Capítulo 77: Trace
"Ladies, any ideas?" I looked thoughtfully at the Oracle's information on the escaped patients, only three of whom had escaped, but they could cause just as much trouble as a couple or three hundred ordinary costumed criminals with machine guns.
Scarecrow, Two-Face and Victor Zsasz... The strangest thing is that right now it is the last one who must be caught. He, in his essence, is an ordinary maniac, who only needs a knife and the desire to put a new mark on the body to kill.
At the same time, the longer the first two are out, the more dangerous they'll become, and by lethal devices and a set of dangerous toy underlings, but we've definitely got a couple days, maybe weeks, until then. Can't say for sure here either, though. Since a very high quality copy of the Joker is now freaking out, it means the city is no longer safe for all of its inhabitants, or whatever the mad doctor did to the settings. Maybe instead of the standard flirting with a man in a tight latex suit, the psycho will just decide to detonate a nuclear charge without informing anyone, or something else?
Hell, Ace Chemical has to be dealt with, too. It was chemical waste two years ago that helped the birth of Batman's main enemy, and Gotham is already over the maximum concentration of fucking clown princes per square kilometer...
~Smack~
I came to my senses with a light kiss. I promised myself I wouldn't disconnect from the outside world, but I kept forgetting to do so while I was actively brainstorming.
"I told you it would work!" Sailor cheerfully shouted from her chair.
"Mm-hmm," Babs sat back in the Batmobile and was immediately hugged by the beautiful Valkyrie, who returned her enthusiasm.
Eh, if we were fucking right now, I wouldn't give a shit about any of these problems.
"We'll split up," I said after a moment's thought. - Mouse, Sailor, you check out the plant, and I'll go to the healing center.
"Mist... Oops. Knight, are you sure?" Harley quickly corrected herself. - Or it'll be like some second-rate horror movie, where the heroes are fished out one by one, and in the end everything is solved by only one seductive hottie with a chainsaw and a sawed-off shotgun. Besides, the Scarecrow must have a supply of ready-made fear toxin.
Hmm, the Ash Williams femversion of The Evil Dead? I should definitely check it out sometime, since I'm not really familiar with local cinema.
"The usual toxin has little to no effect on me, so you don't have to worry about that, and we need to split up so we can check both places out. Oracle, I need transportation.
"The batcycle will arrive at these coordinates in ten minutes, - the elderly man responded almost immediately, and a virtual map with a shimmering dot a kilometer away from our current location appeared on the screen of his glasses.
Hmm, will have to run a bit... And Gloomy Mouse needs to do something about naming, not just shove three letters known to everyone everywhere.
"The police and special forces are already approaching the neighborhood. You shouldn't stay here too long," Alfred said hurriedly.
"Don't take too many risks," I kissed both beauties, renewing my disguise, and lingered in Harley's ear. - If it gets tough, shoot to kill and throw a napalm grenade.
"I will," Sailor assured me, giving me another kiss.
After wishing good luck to the two golden-haired cuties, I headed off to rendezvous with yet another high-tech Gotham Defender device.
Running across the rooftops again, because you have to learn how to use gadgets, and here I am standing in some scruffy alleyway, waiting for transportation, which didn't take long.
With a low growl, a stylish radio-controlled motorcycle came around the corner, with unusual contours that looked like a bat's wing. For the very dumb, the front part was still marked with a familiar logo on a yellow background. I wonder how much such a toy costs?
Reflection didn't stop me from climbing into the seat and flipping through the tabs on the screen built into the steering wheel, discovering an almost complete lack of weapons.
"It's a non-combat model, so the only armament is a taser," Alfred said calmly, as if he'd caught my thoughts. - The controls are standard.
"Thank you," I thanked, tucking the cylinder into my pocket and adjusting my glasses on my face.
Well, it's time to hit the road.
***
I didn't really like the ride on the batcycle, as my attire wasn't designed for that kind of movement. The wind was so strong that it was horrible not to get frostbite.
Fortunately, my torture was over relatively quickly, and soon I arrived at the riverbank, where Alfred had thoughtfully brought a batboat to stealthily enter the hospital. Thank the Creator, it was closed and could move even underwater, so there was no icy spray in my face. I should probably think about creating some kind of compact headgear, just for such cases, and be sure to add smart glasses to it. The same mini-map is sometimes necessary, and if I add to it the ability to switch spectra of vision, it will be a real eye candy... I just need to figure out how to implement it, because my knowledge level at the moment is enough only to create something simpler, of course, if it's not a bomb (Harley's lessons on mine-demining didn't go to waste for me).
