't answer that," Harper said.
The Talon's sword burst through one of the doors as he tired of attempting to knock them down.
"No choice," Stephanie said, "don't let go, and don't look down."
The grappling gun came with handles to allow multiple people to use it. Cullen went first, followed by Harper. It was like using a zip line, only for far longer, much higher up, and without any of the safety features a zip line for tourists would have.
They built up a lot of speed as they descended over the city, enough that when they finally landed on the roof two streets over, they could not keep their footing and stumbled forward, falling on their faces.
Stephanie came last, holding onto the body of the grappling gun itself rather than one of the handles. She faired no better upon landing than the Rows had, but she recovered and rose to her feet quicker than they did. A press of a button on the grappling gun made the cables de-latch from the office wall and roof and retract. The gun pulled the cable back at a speed faster than gravity, preventing it from touching the ground or the building they had passed over. The Talon would not be following them.
They all breathed a sigh of relief. Cullen actually started laughing after their narrow escape, with Harper soon joining him. Stephanie smiled for a moment before her expression turned grim.
"Where's Duella?" she asked.
In a seedy party of town, a Wayne security car pulled up to an antique pawn shop, and Duella stepped out. She found the door to the pawn shop unlocked and entered the building.
She was surrounded by old furniture, lamps, chairs and cabinets from the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the back of an aisle of these antiques, she found the dealer hunched over his desk, tinkering with an old clock.
"Hm-mm."
The dealer turned around. He was in his sixties and bald, though his goatee was as blonde as it had ever been.
Duella produced the statue from her coat. "As advertised, a genuine Paige Bradley. 17 inches, bronze. Not quite an antique, but it's from the personal collection of the late Bruce Wayne, which should make it worth even more."
The dealer took the statue from her hands and examined it. "Indeed it does. That has certainly made it more sought-after."
"What do you mean, sought-after?" Duella asked.
"When I called around to ascertain the value, there was one potential buyer who was quite interested in anything which was owned by Bruce Wayne. Willing to pay a fortune, and willing to pay even more for the person selling it."
He pulled out a gun and pointed it directly at Duella's face. Duella laughed nervously.
"Please tell me you are not that stupid," she said.
"It's unwise to insult the person holding the gun," he said with amusement.
She leaned forward, putting herself even closer to the barrel of the gun. "Considering what's coming, I'd rather be shot. You have no idea who you're dealing with."
"Frankly, I don't care. At this price point, I don't ask questions."
Duella's retort died in her throat as a sword appeared out of the dealer's gut. Duella was nearly impaled in the same motion, and only stumbling back in shock saved her from the dealer's fate.
The sword receded and the dealer fell to the ground dead, revealing the Talon standing behind him.
Duella ran faster than she ever had, out of the shop and back to the car. She had barely shut the door when she looked up to see the Talon standing in front of the car. She had not heard any sound of him following her.
The Talon plunged his sword into the front hood, piercing the engine and rendering the vehicle inoperable. He walked around the front of the car and slashed at the driver's window, making Duella yelp and flinch. But the glass of Wayne security vehicles was bulletproof and too strong for a man with a sword to break, and he gave up after two attempts.
Duella began to laugh, thinking she was safe inside the car, but the Talon looked across the vehicle and walked to the back, where he stabbed the gas tank, causing the fuel to spill out onto the ground.
"No-no-no-no-no-no," Duella said frantically, realizing what his plan was. Using his sword to create sparks on the ground, the Talon set the leaking gas on fire. The car was quickly engulfed in flames, with Duella inside.
She tried to open the door, but the metal door handle was already so hot that it burned her hand. She began to cough as smoke and fumes filled the car as the Talon watched.
A batarang struck the Talon in the shoulder, embedding itself in his costume. He did not flinch or make a sound. He merely pulled the weapon from the material protecting his shoulder and tilted his head in confusion as he examined it.
A large mass of purple appeared as Spoiler leapt at him in full costume, her cape expanding behind her as she swung her bo staff at the Talon. The assassin blocked the blow with his sword with ease and stared at Spoiler through the emotionless eyes of his goggles.
The Talon kicked Spoiler in the stomach, knocking her to the ground and into the flames. She dropped her staff and quickly removed her cape and hood as she rose, letting them be consumed by the fire.
As this was happening, Cullen and Harper ran up to the car. Harper looked at Duella with disgust as the other girl yelled: "Hey! Get me out of here!"
Harper wrapped her hand in a sweater and used it to open the driver's seat door without burning herself. Cullen then reached into the vehicle and pulled Duella out.
In front of them, Spoiler had regained her staff and was holding it in a defensive position, turning to and fro in search of their attacker, but there was no sign of him. After striking her, the Talon had fled.
The others stared at her. Without her hood and cape, Spoiler looked much smaller and less imposing than she had the night she'd saved them from Ford.
Finally, she lowered her staff and turned to them. "Let's get out of here."
Back in the belfry, Cullen was applying gauze bandages to Duella's burned hand.
"Thanks," she said.
"Just change it every twelve hours," Cullen replied without emotion.
"No," Duella corrected, "I meant, for coming back for me."
"Don't thank us," Harper said. "If we'd have gone with you, all three of us would be dead."
"And if were up to us," Cullen added, "we'd have left your ass. If you want to thank someone, thank her."
Stephanie stood in front of the bathroom sink, staring into the mirror, grimacing. She lifted her shirt to examine the black and blue blotch where she had been kicked. Once the adrenaline had worn off, she really began to feel that hit.
"That was pretty stupid, you know?" Duella said from the doorway. Stephanie put her shirt down quickly. "Did you really think you could beat the Talon one-on-one after he killed Batman?"
"I didn't," Stephanie admitted. "But I confirmed what I was suspecting. The Talon has specific orders not to kill Spoiler."
"Is there always another motive with you?"
"No," Stephanie said softly. "I'd just feel pretty shitty if someone still died after I'd already saved them."
"You may be a criminal, but that doesn't mean your life is worthless," she said as she walked past Duella.
Harvey once again stood at the scene of Bruce Wayne's murder, staring at the window from which he was thrown. This time, Commissioner Soto was with him.
"The system says that they accessed the building using Bruce Wayne's personal code," Soto said.
"How would they even know that?" Harvey wondered.
"No idea, probably the same way they knew Bruce Wayne was Batman."
"What was taken," he asked.
"According to the inventory we received, just one sword from that wall."
Harvey looked at her in confusion. "Why risk coming back for a sword?"
"I don't know, but you might want to ask the antiquities dealer we found impaled by one."
