Bruce glanced at the time on his phone. It was just past dawn, but the black clouds made it look like the dead of night outside. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he swung his legs over the side of the bed and rose. Weak light illuminated his naked chest and the pants that hung low on his hips. He walked barefoot out of his room and stared down the hall for a moment, watching where it disappeared into the shadows, imagining Madeleine materializing there, a ghostly figure in the dark. Only silence and storm greeted him. Alfred hadn’t even gotten up yet. Speckled light trembled in patches on the floor. After another long moment, he ventured out in the hall, his feet making no sound as he made his way to his study.
The air seemed stale in this room, and the rain lashing against the windows smeared the outside world into streaks. Bruce paused to stare at the old grandfather clock against one wall. The hands were stuck, and he had never bothered to force them to work again. He ran a hand through his hair in exhaustion, then made his way to his desk. There, he sat down and turned his computer on.
The machine—nothing but a thin, transparent glass panel as long as the desk itself, a piece of technology he had built himself—came to life, and cold, artificial light illuminated him. He stared at the icons that popped up, hovering seemingly in the middle of the air, and then leaned over to type in a new search.
Madeleine Wallace mother
Several familiar links showed up from his previous searches about Madeleine—her original arrest, the details about the murders she’d committed that had been released to the public. He scrolled through two pages of entries. Finally, at the top of the third page, he found a brief mention in an article about Madeleine.
It was an opinion piece, going into the murky details of Madeleine’s youth. A faded photo of the family. Madeleine Wallace. Cameron Wallace. Eliza Eto. Even though her brother was older than she was, he looked thinner and frailer, with hollow eyes and sloped shoulders, his hair buzzed short. Bruce’s attention went to Eliza Eto. There was no doubt that Madeleine had inherited her beauty from her mother; the two had the same long, straight blue-black hair, the same pale complexion and full lips. Bruce went back to reading the article, murmuring aloud as he went.
“ ‘The consequence of such negligent malpractice was tragic. One week after her son’s death, Dr. Eliza Eto broke into the office of Dr. Kincaid and lay in wait until Kincaid entered the room, then proceeded to stab Kincaid over a dozen times with a kitchen knife.’ ”
Bruce swallowed hard at the words. The story was similar to what Madeleine had told him—but it was not the same. In Madeleine’s version, her mother had hit the doctor once, accidentally, and too hard. In this version, Eliza had stabbed the doctor a dozen times with a kitchen knife, had committed a gruesome, premeditated murder, and had as a result been given the death penalty. She died in jail before the sentence was carried out.
Bruce leaned back in his chair with a frustrated sigh. Everything Madeleine said seemed to be a half truth. What about other things she had told him?
A chat bubble appeared in the corner of his screen. It was from Dianne. You’re up already? she said.
Crazy storm, Bruce typed back. Didn’t sleep much.
Same, she replied.
Are you ok? How are you feeling?
I’m fine, Bruce. Q is, are you fine?
Bruce sighed. Not really, he replied. But as much as he hated that Dianne was now somewhat involved in the case, too, he still felt relieved to have someone besides Draccon and Dr. James to talk to about everything. He cleared his search and tried another one. This time he looked up Cameron Wallace.
So—Madeleine told me some more about her past, Bruce typed back to Dianne. At least Draccon was right about her coming from a criminal family, although I still can’t tell how much of what Madeleine said is true.
Bruce. He thought he could almost hear Dianne’s sigh. You’re still on this case? The one that almost killed you?
Just listen. Please, Di.
Fine. Fine. What else?
Her mom was on death row for murder, too.
A pause. Damn.
I feel for her, though. She was ten at the time. And it was over her brother.
Oh, Bruce, I’m sorry. Also I didn’t know she had a brother?
Bruce stared at the screen’s search results. The top one was an obituary for Cameron Wallace, age twelve. Up popped a photo of the same weak, smiling boy.
Her brother died of some kind of bacterial infection. He sent Dianne the link.
How had that led Madeleine to the Nightwalkers?
Revenge. Bruce knew this instinctively, without a doubt—he could hear it in the way she talked about the death of her mother and the callous way the justice system had treated her, in the way she talked about her brother. Bruce might have even done the same, in her shoes. But his thoughts lingered on the doctor who had been murdered, and then on the three philanthropists killed in cold blood.
Whatever the reason, Bruce replied, she didn’t do it alone. A ten-year-old girl simply didn’t become an assassin in eight years without someone else’s help.
Bruce frowned, then leaned forward in his chair and reached for Madeleine’s profile that he’d taken from Draccon’s office. I’ll put it back the next time I’m there, he told himself. His finger scanned her profile, her crime reports. He stopped near the bottom, where a link was printed alongside a username and password. It was to her interrogation video.
He hesitated briefly. Then he typed it into his browser. The page promptly asked for the username and password, and Bruce entered them.
GCPD Guest
GreenLightning
The prompt flashed once, and the screen refreshed. He was in the GCPD video directory.
