The second explosion was closer.
It rattled the floor beneath Nolan's feet and sent a tremor through the walls, dust cascading from the ceiling in delicate streams. The sirens wailed on, and the red emergency lights pulsed like a heartbeat gone mad. From down the corridor came the distinct clang and slam of cell doors flying open, and then the roar of footsteps dozens of them storming into the open corridors.
Nolan sighed and took a seat.
Outside his cell, the world was unraveling. Shouts echoed through the stone belly of Arkham. A man screamed. Somewhere to the east, a third explosion ripped through the structure, followed by the unmistakable bark of automatic gunfire.
Nolan simply turned his head.
Harvey Dent was stepping out of his cell.
His face was unreadable in the red light, eyes dark and still. He glanced at the bedded man just across from him, lips slightly parted as if searching for something some instinct, some pull.
Then he spoke.
"Aren't you coming?"
Nolan tilted his head, gaze steady, almost… placid. His voice came out low and calm, like the storm around them had no permission to touch him.
"No," he said simply, "I'm going to win my trial."
Harvey blinked.
Nolan leaned forward slightly, elbows on knees, voice still unshaken. "Besides… you might need a place to stay."
He paused and smiled, "My hotel has some rooms available. Quite nice, if I say so myself."
A long silence passed between them screams still rising in the distance, heavy boots thundering in the halls. Somewhere far off, another security gate failed.
Harvey didn't answer at first. He just reached into his pocket, fingers curling around something familiar. He raised the coin and flicked it.
Clink.
The silver flashed briefly in the pulsing red light as it spun.
He caught it in one hand, smacked it onto the back of the other.
Looked at it.
Looked at Nolan.
A beat passed.
Then, with a faint nod, Harvey turned and started down the corridor, disappearing into the blooming chaos.
Nolan sat alone in his cell, sirens screaming around him, smile creeping onto his face once again.
"Fucking hell, this trial needs to wrap up quickly I fear we are about to have some competition." Nolan murmured
His greatest friends, brothers really parroted his thoughts inside his mind.
***
The explosion had gutted a third of the eastern security wing shattering reinforced doors, disabling cameras, and sending thick smoke snaking through the hallways. Emergency lights flickered, painting the asylum in strobes of red. Sirens shrieked without rhythm, a metallic wail echoing through the concrete caverns of madness.
Some inmates screamed in delight. Others didn't make a sound. They moved with purpose.
**Block G**
Jonathan Crane was already moving. He hadn't flinched at the sound of the explosions he'd been expecting them. He stepped over the body of a guard whose pupils had blown wide with fear, the man still convulsing, foaming at the mouth from a small needle stuck in his neck.
Crane crouched beside him and whispered, "That wasn't even a full dose. Pitiful."
He plucked a keycard from the man's belt and moved toward the lower containment chamber.
There, behind reinforced glass, his fear gas canisters waited. Someone had helped stash them back here someone with reach. Crane slid the keycard. The doors hissed. Gas masks. Canisters. His old, stitched burlap mask.
"I'm back, darlings," he murmured, pressing the mask to his face and drawing in a deep breath like a smoker savoring their first cigarette in years. He turned toward the hallway. "Let's begin the panic."
**Block C**
The vines were already growing before the alarms sounded. A sprig in the corner. A crack in the foundation. Pamela Isley had been whispering to the earth for months, and now it listened.
The roots tore through reinforced steel like it was paper. Her cell crumbled open with a shriek of bending metal and bursting tile. Two guards aimed tasers at her, shouting conflicting orders.
"I really hoped you'd try," Ivy said, stepping barefoot into the corridor.
A burst of pollen flared from her outstretched palm. One guard began choking, the other sank to his knees, crying as vines wrapped around his chest and dragged him into the wall. She walked past them, expression flat.
As the vines cleared a path down the corridor, she whispered, "Arkham was never going to hold me. The city needs pruning."
***Block F****
She'd stolen the keys off a guard hours ago. Her "accidental" fainting fit earned her a trip to medical, where she strangled the nurse with IV tubing and painted a clown smile on the one-way mirror in her blood. Now she twirled through the block like a ballerina with a scalpel in each hand.
