The tactical team held their positions in the second-floor corridor. The building had gone quiet again after the explosions. Every officer had their eyes moving: doorways, windows, ceiling vents, corners. Shadows shifted in the emergency lighting, and every single one of them looked like something was about to come through it.
Nothing had.
Gordon stood at the far end of the hallway. The rain hammered against the windows in sheets. Somewhere below, he could hear the faint crackle of radio chatter.
Reeves shifted his weight and cleared his throat.
"This is taking forever. Honestly, the way things have been going so far, today might not be—"
"Shut your mouth." Gordon's voice was flat. He didn't look at Reeves, but the kid flinched anyway.
It wasn't superstition exactly. He didn't believe in ghosts, curses, or any of that nonsense. But he'd been a cop long enough to know that certain things, once said out loud, had a way of coming true at the worst possible moment. Cops who announced they were retiring next week. Cops who said the shift was almost over. And cops who said it was quiet tonight. Every veteran had heard the stories. They had seen what happened when someone broke the unspoken rule.
You didn't tempt it. You just didn't.
Reeves closed his mouth and stared at the floor.
The silence settled back in.
Gordon's eyes drifted upward, scanning the ventilation grate above the corridor. Standard aluminum, four bolts, nothing unusual. He'd checked it twice already. His gaze moved on.
Then he heard a sound from inside the duct. Barely there, so faint that for a moment he wasn't sure he'd heard anything at all. His finger tightened on the trigger guard. He raised the rifle and aimed it at the grate.
"Someone there?"
Silence.
The officers behind him followed his lead, raising their weapons toward the ceiling. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Gordon was about to lower his gun when the sound came back, louder this time. A scratching, skittering noise, like claws against sheet metal. Then another sound joined it, and another, building on top of each other until the duct overhead sounded like it was full of something alive and moving fast.
"What the hell is that?" one of the officers muttered.
The scratching grew louder and closer, moving fast through the system, converging on a junction point about ten meters down the hallway.
And then, from that junction, came a scream.
The scream lasted maybe two seconds before it was swallowed by a new sound.
Gordon's blood went cold.
He kept his weapon trained on the duct, but there was nothing to shoot at. The grate was still bolted shut. The sounds were coming from inside the sealed system, somewhere he couldn't see and couldn't reach. All he could do was listen.
The screaming stopped.
But the chewing didn't.
For ten seconds, the only sound in the corridor was the rain outside and that horrible gnawing from somewhere above their heads. Then, slowly, a dark liquid began to seep from the edge of the vent grate nearest the junction. It dripped once, twice. Then faster, the drops falling with increasing frequency until they merged into a thin, steady stream. It hit the floor.
Blood.
He watched it pool on the linoleum, spreading in a circle. Nobody moved or spoke. One of the younger officers made a sound in the back of his throat, but held his position.
The stream quickened. Within thirty seconds, it had become a trickle. Within a minute, it was running freely, tracing a crimson line down the wall and across the floor toward the nearest drain.
Gordon lowered his rifle.
"Nobody move from this corridor. Nobody touches anything until we figure out what just happened."
---
Inside the ventilation system, the space was barely wide enough for a man to crawl on his hands and knees. For two assassins with unusually slight builds, the reason they'd been selected for this particular insertion, it was a tight, suffocating squeeze even at their size. They moved on their elbows and knees, inching forward through the dark.
The inner surfaces of the duct were coated in a layer of dust and grease. The air tasted of rust and decades of accumulated filth. They breathed through their noses, conserving oxygen and keeping their heartbeats low.
They had the building's HVAC layout memorized. The route they were following led directly above the holding cells. It was the filthiest way in. But it was supposed to be the most unexpected.
The first assassin stopped moving. He held up a fist. The man behind him froze immediately.
From somewhere ahead in the darkness, a sound. Faint at first, easy to mistake for the building's air system cycling. It was getting closer. And it was getting louder.
He reached for the miniature flashlight clipped to his vest and clicked it on.
The beam stabbed forward into the dark.
What it revealed made his stomach drop out of his body.
The duct ahead was covered in rats. Their eyes caught the flashlight and reflected it back in dozens of tiny red points.
They were facing him. And they were moving toward him.
"Oh..."
The assassin tried to back up. In the cramped duct, "backing up" meant reversing on his elbows, dragging his body backward through the filth. He managed about sixty centimeters before the man behind him started moving backward too, but there was nowhere to go. The duct behind them was a dead end they'd already passed.
The rats hit them in under a second.
It wasn't like being mobbed. It was like being submerged. Dozens of them, all at once, biting through fabric first and then into skin. The pain was everywhere. The assassins screamed. The sound bounced off the metal walls of the duct, echoing back at them from all directions until it sounded like more than two people were dying.
They thrashed. They clawed at the walls, trying to create enough space to shake the rats off, but in the confined duct there was no room to move. Every motion just pressed more of their bodies against more teeth. The biting intensified. One of them felt something give way in his left forearm and screamed louder.
The screaming faded. The chewing did not.
It continued for another thirty seconds. Then, as suddenly as they had come, the rats withdrew. The tide of bodies flowed backward down the duct, and disappeared into the darkness.
What they left behind was not much.
---
In the corridor outside the holding cells, Otis stood motionless in a patch of shadow where the emergency lighting didn't quite reach. He was perfectly still.
On his shoulder, a single rat sat with its tiny claws hooked into the fabric of his jacket. It was thin, with dark, intelligent eyes that blinked slowly in the dim light. Otis reached up with one hand and scratched the top of its head with his fingertip, a small, gentle motion.
He said nothing. The rat said nothing back. But something passed between them.
After a moment, Otis lowered his hand and turned his attention back toward the holding room door.
