Batman: Nightwalker

  “Detective Draccon?” Bruce asked as they went.

  “She’s discussing your sentence with Mr. Pennyworth.” The officer looked uninterested in saying more on the subject, leaving Bruce to speculate on who the detective might be.

  Half an hour later, they pulled up at the elaborate, gilded gates of the Wayne estate. The four pillars bordering the manor’s front entrance came into view, along with the set of stone stairs leading up to the massive double doors. Twin towers rising three stories high peaked at either end of the manor. Iron light poles, their lamps not yet lit in the early afternoon, adorned the sides of the cobblestone path leading from the gate up to the stairs.

  Bruce saw a blue car waiting outside the gate, the words GOTHAM CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT emblazoned prominently in bold white across the doors. Standing in front of the driver’s side was Alfred, and beside him waited a woman in a light silk shirt that contrasted with her black skin, her long tan coat draped neatly across her shoulders. She straightened as their car approached. While Alfred gave the car a quick wave, the woman’s eyes fixed on Bruce.

  “You’ve kept me waiting,” she said to the officer in the driver’s seat.

  “Sorry, Detective,” he replied. “Hit some traffic on the way over.”

  “Bruce,” Alfred said, leaning down to peer into the car, “this is Detective Draccon.”

  The detective rested a hand against the open window on the passenger side. Bruce noticed the simple silver rings on her dark fingers, and her impeccably polished nails, painted a clean brown nude. “Nice to meet you, Bruce Wayne,” she greeted him. “Glad you’re not the one driving.” Then she turned away.

  The windows in Wayne Manor’s parlor had been thrown open to the air, letting in dappled sunlight and a breeze. Bruce walked through the front entrance into a grand foyer that opened up to a high ceiling. A staircase adorned with wrought iron railings curved up to a balcony that overlooked the living and dining rooms. At the moment, everything seemed in a state of disarray; white canvas was draped over all the living and dining room furniture, protecting it while workers refinished the walls, and part of the stairs remained blocked off because a few loose banisters needed replacement. Alfred was busy directing two people from the garage to the kitchen as they delivered groceries in preparation for the week’s meals.

  It all seemed like a normal afternoon scene, except that Bruce found himself sitting across from a stern detective, who now observed him from behind red-rimmed glasses, her stare discerning. Everything about her was perfectly put together—not a single wrinkle in her clothes. Her black hair was pulled back into rows of orderly braids that formed a thick ball on top of her head. No curl seemed out of place.

  Bruce tried to figure out what category to put her in. He’d met few people in life who weren’t either cozying up to him in an attempt to get something or bullying him out of envy. But the detective—she didn’t want anything from him, she wasn’t jealous of him, and she certainly didn’t seem to have any ulterior motives. Right now she wasn’t trying to hide how much she disliked him. He wondered about her work, what cases she must have investigated over the years.

  Draccon tightened her lips at the light of interest in his eyes. “An officer at the precinct told me he still remembers you as a small boy. Definitely didn’t see your publicity stunt coming.”

  “It wasn’t a publicity stunt,” he replied. “I get enough attention already.”

  “Oh?” she said in a cool, calm voice. “Is that so? Well, you’re not very good at avoiding it, are you? Lucky for you, you have an army of lawyers to help you get off easy.”

  “I’m not getting out of anything,” he protested.

  Alfred cast Bruce a warning glance as he placed the cheese platter and a tray of tea on the coffee table between them.

  Detective Draccon leaned forward to pick up her teacup, crossed her legs, and gestured once at Bruce. “Have you ever done menial work in your life?”

  “I used to help my parents in the garden, and my dad in the garage,” he answered. “I volunteered with them at soup kitchens.”

  “So, in other words, you haven’t.”

  Bruce opened his mouth to protest, then closed it. No. He hadn’t. Alfred managed a staff of a dozen employees to keep the mansion perfectly maintained; they were paid well to do a professional job and to keep out of sight as much as possible. Dirty dishes vanished from the kitchen, and fresh towels appeared folded and ready in the bathrooms. Bruce could recall the occasional sound of a broom in the halls, a pair of shears snipping at the hedges outside. But, with a twinge of shame, he realized he didn’t know a single staff member at Wayne Manor.

