The night air is cold and sharp, not the kind of cold that numbs your hands and slows you down, but the kind of cold that punctuates your actions, a dull but constant stinging on your skin that adds just a bit of extra sensation onto everything you do. There's a kind of energy in cold air like this.
Energy that I'm going to need tonight.
I've tangled with drug dealers, with mobsters, gun-runners and hitmen. I've dealt with some weird things that defy explanation, like the Corinthian. This, however, may be the most dangerous thing I've ever done.
I am about to storm a building filled to the brim with armed and highly trained men, some of whom are cold-blooded killers, all of whom will do whatever it takes to stop me from getting what I'm after.
"Gotham Central," I say as I look across the rooftops to my target.
When Batman killed my father, most of his personal effects were given to me. The things I wanted to keep with me to remind me of him are kept in a footlocker under my bed in Miss Cooper's penthouse; everything else was either put into storage or donated to charity. Well, almost everything.
While digging through GCPD's case files regarding my dad's death (their cyber-security is absolutely pathetic), I discovered that certain items of his were kept as evidence, assuming they ever catch the Batman and put him on trial. Specifically, a jump drive containing all sorts of encrypted data.
I want that jump drive. I want to know if it has anything my father was working on, if it has any leads that could get me to Zucco.....or to Batman.
It takes a quick image search to pull up schematics of the GCPD headquarters, find the evidence room, and plot out my way in and out of the building. It's located on the third floor, in the back of the south hallway. Unfortunately, there's only one entrance to the evidence room, and I have to get past the drop-off and processing stations just to get to it. At least two cops right there, not to mention however many I'd encounter on the way in and out.
Still, I'm not going to make any progress if I just sit here thinking about it. I've been planning this out for weeks. Time to make it happen.
"Here goes nothing," I say with a deep breath, before firing a zip-line across the street to the top of the station house. The grappling hook snags on an air conditioning unit, and I secure the other end around a steam vent. I pull on the line a few times to make sure it's secure, then sling a strap over the line and hold on tight with both ends before running over the ledge and into the open air.
Seven stories down, cars pass by, completely unaware that if I lose my grip, I could plunge down to my death on top of them. The cold, stinging night air whips at my face and howls in my ears. My veins are pumping with adrenaline. If I weren't trying to go unnoticed, I'd either let out a wild whoop of excitement, or scream in utter terror as I slide down the zip-line and onto the roof of Gotham Central.
I roll with the landing, then quickly cut the zip-line and duck behind the stairwell. Once I'm out of any immediate lines of sight, I open up one of the pouches on my utility harness and pull out my modified smartphone. There's a pretty strong wireless connection, and with rather simple use of counterfeit usernames and passwords I'd entered the last time I broke into GCPD's mainframe, I'm once again able to get into their network.
First step is neutralizing the surveillance cameras. I'm able to pull up a full display of what every camera in the building is showing, then use a pirated video-editing program to record the footage from every camera on my planned path, capturing twenty seconds of footage on a permanent loop, with a phony clock in the corner ticking away in real time. Once that's done, I feed it back into the surveillance monitors, overriding the live feed. I read up on the performance reports of Gotham Central's monitoring technicians, and timed this little heist with a shift coinciding with the tech with the worst record. If I'm right, it means he won't be paying enough attention to notice that he's looking at the same twenty seconds of footage over and over.
"And that takes care of the cameras," I say to myself, satisfied with my handiwork.
"God, I love this thing."
Being able to do stuff like this is why I went with a LexCorp phone. Mister Wayne's company doesn't sell hardware that can disable a major metropolitan police station in the right hands......at least, they don't sell them to civilians.
With the chances of being spotted electronically removed, now it's just a matter of avoiding being spotted in person. That means I have to move quickly, but most importantly, move quietly.
Entering the building from the roof, I climb down the main stairwell before stepping out onto the top floor, which thankfully is a sparsely populated maze of desks and cubicles. Plenty of things to duck behind, easy to slip about unnoticed. I close the stairwell door slowly, making sure to make as little noise as possible, before darting into an empty cubicle when I see someone coming.
"Yeah, that's what I said," the policeman grumbles into his phone as he makes his way to his desk.
"Arkham's become a goddamn zoo, more trouble than it's worth. Wouldn't shed a single tear if the whole thing burned to the ground with everyone in it....."
He's too engrossed in his conversation to notice me duck out of the cubicle and slink to the next row over, slowly but surely making my way to the southern stairwell. Not only is it much less frequently used than the main stairwell, but the third floor exit is also much closer to the evidence room.
I creep down the stairs, cringing at every echo of a footfall that touches just a little too hard. Suddenly, there's a loud whining noise.....a door swinging open. Footsteps, coming up the stairs towards me. Crap, someone's coming.
I freeze in place, unsure of what to do. There's nowhere to really hide in a simple stairway. Do I run, making too much noise and getting the cop's attention? Do I try to incapacitate him so he doesn't call for backup?
Can I attack a cop?
Another door opens two floors below me, and the footsteps head outside into the hallway. I finally exhale, not even realizing until then that I'd been holding my breath. I quickly go down the last flight of stairs until I'm at the third floor.
Again, gently easing the door open, I slide a small camera through the doorway to make sure the coast is clear, then step out into the hall. From here, it's a simple three rights and a left to where I'm heading.
