The Ties That Bind Us

CHAPTER 20: Nightmare

Around noon, chaos had already been installed.

Every local channel was reporting it.

Bruce had been woken to the sound of Alfred knocking anxiously on the door calling for him. His phone record showed six missed calls, five being from Blake and one from Gordon.

They'd fallen asleep very late and Selina had been agitated all night, so it was no surprise when they missed the eight o'clock alarm.

That night she'd opened her eyes to Harley's wicked ones, staring at her and Bruce sleeping peacefully on the bed from the corner of the bedroom. Selina had been laid on his chest like she'd usually do, and her entire body froze. She couldn't understand why Harley laughed so provocatively, like she was in on a joke Selina couldn't quite grasp yet.

Until she felt it. Or, better to say, she felt the lack of it. Bruce's usually strong and steady heartbeat was no more. There was only silence and the strangest stiffness. She cautiously looked up at him, suddenly horrified by the image of his eyes open blank and deadly to the ceiling.

She screamed, so hard it made her vocal cords sting. And she sat straight up in one fell swoop on the bed.

Bruce woke up startled, quickly sitting up as well to check on her. Her eyes were involuntarily filled with unwanted tears and her heart burned as if it might burst. As soon as Bruce reached out to her, patting her back and asking if she was okay, her first instinct was to immediately grab his collar and put her hands on his chest. His heart was pounding fast under his rib cage and she sighed, though still unable to relax and let herself feel relieved. When he asked how bad was it at that moment, she replied ten; and so he spent the rest of the night stroking her hair and cuddling her as she obsessively listened to his heart.

Harley had gotten to her, as much as she'd tried to fight it and ignore it. But the moment they turned on the TV screen, she knew she'd been in the right to worry. She didn't know how, but Harley was involved in it.

The day before she had already talked to the Commissioner and filled him in on her suspicions. He couldn't do much about it though, except look into it and make sure Harley's transfer to Arkham was as guarded and strategically planned as possible. Everything had gone accordingly. So how was she doing it? Who was her scapegoat?

Around 11am, the first bomb went off, followed by another 5 minutes later across town. They were low-level bombing explosives and were placed in mostly unused metro stations, deep underground, but the second one managed to go off just as an empty non-automated train passed by, and the driver had been severely injured.

The TV screen now showed twelve other possible locations for other explosions, all connected to a main bomb that was supposedly at the Central Station. Efforts were being pulled to find out where the commands had been coming from, but so far they hadn't even been able to connect it to an IP address.

Gordon was at Arkham pointlessly trying to persuade Harley into confessing something, anything. Blake was scoping around town as Batman to see what was he able to find out; but Bruce was also already on full hero mode, pacing around the living room deep in thought and even absentmindedly letting out a bit of Batman's hoarse voice tone pour out at times when he spoke.

As Selina headed back to their bedroom to change into her catsuit to be ready for anything that could happen, she froze on the spot after having taken a few steps in. On the window, she saw her own reflection, only with a little red dot marked on her forehead. Outside, a white drone stood flying over the balcony. She knew the sensor would detect it in just a couple seconds and destroy its content, but she yelled for Bruce anyway.

However, she regretted it the second his name came out of her mouth. She shouted at him not to get inside and not make any sudden movements, and then just simply asked him if the drone detector was working. He could hear the composed tension in her voice but tried to stay put and calm. She wouldn't answer what was going on and he was about to storm in when she suddenly opened the door.