Truth & Justice I #7

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Truth & Justice #7

Written by JC Roberts (Calamityjamie)
Edited by Daniel Dyer (Spider-Man Beyond)

It would be misleading to say that weeks passed without incident at Arkham Asylum. In an institution full of determined psychopaths, every day is a trip to the combat zone. Three injuries to staff, including one that resulted in a legitimate claim for permanent disability, occurred before the first day of spring. Four fires were set – three of them by the same inmate – and there was a failed escape attempt. However, none of these episodes involved the Joker.

Eventually, the escalated sense of excitement and apprehension subsided and Arkham settled into its usual climate of low-grade paranoia. Martha Kent, who had been spending extra time at work, ostensibly to keep up with her patient workload, knew better than to assume silence from the third floor meant that no trouble was coming from the Joker. Harvey had spent hours sharing his personal recollections of the maniac clown with her and Martha believed that as long as the Joker was alive, relaxing her guard when it came to him was not an option.

It did not bother her. She had no social life, other than visiting the occasional club with Lian and brunches with Alfred. She never expected to see Philippe again. His visit to Gotham had been sort of a post-goodbye, an unexpected consequence of his attending a surgical conference in Midvale. Philippe was good company in the ways she had needed him to be, but she had never been in love with him and she knew she had been a pleasant convenience for him. Completely devoted to his profession, and wary of the divorces that seemed to pile up around his colleagues, the handsome surgeon had long ago decided to simplify his personal life. He taught a course each year on the impact of precision surgery on neurological function and his classes were usually packed. Among his students each semester, there was always a bright, attractive woman who was willing to share his bed and he had become expert in identifying her quickly. Martha had known all of this when he’d asked her to dinner; Philippe’s practice was common knowledge, as were his skills as s surgeon and as a lover. She had not considered the affair a breech of ethics: She was an A student. She did not need to sleep with anyone in order to receive a good grade.

After Dave, she had not looked at another man for years. Before Philippe, there had been two impetuous liaisons in late medical school and residency that she had instantly regretted. The quasi-relationship she’d had with her professor had been a step on the path back to romantic normalcy for Martha. But she had never fooled herself into thinking it was more than it was and she did not miss him.

The extra hours spent at Gotham had not enhanced her chances of finding a love life, but she was making greater progress with several of her patients, progress being defined as sessions in which said patients did not attempt once to try to kill her or in which they revealed something about themselves that shed light on the origins of their homicidal tendencies. Persky was pleased with her performance – he had expressed as much just days before a patient had bitten several chunks out of his upper arm and he’d been raced to the hospital.

She was in the middle of a progress report on Freaky Freddy Shaeffer, whose MO included shaving every strand of hair from the bodies of his murdered victims, when she heard a tap at the window. She instinctively suspected Batman, but when she turned around, she saw Grendel Gardner hovering outside of her second-story office.

Gren eased through the window quickly, announcing, “This must be killing you.”

She snapped closed the window. “What?”

“Staying away from me for so long. Haven’t seen you for weeks.” Superman had been covering most of her Justice League duties. Gren’s eyes combed the office, presumably in search of food. He had a high metabolism.

“Yes, Gren. It’s killing me. But I’ve re-examined my entire life and have come to the conclusion that nothing I could possibly have done could make me deserve being with someone like you,” Martha replied.

Gren smiled slightly and nodded in admiration at her comeback. “How ‘bout I take you out on a date?” Cutting off another caustic response, he added, “Right now. To Myanmar. A trio of bombs just went off; one of them collapsed a bridge. Your father is there, but we could use a doctor.”

Martha jerked open the second drawer of her desk and pulled out a knapsack filled with medical supplies. “Let’s go.”

Superwoman and the Green Lantern left Arkham a few minutes past nine o’clock on an unusually warm April evening. Seven hours later, forty armed thugs led by a psychotic technopath named Fray stormed the asylum to free the Joker.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Batman’s instinct that a technopath had been interfering with the information systems at Arkham had not been wrong. His mistake was in thinking that the interloper had been confined within the walls of the institution itself. Sean Fray had met Joker months before Batman had last captured the monstrous jester. Like other unbalanced lawbreakers before him, Fray had been captivated by the Joker and eager to join his bloody legacy. During the months the Joker had been kept in a medically induced coma in the high-security ward at Gotham General, Fray had plotted to liberate his hero. He had hacked into Arkham’s database with ease and poured over the schematics of the cell designed to hold the Joker. Fray recruited his army with surprising ease: He was not the only one attracted to madness.

