Batman 4 - Batman & Robin (10 page)

Through a canopy of ivy, past the open flap of her tent, Pamela Isley could see a slice of sky. And the full moon that had risen over the roof of the Prison Morte complex.

But it didn’t look the same as she remembered it—neither the sky nor the moon, nor Prison Morte itself. Everything was different. Everything had a certain glamour about it. A certain
glow.

And she was different as well. She could feel it in her every cell. She was something she had never been before, something that in all likelihood had never existed before.

Hearing a voice, Pamela turned toward it. Focused on it.

It was Woodrue. He was hovering over her battery-powered laptop in the next tent, talking on his portable phone as he rifled through her research files.

“Yes, sir,” he was saying, “I’m so pleased you won the bidding, your supreme . . . er, ruthlessness.”

In the distance, someone screamed. Pamela remembered that he had a name now:
Bane.
As in the bane of humanity.

“We’re making the final modifications on him right now,” Woodrue was telling his high bidder. “We’ll have a thousand super-soldiers out to you tomorrow by overnight mail . . .”

Ridiculous,
she thought.
The man is insane.

But even in the grip of his insanity, the scientist had accomplished his goal. Just as she would accomplish hers.

As Woodrue hung up, she began to move. To shrug off the ivy that enveloped her, concealed her. Noticing the disturbance, he turned to look at her.

She stood, casting off the jungle vines. As before, her reflection was cast back at her in one of her chemical beakers. But this time, it showed an altogether different personage.

Her hair was magenta. Her eyes were a chlorophyll green. And her ravaged clothes revealed the form and stature of a goddess.

Smiling, feeling a rather interesting change in her body chemistry, she approached Woodrue. He tilted his head with curiosity as he took in the sight of her.

“Dr. Isley?” he ventured. “Pamela? My God, you look great. I mean . . . for a dead woman.”

Her smile deepened. “Hello, Jason. I can call you Jason, can’t I? You know, I think I’ve had a change of heart.”

Coming closer, she took him in her arms. He didn’t resist, either. Slowly, languidly, she kissed him on the lips. Then she drew her face back to gaze into his eyes.

“Quite
literally
a change of heart,” she added. “I don’t think I’m human anymore, Jason. The animal-plant toxins had a rather unique effect on me.” She thought it through as she spoke. “They replaced my blood with aloe, my skin with chlorophyll . . . and filled my lips with Venom.”

Woodrue’s brow furrowed beneath his wild shock of hair. “With Venom, you say? But that would mean . . .”

Suddenly, the man began to choke. He fell, clutching at his throat. Trying to speak or breathe and accomplishing neither.

“Silly me,” she said, kneeling beside him. “I probably should have mentioned that I’m poison.”

As she watched, Woodrue shivered and spasmed. But after a few moments, it stopped. He lay still, eyes fixed on eternity.

Pamela shrugged. “Oh well,” she said. “It’s a jungle in here.”

Standing up, she turned to the beakers she had labored so long and hard over and—one by one—spilled their contents onto the floor. Then she picked up a Bunsen burner and threw it to the ground.

Its flame spilled out, latching on to the flammables in its vicinity. Before long, her lab was a conflagration, sending up tongues of fire and trails of black smoke.

“Let the flames touch the sky,” she whispered. “The time has come for plants to take back the world so rightfully ours . . . for Nature to again assert her place in the scheme of things.”

And she was Nature’s agent, her spirit, her will. “I
am
Mother Nature,” she declared. “And it’s not nice to fool with me.” She grinned, reveling in the blaze. “It’s not nice at all.”

As she left the tent, something caught Pamela’s eye. She lifted a broken beaker. On it, there was a logo—that of Wayne Enterprises.

In the distance, she could hear Bane screaming his birth pain to the world. Bellowing like the biggest, baddest newborn anyone had ever imagined.

She turned in the direction of his cry. “Coming, Bane darling. After all, we’ve got a plane to catch, you and I.”

F
reeze walked through the frozen bowels of his hideout, admiring the ice sculptures he had made. Subzero art, he thought appraisingly. He didn’t care if it never caught on anywhere else. Here, in his lair, the sculptures made him feel at home.

Outside, this place was an abandoned ice-cream factory built in the shape of a snowman’s face, a dripping cone stuck onto his frigid head. Inside, Freeze reflected with some satisfaction, it was an unbroken icescape. An arctic terrain that echoed the wasteland in his soul.

Up ahead of him, on what had once been the factory floor, Icemen and curvaceous Snow Bunnies in parkas ate frozen dinners, laughing at the wide-screen television they’d installed. One of the Bunnies separated herself from the others and approached him.

“Freezy,” she said, batting her eyelashes at him, “I’m feeling kind of . . . hot.”

Freeze grunted, not at all enamored of the name the woman had hung on him. “I find that unlikely,” he told her.

“Okay,” she conceded. “Truth is, I’m freezing. My hair is brittle, my skin is dry . . . but I don’t care. I’d weather blizzards to have you. You’re the most perfect man I’ve ever known.”

Freeze scowled. “To be frozen. To never change. A life of perfect ice-olation.” He shook his head. “There is no perfection in that.”

The Bunny pressed herself against him. “Then let’s turn up the heat,” she purred suggestively.

Freeze glared at her from his Olympian height. “You are skating on thin ice,” he said. “My passion thaws for one woman and one woman only.”

She sighed alluringly. “Forget your frosty femme. These lips are wet and ready to get frostbitten.”

