Going Out With a Bang

Part 2

        Batman stared at the multitude of screens in the Bat Cave. Displayed on them were the results from Superman’s blood test. Batman had never examined Kryptonian blood, but he could tell something was wrong. Microscopic blue tubes floated in the sea of red.

“Blood poisoning.” Batman thought aloud. Someone gassed him with a hallucinogen to make him attack Metropolis. He mentioned the Joker…but this looks like Crane’s work.

Batman isolated the poison in the blood and analyzed it separately. The compound consisted of several ingredients, none of them manufactured anywhere near Gotham. Not even in the United States. Whoever is making this stuff has been importing it. If I can find out where they’re smuggling it in, maybe I can stop them.

The dark silhouette of Batman was perched atop a gargoyle statue on the GCPD building. He listened closely, hoping to pick up a radio frequency used by the Joker’s gang. After what seemed like hours, he heard what he was waiting for. 

“…at the docks tonight…the rest of the shipment is coming in.” Batman jumped from the gargoyle and spread his wings, gliding through the air.

In minutes he was standing on top of a crane overlooking the Gotham docks. Mountains of multicolored metal crates were piled high around the loading bay. He waited in patient silence until a large eighteen-wheeler pulled into the closed area of the docks. Men wearing grotesque clown masks emerged from the back of the truck and began loading boxes into the truck. Batman saw his opportunity. He pulled out a collapsible batarang from his belt. After pressing a button in the center, he threw it at the truck, hitting his target behind the cabin with inhuman precision. 

He was not aiming to hit anyone, or alert them to his presence. The batarang stuck into the truck and appeared as a pulsing dot on Batman’s wrist map. Now all he had to do was follow the truck from a distance and it would lead him to the place where the gas was being manufactured. 

The men finished packing the eighteen-wheeler with boxes and closed the doors. The engine grunted back to life and the truck began to move. Batman shot a grapple onto one of the other cranes and swung, landing on one of the multicolored crates. He shot another grapple onto a water tower standing on the roof of a nearby building. Batman was pulled to the roof of the building, and from there he watched the truck head into the one part of Gotham he was hoping it wouldn’t. The district where mobsters didn’t dare plunge their hands into the filth. 

The Bowery.

The area was so polluted with crime that the police didn't even bother to patrol it. Ordinary criminals rarely ventured into the heart of the district, for fear of what they would stumble onto. They were in the territory of the Joker, Penguin, Black Mask, and Two Face. Crossing just one of them was almost always a guaranteed ticket to hell. 

The eighteen-wheeler pulled into a dank alley between two abandoned buildings. The truck’s engine shut off and the back doors opened again. Batman watched as men walked out from the building opposite him. They unloaded the boxes from the truck and moved them into the building across the alley. The eighteen-wheeler pulled away and drove off.

Batman mapped out a plan in his mind. He glided to the rooftop of the building where the boxes were. He took a small device from his belt and stuck it into the handle of the maintenance entrance door on the roof. Batman turned his back to it as it quietly exploded, blowing a small hole in the door where the handle used to be. 

Batman walked into the building, not at all prepared for what he was about to find.