Case closed

Several people were tangled in a chaotic fight on one side of the room. Three burly men in cardboard armor wielded machetes and steel pipes, surrounding a masked man in a black cape and a pointed-eared mask. But the masked man's movements seemed strained and sluggish, as though something were holding back his limbs. He staggered with every step, looking ready to fall at any moment.

More than a dozen people surrounded them. Several children, seven or eight years old, huddled together on the floor, curled up like balls, while a few other soldiers in cardboard armor stood stiffly in the corners. A young woman with a smile painted on her face lay sprawled across a filing cabinet.

"Selina?"

Before Li Jie could take a closer look, a tall, thin man wearing long rabbit ears bounded in front of him. He pulled a broken pocket watch from his coat and said anxiously, "Hurry, you're late. They'll cut..."

Thud!

Li Jie withdrew the fist he had driven into the man's neck. No longer anxious about the time, the man dropped straight into sleep.

"Get lost! I hate Bunny more than anything."

He shook out his hand and shouted at the Cloaked Figure, "Hey! Need a hand?"

The man was distracted for a moment, and a soldier's steel pipe struck his back with a dull thump. He used the momentum to throw the soldier in front of him over his shoulder, but the movement was so unsteady that he fell along with him. Another soldier behind him raised a blade, only for Li Jie to charge in and send him flying into the wall with a side kick.

"Up ahead..."

The Cloaked Figure pointed toward the far end of the conference hall. "Careful, he can... affect your... mind..."

Li Jie swept his gaze around the room before fixing on the seat of honor at the far end. Beside a woman playing the "Queen of Hearts" stood an extravagant high-backed chair that looked as though it had been hauled out of a theater. Sitting in it was the very man he had seen through the observation window downstairs.

The fellow was short, dressed in an oversized Victorian suit, with an absurdly tall top hat on his head and an enormous Monocle clamped to his face. His face was deathly pale as he stared at Li Jie with a murderous expression.

"Why! Why won't you listen to me!"

His hands worked frantically over a complex machine connected to countless wires and pipes. In its center, a device resembling a radar dish rotated slowly, producing that maddening hum and intermittent drumbeat rhythm.

"Nygma was right. You really are a dwarf."

Without another word, Li Jie raised his gun, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

He had thought the shot was a sure thing, but the Queen of Hearts suddenly lunged in front of the dwarf.

Bang!

A flower of blood bloomed across her abdomen. As the Queen of Hearts fell, she struggled to cry out one last sentence.

"Cut off... cut off his head!"

Everyone left in the room turned toward Li Jie. Their eyes were just like those of the two thugs downstairs: empty, unfocused, immersed in another mad dream forcibly implanted in their minds. The next second, the dwarf shoved several levers, and the children, the two Alices, and the Playing Card Guards all rushed at him.

"Shit!"

Li Jie quickly removed the magazine, ejected the chambered round, and tossed his pistol beneath a nearby cabinet. Then he turned and ran.

They're just kids!

He might not risk his own neck out of compassion, but if an accidental discharge wounded or killed one of them, the reporters wouldn't care what the situation had been. The next day's headlines would make him pay dearly.

"Hahahaha!" The dwarf laughed maniacally. "Dance! Dance for the Queen of Hearts!"

"Dance, my ass! You illiterate idiot! The Queen of Hearts wasn't at the tea party! You don't know a damn thing about Alice!"

Li Jie shouted as he ran. His words made the dwarf falter for a moment before he shrieked, "Nonsense! I am the Mad Hatter! I know everything!"

"The hell you are. You're just Square Root of Two." Seizing the opening, Li Jie ran to the Cloaked Figure's side and kicked a fallen soldier in the side of the face, adding him to the ranks of the unconscious. "Help me out!"

The Cloaked Figure knocked down the last guard with an elbow, then took two small balls from his belt and threw them. They flew in opposite directions, a thin cord stretched between them.

He had meant to trip most of their pursuers, but his aim was off, and he caught only two or three. The people behind them still hurled themselves forward.

