Emergency lights flickered along the walls, their red glow pulsing more softly than someone's anger. Every few seconds, dust drifted from the cracked ceiling, falling in thin curtains that covered the survivors while sparks hissed from severed cables.
Baby fat had left the face for sunken hollows, ready to drool a blend of blood and saliva. He shivered as a hand reached for the eyepatch.
Fingers clawed away the cheap fabric, revealing a violet glow among the white and black paint. It hadn't been there before. The pale blueness in the other eye remained, but gone was the happiness, replaced by something else.
Isaac's chest was clenched. It couldn't be him. Why? How?
The chaos of the riot, the screams, the distant gunfire, everything faded away. He moved before he could think. With one hand buried in the dirty blond hair, Isaac yanked the clown up and pinned him against the metro wall. His pulse climbed. His hands trembled.
Yes, that face, he recognized it. Blood pumped faster through his veins. It was him.
"Frank?" The name left his mouth on its own.
The latter didn't have time to respond when his head snapped to the side, shattering the wagon's window. Before he could recover, Isaac threw a jab to his liver followed by a low kick to his knee. In less than a second, Frank's hand grabbed a seat to prevent his fall, a reinforced boot rose high, then impacted his shoulder.
A spray of red splattered across the broken tiles.
It wasn't enough. His skull itched right above his eyebrow. He didn't have enough. He needed more. Something hungry uncoiled inside his chest.
He took a step back. On the far right, two other clowns stuck under the broken car. They wouldn't interfere. Rescue wasn't in sight.
Above, cables hung, too flexible. Half-screwed overhead rails pierced the metallic wall. It was perfect. His palm fit the hollow steel. With a violent twist, he ripped it free. The top plates clattered to the floor. Someone screamed. A young girl in uniform, carrying the old lady, stared at Isaac.
She was frozen, her arms trembling.
Two heads smaller than him.
He raised a gun.
She finally moved.
His other hand, gripping the metallic bar, waved at Frank on the ground. He fired. A new hole punched into the floor, a centimeter from Frank's nose.
Gathering all his strength for survival, Frank threw himself backward, slamming against the wagon's wall. He wasn't smiling. Isaac was. He didn't feel the weight in his hand. He was free.
One swing to the shoulder, controlled, like a probe, made the clown bend in pain, one hand over the pain. A new target. The second and the next hit broke a finger. Frank's body coiled, legs kicking uselessly. Isaac didn't stop. Another hit. Another twist.
He lost count when a red vial escaped Frank's pocket. Pausing for a moment, he grabbed the vial. Its color was familiar, purer than in some memories. A detonation above made the dust and cables fall against the fragile ceiling of the train car. A line of steel shot out so fast, slicing the air with a whistle at the beginning of the train car.
Isaac barely had time to pocket the vial when something heavier than debris dived down on the ceiling, crashing under that weight.
When the dust stopped floating, silence remained. Isaac's ribs had reopened, and his back was on fire. "Damn." He cursed when he noticed on the far right, none of the trapped clowns, only a fresh mountain of debris and twisted metal.
Shadows further down seemed to dance in the chaos as screams and distant shots regained their right. Another figure in black threw someone out of the wagon before vanishing through the ceiling frame.
A weak, broken sob cut through the noise. "...Isa."
He slapped the speaking face.
Sitting down, he caught his breath for a full minute, one eye still alert. Something was moving in the shadow, no direct line of aim. Bile rose in his throat, bitter on his tongue. He spat darkish liquid.
He stared directly into the violet and blue eyes.
His tongue finally managed to articulate.
"You were my friend..." he paused. The violet glow in the socket flickered weakly.
His throat tightened, almost asphyxiating him. There were many questions. Many why. Why have you done this? Weren't we friends? Why didn't you tell me in advance, why did you never respond, why the gang, why me, why?... Remember when we were kids? Words hammered his skull. They rang like slashes cutting the air.
Isaac slammed the metal bar against Frank's ankle. The bone made a snapping noise.
"And you shot me in the fucking head." He threw away the bar and raised his gun. Index rested on the trigger. The cross let out a soft whimper, trembling.
A black shape dropped from the ceiling. A gloved hand caught the barrel just as the shot tore into the ground.
"Enough.", white lenses glowed in the red emergency light.