  “Well, you’re about to do some real menial work,” the detective went on. “You’re going to be under my supervision for your community service, Bruce. Do you know what that means?”

  Bruce tried to keep his face calm as he met her eyes. “What?”

  “It means I will make sure you never want to run afoul of the law again.” Draccon took a delicate sip of her tea.

  “And where are you assigning me?” he asked.

  She put her cup down on its saucer. “Arkham Asylum,” she replied.

  “Arkham Asylum,” Harvey mused as he and Dianne lounged around Bruce’s kitchen island that evening. “Doesn’t that prison house the criminally insane? I didn’t know a place like that could even be a community service option.”

  Bruce picked at his food. He had ordered burgers and milk shakes for them so that they wouldn’t have to go to the diner, but none of them seemed able to work up much of an appetite.

  “I heard the inside of Arkham is a nightmare,” Dianne added with a frown. “Does Draccon really think it’s okay to send you there? How are you going to concentrate on studying for finals?”

  “You’re studying for finals?” Bruce gave her a wry grin. “Most dedicated senior I know.”

  “I’m serious, Bruce! Arkham is dangerous. Isn’t it? My mom said those prisoners are guilty of some of the most horrific crimes in Gotham City’s history. And there are always jailbreaks and fights….”

  Harvey grunted as he glided a quarter back and forth along his knuckles, his movements slick as water. He flicked his wrist once, sending the quarter into a perfect spin on the island counter. “No different from the world outside,” he muttered, slapping the coin down on the surface when it refused to topple over fast enough. It came up heads.

  Bruce tried not to cast a sympathetic look at Harvey. His friend was here for moral support, of course, but Harvey was also holing up at Bruce’s mansion because he was avoiding his father, who had stumbled home again tonight as a drunken mess. When Harvey had tried to hang up his father’s coat, which he’d tossed onto the floor, the man had turned on him, yelling something about how his son didn’t think his father could take care of himself. There was always some tiny thing that set him off. The bruise on Harvey’s jaw had already turned purple.

  “You’re staying the night, right?” Bruce asked as Harvey started flipping his coin along his knuckles again.

  Harvey messed nervously with his blond hair, his eyes downcast. “If Alfred doesn’t mind,” he said. “Sorry I keep—”

  “You don’t need to apologize. Stay as long as you want.” Bruce jutted his chin in the direction of the living room’s staircase. “Guest room in the east wing’s all ready for you. Just watch the shaky banisters on the stair railings. There’s a closetful of clothes for you here, all ready to go.”

  “I can afford my own clothes,” Harvey replied sharply as he pushed up the sleeves of his worn hoodie.

  Bruce cleared his throat. “What I meant was, you don’t have to grab anything from home. It’s all here. If you need anything else, just ask Alfred.”

  “Thanks. I’ll only stay the night. Dad’ll expect me back tomorrow. He’ll be sober by then.”

  Dianne exchanged a glance with Bruce, then reached out to touch Harvey’s arm. “There’s no rule saying you have to be there in the morning,” she said ge
ntly.

  “He’s my dad. Besides, if I’m not there, I’ll just make it worse for myself.”

  Bruce tightened a fist against the table. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d reported Harvey’s father to the police, but every single time social services went to visit their home, the elder Dent seemed put together and calm. “Harvey,” Bruce tried again, “if you report him, you won’t have to go back home. You can just—”

  “I’m not turning on him, Bruce,” Harvey interrupted, spinning his coin hard enough to send it skipping off the counter. It clinked on the floor tiles.

  Bruce sighed inwardly. “Well…you can stay longer, okay? If you want.”

  “I’ll think about it.” But Harvey was already shrinking away from the questions, and Bruce knew that lingering any longer on the topic would be going too far. On his other side, Dianne was giving him a pointed look. Leave him be, she was trying to say. Suddenly, the punishment of doing community service inside Arkham seemed light, even trivial, compared with what Harvey had to face every time he went home.

