Everything Was Ready, Let the Riot Begin!

Night wrapped Arkham Island in a heavy black shroud.

Apart from the pale beams of the searchlights and the hazy neon glow of distant Gotham City, the entire island lay in suffocating silence.

It was the last calm before the storm.

Link lay on the hard bed in his cell, his eyes closed.

His breathing was steady, his heartbeat calm, like an ordinary man about to fall into a deep sleep.

But his mind had never been more active.

In his perception, Arkham Asylum was no longer a cold building. It was a vast network filled with countless nodes of emotion.

Rage, malice, obsession, madness... These negative emotions rose slowly from every corner of the network like black bubbles in a swamp.

Over the past week, he had been the most patient of spiders. Each day, he had pushed his cleaning cart across every inch of Arkham, marking each of the most unstable "bubbles" with Chaos Force.

Now every piece was in place.

It was time to light the fuse.

Link's consciousness sank into darkness as he drove Chaos Force harder than ever before.

His mental power became a set of invisible probes, striking precisely at the targets he had chosen long ago.

High-Security Isolation, Block A, Cell 307.

A giant of a man who had committed grave crimes under the delusion that he was an ogre was irritably banging his head against the wall.

Link's consciousness brushed against his.

No complicated command. Just one simple, clear thought planted in his mind like a virus:

That guard by the door... He's laughing at your teeth.

The giant stopped banging his head. He whipped around and stared through the tiny window in his cell door at the guard yawning in the corridor.

The guard's unconsciously open mouth twisted, in the giant's eyes, into a sneer of utter contempt.

"ROAR!"

With a howl that sounded nothing like a human voice, the giant hurled his massive body against the reinforced steel door!

Block C, second basement level.

A fanatic who believed he was "the Chosen One" and waited every day for "divine revelation" knelt on the floor, muttering to himself.

Link gave him the revelation he had been waiting for:

The ones in uniform... are blasphemers. Tear them apart, and you will gain eternal life.

The fanatic trembled violently, fervor blazing in his eyes.

He rushed to his cell door and began chanting his self-invented "sacred battle hymn" in a shrill, piercing voice.

Block B, General Care.

Block D, Psychiatric Research Center...

At the same instant, seven of Arkham Asylum's most dangerous and unstable felons, each in a different area, seemed to receive a mysterious command and flew into a violent frenzy.

They attacked their cells with their heads, their bodies, anything they could use, screaming in madness.

The first domino had fallen.

"Alert! Inmate 307 in Sector A is out of control!"

"Riot on the basement level of Sector C!"

"Sector B..."

In the central control room, alarms blared one after another. Red warning lights flashed wildly, and the guards on duty descended into chaos.

"Move! Send men to Sector A! That guy could tear down a wall!"

"Sector C needs backup too! They're attacking the other cells!"

Teams of guards armed with riot shields and stun guns rushed out of the ready room. Footsteps and shouts echoed through the corridors as they scrambled toward the worst trouble spots.

Just as Link had expected, the sudden outbreaks across multiple sectors drew away most of the security forces.

The corridor leading to the central control room, along with most of the general wards, was left more thinly guarded than ever.

Link snapped his eyes open. His gaze was ice-cold.

He sat up and went to his cell door.

In his mind, the seemingly sturdy electronic lock was already a transparent schematic.

He pulled a sharpened toothbrush handle from beneath his mattress and slipped it into a gap in the lock. Using the mechanical knowledge he had gained from Riddler, he gave his wrist a slight twist.

Click.

With a sound barely loud enough to hear, the cell door opened.

Link slipped into the shadows as silently as a ghost.

He did not head straight for Harley's ward. Instead, he followed the shadows along the walls to Block D's electrical substation.

Only one drowsy old guard watched over it. To him, the alarms were nothing out of the ordinary.

Link approached from behind and struck the back of his neck with a precise chop. The guard crumpled without a sound.

Link opened the main electrical panel on the wall.

The countless colored wires and complex relays were perfectly clear to him.

Without hesitation, his hands shot forward. He pulled out several critical fuses, then forced together two wires that were never meant to connect!

BZZZT!

Blinding sparks erupted!

The lights in Block D and the connected Blocks E and F went out at once!

More importantly, the electronic locks on every cell in those three blocks overloaded. The smell of burning circuitry filled the air as they failed completely.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Cell doors were pushed open one after another.

Hundreds of ordinary inmates poured out of the darkness, stunned, overjoyed, and bewildered.

They saw the flashing red alarm lights in the corridors and heard fighting in the distance. After a brief hesitation, their long-suppressed violent instincts broke free.

"We're free!"

"Kill the cops!"

All of Arkham Asylum fell into chaos.

The unrest spread from a few scattered points into a raging inferno.

At the end of a dark corridor, Link watched coldly as the Hell he had created unfolded before him.

Shrill alarms rang across the island, as though sounding the perfect overture to the grand chaos.