Goddess: Descention

Part Two: Combustion Prologue: Connections

Goddess: Descention

Part Two: Combustion

Prologue: Connections

Of mansions never quite disclosed

And never quite concealed

The Apparatus of the Dark

To ignorance revealed.

Emily Dickinson

Connections

Gotham City, days after the Arkham escapes…

Commissioner Gordon was in his office reading statements… perhaps deciphering was a better word. Over the last few days Gordon and his team had been interviewing witnesses and inmates concerning the asylum escapes. Of the witnesses, the Arkham staff were at least coherent but they didn’t seem to know much about who orchestrated the whole affair, all the police could get from them was a definitive timeline. The Arkham inmates however were a completely different kettle of fish. Trying to get the truth from hardened felons in lock-up was difficult enough, from the inmates in Arkham, it was next to impossible.

The insane didn’t make for very good witnesses Their own varied insanities colored their testimonies and they made up the parts they didn’t understand or know about. Gordon’s notebook read like a Picasso; the disjointed and confusing statements made for interesting reading but not much made any actual sense. Everything from angels and faeries to aliens and demons were all responsible for the riot. One inmate insisted it was the ‘pod-people’ that had taken over the government. Some said the asylum officials planned to raze the entire island and kill all the inmates and make it look like a horrible accident because it had become too costly to care for the patients there. That one interested Gordon because several inmates had testified to similar versions of that story and it was almost plausible.

Gordon personally knew a number of city officials who would like nothing better than to have Arkham Asylum disappear from the face of the earth. Gordon had to admit, if only to himself, that it wouldn’t be a bad thing, but it was just dinner-party talk, winsome fantasies and speculations on how to make Gotham a better place… just talk. Some said if they could, they would shut the place down and ship the inmates off to other installations around the country, but secretly Gordon knew a few that would be more than happy to let the blight of Gotham, Arkham Island and it’s insane population, sink into the bay never to be seen again.

The Arkham Prison Warden, Administrator Talbot steadfastly refused to believe that any of his people initiated such a ridiculous idea and after all it was just a rumor. But whether it was true wasn’t the point. If enough of the prisoners believed the lie, it didn’t have to be true to incite a riot.

Gordon had no solid evidence, just a gut feeling as to who instigated the chaos at the asylum and used it to escape; Dr. Jonathon Crane. In many ways Crane was the most dangerous inmate in Arkham, besides the Joker. As the Scarecrow he sought to inspire fear but it wasn’t just the burlap mask he wore, the mind under that mask was much more frightening. He saw people as nothing more than test-subjects in his insane experiments. His goal wasn’t to kill, though he had no qualms against it and many had indeed succumbed to his toxins, dying horrifying deaths. What he did was study people and the affects his toxins had on them in order to perfect the purest and most absolute form of fear, all in the name of science. He was absolutely insane but he was also highly intelligent. He didn’t need his poison to inspire dread, all he needed to do was talk to you, to get inside your brain and once there he could twist it into jelly.