  Harvey bent to retrieve his coin and started spinning it again. “So,” he muttered, changing the subject, “did the detective say why she was sending you there?”

  “She didn’t need to say anything,” Bruce replied. “I think she picked a place where I’d be most likely to learn my lesson.”

  “What’s your lesson?”

  “To not help the police?” he guessed.

  Harvey sighed. “To not interfere with the police. It’s not up to you to save the world, Bruce.”

  “I know, I know.” Bruce grimaced, picked up Harvey’s coin, and inspected it. “I’m just being difficult about it. I was really looking forward to spending most of our last summer together.”

  Dianne nudged Bruce once with her elbow. “Well, you were going to work on security projects with Lucius at WayneTech this summer, weren’t you? Maybe seeing the inside of Arkham will give you some ideas.”

  Some ideas. Bruce lingered on her words for a moment. She had a point. He’d obsessed over criminal cases since he was young—but reading mystery novels and listening to a police scanner in the middle of the night would be nothing like seeing the inside of a prison with his own eyes. Maybe his time at Arkham could be his own personal study on how justice worked, a close look at how the asylum’s prisoners behaved and at the prison’s security system. It was a better way of thinking about his sentence.

  “I’ll try to get on Draccon’s good side,” he said. “Maybe the whole thing won’t be too bad.”

  “Well, at least you can say you’ve crossed paths with the most dangerous criminals in the city,” Dianne added as she bit into her burger. “I mean, when will you get to do that again?”

  —

  Bruce had once watched a documentary about the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum when he was still a freshman in high school. It was a sixty-minute exposé about the prison system in the entire country, and Arkham, on the outskirts of Gotham City and fully overseen by the city government, had been singled out as a particularly controversial penitentiary. If it were truly a prison, critics said, it should be called one, and if it were truly a hospital, it should be restructured as a ward, a mental health facility, or a rehabilitation center. Asylums were relics of a darker time and should be left in the past. Bruce knew of several petitions that had circulated recently in an attempt to change Arkham’s name and upgrade the facility to the modern era.

  But as Alfred drove Bruce along the bleak road curving out of the city and into a stretch of forest, then up a hill of yellowing grass and sheer rock, Bruce didn’t think Arkham’s grounds looked like a place that could change. Or that had ever changed. The long road approaching the asylum’s gates was lined with skeletal trees that were bare even now, in early summer. Aging signs warned against picking up any hitchhikers. In the distance was an old tower, also a part of the penitentiary, that had in the past shone its lights upon escaping inmates who had been lucky—or unlucky—enough to get past the prison’s walls.

  What a way to spend a Saturday, Bruce thought glumly. He wondered what this area must have looked like when the asylum was still new. He couldn’t picture the place with flowering trees or green lawns. Maybe it had always been dying.

  Arkham loomed at the top of the hill. The prison’s outer gates looked like an antique from a bygone era, tall and menacing and gothic, with the name ARKHAM ASYLUM spelled out in rusted iron across its spiked bars. On either side of the gates, twin statues leered down at them, their bodies bony underneath their carved hoods, their brows serious and their cheeks sunken. One of them held a balance scale in its frozen grasp. Bruce couldn’t tell if the figures were supposed to represent justice or death. Perhaps here, there was no differentiating between the two.

  Arkham Asylum was shaped like a giant U, a monstrosity of stone and spires, with some floors lacking windows altogether. Four tall watchtowers overlooked the complex, along with a main building rising high in the center of the grounds, its roof coming to a sharp point. More towers lined the perimeter of both the outer and inner gates, and even from inside the car, Bruce could see the guards in the posts with their rifles drawn, the narrow gun barrels stark against a gray sky.

  As they drove through the concrete field, Bruce spotted Draccon—looking as polished as ever, her black braids tied up into the familiar neat bun—already waiting for them near the enormous front doors, with two guards and a short, round woman in a plain black shirt.

