Prince of Darkness ~ Gotham

~ Chapter Fifteen: WellZyn ~

"Will you look at these shambles?" Alfred scoffed as he entered the library, seeing the mess Bruce had left after his long night of investigating. He was curled up on the couch, still deep in slumber. As Alfred stepped over the piles of boxes, he opened the windows, filling the darkened room with light. "What would your mother say?" Alfred mumbled. Finally, Bruce's eyes fluttered open as he slowly sat up, adjusting to the early morning sun. "You know, I have half a mind to stick all this lot straight into the bloody fire!"

"No fire..." Bruce groaned, wiping his eyes of the lingering sleep. "Come on, up you get. Wayne Enterprises is hosting a charitable luncheon tomorrow. And I took the liberty of accepting their kind invitation on your behalf, Master Bruce," Alfred informed him. "That's good," Bruce yawned as he grabbed a small stack of files, sitting them on his lap. "Is there any breakfast?" Alfred was rather surprised that Bruce hadn't put up a fight with attending the luncheon. With the young boy constantly engrossed with the files, the butler thought Bruce would brush it to the side. "Yeah, I'll make you an egg. Does that mean you'll go?" Alfred asked.

Bruce looked up from the files and over to him. "Yes. I have some questions I need to ask the members of the board," he nodded. "What kind of questions?" Alfred inquired. "About Arkham. It seems very likely those gangsters were actually given their shares in Arkham by Wayne Enterprises," Bruce explained. "Well, that's usually how business is done," Alfred commented. "Is it? My parents didn't do business that way. Did they?" Bruce stood up. Alfred shook his head, assuring him that that wasn't the case at all.

"The board might not know, of course. There's quite a bit of clever camouflage used. Shell companies, offshore accounts, and so forth," Bruce mentioned, flipping through the files and the notes he jotted down in his notebook. "Right. So, you've learned all that from all this, did you? Fantastic detective work," Alfred complimented. "I still, however, want to get the whole lot and chuck it straight in the fire, huh?" "Don't put anything in the fire, Alfred. That's an order," Bruce spoke firmly, not taking his gaze off the open folder.

Alfred took in a quiet sigh before reluctantly agreeing to Bruce's instructions. As he left the library to make Bruce's breakfast, the latest breaking news appeared on the television screen, and as it caught Bruce's attention, he turned up the volume a few notches. "We are live in downtown Gotham, where a deadly new drug has hit the streets. Nicknamed "Viper", users of this mystery drug acquire great strength and a euphoric sense of power, but only for a few brief hours. Then, without exception, they die a horrible death,"

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To say the GCPD was running rampant with chaos would be an understatement. With the excessive amounts of Viper that were distributed over the previous night, the precinct turned into a war zone. Vipered addicts had to be dragged by at least three to four officers to holding cells, and the screams and protests of them made it hard for the other officers to focus on their work. Some officers even had to hit the holding cell bars with metal chairs to get the addicts inside to shut up. But it did little to no good.

With only a vague description of the main distributor, the man with the mangled ear. The GCPD also only had a limited amount of information on what Viper was. Luckily, Ed was there to provide Jim, Harvey, and Essen a better understanding. "It's really quite remarkable. Viper somehow activates unused DNA. The body starts to burn calcium from the skeletal system as fuel. Hence, the victims' cravings for milk and cheese. They're desperately trying to replace the missing calcium. But they can't consume enough. Essentially, their bones crumble, then they suffocate and die,"