"Carmine Falcone?"
The Riddler's desperate accusation hung in the air like smoke after a gunshot. Blood still dripped from his nose and mouth. His hands trembled where they pressed against his compressed skull, checking if the bone had actually cracked.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Then the Godfather's mouth curved upward—just the corners, subtle as a knife edge. "Me."
The enforcer holding the Riddler's head raised one eyebrow. Sofia Falcone—recently released from prison, built like a linebacker with the face of a Greek statue, fiery red curls pulled back in a severe bun—looked almost amused.
"You?" she said, her voice carrying that particular quality of someone considering whether a joke was funny enough to share.
The delicate atmosphere held for three heartbeats.
Then Carmine Falcone laughed.
Not the cold, threatening chuckle of a crime lord indulging dark humor. A real laugh—genuine amusement that lit his scarred face and made him look almost human for a moment. The sound filled the office, echoing off walls that had witnessed countless interrogations but probably never this particular absurdity.
Even Sofia's mountain-solid face couldn't suppress a small smile. Her hands released the Riddler's temples, and he collapsed forward like a puppet with cut strings.
"Sofia," the Godfather said, still chuckling, wiping his eyes with one hand. "Take Mr. Nygma out through the side door."
Sofia grabbed the Riddler's green bowler hat from the floor and punched it back onto his head. The impact—delivered with casual strength that suggested she could have caved his skull in if she'd wanted to—made the Riddler's vision swim and his ears ring like cathedral bells.
He swayed, dizzy, barely registering the Godfather's next words.
"And Sofia. Be right back."
Through the fog of pain and disorientation, the Riddler's mouth twitched into a fleeting smile. Be right back meant Sofia had other business. Which meant she wasn't being sent to dispose of his body.
He was going to live.
The smile drowned immediately in a new wave of panic as Sofia's massive hand clamped onto his shoulder and steered him toward a door the Riddler hadn't noticed—a side exit, unmarked, the kind of door people left through when they didn't want to be seen leaving.
The door creaked open. Rain and cold air hit the Riddler's face. Sofia shoved him out into the alley with just enough force to send him stumbling but not enough to drop him.
The door slammed shut behind him.
The Riddler stood in the rain, breathing hard, his pristine green suit now splattered with his own blood. He looked around, disoriented. Where was his cane? The question-mark-topped accessory that completed his carefully cultivated aesthetic? He'd dropped it somewhere during the interrogation, and now it was gone.
Without the cane, without his usual props and performance, Edward Nygma looked less like a super-criminal and more like what he actually was: a poor, terrified man who'd nearly had his skull crushed for asking the wrong questions.
He started walking, stumbling through puddles, trying to put distance between himself and Falcone's office. The alley was dark, narrow, lined with dumpsters and fire escapes. Rain poured down in sheets, washing the blood from his face but not the fear from his mind.
The Riddler made it maybe twenty feet before a figure stepped out of the shadows ahead of him.
The man wore a black umbrella hooked over one arm—curved handle, the kind that looked almost like a question mark when held at the right angle. A black round hat sat low on his head, brim dripping rain. A loose coat obscured his build. His face was... blurred. Not literally—but the combination of hat brim and shadow and rain made his features impossible to make out clearly.
Rough men's gloves covered his hands.
One of those hands rose slowly, deliberately. In it: a .22 caliber pistol.
The baby pacifier hung from the trigger guard on a small chain, swaying gently.
The Riddler's breath caught. His body locked up, every muscle tensing as if he'd been flash-frozen. He pressed back against the alley wall, unable to run, unable to scream, unable to do anything but stare at that gun.
The Holiday Killer.
He'd found the answer to his riddle. And his reward was a bullet.
The Riddler didn't beg. Didn't plead for his life or try to bargain. He just stood there, trembling, watching his death approach with the cold certainty of a man who'd pushed his luck too far and finally run out of chances.
The gun rose. Aimed.
The muzzle flash lit up the alley like lightning.
BANG.
The Riddler flinched violently. The bullet hit the wall six inches from his left ear, sending brick chips flying. The baby pacifier broke—the impact of firing shattering it into plastic fragments that scattered across wet pavement.
BANG.
Another shot. Another near-miss. The bullet grazed the Riddler's shoulder so closely he felt the heat of its passage, smelled burning fabric.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The gunman emptied the magazine methodically, each shot placed with surgeon precision. Every bullet came within inches—centimeters—of killing Edward Nygma. Every single one missed.
The Riddler's body was rigid against the wall, arms spread, legs slightly apart, frozen in a posture of absolute terror. The bullets hit the brick around him, above him, beside him, below him. Creating a perfect outline.
A silhouette drawn in gunfire and fear.
The magazine clicked empty. The gunman ejected it, let it clatter to the ground, inserted a fresh one from his coat pocket.
Fired again.
More bullets. More perfect near-misses. The Riddler stared at the gun with pupils contracted to pinpoints, his entire world reduced to that black barrel and the flash of orange-white fire blooming from its end.
Hot brass casings jumped from the ejection port, bounced off puddles, rolled across pavement. They surrounded the Riddler's feet like fallen stars—dozens of them, evidence of a massacre that hadn't happened.
The second magazine emptied. The gunman reloaded.
Fired again.
By the time the third magazine was spent, the wall behind the Riddler was riddled with holes. They formed a perfect outline of his body—arms, legs, torso, even the distinctive curve of his bowler hat. An Edward Nygma-shaped void surrounded by destruction, as if someone had traced his shadow with bullets instead of chalk.
The gunman lowered the pistol. Stood there for a moment, rain drumming on his umbrella, studying his work.
