Arkham Bridge — Following Morning
The GCPD deployment on Arkham Bridge had been active since the previous evening.
Roughly a third of the department's available force had been committed to the operation and half of them had been stationed directly on the bridge itself, the rest spread across the island's entry points and assisting Blackgate and Arkham with an ongoing breach inside. The younger officers were not handling the long hours of tense inactivity well.
"This is bullshit," one of them muttered. He was twenty-three, still fresh enough that the academy training hadn't fully worn off. "The whole city is burning and we're standing here like traffic cops."
The older officer beside him didn't even look over, she had fifteen years on the job and knew how he felt but this was important.
"We're here for a reason," she said quietly.
"Yeah? What reason is that? Guarding a bridge while people are dying across Gotham?"
She finally turned to face him.
"There are multiple active breaches on that island," she said, nodding toward Arkham, which loomed in the morning haze across the water. "You sat through the same orientation I did when I was younger, you know what's locked up in there."
The younger officer shifted uncomfortably while others nearby had gone quiet.
The older officer continued, her voice low and steady.
"If Arkham fully breaks open… and then Blackgate follows after it… we're looking at tens of thousands of criminals and villains flooding into a city that's already tearing itself apart. Even five percent of that population with nothing but destruction on their minds would be enough to end everything. We've seen what these people can do when they get out and—"
Something streaked off the island up in the sky and they looked up at the bright object.
Firefly shot over the bridge at tremendous speed, her fiery wings blazing brightly against the morning sky. She was carrying something in one burning hand, the charred, broken remains of what had once been an Arkham guard. Without slowing, she dropped the body. It hit the bridge deck in front of the GCPD line with a sickening thud.
The officers scattered instantly. Some rushed toward the fallen body, most instinctively fell back, weapons raised.
Firefly didn't even glance down. She banked sharply and dove toward the city proper, heading straight for a cluster of apartment buildings and within seconds, flames erupted on the fourth floor of the tallest structure and began racing upward with unnatural speed.
The older officer stared at the growing fire in the distance, then looked back at the younger officers. Their faces had gone pale.
"That's why we're on this bridge," she said grimly.
The wind carried the distant sounds of sirens and new explosions across the bay. The younger officer who had been complaining earlier swallowed hard, his eyes fixed on the burning building Firefly had just ignited.
None of them spoke again for a long time.
Blackgate Prison — Inner Rings — Same Morning
The lockdown had been running for eighteen hours straight.
The noise never stopped. It was the sound of sixty thousand people who knew something massive was happening beyond the walls that held them in so they began screaming, banging on doors, pounding against metal walls.
Cell Seventy-B on the second ring's fourth floor had been dangerously overcrowded for over a year. Eighty-one men were crammed into a space designed for far fewer, they had built their own brutal hierarchy inside but had united under a shared hatred for the wall that separated them from the outside world.
When they began to feel the groundshake the previous morning they knew something was happening in Gotham and after managing to destroy the cell bars under the guards noses, they came down.
The gap wasn't large, but it was enough. Eighty-one desperate, furious men poured into the block corridor like a human flood. The first ones reached the checkpoint guards and overwhelmed them through sheer numbers and savage momentum. Four guards went down before the emergency call even fully went out.
The response unit arrived from two directions at once, 2 of Arkham's elite emergency deployment team was sent in alongside Blackgate's own backup. The Arkham unit carried flamethrowers with them into Blackgate along with their heavy armor. They had come under Level Two protocols, which granted them authority far beyond standard prison rules.
A GCPD officer was also assigned to the unit in the chaos but he stared at the flamethrowers.
"You cannot do that," he said.
"Level Two is active across the island," the one of the Arkham guards replied evenly. "Any force necessary to contain a breach, the authorization comes directly from the federal exemption Strange had approved, these men have no rights anymore."
"These are still people—"
"These are people who just broke containment during an active Level Two event," the Blackgate guard captain cut him off turning to the GCPD officer. "The exemption is real."
"That exemption has been in place for twenty years," he said quietly. "The public doesn't know because the public has never needed to know, this is only the second time it's ever been invoked."
The GCPD officer looked down the corridor at the prisoners who had stopped their charge. They were now backed against the wall, their rage replaced by dawning fear as they saw what they were facing.
He thought about sixty thousand inmates.
He thought about what would happen if even five percent of them escaped into a city already tearing itself apart.
He nodded once, slowly, then looked away.
The flamethrowers roared to life.
The block went silent.
After that, the response unit moved through the block to other cells on this level with grim efficiency threatening all to fall in line. Arkham's team led the way, Blackgate guards flanked them, and the GCPD officer stayed one position back, eyes forward.
The Blackgate captain looked up and down the corridor, addressing the prisoners behind their bars.
"Anyone tries anything," he said loudly, "they get the same."
There was no response from the cells.
"Good," the captain said.
The silence that followed was heavier than the noise had ever been.
Arkham Asylum — Inner Perimeter Road — Morning
The GCPD convoy had pushed through the Blackgate rings and was moving along the narrow Arkham perimeter access road when they encountered the group.
Thirty people stood motionless in the middle of the road.
Guards in Arkham white-and-black uniforms, doctors in lab coats, nurses, even an janitor still holding a mop. They faced the convoy with an eerie, unnatural stillness that made the hair on the back of the officers' necks stand up.
The lead vehicle slowed to a stop as an officer stepped out, hand resting near his holster.
"What the hell is going on here?" he called out. "We need to reach the secondary breach point. Firefly has already left the island and—"
"Could you clear the road, please?" a calm, warm voice said from directly behind the convoy.
The officer took a step back.
Mathilda Mathis — Dollhouse — walked toward them wearing a standard Arkham jumpsuit. She hadn't bothered to change or disguise it and looked at the officer.