Mayor Hill poured himself a glass of wine as he considered the woman standing in front of his fireplace in his mansion, gazing at the flames with her back to him.
"They watch you at your hearth," he said jokingly.
The woman turned around, revealing herself to be Cressida Clarke. "I'm merely the messenger."
"Well, I could have saved you the trip," Hill said. "Please let the court know that I'm as unhappy with the hunt for the Joker's Daughter and her accomplices as they are. You can assure them that apprehending these fugitives is my top priority."
"However," he added, "the hunt would go a lot smoother if you gave me some actual information on this purple-costumed freak who helped them escape the first time or let me tell the police that he even exists."
"She, actually," Clarke corrected him. "I'm afraid that's all I know myself, besides this: You never, ever question the court's reasons."
"Fair enough," Hill said as he finished his wine. "Was there anything else?"
"There is, actually. The mutant gang is becoming a nuisance and must be dealt with before the situation escalates any further."
"So you want two miracles from me."
Clarke stepped forward. "Have you forgotten your debt of gratitude?" she asked in a threatening manner.
Hill realized that he had overstepped and sook his head. "Of course I haven't. Just ensure that I'm reelected so I can continue to repay it, starting with those mutant thugs."
Clarke smiled and nodded as she stepped past the mayor.
Hill looked at the fire in his hearth and scowled. When he was first elected mayor after the mysterious death of the opposing candidate, he knew that the office would not make him the greatest power in Gotham. There were two forces greater than he could ever be in the city. The removal of one of those forces, Batman, should have given him more room to wield the power of the mayoralty, but if anything, he had less room than ever in which to act or even to think for himself.
"Speak not a whispered word of them," he told the flames.
When Batman spoke, it was in a deep voice, a voice that was at once loud and clear and with a hint of a rasp. It had the commanding presence of Darth Vader's voice, but without any mechanical enhancements.
"You're the one who sent those clues to the police." It wasn't a question.
She nodded. Her homemade costume and cape seemed so cheap now that she was in front of a real superhero.
"Why?"
"You think I like having a world-class psycho as my dad? I want to see him rot."
There was a gust of wind, causing her cape to billow spectacularly. Batman's cape, made of a heavier material, moved very little in comparison.
"What do you call yourself?"
"Well," she said uncertainly, "the Spoiler."
Batman shifted slightly, bringing his face slightly into view.
"I like that."
The water had fallen over the entrance to the cave for tens of thousands of years, and would continue to fall until erosion finally collapsed the entrance entirely many thousands of years hence.
This small waterfall had seen an unusually clad figure pass through it thousands of times, but never one dressed as the girl who staggered into the cave now, pushed down by the weight and force of the water.
Stephanie Brown looked comical in her poncho, and was so soaked she might as well have not worn it. The paper on which had been written the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates she had used to find the cave was practically destroyed by the water, and the large sack she carried under the poncho was as drenched as she was.
Others would explore the same coordinates in search of the fabled bat-cave in the coming years. But by then the clear signs that a large vehicle had driven through the area that led Stephanie to the right place would be claimed by wilderness.
Stephanie removed the hood of her poncho and ran her hand through her sopping-wet hair. She was used to being soaking wet, as her home-made Spoiler costume had never used water-proof materials, bit she didn't like being stuck in wet clothes and often caught cold if she went roof-hopping on a rainy night.
She did not get far into the cave when she stopped and gasped.
The batmobile was naturally parked closer to the cave exit than the other equipment that made up Batman's secret headquarters. With is distinctive black paint, oversized sports-car mixed with battle-tank look, and an exhaust that looked like a miniature jet-engine. It was by far the most famous car in the world.
And it was no more. The engine, a proprietary, revolutionary piece of technology that provided greater horsepower than a military vehicle twice its size, had exploded days prior, taking with it the entire front half of the vehicle and reducing the back half to a slag of melted black metal. A large fin with scalloped black edges was embedded in the rocky cave wall behind the car, having been blown away from the rest of the batmobile by the explosion. The blast had been so powerful that smoke still rose from the vehicle.
Further into the cave, much of the weapons and technology created by the Batman had suffered the same fate. Containers and consoles were reduced to melted slabs, or in some cases destroyed entirely, giving no hint as to what they originally were or contained.
Not everything was destroyed. There were containers with things such as batarangs and grappling hooks that still stood. Stephanie grabbed what she could and stuffed them into her sack, along with various tiny bat-shaped darts. She even found something relatively high-tech still functioning, a collapsible taser gun.
At the end of the cave, next to the staircase which must have led up to Wayne Manor itself, stood what she had truly come there for- the batcomputer.
The console in front of the screen was completely intact. Perhaps Bruce Wayne had watched too much Star Trek and was wary of the console exploding while he was using the computer. Stephanie had never seen anything with so many buttons. So fascinated was she by the workings of the machine in front of her that she almost missed what was displayed on the screen behind it.
The screen was an OLED panel, exactly twenty-one feet wide and nine feet tall. It was designed to display dozens of images at the same time in a manner that a mind that worked as fast as the world's greatest detective's would have access to the maximum amount of information at once. Now, it was completely black except for three small words written in white barely a foot from the bottom.
KNIGHTFALL PROTOCOL ENABLED
Stephanie set her sack down in the chair Batman had used for decades when he sat in front of this computer and its predecessors and looked over the console. She pressed what seemed to her to be the most likely to be the startup button. It was a long shot, she knew, but still, she had to try.
The three words disappeared with the button and were replaced with five new ones.
knowledge is of no value
Stephanie's head tilted in confusion as she stared at the saying, which only remained on the screen for five seconds before it went completely black.
She sighed in disappointment. The batcomputer, a system a decade more advanced than any other computer in the world, was dead, its untold terabytes of data lost forever. It may not have exploded like the batmobile had, but it would be left in such as state that nothing could be recovered and the secrets of its hardware and processing power could not be recreated.
A sound from above shocked her out of her reverie and a sudden light caused a colony of bats to be disturbed from their resting place on the cave ceiling. The flying mammals screeched as they passed overhead, moving towards the other end of the cave.
Stephanie grabbed her bag and hid under the console as Harvey Dent and Cressida Clarke, the attaché of Bruce Wayne, appeared in the doorway behind the Wayne family's grandfather clock, flanked by a dozen SWAT officers. The officers entered the cave, holding rifles with green laser sights to help spot targets in the dark.
Stephanie rushed from console to console as the SWAT team surveyed the cave, taking advantage of every moment no one was looking in her direction to move closer to the waterfall from which she entered the cave, until she was behind the charred ruin of the batmobile.