Freeze dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “Hop away, little Bunny. Before I cool your jets.
Permanently.
”

She recoiled at that—and well she might. His patience was limited, and everyone who worked for him knew it.

Muttering beneath her breath, the Bunny left him alone. He watched her go. It wasn’t as if she didn’t move him. He just couldn’t allow himself to be disloyal to Nora—even if she
was
entombed in ice.

Freeze wondered how cold he could make his shower. He looked around for his aide-de-camp.

“Frosty!” he called.

The man was by his side before he knew it. “Yes, Boss?”

“Look at them,” he said, indicating the Icemen and their Snow Bunnies with a tilt of his head. “Everyone is always having a good time—except me. Try as I might, I can find no pleasure in life. Perhaps my heart truly has turned to ice.”

Suddenly, Freeze had an idea. He lifted his gun and fired, freezing Frosty into a solid block of ice.

The villain considered his work. “Well, that was fun,” he commented grimly, ironically. “There’s hope for me yet, I think.”

Changing the setting on his gun, Freeze fired again. This time, it emitted a thawing beam. Frosty seemed to come back to life, though he was soaked and dripping like a wet cat.

Without a word, Freeze turned and walked past his work area—and its mounting piles of scrawled schematics. He could hear Frosty following him.

“Tell me,” Freeze said.

The response was almost instantaneous. “Anything, Mr. Freeze.”

“Do you think I’m mad, Frosty?”

Frosty wrung out his sleeves. “That’s really a judgment call, Boss. Not for me to say.”

A soft beeping sound interrupted their conversation. Alerted by it, Freeze consulted his wrist display. The power gauge was on “low.”

“Battling the Bat exhausted my power,” he observed.

Freeze approached a safe. Opening it, he removed three small diamonds and placed them in his suit compartment. Immediately, his power levels spiked back to normal.

“But I was successful nevertheless,” he added.

Freeze continued to a pedestal, atop which sat a machine powered by two giant diamonds. There were slots for two more diamonds, still empty. Smiling to himself, he reached into his tunic and removed the diamond stolen from the Gotham Museum. Then he placed it in one of the empty slots.

“One more giant diamond of this size,” he told Frosty. “One more and my freezing cannon will be complete. I will hold Gotham ransom. Unless the city bows to my demands, it’s winter forever here in goat-town.”

“The city fathers will cough up millions,” said Frosty, coughing even at the thought of it.

“Billions,” Freeze corrected. “They’ll have no choice.” He turned to gaze at a frozen wall. “Then I’ll have the funds I need to complete my research. To find the cure for . . .”

His eyes narrowed as he continued to stare at the wall. As he thought about what—and who—was on the other side of it.

“Leave us,” he said abruptly. “We need quality time.”

Frosty complied. As soon as his aide had slunk out of sight, Freeze opened a door in the wall and entered a walk-in freezer. There, he found a frozen-dinner box and lifted it—causing a door like that found on a bank vault to swing open.

Lifting his chin, he stepped into what looked like a frozen mausoleum. In the center of it stood a computerized, glacial sarcophagus with a transparent face. He walked up to it and bent over to get a better look.

Inside it, he could see his frozen wife, ineffably beautiful in near death, a snowflake pendant gracing her frigid breast. Lovingly, he touched the transparent material separating them.

Memories came to him. Of better times. Of life and warmth. Unfortunately, they were only memories, encased as she was in a casket of ice.

“Soon,” he promised, “we will be together once more.”

Then, reluctantly, he straightened and took his leave of her. After all, he couldn’t revive her without curing the disease that had taken her.

And so far, he hadn’t even come close.

Dick was emerging from the Batcave, still sweaty after a rigorous training session, when he heard the doorbell ring.

His first impulse was to get the door. After all, he hadn’t grown up in a mansion with servants catering to him all the time. He’d spent most of his youth around circus people, who did for themselves.

But in the short time he’d been living here, he’d learned that Alfred got the door. Just Alfred, no one else. That was the protocol.

So he stopped himself. And waited for Alfred to get it.

The doorbell rang a second time.
Now, that’s unusual,
Dick told himself. Emerging from the study, he followed the hallway past the stairwell and into the foyer.

Squinting at the light that streamed in from the halfcircle window above the door, Dick looked around—and saw Bruce coming from the direction of the dining room, obviously with the same question on his lips.

“Where’s Alfred?” they asked simultaneously.

The bell rang a third time.

Suddenly, Alfred appeared behind them. “I must have dozed off,” the butler explained—and not without a certain amount of embarrassment. As he confronted Bruce, he looked painfully contrite. “My sincerest apologies, sir.”

Bruce held up a hand and smiled. “First time in thirty years, Alfred. I think we can find it in our hearts to overlook it.”

Dick looked at the door. The suspense was killing him. Wayne Manor didn’t get too many visitors, mostly since Bruce didn’t encourage them. So he couldn’t wait to find out who was there.

Without further ado, he opened the door. “Mystery pizza delivery?” he wondered out loud.

A beautiful young woman stood before him, her blond hair catching the golden autumn light. She was dressed in prim, schoolgirl clothes.

Dick swallowed. “Please be looking for me,” he said. Inwardly, he added another
please.

The girl smiled, “I’m sorry to trouble you, but—”

Her eyes drifted from Dick to Bruce and beyond. It was then that they lit up like beacons.

“Uncle Alfred?” she exclaimed.

Suddenly, she rushed past Dick and Bruce and leaped into the butler’s arms. Alfred held her to him with obvious affection—and obvious surprise.