The familiar reports on each of Madeleine’s crimes popped up, followed by a series of videos and interrogations. Bruce paused at one video, where Draccon and several other officers had surrounded Madeleine in her cell. She stayed on her bed, her head turned away nonchalantly, as they asked her a slew of increasingly frustrated questions. The sight brought a cynical smile to Bruce’s lips as he remembered how he’d felt whenever Madeleine ignored him in the same way.
“You’re not doing a very good job of lying, Miss Wallace,” Draccon was saying, the bite in her voice the same as when she’d first met Bruce. “We are well aware that you were not alone in the Grant home. In fact, we suspect that you had at least three, perhaps even four, others working with you on this murder. Who were your accomplices?”
Madeleine, as expected, stayed quiet, her gaze so calm and distant that it was as if she thought she were alone in her cell. The only thing Bruce caught was the slight movement of her hands—and when he looked closer, he realized that she was folding and refolding one of her paper creations in her lap, making the same three or four creases over and over again.
Draccon stepped forward and shook her head. “We’re going to get them, whether you tell us or not,” she said. “But your confession will mean the difference between a life sentence for you or the death penalty. Your choice.”
Madeleine didn’t deign to respond.
Bruce looked on as the interview continued, fruitless, just like every other interview conducted on Madeleine before he came along. Her crew. He sat in the silence of his room, listening to the storm pound away outside and the muffled sound of the ongoing interrogation, wondering about the other people Madeleine worked with. She had hacked into the prison system when she was only ten years old—sure, she was smart, but she likely had help, too. Then he thought about the murders themselves, the grisly nature of each of them—throats slashed, blood everywhere, the signs of struggle rampant throughout each house.
A ten-year-old girl simply didn’t become an expert murderer in eight years without someone else’s help. And with as many as four accomplices with her…
The video ended. Bruce hit replay, letting it cycle again.
What if Madeleine had been there, but not been the actual murderer? Who e
lse was with her?
The video had reached the point again where Madeleine was folding the paper shape in her lap. Bruce narrowed his eyes….Something, something about her movements made him pause the video. He replayed the segment. Sure enough, she would fold the same creases over and over, three or four times, undoing and redoing it before moving on.
Bruce had seen her do this before, of course, but never from the point of view of the security cams. From this angle, a new thought occurred to him.
He and the officers had always thought her origami was just the idle habit of a bored, intelligent mind. But what if it wasn’t trivial at all? What if it was her way of communicating with the outside world? What if she was using it to send signals to whoever was on the other end of the cams?
Bruce sat back in his chair as a wave of nausea hit him. She was perceptive, but sometimes it did seem like she knew more about what went on beyond the walls of her cell than she should. There were others out there who had worked with Madeleine…who might still be working with her.
Hey. Hey. It was Dianne, pinging their chat box. Hey hey hey is Bruce Wayne still awake? Hello?? What the hell is going on outside?
With his new theory about Madeleine still swirling in his mind, it took him a while to realize what she was talking about. Out in the storm, muffled behind the roar of rain and thunder, he heard the faint sound of sirens. A lot of sirens.
The sirens? he typed.
Dianne sent him a video from her phone. The wails and flashing lights were coming from somewhere down her street, close enough to Dianne’s home that they were deafening.
Yeah. Looks like a New Year’s parade.
He rose from his chair and went to his window, then peered through to see if he could catch anything. There, on the curve of the street below his hilltop, was the glow of a mass of police lights.
Something big had happened.
He hurried back to his desk, then picked up the remote for the room’s TV and turned it on. He flipped through several channels before he landed on a morning newsfeed, and there, he stopped. A giant headline was emblazoned over a frantically talking reporter, displaying the newest Nightwalker victim.
TERROR REIGN
Mayor Price Found Dead in Home
Bruce sat frozen before the screen, his hand still hovering, trembling, over the headlines—as if he had the power to swipe it away.
Right below the headlines were photos of the mayor, smiling at the last public event he had attended, his wife and children standing beside him. His youngest, a little girl, had her arms wrapped around his leg. The sight made Bruce’s heart clench. The last time he’d seen Katie, she had still been a toddler, squealing with delight as he tossed her in the air again and again.
His eyes went to Richard in the photo, who was turned in the direction of his father. Bruce remembered the way he had left things between them, the way Richard had glared at him as he wiped the blood from his nose.
He could imagine Richard standing in the foyer of his home now as the police swarmed around him, his sneer gone, his hands hanging loose at his sides. Was he sitting in the back of an ambulance, a blanket draped around himself, staring off into space? Had he witnessed his father’s murder? Was he comforting his mother and little sister?
Bruce tried to call Richard, but the number went immediately to voice mail. He tried again. Same result. It made sense; the last thing his former friend probably wanted right now was to answer the phone.
The article was refreshing every few minutes with updates—the latest one announced that, this time, the Nightwalkers had left behind a note.
Gotham City—Blame the virus, not the fever. You are not under attack from the Nightwalkers. You are under attack from your own rich, and their corrupt system of blood money. Now they will bathe in blood. Do not try to stop us. Death to tyranny.
The Nightwalkers’ symbol was stamped below, the burning coin, further sealing their involvement.