"Clear!" one officer called out, and Harvey and Cressida descended into the cave, gazing in awe at what remained of the Batman's headquarters, especially the large computer console and screen.
"Did you know about this?" Harvey asked, unable to put as much authority into his voice as he usually did.
Cressida shook her head. "Bruce shared many secrets with me, but this wasn't one of them."
Harvey turned to the SWAT team's leader and found his full voice again. "Bag and tag everything."
Cressida scoffed at him. "The irony. The people couldn't stop the crime in Gotham treating the man who did as a criminal."
"Bruce was my friend," Harvey insisted.
"So why are you here instead of hunting down the people who killed him?"
Harvey opened his mouth to respond, but stopped. None of them had paid any attention to the waterfall at the other end of the cave, but out of the corner of his eye he though he saw a disruption in the water, as if, for just an instant, the falling liquid landed on a large rock well above the cave floor.
Duella hummed to herself as she applied the lipstick she found. She grinned as she gazed at her reflection in a mirror, wearing clothes and jewelry worth more than she stole in a typical week.
She practically danced through the aisles between fancy dresses, stopping to grab and examine a pink skirt.
"Hey, this is totally you," she said to Harper as she threw the skirt to the other girl. "Matches your new hair."
Harper made a face at the pink clothes and dig at the side of her head that was now dyed blue. "And you clearly don't know me at all."
Cullen approached with two causal suit jackets. "Ok, so we've got most wanted and wanted most," he said, asking Harper's opinion for which jacket to take.
"Take em both, decide later," Harper responded.
They all looked up as the sound of sirens startled them. The sirens were getting louder.
"Who tripped the silent alarm?" Harper demanded.
Duella shrugged and tossed her old clothes and additional 'purchases' over her shoulder. "Attention shoplifters, please make your final selections and kindly bring them towards the rear exit."
Gotham Academy's main auditorium was as extravagant as any part of the school, with seating arrangements closer to those of a Broadway show than those of a public school. Indeed, school plays there often were close to Broadway in their production values and set design than to the productions of the average school drama club.
Headmaster Millicheck looked very small standing on the main stage, but his voice was strong, helped by the perfect acoustics of the auditorium.
"This has been a difficult time for all of us. For many of us, we have lost a hero, someone we looked up to and admired. For most of us, there is a fear of the future," he said.
"Rest assured, I have spoken to the police, and I have received assurances that our school is quite safe. The mutant gang does not have any activities in this part of Gotham City.
Standing a few spots from Brody together with the other juniors, Stephanie rolled her eyes.
"Moreover," Millicheck continued, "there is absolutely no reason to believe that the fugitives who murdered Bruce Wayne have been in this neighborhood or that they have or will enter school grounds. We are as safe today as we were last month."
"The school administration is here for any student who is experiencing anxiety or depression at this time, and we have increased the number of social workers on staff so that anyone can receive help at any time. But, seeing as we have no safety concerns, starting now, classes will resume their regular schedules, and club activities will be allowed to resume as well. You are the next generation of Gotham's leaders, and no crime outside our walls will stand in the way of our educating you to be the best leaders this city has ever known."
Brody caught Stephanie outside the auditorium.
"Too bad classes aren't canceled anymore, am I right?"
"Sure," Stephanie responded, not looking at him.
"You still think Joker's Daughter and her friends couldn't have killed Wayne, even after they escaped from the police?"
"I do."
"Right. You know better than the whole GCPD."
Stephanie shot Brody a glare which startled him.
"Sheesh. Why are you so angry the last few days?"
"Days? More like the last 15 years," she huffed as she walked away.
Stephanie stepped at the old door which lead to the belfry. After a quick glance to make sure no one was around to see her, she entered a combination on the door's lock and shut it behind her.
The stairs leading up to the belfry had a tendency to creek from so many years of neglect. The odds of anyone hearing the noise were miniscule, but she still ascended them slowly and cautiously.
The belfry was even more of a mess than usual now that it had three teenagers living there, with garbage and old clothes strewn about.
Harper and Cullen were fast asleep on a pair of old couches. Stephanie frowned at the site of the fancy denim jacket Cullen was wearing.
Stephanie had no chance to wonder where the third member of the trio of fugitives was as a blade appeared at her throat, causing her to gasp.
Duella put her other arm around Stephanie's shoulder. "Hmmm. Looks like someone took a wrong turn at cheerleader tryouts."
Stephanie took a breath to calm herself. "Put that knife down or you won't be able to use that hand anymore."
"Oh, is that you, baby Cluemaster?" Duella let Stephanie go as the Row siblings stirred, awoken by the sudden commotion. "Sorry," she said sarcastically. "I guess I didn't recognize you in that fancy school uniform. Rocking that skirt, by the way, blondie."
"All the same, could you not pull a knife on our only hope to clear our names?" Cullen asked.
"It's not my fault I was expecting a vigilante in a homemade cape and not little miss homecoming queen here."
"I see I'm not the only one wearing more expensive clothes." Stephanie grabbed the back of Cullen's jacket for a moment to glance at the tag. "Dolce & Gabbana. Guess I know why there was a report of a burglary at the nearest mall last night."
"What would you rather we do?" Harper demanded. "Rob a thrift shop? Maybe we should steal from the poor and give to the rich."
"I'd rather you not bring police to the area you're supposed to be hiding out in when no one is supposed to know you're here."
Duella smiled at her outfit. "I think we can go another week before we have to add to our wardrobes again."
"And if we're gonna be hiding out at the rich kids' school, we need to dress like rich kids," Cullen added.
Stephanie shook her head. "Whatever."
"Speaking of stealing," Duella said, "how'd your grave-robbing go?"
Stephanie sat down on the couch where Cullen had been sleeping a few minutes earlier. "Batman had failsafes for if he died. I was able to get some supplies, but any information he might have had on the Court of Owls is gone. Even the batmobile was blown up."
"So you've got no leads other than a coin with the symbol of some evil bird cult?" Cullen asked.
"Laugh while you can," Duella said. "The Court of Owls controls this entire city. They have eyes everywhere."
"And yet no one has ever seen them," Harper pointed out.
"No one who lived to tell about it," Duella insisted.
"Right, right, right, right," Harper said, "'Speak not a whispered word of them, or they'll send the Talon for your head. Let's just tell the cops a nursery rhyme did it!"
Stephanie took out her phone and glared at it.
"What is it?" Duella asked. "Asking daddy for a clue?"
