章 1118: 16
Chapter 16: One Of Those Days
"This is not going to work."
"It's the best shot you've got."
"Ugh, makeup. Really?"
"Guys wear makeup."
"Yeah, actors, dudes on TV, and other guys who actually have to look good in front of people."
"Right, and how is this not the exact same thing? Now take a look."
Max frowned in the bathroom mirror, looking at the job that Rose had done covering up his injuries. The black eye wasn't such a big problem, but the cut on his nose that Rose had stitched up the night before had caused some issues. While he'd been getting ready for school, she'd basically kicked the front door open, dragged him into the bathroom and worked on covering up his wounds with cosmetics she'd bought while he'd been sleeping.
How she'd known how to do such a thing, and do it well, was beyond him. It didn't stop him from trying to crack wise about it, however.
With Rose standing behind him, Max inspected himself, eventually finding nothing wrong enough with his face that anyone who wasn't paying close attention could point out, "You know, you might be able to forget about all of this mercenary stuff once your daddy knows you've got such a great future as a makeup artist," He quickly found himself placed in a hammerlock, his arm bent behind his back at an uncomfortable angle, "Ow-ow-ow! That's the good one!"
"I know," Rose said as she let Max go and shoved him away roughly with a huff, "Take your ass to school already, if you're still going to go."
Max rolled his eyes and winced as he bent over to pick his backpack off of the floor. Everything hurt, "You still think it's stupid."
Rose made no effort to hide her distaste for Max's decision to go out as though nothing were wrong, "I do."
"And you helped me because…?"
Rose leaned against the wall by the hallway, watching Max slowly tie his shoes, "You looked so pathetic last night, trying to sleep cradling that arm, with all of those marks on your face," She shook her head at the thought, "Let's just say you plucked at the one under-developed heartstring I have and managed to get some sympathy out of me."
Instead of the backhanded explanation, Max chose to focus in on the part of Rose's explanation that he could use to stroke his own ego, "So… you watch me sleep," He said, sauntering closer, "That's interesting. Sounds like you watch me a lot."
To her credit, Rose didn't shy away from admitting it, bashfully grabbing her arm as she looked away, "Yeah… it's just… I can't help but watch you sometimes, you know? The door is always unlocked, and you just… look so easy to kill when you're like that," She finished with a predatory smirk and leer that made Max feel immediately uncomfortable.
He started to back away only for Rose to follow him every step of the way, never letting any distance come between them, "O~kay, point taken."
Rose's smirk turned into an outright grin as she reached up to Max's neck, fitting her hand around it despite never touching him, "I mean, I got my hand around your throat one time, just to see if you'd wake up. You didn't even budge."
"Oh my God, stop talking!" Max said, opening the door and hightailing it while he could. As he hustled down the stairs on his way out, he could hear Rose cackling victoriously.
XxX
It was all he heard about in school, and it was driving him nuts.
Everyone in class had their phones out normally, but because of the events of the previous night, everyone was trying to keep track of the ongoing reports of the explosions that had occurred at several Wayne Enterprise locations. It had been less than twelve hours since it had happened, and many of the students' parents worked at some business that somehow did work with the company. Wayne Enterprises basically was Gotham City as far as the honest, hard-working general population was concerned.
The worst thing was that now, Null had finally been identified to the general public. He'd gone months without anyone giving a care, even if they knew about him. That wasn't the case any longer. His name was out there, and there were renderings of what he looked like in his suit.
"Another guy in a costume running around wrecking town? How many weirdos are gonna come out of the woodwork?"
"He doesn't look tough."
"Duh. That's why he blows places up. Fucking coward. I'd kick his ass myself if I ever saw him."
Those were just a few of the comments Max had to deal with hearing as he went along his day. Those remarks in particular grated enough to come close to being the straws that broke the camel's back, 'I would take your goddamn head off without even meaning to. Without the suit.'
Wait. That gave him an idea. If being in school while all of this was going on would be a problem, he just needed to not be at school without it being suspicious to anyone. Who there was around him at any time of day that could or would link him to Null, Max didn't know. But he'd overlooked enough things of that nature in the past and look where it got him now.
Just because he didn't know if there was anyone around him who would be out to get him didn't mean there wasn't. If he could give himself some space to operate, that would be great for him.
Trying to make his way through a crowded hallway in between classes, Max brushed shoulders with a student hanging out along the wall with some friends. The contact was absolutely minimal, but apparently it was enough to get a smarmy remark.
"Excuse you."
Any sort of apology Max had been about to give out after bumping into the student went straight out the window after hearing that immediate response, "Whatever," He rebutted dismissively as he moved along.
"Yeah, you better keep walking."
Max stopped and spared a look back and raised an eyebrow as if to ask if this guy was really trying to make himself look big in the hall. Fortunately for mister tough guy, none of Max's plans involved getting himself suspended for a week, thus he kept on walking.
…Until he realized that a fight would get him suspended for a week. School was basically the only place anyone who could bust him for being Null interacted with him. Having a reason to not be there would be perfect, as he could spend more time trying to heal and doing what he could to find a way to clear his name.
He caused a few more bumps to happen as he stopped in his tracks and turned back around. These people were much more receptive to his apology, which made him feel somewhat justified in what he was about to do to give himself a few days off from school. As he got closer, the student from before noticed him and tried to intimidate him by stepping forward upon his approach.
"You got something to say?"
"Calm down, I just need to get something out of my locker," Max said, to give himself a reason for coming back. The only thing was, it wasn't his locker. With a sharp jerk of his wrist, Max forcefully popped the locker open and swung it right into the other student's face, "Whoops! Sorry!" He said immediately as the sound of metal door hitting skull rang out and the student fell to the floor.
He wasn't sorry. There had been a grin on his face the entire time. He never stopped smiling, even as his mark got up off of the floor sneering angrily with a bloody nose. That was easy enough to start.
The entire time they started squaring off and space cleared for them in the hallway, Max was only thinking about the chances of his idea being a success.
'Let's see. How good are my grades?' He thought as he started dodging punches. He had A's and B's now. Much improved over what his marks in school were before he had become Null and focused in many aspects of his life, '…Okay, they can take a little bit of a hit. This will work. Just gotta make this look kinda legitimate.'
Taking the easy way through it, Max grabbed the student in a front headlock with his good arm and let him drive him into the lockers with a bang. Max winced as he let him land a few clean punches to the sides of his body, simultaneously protecting his privates from a cheap shot. In all honesty, getting his injured arm jostled in the process hurt more than enduring the actual blows.
