Batman Inc. #0

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BATMAN INC.
Issue #0: "Locked Room"
Written by Fantomas (Includes scenes adapted from Batman #0, written by Charles HoM, and Detective Comics #45, written by Alex Vasquez)
Cover by Joe Jarin
Variant Covers by Fantomas
Edited by Mark Bowers

MANY YEARS AGO
[ADAPTED FROM THE PAGES OF BATMAN #0]

It was in a locked room that Bruce Wayne sat staring at a stone bust of his father, Thomas Wayne, and felt his precious blood slip away in a pool over the wooden floorboards.

A locked room in a stately mansion, a man bleeding out.

And then everything was shattered by the Bat.

He takes a deep breath.

Standing atop the pit, wind rushing around him, the thick black cape billowing behind his back.

He stands, silent, waiting.

“No time like the present...” He takes out the grapnel, swings it round hard, again and again, gains momentum, releases…and watches as it flies over the chasm until it connects with the other side.

He takes another deep breath, prepares himself… and he makes the first jump, the line taking his weight, he feel weightless, as though flying… and he swings over the abyss that is Gotham City.

The cape flies through the air, slowing him slightly, but he still flies. He strains his arms, releases the grapnel and rolls onto the building, dragging the line as he goes. He looks up, and sees it start to rain. Perfect. The rain from the heavens… baptizing him into this new life he has chosen.

He smiles.

The uniform is perfect, just like he planned it. The Bat. He is The Bat.

PRESENT DAY

“The Moth to a Flame Gang are directly below you now, sir.”

“Thanks, Alfred,” Bruce grunted, flicking a switch on the flashing dashboard of the Batjet's tight-locked cockpit. Through the mirrored nano-fibre gel screen, Gotham lay waiting below him, its concrete towers, glass skyscrapers and surreal, Gothic spires all bathed in a familiar, perpetual neon glow. There was a blurring of the shimmering-gel cockpit as the Batjet's on-board optical computer system updated its zoom function. Bruce watched in high-focus as a series of fiery blasts tore into the side of the towering Madison Industries building complex. Reaching out, he tapped his finger on the gel screen three times, highlighting the winged figures that circled looping about the rising smoke.

“Batjet, auto-pilot routine DROPBAT 002. Upload surveillance footage of marked kinetic targets to cowl-optics. And give me UTILITY 47-I.”

The ultra-slim black scramjet swung around in the murky gloom of Gotham's night sky. Within its central, reinforced cockpit, Bruce's flat-backed seat began to lower beneath the dashboard, and slid into a hidden dark recess. He lay still for a second, before the words UTILITY 47-I glowed in small, bright letter in the darkness.

There was a whirring sound as Bruce's suit was peeled off and hidden away. The automated robotic limbs continued to whir as they sprayed Bruce's body with a thin layer of translucent orange anti-inertia aerogel.

“Alfred, send out the signal. The Bat is back in Gotham, and he wants the Family ready for briefing on a new mission statement in ten minutes.”

Mechanical arms fixed light grey Nomex around his chest, arms and legs, and Bruce felt the cold metal of the electronic web beneath the fabric fit itself to his skin, where it could monitor his heart rate, body temperature and respiratory rate. Once the grey jumpsuit was in place, it settled as the inner layer of liquid Kevlar moulded itself to his frame.

Clipped into place on his shoulders came his black para-cape, a modified sky-diving version of his usual cape. Over his hands scalloped gauntlets were clasped, a multitude of micro-electric receptors built in that operated, through manipulating his hands into pre-set gestures, a range of systems throughout the suit. Combat boots emerged from another compartment and were fitted and tightened on his feet.

“Ten minutes? Sir, the Moth to a Flame Gang...”

A dulled yellow belt was strapped about his waist, and a rotating carousel built into the recess fitted blocky utility pockets about its circumference, each pocket carefully selected by the programmed subroutine.

“Is strictly C-list. And I'm testing out strictly A grade toys here.”

Bruce heard the soft hiss as the final piece of his armament was released, the black cowl lowering over his face.

He closed his eyes in the dark, and opened them to illumination.
“Co-ordinate DROPBAT para-cape procedure with marked targets,” he said, the crunched gravel growl of his voice signalling that it was no longer Bruce who watched with narrowed gaze the costumed criminals that circled 50,000 feet below. “Drop.”

The recess swung open and the Batman spiralled downwards, his para-cape closed into a streamlined bullet, the Bat diving from his nest down, down towards the city.

Batman felt the embrace of chilled moisture dash across his face as he plunged through the clouds even through the modified sky-diving cowl. He braced himself, allowing the para-cape's carbon-fibre skeleton to keep his body straight as he spiralled. Beneath the cape, he made sure his hands were kept close to the utility pockets at three and nine o'clock on his belt, and behind multi-layered filament lenses his cool blue eyes ran over the rushing flood of uploading data, the three flying figures of the Moth to a Flame Gang below all lit up and marked by the Batjet's sophisticated radar system – his eyes in the sky. The calculations required for a stunt like this were astronomical, the physics of the fall combined with the technology of the weaponry he was about to field, as well as the biology of muscular limitation and potential of Bruce's own body. Computer systems spread throughout his suit provided the raw data from a wealth of receptive sensors, constantly monitoring, while algorithms ran, projecting hypothetical kinetic projections played as overlays across his vision.