Stephanie folded her phone and put it away. "No. I knew someone who might be able to help us, but if she's still alive, she's dodging all my calls."
Harvey followed the SWAT officers as they carried boxes full of objects confiscated from the batcave into police headquarters. There was a lot, but less than they had expected given the destruction of so much of the cave's contents.
Commissioner Soto watched the procession with interest. "Looks like Christmas came early for the boys in the labs. Their daddies were dying to get their hands on the equipment Batman used to stop crimes."
"They might be disappointed when they learn most of the cooler toys were destroyed," Harvey responded. "And most of the stuff we did get are useless unless we start training police to throw boomerangs."
"It would get us some good publicity – the world's first police force to use boomerangs instead of guns."
Harvey chuckled. An African American woman who worked her way up the ranks during the final years of the heyday of costumed supercriminals, Soto was the protégé of Jim Gordon, the legendary commissioner who did so much to clean up Gotham's streets together with Batman. She did not fully approve of her predecessor's decision to partner with a vigilante, but she did approve of Batman's non-lethal approach to fighting crime. Her job had become more difficult with the retirement of nearly all of Gordan's elites, cops like Renee Montoya who were truly dedicated to the citizens of Gotham and to their beloved commissioner and would never dream of accepting a bribe.
"By the way," she asked, "have you seen Detective Ford?"
"Uh, not in a while," Harvey replied with a hint of annoyance. "He's been dodging my calls."
"Well, he better not dodge mine," Soto muttered as she took out her cell phone.
A phone began ringing across the room. Harvey looked up, confused, and walked over to Ford's desk, where the noise was coming from. The desk was a mess, covered in papers, files, and mugshots, along with an unopened package. Harvey opened a cabinet and turned over the papers in search of the phone before stopping and staring at the package.
Soto approached, also noticing the sound emanating from the cardboard box. Harvey removed the tape and opened the box. What they found inside made Soto audibly gasp.
Wrapped in a blood-soaked plastic bag, next to his phone, was the severed head of Detective Ford. Soto had to look away, fighting her urge to vomit.
Harvey shook his head in shock. "We'd better – we'd better check on his team," he said finally.
"Uh-uh," Soto replied, barely able to raise her voice above a whisper. She quickly dialed another number, and they heard another phone begin to ring.
They turned to the source of the sound. Soto's jaw dropped and Harvey closed his eyes in horror at the site of a cart filled with packages, cardboard boxes identical to the one which contained Ford's head.
"Six members of the GCPD task force assigned to hunt down the fugitives wanted for the murder of Bruce Wayne have themselves been found murdered," the news anchor said. "The gruesome discovery was made earlier this morning. The GCPD declined to comment on an ongoing investigation, but sources within the department say that each of those detectives was decapitated."
Duella turned the television off. "Or they'll send the Talon for your head."
Cullen and Harper shared a look, the same look of horror they shared when they learned that their mother had left them to the nonexistent mercy of their father.
Duella put her hand to her ear. "Oh, I'm sorry, what was that? Maybe – maybe, Duella was right about how dangerous and – say it with me now – how real the Court of Owls is?"
"Why would they kill Ford and his men?" Cullen asked. "Didn't they work for the Court?"
"Because they screwed up killing us!" Duella yelled.
"Ok, let's say they are real," Harper said, "who's gonna believe us?"
"I will."
They turned to Stephanie, who was rubbing her chin in thought.
"Who's gonna believe us that can actually do something about it?" Harper asked again.
Stephanie glared at her. "You're missing the point."
"Point, what point?"
"When was the last time you heard of someone being beheaded in Gotham?"
Cullen and Harper looked at each other in confusion. "How should we know?" Cullen asked.
"I'm willing to bet that when I get in front of something with internet, the last time there was a confirmed beheading was decades ago, before Batman appeared," Stephanie said.
"Don't you get it? The Court of Owls had to retreat even further into the shadows because of Batman, they couldn't rule Gotham the way they did before. Now that he's gone, they did this to announce to those who know of their existence that they're back."
"Well, what are you gonna do about it, baby Cluemaster?" Duella asked as she played with the knife she had held to Stephanie's neck. "What's your grand plan for stopping the secret society who killed Batman?"
Stephanie frowned and looked to the side.
"You said the reason you saved us was because you needed us to figure out who killed Batman. Now you know it was the Court of Owls. What's to stop you from giving us up now that you no longer need us?"
Stephanie glared at Duella's knife. "That's a very good question."
Harvey rubbed his forehead as he stared at the reports in front of him. He had long since tuned out the noise from outside his office. Every public safety official in Gotham, from the beat cops to City Hall, were overwhelmed by the crime wave which followed Batman's death. Even so, he was surprised when Mayor Hill burst into his office.
"Mr. Mayor! What are you doing here?"
Hill had never come to Harvey's office himself before. He considered himself too important to come to those who he believed worked for him and would either insist they come to him or content himself with a phone call. For him to come to Harvey in-person could only mean he was feeling the pressure as much as the rest of them.
"What am I doing? We've got six detectives whose heads were chopped off, the city's going to hell in a handbasket, and you're asking me what I'm doing?"
"I'm sorry, sir." Harvey stood up and offered Hill his chair. The mayor sat down and took a deep breath.
"I don't know what to do, Harvey. I can't just yell at people to fix this. Please, just give me something, tell me you've got some lead that will help us catch these juvenile predators."
Harvey shook his head. "If ever we needed Batman, it's now."
Hill nodded. "I never realized what a difference he made. I couldn't imagine that one man could keep such a lid on things. All this time, I was sure it was my policies that kept crime low."
Previously, Harvey would have pressed the issue and told Hill to never forget what he had just admitted. But now he saw no reason to rub salt in the mayor's wounds.
"Ford and his men weren't able to describe the person or persons who intervened when the suspects crashed the police van. Right now our efforts are on figuring out who their accomplice was."
"Was it that accomplice who killed the detectives?"
"We have no way of knowing that right now. If it was, it seems odd that they let them live during the escape and hunted them down later. Even so, anyone who could overpower multiple armed police officers is dangerous."
Two boys in their late teens climbed over a hedge. The stone structure in front of them was the oldest building still standing in the entire neighborhood and had been declared a landmark by the municipality before either of them were born.
"I don't know about this, man," the more timid of the two, a boy with a green, spiky mohawk, said. "Robbing a church? My granny used to come here."
"Shut up, ya big baby," the other one said. When he opened his mouth to speak, he revealed a missing tooth. His arms and face were covered in tattoos. "They just had a big charity drive here. There's a ton of cash in the reverend's office."