The 'fight' lasted all of thirty seconds before teachers scrambled over to pry the two apart and break everything up.
Max was eager to let go, but not without the parting gift of a sharp knee strike to the belly of the boy who had tried to swell up against him. The teachers had an easy enough time pulling them apart, as Max went willingly. After his knee strike, the other student had been left on his hands and knees, breathless.
Just so he didn't make the mistake in the aftermath of thinking that he had actually been winning.
XxX
(One Hour Later)
With a look at the clock as he sat outside of the principal's office, Max drummed his fingers on the hardwood arm of the chair. Did it really take this long for someone to call him into their office and tell him they were kicking his ass out for a few days? He figured this would have gone quicker.
The most annoying thing was that in that position, he was the next best thing to a zoo animal, as every student that walked past the office would stare at him until he was out of sight, likely wondering what he was there for if they didn't already know.
It was this that led to the worst-case scenario happening; the only person that might have given a damn about what he'd gotten himself into managing to find him. The moment he locked eyes with Barbara walking his way, he wished he could sink into his chair. He wished he was in his Null suit so he could try and fool her with the camouflage feature.
He could have only imagined what the expression on his face looked like as she stood in front of him, "How could you get into a fight at school?"
Shifting in his seat, Max really didn't have anything smart to say, "It's pretty easy, Barb," It had seemed like a good idea at the time, and so far had yet to be disproven. Being chewed out by his scholastic conscience taken physical form was the least negative thing he could have expected to deal with because of what he'd done, "…Why are they even letting you talk to me?"
Barbara studied his face and noticed the discoloration on his skin in places that were normal targets in fights. She hadn't heard anything about him getting beaten up, but he'd clearly taken his share of hits, "Normally, they call your parents for something like this to take you home. But when you don't have a guardian, they call the police."
"…What?"
Having never been in a fight at school, he had no idea of the procedure that took place in the aftermath.
Seriously, this seemed like a much better idea when he'd been putting it into action.
"Normally," Barbara reiterated before Max could inwardly panic, "In your case, you don't have any kind of record at all of doing this sort of stuff, so they're just sending you home," If he could have afforded a big sigh of relief, he would have taken it at that moment, "Seriously, what the hell, Max? I didn't have you pegged as that sort of guy."
The look on her face was the sort of wounded look that would make the person receiving it feel bad. It wasn't nearly 'betrayal' bad, but it was enough to let a hard-headed troublemaker know that they had screwed up with someone they could say they were on good terms with.
The old, 'I'm not mad, just disappointed' parental approach. It worked like a charm, and was much more effective at shaming someone like Max than just yelling at him, which he could tune out, "It's… just one of those days, Barb," He tried to explain lamely with a shrug, "Don't take it personal."
XxX
(Later That Day – Max's Apartment)
With a five-day suspension set in stone, that gave Max enough time in his own mind to put his feet to the pavement and come up with some sort of lead as to where he could begin looking for the person who framed Null.
It could at least be good enough for a start.
There was no time to waste, as he didn't get his sorry tail kicked out of school for nothing, so Max immediately made for home, bounding up the stairs and through his front door, prepared to passively greet his roommate before retreating to his room and fashioning whatever plan of action seemed suitable for him.
"Hey Rose, I-," His plans were promptly interrupted when crossed his living room and noticed Selina sitting down in his easy chair, seemingly waiting for him due to how her eyes locked directly onto him, "-Totally forgot that thing I needed to go get. I'll be back later."
"Oh, no the fuck you don't!" Selina was between Max and the door before he could even turn all the way around to leave, "Sit. Down."
The smart-aleck response on the tip of Max's tongue was, 'Or what?' before he realized that saying such a thing would have been the absolute dumbest course of action he could have taken at that moment. Just because Selina Kyle didn't have superpowers or a grudge against him didn't mean she couldn't or wouldn't absolutely ruin him in some way, shape, or form.
Sparing himself that sort of horrific fallout, Max figured it would be much less painful to simply do as he was told and endure the inquisition. As he plopped down on his sofa next to Rose, he took in her state of undress, "Did you just wake back up?"
The combination of her unruly white hair and a shirt (one of his shirts) too big to be of any use to her for anything other than sleeping prompted him to ask.
Arms crossed and legs stiffly set, Max would have said that she was almost pouting, "I woke up about an hour and a half ago to your mommy here pacing a hole in your living room floor. She made me sit and wait like I was three years old."
Amazingly enough, Rose had been so surprised that by the time she realized she would have at a minimum bloodied anyone else's nose for such a demand, it had already been fifteen minutes.
Rose turned a glance Selina's way with a pointed look, "Speaking of which, you do realize I can kill you, right?"
Selina seemed wholly unconcerned by the girl's sideways threat, "Maybe. But even if you could, whatever gratification you'd get out of it wouldn't be worth how hard it would actually be," She said, buffing her nails on her outfit, "A teenage temper-tantrum isn't worth the cost of a fight with me, whether you'd win or not."
"That's a matter of opinion," Rose muttered loud enough to be heard before things fell silent.
Max felt extremely awkward sitting on the couch with Rose, across from Selina who was clearly wondering just how she should approach things. He'd just gotten out of the principal's office and now he was dealing with a staredown from another figure of what sadly enough amounted to some semblance of authority and influence in his life.
Eventually tiring of the atmosphere, Max shifted uncomfortably in his seat before trying to get the ball rolling, "So did you actually have anything to talk about, or did you just plan at staring me down until I spill my guts?" He said, "It's kind of hard to do if I don't even know what you want."
Selina pursed her lips and stayed quiet for a while longer before finding the words she wanted to use, "I'm just trying to figure some things out for myself before I ask you a thousand questions at the top of my voice," She told him, "But if you're that eager to get to the Q&A portion of our morning, I would like to start off with a simple one. What happened last night?"
Max lowered his head and laughed with all of the humor of a funeral chuckle, "Many, many things. None of them good. Very few that were actually my fault. That's the best answer you're getting, because it's the best one I have right now. I don't even know why all of that happened."
Fair enough. Selina couldn't ask him to answer something he didn't even have the answer to, "Second question. What is Deathstroke's daughter doing here? And why didn't you tell me?"
An easy explanation, "She's been here for like a month or two. I'm doing her a solid and letting her stay here for a bit, because we're friends."
If skepticism could be felt, the living room would have been permeating with it as Selina absorbed that bit of information, "She's your friend?"