Bursting through the final layer of murky cloud, the Batman shot down alongside the tall concrete tower of Madison Industries, rippling the burning column of smoke and smog that the explosions had torn into the lower levels.

There was a flashing signal in his lenses, and he moved. With a touch, the utility pockets opened and his fingers drew rounded capsules. Twisting, he flung his arms out, the para-cape bursting open, billowing and then stiffening, frozen as the jagged wingspan of the bat as the Batman soared onwards towards the city streets.

Killer Moth, Firefly and Firebug, hovering on heavy mechanical wings around the open front of the tower building, had seconds to register the dark shape that shot down past them. The quickest among them might have seen the rounded capsules that had burst out like a cloud as the shape passed, flying out and fixing themselves to the hovering villains' chests. None reacted quickly enough before the capsules flashed blue and all three of the Moth to a Flame Gang were lit up with suppressive electric charges.

The Batman landed, his cape whipping about behind him, hitting the rooftop and rolling. He didn't need to turn back to see the frazzled figures fall from the sky, landing heavily in police netting.

He curled his left index finger until the tip touched the base of the metacarpus.



“They're done. Have the Batjet continue high-altitude surveillance.”

“That might be your fastest take-down yet, sir. Certainly your most expensive. It seems your holiday did you good.”

“We'll discuss it at the cave, Alfred. With what comes next, I thought a little demonstration wouldn't go amiss.”

PARIS, DAY THIRTEEN OF THE MONTH AWAY

The optical lenses flickered, and zoomed in on the car as its engine screamed, pulled into a sharp turn off the road and crashed down into a tight and winding alley.

Panning back, the lenses took up new focus, tracking a leaping figure in grey and black as he worked his way in pursuit, swinging briefly from an overhanging washing line to find purchase on a window ledge, resting only on his fingertips before springing from the wall down onto the rooftop of a speeding bus. The figure ran the length of the bus before jumping again, catching a high wall and throwing himself over.

The Batman let the optical lenses zoom out. He scanned the city chase unfolding before him, and allowed himself a small smile. The free-running figure in the grey and black was good. He knew the terrain, had a clear run through one of the many construction sites that seemed to be rising up in this arrondissement that would – if he kept his pace – catch the escaping car where the alleys got too narrow to drive any more.

He was right. The car had skidded to a halt just as the free-runner scaled the last of the construction site's maze of girders. The car's passengers opened doors and leant out, toting machine guns, as the driver desperately forced the car into reverse.

Batman moved his hand to his belt. These were mobsters. Old school, dressed in suits and with slouch caps. Corsican mafioso. A particularly nasty brand of gangsterism that had its links in Gotham. Most of the heroin trade that ran through Gotham docks could be traced back to the dangerous thugs here in Paris, or in Marseilles.

The mobsters stood, leaning out of the car, spraying gunfire wildly. Sparks flew from the girders of the construction site, the tell-tale zipping of the ricochet registering repeatedly on the cowl's listening vanes.

The free-runner had dropped down into the interior of the construction site, putting shadows, steel and brick between himself and the gunmen. Batman watched, making estimations. The free-runner was young, in his early twenties. He had a reputation in the commune of Clichy-Sous-Bois, and Clichy-Sous-Bois was an urban sprawl where a reputation meant something. His work crime-fighting was severely under-funded – he wore a short-sleeved grey tee-shirt and mask with black cargo pants – and lacked diversity – parkour was an asset, but his fighting was limited to an eclectic and spirited blend of musangwe, an African bare-knuckle boxing form, French savate and Korean hapki-do. But still. The free-runner could be matched to witness reports charting a nightly patrol every night going back eight months. He worked cases that the French police wouldn't dirty their hands with, in a community that struggled with long-term social troubles.

The car swerved in its reverse, the driver thrown through his door as the free-runner re-emerged, having dragged himself down, through the shadows and mud of the site, scraping under wire fencing, and springing into the front seat of the car, propelling himself forward fists first.

Batman approved. The free-runner had got the mobsters in close, and by surprise. They expected a vigilante to swing above them, but the free-runner wasn't afraid to crawl on the ground, to work the fight in the cramped close-quarters of a crowded car, where machine guns were too cumbersome to get level and where numbers only meant confusion and collective error.

This willingness to fight his enemy close and dirty was matched by his dedication to the long haul cases. Clichy-Sous-Bois was an urban hell, a community with a high proportion of Sunni Muslims of Algerian, Kahndaqian and Maghrebi descent in a city that worked against them. A disillusioned youth ruled the suburbs, where the only employment chances came from the Corsican drug networks.

