Batman (30 page)

“Let’s go!” he said, as if Batman had been delaying them.

Together they ran down the block and simultaneously cast grappling lines that pulled them to the top of the building where the Riddler waited.

“And the last piece of the puzzle falls into place,” the Riddler said as they climbed.

“He’s not running,” Robin said.

“Maybe that’s the last piece of the puzzle,” Batman answered. They were just below the overhung roof rail. “One… Two…”

He didn’t have to say three. They kicked off the wall and used the tension in the grapple lines to swing up and over onto the rooftop.

The Riddler didn’t move or speak.

A moment later they realized it wasn’t Nigma at all. It was a dummy dressed in the Riddler’s signature outfit. Bracketed onto the dummy’s jaw was a small speaker, now emitting just a soft hiss of white noise.

Of the actual Riddler there was no sign. He had, however, left a note.

Batman
,

I owe you my sincerest thanks. You’ve been a superb test of my next generation of… assets, shall we say? By now you will have learned that if I wanted you dead, you would be dead. But of course I don’t want that, just as you, Batman, wouldn’t really wish me out of commission.

The test of wills is the irresistible thing! And for you, the other irresistible thing is matching wits, solving the puzzle, isn’t it, Batman? You know you feel it!

The future is going to be a little different around here without the Joker. He brought chaos and unpredictability. I have no interest in either. The great puzzle is only great if it has a solution. What I’m looking forward to, as the new sheriff in town, is seeing just how far I can push you.

Just how clever, how determined, how resolute are you going to be? We shall see. You will face a different adversary now that the Joker’s not around anymore…

The old order is ashes, and the new is just getting started. You and I, Batman—and you too, Robin! I think you’ve probably survived this, and if you haven’t, well, that’s disappointing.

We had a grand time, didn’t we? Let’s do it again soon. As I was saying, we’re going to be seeing each other quite often in the future… but when and where? Ah, one hates to answer a question when one can pose it instead.

So here’s a question: If this was my initial gambit, then the opening position has only just been established. We now embark on the middle part of our game. What do you think I’ll do next?

Until next time, I congratulate you on not resigning. You played a bad position and played it well! Let’s call this one a draw.

Yours respectfully,
E. Nigma

“You think he’s going to be able to do it?” Robin wondered.

“Take control?” Batman responded. “He might. This scheme is going to let every lunatic in Gotham City know that the Riddler used Mr. Freeze, Killer Croc, the Mad Hatter, Harley Quinn, and Deadshot for his own purposes. That’s a powerful statement to a criminal mind used to having a warlord in charge.”

“Then he won.”

Batman shook his head. “No. I think he’s just saving face. He wanted me to watch you die, and then figure out after the fact what I could have done to save you.”

“He’s a real charmer.”

“Just like the rest of them,” Batman said. “Misfits, misanthropes, weak people with powerful desires.”

“He was the imago,” Robin said. “This was all like a coming-out party for him. Too bad I didn’t figure that out until he was inside my head already. That’s when I saw the PUPA on the faceplate of the suit.”

“Neither one of us figured it out in time,” Batman said. “Is that what happened? Some kind of mind control?”

“Well, maybe I shouldn’t say that,” Robin said. “I could think, and move a little. Not enough to do any good. Mostly he was in charge.”

“Is he still? I mean, could he do it again?”

“I don’t know,” Robin said. “He let me go when you solved the riddle. He said it was some kind of nanotechnology I ate along with a piece of paper in the tea room.”

“You ate a piece of paper,” Batman said.

Robin shrugged. “Hey, it said ‘EAT ME.’ What was I
supposed
to do?”

“Strange time to decide to start following instructions,” Batman commented.

Robin looked out over the rooftops. Fire crews were battling the blazes the guardian armor had left.

“I did that,” he said.

“No. The Riddler did.”

“I know,” Robin said. “But you know what I mean.”

Batman nodded. “I put you in that spot by letting you go down into the labyrinth alone. You did well to survive.”

“Thanks,” Robin said. On Henry Avenue below them, they both watched Gotham City police cruisers approaching.