Of all people, really?
"She's like, my only friend," Max expressed openly. The slight opening of Selina's mouth reflected her disbelief at that statement, "Is it really that surprising?"
A nod accompanied her reply, "Both the fact that she's your only friend, and that she would rather hang out with you instead of kill you after she got to know you."
"He's not so bad once you learn how to tune most of his b.s. out."
Selina could concede that much. Still, having any sort of common ground with the Ravager wasn't something she was fond of. She was even less fond of her pet project being associated with someone that dangerous, "I still don't like you being here. Which leads to the second part of the question. Why didn't I know about this sooner?"
"When would this have ever come up in any conversation we've been having?" Max said, raising an eyebrow in challenge to Selina's frowning upon their temporary cohabitation, "Are you offering up a hideout of equal or greater value for her to use instead of my apartment?"
"-Which wouldn't be hard, because as far as hideouts go, this place sucks," Rose chimed in acerbically before having Max's odd expression turned onto her, "Oh, you were defending me. My bad. Still not used to that yet."
Selina's foot rocked impatiently from where her legs were crossed, "So if she's been here for that long, I have to ask, what exactly are you getting out of having her over? It's clearly not sex."
Max shrank back into his chair self-consciously, "It could be. You don't know," He said, trying to preserve a non-existent ladies' man image.
Rose did her best to keep from laughing aloud while Selina just spared Max a look as if to say that he was naïve, and thus adorable to the older woman, "Oh hon. Yes, I do."
Aforementioned image thoroughly shattered, Max clicked his teeth and admitted his price for letting Rose stay in his home, "Fine. 500,000 dollars and a reprieve from the crushing loneliness that is my everyday life. I mean the money's nice, but you can't put a price on the company."
"You think I'm good company?" Rose asked, oddly touched by the out-of-the-blue insinuation behind Max's words. That impression was quickly crushed like an insect under someone's heel.
"I said you were company. I never said you were good company. Beggars can't be choosers," Max remarked, ignorant to the thoughts of the girl next to him centered on making him pay, "You're passable company. Fair even. On a good day, maybe even decent."
"Eat me, Sparks."
Unfazed, Max immediately shot back with his rebuttal, "You know, if we actually did stuff like that, it'd probably add to your good company score," Rose's immediate attempt to strangle him was met with a wall of magnetic repulsion that always kept her at a neutral range, "See? This isn't good guest behavior."
"Hey," Selina said, snapping her fingers to get the teenagers to focus once more, "Bombs. Domestic terrorist. Maxie's taking the rap. What are you doing about that?"
"You think I'm just gonna sit back and take this?" Max said, doing his best to sound offended. Sitting up tall in his seat, he crossed his arms and sneered at his mentor, "Trust me, I've got an idea on how to start looking for the guy who actually did it."
He left it at that, not exactly pacifying any fears, 'If he needed my help, he'd definitely ask. I'm not even really sure what to do about this to begin with,' Selina thought to herself, "If you say so. But if anything else happens-."
"I'll let you know," Max finished for her, watching as she headed out the door. He gave it thirty seconds before he dropped all pretenses of being a man with a plan and turned to the girl next to him, "…Rose, ?"
He didn't even need to finish his comment before she waved him off, knowing that he was about to pick her brain for some sort of solution, "Yeah, yeah. I know. I'm just as lost as you are. Fortunately, I've been working on this like I said I would. Unlike you, as a proper villain, I actually have contacts for this sort of thing. Or should I say, one really good one."
XxX
(Wayne Manor – Batcave)
Between homework and the research that needed to be done on some of Gotham City's most pressing cases, Barbara Gordon had seen enough computer screens and paperwork. But as the work would never end, her drive to get through it all could never relent.
From the moment she had left school, she had been perusing any leads she figured she could find in order to find the person responsible for the previous night's horrible events.
"There's not much to follow on Null's trail," She said, rubbing the fatigue from her eyes, "There haven't been any reports from any hospitals regarding anyone with injuries consistent with what you did to him. Tim had been scouring the back alley physicians before he had to leave for the Titans, but he hasn't drummed up anything either."
Instead of responding in any way, Bruce remained silent, continuing to focus on the work he was doing on the supercomputer. It looked like he was investigating the remnants of one of the buildings that had been blown up, looking for any signatures that could be tied to a bombmaker.
It was important work to make sure everyone involved was brought to justice, but it was also something that he could have left to Tim so his time could be better served elsewhere.
Barbara watched the man for a while longer before the difference between her expectations and the reality of Bruce's temperament got the better of her, "What's going on?" She asked, "You should have been all over this instead of us. Null blew up your buildings, and he got away. I figured you would have been locked in on this case more than anyone."
The billionaire's eyes darted from his work to Barbara's for a split-second before he returned them to where he needed them, on the screen, "From the sound of that, clearly I am more locked in on this case than the two of you," He said, "It wasn't him. I knew it wasn't him the second you found him."
"Are you serious?"
"He has no motive," Bruce said, explaining the first thing that let him on to believing that Null was a scapegoat, "Yes, he does things for money, but there's no record of him doing anything openly destructive for a payday. No build-up in the severity of his crimes. He just steals."
It was kind of a big jump to go from ripping off valuables to the coordinated destruction of several private facilities. Even if it hadn't been his plan and he had been carrying it out on behalf of someone else, it just didn't stack up to Null's m.o. in the slightest.
Barbara stopped and stared at Bruce, letting what he said sink in before she chose to respond, "So the reason you went at him so hard-."
"It was for a few reasons," Bruce explained, continuing to flip through the notes of current cases he had on-hand, "He was set up. Whoever was behind this used Null so that they could keep moving around freely. This is just the beginning of something. Going after him means they'll think they've gotten away with it for now. As long as the general consensus is that Null is the culprit, next time the true perpetrator will be sloppier. Easier to catch off-guard."
So they would let the city go on thinking that Null had blown those buildings up so that they could get closer to the person or persons actually responsible.
It was a plan. A sensible plan given the circumstances, but still-, "That seems… cruel," Barbara told him aloud.
Bruce's expression didn't change. He knew and agreed, but it was how this particular incident would work, "Null's still a criminal. He did steal valuable materials, which is why I sent you to go after him first while I headed to the scene of the nearest explosions and collected what I could to investigate," He said, "It took all of five seconds after finding out that he'd been caught at another facility to see that he was the decoy."