The free-runner kept out the mafia's enforcers, like those in the fleeing car, when they came into Clichy-Sous-Bois – not high level men in the trade, but it was an earnest start – and he kept the product from the recruited youth of the banlieues. It was a mission that would go on as a cycle unbroken, a war the free-runner could never win – but he hadn't given up yet. He cared about the victims, the people caught up in the cycle.

The gunmen in the back of the car slid out, hitting the cobblestones. The lenses refocused, capturing the free-runner's masked face as he sat breathless beside the unconscious mobsters. He didn't kill. Didn't use guns.

The free-runner was promising. If Bruce hadn't had the money, hadn't had the headstart...had been born in Gotham's housing projects, and not in a manor...he hoped he could say that he would have become something not so different to the vigilante he watched now.

Batman had done his detective work. The free-runner's name was Bilal Asselah. A Sunni Muslim born and raised in Clichy. He had lost friends to the violence of the riots that had torn the suburbs of Paris apart, had been faced with the prospect of a life fighting the law, fighting for anger, fighting because there was no chances, no hopes for anything other.

Had lived in a city on the precipice of chaos, had lived with nothing and refused the violence of hate. Had channelled his disillusionment into climbing, into running, had turned the city where doors were closed to him into an unlimited, unrestricted unfettered freedom.

Bilal had been given a name by the wary citizens of Clichy-Sous-Bois.

Nightrunner. The Dark Athlete.

Batman watched as the Nightrunner bound the mobster's hands with cheap plastic cord, and then as he ran the height of a brick wall and went running off, into the night.

PRESENT DAY

“Where have you been, Bruce?”

Bruce Wayne stood, his cowl pushed back and his brilliant blue eyes matching those of his adopted son and ally, Dick Grayson.

“Away. Far away at times,” Bruce answered, tapping keys on the Batcomputer and calling up illuminated stills from his cowl-optics. A young man with tan complexion, calm dark eyes and a shaven head appeared, caught in the act of pulling on a grey mask.

Dick leant against the wall-mounted super-computer and rapped his knuckles on the screen. “Who's the mask?”

“Nightrunner. French vigilante. Where's Tim?”

“On his way. Got caught up in the sewers. He's been working hard to cover your absence. We all have.”

Bruce grimaced, imperceptibly. “I know. That's partially what this is all about.”

The bats high above in the cavernous rocky lair were returning with the flapping of leathery wings and high-pitched shrieks as they vied for purchase among the stalactites.

“A month ago...before I left...something went off in my head. A warning, one of instinct and precognition. Something years ago I would have dismissed as nothing, but Gotham has revealed more devils, impossible crimes and monstrous mysticism to me than seems real or possible – the supernatural is a factor and a clue to be analysed like any other now.”

Bruce continued to switch through stills of caught footage, crime-fighters in various strange locales and attires, some verging on the surreal. A martial artist in a domino mask, a knight riding a motorcycle, a Native American chieftain with a hunting rifle and run-down Jeep, a jetpack-wearing gunman firing sonic blasts in the outback.

“My oldest enemy is coming for me. I know this without knowing how. Gotham city seemed to be telling me, warning me. My oldest enemy is coming for me.”

Dick straightened up, and shifted with uncharacteristic unease. “Your oldest enemy? You're greying at the temples, Bruce, and with what happened to you last year...doesn't it seem conceivable that your oldest enemy is Time? That this could be about your... mortality?”

“I 'died', Dick. That happened,” Bruce said, bluntly. “I died, or at least had to appear to die, and I left you with a mission that I had made so personal to me, a mission statement that had been integrated into my being. It was not the right thing to do. I like to have contingencies for every outcome. I need to have contingencies for every outcome. But the continuation of the Bat as a symbol beyond myself was something I did not plan well enough.”

“Bruce, you trained me, I don't blame you for...”

“I asked you to be me when I died. Not the symbol. Me, with all the darkness and personality that comes with a personal vengeance that has gone on too long.”

Dick frowned. “Wait. Too long?”

“My oldest enemy is coming for me. A thought that caught and stuck. A thought that drove me to take a trip across the world. A thought that spurred me to new kinds of self-improvement, self-exploration. Finding the strands of a net across the globe that can be pulled together.”

“I'm not following, Bruce. What about the mission?”

“The mission,” Bruce smiled, “is no longer that of the Batman and his personal vendetta against crime. This mission is the next stage, the mission in maturity. The symbol of the Bat carried by agents of justice worldwide, no longer driven by the pain of an orphan but by the will and humanity of good people.”

Bruce tapped a key, and the screen shifted. A globe, rotating in lucid blue, began to light up with yellow ovals. Bat-signals, dotting an array of countries, an array of cultures.

The words BATMAN INCORPORATED lit up in the Atlantic, surrounded by a glowing yellow beacon.

