The Dark Knight Rises (25 page)

Looters invaded a tree-lined boulevard across from the park. What had once been one of Gotham’s tonier neighborhoods was overrun by a lawless horde that stormed the luxury apartment buildings. Gun-wielding rioters shot off the locks or battered down
the doors. Hopelessly outnumbered, cowed doormen and security guards either retreated from the mob or else joined the insurrection. Mercenaries, convicts, gang members, vandals, anarchists, and opportunists whooped uproariously as they helped themselves to the homes of the rich and famous.

“The powerful will be ripped from their decadent nests…
”

On Park Boulevard, looters ransacked a palatial penthouse apartment. High-end televisions, computers, and other pricy electronics were seized and fought over before being hauled out the door. Drawers were yanked out and dumped onto the floor, the better to rifle through their contents. Antique desks and chairs were overturned, priceless vases and paintings trashed.

The one-time owners of the apartment, an investment banker and his much younger trophy wife, cowered in a corner as the rioters rooted through their closets, tossing designer dresses and tailored suits onto the floor. Thirstier looters raided the well-stocked liquor cabinet, passing around rare vintages of wine and bottles of fifty-year-old Scotch and bourbon. Empty bottles shattered against the walls. Costly spirits spilled onto an imported Persian carpet. Cuban cigars were smoked with abandon.

* * *

“And cast into the cold world the rest of us have known and endured…
”

At first, the terrified apartment owners thought that they themselves might be spared, that the rioters were only after their possessions. But then men with guns descended upon them and herded them roughly out into the street, where they were rounded up along with the rest of their scared and affluent neighbors. Despite the cold fall weather, and not even given a chance to dress for the outdoors, they were marched at gunpoint away from their former homes.

Raucous laughter followed them down the block. Thrown rocks and garbage pelted them. An empty bottle hit the banker in the face.

“
Courts will be convened…
”

The stock exchange, site of Bane’s first assault upon Gotham’s wheelers and dealers, was converted into a mock courthouse attended by crowds of jeering spectators. An escaped convict who had traded his orange prison jumpsuit for an ill-fitting black robe presided over the trial of the banker and his wife. They found themselves accused of high crimes and treason against the people of Gotham. They clung to each other, shivering in the dock, as Jonathan Crane, a convicted killer who had once terrorized the city, pronounced sentence on them.

He pounded his gavel upon the trading floor’s
elevated bell podium.

The mob roared in approval.

Bane watched silently from an upper gallery.

“The spoils will be enjoyed…
”

A once-exclusive apartment became Party Central. Dozens of squatters occupied the penthouse, helping themselves to whatever the first wave of looters had left behind. Winos, addicts, prostitutes, and homeless runaways cracked opened bottles of champagne, spraying one another with the foam while trampling over broken furniture and heirlooms. Hookers and crackheads put on an impromptu fashion show, modeling liberated furs and jewelry. A drunk peed in a corner.

Selina kept to herself, frowning as she watched the revelry.

“Blood will be shed…”

Officer Ross peered up at the daylight, high above his head. The light penetrated a narrow storm drain partially clogged with shattered concrete. A basket full of supplies was lowered into the ruins of the tunnels, where he and hundreds of other cops found themselves buried alive.

At first, he had expected the city to launch a full-scale rescue, employing heavy machinery and teams
of workers to dig their way down to the trapped personnel, but apparently that wasn’t happening anytime soon. They remained stuck in the sewers.

He
remained stuck in the sewers. Away from his wife and daughter.

Ross grabbed onto the basket, which contained stale bread, moldy fruit, and dented cans of lunch meat. His stomach growling, he handed them out to the other officers, hoping it would be enough, but knowing that it wasn’t.

He shivered, trying to remember what it was like to be warm.

“
But the police will live, until they are ready to serve true justice…”

The reactor core glowed brightly, and lit gauges crept toward the red zone, as the large metal sphere was loaded into the back of an unmarked black truck. Mercenaries made sure the bomb was secured within the vehicle.

“This great city will endure. Gotham
will
survive.”

Inside the truck, a digital counter ticked toward zero.

Bruce couldn’t bear to watch the news coverage any longer. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he rocked back and forth on his cot—until he rolled over the edge and landed on the hard stone floor. A harsh grunt
escaped his lips as he placed his palms against the grimy floor and pressed against it.

His caretaker stared at him in confusion, as if fearing that his charge had fallen by accident. Not until Bruce managed to lift his face a few inches from the ground did it become obvious that—insanely—he was trying to do a pushup.

Just one rep
, Bruce ordered himself.
You can do it!

His screaming spine thought otherwise.

The blind man barked next door. Sightless eyes turned toward Bruce as the man strained his ears to hear the exertions. Despite his handicap, he seemed to grasp what was happening.

“He says you must first straighten your back,” the European translated. He helped Bruce roll over onto his back. Every motion sent a bolt of searing pain up his spinal column. The rough stone floor felt like a bed of nails.

“How would he know?” Bruce asked.

“He was the prison doctor,” the other prisoner revealed. “A morphine addict who incurred the displeasure of powerful people. Including your masked friend.”

“How?”

The prisoner sighed, perhaps realizing that Bruce would only keep asking. Or maybe he simply hoped to distract Bruce with a story. In any event, the European spoke softly, his voice hushed and doleful.

“Many years ago, during a time of plague, Bane
was attacked by the other prisoners. The doctor’s fumbling attempts to repair the damage left him in perpetual agony. The mask delivers a gas that holds his pain at bay.”