If Null had really been the one behind the blasts, he would have never allowed himself to be caught on-camera and then detonate explosions that would incriminate him. He wasn't a scaredy-cat, but he was what one would call skittish. And it was from there that the man behind the Batman cowl made the decision to do what wound up happening next.
Batman had to go after Null personally to try and sell the fact that he thought Null was the real culprit. To everyone.
If he let him go or took it easy on him, there was a chance it would have gotten back to the person responsible for everything. That would have made it markedly harder to pursue them later.
He hadn't planned on Null actually escaping though. From what Nightwing had told him about Null's powers, as he had reported to him on what he'd seen him do, he needed both arms for precise control. Either that was untrue, or something had changed. Breaking the one should have effectively handicapped him. He'd escaped from police custody just using the fingers on one hand to jimmy the lock in the handcuffs.
Atom did say that he was going to get stronger over time, but he still shouldn't have gotten away.
He had told the police to take great care and be careful with transporting him. The kid had magnetic powers for goodness sake! He had told Gordon that! Even Bullock knew! He had told them when he'd handed Null over.
It should have been common knowledge for whoever wound up booking him. Even if his powers should have been stunted, why would you put handcuffs on him? There were plenty of other ways to bind his hands that didn't involve metal.
The fact that he'd gotten away was merely because there was another axe to grind. Rest assured, Batman knew that it would become a problem later somehow. How much of one remained to be seen, he just hoped it was something that could be managed with relatively little harm.
"Do you think he skipped town?" Barbara asked in regards to Null's actions after escaping custody.
It would have been smart, but after a moment of thought, Bruce decided, "No."
"Why?"
"Because leaving would mean giving something up," Bruce said, thinking about the profile that he and his protégés had formed on this particular crook, "That one hates the idea of losing anything he feels belongs to him."
Like his freedom.
Like his 'good' name.
Like his chance at getting even.
Whether that getting even was with Batman and his sidekicks, or with the mastermind behind his framing, that remained to be seen.
Either way, he wasn't important. What was important was bringing down the true culprit and keeping a leash on all of the lunatics in Gotham City who would see such a big, grandiose act as something they needed to top in order to show the power that they had.
After living and breathing Gotham City for as long as he had, Bruce Wayne had his finger firmly on the pulse of the place. He knew how it worked and he knew that the floodgates were open.
The crushing waves that may or may not have been held back before would soon come rushing through.
XxX
(Later That Evening)
Max was torn as he climbed into the Null supersuit that night.
On the one hand, he had gotten himself into immeasurable trouble trying to fix the damn thing, so he definitely wanted to use it.
On the other hand, almost every time he got into it, something painful happened. The last time he'd gotten his elbow dislocated, which still hurt him greatly.
Fortunately, it was just for show on this evening. There was no fighting or danger to be had tonight. Instead, it was a meeting with someone who could do something about Null's little frame-up issue.
"I don't even want to know what you had to go through to make this whole thing happen," Null said as he stood behind Rose in a rooftop stairwell. She sat with a laptop in her lap and a conveniently placed Ethernet cable that had been hidden in the wall.
"There are plenty of these all over the place. Gotham City and any other place you can imagine. There are other ways to get in-touch too. More reliable clients get information on extra ways to contact him," She said, watching the screensaver on her computer, "No one else. He can also choose if he wants anything to do with you at all, so just knowing that this is here really doesn't mean you have an open line to the Calculator."
"So it's invite only?" Null said to himself, "How do you get invited?"
"Since a lot of what he's into is relevant in the super community, he's partial to supervillains," Ravager said with a shrug as she sat in front of the terminal and waited to hear from the individual she was trying to contact, "He wants people like us to get into contact with him. How else would he get paid?"
That made sense to Null. From what he'd seen, crime families were usually more trouble than they were worth. For a lot of supervillains, money was the name of the game. Sure, most of them had some sort of alternative aim, but the easiest way to get anything from most of them was to pay an exorbitant amount of money that could go to their cause. It was what got him going, after all, "So what's this guy going to do for me?"
"What do you want him to do for you?" Rose asked him in return, "Got something you want to fence? You can go to him. Do you want to find work? He can be the bridge between you and a client to get you hired. If you screw it up though, he'll probably have you killed by someone else."
It was at that moment that everything clicked for Null as to just who had been hiring Ravager for her odd jobs around Gotham City, "Wait, he's how you've been finding merc work?"
Rose smiled, letting him know that he was absolutely correct without really saying it, instead choosing to continue explaining things, "And if you want information, for a nominal fee, he'll be willing to drum it up for you. Be warned, he'll sell information on you too to someone else who wants it, but he might not bother with much legwork for your stuff since it'll be harder to get than it is for every other criminal out there. After all, you haven't been busted yet, so your personals aren't on record."
"…This is a new and exciting experience for me," Null said honestly before shaking his head, "I'm not sure it'll work out too great, but I'm just too jazzed to care right now."
Ravager leered over at Null with an unreadable sort of grin on her face, "You know, sometimes I forget that when it comes to criminal activities you're still just a beh-beh," Before Null could find anything smart-alecky to hit her back with, the screen turned on, prompting Ravager to greet the man who appeared on the screen, "Calculator."
Calculator was a middle-aged man with greying brown hair and thick glasses. From the view of his web camera, he wore a black tie and a white dress shirt. He seemed more like a tech worker at a day trading company instead of a criminal information broker. The wrinkles around his eyes crinkled as he smiled at what was quickly becoming one of his favorite contacts.
"Rose Wilson," Caluclator said with a measure of professional fondness, "It's good to hear from you, but I already told you, you've been clearing out my quickie jobs. I'll let you know when I have more."
"No. It's not about work this time," Ravager said, waving off what the man believed to have been her reason for calling. She grabbed a hold of Null and pulled him into view of the web camera on their side of the connection, "This asshole is Null. You've heard of Null?"
Calculator seemed to size Null up for a moment before saying anything else, "The kid that dropped Felix Faust on his head and blew up those Wayne Enterprises facilities. You know, from what had been going on about you, I didn't think you had something like domestic terrorism in you. I guess I'm going to have to upgrade the level of psychopath I have you on file to be."
Null clicked his tongue in annoyance at being classified in any way, shape, or form, "I don't. I didn't."
"That's why I got him in touch with you," Ravager interrupted in order to keep the conversation on its rails, "I'm trying to nurture the grade-A jerk I know he has deep down in his soul, and the next step for that is some good old-fashioned revenge! We want you to help us find the guy who framed him."