Two guards rushed toward her.
"Oh boys," she giggled, ducking a baton swing and slashing the man's thigh. "Don'tcha know? I'm already late for a date."
She stabbed the second one in the neck with such joy she hummed as he gargled blood. Then she stood, breathing heavy, scalpels dripping.
"Gotta find my puddin'," she whispered with a crazed smile, skipping down the hall, singing off-key as the red lights pulsed.
***
Over the control deck, sparks flew as an unknown figure in a guard's uniform typed furiously at the central override. Files were being erased. Backup systems were fried. An entire wing's door logs were scrubbed in seconds. He lifted his radio.
"Phase one complete," he said. "Extraction teams ready at the north perimeter."
****
Engines rumbled. A black, unmarked military truck pulled to a stop just beyond the tree line. Its back door opened.
Inside waited masks. Guns. Blueprints. And someone tapping their foot.
"All of them?" came the voice from the shadows.
"Most," said the driver. "The big ones, yeah. Ivy, Scarecrow, Quinn Two-Face is headed west."
There was a pause.
"Then Gotham's about to have a very, very bad night."
Floodlights flared to life, cutting through the smoke as tactical vans screeched to a halt at the gates. Gotham's Emergency Response Unit black-clad and helmeted poured out in tight formations, weapons raised.
"MOVE IN! CELL BLOCKS C THROUGH G FIRST!" the commander shouted over the chaos.
They swept through breached walls and half-collapsed corridors, shoving fleeing inmates to the floor, cuffing them with electric restraints. But the big names Scarecrow, Ivy, Harley were already ghosts, leaving only their carnage behind.
One trooper sprinted past a scorched wall, pausing only to gag at the floral reek of neurotoxin. Another stumbled onto a scene of a vine-covered corridor where the ceiling hung in tatters, green and trembling. No one wanted to enter.
"North stairwell compromised. Containment breached. We've got groups heading underground repeat, escapees are using the old sewers!"
A sharp black silhouette dropped from the clouds. Another followed close behind.
Batman and Robin landed hard.
Batman rolled into a sprint without a word, immediately hurling a sonic batarang that exploded midair disrupting a group of four inmates trying to vault over the eastern courtyard fence.
Robin crashed down behind him, bowstaff crackling as he swung it though the air. "We're late, huh?"
"We're not too late," Batman said grimly. "Move."
They surged into the fray.
The sounds were deafening alarms, screams, the thrum of helicopters above. Robin dropped a brute with a baton to the side of the knee, then stunned another with a high vault kick. Batman slammed a reinforced cell door onto two escapees trying to block his path, then grappled up to the second floor where two inmates with looted rifles had set up a nest.
They never got a shot off.
Everywhere they went, they tried to stem the bleeding tide but the sheer volume of inmates, the layout of the asylum, the sabotage to the systems, it was too much.
Some fled through the sewage tunnels. Others simply melted into the chaos, donning stolen uniforms, vanishing into the city like specters albeit insane and injured ones.
Batman walked alone through a hallway that looked untouched by the bedlam though muffled explosions and distant shouts still echoed behind him. His cape dragged through blood and shattered glass.
He moved with caution. This part of the wing had somehow remained relatively intact.
Ahead, three inmates rounded the corner—brandishing jagged shivs and frothing at the mouth. Without breaking stride, Batman launched a flashbang that stunned them mid-scream, and then a series of precise, fluid strikes dropped them to the floor.
He paused, scanning the hall.
Then he turned and saw him.
Inside his undisturbed cell, Nolan sat on his cot, legs crossed, posture relaxed. Arms resting on his knees, back straight almost as if he was a monk and the chaos around him was instead peaceful sounds of wind blowing through mountain peaks.
He blinked slowly when he noticed the Dark Knight watching him.
Then he smiled.
And waved.
"Hey, Bats," Nolan said, voice casual and light, "Crazy night we're having, isn't it?"