Talon

The elevator began plunging from the eighty-ninth floor. Weightless, Stuart turned his gaze outside, where the dense streaks of rain seemed suspended before his eyes as though underwater.

After a brief hesitation, he swung the miniature safe in his hand and smashed through the elevator's roof.

Clenching the document envelope between his teeth, Stuart grabbed the edge and climbed out. He pushed off the roof, his face grazing the speeding cables as he leaped toward the glass outer wall of the elevator shaft.

Impact!

Rebound!

Free fall!

Stuart spread his fingers and dragged them across the glass, leaving several bright red streaks of blood.

He hung in midair, one hand holding the safe, the other clinging to the metal frame of the glass outer wall.

The frame's edge was less than an inch wide, about the width of a finger joint. With nothing but his grip strength, Stuart had escaped almost certain death.

The elevator's outer doors were diagonally below him.

Kicking off the glass, he twisted a hundred and eighty degrees as he fell. His fingers stabbed viciously into the gap between the elevator doors like an unstoppable scalpel.

If he could just pry the doors open, he would be out of danger.

But fate chose that moment to play a cruel joke on him.

The elevator doors suddenly opened from within, and a gleaming wrist blade plunged into Stuart's unprotected chest.

Pain shot through his entire body like an electric shock, and Stuart fell into the elevator shaft.

But he still refused to give up, grabbing desperately onto the edge of the opening.

F37 showed on the outer wall. That meant he was much closer to the ground, but the height was still lethal.

His opponent, the man responsible for his near-fatal wound, stood silently at the elevator opening.

Clad in leather armor, with a mask resembling a medieval plague doctor's, he looked down at Stuart. The pair of blades strapped to his wrists scraped together, throwing off sparks.

"Harold makes mistakes. I don't. Rather than watch you lose your grip and fall, I'd prefer to pierce your heart."

"Ready? This time, I won't miss."

The mysterious man's tone wasn't particularly cold. He sounded like a stern instructor correcting a student's form.

But his actions showed no mercy. He kicked Stuart's hand loose, then leaped down after him.

They tangled together inside the elevator shaft. A wrist blade skimmed past Stuart's neck. Stuart curled up and drove his heel hard into the mysterious man's abdomen, using the recoil to swing the safe at the glass.

Crash!

Glass shards and rain hurtled past. Stuart found it harder and harder to breathe.

Blood was slowly filling his lungs through the wound. His life was on a countdown.

He swept the obstacles out of his way, adjusted his balance in midair, and drew the grapple gun hidden behind his waist.

William had been right. This thing could save his life when it mattered.

He fired toward the building diagonally opposite, but a flash of steel severed the grappling hook the instant it left the barrel.

Stuart caught a falling human silhouette out of the corner of his eye. He could hardly believe what he saw.

The mysterious man had jumped out after him.

But he had no time to think. The man's wrist blade sliced through the curtains of rain toward his chest, and he raised the safe in front of him.

The thin blade slipped into the safe's seam and silently cut through its latch.

The door creaked open. Stuart watched its contents spiral upward on the rushing air.

Jewels, gold bars, compromising photos of politicians-everything except the evidence he needed to convict Harold.

He regretted it.

He hadn't followed William's instructions. He hadn't kept his cool.

After seeing what the safe contained, the light vanished from Stuart's eyes. He released his grip on the safe and watched the wrist blade pierce his heart.

"You need to experience death once to fully awaken your ability."

"Then maybe I'll never awaken it in my entire life."

"****** When are you going to do something about that arrogance?"

"But my dear Erin, isn't that exactly why you fell in love with me?"

The mysterious man rose from the cracked paving stones. At his feet, Stuart's blood spread through the rainwater.

A white haze misted the lenses of his beaked mask. His gaze settled on Stuart's still-open eyes. After a few seconds, he grabbed Stuart by the ankle and dragged him into the underground parking garage nearby.

Witnesses remained at the scene: Wayne Tower employees and a handful of passersby.

Everything that had happened today would be seared into their memories, spreading by word of mouth until it became Gotham's latest urban legend.

Inside the parking garage, Harold Wayne emerged from the shadows with heavy steps.

"I didn't expect him to still be alive. The Mad Hatter told me he was dead."

"No one's intelligence is trustworthy. Never forget to verify it."

The mysterious man nudged Stuart's bloodstained face with his foot.

"How many others know about this?"

"William Hans. It must have been him!!!! He switched out my 'Bruce'... but I don't understand how he did it!"

Harold's hands and feet twitched with rage.

There was no time to find a new stand-in at this stage. He had to get him back.

"I'll find a hitman. You bring 'Bruce' back."

"No!"

The mysterious man shook his head.

"Too many things have already gone wrong with our plan."

"Then..."

"Leave it to me. Leave everything to me. Except this corpse. I'm not a vulture. Disposing of bodies isn't my responsibility."