Calculator found the situation amusing enough to get a chuckle from it, "Alright. Fair enough. Tell me what you know about the frame job and I can use that to get things started."
Null gave him his side of the story, but was forced to backtrack moments after finishing his tale, heading back to the part about why he went to the Wayne Enterprises storehouse in the first place, to steal the extremely expensive regenerative fibers that comprised the padding of his suit.
"Regenerative fibers. That's what your whole suit is made of? And you stole more just to fix it?" Calculator asked, the tone of his voice making it seem like Null was an idiot for some reason, "You realize you could have used just about any kind of fabric to patch whatever was wrong with it and it would have worked, right?"
Null dropped to the floor next to Rose and muscled his way into view of the web camera, "What?"
Calculator rolled his eyes, realizing that, no, he was assuredly not speaking to some sort of genius, "The regenerative fibers were made with biomaterial, to help heal wounds for injured soldiers on the battlefield. You look like a kid who endures his fair share of beatings. Haven't you ever noticed that your wounds start healing quicker when you're wearing that thing than when you're not?"
Max thought back to the copious beatdowns he'd received at the hands of various individuals. The fact that he'd been able to get up from many of them, and in more than a few cases keep fighting, had to have been about more than just a latent survival instinct and innate toughness, "Now that you mention it? Yeah."
Calculator grinned once it was clear Null was beginning to catch on, "It works the same way for itself. Imagine if your shirt was made of artificial skin and muscle. If you cut it, with time, it'll mend itself to what it was originally set as. If you take a chunk out of it, you fill the hole with something like a random shirt, a ripped piece of jeans. Hell, you could tear off your underwear and use it to plug the hole. It'll take an hour or so, and you'll have to cut away the extra if there is any, but you won't even notice there was a hole."
His creepy costume could fix itself by cannibalizing other fabrics at the place where it received damage.
The stairwell was entirely silent for close to a minute as Null held in his desire to yell out loud. They were in a stairwell. That noise would echo and travel.
"So I did all of that, got beaten from pillar-to-post, and got framed for something I could have just thrown some old clothes on," He said, in an even-tempered voice belying the actual annoyance and anger he was feeling.
Ravager frowned at the failed attempt from Null to keep any emotion out of his voice. Clearly, he was miffed, "You alright?"
"Well, if anything else makes this any worse, I might just lose my shit," Null told her honestly, sarcastically downplaying his mood, "Other than that, yeah. I'm fine."
"Okay, moving on," Calculator said, dismissing irrelevant things like his potential client's feelings, "My guess is, this guy was just waiting on one of Gotham's big badasses to make a move on a Wayne Industry location. You said that nothing happened until you were on your way out? I say whoever did this had it planned and was just waiting for his patsy to slide on by to conveniently take the blame."
"How'd he know Sparks would be at that last factory then?" Rose asked, "He could have gone to any of the others and then the guy would have blown up his own sucker."
"Because he didn't know which one someone would eventually go after," Calculator said, "That's why I believe the blasts were remote activated. He just knew that someone would go after one eventually, and when they did he would destroy all of them except for the one that you were in. Just to make it seem like it was a distraction."
"How do you know that?"
"It's what makes the most sense. Otherwise he would have blown those places sooner if he had charges inside to take all of them out at once."
All of this information was well and good, but it was simple speculation over how the incident happened. It wasn't getting him any closer to a face-to-face with the culprit. It did lend itself to an idea, though, "So there might still be explosives at the place that I stole from."
Seeing that the young man had a plan, Calculator figured it to be best to simply let him go about his business, "Yep. If you want to make this easy for all of us, get your hands on those charges and get them to me. All explosives have signatures to them."
A smile slowly started to grow on Null's face, "And you can track that sort of thing? Narrow the list of guys who could have been responsible down to something I can manage?"
Calculator seemed offended by Null's questioning of his capabilities, even if it was only for confirmation's sake, "Clearly, you don't know who you're dealing with. But I'll let it slide, so long as Ravager better educates you. Go get those explosives. Ravager knows how to get in touch with me."
With that, the call ended abruptly. He was likely a busy man and had more important things to do than hold a wet-behind-the-ears criminal's hand through whatever process this was. That was fine. This was enough for now anyway. Null knew where he was going that night.
Exiting the stairwell onto the rooftop, Null looked around for a moment to get his bearings so he could remember where to go to get to the storehouse.
Having put her laptop somewhere easy to carry, Ravager soon thereafter joined Null outside as he prepared to head off, "Are you sure this is a good idea, Sparks?" She asked, "Those charges are probably still live, and if he sees you there again and figures out what you're doing he could still blow you to hell."
That was a very startling thought. But there wasn't really any advantage to it from a mastermind's point of view. If the person framing Null really thought they were as smart as they tried to make themselves out to be, they would consider the fact that he was more useful to them alive than dead; all the better to sidetrack the police.
Besides, there probably wouldn't be any eyes on him once he got back inside. He had been very thorough with blinding every piece of electronic security he could find.
"I fried every camera in my way the last time I went through," Null said, "With what's been happening in all the other Wayne Enterprise places, I don't think they got around to fixing all of them, if they got around to any of them at all."
"I'm asking again; are you sure?"
"Honestly? No. But it's the best we've got to get this whole thing moving."
"You know, just because it's your only option doesn't make it your best option," Ravager groused before washing her hands of the situation, "Whatever. Just don't come crying to me when Batman's handing you your ass again. My sympathy is all used up from the last time you stumbled through your window a bloody mess. I've got better things to do."
Null barely spared her a glance as she left him alone. Of course going back wasn't the smart thing to do. None of what he did in that costume was particularly smart to begin with, but returning to the storehouse was his best chance at the moment to get closer to his target.
And that stood above everything else logical in his thought processes at the moment.
XxX
(New York City – Battery Park)
After talking to Max that day, Selina had gotten back into her car and drove away.
And she kept driving…
…And kept driving.
She wasn't in the mood to head back to her apartment, either to relax or to continue planning her next burglary. Instead, she took a day trip away from Gotham City, a few hours away, out of state to New York City. By the time she realized that she had gone fairly far north, she was already halfway there.
By the time she had reached the city proper, she already had an inkling of where she wanted to go, and passed up the chance to do any shopping around (for means legal or otherwise illegal) in the heart of Manhattan to head straight for Battery Park.