"Get your fucking hands off me!"
"Drop it. Now."
"...Alright."
Isaac kicked the dark knight's torso side who blocked the hit with his elbow. He retreated two steps away, ceramic hidden in the guard, broken.
A man in his fifties with a half-bald head woke up from the gunshot and stayed glued to the ground. He didn't want to die from a random shot. He prayed to be invisible.
Fire raged from the gun. The first shot bit one millimeter into the dark armor before a reinforced cap snapped into place, electricity coursing through it, boosting its resistance far beyond what its weight suggested.
Isaac sidestepped, avoiding a dozen of flying shards of metal, drawing a line between him and Frank.
"Why? You..." Isaac pressed the trigger, but an empty click responded. His jaws clenched hard. "You let goddamn monsters like him walk around every night..." He lowered his center of gravity and jumped backward to avoid a pellet that exploded and cracked the floor. "And you stop me?!"
He stepped back, almost falling because of a witness in a fetal position in his path.
"This isn't justice. This is murder."
Batman stood in front of Frank, leaving no opening. Traces of red colored the corner of his jaw. His gaze covered but worried.
"Murder's everywhere." Isaac put the gun against his temple. An empty click answered. His eyelids twitching. "He shot me!"
Isaac replaced the magazine in place, his eyes never leaving Batman. The Dark Knight's grapnel fired with a sharp hiss. It hit the man Isaac lifted in one instant, arm around the neck. The gun against the man's skull, breath locked in his throat. Yellow liquid tainted the floor.
Batman deactivated the grapnel. The hook and the line fell on the ground. His head tilted a millisecond, he couldn't stay here forever. The city needed him.
Batman put his hand in front, unarmed. "I once stood where you are now." His cold voice seemed to have a hint of warmth. "Someone had taken everything from me. I had him at my mercy... just like you have him now." He took a step back. "I wanted to kill him more than I've ever wanted anything. But I didn't."
"I would." Isaac tightened his arm. "For that guy too..." The barrel pressed and traced a deeper mark on the man's side of the head. "If you don't move your fucking ass out of the way!"
"Save me..." the man whimpered, hands in a prayer position.
Image and facial analyses ran beneath the mask, displaying real-time data for Batman without blinding him. Through the riot, the police response, the burning buildings, and satellite feeds, the system finally locked onto the teenager's face in front of him.
"You're better than that. Killing him won't bring back what you lost."
"Let me put a bullet through your brain... And let's talk again."
"It won't bring your father back, Isaac."
For a heartbeat, his shoulders dropped, his grip loosened just slightly. The sound of his own breathing dissipated into a distant memory, an echo of a laugh. The ribs cried, but the body held steady. The barrel still touched the man's temple, but no longer carved a death threat on his skin.
Batman watched Isaac's posture. He didn't speak. The hesitation was the key. He couldn't force it, but now, there was a way to end this without a corpse on the floor.
Behind the Dark Knight, a breathing stabilized. A victim or a criminal, someone he had to protect until Justice came. For Gotham, for its future, he couldn't stop. He wasn't omnipotent, no matter how many he saved... it was never enough. But he kept going.
A red marker zigzagged across the damaged station on the map only Batman could see.
"...hahaaha... Old 'Drew's dead?" Frank's voice cut the single thread Batman pulled before everything snapped.
Batman didn't hesitate. In one motion, he retrieved and injected into Frank's arm a sedative injector. A normal adult would never survive more than 15 mg of Alprazolam without respiratory collapse, but the upgraded Anxiolytic Hypnotic with a neuronal dampening agent allowed a far higher dose without immediate danger, for immediate effect.
Frank's eyelid fluttered once, and he passed out. Something dug the metal and 9mm rounds slammed into Batman's cape.
He didn't register the coming footstep until rage tackled him to the ground.
Isaac's impact painted a broken line on the cape. Batman rolled with the momentum, planting both boots against Isaac's torso mid-fall and using the opponent's own force to propel him across the platform. As he rose, he caught a glimpse of the hostage twitching on the floor, inches from a fresh reddish dent in the wall.
His body forged by years of fighting crime and crowds in any condition and situation allowed him to raise his arm in time to stop a steel cross.