While the transport was on autopilot getting to the island with the crazies, I finally got a chance to properly familiarize myself with the information about the escape, which was incredibly fragmented.
The thing is that Arkham Asylum's internal security systems are constantly being modified, both physically and programmatically, so even Grim Mouse, with his pile of advanced gadgets and secret lair located somewhere on the grounds of the asylum, doesn't have trivial access to the cameras. But he does have access to police communications, but here, I think, Gordon's unofficial order to assist the Dark Knight has had an impact...
God damn it, you got a fucked up situation going on almost every week and you're hoping for a man in tights. The only question I have is, where does the funding for the police department go?!
Phew, Jay, calm down and better get back to running.
I took a couple of deep breaths in and out, and looked at the output and the recordings of the conversations of the policemen who'd arrived on the scene. So, the criminals had left the hospitable walls only an hour ago, setting a small fire as a distraction, so if I acted quickly, I had a good chance of getting on their trail. But first, I need to infiltrate the surveillance room, and figure out how they left the island. A few taps on the touch screen, and I see the layout of the prison block.
Hmm, it's not that far to the right room if you get to it from the outside.
After one more careful look at the scheme (glasses with a minicard are cool, of course, but it's better to memorize the way by yourself to increase your intelligence), I left the batboat at the western slope, where the prison block was located. Twenty meters of rock above my head, but hardship builds character, and I have a very cool cane and a cloak-planer in case I manage to fall off.
The climb was relatively smooth, except for a couple or three sharp gusts of wind trying to throw me into the ocean, but the three-point rule and a reliable rope left the elements no chance.
Once at the top I had a marvelous view of the bleak landscape of the asylum, which Ivy was trying her best to fix.
The funny thing was that I had never seen it from this angle before. The prison block below looked like an ordinary two-story parallelepiped, with the western part of it slightly recessed into the rock. The east side of the building was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and a couple of towers, where snipers were usually bored. Today they were trying to act active, scrutinizing the area with a few parked police cars at the gate. I think the previous shift had gotten a serious headache, since the three escaped supercriminals were very likely to have gotten off on the ground, because even Bats, according to the butler, had no secret passages here because of the many seismic sensors installed around the perimeter.
I turned my gaze to the north side of the building, where the surveillance room should be, and noticed with annoyance the small traces of soot on the eaves. I had some suspicions about the location of the arson attack.
I didn't dare to plan down from the cliff because of sharp gusts of wind, so I had to go down the old-fashioned way, using a harpoon, because it was not very high here.
Unfortunately, my fears were confirmed and the very room I needed was affected by the fire.
"...Jim, I understand that, but your obsession is getting to be too much. I'm willing to wait another five minutes, but if he doesn't show up, I'm calling forensics," an exasperated voice came from the broken window. - After all, this is our job, not some guy with a bat symbol on his chest.
Oh, I like this stranger already. But what the hell?! Over an hour ago they had three dangerous lunatics escape, and all they did was send out a few patrols to check out the old haunts of the criminals, instead of a proper investigation into all the circumstances of the escape to look for clues.
There was a soft click, and the air smelled of tart smoke.
"Good evening," I jump gently onto the windowsill.
"Pha-ha-ha, kha-kha," the heavyset man coughed, choking on the smoke from his cigar. - Who the fuck are you? K-ha.
"Knight of the Moonlight.
Harvey Bullock, and it was he, sighed, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling.
"Just one more clown Gotham didn't need," the detective whispered quietly. - Where's Batman?
Two attentive brown eyes looked at me, as if trying to see through me.
"Busy, so I'm on him," I climb inside the room, wary of the snipers' attention.
Well, it doesn't look too bad inside and there's even working equipment that wasn't badly damaged by the fire, you might even be able to recover the data. Why would you want to, though, when you can find out all the information first hand?
"Wait, you're the magician who healed Jim?!" Harvey had successfully recovered from my shocking appearance.
"Sort of," I walked over to one of the server cabinets, which, judging by the heavy traces of soot, had started the fire. - I hope you don't mind if I take a look around, since Beth... I'm really busy right now and can't come over.
"Ahem... Just for saving Jim's life... Without him, this town would have been finished quickly," the man took a good puff, examining the blackened ceiling.
"Thank you. Have you interviewed any witnesses yet?" I put my finger on my glasses and spin the small wheel on the side, switching vision modes and scrutinizing each affected object.
