Bruce opened his mouth to respond, but the lump in his throat had lodged too tight. If he waited any longer, he wasn’t sure if he could ever work up enough courage again.
So he tore his gaze away, got out of the car, and, without a backward glance, headed toward the flashing lights.
The murmur and shuffling of the crowd of onlookers grew louder as Bruce neared the block with the barricade. Officers were trying unsuccessfully to clear the area—people would disperse, then slowly drift back. One police officer was shouting in vain for everyone to return to their homes.
Over a loudspeaker from the concert hall, they could hear a man’s deep voice spelling out new demands for the police. His voice rang across the night. “We want the city’s treasury transferred over to our accounts within the hour,” he called out. “If you do so, we will release some of our hostages to you. If you fail, then we will start sending out some bodies. It’s your choice, Gotham City.”
Not if I can help it,Bruce thought. He paused in a narrow side street, hidden from view. Double-checking the intersection, he then headed in a small side door that led into an empty skyscraper lobby. His footsteps echoed as Bruce hurried straight to an elevator and hit the button for the lowest level.
Alfred was right. The Seco Financial Building’s basement level connected directly to the city’s underground tunnels—including one running underneath the kiosk across from the concert hall. It would get him past the police barricade. Now Bruce entered the subterranean space and walked along the empty corridor, ignoring the construction materials on either side.
As he reached the end of the hallway, he found the elevator that would take him back up to the surface. He took a deep breath, then got on. As he did, he sent Alfred a message. If he was lucky, the drone would already have made its way toward him.
“Here we go,” Bruce whispered.
Reaching street level, the elevator stopped and the doors slid open.
A whirlwind of sound hit him. The roar of helicopters overhead. Thepop-pop-popof gunfire as a SWAT team tried to break the drones’ formation. The blare of an officer’s voice from a megaphone, demanding the Nightwalkers stand down. Bruce looked on in horror from the kiosk as the drones pushed the line of heavily armed police back even farther. Across the street from him, a cluster of drones guarded one of the doors leading into the concert hall. Behind him, a full block away, was the barricade of police cars trying to keep people back from the fighting.
Bruce glanced down at his phone, his hand trembling. His drone had reached the edge of the police barricade. GCPD would see it any second now. Once he made a run for it, he couldn’t afford to stop moving.
This was his last chance to stay out of the fight.
His muscles tensed.Now, Alfred,he mouthed silently.
A burst of commotion came from the barricade—a chorus of screams. Bruce looked on as an Ada drone leaped over the barricade, completely unharmed by the police’s attempts to shoot it, and then made its way toward him. The two drones nearby turned their heads, rearing up—but when Bruce’s drone drew closer, they relaxed, recognizing one of their own.
Bruce didn’t hesitate. He hurtled across the street toward the concert hall. Behind him, he could hear the police raise the alarm.
“Hold your fire!Hold your fire!Civilian in the vicinity!”
In a few split seconds, Bruce had sprinted past the drone barrier and onto the path leading into one of the concert hall’s side entrances. The elastic, metallic armor of his suit seemed to give each of his movements strength, enhancing his agility and making each leap feel like little effort. He felt as if he were inside a gym simulation, running a circuit with the ease that came from years of practice. His breaths were steady. Behind him, he saw the two hostile drones advancing on his own. Already, someone from inside was overriding the controls that prevented them from firing on each other. He’d hoped he would have more time—but as he looked on, one of the hostile drones reared up, pointed an arm at Bruce’s drone, and opened fire.
The second drone caught sight of Bruce hovering near the locked side entrance. It craned its neck, then lunged over in his direction. Its eyes flashed scarlet, a clear warning, and it raised its arm at him.“Stand down, civilian,”it said.“You are not cleared for this area.”
Was Madeleine behind the eyes of this drone, looking at him? Would she even recognize him, with his disguise on? And if shedidknow it was him…would she still attack? Bruce crouched, tense, as the drone stared him down, waiting for him to step away. He stayed where he was. The drone reared higher.
“You are under arrest for resisting police orders,”the drone said.“Hands in the air.”
Bruce narrowed his eyes. “Go ahead, then,” he replied as if he were talking directly to Madeleine.
The drone hesitated for a second—perhaps it washerhesitating. Then it raised its weapon. A slight blue glow came from the end of its arm.It’s going to attack.
The arm shot toward him. Bruce threw himself to the side a split second before the arm struck him—instead, it smashed into the door, shattering it in an explosion of glass. Bruce shielded his neck and face with his arms. As the drone shifted in his direction and reared back to attack again, he sprang to his feet and lunged through the gaping hole in the door. The drone followed in pursuit.
Bruce entered a narrow corridor. Two Nightwalker guards dressed all in black hoisted rifles and pointed them at him. Their jaws dropped in surprise as the drone crashed in after him. Bruce reacted on instinct—he dove into a roll in front of them and swung a leg out at the first guard, knocking him clear off his feet. As he fell, the drone reached forward and caught him, its grip closing tight around the man’s chest and lifting him up in the air. The man let out a shout—he pointed his rifle at the drone and opened fire. The shots ricocheted off the metal surface. Bruce ducked. The bullets hit the second guard in his legs. He fell to the floor, screaming.
Bruce seized the injured guard by his arm and dragged him down the corridor and around the corner to safety as the drone behind them realized it had seized one of the Nightwalkers. A glitch that would need fixing.
The injured guard gave Bruce a bewildered look, but Bruce didn’t have time to explain that he wasn’t here to hurt people. He left the man where he was and sprinted on.
Bruce had been in this concert hall twice before in his life—he recognized this level as the corridor that led into the smaller of two lobbies. Where were the Nightwalkers holding the hostages? Behind him, he could hear the shouts of the first guard, who had been released by the drone. “Someone’s inside!” he was saying. “I—Idon’t know—maybe a cop—he had a black helmet on—”
Bruce toggled one of the panels on the side of his helmet—and suddenly the walls around him turned grid-like and transparent, heat signals of six Nightwalkers lit up behind the walls, each one turned in his direction and heading his way. He glanced up at the ceiling. That looked transparent now, too—and three floors above him, he saw a dense cluster of heat signals, all gathered in what must be the upper mezzanine area of the concert chamber.
The hostages.
His corridor suddenly opened up into a lobby, the gala’s silk ribbons and long banners now jarringly out of place. Bruce took a sharp turn away from the center of the room as several heat signals from an adjacent hall rushed closer to him. As they reached the lobby, he darted into an empty corridor and continued sprinting. Shouts went up behind him. They had slowed in confusion, trying to figure out where he’d gone. Bruce turned his attention toward the nearest stairwell. There were clearly heat signals coming from inside it, but only three—if he played his cards right, he could get past them. He reached the end of the hall and slammed himself into the stairwell door. An emergency siren blared.
