Wayne of Gotham (17 page)

“We've never put the entire sequence together before,” Richter countered, gesturing with his hands for emphasis, the desk lamps casing the lines in his face in stark relief. “The individual elements, yes, they all appear to be yielding the desired results, but in combination—”

“And what about the initial results from the test subjects you already have?” Thomas asked, picking up the clipboard off the top of a stack of papers scattered across the desk. “Look here … Michael Smalls, a professional contract killer before shooting up half the Tricorner Yards. Your memory replacement therapy has worked in him. These two women—Caprice Atropos and Adele Lafontaine—they've shown no side effects to the benign viral carrier and have both responded to the genetic memory triggers you engineered. You've managed to collect memories using the viral trace therapies from both of them, and with a degree of accuracy neither of us expected. The base motivations are much broader in their chemical base and easier to locate than specific memories, you've proved that. All that's left is to attach the chemical memory to the genetic keys in the benign virus and the entire system is complete. In a single inoculation we can turn crime against itself … and rid the world of bullies, thugs, and anyone who wants to extend their domination over another human being.”

“Yes, the protocols appear sound,” Richter argued. “We can replace the basic motivations of these criminals, but with
what
? Whose ethics do we choose?”

Thomas thought for a moment before he spoke.

“With mine.”

“Yours?” Richter said, surprised.

“Elysian is our dream, Doctor,” Thomas said. “It's time to make it a reality. We have the means, quite literally, to cure crime. All we need is the will to make it happen.”

Richter looked away.

“Ernst,” Thomas said quietly.

Richter turned back to face him.

“We both have things in our past we want to correct,” Thomas said. “We can be healed, too.”

Richter cast his eyes downward but nodded.

“I've got to get back to the hospital,” Thomas said. “Call me there when you're ready for me. I'll just go check on everyone before I go.”

Thomas turned and stepped through the office door. The laboratory space had to be combined with the operatory, and though it was packed with equipment, there was sufficient room for what they needed. Thomas turned toward the rotunda in the back, where the cells were located.

Thomas started with the right-hand cell, looking through the four-inch square opening in the metal door. Caprice Atropos practiced yoga next to her cot, holding the lotus position perfectly still. Her flaxen hair lay across her face. She had been a sociopathic cat burglar for the Moxon mob until she decided it was more fun to kill the victims in unique ways during her thefts.

The next cell brought Michael “The Scythe” Smalls into view. The Butcher of Tricorner was a tall, wiry man with hollow cheeks. He had been a vicious hitman for the Rossetti mob who especially delighted in inflicting torturous pain on his victims before allowing them to die. He lay sleeping on his bunk—more evidence of improvement since he had not slept at all so far as anyone could determine for the prior eight months of his confinement in Arkham.

Third was Adele “Chanteuse” Lafontaine. She stood leaning with her back against the wall, reading a copy of Truman Capote's
Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Her long black hair flowed down over the double-breasted, olive-green greatcoat she had worn since her arrest and had fought violently for whenever she was parted from it. She turned her head toward the door and, seeing Dr. Wayne, smiled faintly and waved. She had been a singer once, Thomas recalled, whose husband had served in Korea. She had caught him with another woman, and the result had been two dead and a broken psyche. Eight husbands later she was known as the Black Widow of Robinson Park. The coat, it was rumored, had belonged to her first husband.

At last, Thomas came to the last cell.

“Thomas!” Denholm said, rushing to the door, his face pressed against the small opening. “Thank heaven you're here! You've got to get me out of here.”

Thomas took in a shuddering breath. “But I worked so hard to get you
in
here, Denny.”

Denholm blinked at this, as though the words would not register in his mind.

“I know what you've done, Denholm,” Thomas continued. “The embezzlement, the lies, taking Martha for a ride—”

“No! No, Thomas, you've got it all wrong,” Denholm said quickly. “I had no choice! What chance has a guy like me got? The whole game's rigged … so, I tried to rig a few things myself … but it just got outta hand.”

“Out of hand?” Thomas said. “Denny, seventeen children died from the fire that
you
set.”

“That wasn't supposed to happen!” Denholm whined. “I pulled the alarm … Me! … I thought there was plenty of time for them to get out. Celia said there would be plenty of time. How was I supposed to know there were deaf kids on that floor?”

“And what about Martha?” Thomas said quietly.

“Martha?” Denholm said, unsure.

“You remember Martha, don't you?”

“Oh, sure, she's a swell kid but what does she have to do with—”

“Denholm, you're not worth the gum on the bottom of her shoes,” Thomas said, anger rising inside him at last. “I've known her since she was six years old, would have done anything for her if she had bothered to ask me. But now she wants
you
and some fantasy of who she thinks you are. She came to me this morning. ‘Fix it,' she said. She asked me to fix it for you. It's one of the few things she's ever asked me for in all our lives. So I'm going to fix it for her, Denholm … and you're going to fix it for her, too.”

“Great!” Denholm smiled uncertainly. “What? What do you mean?”

“You're not the man she thinks you are,” Thomas said heavily. “But by the time you leave here, you
will
be.”

Utility Tunnel 57D / Gotham / 8:12 p.m. / Present Day

“You're going the wrong way, Tommy!”