Having been extensively trained by Wildcat before her Catwoman days and having shared a fling with the man in the costume, she knew him well enough to remember his habits, such as where he liked to unwind with a drink after training all day at his gym.
She found him sitting at a table near the back, funnily enough underneath a picture of himself from back when he was a big name in the boxing world.
Knowing she looked the part of the kind of woman who rarely, if ever, visited that bar, Selina ignored the stares of some of the happy hour patrons and made a beeline for Ted Grant, stopping off to order a drink before taking a seat.
He saw her coming and didn't react much beyond an initial quirk of the eyebrow, "Selina," He greeted evenly, tipping the bottle in his hand her way as a slight acknowledgment.
"Ted," She said in return, "It's been a while, hasn't it?"
"Not since before ya put that kitty cat costume on and started rippin' off rich folks," Ted quipped gruffly.
Selina rolled her eyes and set her elbow down on the table, cheek in her hand, "Well it was partly inspired by you, so I'd say you should be flattered," She said, trying to break the ice. It was enough to get a chuckle out of him, so she figured her mission had been accomplished there, "So, I'm assuming you've heard about what's happened in Gotham."
The mess with the criminal named 'Null' by the reporters and anchors.
Yes, Ted had a television and checked in on the goings-on of his region, even though he was technically retired. He scoffed into his drink at Selina trying to slide into the topic at hand, "So you're finally admittin' he's yers? Funny. He didn't bring dat up when I offered trainin'."
A thief admitting that he was trained by another thief to a hero? Yes, he definitely never did that. Let it never be said that Null was dumb.
Selina rolled her eyes and kicked at Ted's leg under the table to chide him, "You still would've done it, even if you did know he was mine."
"Not da point," Ted replied, "Besides, ya think I'm touchin' any a' dis wit' a ten-foot pole?"
Selina slapped the table in exasperation, "Come on, Ted. You trained him, and you didn't go bring him down yourself once you found out he was a thief," She reasoned, "If anyone else did that, you would have run off to wherever they were to bust their ass. You can't say that you don't like him at least a little bit."
Fair enough. That still didn't explain what she wanted him to do about what was going on now, "So whaddya want from me?"
"He didn't do it," Selina said gravely, "Tell someone who can clear him. Actually, tell someone who's actually willing to step in and help find out who really did it. Where the hell's Question?"
"You think my word has any weight with anyone heavy-hittin' enough to get da kid cleared?" Ted knew she wanted someone big to help out. But that wasn't going to happen. Even if he was with the Justice Society as an advisor and occasional member, he didn't have enough pull with the rest of them who would have believed that Null was responsible.
If Catwoman's word was all Wildcat had to take to the Justice Society, there wasn't a chance that it would work, no matter how much respect the man himself had with them. And the Justice League? Not a chance.
He wished there was something productive he could do, because Null wasn't evil, or really that bad a person. He was just a teenager, and most teenagers were assholes to a certain degree until they got significantly more life experience.
…Then it would either get fixed by the world, or made that much worse. That was what getting older was like.
It was obvious to Ted that this was not what Selina had been hoping for, "Look, I heard about da little amnesty thing ya got for him. It was a miracle ya got that. It ain't happenin' twice. Especially not when da case's still open. Ya wanna help? Head back and get da guy who really did it."
"Null says he's working on it," Selina said, as loathe as she was to leave it to him alone.
As much as she hated the implication, she was his mother in crime. Instead of relying on her, he had been trying to cut the cord and be seen as something as an equal. Unfortunately, because she had been the one to break him in to the industry in the first place, that would probably never happen.
Whether he got into larger-scale trouble than she did or not.
"Huh. Kid's got more balls than I thought," Ted commented as he took a sip of his beer, "…Or maybe he's just pissed."
Perhaps, but Null had been upset before and had never hit the streets for any kind of personal vendetta before. Likely because in the past, there was little or nothing of actual substance to be gained.
Unlike other times, in this instance not only would bringing this person down give him the sense of gratification he enjoyed, it would actually serve him a purpose, which he put more stock in when it came to the actions he made.
The bartender came up to the table and set down Selina's previously ordered drink, something she was extremely grateful to have at the moment, "Well… he does always say he's selfish," She mumbled into the glass, "Of course, he may have more of a bad influence in his life nowadays."
"Worse than you? Doesn't seem possible."
"Oh trust me. This one's pure bad news."
XxX
(Gotham City)
The sounds of frantic gunfire echoed through the halls of Maxie Zeus' Greek-styled domicile. The man himself had taken refuge inside of the main parlor that had been fashioned to look like a throne room of Olympus.
A man sat in an ornate throne, an uzi in one hand and a strange rod shaped like a thunderbolt in the other.
"Whosoever this interloper may be, they will pay," He said, as his underlings could be heard panicking and desperately trying to fight off their attacker outside, "To stand against a god? Fools. No mere mortal's might can match the fury of Zeus' bloodline!"
The shooting started to quiet down, putting a grin on the crime lord's face. Finally, his useless men had managed to dispose of his unwanted guest. It certainly took them long enough. What did he outfit them with automatic firearms for if they were so poor at using them? They were squandering the bounty that this god had bestowed upon them!
And now the worthless peons were banging on the door to his sanctum? He had retreated there for them to handle the problem. He would come out in good time on his own.
The heavy doors didn't budge, despite their best efforts to push it open and get his attention.
He realized just why they had been trying to get inside of his room when a hole was blown in his ceiling, causing Maxie to cover up to block the debris.
Ravager dropped to the floor, dusting her outfit off. Her efforts couldn't rid her of the bloodstains she had accrued fighting her way inside, however.
Veins bulged at Maxie's temples. A girl? A little girl had made sport of his handpicked minions and had the unmitigated gall to stand before him? His hand tightened around the gun in his lap as he rose to deal with this problem.
"You dare to- gah!" His loud yell of anger was cut off by a single shot from Ravager that took a chunk out of the bottom of his hand, forcing him to drop his gun before he could even finish aiming. He stumbled back and fell seated onto his throne where he promptly had a broadsword driven through his chest to the hilt.
"Why yes," Ravager sneered as Maxie let out a noise somewhere between a gag, a choke, and a scream, "Yes, I do."
She stepped back to observe her handiwork, watching Maxie try to claw at the handle and pull the sword out, as if that would have saved him. His efforts were futile. His strength had been taken by the fatal wound, and even if it hadn't been, Ravager had driven the sword clear through the back of the throne he had been seated in.