"Aw, that's sweet Mervin. I didn't realize you were the charitable type."
They spun around to see a figure in a dark purple costume and cape crouched on the hedge.
"Spoiler!"
"You said she was dead!" the one with the mohawk yelled at his friend.
"So you guys missed me! You sure know what to say to make a girl feel loved." Spoiler leapt down from the hedge. "So what are you donating, Mervin? Some more teeth, maybe?"
"N-no," 'Mervin' stammered. "We-we was just passing through. We weren't planning nothing."
"A word of advice then. Whenever you're 'passing through,' stay away from this church."
"Y-yes!" the one with the mohawk said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Yes, ma'am," they both said.
"Now get out of here."
Spoiler shook her head as the pair of hoodlums clambered over the hedge as fast as they could. With any luck, the discovery that the vigilante who beat them up and put them in jail was back would keep them out of trouble for a full week. But for now, she had bigger problems.
She knocked on the back door to the church and waited. Less than a minute later, a bald man in his late 60s opened the door, and unlike the two attempted burglars, he was overjoyed to see her.
"Spoiler! It's been so long! I was starting to get worried."
"I've been very busy, Reverend Knutland," she responded. "I'm afraid recent events have made the resurrection of Spoiler necessary."
The reverend nodded sagely. "Yes. People are very frightened right now. I've been hearing rumors that the mutant gang is about to expand into Widowstone Creek."
"Not if I have anything to say about it."
"But that's not the reason you're here, is it?" he asked.
Spoiler's shoulders slumped. "I could use some advice."
"Of course. After everything you've done for this church, I'd be happy to help in any way I can."
She lowered her hood, leaving her mask in place. "I recently saved the lives of a group of criminals. Now I don't know what to do with them."
"You can't turn them over to the police?"
"I want to, but if I do that, then the people who are trying to kill them will succeed."
"And the crimes they committed don't warrant the death penalty, I take it."
"No. Years and years in prison for at least one of them, but not execution."
"Then you can't turn them in."
"But they've already committed more crimes since I saved them, and show no signs of stopping! One of them even threatened me when I confronted them about it. Doesn't that make any crimes they commit now my responsibility?"
"Maybe it does, but do you want their deaths to be on your conscience instead?"
Spoiler looked away. "I put on this mask to save the innocent, not criminals."
"Who are we to decide who is innocent and guilty? Just because they didn't change overnight, doesn't mean they can't change. Do you know how many people have entered this church changed men after Batman saved their lives while they were committing crimes? From everything I've heard from the worst of the worst, Batman valued all lives equally, regardless of whether they were innocent or criminals."
"I guess Batman was a better person than I am," Spoiler admitted.
Reverend Knutland stopped looked to the side in thought. "You can't blame yourself for what happened to Bruce Wayne," he said at last. "You should keep protecting these people, even if they're criminals, not to atone for Batman's death, but because it's the right thing to do."
"The right thing can be very hard."
"If it was easy, everyone would do it. But you can come here anything, for anything you may need."
Spoiler suddenly looked up, as if a lightbulb had just turned on. "Thank you, Reverend Knutland." She took out a five-dollar bill. "Here. I missed your charity drive. This is all I have right now."
Knutland pushed her hand away. "You keep it. In your hands, I know it's money that's going to keeping our community safe."
"I need your help," Stephanie said. "I need to break into Wayne Tower."
Duella, Harper, and Cullen looked at her like she was crazy.
"Why?" Harper asked.
"I think any information Batman had on the Court of Owls would be there."
"Why would you think that?" Cullen asked.
"Something Batman once said to me, about how I could find anything I may need at Wayne Enterprises. I think he was giving me a clue about where to go if something like this happened."
Duella shook her head. "You do realize that the first rule they teach you in 'thief school' is never return to the scene of a crime, right?"
"Since when do you follow rules?" Stephanie retorted.
"Since Wayne Tower became the most famous crime scene in the history of Gotham."
"Not to mention," Harper added, "they'll have doubled the security, restored the motion sensors we disabled, and have redundant cameras covering every way in or out."
Stephanie smiled. "Not every way." They all turned to her as she explained. "Bruce Wayne had a private elevator that goes straight from the lowest level of the garage to his office. It's not in any blueprints and bypasses every security camera and guard in the building."
"To even access the elevator, we need to break into the garage," Cullen pointed out. "Wayne security patrols search all the cars going in."
"Except their own," Stephanie said with a smile. "I happen to know where we can get a Wayne security vehicle equipped with a transponder that automatically opens the gates."
"I can go alone if I have to," she clarified, "but it would be a big help to have someone 'in the chair' monitoring everything from outside."
"I think we can do that," Cullen said. "I can keep the engine running."
"And I could be the one 'in the chair,'" Harper added.
They turned to Duella, who shrugged and gave them a look of resigned boredom. "Whatever gets me out of this attic."
That night, a Wayne security vehicle made its way to the lowest level of the parking garage below Wayne Tower.
"How'd you know about all this," Cullen, who was driving the vehicle, asked. "I mean, where to find the car, the secret elevator, that it's not picked up on security?"
"I once helped another vigilante break into Wayne Tower using this method," Stephanie explained from the back seat. "We used this same car. Then I was the 'guy in the chair' watching and waiting for her to come down."
"That would be the 'friend' who's dodging all your calls?" Harper asked.
Stephanie nodded as she put on a pair of gloves. "Someone got their hands on the Mad Hatter's old mind control tech and put a bunch of business executives under his control to get rich. She was trying to determine if Bruce Wayne was also under his control and snap him out of it if he was. I didn't realize at the time she was actually trying to determine if Batman needed saving."
"Here," she said, handing them each a flip phone.
"You're giving us burner phones?" Duella asked.
"Exactly. I can guarantee these are safer than any other phones you could get."
Harper took out her laptop and began her hacking. "Didn't think I'd be back this soon, did you, Wayne Tower?" A bunch of circles became highlighted on the building schematics. "Looks like someone gave you a brand new set of motion sensors. I'll be accessing those, and your cameras."
"Ok. No patrols on the top floor. You're good to go. We'll monitor you from here."
"Great," Stephanie said as she put on a purple ski mask with holes for her eyes and mouth. "With any luck I'll be home in time to edit my AP History paper."
Stephanie exited the car and made her way to the hidden elevator entrance. She entered the code from memory and the elevator doors opened, allowing her to step inside.
Once Stephanie was out of sight, Harper turned to Duella. "Ok, what's with the team spirit all of a sudden? You never go along with any plan you didn't come up with yourself."