“Commissioner Gordon will be in one of those cars,” Batman said.

“Yeah. You know I was fine down there, right?”

“Sure,” Batman said.

Robin watched as Gordon got out of the lead cruiser. “We’ll need a nanotechnology expert to see what’s still in my bloodstream,” he said.

Bloodstream
, Batman thought. He was thinking of the Joker’s blood, and all the blood shed during the past few months. What would come next? The Riddler thought he was fully emerged from his cocoon now. This series of riddles had been his announcement.

Now the real turbulence would begin. The other high-profile and powerful villains of Gotham City weren’t likely to go along with the Riddler’s proclamation. Some of them, like Solomon Grundy or Poison Ivy or the Calendar Man, wouldn’t care. They did what they did no matter what anyone else had to say, driven by deep-seated desires only they could understand.

But others—the Penguin, the Mad Hatter, Mr. Freeze, Two-Face—they were ambitious. They wanted to be in charge, and built their own small empires into larger empires to prove to each other that they were in charge. Now the Riddler had called them all out.

Even though the physical emergence was Robin’s, like Tim had said, the Riddler himself was the imago called out by the final puzzle. Throughout the day—and, Batman realized with astonishment, it had been only a single day—the Riddler had unfolded a series of puzzles with layers that interlocked and led inevitably to the claim that the Riddler was reborn as Gotham City’s new criminal kingpin, emerging from the cocoon of the Joker’s shadow.

That explained it all, every clue and puzzle and trap from the moment the USB drive had shown up in the Gotham City Police Department headquarters. That was what had led him to the larval clue in the first place.

It was masterful, really, Batman thought. In the past, the Riddler had left puzzles. He had constructed lethal traps within confined rooms. But here he had developed a network of allies and contractors, gone into Arkham City and created a series of puzzles that not only had to be solved from multiple angles, but each contributed an element to a final master puzzle.

Shockingly, his goal had not been to kill Batman, or even Robin. Their deaths wouldn’t have been unwelcome, exactly, but the Riddler wanted an adversary he considered to be worthy of him.

As the Joker had.

Something stirred in him.

I have to stop doing that
, Batman thought.
The Joker is gone. Gotham City needs me present, and focused on the current threats. I don’t have the leisure to indulge psychological weakness—and needing time to grapple with the absence of my most intimate and deadly rival is a weakness.

Eliminate it
, he told himself.

It was all well and good to think that. Batman knew he would have to keep working to habituate himself to the fact that the Joker was gone. The past needed to stay buried. Even so, something within him kept trying to add the Joker back into these scenarios. It was a bone-deep call back to a time he understood.

Now everything was going to reshuffle, and Batman needed to get to work understanding how alliances would shift and break and be remade among the underworld powers. The tension hadn’t come to a head. It had just been ratcheted up a few notches. The real storm was still to come.

He had survived again, and he would be there to weather it. This was his city.

“Robin,” he said. “You should head back to the Batcave and let Alfred take a look at you. See if those nano machines are still in there.”

“If you’re worried about that, you shouldn’t let me go alone,” Robin said. It sounded like concern, but it was actually a challenge. Robin was asking if Batman trusted him.

“If the Riddler has let go his control, he has his reasons,” Batman said. “He’s made his point. He wants to be the new man in charge of Gotham City’s underworld, and after this I’m not sure who will challenge him. But I
am
sure that you should get a complete medical screening, so we don’t have to worry about him turning you into a puppet again.”

Robin flinched.

“Sorry,” Batman said.

“Don’t be,” Robin said. “It’s true.”

“So get moving. I’d offer you a ride, but I used up my only Batmobile saving you from a missile strike.”

Almost before he finished, Robin was gone across the rooftops, heading north toward the secret entrance to the Batcave. Batman flared his cape and dropped from the rooftop, alighting without sound on the sidewalk below.

“Commissioner,” he said.

“You know I did what I had to do,” Gordon said.

“I know you believe that.”

Gordon looked away, up toward the rooftop.

“So… the Riddler?”

“Just a dummy,” Batman said. “He was here, though. Somewhere nearby. He watched the whole thing and left us a message.”

