Rush to Harley: Come with Me or Stay and Die?

Arkham Asylum had become a pressure cooker on the verge of bursting.

In the dark corridors, shattered lights spat dying sparks, illuminating one twisted, frenzied face after another.

Prisoners poured from their open cells like a flood. Armed with stolen batons, chair legs, and even their own teeth, they attacked every living thing in sight.

The guards were cut off and surrounded, losing ground at every turn. White clouds of tear gas mingled with the coppery scent of blood and the stench of burning, creating a symphony of Hell.

Amid the chaos, Link moved like a ghost no one could see.

He joined no fights and drew no attention from either side.

He kept close to the shadows along the walls, moving only when explosions and screams covered the sound.

To his senses, the [Chaos Force] turned the battlefield into a shifting heat map. He could see where the crowds were thickest, where the guards' firepower was strongest, and where clashes were about to erupt.

He sidestepped a stray bullet half a second before it struck, slipped past a madman lunging from a nearby cell, and calmly skirted two groups of prisoners locked in a bloody brawl.

He pressed against the flow of people like a fish threading a raging current, never wavering from his destination.

Block D, observation ward attached to the medical wing.

Harley Quinn's cell was here.

By the time Link arrived, the scene was even worse than outside.

Several burly inmates had smashed through the iron door. Licking their lips, they surrounded Harley, who trembled in the corner beneath their greedy, filthy stares.

In Arkham, weakness was the original sin.

And a woman abandoned by Joker was the perfect prey on a night like this.

"Well, look what we found. Joker's Lil' Puddin'." The scar-faced man in front sneered as he closed in.

"Get away! Don't come any closer!" Harley grabbed a pillow and hurled it at him, but her feeble resistance only made them laugh harder.

Her eyes were full of fear and despair.

She instinctively hugged the Joker doll to her chest, but this time, its grotesque grin offered her no comfort.

The seed of doubt Link had planted earlier finally broke through the surface.

Puddin'... where are you?

Why... haven't you come?

Just as the scar-faced man reached for Harley's shoulder, a dark figure appeared silently behind him.

Link struck.

No wasted words. Not even a sound.

He clamped one hand over the man's mouth and, with the other, swept a shard of glass he had picked up from the floor across his throat.

The man's eyes flew wide. His body jerked once, then collapsed.

He died without ever knowing what had hit him.

His two companions froze at the sudden sight.

All they saw was their leader fall before a blurred shadow flashed past them.

One felt a sharp blow to the back of his head and lost consciousness.

Link kicked the other man's knee, dropping him to the floor with a scream. Then Link drove an elbow into the back of his neck, ending his resistance.

It took less than five seconds.

Clean, precise, efficient.

Harley stared at what had happened, speechless.

The man standing beside the body showed no expression. His eyes were as cold as scalpels, as though he had merely taken out the trash.

There was something about him...

He had neither Batman's refusal to kill nor Joker's sheer madness.

His was a coldness centered entirely on himself.

Link paid her no attention. He went to the cell door and worked a length of wire inside the lock.

Click.

An electronic lock that had stumped Arkham's finest security staff opened for him as easily as his own front door.

He pulled the door open and turned. In the flashing red alarm light, his dark eyes seemed bottomless.

He held out a hand to the dazed Harley.

"Joker forgot about you."

His voice was quiet, but it pierced her last hope like a cold spike.

"Come with me, or stay here until they transfer you to Blackgate Prison, where security's even tighter. You'll never get out."

"Choose."

No comfort. No persuasion. Just two brutal realities laid before her.

Harley shook violently.

She looked at Link's bloodstained hand, at its sharply defined knuckles, then up into his terrifyingly calm eyes.

He was right.

Joker hadn't come.

If she stayed, only deeper despair awaited her.

The man before her was mysterious and dangerous, and he frightened her. But when everyone else had abandoned her, he had opened her cell door.

Harley glanced at the body still warm on the floor, then at the ridiculous doll in her arms.

She flung the doll to the ground, as if casting off that foolish part of her past.

She looked up. The confusion and weakness in her eyes were gone, replaced by wild, desperate resolve.

Gritting her teeth, she seized Link's hand.

"I'm coming with you!"