The Edge of a Blade
Prologue
By Draco664
Gotham.
A great actor once said of a fictional settlement, 'You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy'.
He'd obviously never been to Gotham City.
Several million men and women made Gotham their home. The wealthy, the poor, the meek, the powerful.
Some good, some evil. Many selfish, few generous.
The wide spectrum of humanity drew people to it, like a black hole. And just like a black hole, many who brave the streets are never heard from again.
Some who arrive though, are strong enough to survive whatever even Gotham and its inhabitants can throw at them.
The super tanker Menindez silently coasted towards its designated berth. The two powerful tug boats that had attached themselves to the hull of the tanker skilfully guided the great ship safely to what would be its home for the next several weeks as its cargo was unloaded.
Captain Dino Giotti watched the lights of Gotham City gradually get closer nervously from the bridge. This in itself was odd, since he had been working on tankers since he was fourteen, and had been the Menindez's captain for the last thirteen years. He had docked without incident at Gotham countless times before, so many that the last few times he had yawned constantly just to keep awake.
This time was different.
"Everything is in order?" asked a soft voice behind him in oddly-accented Italian. The sharp point digging into his kidneys indicated that responding in the negative would not be a bright move.
Captain Giotti nodded gently, his throat too dry to respond verbally.
"Good," came the voice again, and the tiny point of pressure on his lower back disappeared. "You will remain alive because your corpse would cause unwanted attention. I do not like attention. We shall not meet again."
The Captain's nod was more emphatic this time.
There was no response.
Dino turned around slowly, only to discover that he was completely alone.
He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly in a quivering sigh.
Ropes thicker than a person moored the huge ship to the dock. Against seemingly gentle movement, the pier creaked and groaned as the ropes pulled and slackened rhythmically.
As the local customs agents boarded the ship, a figure dressed completely in black gracefully climbed head-first down the underside of the rear most tether. Hanging from the underside, it moved quickly and efficiently, arm over arm, clinging to the rope like a sloth, but moving like a lemur.
Gary Jones yawned, and turned the key in the ignition of his taxi. Gently, he touched the accelerator with his big toe, nudging the car forward, to take the place of the taxi that had just left the rank.
Gary was just about to turn off the ignition, when a slender man dressed head to toe in soft, stylish black opened the door and wordlessly entered the cab. The newcomer tossed in a soft duffle bag onto the back seat opposite him.
"Where to?" Gary asked, looking into the rear view mirror. The man had short cropped red hair, and cold green eyes.
Wordlessly, the newcomer passed a slip of paper and a note through the fare tray. Gary frowned and glanced down to see an address in uptown Gotham written in an old English school hand. It sat on top of the welcome sight of a crisp one hundred dollar bill.
"A C note? Man, I can't change that! I just started my shift."
"It's yours, if you get me to my destination in half an hour." came the soft response.
"Yes sir!" Gary said enthusiastically, and gunned the engine.
The late evening traffic was not too heavy, and Gary made good time down the main streets of Gotham. Gradually, the look of the streets improved, as the docks were left behind. Gary checked the rear view mirror again, noting that his passenger had not moved at all since settling back into his seat at the beginning of the journey.
Try as he might, (and Gary had indeed tried) he was unable to draw the man into conversation, his passenger simply stared out the window, ignoring him. With a mental shrug, Gary concentrated on his driving, silently wondering what he would spend the money he'd get for this fare on.
Suddenly, his passenger snapped his head around, looking straight out the other side of the cab at a block of apartments they were passing.
"Stop here!"
Gary blinked. "What?"
"Here! Stop here!" snapped the man.
Gary quickly pulled over, narrowly avoiding running down a cyclist. "Man, we're still a dozen blocks from your address," he complained, returning a rude gesture to the indignant cyclist.
For a few long moments, the red haired man leaned over the seats and gazed out the opposite window, looking the non-descript building up and down. Finally, he seemed to come to a decision, and opened the door.
"Um, look man, you want to go here or not?" Gary asked, waving the piece of paper with the written address. "I can't get you there in half an hour if we gawk here for too much longer."
"Yes," replied his passenger. "But I have business here first." He exited gracefully from the taxi, and took hold of the bag's handle.
"Look, I can't hang around all night," Gary replied, hoping against hope that he wouldn't have to give the Benjamin back.
Slowly, the red haired man lowered his head to look through the open door at him. With a easy twist of his arm, the black bag was tossed over one shoulder. "I'll give you another hundred if you wait for me," he said in the same soft, well enunciated tones.
"Deal."
Gary sat in the cab, the engine off, casually tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel in time with the music he listened to on the radio. For two hundred dollars, he'd wait a while for sure.