“From now on we are a global operation, Dick. My oldest enemy is coming for me. You are right, in a way. This is about my mortality. The Bat is a symbol that must endure, and to endure it must mature and evolve. I've chosen the first wave of an incorporated enterprise of crime-fighting, national interpretations of the Bat. We will carry the standard of the Bat across the world, and we will hone the symbol beyond vengeance and anger into something pure enough to endure on forever. I've called a press conference for Bruce Wayne to announce his financial and political support for this Batman Incorporated venture in the morning.”

Dick stared. “Bruce...there have been times when people say we don't get along. People – and I'm including you in this - that think the Bat is a lone hero. You really think that the symbol is something that can be shared, grown across a team of this size?”

Bruce turned and grasped Dick's shoulder. “Do you?”

LONDON, DAY TEN OF THE MONTH AWAY

Golden shafts of light fell through into the oak-panelled reception of the Costumed Gentlemen's Club, giving the stately room a rosy auburn quality.

Bruce Wayne, shaking off the flashing cameras from the street outside, crossed the marble floor. He lowered his shades for a moment, and handed a slim black card across the desk. A masked receptionist took it, nodded, and returned it.

“The Earl is in the Cavalry Room, Mister Wayne.”

“Thank you.”

Outside the sonorous tolling of Big Ben could be heard.

Passing through a gallery of costumed mannequins in glass cabinets, Bruce came to a discrete white door labelled 'THE CAVALRY ROOM'. He waited a moment, reflexively noting the array of hidden wave scanners that were rigged into the framework of the door, and then pushed the handle and walked in.

The room was dark, the windows covered by heavy curtains. The flickering orange glow of the fireplace was all that illuminated the figure in the high-backed chair and the piles of books that surrounded him. From a gramophone somewhere in the shadows, Elgar played. Bruce closed the door and took the other chair.

The figure in the chair appeared to read another couple of pages from the book open in his hands, and then looked up and smiled.

“The scanner couldn't register you. How did you do that?”

“I don't just wire my bat-suit with stealth tech. How are you, Cyril?”

Cyril Sheldrake closed his book, and, with a gesture, Elgar began to fade. “Fine. About the only time I get to read and listen to good music without Beryl getting on my case. Kid sidekicks have no appreciation for traditional leisure.”

Bruce grinned. “Tim can play Elgar's cello work more than competently. And Waugh is one of Dick's favourites.”

Cyril laughed. “Some people get all the luck. It's nice to see you at the club.”

“Bruce Wayne is on a world tour. How could he miss his favourite English peer on a visit to London?”

Cyril put the book to one side and stretched. He was younger than Bruce, by a good decade or more, with a rugby player's broad build and a blond cropped military cut to his hair.

“So what's this world tour about? I hear you've had Dick filling in for you in Gotham. Last time he had to do that you were playing dead.”

“I'm not playing dead this time. Quite the opposite. I'm recruiting.”

“Recruiting? Wayne Corp. hasn't got enough suits?”

“Different enterprise, different kind of suit.”

“Ah, this is about the cowl.”

“I'm here because I want the Knight in Batman Incorporated. You'll get official funding and recognition, and access to a network of heroes across the globe.”

Cyril hesitated. “Bruce, when I first wore the tights, so to speak, you were some kind of legend to me. You were the man dressed in shadows whose adventures my dad read to me from newspaper clippings. I know we seemed like a quaint English tribute act to what you were doing in Gotham, I know a lot of people never took us seriously, no matter how much we achieved here. But you always treated us with nothing but respect. You treated us as peers, even as friends. And when I took up my dad's mantle, you were there to help me define myself as a new hero.”

“I never thought of you – or your father – as anything other than heroes whose track-record spoke for itself. When Bruce Wayne announces his financial affiliation with Batman Incorporated, I want the Knight and his Squire held up as perfect examples of established heroes adding their name and contribution to the worldwide war on crime.”

Cyril smiled, and nodded. “You have the Knight, and Beryl will be head over heels with the idea.”

LAST YEAR
[ADAPTED FROM THE PAGES OF DETECTIVE COMICS #45]

“Dick, I’ve told you many times I was very pleased with your work during my absence. You exceeded all of my expectations,” Bruce said as he stood up, holding a box.

“Well, I was trained by the best.”

“You more than earned this,” he said, handing him the box.

“What’s this?” Dick asked, taking the box from him and opening it. It was a bat-suit, a newer version of the one he had been wearing. “Bruce… what’s this about?”

“The one you’ve been using has seen better days. This one is updated with the latest technology and lightweight Kevlar fabrics. I’ve lightened the cape as much as possible without compromising its usefulness. I know how much you hate them.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Dick said as he sifted though the box. He looked at Bruce. “Bruce, I mean, I know there’s a bunch of Lanterns, Flashes and Arrow people out there, but there can really be only one…”

“Dick, you’ve proven yourself over the past year to be just as capable as I am in the suit, and ultimately that’s what it is. Whether you're Robin, Nightwing, or Batman, or in Gotham, New York or someplace else, it’s the determination, relentlessness, dedication and bravery of who’s in the suit that defines it and makes a difference in this world. And there’s not many in this world that make a bigger difference in it than you.”

