The Dark Knight Rises (20 page)

Feverish images dragged him up from the dark. Screams, sobs, and maniacal laughter surrounded him. Broken bodies crashed to earth. He was falling down a long dark shaft.
A
black, skull-like visage gazed down on him, coming closer and closer…

Bruce opened his eyes, drifting back to consciousness.

Disoriented, he found himself lying on his back on a rough wooden cot. He stared upward at a sooty stone roof that looked as though it had been carved from solid rock. He glimpsed prison bars out of the corner of his eye. His Batsuit was gone, replaced by coarse, filthy rags. His head throbbed and his throat was parched.

Whiskers carpeted his pale, clammy face. He tried to sit up, only to experience an excruciating jolt of pain. He sank back onto the cot, gasping in agony.

It all came back to him.

Bane. Wayne Tower. His back bent backwards until…

Someone stirred to his right, and he realized that he wasn’t alone in the cell. He tried to roll over to see who it was, but even the attempt was torture.

Heavy footsteps approached the cot. A massive figure squatted beside him. Densely muscled shoulders curved upward into a thick neck supporting a familiar masked face. The dark skull from his fever dreams seemed to gaze down on him.

Bane.

“Why didn’t you just kill me?” Bruce rasped, his throat sore from disuse.

“You don’t fear death,” Bane answered. “You welcome it.” He shook his head. “Your punishment is to be more severe.”

Bruce understood now. He glared furiously at his captor.

“You’re a torturer…”

“Yes,” Bane agreed. “But not of your body. Of your soul.”

Bruce tried to hold onto his anger, but the pain was too great. He let out a sharp gasp. Bane blurred before his eyes as he felt the darkness encroaching on his vision. He fought to stay conscious.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“Home,” Bane replied. “Where I learned the truth about despair. As will you.”

Bruce forced himself to look around, turning his head as little as possible. Through the rusty iron bars of his cell, he glimpsed what appeared to be an enormous underground complex carved into the sides of a gigantic pit. Metal stairs and catwalks connected rows of terraces that led into deep, cavernous cell blocks. The entire structure resembled a huge inverted pyramid or ziggurat that was almost Escheresque in appearance.

Wretched figures clad in frayed peasant garb populated the place, trudging wearily about their labors. There appeared to be no guards—only prisoners. Angry shouts and screams came from the other cells. The early morning sunlight filtered down from a vast circular shaft rising hundreds of feet above the bottom of the pit. Higher up, crumbling ledges and outcroppings jutted from the weathered stone sides.

It was like being at the bottom of a colossal well.

Bane rose from Bruce’s bedside and crossed the cell to the bars.

“There is a reason that this prison is the worst hell on earth.” He lifted his masked countenance toward the distant sunlight. “Hope. Every man who has rotted here over the centuries has looked up to the light, and imagined climbing to freedom. So simple, so easy. And, like shipwrecked men turning to seawater from uncontrollable thirst, many have died trying.

“I learned here that there can be no true despair without hope.” He looked away from the light, fixing his pitiless gaze on Bruce.

“So as I terrorize Gotham, I will feed its people hope to poison their souls. I will let them believe they can survive, so that you can watch them clamber over each other to stay in the sun.” He pointed to an ancient-looking television set up just outside the bars of Bruce’s cell. A cable ran from the television into the crude, rough-hewn masonry.

“You will watch,” Bane continued, “as I torture an entire city to bring you pain you thought you could never truly feel again. Then, when you have truly understood the depths of your failure, we will fulfill Rā’s al Ghūl’s destiny. We will destroy Gotham. And when it is done—when Gotham is ashes
—then
you have my permission to die.”

Bane turned to depart, leaving Bruce alone in the dismal cell. A barred door swung shut, its rusty hinges squeaking in protest. He wanted to shout at Bane, say something defiant, but it would have been nothing but an empty gesture. He couldn’t even move without agony.

The pain overwhelmed him again and the darkness swept over him. His eyes drooped and fell shut.