The assault on Arkham had originally been planned for April 1 – Fray was a fan of poetic irony – but the unexpected return of subcontractors to the Joker’s cell and the delay in transporting him to the asylum had set the mission back. It was not that the repairs Batman had ordered were of any consequence. Fray’s talents with electrical circuitry superseded the need to exploit mere technical flaws in the cell’s structure. But he had not known the exact nature of the construction work and he wanted to be prepared for any eventuality. Fray had not been able to access the revised schematics from the Arkham database. From reading Persky’s e-mails, it seemed as if Batman sent a handwritten list of corrections to Perksy’s home. Eventually, though, the fixes were uploaded onto CAD systems in the offices of the architect and engineer who had been contracted to design the cell. Until Fray examined them, he had not considered it safe to launch his attack.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

At four o’clock in the morning, most of the security force at Arkham was engaged in writing nightly reports or in making a final patrol. When the doors of the asylum were blown open, the guards made a valiant effort to regroup and fight the sea of armed invaders, but they were badly outmatched. There were as many Arkham guards as there were attackers, but there wasn’t anyone like Fray on the good guys’ side.

As his army trampled past him, Fray stood triumphantly in the frame of the institution’s main doors, a gleam in his eyes.

“Nothing will quite catch your eye,” he quoted gleefully, “as Spring’s first dainty butterfly.” He opened his hand, releasing a mechanical replica of the insect – as colorful and elegant as its living counterpart – but with wings that flashed hummingbird quick – and were made of razors.

The bladed butterfly shot from Fray’s hand and into the neck of an Arkham guard, shredding his carotid artery. When its first victim dropped to the ground, it immediately sought another, flying blithely as a sun-kissed moth until it found another body to burrow into.

Fray glowed with wicked satisfaction as he watched his invention slice through the throat of the second guard. Then he opened a metal chest two of his minions had placed beside him. On his command, a hundred menacing metal butterflies rose into the air and hurtled through the halls of Arkham.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Lucy DiTomasa had not so much as looked up when she heard the first scream. Screaming was white noise at Arkham, like the whirr of the ventilation system in an office building. An alarm would sound if there were real trouble and Lucy did not have the time to waste on idle curiosity. She had plans to meet her husband for breakfast and she needed to update some reports before checking out. Persky would probably not make it in today – she heard his bite wounds would require weeks of painful debridement – but his assistant was relentless in her insistence that all paperwork be completed.

It was the second scream, quickly followed by a third, that got her attention. Procedure required her to lock her door and call security should she suspect danger, but Lucy was tired from a tedious night shift and she wasn’t sure there was really anything to worry about anyway. She stepped out into the hallway, where she barely had time to register the sight of the robotic butterfly that decapitated her.

Fray had deactivated the alarm system with a wave of his hand before his minions had set foot in Arkham. This not only left the guards unaware, but short-circuited a link to the Gotham police, who, along with Batman, remained oblivious to the onslaught. Fray walked jauntily through the halls of Arkham, nimbly stepping over the dead bodies, which seemed to be composed in equal numbers of his own men and the Arkham guards. His journey to the third floor occurred without incident. With the gunfire and shouting serving as background music, he caressed the door to the Joker’s cell and it slid open. The Joker had sensed – maybe smelled – the chaos. He was standing in the middle of the small room, his wild wide eyes staring expectantly past the opening door.

“Hello, Boss,” Fray said. The shriek of laughter that greeted him felt like a caress.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Lakeeta Reardon was driving to work when she received a call from central dispatch. This did not bode well – most calls were routed through her assistant, who had the uncanny knack of arriving at the office about a minute before Reardon. The dispatcher’s report was so bizarre that Reardon actually pulled her phone away from her ear and stared at it.

“Butterflies?” she repeated.

The dispatcher repeated her report that a frantic psychiatric nurse at Arkham Asylum had locked herself in a deserted office, dialed 911 on her cell phone and sobbed that the institution was under attack by killer butterflies.

“We get an alarm?” asked Reardon, who was already turning her car in the direction of Arkham.