“Bruce…thanks…that meant a lot.” Dick looked down, trying to hold back a tear. “Honestly, the last couple of days I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to miss wearing this outfit…I mean I want to, but now that you're back…I just think I need to live some of my old life for a while. I need to start this next phase of my life for me and get myself straightened out before I can put this on again.”

“I understand. You’ve earned that too. Keep it for when you’re ready for it.”

“Thanks, Bruce, for everything.” Dick extended his hand.

“No,” Bruce took his hand and shook it. “Thank you.”

PRESENT DAY

The two caped figures sprang across the rooftops, framed by the soft neon glow of the Gotham night sky.

“I only wore this bat-suit again to cover for your month away. Are you sure Gotham needs two Batmen tonight?”

“It would add weight to the press conference tomorrow,” Bruce said, punching out a fist and launching a grapnel hook out into the night, “but I'm not forcing you back into the cowl. You've worked hard to establish Nightwing.”

“I don't mind it,” Dick added, quickly. “There's something liberating about playing a Batman that isn't meant to replace you. I get to add more of my own flair to the role.”

“You can...play...Batman,” Bruce grated the word, “on Incorporated assignments and Nightwing in your regular work. Between us we can ensure that Gotham is never without a Batman, even if I'm on international cases.”

The two Batmen scaled the granite side of the Gotham Museum of Antiquities, and swung themselves into the shadowed lee of rooftop beneath the towering statue of Orion that straddled the museum's façade.

Crouched in the darkness, they both surveyed the street below, their cowl-optics adjusting and zooming in.

“I think I'd enjoy that,” Dick grinned.

“I've gone over your casework. The Mad Hatter take-down was fast, but you failed to follow every trail. Someone in the Wonderland Gang is still fugitive.”

Dick frowned. “Mad Hatter, the Tweed Brothers, Walrus and Carpenter...March Hare, Unicorn and Lion were already in Blackgate. There were some five hired muscles, no-one special.”

“There was another player in Hatter's game. Tetch even gave you clues. You didn't note it down, but your cowl's audio log recorded Tetch submitting himself to the 'golden scales' of justice after you defused his bomb. And when you and Tim broke into his maze hideout, he said he 'welcomes the little fishes in' to draw you both into the concealed water trap his henchmen had set out. He repeats the scales reference and promises to 'improve his shining tale' later in the statements he gave to the press on his way to court.”

“Literary reference,” Dick sighed. “I didn't have the Batcomputer go over the audio feed with the usual algorithms. Let's see, it's got to be Carroll...”

“How Doth the Little Crocodile,” Bruce said. “It's a poem that Alice herself recites.”

The two Batmen – the one heavy-set, wreathed in black, the other lithe and cloaked in blue – swung out from their post, resuming their city patrol.

“So Hatter recruited Killer Croc for a job. Great. Tetch is smart with how he distributes his funds, so the fact that his paymaster is in Arkham right now might not stop this job from going ahead.”

Commissioner Jim Gordon relit his pipe, taking care to pocket the spent match rather than add to the layout of forensic tape and outlines that already covered the grubby apartment floor.

“Skell's name is Charlie Dodgson. Vagrant, has a record filled with petty crimes, mostly just to trade his cardboard box for a police cell in the winter.”

Across the cramped room, the two Batmen crouched over the mangled body. Windowless, the limp grey paint on the walls peeling, unfurnished aside from a heavily-chipped wooden closet and a broken-down wiry bed frame, the room was typical of the living spaces that filled the Lower East Side, one of Gotham's slum-districts.

There was only one door, which let in a cold draft from the graffitti-covered stairwell beyond, the wooden panel in the corner closest to the handle smashed open.

“Dodgson,” Bruce said, using a scalpel to peel back a flap of the corpse's cheek. “That means you found...”

“One of the Hatter's tags,” Dick said, quickly.

Jim pulled a plastic bag from his briefcase and handed it to Bruce. “I won't ask how you knew that.”

“There are pin-prick lacerations that follow the outline of a square at the back of the neck, a common indicator of Tetch's mind-controlling tags having been sewn into place,” Bruce answered.

“And Lewis Carroll was only the pseudonym for one Charles Dodgson. Tetch has a theme to follow,” Dick added.

The GCPD commissioner puffed thoughtfully on his pipe for a moment as the two Batmen worked their way around the corpse.

Looking up, Dick broke the silence. “So when are you going to ask about there being two of us?”

Jim chuckled. “Son, you never had me fooled to start with. I know the old Bat when I see him, and you are not him. You've done good work with the pointy ears, though, last year and more recently. So this doesn't surprise me, no.”

Dick paused, taken aback. Bruce examined the circuit-riddled tag in the evidence bag. He rose.

“Based on the maturation of the larvae growing in the body, time of death has to be within the last week. Cause of death is consistent with feral animal attacks, based on the nature of his wounds and the missing organs and areas of flesh. The way in which the blood has dried and settled suggests that the body parts still present have been disturbed and moved around vigorously after the moment of death. He probably didn't die here.”