This was turning out to be a pretty good night. A hundred and seventy buck tip for a thirty dollar fare. Nights like this didn't come along often at all. He reached out and changed the channel as the news came on. After scanning the stations, he found an old Elvis song.
Gary started nodding his head to the music. For a few minutes, he sat there in perfect contentment.
The radio died.
Frowning, he cursed softly and thumped the dashboard above the recalcitrant radio.
Gary's heart skipped a beat as the engine roared to life unexpectedly, lurching the car forward. It was only the fact that the hand brake was engaged that saved him from smashing into the car parked in front. The wipers thrummed to life and scrapped across the dusty windscreen, the horn sounded and the headlights flashed on.
Gary cursed inventively as he fought to bring the car under control. In the back of his mind, he noted an odd taste forming in his mouth. The air felt... heavy. And tasted of tin.
Cars parked all around the street were flaring to life, alarms flashing, horns blasting.
Just as Gary was entered a full blown panic, every pane of glass in the apartment building behind him shattered at once.
Almost every window pane was empty, with the exception of only a handful of jagged edges remaining here and there, lonely testament to the obvious power of the recent explosion. Hundreds of people were gathered at the front of the building within minutes, judiciously avoiding the sharp slivers of glass that covered the pavement. Gary stood at the back of the crowd, looking at the pockmarked face of the building in awe.
He almost jumped out of his skin as someone tapped him on the shoulder. He spun around to stare straight into the eyes of his generous passenger. "Oh. Yeah. Your ride. Man, that was incredible. Were you in there when that happened?"
The man ignored him. "Come. I am late."
Gary blinked and followed after his fare, but looked back over his shoulder at the devastated building. "Yeah. Incredible," he muttered.
The taxi pulled away from the scene just as the first of the GCPD arrived.
Commissioner Gordon picked his way through the shattered glass on the pavement outside the devastated building. He sighed to himself and wrapped his long overcoat around him against the unseasonably chill wind. He cast his eye over both the damage and the crowd, wondering not for the first time how this one was going to be written up.
Despite over three hundred people on the street surveying the damage, not one of them would say that they saw anything. Or heard anything. Or was anywhere near the building when the bomb went off, thank you very much.
"That's Gotham for ya. A couple of hundred people around and no one saw a God damn thing." came an unwelcome observation.
"Thank you for your observation, Sergeant. Has any trace of the bomb been found?"
"Not so far, Commish. Bomb squad can't even tell where the thing was set off."
"They don't know where the epicentre was?"
Sergeant Bullock shrugged, his ever present cigar moving from one side of his mouth to the other. "They haven't found it so far."
James Gordon looked up at the building face. "No warning. No one claiming responsibility. No bomb fragments. All the usual suspects confined to Arkham. Damn it, I'm supposed to be having dinner with my daughter tonight. Why does this sort of thing always happen the night I have something planned?"
"Maybe God's trying to tell you somethin'?" Jim could hear the smile on Harvey's face.
"Just go and liase with the Bomb Squad, Sergeant." he said, still looking up.
Gary rolled the cab to a stop in front of the apartment block at the address his passenger supplied. The building was brand new, one of the first to have been erected after Gotham's status as a No Man's Land had been rescinded.
The man in the back seat nodded to Gary, and passed another crisp hundred to him. "Thank you. May I have the address back?"
Gary nodded quickly. "Sure thing," he said, reaching over his shoulder to pass the thin card back through. It was snatched from his so quickly that it left a small but painful paper cut on his index finger.
Despite Gary's mumbled curse, the red-haired man exited the taxi wordlessly, and quickly entered the lobby of the building. Gary frowned after him, sucking on his wounded finger, but the idea of having two hundred dollars in his wallet after just one fare brightened his mood considerably.
Jim Gordon exited the fire escape on the roof of the building, completing his brief examination of each floor. Clutching his chest and breathing heavily, he moved over to the building's leading edge. "Damned elevator's not working." he said out loud.
"Nothing electronic that was within the building at the time of the explosion is working correctly."
Jim turned to face the source of the voice with no surprise apparent on his face. "When did you get here?"
Batman stepped out from the shadows. "Before the Bomb Squad. It doesn't make much sense, Jim. There is no epicentre, no fragments, there's not even traces of an accelerant. The entire front of the building just exploded out at the same time."
"What else?"
Batman looked down at the street, twelve stories below. "Phenomena inconsistent with an EMP, though similar effects," he said softly, as though talking to himself.
"What does that leave?"
"I have a few theories."
Jim looked down too. The yellow tape holding back the crowd formed an odd dividing line below. "I don't suppose you'd care to share them with me?"
Silence greeted him.
"Batman?" Jim asked, looking around at the roof, now quite obviously lacking a two-metre tall man dressed as a bat.
"Damn, he did it to me again."