“What kind of a message?”

“The kind that lets us know he’s already planning his next… challenge, I believe is his preferred term.”

“Figures. Robin’s okay?”

“He is.”

Gordon sighed. “Good.” After a pause, he lit a cigarette. “I guess we should start planning out what to do next, shouldn’t we?”

“That’s usually a good start.”

“Times like this I’d like to burn Arkham City to the ground. Bulldoze the whole thing into the river and start over again.”

Not a terrible idea
, Batman thought. But Gotham City was what it was. There was a sickness in the city, maybe in all cities. That was why they needed people like Batman, and like Gordon. They needed people who would never give up.

“You have the Mad Hatter and Mr. Freeze in custody?”

Gordon nodded and flipped his cigarette butt into the missile crater.

“For now,” he said. “Deadshot, too. We’ll see how long it lasts.”

Batman reached out and put a hand on Gordon’s shoulder. “We have to keep going,” he said. “Someone has to.”

“Yeah.”

One of the officers securing the area called out to Gordon. He turned to answer a question and felt Batman’s hand lift from his shoulder. When he glanced back, Batman was gone.

They were talking about him. Everyone in Gotham City was talking about him. Vicki Vale, Jack Ryder, Del Toro, Trask… The Riddler flipped through the channels and saw file photos of himself on each and every one of them.

He tuned through different radio stations. Sports talkers ranted—and talked about the Riddler. Political ranters talked about the Riddler. The quiet cognoscenti on public radio murmured during their fund-raising breaks… talking about the Riddler. There were question marks in bright green on the front pages of every newspaper. He could hardly have asked for more… except for one thing.

Batman had spoken to no one. Neither had Robin.

This bothered the Riddler because he knew both of them had much to say. They wouldn’t want to give him credit, even by way of backhanded compliments about the fiendish complications of the challenge rooms or their associated puzzles. He understood that. But surely they wanted to say something! Surely they had to acknowledge that he had driven them to the utmost limits of their strength, their focus, their resolve. He had brought them to the very edge of what they thought was possible, and then… he had let them survive.

Let them.

Batman would even now be thinking that he had solved every puzzle and bested his opponent, but the Riddler saw it differently. He had given Batman more than enough at each turn, drawing him along so Robin too would be drawn along so that he could make his grand gesture with the guardian armor. The whole thing had been a greeting card, a “how-do-you-do,” a formal announcement that if the Joker was dead, long live the Riddler.

He knew it had been very close. His gambit had almost tested them too sternly. If Batman had wavered even a little in his decision to go after Killer Croc… or if Killer Croc had fought a little harder than the Riddler had asked… or if, and if, and if. So many things might have gone wrong. In retrospect he realized he was glad Batman had seen the final imago clock face puzzle. It would have been a terrible shame to have devoted all that time, all that energy, all those lives—and then have the whole pageant end before it had properly begun.

When he had left the message for Batman, the Riddler had been angry. He had been, essentially, faking it. Oh, so angry. He had wanted Robin to die, he had wanted to see Batman’s favorite blasted into charred and bloody shreds by police missiles, and he had forced himself to write that message and set up the dummy just in case because he could… not… stand the idea of being caught unprepared.

It turned out to have been more than just prudent, it was the best decision he could have made. Why? Because he had, essentially, followed the old show-biz advice: Fake it ’til you make it.

It was much better to have both Batman and Robin survive. He knew that now. If either of them had died, the newspapers and radio stations and television airwaves of Gotham City, the blogs and social media and water-cooler conversations—all would have been about the dead hero. The martyr. He who had fallen to the nefarious bloody mastermind.

With both Batman and Robin alive, the nefarious bloody mastermind was the topic on everyone’s lips, at everyone’s fingertips.

It was marvelous.

Even if Gotham City police units were combing the wreckage in Wonder City. Even if Deadshot, the Mad Hatter, and Mr. Freeze had been removed from the board. Those were acceptable losses. In coming operations, he would have other partners. Already he had made overtures to some of them, and chosen new spaces that would be well suited to the next generation of puzzled.