There were no hidden bombs, no hostages in restraints, no Gotham plunged into chaos.
There was not even a Joker who had escaped from prison.
He was still inside the Illusion. He had not truly woken up.
Bruce Wayne realized this with absolute clarity.
Or rather, his subconscious had been warning him from the very beginning-something was wrong. Everything was wrong.
But whenever he had that thought, even as the faintest suspicion, emergencies would immediately come piling in-
The Joker's escape, hidden bombs, hostages tied to a Ferris wheel, explosion sites whose authenticity was impossible to determine, the Gotham Police Department under siege, Arkham's security system crippled, mentally ill villains breaking out en masse, riots at Blackgate Penitentiary, the Batcave's system breached...
One crisis led straight into another, leaving him no time to breathe, to stop and think through what was wrong.
Yet it was precisely this relentless succession of disasters that made Bruce's initial flicker of doubt snowball.
Batman was used to this pace. Gotham's nights had never known peace, and his nerves had long since been tempered into the hardest alloy, always taut and ready for every sudden crisis.
This time, however, all that panic and urgency felt like foam floating on the surface. It looked turbulent, but it never touched anything real beneath it.
The Joker had been at this for so long, yet there had not been a single real explosion. Aside from the employee who had been setting up the livestream equipment, no one had truly suffered irreparable harm. There were none of the Joker's usual clown balloons, gift boxes, exploding dolls, or acid-spraying boutonnieres-things that seemed absurd but were lethally dangerous...
Even the Joker's signature laugh, with its undertone of madness, sounded a little hollow.
"You're still too kind, Miaomiao." Bruce took off his