“Right,” Jim said, chewing his pipe. “Only the place was locked from the inside when the body was found like this. The key was in the lock on this side, so the landlord couldn't open it up when people started to complain of the smell. He had to break the door in and reach in to unlock it while most of the other neighbours stood around watching.”

Bruce and Dick shared a look.

“Hatter usually uses vagrants under mind-control to deliver payments. The body fits Croc's MO.”

Without answering, Bruce opened up the wooden closet. Reaching into one of the large pouches on his belt, he drew out a thin torch. Twisting it until it shone a faint UV light, he ran it around the inside of the closet.

Dick stepped over to where Jim stood.

“Who rents the place?”

“A George Shaw is on the landlord's records, but we suspect it's a fake name. None of the neighbours can say for sure who lives here, and there are no financial statements or tax claims proving there is a George Shaw living anywhere in this neighbourhood.”

There was a scratching, and then the wooden backing to the closet came away in Bruce's hands, the nails holding it in place falling free and clinking on the floorboards. Behind it roughly hewn stone steps led downwards, into a darkly shadowed void.

“There is no George Shaw. This room is a drop-off for payments,” Bruce said, turning the UV light off and fitting it into his belt.

The three men stood around the dark stairs and peered downwards. A sudden draft from the broken door made Jim's pipe splutter, and he turned away to stoke it with short, sucking inhalations.

“Landlord's a real sketchy character, too. Name of Lazlo Valentin, has been suspect for a fair few disappearances in this building. Has these weird...ah, dammit.”

Turning back, the two Batmen had disappeared down the stairs.

*****

“Is it just me with the creeps?” Dick asked, his cowl-optics compensating for the darkness and painting a shaky green-lit picture of the narrow stone stairs as he descended them.

He and Bruce continued to silently tread along the stairs, winding down and around in sharp turns, the stairs obviously worked into the wall-spaces between apartment rooms in the tenement block.

“I'm joking, obviously it's just me.”

They went on until the staircase halted with a heavy steel trapdoor at the foot of the stairs. Long scratch marks had been clawed into the metal.

“So it wouldn't be insane to conclude that this is Croc's current lair, then?” Dick said, reaching down and bracing his hands against the hatch. “He has payments come to the apartment room, while he lives... in whatever is down there. Could lead down to the sewer, maybe. Always been a favourite haunt of his. So this time the courier comes – mind-controlled, if he died in the last week it fits the Hatter's crime-wave time-scale – and Croc takes the money and wastes him. Or the courier comes with the orders for a job and Croc kills him.”

Bruce didn't reply. Rather he drew out the small forensic light once more and ran it along the deep scratches cut into the hatch. Satisfied, he put away the torch. “Open it.”

Dick slammed his palms down and the steel trap gave, shunting open on thick hinges. Dick caught it as it began to swing down, noiselessly setting it to rest. With the confidence and ease of action that came with everything he did, Dick dropped himself silently into the darkness below. Bruce swung himself after him.

Dick was right. They had come down to a damp but unmoving section of the old Gilded-era sewer system. Rounded brickwork grew dimly-glowing lichen along a lengthy tunnel, which turned away into narrower turn-offs and drop-downs.

Moving to cover one another with a wordless, trained instinct, they surveyed either end of the tunnel. With an almost imperceptible movement, Bruce called up sewer schematics as an optical overlay. In a blink the system had found their location, and plotted out the tunnel workings in the immediate area over his vision.

They stood poised, allowing the sensitive listening vanes built into the ears of their cowls to work. As they both picked up on the same, low rumbling, Dick drew telescopic escrima batons from his compact golden utility belt.

“You'll have to synthesize new scent-deterrents for coating the bat-suits. Croc has adapted to the current strain,” Dick said, in a low hiss, as a roar shook the sewer tunnel.

“No,” Bruce gestured at the thick wash of brown sludge at his feet. Bright red was seeping into the darker flow, from a hefty mass of lumpy refuse.

Dick refocused his cowl-optics. “Meat. Human by the size of the bone.”

“It's what's drawing him.”

“But it isn't Dodgson's. This is much fresher. And it hasn't been sullied enough yet, it can't have been dropped longer than...an hour or so ago.”

“The landlord called the police in a half hour ago.”

Dick exhaled. “When you checked the hatch, those claw marks...”

“Cut into it by a screwdriver. Recently.”

The roaring came again, and a heavy pounding of long-clawed feet quickened, shaking the dust from the brickwork tunnel.

“Someone worked hard to make it look like Croc has been using that room as a drop-off. To make it look like Croc killed Dodgson, too,” Dick thought aloud.

“Gordon gave us our suspect, motive and method already,” Bruce prompted. “Piece it together.”

The dark mass of scaled hide that reared up from the sluggish sewage threw out muscle-bound arms that extended into ragged claws at the two caped detectives, bellowing and roaring hot spittle as he charged.