Then she looked past him at the thirty people blocking the road before telling her new admirers-
"Move," she said softly.
The group surged forward with eager, almost joyful obedience. The Arkham staff and medical personnel came at the convoy like loyal dogs to their master and the fight that followed was chaotic and ugly.
GCPD officers shouted commands and tried to maintain formation, but the attackers came with a single-minded focus that made standard de-escalation tactics nearly useless. Tasers dropped several while batons and physical takedowns brought others down. The charmed individuals fought with desperate intensity, as if failing Dollhouse was the worst possible outcome.
An Arkham guard came running up the side of the road, hands raised.
"They're charmed!" he shouted. "She's controlling them! Stop hurting them!"
Several officers hesitated. Two of the charmed staff exploited the pause and nearly broke through the line while remaining GCPD officers recovered quickly and brought the last attackers down as the road fell quiet.
Dollhouse seemed to have vanished in the confusion.
Then one of the officers near the rear of the convoy suddenly turned his weapon on his own partner. His eyes were glassy, his movements mechanical. Dollhouse stood right beside him, lips close to his ear, one hand gently resting on his arm, she had slipped behind the convoy during the fight and targeted the one officer who had been watching too nervous to join the fight.
He fired twice. Both rounds struck vehicles instead of people, the rest of the team had reacted the moment they saw his posture change.
Dollhouse used him as a human shield, backing toward one of the vehicles. She slipped into the driver's seat, threw the car into reverse, and floored it.
Four sharp cracks rang out.
All four tires blew simultaneously. An elite Arkham security team had been advancing from the interior to them and good thing they had excellent aim as the vehicle lurched to a stop, engine dying.
The Arkham guards moved in from both sides wearing sealed anti-auditory headsets and once Dollhouse looked at the headsets realized there was no viable escape she was not a fighter, as why bother getting strong when others can do everything for you.
She was cuffed, blindfolded, and gagged in under thirty seconds.
The Arkham unit commander looked down at her secured form in the back of an armored transport and keyed his radio.
"breach contained," he reported flatly.
Arkham Asylum — Helipad — Same Time
The helipad on the north side of the complex stood quiet and largely unguarded.
Roman Sionis crossed the open ground with measured strides. As planned, security had been pulled thin as three concurrent breach events along with the city in chaos had drawn nearly every available guard and response team to other sectors of the island. Strange had arranged the timing on two of those events as a Crane requested.
Roman reached the helicopter and began his pre-flight checks with calm efficiency. His Predator Sense stayed active, scanning the surrounding area for any unexpected movement.
"Why does the prisoner always leave through the front?"
Roman didn't turn immediately, he finished checking the instrument panel before slowly looking over his shoulder.
Edward Nygma stood a short distance away, still dressed in his bright green Arkham jumpsuit. He had fashioned one of missing bars from his cell into an improvised walking stick, which he held with theatrical flair with a wide, satisfied smile stretched across his face.
Roman raised an eyebrow.
"Because the back is where they're waiting for him," Nygma answered his own riddle with obvious pleasure. "Though today, the front is also heavily guarded. Which makes any direction equally interesting, doesn't it?"
Roman turned fully to face him.
"What does a man with a helicopter do when he can't pilot it?" Nygma continued, tilting his head.
Roman glanced at the helicopter, then back at Nygma.
"In your dreams," he said flatly.
Nygma's smile widened.
"that is unfortunate, because the security response will arrive in—" he checked a watch he had somehow acquired, "—approximately four minutes."
Roman stood with one hand resting on the helicopter door. He weighed his options, Edward Nygma had escaped his cell though how he did not know, navigated the island while avoiding active security positions, and timed his arrival almost perfectly. He was irritating, but undeniably resourceful.
Roman let out a loud, annoyed sigh.
"Fine," he said. "Get in."
"Delightful!" Nygma replied, climbing into the passenger seat with exaggerated enthusiasm.
Roman took the controls. He lifted the helicopter smoothly off the helipad and banked west, heading away from the island. As they gained altitude over the bay, the full scope of the war became visible.
Gotham was like a warzone.
Thick columns of smoke rose and Fires raged. Even from five hundred feet up, the scale of the destruction was staggering. Roman had known the plan but seeing the city the city tearing itself apart from the air hit on a different level.
"I did not expect that," Nygma said softly beside him. It was the most subdued Roman had ever heard the Riddler sound.
They were two minutes into the crossing when a skyscraper exploded.
The blast came from the Upper West Side where a mid-sized tower that had been filled with high grade explosives had been set off by Joker's minions. The flash of light reached them first, then the shockwave hit the helicopter seconds later.
The aircraft lurched violently sideways.
Nygma fumbled with the controls but not enough to stabilize it. Roman's Predator Sense kicked into overdrive, calculating trajectories, altitude, wind speed, and the cold water below. It showed him the precise half-second window where jumping would keep him alive.
"Jump!" Roman shouted.
"I beg your—"
"Jump, if you want to live!"
Roman threw open the door and leapt out without hesitation.
Nygma followed with considerably more vocal protest and far less graceful form.
Roman hit the bay, the impact was jarring but survivable. He broke the surface, looked around, and spotted Nygma surfacing roughly six meters away, the bright green jumpsuit making him easy to locate.
The helicopter continued its uncontrolled arc without them and slammed into the harbor two hundred meters further on, sending up a large splash of water.
Nygma spat out bay water and looked at Roman, then at the distant shoreline.
"Well," he said, breathing heavily.
"Swim," Roman replied.
He started swimming toward the nearest shore with strong, steady strokes. Nygma followed, muttering complaints between breaths as the cold water carried them forward. Behind them, the war continued to rage across Gotham, the skyline still burning brightly against the morning sky.