"All right," Duella said, leaning forward between the front seats. "Going along with baby Cluemaster's plan is a part of my plan, one that involves getting the hell out of Gotham. And I was just about to invite you two to join me."
"What about clearing your name?" Cullen asked.
"I'd rather keep it off a tombstone," Duella responded. "And besides, once we check out of we're we'll get new names."
Cullen looked disgusted, and Harper had the same expression when Dulle joked about taking her name.
"Who, kidding," Duella said. "Hate that name. Look, I'm just saying that if proving we're innocent means breaking into a place that we were very lucky to get out of the first time, we are better off running."
"Yeah," Harper said dismissively, "it takes money to run."
Duella smirked. "Got that covered. I grabbed that statue Wayne had on his desk when we were here before and hid it. I did some asking around and it's worth a ton of money. An antiquities dealer over on Brundle offered up a number that splits very nicely three ways."
"And then what?" Harper demanded. "Every way out of the city is a GCPD checkpoint. What makes you think you can dodge that much heat?"
"You're sitting in it."
The Row siblings turned their heads, finally beginning to see where Duella was going. "The police aren't searching Wayne security vehicles. That'd be like searching the President's motorcade. This comfort-ride beauty is our ticket out of G-Town! Come on, I'll even let you pick the radio station," she offered Harper, who was beginning to smile.
Once the elevator began to move upward, Stephanie leaned against the back wall and rubbed her eyes. She had stayed up until four in the morning to finish her history paper once she realized what she would have to do after school that day, and the lack of sleep was beginning to affect her.
The elevator reached Bruce Wayne's office on the top floor in just a few seconds, and she stepped out of looked like a normal wall. A glance back after the elevator closed revealed that the wall was adorned with a set of antique masks, one of which she knew contained the controls to operate the elevator. No one who did not already know about this secret elevator would ever find it or even suspect it was there.
On the way, Stephanie had explained to her current partners why Batman would be more likely to hide useful information at Wayne Tower than in the batcave under his manor. He lived alone at Wayne Manor, making it the obvious choice for the location of his headquarters. Wayne Tower, by contrast, was always filled with people, making it more dangerous to his secret identity to store anything Batman related there. As a result, the police would not search the tower with the same fine comb they used at the manor to find the entrance to the batcave. But this would in turn mean that in the event of his death, anything he kept hidden in his office would not need to be destroyed to be kept out of the hands of the police.
The next thing Stephanie saw was the broken window Wayne had been thrown out of, with the red words written above it. A lump formed in her throat at the sight, and she quickly moved into the adjoining room of the office.
On the other side of the desk stood several bookshelves. That was what she was looking for.
"Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice," she whispered, completing the quote from Anton Chekhov she had seen on the batcomputer a few days earlier. She found four of Chekhov's plays in the corners of the bookshelves, and the novel The Shooting Party in the middle, and turned all five works on their sides.
With the novel turned after the plays, she heard a mechanical sound and the bookshelves began to move apart, revealing a secret compartment with three shelves. The top two shelves contained gas balls, smoke bombs, shaped charges, and a grappling gun while the bottom shelf contained a row of about thirty small black books, along with a gold watch. The watch caught Stephanie's eyes as the object which did not belong, and she grabbed it first. Upon turning it over, she found an engraving of an owl on the back of the watch, the same engraving seen on the coin she had taken from Detective Ford.
She next turned her attention to the books on the lowest row. The book farthest from the edge was lying on its front instead of standing like the rest, and Stephanie reached for it.
As she opened the book, Stephanie was not surprised to find that it was the diary of Bruce Wayne. She was surprised, however, to find that this volume was from when he was a boy, shortly after the murder of his parents.
She flipped through the pages until a particular set of three words caught her eye and began to read from the diary out loud.
"Everyone, even Alfred, believed that a lone thief was responsible for my parents' murder. Joe Chill may have pulled the trigger, but he didn't orchestrate the murder. The Court of Owls did."
Stephanie has to stop. "Oh my God." She looked up at the rest of the journals.
Cullen looked at his sister with an expression of disbelief. "You can't seriously be thinking of taking off with her."
"Just because she's deranged doesn't mean she's wrong," Harper explained.
"True," Duella added.
"Staying in Gotham is suicide," Harper continued.
"Also true."
"I'm so tired of running," Cullen said. "First from Dad, now from this."
"Yeah?" Harper asked. "A six-by-nine cell in Blackgate will fix that. But they'll probably just skip straight to a coffin! And that's a lot less roomy."
"Do you even care about what happens to Stephanie?" Cullen demanded.
"Not particularly," Duella began before Cullen raised his hand to cut her off.
"No one's talking to you," he said.
"I care about what happens to you," Harper said emphatically.
Cullen shook his head. "If that were true, you wouldn't be asking me to run."
"Cullen, what?" Harper asked in shock.
"I wanna stay and clear my name, not only because, you know, I chose the damn thing, but because it's finally my choice," Cullen declared. "You want to go with her, then go. You've both got problems with Stephanie that I frankly don't understand. But I'm staying for Stephanie."
He looked forward and nodded before adding: "And for me."
Stephanie packed all of the weapons and the rest of the journals into her sack before looking through the first journal again. The young Bruce Wayne, she found, had been obsessed with the Court of Owls and blamed the shadowy group for the deaths of many of his ancestors.
"I memorized the entire geography of Gotham," she read, "every building, every street corner, every alleyway. I have scoured the city from north to south, east to west, searching for the court's meeting-places and hide-outs. But the only conclusion I can draw from my searches is this: The Court of Owls is a fairytale, no more than a nursery rhyme made up to scare children like me. The only thing which was real was my obsession with them."
"Despite this, I remain convinced that the court is real and was behind the deaths of my parents and my great-great grandfather Alan Wayne. The Court has made mistakes in the past which have led me to conclude that they must be real. They appear to be more cautious now, but I will wait for them to make another mistake. If necessary, I will force them out into the open. And then, I will have my revenge."
Stephanie shut the journal angrily.
Harper's laptop began to beep continuously, causing her to turn from her brother to the screen, where the green symbols by each of the camera feeds turned red.
"Uh, what's that?" Duella asked.
"Security alert," Harper responded. She pulled out the phone Stephanie had given her and auto-dialed the first number saved to the phone.
In the office, Stephanie was startled by the sudden ringing of her phone and took a moment to place the last journal in her sack before answering.
She heard Harper's voice on the other end. "All the security cameras in the building just went offline."