Harley's whining voice echoed down the stained bricks that formed the archway of the old cellar corridor, with a maze of branching corridors leading off on either side. The Arkham sewer had been more recently encased in a large pipeline that ran down the side of the center trench of the old hall, while utility conduits as well as a number of more hastily installed cables ran down the side walls. People rarely came down here alone; it was too easy to get lost in the branching corridors. However, it was the quickest route up from the abandoned underground staging area for the old 1988 Gotham Subway Expansion Project, where he had just left the Batmobile recharging from the main power lines. The area afforded quick access to his forgotten cellar hall, and through it, to the more populated regions of Arkham above, where Gordon said he would be waiting for them both.

As for Harley, her hands were bound behind her, and Batman's grip on her arm was unyielding. The corridor was pitch dark, with Batman using the subsonic imaging in his cowl to determine the location of the walls around them. One of the benefits of the Batmobile having no windows was that it made it very difficult for passengers to know where they were, and the use of his cowl device was also part of keeping their location secret until they stepped into the light.

So either Harley was insane or something had gone wrong.

She is insane … but never underestimate insanity.

“You'll be late for the party!” Harley cried. “Everyone's waiting … everyone … and here you are spoiling the surprise.”

Harley stumbled slightly, and Batman tried to adjust for the shift in weight but was too late. Harley pushed hard against him, throwing him off balance slightly and twisting out of his grip. In an instant she had plunged through the archway and into the darkness beyond.

Batman roared in frustration. He should have been quicker than that, but the years were grinding him down. He turned at once, the Batsuit responding, drawing more power. He closed his eyes and he dashed in after the laughing woman.

The corridor twisted and turned through several angles, a pair of T-intersections, and a number of cross corridors. Batman triggered the imaging recorder on his Utility Belt. The GPS system would not function this far beneath ground—especially with the massive bulk of Arkham overhead—but the subsonic imaging could at least allow him to retrace his steps out of the nightmarish belly of Elizabeth Arkham's monstrous architecture. There was a slight heat trace in the air from her passing that he was able to pick up from time to time in the damp, cold air around him. He was getting closer, and the echoing taunts were becoming more distinct with every step.

“
You're invited! You're invited'”

Batman paused for a moment at a flight of stairs leading downward but realized they ended in a stone wall. The corridors here were only three feet wide, though the ceiling was a full fifteen feet overhead. He passed panes of Tiffany stained glass that have never been lit by any light and looked out over dark alcoves. The corridor turned again, inexplicably, onto a rotting wooden veranda surrounded entirely by brick walls. A wrought-iron circular staircase spiraled upward into a black shaft at the far end of the veranda. Two window panes with beveled glass were set in the stone on either side of a metal door that exited the room to the right.

The door at the back of the veranda was still swinging, brilliant light overwhelming the thermal image. Batman opened his eyes, his irises contracting as he pushed through the door.

Only half the old fluorescent lamp banks hanging from the ceiling still cast their greenish pall over the room. The ballasts of several of the lamps were failing, causing them to flicker with occasional flash pulses. There was an enormous metal security door large enough for trucks to move through completely filling the far end of the room, with great rust spots boiling up on its surface where the old paint had peeled away. Set into the far wall was a pane of laminated glass, shattered into a crystal web in one spot from some heavy impact, a dark stain running down the glass behind. A broken doorway lay askew in the frame leading to the dark room beyond the glass.

The floor was a jumble of ancient laboratory equipment. Overturned metal tables lay amid shattered tempered glass, broken beakers, and chemistry frames. Several centrifuges blue-gray in color lay smashed on the floor among a number of incubators. Massive microscopes poked up through the debris, and many pieces of equipment defied explanation. Three refrigerators, their doors open, sat against the far wall.

It looked to Batman as though a bomb had gone off in the confined space, but the room was devoid of scorch marks or any burning.

“
Hey, Tommy!
”

Batman turned at once toward the voice.

There was a large, arched opening to a circular room left of the broken door and window. Arranged around the circle of the room were five metallic cell doors. The second from the left was twisted and broken. The center door was closed with the remaining three doors hanging open.

Quinn peered out at Batman from the small window in the closed, center door. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Tommy! Thanks for the fun evening … so sorry it has to end.”

Batman strode quickly over to the cell door, the glass crunching beneath his boots. He reached for the handle, moving to turn it, but it would not budge. He examined the latch more carefully.

Harley Quinn had locked herself into the cell.

She stood back from the door, throwing her hands into the air. Her white face makeup looked ghoulish in the rapidly flickering light at the top of her cell. “Welcome
home
, Tommy!”

I've spent half my life trying to put her in a cell … and now I need to get her out of one.

The lock was old and he thought he might have to find a way around it. Batman stepped away from the door, looking around the circular room.

Never use force to break a lock when a key will do. Where would one keep the key in a security area
?

Batman turned, stepping back into the ruined laboratory space. Behind him, Harley Quinn began singing in her shrill voice, heavily colored with a Brooklyn accent to the tune of a song he vaguely remembered from World War II.

Kick Bats once, then kick Bats twice, then kick Bats once again …

It was an awful time …

Batman thought for a moment. The keys never would have been in the open. They would be secured as well as the inmates.

Harley's voice echoed from within the cell behind him.

Past is past and dead is dead to never live again …

It was an awful time!

Batman stepped over a test-tube rack to the shattered office door. He pulled the remains away from the frame, feeling inside for the light switch.