Hamilton Hill — Main Boulevard — Evening
People were running in every direction as he fired widely across the street until it was almost clear, with just Roman standing in the center of it with the gun still raised and a wide circle of empty pavement around him.
Three GCPD cruisers came in from both ends of the boulevard and from the side street, moving fast and stopped at angles that boxed off the street, doors opening, officers taking cover behind them with weapons drawn.
"GCPD! Drop the weapon! Get on the ground!"
Roman lowered the gun slowly.
He crouched and set it on the pavement, then straightened and put both hands up.
Four officers came forward fast with cuffs and shouting commands. Roman followed every order without a word, going to his knees on the pavement when they told him to, keeping his hands visible. One of the younger officers was nervously yelling and had his hand shaking on his weapon even after the gun was on the ground.
The older officer next to him was who put the cuffs on Roman as he and another senior officer exchanged a look over Roman's head.
These men had been on Maroni's payroll for years, and Rossi had ordered them to be nearby for this.
Hamilton Hill was solid Maroni territory but no one knew even the police were this deep in corruption.
They walked him to the car and put him in the back.
The younger officer started toward the driver's seat, but the older one said something quiet to him, a hand briefly on his arm, redirecting him toward the other car.
The two older officers got in and started moving.
Crane's Wings Facility — Operations Room
The brain room had been a marvel of Williams surgery but the actual use still remained out of reach without a proper computer/machine to extract information from them.
"The Calculator could do it and Nygma, probably."
Suguro's expression shifted slightly.
"Nygma…" he said.
"He has the capability," Jaina said. "Whatever you think about how he operates—"
"What I think is that he would design something unnecessarily complicated specifically so we'd need him to explain it and we know he can never do that straightforward," Suguro said, "and that we'd spend a lot of time managing his ego." He looked at the two. "The Calculator is the better option, keep working the lead on his location and approach him when we have something solid, Nygma is the backup plan."
"And in the meantime?"
"The room stays locked, and I don't want Overhaul operated on until we have this problem solved so just keep him as he is." He pushed back from the table and left the operations room and stepped into the corridor.
His phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
Victor.
He answered.
"This girl you found," Victor said, his voice was in that careful tone it always took on when he was thinking about Nora, like a man handling something fragile. "Her power. You said she can rewind someone to a previous state?."
"Correct though she needs some training," Suguro said.
"Could she maybe rewind someone back by years?"
Suguro was quiet for a moment. "She's seven and she has not much control as I said. We're a long way from testing the scope of it."
"I understand that," Victor said. "I'm asking whether you believe it's possible."
Suguro looked at the corridor wall.
"I absolutely believe so," he said carefully, "we have been looking through the man who had her previously and apparently she rewound her biological father out of existence "
Victor remained silent for a long minute.
"I know you better than to do something for free"
Crane answered with a hint of warmth "you taught me better than that."
Victor remained silent as Crane continued.
I want you to work in my organization
A silence between the two again then Victor spoke.
"I'll begin the preparations to safely put Nora in a state where this girl could help her."
The call ended.
Suguro stood in the corridor for a moment, he knew this was a yes.
Another piece of the puzzle in his plan was now soon to join him.
Hamilton Hill Precinct — Interview Room B
Two detectives had been at Roman for forty minutes.
He hadn't said a word.
"We can make this significantly easier for you," the first detective said. "You discharged a heavy automatic weapon in a public area. You're looking at multiple weapons charges and reckless endangerment at minimum and that's only manageable if you cooperate. Tell us who you're working for and what the attack on Hamilton Hill was even for—"
Roman looked at the wall.
The other detective had been pacing. He stopped, came around the side of the table, and put both hands on the surface, leaning into Roman's sightline.
"You want to play it quiet? Fine," he said. "You can stay quiet in Blackgate in Arkham for the next 20 years. How about that?" He got closer. "What happened to your face anyway? Someone do that to you?, or is being that ugly just what you look like?"
(blackgate and arkham are kind of combined in this story but you will see later on in the story i dont want to just explain)
Roman looked at him.
He drove his forehead forward into the man's nose.
A large cracking noise echoed and the detective stumbled back into the wall, both hands flying to his face as blood poured between his fingers. His partner shot up so fast his chair hit the floor. Shouting erupted immediately from both of them and then from outside the door as more officers responded to the noise.
Roman sat back in his chair. His cuffed hands rested calmly on the table.
The door opened with some senior officers entering along with the precinct commander.
Commander Reeves was a man in his late fifties who had run Hamilton Hill for eleven years.
"Enough," he said. His voice carried the weight of someone who had said that word in rooms like this for a long time. "Im invoking Executive Order Six, get him to Arkham."
The detective with the broken nose looked up, blood still streaming. "Commander, we were in the middle of—"
"Do I need to repeat what Executive Order Six means!" Reeves repeated firmly. "He's classified as an immediate public danger and I can send him to Gotham immediately."
