The only answer she received was the repeated busy tone after the call disconnected.
And the rain began again.
Amanda Waller walked behind the third vehicle, her boots making dull echoes on the wet asphalt. Her face looked particularly grim beneath the yellow streetlights, but her eyes remained sharp, now mingled with anger and humiliation.
Usually, someone else would suffer at a moment like this. This time, she was the one suffering.
"Open the door," she told the agent in the transport vehicle.
The mechanical click of the unlocking door sounded unusually clear in the quiet street. Floyd Lawton raised his head, his handcuffs and leg irons rattling with the movement.
He saw Waller standing outside the door, rain dripping from her short hair and soaking the broad shoulders of her dark suit. Behind her lay Gotham's predawn streets, mist flowing between the buildings like a living thing.
"You knew all this would happen?" Amanda Waller demanded, staring at him. "Are you working with them?"
"Of course not. I just thought the trip out wouldn't be too peaceful." Lawton smiled faintly. "Reality proved me right."
"Get out."
Lawton slowly shuffled to the door, where an agent reached out to restrain him. The moment his feet touched the ground, Waller headed toward another vehicle.
"This one too."
She motioned for the agents to open the rear compartment of another vehicle. Mark Desmond's enormous, sleeping body lay curled on a specially designed restraint stretcher.
His breathing was steady, his eyelashes casting long, slender shadows beneath the light.
"Release him."
"Ma'am, his sedative will still last-"
"Release him, then carry him to the roadside."
The agents exchanged glances and obeyed. Six of them struggled to carry Mark out of the vehicle and set him beneath the porch of a closed grocery store.
The