He could still hear the screams, even in his sleep.

Blackgate Prison was a maximum-security penitentiary located on one of the smaller islands in Gotham Harbor. Now that the Dent Act had made it all but possible for the city’s criminals to cop an insanity
plea, it had replaced Arkham Asylum as the preferred location for imprisoning both convicted and suspected felons. The worst of the worst were sent here, except for the Joker, who, rumor had it, was locked away as Arkham’s sole remaining inmate.

Or perhaps he had escaped. Nobody was really sure.

Not even Selina.

She gazed up at Blackgate’s forbidding gray walls and watchtowers as she was escorted into the facility, wearing an absolutely hideous orange jumpsuit. Her long brown hair was tied back behind her head. A pair of steel handcuffs accessorized her convict garb. She would have preferred a pair of diamond bracelets.

After being processed, she was led down the middle of a multi-level cell block. Rows of inmates, locked in their cells, hooted and hollered at her as though they had never seen a woman before. Obscene jeers, whistles, and catcalls followed her down the length of the long, dreary corridor. They rattled their cages like monkeys in a zoo.

She had always liked the big cats better.

The guard in charge of the block looked askance at his new prisoner.

“We’re locking her up in here?”

Selina was the only female prisoner in sight. This part of Blackgate wasn’t exactly co-ed.

“The Dent Act allows non-segregation based on extraordinary need,” the warden explained. He kept a
close eye on her. “First time she broke out of a women’s correctional, she was sixteen.”

Fifteen,
she thought,
but I looked mature for my age.

A hulking convict—who was as ugly as he was muscle-bound—groped for her through the bars of his cage. Pudgy fingers strained to reach to her. He licked his lips, practically drooling like a dog in heat.

“Little closer, baby,” he said coarsely.

“Why, honey,” she purred, “you wanna hold my hand?”

Making it easy for him, she slipped his greedy hands between her own handcuffed ones, and then executed a flawless cartwheel, snapping both of his arms.

Bone splintered noisily and the steroid case shrieked in agony even as the guards rushed to separate them.

She landed on her feet and kept on walking, not missing a step.

The hoots and whistles died away.

“She’ll be just fine,” the warden predicted.

The elevator let Fox and Miranda off on the top floor of Wayne Tower. They strolled toward the executive boardroom.

“I don’t see the need for a board meeting on the energy project,” he protested. He didn’t have time for a meeting right now, not when he was still dealing with the raid on Applied Sciences. Even a
partial
inventory
of all the prototypes that had gone missing was enough to keep him up at night. He didn’t like to think about those inventions falling into the wrong hands.

“Bruce got a lot of things right,” Miranda said. “Keeping the board in the dark wasn’t one of them.”

Lucius wasn’t sure he agreed with that, but Miranda was president of Wayne Enterprises now, so he needed to respect her opinion. Bracing himself for a contentious exchange, he politely opened the door to the boardroom and escorted her inside.

Where he found a different kind of meeting already in progress.

The board members sat around the conference table, ashen and trembling. Armed intruders held them captive at gunpoint, while an intimidating masked figure occupied the head of the table. Lucius recognized him as the same ruthless killer who had staged the raid on the stock exchange, wiping out Bruce Wayne’s fortune. Newspaper reports on the attack had identified him as a notorious mercenary known only as Bane.

“This meeting is called to order,” the man said.

Fox and Miranda froze, staring aghast at the masked man and his gunmen. Lucius stepped protectively in front of Miranda.

“Chair and president,” Bane said, addressing them. He was dressed for combat, wearing a khaki utility harness with plenty of pouches, and rugged gray trousers and boots. He crossed his beefy arms. A pistol was stuck in his belt. He glanced around the conference table. “I also need one ordinary member. Mr. Fox, would you care to nominate?”

For what?
Lucius wondered. Bane’s mockery of business protocol left him speechless and confused.