Bruce ducked down as Dick jumped up, launching himself from Bruce's back up and over Croc's reaching arms. He twisted his body into a perfect corkscrew through the narrow gap between the hulking monster's gnashing jaws and the curved ceiling of the tunnel, lashing out with his escrima sticks as he slipped by. The batons came down in neat arcs against the howling head, and then away again as Dick landed expertly behind Croc.

Bruce straightened and faced the raging behemoth as it towered twice his height, the flattened face winking yellow eyes at his in the darkness over a grinning maw of long, jagged teeth.

“Your optical filters working, Dick?”

Dick frowned from the other side of the beast. “My optical-”

There was a brilliant flash of yellow, and the great muscular mass of Killer Croc recoiled, rolling back to clutch at his beady eyes as the murky sewer tunnel lit up with an electrical flash.

For a moment, Dick thought he saw the dark jagged shape of the Bat, etched in blinding light across his vision just before his cowl-optics cycled to a darker filtered lens.

The light died, and Dick's vision returned to normal.

Somewhere in the shadows beneath his mask, Bruce may have been smiling. He pointed to his chest, and to the great black bat that stretched across Nomex grey fabric. “The latest in flexible OLEDS. Can burn the Bat-signal into the retina for 24 hours. Good to know it works on Croc's parietal eyes.”

Croc stumbled backwards, bellowed and was swinging blindly, his claws scratching sparks up in great showers as they caught the rough brick of the tunnel walls.

Dick backed up, nimbly, and then tensed. Spinning, he threw himself into a graceful high kick, his leg arcing out straight and lancing into Croc's back, powering the towering brute off balance and crashing head-first into the brick floor. Bruce punched down, hard, in a series of precision blows to the complex mutated nervous cluster that dotted Croc's cranium and wide neck. Each punch sent a crunching echo down the tunnel.

“You'll find Killer Croc in restraints down in the sewer,” Dick said, as he emerged into the room once more. Jim Gordon stood surrounded by a thick cloud of smoke, while outside police in uniform were waiting on hand.

“He didn't kill Dodgson, though,” Bruce grunted. “Croc's job for the Hatter was to oversee a trade elsewhere in the sewer system – mentally-broken human automata supplied by the Hatter for a splinter Yakuza cabal – but Robin broke that up earlier tonight.”

“Dodgson wasn't even here for the Hatter,” Dick continued. “That tag is an old model, and was sewn on after death had occurred, by someone who spotted Hatter's clues as to a Killer Croc job in statements made public by the press, and who wanted to set up Croc to deter further attention to themselves. Lazlo Valentin, the landlord, has been kidnapping people here in this tenement block and using this room's hidden access to the sewer to dump the bodies. You said that the police were becoming suspicious of Lazlo, so he figured that by making sure Croc would be in the sewer beneath us with a trail of meat he set out just before 'discovering' the body and calling the police we would find Croc and lay all blame for the disappearances and this room on the reptilian monster that eats people.”

“The locked door?” Jim asked, signalling the uniforms outside to go down the dark stair with torches drawn and tranquillizer guns readied.

“Another literary reference, perhaps. It's a classic Dickson Carr locked room misdirection,” Dick said with a grin. “The door wasn't locked at all, Lazlo broke it down himself so he could reach in on this side and fit the key in the lock.”

“This Lazlo Valentin made a knowing reference to the Hatter when he chose a Charles Dodgson as the subject for his frame,” Bruce said, giving the body one last look. “It could be that the fake name used for this room – George Shaw – has meaning to him.”

“Whatever his game is, he can kill savagely when he wants to. Come on,” Jim growled, drawing an automatic handgun from his long coat and grabbing his radio.

The three crime-fighters ran up the tenement block's stairs towards the top apartment.

DAY ONE OF THE MONTH AWAY

It was in a locked room deep within the red supergiant sun Betelgeuse, on the shoulder of the hunter, that the oath of the Bat took place. A ritual in the dark within the bright star, held by cloaked shadows about a black table.

The table could have been the inky blackness of the void out beyond. At its centre a silvery long-eared helmet sat. Seven pearls were fixed in an hour-glass belt, white spots winking in the dark.

[Are you sure that this is your choice, Bat-Man?]

The tall, skeletal white figure wreathed in sprawling jet-black cloak and hair spoke without making sounds, rather his words were simply known, words that echoed about the mind and not the ear. The figure – whose name was best put as Dream – stood looming beside the man with the brilliant blue eyes.

“This began in an alley, in a city. With the primal crime. A man of trained muscle and brain against gangsters and sociopaths. The vengeance of a wounded child.”

The blue eyes turned to Dream's deep dark gaze. He smiled, his teeth matching the pearls on the table.

“I think it's time to let the symbol overtake the man. My campaign has to go further. What happens next is greater than anything I anticipated in those early days, and the Bat must open its wings.”

[To carry the Bat to the brightest star in a galaxy of darkness.]

“Will you uphold our bargain?” Bruce asked.



