Taking advantage of having their attention, Barbara turned toward one of the Maelstrom members who was trading BDs with a visible erection under his ragged pants.
"Lars H. Dyer..." she read aloud, without a hint of emotion, as the holographic file floated before her eyes. "Two charges of sexual assault, one for possession of braindances involving minors."
Lars looked up, clicked his tongue, and smiled, revealing teeth sharpened like razor blades.
Barbara didn't wait for a reaction. She advanced toward the group huddled in front of the flickering screens.
"Leonard Nowak: three homicides... acquitted due to lack of evidence."
Nowak turned toward the others, smirked lopsidedly, and raised two fingers, as if that were an accomplishment.
"Chandler 'Chop' Ruiz… Arrested for kidnapping and forcible extraction of cyberware… which led to two confirmed homicides."
Despite the gravity of the charges, what really made his companions react—and not kindly—was learning his last name, which none of them had known.
"Wait… Ruiz? What are you, a fucking Valentino?" the one sitting next to him blurted out, standing up abruptly and backing away from him.
Chandler raised his hands, nervous, looking at everyone through the multiple lenses encircling his head. "No, man, no! I don't even know my old man."
Barbara ignored them as they argued loudly and moved on to the next one. "Ralph Wigs—"
The difference between the name and the heap of chrome was so absurd that it made her frown as she asked rhetorically:
"Seriously... Ralph?"
Ralph himself shrugged, uncomfortable.
Barbara sighed before continuing. "Seven charges of grievous bodily harm, three for possession and distribution of illicit substances…" She paused, her voice laced with coldness, before adding: "In the vicinity of a school..."
"What's wrong?" Ralph replied mockingly, leaning back in his chair while puffing out his chest. "In the times we live in, kids need to release stress too."
The response elicited laughter and whistles from the other Maelstrom members.
Barbara clenched her jaw upon hearing them boast about their crimes, and the misfortunes they had committed... generating wounds that would take a lifetime to heal.
She restrained the violent impulse and focused her gaze on the file of the absent netrunner, still submerged in the net, projected directly onto her retina.
She read it silently: [unauthorized access to corporate networks, identity fraud, trafficking of child sexual abuse material, two hacks on the Neo Gotham City police...]
And that was just the beginning of the list.
Disgusted, she frowned and turned to the most chromed of them all: tall, with skin tattooed in pentagrams and anarchist designs up to the neck, and a single cybernetic lens the size of a fist integrated deep into his face, where his nose and eyes should be.
"Gunnar 'Cyclops' Kowalski. Rape. Organ trafficking. Smuggling of military cyberware. And the possible murder of three Trauma Team employees... while they were trying to evacuate their clients..." Lowering her gaze to his implants, she completed: "With mantis blades."
Gunnar extended the blades with a hydraulic snap, the red-hot edge gleaming against his implants. He approached until Barbara felt the heat radiating from the blades, and retracted them suddenly.
In a failed attempt to intimidate her, since she didn't even blink.
"I've already paid for my 'terrible' crimes and now I'm a free man. Besides..."
Smiling as much as his facial implants allowed, he completed: "About the Trauma Team bastards, it's only presumably, detective. They never convicted me for it. It was just a... terrible case of mistaken identity."
Barbara didn't even bother to correct him when he called her Detective. Not willing to exchange more words than necessary with the scum in front of her.
The Maelstrom's lens rotated, focusing on her as if recording every nuance of her reaction, as he added: "You caught the wrong person."
She controlled her expression as best she could, letting out a grunt more fitting for a certain cane-wielding hermit.
"Even if you're playing dumb, we know that little shits like you have no idea where Viper is hiding... You only have one use: giving us a lead. We want the location of the person who knows the answer, your boss in Gotham."
Gunnar tilted his head, feigning curiosity. "Anything else, commissioner? The names of our clients? Or maybe our supplier's?"