---
Two blocks away, on the top floor of an abandoned factory building, a woman stood behind the shattered remains of a window frame. The glass had been gone for years. Rain came in freely, soaking the concrete floor and running in thin rivers toward the far wall.
She didn't move. The rain hit her black combat suit and ran off it like water off glass, pooling at her boots. Her black hair was plastered to her forehead and neck, but she paid it no attention. Her eyes were fixed on the East End precinct, visible in the distance through the curtain of rain.
Talia al Ghul.
Ra's al Ghul's daughter. Trained from childhood to lead the League of Assassins. Ruthless, patient, and possessed of an intelligence that made lesser minds feel as though they were thinking through mud.
A figure materialized behind her. His black mask covered everything but his eyes, and even those betrayed something he couldn't quite control: shock.
"Report," Talia said. She didn't turn around.
"The first wave has been completely neutralized. The rooftop team triggered a booby trap. One operative is confirmed dead, and two are in critical condition. The rappelling team on the east side encountered welded iron bars behind the windows. There were multiple casualties on impact. Several more were injured on the ground after landing on tire-spike strips placed beneath the drop zone. At least three are non-ambulatory. The underground infiltration team has gone completely dark. There has been no signal and no check-in. They are presumed killed."
Talia's expression didn't change. She continued to stare at the precinct through the rain.
"Describe the defenses," she said.
"They left messages," he replied. "Written on the traps, on the doors, even on cards tied to the mannequin. They were riddles."
Talia tilted her head slightly.
"Riddles."
The corners of her lips curved, just enough to resemble a smile, though there was no warmth behind it.
"Edward Nygma," she murmured, almost to herself. "Father's intelligence was correct about his involvement, but we misjudged what he has become. He is no longer just a forensic analyst pretending to be clever."
She exhaled slowly through her nose.
"We underestimated all of them."
At last, she turned away from the window. Whatever softness the rain had reflected was gone.
"If they want to stay inside their fortress, we will force them out," he said. "Go. Find civilians and bring them to the front of the precinct so the people inside can see them. Then kill them, one at a time, slowly enough that it makes an impression."
The operative didn't hesitate. "Understood."
He rose and turned to disappear back into the shadows.
"Wait."
Talia's voice stopped him mid-step. She had already pulled an encrypted communicator from a pocket in her vest. The device connected after two seconds.
A voice answered. "Miss al Ghul? I've been waiting for your call. I was beginning to think you'd forgotten about me."
"Dr. Strange. The time has come for you to prove your value. We need the East End precinct neutralized from the inside. I want their communications taken offline and their structural vulnerabilities exposed. Can you do that?"
"Of course I can. I've been preparing for exactly this scenario. Nygma's trap network is impressive, I'll grant him that, but it's still just electronics and engineering. I can disrupt their communications within minutes. Once I'm in, I can make that fortress feel like a paper box. But the Lazarus Pit—"
"My father does not renege on agreements with allies who deliver results. But he has no use for people who promise and don't deliver. Begin and show me what you're worth."
She ended the call without waiting for a response and slipped the communicator back into her vest.
For a moment, she stood there, looking out at the rain-soaked city spread below her.
Bruce.
The name surfaced in her mind. The man she had loved. The man she had fought. The man who refused, against all logic and reason, to use the power at his disposal to simply end the suffering in this city.
You could stop all of this. One word, and the League would purge Gotham clean. But you won't. Because you believe there's another way.
Father saw your potential. I saw something else.
She pushed the thought down, buried it where it couldn't distract her, and turned her attention back to the task at hand.
The city answered her with the sound of engines.
---
The Batmobile came screaming out of the rain. The rain hit its surface and sprayed sideways.
It didn't slow down as it hit the factory's outer clearing.
Armor panels on the roof and both sides snapped open simultaneously. From inside, dozens of mechanical bats erupted outward in a dense swarm. Each one was roughly the size of an open hand, built from matte-black composite metal, with wings that beat at a frequency high enough to produce a continuous, piercing buzz. Red optical sensors flickered to life in their heads as they launched.
They hit the factory's lower levels.
League operatives on the ground floor opened fire immediately. Bullets stitched through the air, and some of them connected. They wove through the gunfire, each one targeting a specific individual, and when they got close enough, the needles deployed.
The needles were embedded in the bats' claws, wing edges, and mandibles. They drove them deep, past clothing and muscle, directly into the bloodstream.
One operative dropped his rifle mid-burst, his hands going slack, his legs folding beneath him. He was on the ground before he could process what had happened. Another one managed to pull a bat off his neck and crush it in his fist, but the needle had already gone in, and he made it three steps before the world tilted sideways and he went down.
Within forty seconds, the lower levels were chaos. Gunfire was still going, but the mechanical bats kept coming. The ground was littered with unconscious bodies and shattered bat components, and the noise of it all was so dense and so loud that it was almost impossible to think.
And in the middle of all of it, the Batmobile's top hatch slid open.
A black figure shot upward from the vehicle. The ejection system launched him skyward with enough force to clear the factory's lower structure entirely, and for a brief, suspended moment, he was simply rising. His right hand moved. A grappling gun fired a steel cable that crossed the distance to the factory's top floor in a fraction of a second. The hook bit into a steel beam at the edge of the platform where Talia stood, and the motor engaged, reeling him upward at speed.
He crossed the gap between the ground and the rooftop in under three seconds. The rain hammered against his cowl.
Talia watched him come. She didn't move or reach for a weapon.
He landed in front of her, the impact sending water splashing in every direction. He rose slowly to his feet, his cape settling behind him, heavy with rain.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The rain filled the silence between them.
Batman's gaze swept the scene below and then his eyes moved back to Talia, who met his gaze without flinching. The cold smile was back.
"Bruce... You came."
Batman said nothing for a long beat. Then he spoke, "Take your people and leave this city."
---
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