Batman (13 page)

Just another bomb in Gotham City.

He skirted around to the south to avoid going near the Monarch Theater that still stood just to the northeast of the factory. Behind that theater was the place where Batman had been born, known as Crime Alley. He preferred not to get close to it, if he didn’t have to.

Everything in Gotham City was full of echoes, and there were times when he found it difficult to sort out the present from his memories. He was beginning to suspect that some of his more ambitious enemies were taking advantage of that fact. Deadshot had been one of Hugo Strange’s pawns in the buildup to Protocol 10, and now he was active again.

Killer Croc was still hanging around in the same part of the sewers where he’d been before, near the steel mill… and he was still talking about that damned “scent” he’d detected.

Now here was Mr. Freeze, who had been both enemy and ally during the brutal days of TYGER. Freeze had been dragooned into the Joker’s scramble to find a cure for the Titan toxin in his blood. Yet unlike many of Gotham City’s pre-eminent villains, Fries wasn’t a psychopath. He was a man driven to extremes by love, but he had spent so long in extreme emotional states that he was less and less able to come back to anything resembling normal.

Which, Batman knew, was something people said about him.

He wondered if he was going to encounter the Penguin, Clayface—any number of Gotham City’s rogues’ gallery might be drafted into the Riddler’s grand plan. Except for those who were no longer among the living.

Rā’s al Ghūl, Scarecrow, the Joker himself…

Too many others were resurfacing, and all at once, for it to be coincidence. Echoes of the past, echoes of the future. Were they part of another riddle?

Batman paused on a rooftop between the factory and the Jezebel Theater, holding a surveillance position in a destroyed TYGER sniper nest less than a hundred yards from the Ace Chemical lot. He didn’t see any people, or any sign of a human presence in the building, for that matter—except for steam pouring from one smokestack near the far side of the works.

And that was enough.

That part of the factory housed a series of vats and tanks where raw materials were mixed under carefully controlled conditions. The temperature controls there required the venting of a lot of waste heat, which would account for the steam. That is, if someone was manufacturing chemicals, or doing something else that required precise control.

Mr. Freeze was there. He’d bet his cowl on it.

Staying in the shadows, Batman skirted the fenced perimeter until he reached the railroad spur where tank cars had once delivered raw materials. The fence had been beaten down in several places, and he had no problem getting across the parking lot on foot, sprinting to the loading docks. He entered through an open bay and crossed the receiving area to a door with a sign that read:

The distant sound of pumps echoed from deep in the building’s interior. Touching the door, he felt a slight vibration. He went through it and into a short hallway. An open door on his right revealed a changing area with old protective suits hanging on pegs. Ahead was another door with the same warnings as the last. This one had a narrow window made of reinforced glass. Looking through it, Batman could see part of the factory floor.

The far end of the cavernous area was obscured by roiling steam, but he thought he saw motion there. Preparing himself, Batman slipped through the door and dropped down to the factory floor. Some of the machinery had recently been repaired. Shiny new parts gleamed in the dimness, standing out from the grime coating the rest of the works. Ace Chemical was up and running again, at least partially.

The Joker had been created here, and later made use of the plant to produce some of his more deadly toxins. Now he was gone, and someone else had stepped into his place.

It never ends
, Batman thought. Gotham City was a bottomless wellspring of criminality. It was as if the Joker’s absence had created a space that demanded filling by other forms of evil. Briefly he wondered who would step in for him, once he was gone. Robin would try, certainly. Perhaps Catwoman would make the choice to abandon her love of theft. But even those two would be standing against a seemingly endless roster of the depraved.

That was as good a reason as any to stay alive.

He moved across the factory to a large assembly of pumps and pressurized tanks. The floor in this area was littered with heavy plastic shipping totes, broken open and emptied out. Labels on their lids read
CONUNDRUM SOLUTIONS, INC
.

He radioed Oracle and spoke quietly.

“No time for a long conversation. Run down a company called Conundrum Solutions.”