The other shadowed figures began to blur. Faces and names that Bruce recognised. Every one of his mystic, crypto-celestial contacts had been spent to get him here, to the locked room in the shoulder of the hunter. Setting the course for what would be the next stage of Bruce's campaign. The preparation of the symbol as something more than it had ever been.

The helmet burned in black flame. Bruce pulled up his hood, and slid the mask of the Bat over his eyes. His optical lenses had ceased working on any physical science, and now ran through metaphysical visuals only. The locked room swirled and warped around the long-eared helmet, ablaze in black, and the pin-prick spots of white pearl that sat fixed about it.

[You must take the undying oath, grim hunter.]

Bruce spoke, and as he did so he took the belt of pearls and fixed it about his waist.

There was a flash of lightning, arc blue, that lit up the room in one blinding moment. Dream, unfolding his cloak, spun out a smoky silken thread that wound itself around the room, a great tapestry of dream-stuff. Figures in capes, cowls, jet-boots, great wings, all wearing the raiment of the Bat, the black winged symbol repeated and echoed throughout the dream. A great host of dark huntsmen that tracked and battled evil – great, hideous evils that roared and leered through the fabric of the dream – across the cosmos.

Bruce spoke, and as he did so he took the long-eared helmet and lowered it over his head.

There came then the thunder, an unseen crashing and blasting of sound and fury. A hulking, mechanical figure – in which Bruce recognised the mad Barbatos-worshipping architecture of the mad Cyrus Pinkney – howled with the voice of gunfire.

Bruce spoke. “I swear it.”

And then he took the darkness, the dream and the crashing fury of the room and shook it out into a long unfurling shroud, which he swept around and fixed to his shoulders.

Opening his new cape, the Bat soared into the red light of the sun beyond.

[The ritual is done, grim hunter. Spread the leather wings of the Bat across the stars.]

Bruce awoke and looked at the cool lucid blue of the Batcomputer.

“End cognitive prompt MORPHEUS 007. Close down visual and cerebral stimuli.”

The Batcomputer's projected monitors closed with a wink, and Bruce pulled the conduit wires from his forehead. From above him there was the sound of a security door opening, and the familiar rhythm of Alfred's footsteps down the the long stone staircase that ran into the cave.

“Pleasant dreams, sir?”

Bruce sat back and steepled his fingers under his chin. “I have the latest gen psychonarrative technology, perception-distortion chemicals and magicologic artifact-tech in the world tied into one five second micro-sleep's worth of REM dreaming. My pleasant dream cost the same as the national GDP of Mtamba.”

Alfred set down a tray of carefully-biochemically-engineered energy supplements. He poured from a tall cannister into a bone china cup, and stirred.

“Then you will appreciate the real tea I took the liberty of including with your usual laboratory diet. I always enjoy waking up more when there is tea involved.”

Bruce stared blankly into the long shadows of the cave and said nothing.

“A deal made in a dark dream sounds a tad more... I'm not sure whether to say mythic or sci-fi... than your usual fare, Master Bruce.”

Bruce smiled this time.

“Dixerat interpres. gelido mihi sanguis ab ore
fugit, et ante oculos nox stetit alta meos.”

“It is good to hear that you have not forsaken your Classical education over these futurist magical concepts,” Alfred hummed. “Would you permit me to ask, sir, just what it is you believe this dream-time bargain has accomplished?”

Those ice-blue eyes turned on his oldest friend, and glinted like steel in the moonlight. “I have lit up a Bat-signal through time and space. The same flash of understanding I had that night, after my first foray into crime-fighting. When I knew that I must become a Bat, a symbol of fear, of the night. An agent of justice in the dark. I've weaponized that idea. Super-charged the Bat with the black light of the universal collective imagination. The inspiration that the symbol evokes compounded into a mathematical equation as fundamental to the universe as Darkseid's Anti-Life Equation.
“Batman Incorporated is about widening our reach, expanding our ground, but there are limits to the recruitment and training of new agents. With the Bat stretched across the cosmos there will be Batmen everywhere, and everywhen. From the beginning to the very end.”

Bruce rose.

“I have made the Bat immortal, timeless, and bigger than all of us.”

SOMEWHERE, SOMEWHEN

The crawling, centipede-like creature ejected a cloud of regret/spore-pheremones and curled two long sentiment tendons in a silent, guttural display of emotion.

Around it, spherical pearly-white maternal/spore-cases were scattered, rolling away as if recoiling from the scene of horror.

The bodies of all the creature's eight hundred parent/spore-bearers bled out into the sand. The creature – birthed-name/Tlano – was alone for the first time in all its three generation-spans.

The robots retreated, their scavenging/kill-program completed. Tlano, now an orphan, raised its sensory feelers skyward. A thought, an image, flashed across its mind suddenly, brilliantly. Revelation.

I shall become a bat/spore-winged.

And Tlano scuttled away, into the coming black methane atmospheric clouding of the distant planet, Zur-En-Arrh.

PRESENT DAY

Bruce Wayne gave the world's press a predatorial smile as the lights lit up on the great winged neon symbol beneath his podium.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:"

BATMAN INCORPORATED

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