The dispatcher said that they had not and then urgently asked to put Reardon on hold. When she returned on the line, her voice was strained. There had been another call from an Arkham employee. Before his cell phone went dead, he confirmed the bizarre report of murderous butterflies, but he added something they all found easier to grasp: Men with guns had followed the purported insects into Arkham.

“Send everyone,” Reardon ordered. “Call back every shift and get them right over there. And call Batman.”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Despite Fray’s request that they leave Arkham immediately, Joker insisted on making two stops on the way out. One was to the cell of Victor Zsasz, who eagerly joined his longtime idol. The second cell Fray opened belonged to Harvey Dent, who had dreaded the visit since he first heard the pandemonium on the other side of his door.

“Harvey… my dear friend,” the Joker said grandly. “Time to go. Chop-chop.”

Harvey knew the smart thing to do was probably to go. The Joker might take a refusal personally, and in truth, there was a part of him that longed for the release that madness would bring. But he believed the likelihood of surviving this sort of escapade at his age was slim and realized he might at least have the power to decide whether his final act was to decline evil or embrace it. He thought about the sole person in twenty years that had shown faith in him and knew that even if she were now lying dead in her office, he didn’t want to disappoint Martha Kent.

He looked at the floor and shook his head. “Bad knees,” he mumbled. “I’d hold you up.”

An astonished cackle pierced the air and Harvey waited for the bullet to follow. When nothing happened, he looked up and saw only an open cell door.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Dawn was creeping over Gotham when Superwoman returned from the catastrophe in Myanmar. She slipped through her open bedroom window and flipped on the television before heading into the bathroom for a quick shower. She was reaching for the hot-water faucet when she heard a broadcaster say, “… Commissioner Reardon reports thirty casualties among the guards and medical personnel dead at Arkham… Twenty-five attackers also dead… Most of the prisoners have been returned…”

Superwoman was already halfway to Arkham before the newscaster added that a new report indicated that seven police officers were also dead, some at the hands of inmates, others the victims of what seemed to be flying razors.

The scene at Arkham was sickening. Bloody corpses were strewn on the grounds and entrance to the asylum. Medical personnel were standing by with stretchers, but Reardon had not let them cross the police line, fearing the emergency workers might themselves become victims of the handful of mechanical devices that whizzed around, slicing at any exposed portion of flesh. Superwoman spotted one of the gizmos just outside the main asylum doors and crushed it. Inside the lobby, she saw more bodies and understood immediately why the inmates had been easy to corral: Those who had seized the opportunity to escape had been attacked by the flying razor things. Superwoman smashed two more of them before finding Batman. He was fighting the last of the rebelling inmates – Sylvester Slipp, BoneCruncher and a woman who seemed skilled at turning anything – pencils in this case – into a throwing weapon.

Superwoman flew in a low, wide horizontal arc that sent her hurtling one-by-one into all three of them. She didn’t think Batman would mind; there were too many wounded in need of attention to worry about combat etiquette.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked, hauling the unconscious men into a nearby cell.

Superwoman tossed the female inmate in with them and filled him in on Myanmar.

“Is the Joker gone?” she asked.

“I’m about to go check,” he said. “Hard to believe this didn’t have something to do with him.”

Superwoman nodded miserably. Months of preparation and precautions – as well as manpower and money – had ended with yet another massacre of innocents by the Joker. And now he was loose again.

“I think I got all of those butterfly things,” she said. “I’ll go help with the wounded.” She started to turn away. Batman grabbed her arm.

“Here’s the problem,” he said. “I spoke to Harvey Dent –”

“Oh, thank God he’s alive,” she said automatically.

“He said there were dozens of ‘those butterfly things’,” Batman said. “But when I got here, there were maybe ten.”

“Oh, God…”

“Leave the wounded to the paramedics,” Batman said. “We’ve got to stop a bloodbath.”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Unfortunately for the guardians of Gotham, the bloodbath had already started. It was never clear whether the Joker’s new posse had actually driven into the city’s business district, where tens of thousands of office workers were moving along the streets and sidewalks, or whether Fray was able to control the lethal butterflies from a distance. Logistics were a secondary matter, or maybe a third, when compared to the magnitude of the carnage committed upon hundreds of commuters by the tiny monsters.