Good to know,
Bruce thought. “Is Bane the child you spoke of? Was he born here?”

The prisoner nodded.

“The legend is that there was a mercenary working for the local warlord, who fell in love with his daughter. They married in secret.” He retrieved a rope from the hall and tied it under Bruce’s arms. “When the warlord found out, he condemned the mercenary to this pit. But then exiled him instead, dropping him at the side of a barren road.

“The mercenary understood that the warlord’s daughter had secured his release, but he couldn’t know the true price of his freedom. She had taken his place in the pit.”

Bruce shuddered at the thought of a woman in this awful place. So far all the prisoners he’d seen had been men. There did not appear to be any guards. Apparently, they weren’t needed. The prisoners had been left to police themselves.

“And she was with child,” the European continued. “The mercenary’s child.” He gestured toward the blind man in his cell. “The doctor delivered the child, back when his eyes were still young and could see the light. But one day, years later, he forgot to lock the cell behind him.”

* * *

Years ago:

A Madonna in hell, the mother wore a native shawl over her slender shoulders. She backed against an unyielding stone wall as a crew of lustful prisoners, seizing the opportunity, barged into her cell. Muslin masks concealed the men’s faces.

She reached for the child, wanting to protect her offspring.

But instead the child charged at the invaders, knife in hand. The blade slashed at the men, drawing blood…

“Innocence cannot flower underground,” the European said. “It was to be stamped out. But the child had a friend. A protector.”

A
sinewy figure, his face also veiled by muslin, came to the child’s rescue. Threadbare garments hung on his frame. Deflecting a knife blow with his arm, he pulled the furious child away from the invaders. A snarling inmate, his face sporting a bloody gash, grabbed for the child, but the protector intercepted the man’s arm and, with a deft move, broke it at the elbow.

Bone snapped loudly. The man dropped to his knees, clutching his arm in agony.

The other prisoners lunged at the woman. Making a brutal choice, the masked man held onto the frantic child and dragged the youngster into the shadows,
away from the attackers, who fell upon the woman like a pack of ravening wolves.

Her screams finally trailed off into silence.

“The child’s guardian showed the others that this innocence was their redemption. To be prized.” The European shook his head mournfully. “The mother was not so lucky.”

The blind doctor shouted from his cell. Bruce’s caretaker nodded in understanding.

“This is Bane’s prison now,” he said. “Bane would not want his story told.”

He knotted the rope securely beneath Bruce’s arms, and then hurled the end over the open door of the cell, running around to take hold of it. Tugging on the rope, he pulled Bruce upright against the bard.

Bruce screamed as if he was being tortured upon the rack.

Which—in a sense—he was.

The pain was like nothing he had ever known. Worse than the time the Scarecrow had set him on fire, or when the Joker had stabbed him in the side. Worse than the time he had hauled Ducard up over the edge of that cliff with just one arm.

He convulsed in torment, praying to pass out. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could endure it, even after everything he had already been through. Oblivion would have been a mercy.

But there was no such luck.

The European tied the rope to the metals bars of the door. His fingers explored Bruce’s spine, which only increased the torture. Razor-sharp spasms of pain rocketed up and down his brutalized body. He bit down on his lip as his caretaker located the source of the pain.

Bruce tasted blood.

“You have a protruding vertebra,” the man said. “I’m going to force it back.”

“How?” he asked, and he braced himself.

Without warning, the man punched him in the back, hard enough to rattle the door’s rusty hinges. Bruce howled like a damned soul, suffering the most excruciating torment of hell, before finally sagging against the iron bars. Only the unforgiving rope, digging into his armpits, kept him from collapsing onto the floor. He hung limply.

“You stay like this,” the other prisoner said. “Until you stand.”

Bruce finally lost consciousness from the pain.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Days and nights blurred together as Bruce hung within the cell, drifting in and out of delirium. Noises came and went from the pit outside. The tantalizing light of hope retreated and returned, over and over again. Only the pain in his back was constant, giving him no relief.

The ghosts of his past tormented him.

“Did you not think I’d return, Bruce?”

He looked up to see Rā’s al Ghūl standing before him. His long-dead mentor appeared just as he had the last time Bruce had seen him. He was a tall, bearded man wearing a stern expression and a severe black suit. Bruce had originally known him as “Henri Ducard,” and had only later realized that Ducard was merely a convenient alias for the true master of the League of Shadows.

Icy blue eyes regarded Bruce with wry amusement.

“I told you I was immortal,” he said.

No, this is impossible,
Bruce thought. He vividly recalled a speeding monorail crashing to the street in a fiery explosion. “I watched you die,” he gritted.

Rā’s did not deny it.

“There are many forms of immortality.”

A memory surfaced from the past, of the two of them sitting before a campfire beside a frozen lake. The older man had spoken tersely of his own tragic history.

“Once I had a wife,” he said. “My great love. She was taken from me.”

The tapestry came together in Bruce’s mind. Returning to the present, he stared at Rā’s.

“You were the mercenary,” he said. “Bane is your child. Your heir.”

Rā’s nodded.

“An heir to ensure that the League of Shadows fulfills its duty to restore balance to civilization.”

Bruce knew what that meant.

“No…” But Rā’s continued.

“You yourself fought the decadence of Gotham for years—with all your strength and resources, all your moral authority. And the only victory you could achieve was a lie. Finally, you understand. Gotham is beyond saving.”

“No!” Bruce shouted. He strained against the rope holding him up. The pain in his back was nothing compared to the agony of knowing that his
city was in peril—and there was nothing he could do about it.