The mysterious man turned and left, water from his shoulder cape splashing onto Harold's glasses.

Ever since returning from Arkham Asylum, William had felt uneasy.

Maybe it was the little scare Hugo Strange had given him. Maybe it was Stuart missing his check-in.

They had agreed to message each other on their pagers at seven every evening to confirm they were safe, but there were still five minutes until the deadline.

William had absolute faith in Batman's abilities, but reality wasn't a comic book.

Taking a deep breath, he picked up the jacket from the edge of the bed.

"We're not waiting. Casey, let's head to Floyd's first."

Casey said little and pulled on her bat mask.

She fired her grappling hook and swung down from the window with William.

Dense raindrops pattered sharply against her cape as they passed through an alley piled with junk.

As they passed a twenty-four-hour convenience store, the phone behind the counter rang.

William stopped out of habit.

"Hungry?"

William shook his head, his eyes following the clerk's hand as he picked up the phone.

Just as expected, the clerk looked around with the receiver in his hand. When his eyes met William's, he froze for a few seconds, then slowly beckoned.

William entered the convenience store and took the receiver.

"The moment you hear this, run. Don't go back to your rented place. Someone's following you."

Without hesitation, William dropped the phone, grabbed Casey's wrist, and dashed into the rain.

"You've been acting weird for a while now. What's going on?"

"Don't ask. Get ready to fight..."

William didn't even have time to finish the last word.

A dark figure appeared at the end of the alley. As the streetlight flickered and buzzed, he approached with mechanical steps, like a character in an animation with missing frames.

Casey pulled William behind her.

"Run!"

"Don't leave. Unless you want Kathy Kane to die in this filthy alley."

The mysterious man flicked his wrists. Blades sprang out and scraped against the wall.

"What do you want?" William patted Casey's shoulder, signaling for her to step back.

"You know what I want."

"If I hand it over, do I live?"

"No. But your corpse will look nicer." The mysterious man's voice dripped with mockery.

"Let's make a deal. I can die, but..."

William had barely begun when Casey waved a hand in front of him.

"Sorry to interrupt, but you've been scratching my stomach with your fingers this whole time. What does that mean?"

William said nothing. He merely stepped on Casey's foot.

"Why are you stepping on me now? Can't you just say what you mean?"

William's blood pressure shot up in fury. He couldn't get a single word out.

"Miss Kane, Mr. Hans means to buy you time. Haven't you noticed that he's blocking your utility belt with his body? While he does that, you can unclip a smoke grenade out of my line of sight... or a flashbang, of course. Detonating it without warning would give you a slim chance of escape."

"Oh, so that's it!"

Casey smacked her fist into her palm in realization, then seemed to remember something and asked timidly.

"Then... are we still going ahead with the plan?"

William's smile looked worse than tears.

In the next frame, a sharp blade sliced through the raindrops, aimed straight at William's throat.

Casey instinctively reached out to block it. The mysterious man turned his wrist and drove the blade through her palm, pinning her hand hard against the wall.

His other wrist blade thrust toward Casey's lower abdomen.

The mysterious man's target had been Batwoman all along.

At the critical moment, William grabbed his wrist and threw his entire weight onto the killer's arm.

But the man still had both feet.

The mysterious man turned sideways, drew up his knee, and kicked at Casey.

The ringing hiss of a blade leaving its sheath sounded in the darkness. Evidently, he had concealed weapons on his feet too.

Her stab-resistant suit proved crucial. The blow struck Casey's abdomen without causing serious harm. Instead, she straightened and stepped half a pace forward, drawing her head back before slamming it toward the mysterious man's head.

Street-brawling tactics might have worked against an ordinary thug, but against the experienced stranger, they left openings everywhere. He retracted his wrist blade, opened his fist into a palm, and struck William's hip. William spun backward as though hit by a sledgehammer.

With his arm free, the mysterious man dodged the headbutt and thrust his wrist blade toward the gap between Casey's mask and armor at the back of her neck.

Casey raised her hand to defend herself. The Hydraulic Exoskeleton surged with power, stopping the fatal strike by brute force.

But the mysterious man was astonishingly strong. Fighting against the exoskeleton's power, he forced her arm down little by little.

The exoskeleton strained beyond its limits, sparks crackling in the dark alley.

William got up, clutching his head, and drew his gun.

Two shots hit the mysterious man's shoulder. One hit Casey in the back.

The mysterious man showed no reaction to being shot. Casey, on the other hand, staggered under the bullet's impact and nearly lost her balance.

"Body shots don't work on a Talon. Aim for the head."

Suddenly, a familiar voice sounded behind William.

The older man's voice was low and hoarse, roughened by the years.

The scent of cologne mingled with gun smoke. A blinding muzzle flash erupted at the edge of William's vision, and an explosive gunshot slammed into his right ear, leaving it ringing as a wave of dizziness swept over him.

Bang!