"Really?" Stephanie asked. "I'm impressed. How'd you even do that?"
"I didn't," Harper responded. "And I don't think security did either, because they just sent out an alert to the GCPD of a possible intrusion."
Another alarm went off on her laptop. "And now the motion sensors are going off on your floor."
"Is it security?" Stephanie asked, looking with alarm at the door to the office.
"No. There's no security on the top floor yet."
"Understood," Stephanie said. She put the phone in her pocket and bent down to pick up her sack. She had barely turned to leave when the office door opened, making her freeze in place.
The figure which stood in the doorway was straight out of stories told to misbehaving children. It was covered from head to toe in a black outfit that appeared weathered from many years of use. Its mask featured golden ridges on its brow that sloped upwards like the crests above an owl's eyes. Its own eyes were covered by a pair of dark goggle lenses. On its back was sheathed a large sword, and on a sash across its torso were kept many knives and daggers of various sizes.
Stephanie hoped that her ski mask hid enough of her face to conceal how white her skin had gone from this newcomer. "You must be the Talon," she said with all the false confidence she could muster. "I admit, I didn't expect to see you return to the scene of the crime. I love me my cliches, but I thought you'd be above that."
The masked man continued to stand there silently.
"A man of few words, huh? That's going to make banter a little difficult. Do you mind if I call you Tally?"
Alarms began to sound outside the car, causing Harper, Cullen, and Duella to look around them.
Harper picked up the phone again. "Hey, what's going on?"
Stephanie slowly reached for the phone in her pocket at the sound of the voice faintly coming from it. "I think I just met the Talon," she said robotically into the phone.
"Security is on their way up to you and GCPD's already inbound!" Harper yelled. "You need to get out of the building now!"
"You go. I'll meet up with you later," Stephanie replied, hanging up the phone. Her eyes were fixed on the Talon the entire time. "You're much more polite than expected, letting me talk on the phone like that. Why is that?"
"We gotta go help her," Duella said. The Row siblings looked at each other and nodded. All three of them opened their car doors at almost exactly the same time, but as the Rows began to run towards the elevator Stephanie had used, Duella took Cullen's place in the driver's seat and started the engine.
The Rows turned back to her.
"Duella, no!" Cullen yelled.
"Your junior vigilante's about to become the meat in a cop-Talon sandwich!" Duella yelled back. "This is your last chance to stay alive!"
Cullen turned to his sister. "You can go with her if you want."
"Now without you," Harper responded.
"Duella," Cullen said, "You can't do this. You can't just abandon her!"
"Why not, Cullen? Everyone abandoned me! Enough times for me to know that no one would ever come save me."
Duella put the car into drive and drove off.
With her gone, along with their only means of escape, they turned their attention back to the elevator.
"Were you watching when Stephanie entered the code?" Cullen asked.
"I sure was," Harper responded.
"You're not drawing your sword," Stephanie observed as the Talon continued to stand menacingly in the doorway. "You didn't expect to find me here, and now you don't know what to do."
"Is it because you don't kill people unless you have orders to do so," she wondered, "or because you know who I am and have orders not to kill me?"
The elevator arrived, bringing with it no chime like normal elevators that were not meant to allow vigilantes to sneak in undetected. But there was no mistaking the voices that emerged when the elevator doors opened.
Both Stephanie and the Talon turned their heads towards the new sound, Stephanie mouthing 'oh shit' to herself. She looked at the Talon from the corner of her eye. He was starting to lean in the direction of the other room and reach for the sword sheathed on his back.
Stephanie bolted, slinging her sack over her shoulder as she ran into the other room. A split second later, the Talon began to move as well, crossing the room with astonishing speed. It was only the combination of her moving first and being closer to the doors that allowed her to reach and close them before the Talon.
The Talon immediately began banging on the doors, attempting to break them down. Fortunately, Bruce Wayne was not one to cheap out on his doors, and the wooden structures withstood the pounding with Stephanie bracing against them with all her strength.
"Gimme those swords!" she yelled, gesturing with her head toward a set of antique swords displayed on one of the walls. Cullen and Harper each grabbed a sword and handed them to Stephanie, who slid them through the door handles, ensuring they could not be opened from the other side.
"Time to go," she said, beginning to move towards the elevator.
"Can't go that way," Harper said. "Our ride's gone, and with it, our only way past security."
"And we definitely can't go this way," Cullen added as the Talon banged on the doors again. "Looks like we're trapped."
Stephanie tore the plastic coverings off the broken window. "There's one way."
"How?" Cullen asked. "Are we supposed to climb?"
"No," Stephanie replied, reaching into her sack, "we fly."
She held up the grappling gun and pressed the trigger. A cable shot out of one end and latched into the back wall. A second, longer cable shot out of the other end and passed through the window, over the building across the street, and latched onto the roof of the building the next block over.
"Have you ever used that thing before?" Cullen asked.
"Don't answer that," Harper said.
The Talon's sword burst through one of the doors as he tired of attempting to knock them down.
"No choice," Stephanie said, "don't let go, and don't look down."
The grappling gun came with handles to allow multiple people to use it. Cullen went first, followed by Harper. It was like using a zip line, only for far longer, much higher up, and without any of the safety features a zip line for tourists would have.
They built up a lot of speed as they descended over the city, enough that when they finally landed on the roof two streets over, they could not keep their footing and stumbled forward, falling on their faces.
Stephanie came last, holding onto the body of the grappling gun itself rather than one of the handles. She faired no better upon landing than the Rows had, but she recovered and rose to her feet quicker than they did. A press of a button on the grappling gun made the cables de-latch from the office wall and roof and retract. The gun pulled the cable back at a speed faster than gravity, preventing it from touching the ground or the building they had passed over. The Talon would not be following them.
They all breathed a sigh of relief. Cullen actually started laughing after their narrow escape, with Harper soon joining him. Stephanie smiled for a moment before her expression turned grim.
"Where's Duella?" she asked.
In a seedy party of town, a Wayne security car pulled up to an antique pawn shop, and Duella stepped out. She found the door to the pawn shop unlocked and entered the building.
She was surrounded by old furniture, lamps, chairs and cabinets from the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the back of an aisle of these antiques, she found the dealer hunched over his desk, tinkering with an old clock.
"Hm-mm."
The dealer turned around. He was in his sixties and bald, though his goatee was as blonde as it had ever been.
Duella produced the statue from her coat. "As advertised, a genuine Paige Bradley. 17 inches, bronze. Not quite an antique, but it's from the personal collection of the late Bruce Wayne, which should make it worth even more."
