Panic at Wayne Manor

The stench of the sewer bored straight into his nose.

Bruce stopped, leaning against a moss-covered brick wall.

Murky sewage rose past his knees, and rats rustled in the darkness.

He braced his right hand against the wall. His broken left arm swung limply at his side.

Blood still seeped from the burns on his back, and the edges of his scorched armor scraped against raw flesh.

He dragged his legs toward a hidden door ahead.

The stone bricks slid aside, revealing an elevator buried deep underground.

The fingerprint lock sounded an identification failure alert.

Bruce slammed his elbow into the keypad, then entered a string of numbers with his chin.

The elevator doors slid apart, and he stumbled into the car.

Blood loss darkened his vision. The numbered buttons blurred into overlapping shadows.

With the last of his strength, he pressed the button for the lowest level.

The car plunged downward. The sensation of weightlessness tugged at his displaced organs before it changed tracks and sped toward the Batcave.

He swallowed a mouthful of bloody foam.

When the doors opened, Alfred stood outside. He caught Bruce just as he was about to collapse.

"Oh, good Lord."

"Get me over there." Bruce leaned on the old butler's shoulder, forcing the words out between ragged breaths.

Alfred helped him toward the medical area. Lights came on one after another along the way.

"You're badly hurt. I need to call Dr. Craisley."

The old butler reached for the clasps on Bruce's armor.

"No. We can't let an outsider in." Bruce caught Pennyworth's wrist with his right hand.

Alfred helped him onto the medical bed. The cold metal pressed against his back.

Alfred fetched emergency shears and cut through the charred bulletproof cape and shattered armor.

Blood had already glued the fabric underneath to his skin.

The old butler peeled it away with disinfected forceps. Blood ran down Bruce's waist and into a surgical tray.

"Multiple comminuted fractures of the left ulna and radius. Two broken ribs, one of them barely two centimeters from your lung." Alfred studied the scanner display.

"Give me two shots of local anesthetic and set the bones." Bruce stared at the surgical light overhead.

"That requires an operating room. All I can do here is stabilize the arm externally and stop the bleeding."

"Do as I say. We're running out of time." Bruce struggled to sit up.

The old butler held his shoulder down and picked up a syringe.

The needle pierced a vein, and the medication flowed into his bloodstream.

Alfred gripped Bruce's left arm and pulled and twisted it hard in the opposite direction.

The sound of grinding bone rang harshly through the cavernous Batcave.

Bruce clenched his teeth. Sweat rolled down his cheeks and struck his collarbone.

The old butler quickly immobilized his arm with polymer plaster, then wrapped bandages around his ribs.

"You went after that man?" Alfred dropped the bloody gauze into the medical waste bin.

Bruce said nothing. He struggled off the bed and made his way toward the computer room, steadying himself against the wall with his right hand.

Alfred hurried forward to support him.

Bruce sank into the enormous control chair and pressed Enter.

Data from his helmet recorder began uploading to the main computer.

A huge holographic screen showed Chu Men standing on the clock tower.

Alfred approached with a cup of warm glucose water, then stopped, his eyes fixed on the screen.

"You used a high-purity Synthetic Kryptonite Ray?" The old butler had spotted the weapons log in the lower-left corner.

"Yes. It had no effect on him."

Bruce hit pause, freezing the image at the moment Chu Men walked into the green light.

A red warning flashed relentlessly across the screen.

Bruce brought up the system's feedback data for every attack he had used.

"The lead-powder smoke blocked his X-ray vision, but he didn't need to see."

He opened the next video. A close-up of Chu Men crushing an electrified Batarang between two fingers filled the screen.

"He casually kicked apart the ice from a Liquid Nitrogen Grenade. He showed no sign of sensitivity to cold or heat."

Alfred studied the data.

"So he's immune to physical attacks from every angle. What exactly is he?"

"Probably not an alien." Bruce typed on the keyboard and brought up a comparison with the blood sample he had taken from Joker's corpse on Arkham's second basement level.

A long map of genetic sequences filled the screen.

"These are mutated carbon-based genes. They look like the product of a powerful chemical compound."

Bruce studied the red genetic strands, his hands clasped before his chest.

"Then how can we fight him?" Pennyworth asked.

"Conventional physical attacks are useless." Bruce closed his eyes, and the terror he had felt on the clock tower returned.

It was the helplessness of standing before the overwhelming power of nature.

Since becoming Batman, he had never faced a situation so hopeless.

He had always made the rules for this city from the shadows.

Now a tyrant had arrived who not only ignored those rules but could tear them apart at will.

Bruce opened his eyes and pulled up the psychological profiling module.

Hundreds of labels scrolled across the screen before stopping on three words in red.

"Utterly selfish. Bloodthirsty. Unrestrained." Bruce read them aloud.

"He sounds worse than the lunatics in Arkham."

"He had countless chances to kill me on the clock tower." Bruce pointed to the moment in the footage when he escaped into the sewer.

Chu Men stood on the windowsill, staring at the manhole cover. He did nothing.

"He was toying with his prey." The old butler understood.

"Because he finds it amusing." Bruce coughed twice, and pain stabbed through his ribs again. "He sees all of Gotham as his playground."

Alfred sighed and pushed the warm drink within Bruce's reach.

"Master Bruce, Gotham may be facing a disaster."

"I won't let Gotham fall into the hands of someone like him." Bruce slammed his fist onto the console.

The metal panel buckled beneath the blow.

The movement pulled at the wound on his back, and he doubled over in pain.

"You need to rest. Leave the rest of the data analysis to me." Pennyworth steadied him.

Bruce pushed the butler's hand away, his eyes locked on the red figure on the screen.

Anything alive had a weakness. He had to find this one before Gotham was destroyed.

He could not let Chu Men keep rampaging.

The man was a beast through and through, a butcher with no limits.

With his uninjured right hand, Bruce accessed the global satellite network.

"Connect to Metropolis. Activate long-range acoustic detection. I want that city monitored," Bruce ordered.

"You think he'll come to Gotham?" Alfred sat down at the other side of the console.

"Those red beams were too conspicuous. That man would never tolerate someone tarnishing his reputation that way."

Bruce watched the data stream flicker across the screen and bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.

This was the outcome he feared most.

If two superhumans with the power to destroy a city fought in Gotham, the casualties would be beyond counting.

And right now, he did not even have the power to stop them.