“No,” Douglas Fredericks said, speaking up. The dignified older man rose to his feet. “I volunteer.”

Fox was impressed by his colleague’s courage. He hoped it wouldn’t cost him too dearly as the mercenaries rounded up the three of them. Helpless against the armed soldiers, he couldn’t help wishing that Wayne was still a member of the board. Bruce would know how to handle a situation like this.

But no one had seen Bruce Wayne in days.

Or his nocturnal alter ego.

“Where are you taking us?” Fox asked cautiously.

“Where you buried your resources,” Bane answered. “The bowels of Gotham.”

Fox shivered involuntarily at the killer’s words.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A nurse helped Gordon pull himself up to a sitting position. It hurt, but maybe not as much as before. A dog-eared copy of A
Tale of Two Cities
sat on a bedside table. Detective Blake stood by the hospital bed, waiting patiently for the nurse to depart.

He closed the door behind her when she left.

“So you think our friend is gone again?” Gordon asked him.

The young detective nodded gravely.

“This time he might not be coming back.”

Gordon’s face fell. The whole time he’d been stuck in this damn bed, the one thing that had kept him going was the knowledge that Gotham’s Dark Knight had returned. But it seemed as if that hope had been short-lived.

Where is he?
Gordon wondered.
What’s happened to him?

The door swung open again, and Foley barged into the room, visibly agitated. He was short of breath, as though he had run all the way up the stairs. Beads of perspiration dotted his brow.

“Okay, Commissioner,” he said, gasping, “you were right!”

Gordon sat up straight, his pains forgotten.

“What’s happened?”

“Your masked man kidnapped the Wayne Enterprises board,” Foley reported. “He let most of them go, but took three down into the sewers.”

Gordon winced at the thought. Memories of the tunnels, of his own blood spilling into the chilling waters, sent a chill through his entire body.

This is it,
he realized.
Bane is making his move.

“No more patrols,” he ordered. “No more hide and seek. Send every available cop down there to smoke him out.”

Foley hesitated.

“The mayor won’t want panic—”

“So it’s a training exercise,” Blake suggested.

For once, Foley seemed to welcome the younger man’s input. He looked guiltily at Gordon.

“I’m sorry I didn’t take you seriously—”

Gordon cut him some slack. Foley was a good cop. He had just taken for granted that the bad days were gone. Gordon had known better.

“Don’t apologize for believing the world is in better shape than it is,” the commissioner told him. “Just
fight to make it true.”

Foley nodded, seeming to understand at last. He left to carry out Gordon’s orders. Blake moved to follow him, but Gordon called him back.

“Not you,” the commissioner said. “You’re telling me the Batman’s gone. So you chase up the Daggett leads, any way you can.”

They needed to do more than just find Bane. They had to find out what he was up to, before it was too late. Daggett’s name had been all over the excavations in the tunnels, and now he was dead. There had to be a connection. And
somebody
had to find it.

If not Batman, then maybe Blake.

Water dripped onto Bruce’s dry, cracked lips. An old man with shaggy white hair leaned over him, squeezing the liquid from a dirty rag. One cell over, separated from them by sturdy iron bars, a blind Middle Eastern man squatted against a rough stone wall. He appeared to be in his seventies. Milky cataracts clouded his eyes.

He muttered something in a tongue Bruce couldn’t place. An obscure dialect of Persian, perhaps, or Arabic.

“He asks if you would pay us to let you die,” White Hair translated. An Eastern European accent suggested that he had been born somewhere far beyond this hellish pit. A ragged wool vest hung over his scrawny frame. He was dressed like a peasant, but had an air of ravaged gentility. “I told him you have nothing.”

Bruce grimaced. He lay miserably atop the cot, from which he hadn’t stirred for who knew how long. Feverish and weak, he’d lost all track of time, drifting in and out of awareness. His head pounded, and the searing pain in his back was a constant companion, even in his sleep. Existence had become an endless ordeal he could never escape. He could not even clean himself.