  Bruce took a deep breath. He shouldn’t be this nervous, but when he looked down at his hands folded in his lap, he noticed they were shaking. He squeezed them together. Passing through the gates of Arkham reminded him of how impenetrable this place must be and gave him the unpleasant feeling that he was now a prisoner who had been sentenced here. How inmates had ever escaped in the past, he had no idea.

  You won’t be here long. Five weeks will fly by, he tried to tell himself.

  “Good luck today, Master Wayne,” Alfred said as they stopped at the steps leading up to the front doors.

  Bruce looked away from the windows to the rearview mirror, where he could see Alfred’s familiar eyes. With a sigh, he nodded at his guardian, then pushed open the car door and stepped out to meet the people waiting for him.

  As he approached, the woman in the black shirt uncrossed her arms and stretched one hand out toward him. She was shorter than Bruce, but Bruce still winced at the strength of her handshake. Her skin was light brown, her hazel eyes as hard as marbles. Bruce noticed that the guards on either side of her wore bulletproof vests with bold white SECURITY inscriptions.

  “You’re early,” the woman grunted. She peered over his shoulder at Alfred’s car, which had turned around to leave. “Glad you hired a babysitter who knows how to tell time.”

  “His name is Alfred,” Bruce said. “He’s my guardian.”

  The woman just grinned at him. “Yeah, and I’m sure he doesn’t ever think of you as a baby he has to sit for.”

  “Bruce, this is Dr. Zoe James,” Draccon said with a sigh as she adjusted her glasses. “The head warden of Arkham. You’ll report directly to her.”

  “The detective thinks I’m difficult.” Dr. James winked once at Bruce. “But we’ll make this visit of yours fun, won’t we, Wayne?”

  “You are difficult,” Draccon replied, rolling her eyes. “Don’t make me regret this, James.”

  “I’ve never been anything but the sweetest.” And before Draccon could reply, James whistled a cheery jingle and waved for them to follow her. She glanced over her shoulder at Bruce. “You’ll need to sign in at the front desk every time you’re here, and then get my signature, or your hours will count as invalid. So play nice, or we can make this game real hard for you.”

  They stood before the front doors. Only now did Bruce see that the doors were solid metal, a modern design that stood out from the gothic architecture. James placed her hand against a palm pad on one side of the doors, then punched in a long code. The doors gave a
loud clank, gradually pulling to either side to reveal a dimly lit lobby.

  Bruce followed Dr. James and Draccon to a small counter protected by a wall of thick glass. Behind them, the front doors slid shut with a bang, sealing them in.

  A surly attendant looked up at them and smacked gum loudly between his teeth. His chewing paused for a moment at the sight of Bruce. One edge of his lips tilted up. “It’s the kid,” he said, narrowing his eyes as he passed Bruce a note card through the small gap at the bottom of the window. He nodded once at James. “Don’t look as rich as the TV makes him.”

  Bruce kept his head turned down, hoping the man didn’t notice the slight coloring on his cheeks, and filled out the note card as quickly as he could. He passed it back. Draccon and James led him farther into the building, where they passed through a pair of barred sliding doors flanked on either side by guards armed with live weapons.

  They were inside the halls of Arkham.

  The first thing that struck Bruce was how coldly lit the halls were. Fluorescent lights beamed icily across the tiled floors and speckled walls, casting everything in a sickly green. The walls gave Bruce the distinct feeling that they were closing in from all sides, that eventually they would crowd around him and crush him like a bug. From somewhere in another hall came the echo of angry shouts and a wild peal of what could be either laughter or sobs.

  “Mayor Price’s administration oversees this place,” James said as they went. “The fact that they keep such close watch over everything here—our guards, tech, facilities, workers—should tell you everything you need to know about how dangerous the city considers these criminals.”

  A couple of prison guards marched down the hall, not making eye contact with them as they half dragged an inmate with a jagged scar running down his face. The prisoner turned alert as they passed. “Well, well,” he said, craning his neck. He scowled at Bruce. “What’s this delicate little piece of flesh doing in a place like this?” And before anyone could stop him, he lunged for Bruce.