“Where should I send what I find?”
she asked.

“I’ll be in touch.” Batman clicked off and took another step toward the roiling steam. He could feel the air getting colder. The vapor itself wasn’t hot—it was more like the sea smoke that sometimes hung over Gotham City’s harbor when the temperature dropped below zero. The temperature drop had to be due to whatever process was underway, and perhaps—

“Ah, Batman,” a tinny voice said. “A mutual acquaintance alerted me that you would be paying this facility a visit.”

The timbre of the voice gave the speaker away even before Batman saw the tall, thin figure coming out of the steam, body encased in a frosty blue and gray outfit that looked like a cross between a hazmat suit, a spacesuit, and a suit of armor. A transparent helmet like a bell jar covered his head. Elements of his equipment glowed a soft cyan, while hoses conducting supercooled gases to the suit’s temperature-control system snaked around its torso. Freezing mist pooled around the figure’s feet, swirling as he walked.

The face within the helmet was unnaturally pale and masked by glowing red-tinted goggles. His head was clean-shaven.

Mr. Freeze.

“Doing some work for the Riddler here, Fries?”

“No, far from it. This is a project of my own. Now that the Joker has shuffled off this mortal coil, I have this facility entirely to myself. It’s marvelous what one can do with the proper tools and equipment.”

It was an eerie effect as his electronically enhanced voice came simultaneously from his suit and some speakers mounted in the rafters overhead. A half-dozen goons appeared out of the freezing mist, wearing containment suits with designs that echoed his unique ensemble, and bearing weapons with barrels that glowed with the same pale blue that shone from the freeze gun mounted on their boss’s right arm.

“The Riddler did suggest you would be dropping in, and I took steps to ensure that both his plans and mine would continue, despite your interference.” Mr. Freeze took a step back and was wreathed in the mist again. “Please excuse me,” he said. “My work calls. It is nearly finished.”

The tactical situation wasn’t complicated. Whatever Mr. Freeze was doing, Batman suspected it wasn’t designed to enhance the well-being of Gotham City’s citizenry. He didn’t have to wait long for that suspicion to be confirmed, as the singular voice came over the speakers again.

“While you fight for your life, I will entertain you,” Mr. Freeze said. “I am in the process of supercooling the natural gas held in tanks along the river by Gotham Power and Light. When I have achieved the desired temperature, I will reset the containment and distribution systems so that supercooled gas enters the power-generating station, where it will encounter the normal ambient temperature. You are an educated man, Batman. You know what will happen next.”

He did. The supercooled gas, colliding with the sudden higher temperature, would expand violently. The force of the expansion would be enough to shatter many of the pipes and valves channeling the gas supply, causing a huge eruption of volatile natural gas… which would then ignite the moment it encountered an open flame, or even a spark from a live wire torn loose in the initial expansion.

The entire storage and generation works would go up in a fireball powerful enough to level everything within hundreds of yards. That blast radius included several apartment buildings and at least one police precinct. Casualties would be in the hundreds, at the very least, and Gotham City would be without electricity until power could be rerouted from elsewhere.

“Your silence is telling, Batman,” Mr. Freeze said. The mists began to clear, and Batman saw that he was standing on a platform over a shining tangle of valves and pumps. “Already the cooling agents are circulating. Liquid nitrogen is quite effective. Soon the gas will be too cold to return to normal temperature without a quite spectacular explosion.” He cast a brief look over his shoulder. “Fight well, and you will live long enough to see it. Gentlemen?”

Mr. Freeze’s goons raised their weapons.
Six of them
, Batman thought. Just as there had been six in the Gotham Merchant’s Bank vault.

Another echo.

Mr. Freeze needed them to buy him time so he could finish circulating the liquid nitrogen across the river to the GP&L facility. Most likely he was using the existing gas mains, reversing their flow to send cooling elements back up the pipes. Even if the explosive expansion of the liquid nitrogen didn’t itself destroy the works, the reversed flow would over-pressurize the natural-gas storage chambers.