He raised his hands and lifted his voice so everyone could hear. "Guys, behave... we're in the presence of the second-generation commissioner, Barbara Gordon. Living proof that nepotism exists in the fucking NGPD too."
Amid the sarcastic applause from his men, Gunnar added mockingly: "You're not the only one with a facial scanner... commissioner."
Barbara closed the distance by a step, her Kiroshi implants glowing, ready to hack into his system.
"Don't play games with me; I just need an excuse to rain agents down on this dump. We won't have to look far to find something that sends you back to the cage you never should have left."
The twisted smile faded from his face as he responded without mockery in his distorted voice. "Any time in Arkham would be better than the punishment we'd get for collaborating with the NGPD. So..." raising both hands together, he completed: "Arrest us... we won't resist. That way, you won't have to waste our tax money."
The yellowish glow of Barbara's Kiroshi faced off against Gunnar's red lens.
Measuring who would yield first.
Detective Sherly, at her side, cleared his throat nervously.
"Commissioner, should I call for reinforcements?"
Barbara weighed it in silence, but as he himself had said, they preferred serving time in Arkham over talking to them. Restraining once again the violent impulse that crossed her mind, finally...
"No. We're out of here." She was the one who stepped back, turning around and heading toward the exit.
Laughter erupted among the Maelstrom, a chorus of whistles and sarcastic comments following them like toxic smoke: "Come back soon, commissioner!", "Say hi to daddy for us!".
Barbara shoved her hands into the pockets of her trench coat, clenching her fists until her knuckles turned white.
She missed the old days, when the department's rules and social norms didn't tie her hands, leaving her powerless against scum like that.
-
Barbara stormed out of the factory with a metallic crash as she slammed the door against the wall.
Walking away at a brisk pace, she tried to drown out the laughter and guffaws escaping from the old building like an echo that refused to die.
The taunts didn't hurt her.
What consumed her was the impotence.
'That scum... they don't even deserve to be treated like people.'
'They have the information to hunt down an even worse monster... and that's the only thing that matters.'
'But... NO!'
'I have to respect their rights... the same as any citizen... the same as their victims!?' she reproached herself.
Sherly didn't dare leave seeing his boss's state. Although his car was parked in the opposite direction, he quickened his pace to follow her, trying to find the words to calm her.
"That didn't go well..." he sighed.
A grunt was all the response he got.
"I hope at least the other detectives have had more luck."
Barbara stopped. The impotence dimmed the spark in her eyes before she replied with the pessimism that experience had taught her:
"I doubt it. Probably, even the Detectives in Night City are going through the same thing we are here."
Marcus took a couple more steps and, unlike her, asked with a glimmer of hope: "What now?"
Barbara took a deep breath, as if searching for an answer that wouldn't come. She just wanted to go back to her daughters and husband after such a long and hard day...
"The best thing is for us to head ho—"
Her voice broke off. Her eyes narrowed, her jaw tensed.
"Is something wrong?" Marcus asked, noticing the change.
Instead of responding, Barbara accepted an incoming call on her neural implant. Although the signal was encrypted, she didn't hesitate, her tone obviously irritated in the privacy of her mind.
["What do you want, Bruce? I'm not in the mood."]
["You already tried. Let the kid do it now."]
["The kid? What kid!?"]
Instinctively, Barbara turned her gaze back to the factory, catching something as dark as the night crashing through one of the windows on the top floor like a propelled missile.
The shattering of the glass mixed with a brutal landing inside, so sharp and violent that the ground beneath her feet trembled. Like the roar of a beast released from its cage.
A second of confusion later... chaos erupted.
Bursts of gunfire thundered inside. Distorted screams of fear and pain filtered outside, like desperate bellows in a slaughterhouse. Dry and brutal blows made the impacted crash against the walls, dislodging bricks and bending the pipes on the exterior facade.
The air was filled with the unmistakable echo of bone and chrome breaking... equally.
Before Marcus could process it, Barbara was already running back to the factory, weapon in hand.