Just then, hurried footsteps and shouts came from downstairs.

"GCPD! Nobody move!"

James Gordon charged at the head of the group, followed by five or six officers in bulletproof vests. Each had a crude-looking Jamming Chip attached to the back of his neck or his temple.

"Get the situation under control! Subdue the hypnotized victims first, and don't hurt them!"

With reinforcements joining the fight, Li Jie breathed a sigh of relief. He looked at the Mad Hatter in his high-backed chair and gave a savage grin.

"Square Root of Two, now it's my turn to play."

Taking advantage of his height and long legs, he stepped over two officers wrestling with an Alice and lunged toward the far end of the conference hall.

"You villains ruined the tea party! You villains ruined the tea party!"

The Mad Hatter's face darkened at once. Through his thick lens, he stared at the faintly glowing chips on the backs of the officers' necks.

"Cheap tricks! Pathetic imitations! Mine! Your minds are mine!"

He roared madly, seized the largest dial on the machine with both hands, and twisted it as far as it would go.

"Since you've come uninvited, listen to the Hatter's final movement!"

Bzzzz-!!!

A piercing buzz erupted, sharp enough to nearly rupture their eardrums. The radar-dish device suddenly blazed with white light, its rotation accelerating to maximum speed! A ripple of distortion seemed to spread through the air, almost visible to the naked eye!

"Aah!"

"My head!"

"Urrgh..."

Screams rang out one after another. The officers took the brunt of it. The Jamming Chips on their necks instantly overheated, releasing wisps of smoke as they burned out. The powerful Hypnotic Pulse swept through their mental defenses like a tsunami. The two officers nearest the machine suddenly developed the same empty eyes as the other victims. They stiffened for a moment, then swung their batons and riot shields around, attacking indiscriminately.

"John! What are you doing!"

"They're controlled too! Watch out!"

The scene descended into utter chaos. The original hypnotized victims grew even more violent, while the newly controlled officers joined the attack. Even the Cloaked Figure and Gordon dropped to one knee under the stronger pulse, clutching their heads in pain.

Li Jie's thoughts remained unaffected, but the shrill noise still left him dizzy, his ears ringing. Before he could react, an agile figure pounced from above, five sharp streaks of cold light slashing toward his face.

He instinctively stepped back, and the front of his police uniform, lining and all, was shredded. Li Jie raised his left arm to block the second swipe, then smashed his forehead into Selina's face. While she staggered, her face covered in blood, he followed up with a punch to her stomach.

"I don't go easy on women."

He grabbed the fallen Selina by the back of her neck with one hand and her waist with the other, then threw her at the struggling Cloaked Figure, watching the two tumble across the floor in a tangled heap.

"Go find your canon boyfriend!"

But dealing with one of them wasn't enough. The remaining Alices lunged recklessly at him from beside the table. Li Jie felt his patience crumble like ashes consumed by fire. He glanced back and saw a little girl, not even ten, wearing an eerie smile as she picked up a table knife and stabbed at Gordon's calf.

"Fuck it! No more holding back!"

He swung back and knocked an oncoming officer flat on his back. Facing another charging "Alice," he delivered a precise, powerful uppercut straight to her jaw! The girl collapsed unconscious without so much as a grunt. Then came the second, and the third!

Uppercuts, vicious slaps, elbows, knife-hand strikes-every blow sent another controlled victim crashing to the floor. He charged straight toward the Mad Hatter, the crazed tea-party guests falling like cut wheat in his wake.

"No! Stop! My friends! My Alices!" Seeing his carefully controlled puppets destroyed one after another, the Mad Hatter shrieked in anguish and rage. He watched Li Jie break through the crowd like a god of war, leap onto the long table, crush countless cups and saucers beneath his feet, and spring toward his high-backed chair like a cheetah. For the first time, fear entered his eyes.

"Square Root of Two, you're finished!"