Businessmen and women who might have heard about the attack at Arkham on their car radios while driving to work had invariably turned their attention to the hours that lay before them or the unseasonably sunny morning. When the first flying razors tore into the face of an accountant from Black Securities, passers-by looked at him dully, as if wondering why he had splashed red ink on his face.

The morning commuter stupor did not last for long. Within seconds, the streets were filled with screams of terror and torment. Having locked on a particular target, a butterfly would pursue it relentlessly, slashing away at any exposed piece of flesh that could not be permanently covered. Most of Fray’s flying weapons were small and could slide past arms trying to cover vulnerable areas. Women in skirts and open blouses were preferred targets – there was much more bare flesh to carve away.

Reardon had sent every cop in the city to Arkham, now they had to go back. This was a 25-minute commute under the best conditions. With frantic drivers fleeing in every possible direction – and with little regard to traffic laws – it would probably have taken them an hour.

Superwoman circumvented the traffic in her usual manner – she was in the fray within minutes of a report of a desperate cell phone call from a commuter on Bank Street. Glad for a hand-to-eye coordination that was honed, at her father’s insistence, on playing baseball instead of video games, she was snatching away at the darting daggers before her cloaked Reeboks hit the pavement.

Batman barreled through the streets in his most armored Batmobile – a hyper-charged tank model he used for trouble riots at Arkham. He regretted the delay – it took him almost 15 minutes to make it to ground zero – but he needed the car. By the time he arrived, Superwoman had caught more than half of the butterflies and most of the people who survived the onslaught had managed to find shelter.

The Batmobile screeched to a skidding stop in the middle of the chaos and its speakers blared orders for all citizens to drop to the ground. Moments later, a low humming noise emerged from the mammoth black vehicle and, without warning, every loose piece of metal on Bank Street went careening into the Batmobile.

In less than a minute, it was over. Dozens of butterflies slammed into the Batmobile like tiny meteors. None of them survived the impact. Later, Batman would regret that not a single one remained intact. They were worth studying, if only to understand how Fray’s power worked and what technology he was using.

As soon as Batman deactivated the magnet, Superwoman was checking for survivors among the wounded. Batman emerged from the car, located the sound of approaching ambulances and strode over to Superwoman, who was using a sobbing man’s tie as a tourniquet.

“We’ve got to find them,” he shouted over the cries of pain and hysteria.

Superwoman straightened and shook her head. “No. The rescue squads can’t handle this many dead and wounded. Neither can Gotham General. There must be a thousand people here. I have to stay.”

She met his eyes and he nodded. Batman could not quarrel with her judgment this time. He understood the priorities of a doctor. His father had been the same way.

As he turned toward the car, Batman thought he heard her say, “Be careful.” But when he looked over his shoulder, he saw that Superwoman had lifted a bloody woman into her arms and was lifting off for Gotham General.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Night had fallen long before the last patient had been evacuated to Gotham General. The emergency rooms and trauma bays were glutted with torn bodies, many of them dead. It had not been difficult for Superwoman to realize when Dr. Martha Kent would be of greater assistance than a blonde in digital tights. Her certification in emergency was a bonus – at this point the hospital was pleading for anyone able to do as much as unpeel a Band-Aid.

The hours spent stabilizing patients were a blur of anguished cries and ripped flesh, punctuated occasionally by a personal blow that she could not let herself think about. One of the few surviving Arkham guards had told her about the death of Lucy DiTomasa, her best friend among the asylum staff. The guard who had ordered her into her office during the lockdown was also dead.

It was 4 AM – twenty-four hours from the time of the invasion of Arkham – when she wandered out of the back door of a trauma bay to get a breath of air. It was not fresh air – the dead lay stacked in stretchers along the sides of the building – but it felt cool against her bloody gray-blue scrubs and the hairline exposed by her hastily fastened ponytail. Her eyes rested sadly on the body of a dead cop with shaggy black hair.

“Ieiri.” Batman was standing about a yard behind her, sounding as worn out as she felt.

“Yeah,” Martha said shakily. She closed her eyes and drew in a ragged breath. “I guess it’s a good thing I never went out with him.” She did not have to ask to know that Batman had not found the Joker or the monster who had broken him out of Arkham.

A thick, dark silence surrounded them for nearly a minute. Then the back door opened, revealing a woman supporting a wounded teenager.