-
"Where is he?" growled the shadow with white eyes, tightening its armored claws around Gunnar's neck.
The Maelstrom member, completely blind, gasped in terror; sweat mixed with oil and whitish synthetic blood ran down his face and tattooed torso.
"I-I don't know who you're talking about..."
The figure raised its "free" arm and, without warning, plunged the Mantis blade it gripped into its owner's stomach.
The red-hot edge cauterized the wound at the same time it scorched his insides.
Not seeing the attack and only feeling the sudden burst of pain made Gunnar scream hysterically, thrashing like a fish yanked from the water.
A few seconds later, the white eyes sharpened like blades as it slowly withdrew the blade, only to ask again:
"Where is Viper?"
"I-I-I don't know!" His voice cracked. "I don't know shit!"
Even though he couldn't see it, Gunnar sensed that his answer didn't stop the shadow for an instant.
"Wait... I beg you... NO!" Not even his desperate pleas managed to halt it.
Another scream, as heart-wrenching as it was distorted, escaped his throat when the blade plunged in again and again, in controlled bursts that made him convulse in pain while suspended in the air.
"WHERE?"
"I don't know! I don't know, I swear! FUCK!!!!" Gunnar shrieked desperately, the words tumbling out in a rush from his chest before the pain cut him off again. "BUT I KNOW WHO DOES!"
The shadow with white eyes leaned in until it brushed the edge of what was bearable.
Gunnar felt a rough breath collide against what remained of his face:
A heavy, controlled breathing... that made his skin crawl. As if instead of a person, he had a predator in front of him, on the verge of pouncing and tearing flesh and metal alike.
However, instead of that...
A deep, almost inhuman whisper broke through like a roar in his personal darkness:
"W-H-E-R-E."
At that moment, the door burst open.
"Freeze! Hands up! NGPD!" Barbara shouted, bursting in with her weapon raised, Marcus panting a few steps behind.
Gunnar had never been happier to hear those initials, crying as his crotch grew damp. "Fuck... finally... don't let him kil—"
Unable to finish as the grip around his neck tightened.
Barbara and Marcus stopped dead in their tracks amid the air thick with smoke and sparks.
Under the erratic flicker of the red neons, an intimidating black silhouette with long, pointed ears rose up, barely outlined by the crimson glow, as if the light itself dared not touch it.
It had its back to them, not even glancing their way, while holding Gunnar by the neck with a single hand, as if he weighed nothing.
The Maelstrom's proud cybernetic arms were gone: in their place, a tangle of cables and metal dangled from his shoulders, as if they had been ripped out at the roots... and that wasn't the only thing.
The thermal edge of one of his Mantis blades hissed, piercing the organic part of his left leg; his thigh. The other was still trapped between the figure's claws, dripping hydraulic fluid.
Activating her Kiroshi, Barbara's yellow eyes scanned the devastated surroundings.
Leaving her stunned by the brutality she saw.
Even though the "victims" deserved it... the violence with which it had been carried out... unsettled her.
Lars H. Dyer; the rapist, trafficker of child content, had taken such a blow that it left him embedded in a crater in the wall. Inert, possibly with a broken spine, and a trickle of blood seeping from the point of impact... his groin.
Leonard Nowak; the alleged multiple murderer, lay face down amid shattered glass, his skull sunk into the cracked concrete, a pool of blood spreading beneath his half-crushed head.
As if upon landing... the black figure... had grabbed his skull and slammed it against the ground. Brutally channeling all the force and speed it carried.
Ralph Wigs; the aggressive junkie who enjoyed selling drugs to teenagers, focused on breathing in short, ragged gasps as if in labor.
Trying to escape the pain and the unsettling sight of his four limbs twisted at impossible angles, with bones and metal protruding beneath the torn skin.
The rest of the Maelstrom lay scattered in intermediate states: some groaning, others motionless, but with their chests rising and falling irregularly.
Barbara, unable to scan the figure—as if her Kiroshi couldn't detect it despite it being right in front of her—finished the scan by examining Gunnar's red lens, lying on the floor after being ripped out at the root.