Li Jie leaped into the air and snapped open his steel police baton. Just as he prepared to strike with all his strength, the mad dwarf gave a desperate, eerie smile and slammed his hand onto the armrest!

Click!

The back of the ornate chair suddenly flipped backward. Behind it was no wall, but a pitch-black opening with no bottom in sight.

"Hahahahaha! A step too late, Officer!" the Mad Hatter cackled as he plunged into the dark "Rabbit Hole," taking the core components of his elaborate machine with him. "The tea party is over! But we'll meet again soon!"

The baton came down, smashing the wooden seat to pieces. Li Jie lunged to the edge of the opening, hearing a series of rolling, clattering impacts rapidly recede before vanishing into the depths. He shone his flashlight down and saw only a sloping shaft, apparently converted from an old factory ventilation shaft or freight passage. Below, it might connect to the city's sewer system or some other, more complex network.

"Son of a bitch!" Li Jie punched the wall in fury. Refusing to give up, he tried squeezing into the hole, but it was far too small. All he accomplished was nearly getting his thigh stuck and spending ages pulling it free.

With the Mad Hatter gone and the main device shut down, the powerful Hypnotic Pulse abruptly stopped. Behind Li Jie, the hypnotized victims who had been raging moments earlier lost all strength like puppets with their strings cut. They slumped to the floor, falling deeply unconscious. In an instant, the mad tea party was reduced to wreckage and overlapping groans and gasps. Police flashlights swept through air thick with chemical odors and dust, illuminating the nightmarish scene like the ruins of a battlefield.

Still shaken, Gordon and the officers who hadn't been controlled emerged from behind cover. They looked at the unconscious people strewn across the floor, then exchanged glances.

Batman struggled to his feet, seemingly somewhat recovered. He glanced at the "Rabbit Hole" and Li Jie, nodded silently, then slipped like a ghost into the shadows in a corner of the conference hall and vanished without a sound.

Li Jie stood panting beside the hole, staring at the wrecked room and its unconscious occupants, his teeth clenched.

"A Rabbit Hole... fuck, he really got away..."

"...Thanks to the tireless efforts of the Gotham Police Department, the Miller Port Floating-Body Case has now been solved. A jurisdiction-wide wanted notice has been issued for the principal suspect, cult leader Jervis Tetch, known as the 'Mad Hatter'..."

"Sir, what does this case have to do with a cult? Wasn't that guy just a lunatic?" Alan asked, looking baffled as he watched James Gordon address reporters confidently on the precinct break-room television.

"What else would they say?" Li Jie glanced at Alan. "If the public found out there was a lunatic who could control people's minds running around, and the police had let him escape, what do you think would happen?"

"Oh, so that's it..."

"Same old story. Just the usual routine. Forget about it. The higher-ups worked out a deal this time: Central Headquarters gets the credit for solving the case, and we get the actual benefits. You're getting promoted with me early next month."

Li Jie stood and was about to reach over to turn off the television when he heard Gordon announce another piece of news to the assembled reporters.

"...During this investigation, we received assistance from the Cloaked Figure mentioned previously. The facts have shown that he is a force for justice, willing to work with the police to fight crime. We shouldn't regard him with hostility, let alone hatred. In these difficult times for our city..."

"Ha! Huh? Hahahahaha...!"

Li Jie couldn't take in anything that followed. His astonishment turned to confusion, then uproarious laughter. Under the puzzled gazes of Alan and the others, he slapped his thigh and laughed in the break room until he couldn't straighten up.

"That's James Gordon for you. Justice above all else. You always find the perfect way to set your own life to hell difficulty."

At the edge of the shot, he saw Gillian Loeb's livid face, along with the press's enthusiasm erupting like cold water poured into hot oil. But Detective Gordon seemed not to notice any of it-or perhaps he noticed and simply didn't care.

"What's his name, Detective!"

"Who is he?"

"What's his real identity!"

"Where is he now..."

"I'm sorry, we don't know his real identity. But..." Facing a microphone thrust right up to his mouth, Gordon shouted that name.

"We call him-Batman!"