Batman committed everything he'd pulled from the CIA to memory while his hands kept working on gear.
It was for the Squid-Man—and it was something he'd used often in Gotham: gel bombs.
A liquid blend of multiple chemicals, stable in storage, that rapidly solidifies on contact with air and becomes explosive.
They weren't hard to make; the only tricky part was the formula, which wasn't a problem for Batman.
Paired with the gel bombs was a detonation system made from five or six micro signal receivers combined with igniters.
He would plant the receivers before spraying the gel. Their job was to listen for a specific wireless signal; when the right command arrived, they'd trigger the next component—the igniter.
The igniter then delivered a tiny current, setting off the gel bomb.
With his deep Gotham experience, he assembled the bombs in one smooth run without a hitch.
Szz…
He stuck a receiver–igniter unit to a steel beam, then sprayed on the gel.
The remote, hacked from a car key fob, let him back twenty-plus meters to cover before he pressed the button.
Boom—clean detonation.
He hadn't sprayed much gel, so the blast was modest—but more than enough for his purposes. If he needed extra punch, he could just lay down more gel.
With that, his third piece of kit—after the Bat-Claws and the high-spec computer—was done. The fourth, strictly speaking, wasn't finished: a shock device hacked from a stun baton, capable of dumping a charge that would drop an ordinary person instantly.
Because the Squid-Man exceeded human limits, Batman boosted the output—at the cost of making the device single-use.
Everything set, night fell again. Batman still didn't head into the sewers; he started rigging the abandoned shipyard.
Szz szz…
Tiny sounds flickered from corners of the yard as he used the Bat-Claws' mobility to place gel bombs and string up lines of webbing—now reformulated black.
Webbing is hair-thin to begin with; black made it vanish into the dark.
This was Plan B, in case the Squid-Man came to him and he wasn't underground yet.
There were no rumors about "Batman" on the street. If the Squid-Man had accepted Kingpin's contract and wanted to find him, the shipyard was the logical place to look.
"There are four main sewer trunks under the yard and more than twenty branches. Given his size, he's most likely to surface from one of the four big mains."
He looked toward last night's breach—the spot where the Squid-Man had torn through. It was one of the mains.
He'd given that area special attention, crisscrossing it with gel and webs into a great net.
"If he hasn't shown by nine, odds are he's holed up in the sewers and won't come here."
No time like the present. Batman dropped into the sewers and set more gel and web traps at junctions within a hundred meters of the yard.
When everything was in place, he took position at the yard's highest point—the upraised keel of a suspended hull.
From here on: lie in wait.
Minutes ticked by. The street outside wasn't commercial—no lights beyond a few dim lamps. The yard itself was pure black. In the dark, the silhouettes of ships and machinery loomed like beasts, ready to swallow any guilty soul.
A faint breeze carried the barest hint of brine and rot.
Batman didn't move. The Squid-Man was coming—heading for the yard.
He wore his stealth suit; the Bat-Claws and gel bombs were on him; the shock device was planted at a chosen spot.
He fixed his gaze on last night's shattered pipe.
Silently, a green-blue tentacle studded with suckers eased out of the crack.
Then a second. A third… an eighth.
Unlike last night's humanoid form, today the Squid-Man appeared as a full-on squid. The CIA file hadn't covered that.
"But I planned for it," Batman thought.
As the Squid-Man crept from the pipe and cautiously probed forward, Batman thumbed the remote.
His redesigned control could detonate separate charges precisely—no risk of blowing the whole yard at once.
The blast point was opposite the pipe where the creature had emerged.
Boom. At the instant of detonation, the Squid-Man bolted forward on reflex, charging straight into the route Batman had mapped for him—onto a rotting fishing boat.
Five meters, ten—he was fast, which only meant he hit traps faster. By the time he sensed something was wrong, black webbing had cinched him tight.
He panicked, instinctively writhing against the bonds. His slick body let him slither one tentacle free and haul himself toward the decayed hull.
The moment he clambered onto it—another blast. Gel Batman had sprayed on the boat blew the already fragile structure apart. The Squid-Man dropped in free fall, into a webbing pit.
The trap wouldn't hold him forever. Given time, he'd ooze loose.
"If I just had something sharp to cut the web…" His eyes darted and found a metal frame that had once been part of the hull.
Tear it off and the sharp edge would help him saw free.
That, too, was Batman's trap. The instant his tentacle wrapped the frame, a heavy jolt surged through him—enough current to lock all eight limbs and leave him twitching, helpless.
He never even saw Batman. Every step had fallen into a plan laid hours ago.
Fear—and pain he hadn't felt in a long time—sent him into a tailspin. Then, without warning, an oppressive, devilish voice sounded right at his ear:
"Tell me about the human experiments you underwent at Oscorp. I want everything."