Batman (26 page)

“Batman!”
the armor said. Robin didn’t move inside it. The voice emanated from a speaker set in the base of the helmet.

Batman stopped.

“Riddler,” he said.

“Yes! Edward Nigma here. I want to make sure you understand a few things before we proceed, since it’s no fun giving someone a riddle without enough information to solve it. Anyone can spew out random gibberish. The master of the game proves his superiority by challenging his adversary, and giving that adversary every opportunity to fight back. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Let me talk to Robin,” Batman demanded.

Inside the suit’s helmet, Robin’s eyes snapped into focus. He looked at Batman, and Batman saw that he was aware of what was happening to him.

“Batman!” he said—and then his mouth snapped shut. His eyes went wide. After a moment, it opened again, and he said, “I flee sky and earth alike, and all green things long for the touch of my tears.”

A riddle.

“Clouds,” Batman said.

“Very quick!”
the Riddler said.
“You see, Robin is alive and well. Yet your most difficult challenge is still ahead. You want to free Robin, of course you do, but I cannot let you open the suit, for I fear the very same batteries that power it will combine and explode if it is breached. There is one way—and
only
one way—to circumvent this mechanism. The answer lies in a riddle I have given you… and just to make things a little more interesting, I thought I would add another element. Robin?”

The guardian armor raised its left hand and spread the fingers. From its palm, a beam of energy lanced out, blasting apart the cabin of an empty GCPD patrol boat docked at the next pier. The boat started to burn fiercely as the Riddler continued.

“You see that young Robin is under my control,”
he said.
“He speaks in riddles, as I am fond of doing. His limbs move as I command, and the suit does what I tell it to do. It will continue to do so until you either solve my final riddle… or choose to sacrifice your comrade on the altar of public safety!

“Shall we begin?”

The boat exploded as the fire reached its gas tanks. The pier caught fire as well, and Batman heard alarms going off.

“I’ve already contacted the fire department,”
Oracle said in his ear,
“but they’re going to need some protection.”

“I’ll tell your father,” Batman replied, his voice low so the Riddler’s sensors wouldn’t catch what he said. “Start evacuating the area.”

“That’s a little above my pay grade,”
she said.

“Just start setting off alarms, at least in the major buildings—the ones you can access,” Batman said. “Get people moving. When GCPD gets here, they’ll start coordinating, but if we don’t start this now, a lot of people are going to die.”

Sirens sounded throughout the nearby area. Robin, in thrall to the Riddler, walked forward in the guardian armor. When he got to the base of the pier, he swept the road with the palm blasters, incinerating cars and setting fire to storefronts and warehouses. Luckily this part of Gotham City was sparsely populated. Gentrification hadn’t reached the West River docks. But most likely Robin—and the Riddler—wouldn’t stay here.

The armor stomped up to Batman.

He refused to move.

“Robin,” he said. “Robin! You have to take control.”

Robin stared at him though the faceplate. His eyes tracked back and forth—it was happening too evenly to be random motion.
A message
, Batman thought.
He looks like he’s reading…

He looked over his shoulder, but there was nothing there. Where else could Robin be seeing words? Or was the ocular motion a byproduct of the Riddler’s control?

No. Robin wanted him to read something.

Thinking of the digital displays he had built into the Batmobile’s windshield, Batman wondered if something might be inscribed on the inside of the faceplate. That would account for Robin’s signal. He stepped to the right, and as the guardian armor stomped past him, Batman watched the faceplate carefully. He caught a brief luminescent image as the rays of the late afternoon sun struck the faceplate at a particular angle.

PUPA.

Throughout the day, as he had hunted the Riddler’s associates and pieced together the different solutions, Batman had anticipated a grander riddle, an overarching theme to the scheme.

Now he had it.

IAMLARVAL had led to PUPA. The next stage of the life of a holometabolous insect was the imago, the fully mature adult form achieved when the insect emerged from its cocoon.

The letters in
imago
struck him, and another piece of the Riddler’s grand conundrum fell into place.

Isaacson.

Mateosian.

Angelo.

Gray.

Ouellette.

IMAGO.

The Riddler had presented him with the answer, but not until it was too late. The lives of five people had merged into the final clue, and only one of them still lived.

To solve this last puzzle, Batman had to figure out a way to allow Robin to emerge from the deadly cocoon. Within the structure of the riddle, that would complete the cycle. Robin would achieve his imago form.