"Yes. According to several people, the criminals were let out by two guards, but one of them was almost immediately stabbed to death by Zsasz, and the other led the group to the first checkpoint, after which the four of them fell through the ground. The local guards had already checked every brick of the place, but they hadn't figured out where they'd disappeared to.
"Yeah, that's not good... But I'm more interested in how they managed to get out of the lower levels?" I asked thoughtfully, continuing my inspection. I know those checkpoints with big ventilation grates. A couple of minutes of careful work with a screwdriver, and no one will guess how the room was left.
"The second guard had a card with the maximum access level.
"Hmm, that's pretty good.
Relatively recently, I held a similar toy in my hands, belonging to the head of the prison block. According to Harley, such cards gave access to almost any room, could disable force fields, and in the local canteen they gave their owner a triple scoop of strawberry ice cream, but I wasn't quite sure about the last point.
"Yeah. I've got a few of my staff checking employee lists to see who's got it, but so far nothing. Sharpe and Arkham have 100% alibis, and they wouldn't do something like that, which means someone was able to sneak into the system, and that's a lot of work.
The trap was a familiar design, but it was hard not to recognize it: on the racks with the remains of hard disks there was a melted metal frame that looked something like a spider. And there were shards of a glass flask that had once contained a flammable liquid.
I've learned from my mistakes from last time, so I pull a pair of tweezers out of my pocket to take samples, picking up a heat-scarred red curl from the bottom of the cabinet.
"You got something?" The detective came closer.
"Yeah, and I even realized who the mystery guard was. A gift ribbon, and a gift of napalm or something similar," I nodded at the remains of the trap.
"Shit, Joker again," the man scrutinized my find.
"First," I corrected him. - And, by the way, Hugo Strange had been a doctor here for many years, so he could have quietly hacked into the security systems to create a full-access card that the First could later borrow from his creator.
"First, Second, Sixty-ninth, what the fuck does it matter?" Bullock grumbled irritably. - It felt like with the original missing, almost every psycho wanted to be the new Joker. One's letting his buddies out, the other's robbing a chemical plant. I wouldn't be surprised if today's mayhem in Blackport was caused by some third nutcase looking to grab a piece of the glory. Ugh.
"What happened at the factory?" I clarified, catching the familiar phrase.
"Ah," the detective waved his hand and flicked the rest of his cigar out the window. - Another Joker and his henchmen came in and whistled chemical waste, scaring the night shift. No one was hurt, except for one overzealous guard who got his arm broken.
Hmm, another patient of Hugo's has surfaced... Eh, it would be better if he really surfaced in some pond, because there were three of them out there. I decided to visit the secret hideout under the movie theater and interrogate the last psycho caught and see if I could find out more about the others, but first I had to try to find Zsasz before he killed someone again and put another mark on his body. The mark.
- Are you done?" A man's voice came from my right, bringing me back to the real world.
"Yes," I answered slowly, trying to realize the idea that had flashed to the edge of my mind.
"Then I suggest you bail if you don't want any more questions.
"Wait, huh - concentration helps you remember every last minute thought without being distracted by other stimuli. The mark, the bloody mark, the blood. - What was the guard killed with?
"A shard of a regular mirror," Harvey shrugged.
"I need a sample of Zsasz's blood. He scarred himself with the same glass, didn't he?" I waited for a nod and held out a vial I'd pulled from my pocket. - The more the better.
"You can't tell whose blood is where.
"Hopefully the magic will sort itself out on its own.
"Well, if magic... Wait a couple minutes," the detective took the glass cylinder and went out into the corridor, giving orders to his subordinates as he went.
"What are you up to?" Alfred's polite voice came over the speaker.
"Following the example of the valiant police, I will check all the old hideouts of the maniac, but with the use of a search amulet.
"That's a great idea. Suggest its range for building an optimal route.
"Kilometer three and will work only an hour after activation - I answer after a short thought, figuring combinations of runes.
"Okay, I'll see what I can do.
I was about to ask the butler about the girls' progress, but the door to the room opened, and Bullock appeared on the threshold with a vial in his hands, filled to the brim with a red liquid.
"Here. We couldn't separate it, but it's definitely got Zsasz blood in it.
"Thank you," I put the object in my pocket. - I'll see you later.
"It's probably not the best advice, but it's a lot better than having your companion fade into the shadows," the man said diplomatically.
"Next time I'll try the second option," I found myself at the window in two steps and climbed out.
Now I have to make my way back to the bat boat, and then an exciting search for a maniac that may end in a fizzle.
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