The dealer took the statue from her hands and examined it. "Indeed it does. That has certainly made it more sought-after."
"What do you mean, sought-after?" Duella asked.
"When I called around to ascertain the value, there was one potential buyer who was quite interested in anything which was owned by Bruce Wayne. Willing to pay a fortune, and willing to pay even more for the person selling it."
He pulled out a gun and pointed it directly at Duella's face. Duella laughed nervously.
"Please tell me you are not that stupid," she said.
"It's unwise to insult the person holding the gun," he said with amusement.
She leaned forward, putting herself even closer to the barrel of the gun. "Considering what's coming, I'd rather be shot. You have no idea who you're dealing with."
"Frankly, I don't care. At this price point, I don't ask questions."
Duella's retort died in her throat as a sword appeared out of the dealer's gut. Duella was nearly impaled in the same motion, and only stumbling back in shock saved her from the dealer's fate.
The sword receded and the dealer fell to the ground dead, revealing the Talon standing behind him.
Duella ran faster than she ever had, out of the shop and back to the car. She had barely shut the door when she looked up to see the Talon standing in front of the car. She had not heard any sound of him following her.
The Talon plunged his sword into the front hood, piercing the engine and rendering the vehicle inoperable. He walked around the front of the car and slashed at the driver's window, making Duella yelp and flinch. But the glass of Wayne security vehicles was bulletproof and too strong for a man with a sword to break, and he gave up after two attempts.
Duella began to laugh, thinking she was safe inside the car, but the Talon looked across the vehicle and walked to the back, where he stabbed the gas tank, causing the fuel to spill out onto the ground.
"No-no-no-no-no-no," Duella said frantically, realizing what his plan was. Using his sword to create sparks on the ground, the Talon set the leaking gas on fire. The car was quickly engulfed in flames, with Duella inside.
She tried to open the door, but the metal door handle was already so hot that it burned her hand. She began to cough as smoke and fumes filled the car as the Talon watched.
A batarang struck the Talon in the shoulder, embedding itself in his costume. He did not flinch or make a sound. He merely pulled the weapon from the material protecting his shoulder and tilted his head in confusion as he examined it.
A large mass of purple appeared as Spoiler leapt at him in full costume, her cape expanding behind her as she swung her bo staff at the Talon. The assassin blocked the blow with his sword with ease and stared at Spoiler through the emotionless eyes of his goggles.
The Talon kicked Spoiler in the stomach, knocking her to the ground and into the flames. She dropped her staff and quickly removed her cape and hood as she rose, letting them be consumed by the fire.
As this was happening, Cullen and Harper ran up to the car. Harper looked at Duella with disgust as the other girl yelled: "Hey! Get me out of here!"
Harper wrapped her hand in a sweater and used it to open the driver's seat door without burning herself. Cullen then reached into the vehicle and pulled Duella out.
In front of them, Spoiler had regained her staff and was holding it in a defensive position, turning to and fro in search of their attacker, but there was no sign of him. After striking her, the Talon had fled.
The others stared at her. Without her hood and cape, Spoiler looked much smaller and less imposing than she had the night she'd saved them from Ford.
Finally, she lowered her staff and turned to them. "Let's get out of here."
Back in the belfry, Cullen was applying gauze bandages to Duella's burned hand.
"Thanks," she said.
"Just change it every twelve hours," Cullen replied without emotion.
"No," Duella corrected, "I meant, for coming back for me."
"Don't thank us," Harper said. "If we'd have gone with you, all three of us would be dead."
"And if were up to us," Cullen added, "we'd have left your ass. If you want to thank someone, thank her."
Stephanie stood in front of the bathroom sink, staring into the mirror, grimacing. She lifted her shirt to examine the black and blue blotch where she had been kicked. Once the adrenaline had worn off, she really began to feel that hit.
"That was pretty stupid, you know?" Duella said from the doorway. Stephanie put her shirt down quickly. "Did you really think you could beat the Talon one-on-one after he killed Batman?"
"I didn't," Stephanie admitted. "But I confirmed what I was suspecting. The Talon has specific orders not to kill Spoiler."
"Is there always another motive with you?"
"No," Stephanie said softly. "I'd just feel pretty shitty if someone still died after I'd already saved them."
"You may be a criminal, but that doesn't mean your life is worthless," she said as she walked past Duella.
Harvey once again stood at the scene of Bruce Wayne's murder, staring at the window from which he was thrown. This time, Commissioner Soto was with him.
"The system says that they accessed the building using Bruce Wayne's personal code," Soto said.
"How would they even know that?" Harvey wondered.
"No idea, probably the same way they knew Bruce Wayne was Batman."
"What was taken," he asked.
"According to the inventory we received, just one sword from that wall."
Harvey looked at her in confusion. "Why risk coming back for a sword?"
"I don't know, but you might want to ask the antiquities dealer we found impaled by one."
Mayor Hill poured himself a glass of wine as he considered the woman standing in front of his fireplace in his mansion, gazing at the flames with her back to him.
"They watch you at your hearth," he said jokingly.
The woman turned around, revealing herself to be Cressida Clarke. "I'm merely the messenger."
"Well, I could have saved you the trip," Hill said. "Please let the court know that I'm as unhappy with the hunt for the Joker's Daughter and her accomplices as they are. You can assure them that apprehending these fugitives is my top priority."
"However," he added, "the hunt would go a lot smoother if you gave me some actual information on this purple-costumed freak who helped them escape the first time or let me tell the police that he even exists."
"She, actually," Clarke corrected him. "I'm afraid that's all I know myself, besides this: You never, ever question the court's reasons."
"Fair enough," Hill said as he finished his wine. "Was there anything else?"
"There is, actually. The mutant gang is becoming a nuisance and must be dealt with before the situation escalates any further."
"So you want two miracles from me."
Clarke stepped forward. "Have you forgotten your debt of gratitude?" she asked in a threatening manner.
Hill realized that he had overstepped and sook his head. "Of course I haven't. Just ensure that I'm reelected so I can continue to repay it, starting with those mutant thugs."
Clarke smiled and nodded as she stepped past the mayor.
Hill looked at the fire in his hearth and scowled. When he was first elected mayor after the mysterious death of the opposing candidate, he knew that the office would not make him the greatest power in Gotham. There were two forces greater than he could ever be in the city. The removal of one of those forces, Batman, should have given him more room to wield the power of the mayoralty, but if anything, he had less room than ever in which to act or even to think for himself.
"Speak not a whispered word of them," he told the flames.