The reinforced carbon in his gauntlet allowed the best weight ratio with protection. Especially when layered with Kevlar and Nomex to protect against impact, cut or explosion. But this time, it couldn't absorb all the impact. Along the layer and thousand dollars protection, two knuckle articulations fractured with a muted crack.
Batman's hand recoiled half a centimeter. Pain inhibitors flooded his bloodstream as the suit's sensors registered the spike in his stress hormones. The pain was real, but he had known worse.
Blood dripped from Isaac's nose. His brain pulsed harder. He felt it. Something intangible, invisible, like a membrane stretching from the base of his skull down to his right arm. His fingers clawed around the steel cross, digging into the metal with a different shape.
He rushed forward. The gun flew in a straight line toward the hostage. Batman's grapnel fired with a crack, and the hook intercepted the projectile mid flight. Two inches from the man's face, the steel cross almost penetrated fully. One more step and Isaac would reach Frank's neck.
His fist fell. One ear gone, torn clean off by the strike, but Frank's body was already moving. Dragged backward by Batman's gauntlet as the grapnel recoiled, leaving behind a dozen pellets. Two exploded in black smoke, while half dissolved in a cloud of white smoke and the rest let out green slime all over a radius of one meter.
Chemicals irritated his nose as his fingers carved through the sticky slime. The substance hardened. It crackled like ice. The more Isaac resisted the green slime as he got up, the more sticky and fiber dense it grew on the floor, the seats, the wall and his body like a boosted variant non-Newtonian liquid.
Isaac breathed out. His eyes were heavy. None of his muscles responded in time. There was one-second lag. He pushed forward. Shards of green stuck on his pants and arms. He cleared the smoke. Away, Batman's shadow dragged a body on the street level, out of his reach.
At the same time, metallic clatter echoed above, a bright voice followed. "Found you, Batsy!"
Large portion of walls and street blocked the main hallway in the station. No emergency exit either. Isaac spat blood and bitterness. Even with the best sprint, he had no way to reach the next station for the exit in time. His eyes stayed on the woman above for a second before he sprinted into the subway tunnel. He couldn't stay there.
His fist dripped liquid. He was so close. Why?
Most of the riot had moved from above to another quarter in the city, leaving behind scattered Vauban barriers among the broken streets and avenues. Fire burned trash bins next to a scarf hailing a man with an 'S' symbol on his chest. Police's sirens echoed one street away.
A low engine rumble rolled, not far. Not the main distraction for Batman. Not like the woman in front of him. She had chalk white skin, blond pigtails dyed in red and blue on the tips and two 'dogs' on her side. He put Frank on the fractured asphalt.
She took a step in. "Wowww, Batsy, you look like you're havin' a rough day." Her large eyes hidden behind dark makeup shined with happiness. "But you know... it's still not enough!"
"Harley. Leave."
She gasped dramatically. "Rude. I came all this way! Mister J's still waitin' for his present, y'know. And you're hoggin' him." She grinned, seeing a vehicle passing the police's barrier on the other street.
She snapped her fingers. Two low shapes growled in unison. Their fur bristling, as they jumped on Batman. Teeth bared, saliva dripping onto the armor.
Batman's cape snapped into a rigid shield as one beast's jaws clamped onto reinforced fabric. The impact forced him back a step. Leaving Frank's body unprotected. The second hyena circled taking cowardly bites at the Dark Knight's ankles.
He knew he had to jump but the beast had bought enough time for a dented minivan to burst on his back. His body rolled to the side one second late. The impact threw him five meters away, breaking a still growing tree in a pot.
The minivan's service ramp didn't last and fell on the ground. Inside the wide open rear doors, a heap of injured clowns lay stacked like trash bags, groaning with every bounce while a bottle of alcohol at seventy percent jumped out.
The van skidded sideways, not stopping. "Harls! We're here! Where's the package?!"
She pointed at Frank's limp body. "Right there, sugar!"
Batman stood up. A line of batarangs punctured the van's front tire and side door. Pellets intercepted the hyena before they could gnaw on his cap. He rolled to the side, hiding behind a stone bench. Small and medium holes pierced the area.
Harley grabbed Frank under the arms. Blood smeared behind them. The clowns in the van reached out. With one brutal heave, Frank was thrown into the minivan, landing atop the pile of wounded clowns.
The doors slammed shut.
The engine roared louder. And the van accelerated through.