She was the last thing he saw, and she stared him right in the eyes until she saw the light fade from them. She'd killed enough people to where such a thing didn't bother her any longer.
…Thanks dad.
Ravager stood in front of the motionless body of Maxie Zeus and pulled her sword out of his corpse, giving it a swing to send the blood flying right off, clean and clear. She lifted the blade and gave it a flick, relishing in the pain the hardened steel brought to her fingertip and the sound of vibrating steel.
"God, these are some sweet swords," She said to herself, relishing the effectiveness of depleted promethium alloyed with stabilizing metals as a weapon, "We are gonna dismember so many people together."
There was no one around to bear witness to Ravager's recently initiated love affair with her brand new swords, seeing as how everyone in the immediate vicinity was dead, and anyone outside who figured that she had offed Maxie by now was probably listening in or had done the more intelligent thing and run for the hills.
Well, just in case there were some stragglers who hadn't quite gotten the point she'd tried to make on her way inside…
"Alright, suckers!" Ravager bellowed loud enough to be heard beyond the great doors, "I'm about to leave this room! Whoever's still alive out there, take your injured, leave your dead! If I see any of you on my way out, you won't get a second chance to get away."
There. Now she was plausibly free and clear of any responsibility for her actions that would follow if anyone were dumb enough to stay behind.
She strode out into the hallway with a confidence that could only come with having already massacred the majority of the hired muscle that oversaw security for Maxie Zeus. As she vacated the premises, she mentally checked off one of the names on her potential hit list that she'd made for her client in exchange for so many wonderfully deadly goodies.
Bruno Mannheim wanted Ravager to kill the masterminds of these organizations, as well as any lieutenants, but exterminating the entire group was forbidden unless they fought her to the last man. None were expected to once it became clear that she could slaughter them all. Case in point, what had just transpired with Maxie Zeus' outfit.
The reason was simple.
When Intergang moved to Gotham City as was planned, they would need manpower. What better to use than experienced criminals with burned bridges due to previous affiliations with what other gangs in the city would have considered rivals? It would go hand-in-hand with the power vacuum that all of the crime lord killings would create.
This would clearly make life more difficult for Gotham's finest, both the police force and the heroes that populated the city. It wasn't her problem though. If anything, she would benefit from a more lawless environment.
It just meant plenty of opportunities for work. And the more of those she could get before Deathstroke came to check on her progress, the better.
XxX
(With Null – Gotham City – Wayne Industries Storehouse)
"This is a bad idea. This is a bad idea," Null repeated to himself like a mantra as he crept closer to the property that had served as the site of his most recent theft.
He wasn't sure how much stock criminal investigators put into the whole 'returns to the scene of the crime' theory, but if there was someone out there who believed in it, he was definitely proving it correct.
In an effort to vary his methods from the first infiltration, he slipped in through a different way and didn't kill the cameras this time, just in case. Predictability was the first fallacy that led to defeat.
He had to find wherever the bomb in this particular facility was located. He couldn't leave until he had scoured every inch of the place. Even if he had to stay there, skulking around until the sun came up.
'This is bullshit!' Null thought to himself, quiet now that he was in a dangerous area and possibly under surveillance of some sort, 'How do you go looking for a bomb? I should have stolen a police dog or something before I came here.'
It wasn't exactly an easy search. There was a lot of space to cover, even if the bomb was without a doubt set up in the main building. He wasn't a demolition expert either, so he didn't know the best place to put a bomb to bring big building like this down in one blast. Anyone else had at least an even chance of making a better guess as to its whereabouts than him.
Null stole things, spied on people, and sometimes got into destructive superhero/supervillain fights with other things. That was where his area of expertise lay, and that was admittedly being generous.
'If I were an asshole with too much time on hands, a lot of explosives, and somehow had free reign to put a bomb wherever I wanted, where would I put it?' He thought to himself, trying to remember the layout of the facility and what he had seen.
He would put the weapon in a place where it could do the most damage, of course. Whoever had set the other bombs around Gotham City's Wayen Enterprise locations definitely knew what they were doing. Those buildings had been leveled.
But this was a storehouse around the edge of the town's industrial portion. It was a bit sturdier, with no part of the architecture dedicated to aesthetic appeal. No part of the structural stability was sacrificed for appearances.
Returning to one of the storage wings, Null started looking around in the near dark, feeling out with his static presence for anything out of place with even the faintest electric charge.
As he did this, he felt the presence of another person sitting around and waiting in the same room as him. It was so dark, he wouldn't have even known if he hadn't been using the method he had been to search.
Sitting on a crate somewhere near the middle of the warehouse was a man sitting and waiting. But it wasn't a security guard. He had on a trench coat and a pair of thick glasses. He could see as much from the little bit of light that came when the man flicked a lighter close to his face in order to light a cigarette. A detective maybe?
Either way, it wasn't Null's plan to engage anyone tonight. He'd slip on past and keep searching for the bomb.
'There's no way he's here looking for the same thing, right?' He thought to himself as he kept to the shadows and tried to move quietly, 'Ugh. Of course the cops would have figured to check the other places for more bombs. Wouldn't they have done this in the daytime then?'
Absolutely they would have. There was no advantage whatsoever to doing it at night. If they were to do that, they would have started right after the previous evening's explosions happened.
This didn't smell right, and it didn't sit well with Null whatsoever. He just needed to find what he had come for before someone noticed that he was there and things went to pot.
"Why don't you come on out already?" The sound of the man's voice made Null stop in his tracks. He couldn't have been talking to him. And yet, he was, "Yeah, I know you're here. Trust me. You're no Batman," He concluded with a bit of a chuckle.
Hearing Batman's name made the hair on the back of Null's neck stand up, but he concluded that the Dark Knight wasn't present. If he had been, his face would have already been rearranged and he'd be sitting in the back of another police transport.
The jig was up anyway, making sneaking around a general waste of his time. It would have been quicker to just deal with what was in front of him and move along.
Null maneuvered his way onto one of the metal shelves that were used to better store things in the warehouse, giving him the high ground over the man who had called out to him. If nothing else, he could hang his hat on starting with that little advantage if things went south.
"It's pretty dark for you to be sitting in here all by yourself," Null commented. Just because the person underneath him was supposed to be trying to put handcuffs on him didn't mean that he couldn't at least try to be cordial at first. He did have manners, even if they did get thrown out the window quickly, "…I really hope you weren't waiting on me."
The man below turned around on his improvised seat to face Null somewhat properly, "You think I know who you are. Why?"