Yet the suit was set up to explode—the result of Victor Fries’s efforts. The clue, seen in hindsight, had been on full display in the death room where Robin had moved the spheres. The Riddler had set up several of his puzzles, it seemed, so that they had dual meanings. They could be solved in the moment, but their role in his ultimate plan could only be understood after it was too late to do anything about it.

That in turn meant there was an element of the imago puzzle that Batman hadn’t yet deciphered. In a gesture of irony, he wasn’t meant to understand it until after he had witnessed Robin’s death.

Batman snapped out a grappling hook and pulled himself up and across the waterfront road, his cape billowing in the updraft from fires below. When he was on the rooftop of an empty warehouse, he looked back. Robin had turned down the middle of the waterfront road. He destroyed a crane tower, then a transformer, then a small office shed.

Another element, indeed.

Sirens sounded and got closer. The police had set up a blockade shutting off the waterfront road both north and south of where Robin stood. Commissioner Gordon got out of one of the cars, a bullhorn in his hand.

“This is Commissioner Gordon of the Gotham City Police Department!” he boomed. “Robin, you need to stand down. We will use lethal force if necessary, but you know we don’t want to do that.” He paused and dropped his voice from an authoritative bark to a gentler level. “Come on, son. Whatever happened to you down there, you don’t need to do this. Shut down the suit, and let’s work this out.”

A police helicopter hovered just behind the north blockade, a sniper poised in its open side door. Batman sprinted north, vaulting the gaps between rooftops until he was near enough to the blockade that he could jump off the roof and glide down with the assistance of his cape.

“Commissioner!” he called while still in the air.

He didn’t get any further.

Robin raised both hands. The sniper in the helicopter got off one shot. It was a good one, hitting the faceplate just above dead center. If it had penetrated the armored glass, it would have hit Robin right between the eyes. But the guardian armor was engineered to handle heavier incoming fire than rifle bullets. The slug left a small conical divot on the faceplate, and ricocheted away into the air.

As the sound of the gunshot reached Batman, Robin activated the armor’s palm beams. The helicopter’s cockpit disintegrated into fragments of glass and steel. Two of its rotor blades snapped off and spun out over the river. The sniper fell out the open doorway, hanging by his safety harness as the helicopter spun down and smashed into a freight yard at the base of the pier just behind the blockade.

Officers ran to help, while others opened fire on the guardian armor. One of them, in a panic, aimed his gun at Batman as he swooped low toward the blockade. He spun and tucked into a somersault, hitting the pavement harder than he’d planned and tumbling into a controlled stand directly in front of the frightened cop.

“Don’t shoot,” he said calmly. The cop’s gun was aimed right at his sternum.

After a moment he lowered it.

Batman glanced over at the guardian armor. It still held both hands out, but the cops had stopped shooting at it because their fire was making no difference.

“Commissioner,” he said again, striding up to Gordon. “You have to get your officers back and manage an evacuation.” Sirens were still sounding near and far, as Oracle commandeered emergency response systems.

“I do?” Gordon lowered the bullhorn. “Why exactly do I need to do that? What’s going on here?”

“The Riddler showed his cards,” Batman said. “He’s trapped Robin in that suit and he’s operating it remotely. Robin’s not doing this, Commissioner.”

“I’m not sure that matters,” Gordon said.

“It does. The suit is a walking bomb. If we damage it before we solve the Riddler’s final puzzle, it will explode, and Robin will be killed.”

“Other people are already dead,” Gordon said. “I’ve got additional helicopters on the way, and they’re carrying more than snipers. I’m sorry, Batman, but we can’t let this thing get any further—we can’t let it reach a populated area.”

The thudding of rotor blades reached Batman’s ears. He looked to the southeast, in the direction of the new police headquarters, and saw three helicopters, spread a few hundred yards apart, coming into position. They hovered perhaps a quarter of a mile away, one over the river, one over the road, and one over the city.

Then there was another sound. Turning, Batman saw three more helicopters to the north, their positions mirroring the first to arrive. One hung just over Arkham City, one over the road, and one near the Wayne Industries building.

“Commissioner.”
A voice crackled over the radio clipped to Gordon’s belt.
“We are in position. Awaiting orders.”

“Don’t do it,” Batman said.

with Jack Ryder

GNN CABLE NEWS NETWORK