Leaving an irregular and nauseating hole in his chromed face, distorted by a grimace of pure pain and terror.
The one responsible, ignoring the weapons pointed at him, ordered in a distorted growl:
"Mark it on your GPS."
Already connected to Gunnar's neural ID—where he had deactivated the pain blockers and amplified his sensory receptors to the maximum—he allowed him to see an extension of his interface in motion: switching tabs to the city map and marking one of its buildings in Downtown.
Barbara took a step forward, her voice escaping her lips with firmness:
"Drop him and hands up!"
The figure obeyed halfway: releasing Gunnar abruptly, but not without first plunging the other mantis blade into his right leg, completing the symmetrical pair.
"If you lie... I'll come back and stab them higher up."
The Maelstrom howled, collapsing into a puddle of sweat, oil, synthetic blood, and other residues.
Instead of raising his hands, the shadow turned, revealing the legendary crimson emblem that burned on his chest, sharp as an open wound in the darkness.
The suit—if it could be called that—made of a matte material darker than the shadows surrounding it, clung to his body without highlighting any detail: like staring at a human-shaped void.
His completely black face had simplified features, erasing any trait that could humanize him, leaving only the harshest and sharpest contours.
With sealed lips, there was no trace of a mouth; only a pair of white eyes that opened or narrowed with an expressiveness as minimal as it was intimidating.
Upon seeing him approach them, Barbara aimed at him again: "Stop!"
Managing to halt him... for a second. Until, unable to waste any more time, his thrusters ignited with a low roar, propelling him forward like a black blur.
Although it seemed like he was charging toward her, Barbara—seeing that bat emblem, the same one she had once used—her finger froze on the trigger.
One heartbeat before, Marcus received a sharp blow to the back of his neck.
The netrunner, freshly disconnected from the net with his eyes still glassy and unaware of what was happening, snatched his standard-issue M-10AF Lexington and aimed straight at Barbara's back.
She turned upon hearing the scuffle, but it was too late: the barrel stared her down, with the netrunner's finger squeezing the trigger.
However... when all Barbara could see was the faces of her daughters, of Dick... her family, at the bottom of the barrel that opened fire...
Something dark interposed itself in front of her.
Taking the shot full in the shoulder—the impact rang out like a gong, disrupting his charge. But with a boost increase from his boots, he corrected it, amplifying the force of the propelled punch that cracked against the netrunner's head.
Shattering his neural link at the neck in a shower of sparks and cybernetic fragments, while he was sent flying toward another wall, where he remained embedded.
A few seconds later... realizing what had just happened, Barbara—still with her pulse racing—murmured:
"Tha-nks."
He didn't respond immediately. It was the first time he'd been shot; he checked the damage by moving his shoulder slightly. The bullet hadn't left a mark on the suit, but the impact felt as if it were still vibrating in his bones.
As he passed by her, thinking about the warmth of that jacket, he spoke with a dry calm: "No need. I'm just returning the favor."
"Favor?" she asked, frowning.
Although he had no intention of answering... a deep voice emerged from the suit, interrupting them:
["Don't waste time. Every second you're here is one your target can use to change location."]
"Bruce?" Barbara let slip.
For an instant, the figure broke his stoic composure and, surprised, asked: "You know each other?"
["Go!"] the voice ordered from inside and outside the suit.
Before leaving, "When you write the police report," he pointed to Chandler 'Chop' Ruiz lying on the ground covered in wounds. "That wasn't me. When I arrived, all of them were beating him to death, calling him Valentino."
Then, Barbara stood watching as the "kid" was propelled out through the same window he had entered, and in the air, he corrected his trajectory with a couple of awkward movements before stabilizing.
Watching him disappear into the night... Aware that the line was still open, Barbara asked aloud, unable to hide the concern she felt.
"Bruce... what are you doing?"
He simply replied: ["Your job."]
Before cutting the communication.