"You're a cop in Gotham City," Null said with a wry smile, "I'm pretty sure all of you know my name by now. I'm more surprised that you didn't pull your gun the second you knew I was here."
"A friend of mine told me that unless I really got the drop on you, it wouldn't do much good. You'd just yank it out of my hand without getting up off of that shelf," The man said, "And you are right. I do know who you are. It kind of has to be my business to know every time one of you costumed types turns up. I wouldn't be much of a police commissioner if I didn't."
The man, having revealed himself to be Commissioner Gordon, used the temporary silence to gauge what he could of the youth before him.
Null didn't jump him when he thought he had the advantage in the dark. Null didn't threaten him to leave him alone, instead accepting that as a member of the police force, he would do what was needed to bring him in.
He was a weird one to try and profile from just a short interaction, but he would do his damndest to try. Once the boy was back in custody, he would likely never say a word to anyone else until it was time for his hearing.
God, he sounded so young. He couldn't have been any older than his daughter.
"…It's kind of weird for you to be in a place like this waiting on me, don't you think?" Null eventually said, growing uncomfortable with the silence that he himself had actually created. In his defense, he hadn't expected to ever meet up with Gothan City's top cop, "If you had to send anyone in particular, you should have sent a detective, right?"
"A few of my detectives would have shot at you first," Gordon told the young man, "They wouldn't be able to sit down and talk like we are now."
"Talk," Null said, as if the words were foreign. He was used to talking in situations like this. Talking at times like this usually found itself accompanied by combat, "Shouldn't you be telling me to put my hands in the air? Or that I'm under arrest?"
It was funny, just how civil this whole thing was. Enough so to elicit a chuckle out of the commissioner, "I'm supposed to. Do you want me to? Would you, even if I did?"
"No."
Just as he thought, "We'll get to that soon enough, and everything else that'll come with it. Believe me, we will," Gordon told Null before pausing and getting more serious, "I never got the chance to look at your face the last time you were in custody. I was busy at the scene of one of the blasts, told myself I'd get a one-on-one with you at the station later. But you got away."
"There's no way I'm letting anyone bring me in," Null explained plainly, "You might as well have sent someone here who would have shot me, because if I wind up in that station I'm dead anyway. If you send me to Blackgate, even if I get out eventually, I wouldn't be the same anymore. I already said that to someone else."
"Whichever way this ends up going, kid, I want to say, I understand," Gordon said. This elicited a different response out of Null than he'd seen thus far.
Null dropped down from his perch, landing smoothly on the ground and actually daring to venture closer.
"Do you? Do you really?" Null said, the inflection in his voice initially unreadable, "I don't think you have the first clue about what's going on. And if you're talking about me personally? Don't even get me started. I mean, it's not like I'm complicated or anything, but… there's just something I don't like about a guy who I haven't said a single word to before tonight saying he understands. It just irks me."
"Never said anything about understanding you in particular," Gordon specified, "It's just, I've been doing this a long time. I've found out why most of the people I've put away went into crime. From the crime lords who were born into it, to the stick-up kids who just want food on the table. Ones who say they didn't have a choice."
Null held back a flinch that would have confirmed to the man that he was closer to the latter.
Gordon took a drag from his cigarette and pointed it at Null as the smoke billowed from his mouth, "The world's such a big place when you're a kid. You can go anywhere, be anyone, do anything you can dream. You'll be a rock star, or a spaceman, or a hero, and all your futures are golden," He continued, "Then you grow. And, almost unnoticed, all your choices start to die. Five years old? You'll never be the Gerber Baby. Eleven? Too late to be a world-class gymnast."
Null didn't come to sit through a lecture, but for some reason, this didn't feel like one. He was engrossed that someone older than him was actually willing to sit and talk to him instead of at him for once.
"And you grow. You get a job, maybe a family. A life. Then you're on a road you can't get off, and with every day the golden glow gets dimmer. But when you're a kid, you're magic. You can do anything," Gordon turned away to the side and tapped the ash off of the end of his cigarette, "Then one day, you realize the infinite has compacted into the inevitable. You've used up all your choices. The road ahead is straight, and short, and very dark."
Null didn't say anything until he was certain that the man was done speaking. He deserved that much respect at least, "Are you telling me I'm heading down that road?" Null asked carefully, "Or are you telling me it's already too late to get off of it."
Commissioner Gordon didn't answer. He didn't say anything else, he simply continued to smoke his cigarette quietly in the dark. The glow from the embers burning at the end of it faintly lit his face.
Null froze, as with the newfound silence of the room he could hear the faint *clomp* sounds outside of the great room. Boots.
A tick of fear crept into his heart. Regular police officers did not wear boots.
He spared a look back at Gordon who seemed just as unconcerned as he had been before. The old man was a cool customer, but then again, with what he had dealt with in the past, a snot-nosed thief who had allegedly graduated to lawless destruction probably didn't faze him in the slightest.
"You're making a mistake," Null said, sounding like a teenager pleading with a parent or an adult at school, just trying to get a chance to explain his side, but knowing that in the end, it would do him no good.
What he had to say wasn't what they were looking to hear.
Gordon dropped the cigarette from his fingers and put it out underneath his foot, getting rid of the only natural light in the room. When he did, the doors boomed open as footsteps swept inside. Null had been gone by the time it had gone pitch black again.
"Freeze!"
"On the ground!"
Null kept himself out of sight, despite the fact that it was impossible for a regular person to see in that room. The SWAT unit moved with absolutely no trouble whatsoever, meaning they had something to let them see in the dark.
He ripped the cover off of the nearest air vent and dove inside, just as the nearest attentive officer turned and opened fire. The sounds of bullets hitting wall and the metal behind him motivated Null to crawl quickly out of danger. The moment he found an opening elsewhere, he kicked it open and dropped down, only for an officer to sweep around a nearby corner and take a shot at him seconds later.
"Unit Two, he's on the move, heading east down the far hallway out of Storage Area A."
Null heard the report on his position as he continued to flee and search at the same time. Even with the situation at hand, he couldn't just vacate the premises, 'I can't leave yet! I haven't gotten what I came for!' If he just cut bait and ran away now, he would miss one of the last chances he would likely have to start hunting down the person who screwed him over.
The police hadn't found any other explosives. If they had, it would have been all over the news at some point today.
If there had been a bomb planted here, it was still around somewhere. Even if he had to eat a bullet, he was walking out of that place with what he needed.
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