The second detective looked like he wanted to argue, but after a glance at the commander he picked up his chair and left the room.
Order Six was an emergency provision attached to Gotham's mental health statute, it was something the city's mayor had signed into law decades ago. Individuals assessed as an immediate or ongoing danger to public safety could be remanded directly to Arkham Asylum bypassing normal arraignment, bail and allowed no trial needed as it would be decided whenever Arkham cleared them.
Reeves waited until the room cleared, then he looked at Roman.
"You'll be on transport tomorrow morning," he said quietly. "You should be there by midday."
Roman said nothing.
Reeves looked at his phone and texted Vincent Rossi saying that he did what they asked then left the room.
Crane's Wings Facility — Ivy's Greenhouse
Silver had taken Eri along the residential corridor showing her the parts of the base she could move through freely, and telling her the parts she couldn't.
The greenhouse corridor was the last section before they turned back.
Eri stopped walking and was looking into the massive room through the glass.
"That's—" Silver started.
"Wondering something?"
Ivy was behind them with her arms loose at her sides, looking at Eri with genuine interest.
Eri looked up at her taking in the woman's appearance once again, her red leafy hair, the green plant-like skin, and vines that wound around her forearms.
"Could I see inside please..?" Eri asked.
Ivy smiled.
"I always appreciate people who want to see my plants," she said.
She pushed the door open and stepped back.
Silver moved to follow and Ivy fell into step beside her, close enough to speak quietly.
"Don't worry," Ivy murmured with a still smile. "I've tidied up the grotesque ones."
Inside, the front section of the greenhouse was breathtaking with its cathedral-high ceiling with glass panels letting in artificial light, extraordinary plants everywhere with flowers the size of dinner plates to small houses in colours of all kinds, vines winding up structural columns and across the ceiling in deliberate, beautiful patterns.
Eri moved slowly, arms slightly out from her sides as she stopped in front of a cluster of deep blue-violet flowers hanging at head height, each bloom the size of her head and she stared at them for a long time while walking.
Then her foot caught on a thick root that had grown across the path.
She pitched forward.
A broad leaf dropped from above and caught her, flexing gently under her weight before holding steady, suspending her a foot above the ground like a hammock.
Eri lay there for a moment, looking up at the greenhouse ceiling and she started laughing.
It was quiet and brief and she covered her mouth with her hand when she realized she was doing it out loud, but the sound had already escaped.
Silver looked at Ivy.
Ivy was watching Eri in the leaf with an expression Silver had never seen unless she was near Crane.
Crane's Wings Facility — Testing Room
Sen Kaibara slowly came back to consciousness in pieces.
Lights first, bright overhead lights that made him squeeze his eyes shut again, then the feeling of lying on something firm, after it was sounds: a low mechanical hum, and the quiet movement of people working around him.
He opened his eyes slowly.
Doctors? That was his first thought, they had white coats, lots of equipment and computers on the walls... He must have fallen in the alley and been brought to a hospital when he saved that man—
He remembered the needle then his face changing.
Sen tried to sit up and realized his wrists were secured to the sides of the table, his ankles too and he then looked closer at these doctors around him.
The figures in white coats were all wearing gas masks, but the one closest had a different kind of gas mask…
A creepy pig's face caught the light with a slight sheen, the mouth was fixed in a grotesque half-grin between snout and smile and the eye holes were dark voids.
Sen's throat went dry.
"Where—" His voice came out rough. "Where am I? What is this place?"
The pig-masked figure turned its head toward him.
Sen's chest tightened.
"What is this place?" he asked again, louder. "Who are you? I'm a UA student, my teacher is—"
The pig-masked man looked to his left and gave a single, calm nod.
One of the masked figures crossed to the wall and gripped a large industrial lever. He pulled it down with a heavy hydraulic thunk.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then he could see the faint haze of it moving through the overhead light.
"Stop," Sen said. "Whatever that is, stop it. Stop—"
The shadows at the edge of the room began to move.
He looked back at the pig-masked man.
The mask was worse now the fixed mouth moved like real tattered flesh and the eyes seemed to be looking right into his soul itself, the pristine white coat had become stained and tattered, the figure growing taller, wrong in every proportion.
The Pyg leaned over him.
"Welcome,"
it said in a pleasant, distorted voice in english,
"to your hell."
Sen pulled against the restraints with everything he had.
He screamed and couldn't use his quirk in the delirium no matter how hard he tried.
Prison Transport — Gotham Bridge — Morning
Roman sat in the back of the GCPD transport with his wrists cuffed to the bench ring and his ankles secured to the floor anchor. While two officers sat in the front, neither had said a word to him since leaving the precinct.
Through the small window the city slid past as the van climbed the Arkham Island bridge ramp.
Arkham and Blackgate that surrounded it sat on its own isolated island, separated from the mainland by the bay and connected only one long bridge.
Roman watched as the largest prison and villain containment centre on the planet grew closer as the van crossed the bridge.