Then he dropped the weapon. Let it clatter to the ground beside the broken pacifier. Dropped the black umbrella next to it—curved handle pointing up at the sky like a question mark made manifest.
Without a word, the figure turned and walked away. His footsteps splashed through puddles, growing fainter, until the rain swallowed them completely.
The Riddler remained frozen against the wall for a long moment. His legs finally gave out and he slid down to sit in a puddle, staring at the umbrella and gun lying three feet away.
His voice, when he finally spoke, was barely a whisper.
"When does a killer stop killing?"
The question hung in the rain-soaked air, unanswered.
Jude's system screen went black.
He sat on his couch holding an empty popcorn bucket, staring at the blank interface, his mind still processing what he'd just witnessed.
The Riddler's final question echoed in his thoughts: When does a killer stop killing?
"The most superficial answer," Jude muttered, setting the bucket aside, "is today's date."
April Fool's Day.
A day when people's actions get turned upside down. When truth becomes lies and lies become truth. When everything is backwards, reversed, inverted.
For the Riddler—a man obsessed with puzzles and wordplay—it should be his favorite holiday.
But there was something deeper here. Jude could feel it, like an itch at the back of his brain.
"The Holiday Killer usually kills on holidays," he said to his empty apartment, working through the logic aloud. "But today he does the opposite. He doesn't kill. That's his usual pattern—following rules, maintaining consistency. If he's truly a villain like the Riddler or Joker, then he'll abide by his own killing schedule. It's his nature."
Jude stood, paced, his newly acquired Advanced Acting Mastery unconsciously adjusting his posture to think better—shoulders back, chin up, the confident stance of someone solving a problem.
"So he didn't kill anyone today. Is that the end of it?"
He froze mid-step.
"No. There's another layer."
Jude turned, stared at where the screen had been. "The Holiday Killer isn't the only one doing the opposite today."
His eyes widened as the pieces clicked together.
"Paranoid criminals are all similar. And today's super-criminals—besides the Holiday Killer—also include the Riddler."
He grabbed a notepad, started writing, organizing his thoughts.
"The Riddler asked: 'Who is the Holiday Killer?'"
Jude circled the question, then wrote beneath it:
"But today is April Fool's Day. So the real question is—"
He wrote in large letters:
"WHO ISN'T THE HOLIDAY KILLER?"
Everything inverted. Everything backwards.
"Oh my god." Jude sat down hard on his couch. "The Riddler wasn't proposing suspects. He was eliminating them."
He flipped back through his mental notes, reconstructing the interrogation:
Catwoman: Proposed as Holiday Killer. Her motivation was insufficient—she's a thief, not a murderer. The target pattern doesn't fit. Jude rejected the theory. The system confirmed his judgment.
Salvatore Maroni: Proposed as Holiday Killer. His interests were contrary to the results—killing his own organization makes no strategic sense. Jude rejected the theory. The system confirmed his judgment.
Carla Vitti: Proposed as Holiday Killer. Her motive couldn't cover all cases—killing her own son to frame Falcone is too convoluted. Jude rejected the theory. The system confirmed his judgment.
Three precedents. Three proposed suspects. Three confirmed eliminations.
Which meant the fourth and fifth suspects...
Harvey Dent: Proposed by Alfred, considered by Batman. Gotham's White Knight, the District Attorney with perfect timing alibis and increasing violence.
Carmine Falcone: Proposed by the Riddler under torture, with desperate logic suggesting the Godfather was killing his own family.
"If the Riddler was smart enough," Jude whispered, "and if I guessed his methodology correctly... the five people he proposed were exactly the ones he judged were unlikely to be the Holiday Killer."
He was narrowing the suspect pool by elimination.
Process of deduction disguised as accusation.
"But he didn't just invert the suspects," Jude continued, writing faster now. "He inverted the questions too."
He pulled up the Riddler's statements from memory:
RIDDLER'S QUESTION: "Why do Holiday Killers always use the same weapon?"
RIDDLER'S ANSWER: "He bought it wholesale."
ACTUAL MEANING: "Why didn't the Holiday Killer use other weapons?"
ACTUAL ANSWER: "He customizes weapons from secret channels that can't be traced."
The .22 pistols weren't randomly chosen or bulk-purchased. They were deliberately obtained through methods Batman couldn't track. The weapon choice was intentional, planned, untraceable.
RIDDLER'S QUESTION: "Why did the killer shoot Alberto Falcone?"
RIDDLER'S ANSWER: "Because he can."
ACTUAL MEANING: "Why didn't the killer choose someone else?"
ACTUAL ANSWER: "Because he had ample reasons to kill Alberto."
The Holiday Killer wasn't casual or random. He was meticulous, deliberate, choosing victims with specific intent. Alberto wasn't a target of opportunity—he was specifically selected despite the difficulty of reaching him on that yacht.
"Because the killer had reasons," Jude breathed. "Personal reasons."
Which led to the inverted version of the Riddler's third question:
RIDDLER'S QUESTION: "Could all of this killing be motivated by personal vendettas?"
ACTUAL MEANING: "Could all of this killing be at least partially personal?"
Not pure gang warfare. Not strategic elimination of rivals. Something with emotional weight. Grief. Rage. Justice perverted into vengeance.
Jude set down his pen, stared at what he'd written.
Harvey Dent fit every criterion. The White Knight who'd watched Gotham's corruption destroy everything he tried to build. Who'd lost faith in the legal system. Who'd decided that bullets worked better than briefcases.
But proving it was different from knowing it.
And there was still one question left unanswered.
Jude wrote it at the bottom of his notes in large letters:
"WHEN DOES A KILLER STOP KILLING?"