“Por favor dígame donde está el cuarto de X-ray,” woman asked. (Translation-“Please tell me where is the x-ray room.”) She saw Batman standing behind the small doctor and drew back slightly.

Martha replied, “Detrás dentro, haga un izquierdo en el vestíbulo. Dos puertas abajo.” (Translation-“Back inside, make a left at the hallway. Two doors down.”)

“Gracias.”

“You speak Spanish?” Batman asked. “I thought you spoke French.”

She turned towards him. "My French is decent. My Spanish is... a work in progress. French isn’t very useful here.”

Batman scowled up toward the cloud-shrouded moon. "Is there anything you don't know?" It was a rhetorical question. He started to walk away.

"I don't know why you don't like me.” Martha had not meant to say it. She had not wanted him to know how much his coldness frustrated her – she sensed it would be a win of sorts for him that she didn’t intend for him to have. But the bloodshed in Myanmar and the carnage that transpired upon her return to Gotham – coupled with hours of exhaustion and loss and sorrow – had worn her down. Her self-control was gone, along with her usually judicious internal censor.

He stopped walking. “Everyone has to like you?”

“If they don’t, they have a reason. Beyond the fact that I’m Clark Kent’s daughter.” She had completely lost control of her mouth. “You don’t like him. Fine. You’re an idiot, but fine. I’m sorry that you resent everything he has, that you think it’s somehow wrong for him to have a happy family and friends and a life that’s more than just beating the crap out of endless bad guys. You may not have noticed this, but he’s Superman. He barely has to sleep and he does everything super-fast, so he’s got more time for all of those things.

“You want to keep resenting him, just go ahead. But I’m not him,” Martha added fiercely. “My life is nothing like his. I’m not just an extension of my father.”

He had kept his back toward her during her entire rant and now he took his time in turning to face her. “Actually,” he said. “You sound more like an extension of your mother.”

Disgust at his attempt to bait her in the middle of a bloodbath overcame her natural instinct to lash out. She shook her head and said, “I don’t have time for this.” Then she strode back into the hospital.

If possible, the scene inside was even worse than it had been five minutes before. Martha was more than used to the sight of blood, but she’d never become accustomed to the audible evidence of another person’s suffering. The pleas for help, the cries of pain made her nauseated. She tried to tune them out as she grabbed a patient chart from the triage station.

She did not look around the room again, save to locate her next patient, for more than an hour. She was applying the last skin staple to a gash in a woman’s calf, when she heard someone call, “Councilman!”

She looked toward the Emergency Room doors, where a stylishly coiffed young woman in a business suit stood glaring in apparent exasperation. Martha easily found the target of the woman’s irritation where he stood on the other side of the ER. He was a handsome man in his early 30s, with thick brown hair and a sturdy build. The man looked completely out of place in his expensive business suit until he turned slightly and Martha saw that the front of his shirt and jacket were so entirely soaked with blood that his tie was almost invisible. He was collecting bloody blankets from waiting patients; an off-duty cop was replacing them with warm, clean ones.

The man seemed mildly surprised to have been summoned. He ambled over to the woman with the blood-drenched linens still piled high in his arms. He allowed himself to be scolded for a few minutes, then said something that made the woman leave. He headed for the nearest infectious linen hamper, only to find it overflowing.

“Excuse me,” he said to Martha, who had continued to watch him. “Do you know where I can put these?”

She smiled tiredly. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to dump them next to the bin. They’re all full. You aren’t exactly dressed for the party,” she observed.

The man let the blankets drop from his arms onto a spot near the hamper. “Well… I came here to, you know…” He used his fingers to make quotation marks in the air. “To ‘observe the scene,’ but… you just can’t stand here, can you, with all this suffering.”

Martha studied his broad, chiseled face and stretched out a hand. “Martha Kent.”

“Josh Greenberg.” His grip was warm and strong.

They stood awkwardly for a moment. Martha gestured back toward her patient. “I guess we’d better…”

“Yeah,” said Josh Greenberg. “Back to the blanket patrol. Nice meeting you.”

“Yeah,” Martha said. She turned back to her patient and reached for some dressings. She was a little surprised at herself. It was unusual for her to be attracted to someone so quickly and she was glad for the feeling, even in the aftermath of a massacre, even though she’d probably never see Councilman Greenberg again.

Continued...