His heart pounding, Bruce threw his clothes on and rushed downstairs. In his pocket was the frequency device he’d taken from WayneTech, the weight of it bouncing with each step. He double-checked that he had his Arkham access card. Since the jailbreak, Dr. James had gone easy on him. She’d probably agree to adjust his hours and let him sign in early today.
Without a backward glance, Bruce opened the door and stepped out into the black.
Rain splattered against Bruce’s windshield as he drove Alfred’s car to Arkham. In this darkness, the landscape looked even more foreboding, like a creature come alive in the night—all gnarled limbs and sharp shadows, an illusion around every corner.
The last time he’d investigated things with Madeleine’s help, he’d managed to uncover an entire underground hideout that belonged to the Nightwalkers, forcing them to move their operations elsewhere. If he could talk to her now and get a clue out of her, if he could figure out who she was possibly communicating with, they might be able to find where this crime trail led. They might get a lead on the boss.
Of course, the question—as always—was how much he could trust Madeleine. But right now she was his only lead, and the Nightwalkers had just escalated the stakes.
He had to help the police get to the bottom of it before fate came knocking on his own door.
What if she is innocent, too? She had been arrested at the scene of the last murder with the victim’s blood on her hands—but what if there were more to her story?
By the time Bruce reached Arkham’s gates, the downpour had lightened a bit, and he could see the asylum looming clearly behind his windshield. Yellow light dotted the windows. He passed through both clearance gates and then pulled up to the entrance and stepped out, wincing at the gust of wind that hit him. Quickly, he scanned his ID at the door and hurried inside when the double doors slid open.
“Early morning, Wayne?” the security guard said as Bruce signed in at the front desk. The guard had seen Bruce so often that he didn’t even bat an eye.
“Yeah,” Bruce replied. “I need to talk to Dr. James.”
“Urgent enough to drive through this storm?” The guard took another large bite out of his doughnut and went back to watching the weather tracker on the news. “Go ahead. She’s probably in the cafeteria.”
Bruce needed no second bidding as he hurried past the front desk and toward the elevator leading to the basement level.
He wasn’t supposed to be on duty down here anymore, but James wouldn’t notice for hours. Draccon might not show up at all, in fact, not with the mayor’s murder all over the news—she was probably at the Price estate right now. She wouldn’t be thinking about Bruce. He reached into his pocket and tightened his grip on the frequency device.
The two inmates who had broken out during the brief jailbreak were gone now, moved somewhere else. Replacing them were others, all similar, with haunted eyes and menacing faces. Bruce stopped at the front end of the hall, right before the first security cam on the ceiling, and then turned on the device.
It didn’t make a sound—at least, none that he could hear. Bruce let it run through every frequency it could. The seconds dragged on.
Then, a match; he heard a faint click from one of the cams. The others all followed in a domino effect of sound; the red light usually shining on each cam had now gone dark. Bruce waited. When a blue light blinked on, indicating a reset, he pressed the device again and set all of the cams on the wrong band so that they were not recording footage of the hall.
He headed for Madeleine’s cell.
She was awake and alert. Her face was turned up at the ceiling, as if pondering the security cameras once more, and Bruce wondered if she already knew what he’d done. Not only could their meeting be off the record, but if she really was using the cams as a rudimentary way to communicate with the outside world, then he’d temporarily shut that down, too.
She turned to look at him as he approached her cell window. “I thought you weren’t allowed down here anymore.”
“The Nightwalkers stru
ck just a few hours ago.” Bruce rested a fist against the glass. “The mayor was killed. But you might already know that, don’t you?” He nodded up at the broken cams. “You have some sort of system in place to communicate?”
If Bruce weren’t so used to Madeleine’s enigmatically calm expression, he wouldn’t have thought much of her sharp blink, the subtlest gesture showing that she was surprised. “So early this morning, Bruce, and so upset,” she said. “You’ve been thinking about me.”
Her words were so similar to what she’d said to him in his dream that Bruce had to take a step away from the window, as if the extra distance might protect him from her. He hoped she couldn’t see his flush and guess instantly what his dream had been about—that even now he couldn’t help looking at her lips. It had all felt so real.
“Come on, Madeleine,” he said, lowering his voice. He couldn’t afford to be confrontational with her right now—he needed her to see him as vulnerable. To let down her own guard. “Haven’t we talked enough to skip all the games? Look…the mayor was my friend’s father.” He looked away for a moment, then stepped forward to put his hand on the glass again. “You’ve helped me once before, given me a clue that uncovered one of the Nightwalkers’ hideouts. If you know something, anything…please. Tell me.”
Madeleine sighed. For a brief second, she even appeared angry, as if the news Bruce was delivering to her was not what she’d expected. Then she got up and walked over to the window separating them. Her nearness reminded Bruce again of his dream—her arms around his neck, pulling him down, her lips moving against his—and he swallowed hard, trying to push it away.
“I don’t think you committed those murders,” he went on. “I think you’re involved—that you know who did, but that you’re not coming forward for some strange reason. You’re taking the fall. And I think you can help me stop the killing of more innocent people, if you would just let me in.”