CHAPTER 1




Commissioner Gordon stood still, gazing into the deserted apartment complex. The remains were vacant of any signs of life other than a stray cat trotting on a support beam scorched black by the explosion responsible for the miniature wasteland spread before him and his police squad. Once again Gotham has become the hub of anything and everything chaos and destruction, he spoke to himself under his breath. These freaks just can’t get enough.


The incident at the Elms Complex was the third of such detonations in the past five days, and the element that linked them other than the fact that they all brought down major apartment buildings, was the fact that they had all gone off at the same exact time of day, 1:24 in the afternoon on the dot. Situations like this were fairly cliche in the crime world, but mainly with the obsessive compulsive type. They had their own little wing in the imaginary Gotham Hall of Crime in the back of Gordon’s stressed mind, and a real one at Arkham Asylum which hadn’t been short on guests in some time. Everything was assigned a specific time or place with these type, which, depending on the target, made it a cinch to prevent an incident, at least as far as predictability went. The only problem with that was waiting for the first few storms to blow over until you had a pattern worked out to follow as a lead; often a necessary sacrifice in the world of demented criminal-hunting. Yes, lives would be taken. There would almost always be casualties. But this was the morbid prerequisite to achieving justice as the end goal. Of course there was also the off-chance that a pattern-follower decided to change things up a bit, and that was why Gotham’s good Commissioner was gazing into a pile of smoldering rubble and not protecting a standing structure.


“Wild goose chase, Hatch,” Gordon said depressingly towards the approaching officer, exhaling with his hands deep inside the pockets of his trench coat. “God knows how much those irritate me.” He kicked a broken brick into a nearby pile of debris and swore through gritted teeth.

“It happens to the best of us Jim. Success isn’t the default.” Hatch tried his best to be a comfort to his oldest friend in the force. He was always straightforward. Never one for frivolity or impromptu cheeriness, he rarely sported a smile or barely even a grin, but he was the first to say it like it was. “Candy coating the issue never made the outcome more enjoyable” was practically his motto, and he made no exceptions. But he couldn’t help seeing Gordon take another one to the heart like this, especially with him looking on the verge of a mental breakdown. Gordon took his job seriously, and as a perfectionist there was no tolerance for mistakes.


“It should be the default.” Gordon responded softly, eyes fixed ahead. He tried to contemplate the culprit’s next move, but his brain was a haze of welling emotion hidden beneath a thick, twenty-two year cop skin.

“If it were, we wouldn’t have a job would we?” Hatch asked.
Gordon smirked and took a deep breath.

“True.” he admitted. “But then again it would be spectacular for a break. Even just a small one.”
Hatch was staring too.

“But imagine how much more difficult it would be without the Batman,” he said. “I mean, half of Arkham was caught by the guy, and with little aid from us. Personally, I don’t understand why we are hunting him down. We need to just let him do his own thing. Everything seems to go smoother that way.”

Gordon couldn’t help but nod his head in agreement. He had had close ties with the vigilante known as Batman ever since Gotham’s trials in the slum with the fear gas almost five years prior. Since then, they had cooperatively cornered the make-up clad Joker in his attempt to destroy the city through chaos, and he had a pretty good head start too. He had managed to rob a major bank, bring down Gotham General, and was rumored to have been the one to kill Gotham’s best DA in years, Harvey Dent. But they still weren’t positive about that. Either way, they had worked together before, and they proved to be a force to be reckoned with. He was the only thing linking Batman with the law, and that’s the way they both preferred it.?