I pass bulletin boards and wanted posters, water coolers and framed pictures of distinguished officers, empty offices and locked doors. At this hour of night, there aren't many people on this floor--patrol, detention, and most of the other constantly active departments are on the first two floors, and the dormitory sections are all in the upper floors. At the very least, it should be just the technician working evidence check-in and processing.
I peer around the corner to see the check-in desk, and a very bored-looking balding man in a salmon colored button-down shirt. He's staring holes through this morning's
Gotham Gazette, but judging by his body language, he's forcing himself to look at it despite not actually wanting to read it, for lack of something else to do.
I believe I can make his shift a little less boring.
From a pouch on the left side of my utility harness, I pull out a pair of earplugs, and a small wireless speaker. I put the earplugs in and slide the speaker across the floor, stopping just short of the desk. Once it's in place, I open up my smartphone, open up the app connecting to the speaker, and turn it on.
To the naked hear, it doesn't make a sound. That's because the speaker is actually a powerful compact sub-woofer, able to send out a pulse at just under 9 Hz...........the infamous "brown note."
After a few pulses, the cop in the salmon colored shirt lets out a nauseous groan, then gets up from his desk and bolts down the hallway towards the restroom. I know I shouldn't laugh, but I very nearly do.
That won't keep him gone for long, but hopefully it'll be long enough. I pass the check-in desk, swiping the keys from the desk drawer, duck by the door to the processing room to make sure no one's inside, then unlock the door to the main evidence room.
There are many things in the Gotham City Police Department that aren't what they should be, things that are crooked and backwards and rotten to the core. Luckily for me, the evidence room isn't one of those things-- everything is organized in perfect alphabetical order, shelf after shelf of boxes all labeled and in their right place (though I'm sure that in the wake of Jim Gordon's reign of terror, many of those boxes might have some omissions).
I navigate the rows of shelves til I find the Gs, then it's a quick search for Grayson. I pull out the box, and open it up......a little cardboard box that contains everything they know about how my father died.
There's a dossier full of reports detailing the crime scene, forensic data, possible suspects...
"Oh God....Oh G--*ulk!*
...a mortician's photo of my dad's corpse on a slab, abdominal cavity pried open, organs on display for autopsy. My stomach convulses at the sight of it, and I begin to gag, choking down the vomit through sheer force of will.
There are a few plastic bags with some of the personal effects Dad had on him the night he died. His collapsible nightstick. His 9mm pistol. His wallet.
.....and the jump drive.
I pocket the jump drive, putting away the dossier, the wallet, and the pistol. I'm just about to put the nightstick away, when--
"Hey kid! What the hell are you--"
I whirl around, instinctively grabbing the nightstick and swinging at the person behind him. Apparently the man in the salmon colored shirt wasn't the only person working the evidence department tonight, as the collapsible baton cracks into the temple of a heavyset latino man with a thick mustache. He falls to one side, and I bolt past him.
"I'm sorry! I'm really sorry!" I yell back to the cop I just clobbered as I hurdle the check-in desk, seeing the salmon-shirted balding man coming back down the hallway. Cover's blown, no time for sneaking out. I have to find the fastest, most direct way out of this place, right
now.
"Stop! FREEZE!" he shouts as I run towards him. He tries to grab at me when I get close, but I duck low and roll under him, running to the large conference room at the end of the hall, and the biggest window on this floor.
Without breaking a stride, I pull three pellets from a canister near my right hip. They're small explosives made from some of the hand grenades I'd taken from the Dragon's weapon-smuggling ring. They're not enough to cause a life-threatening injury to a person, but they'll do a real number on glass.
I fling the pellets as hard as I can at the window, and with a trio of ear-piercing
CRACKs, they pulverize the plate glass. Shards of it rain down on the street, and I charge headlong at the opening I'd made. The police officer in the salmon colored shirt is hot on my heels before I dive out of the window, thirty feet above the street.
The ground rushes at me more quickly than I'd expected as I pull my grapnel gun from my belt. Unable to fire it to a rooftop in time, I instead shoot it straight into the wall, swinging back towards the walls of GCPD to break my fall barely five feet from the sidewalk. By now, alarms are sounding all over the building, and I've only got a few minutes before cops come swarming out of the station after me.
I quickly disengage the grapnel from the wall, letting the line wind back into the launcher, then run as fast as I can down the sidewalk, as an officer bursts out from the front door, barking at me to stop.
I'm faster than him, but not by much. He's able to give chase until I'm able to round a corner, firing my grapnel line up at the nearest rooftop. By the time he comes around the same corner, I'm already halfway up the building.
I keep running, rooftop to rooftop, bobbing and weaving until I'm sure I've put enough distance between myself and Gotham Central. I can see police helicopters in the distance, sweeping the area with searchlights. Once I'm far away enough that patrol cars are unlikely to find me, I climb down from the rooftop, away from the police choppers. After a quick re-arranging of my wardrobe, I'm just a teenager who's out too late, using his smartphone to find the nearest subway station.
Now it's just a matter of getting back home without Miss Cooper realizing I've left. And from there, I can crack open the secrets within my father's jump drive....
.....and hopefully come one step closer to finding the Batman, and taking him down once and for all.
