Batman Fear Itself

1 Trust the night. The sensei had told him that, not long after he had gone to Japan to study under the old man's tutelage. He'd no idea at the timehe still didn'thow Master Yoru had divined his intention, his purpose . . . his Plan. But somehow, he had. Bruce Wayne had known that from nearly the first day they'd met, in the peaceful dojo of lacquered wood and painted shoji, and he knew that the martial arts master had known he knew. Eighty years old, at least, and nearly blind in one eye, judging by the cloud of cataract tissue that had spread across it. Yet he'd still been able to move like water between rocks, strike like iron against rice paper. No one in the dojo could touch him. Bruce doubted that any- one in the East could touch him. He had learned much. Trust the night. The phrase always flickered like heat lightning through his mind as he entered the shadows. He quickly descended the rungs of rusted and verdigris-crusted iron, his cloak draping him. The tunnels were almost large enough to stand in upright; the storm drains and sewers that snaked below Gotham City rivaled those of Paris or Vienna in their size and complexity. Theyand the rooftopswere by far the quickest and easiest way to get from one area of the city to another. He moved swiftly along the relatively dry embankment. The sewer stench didn't bother him; he was used to it, plus he had daubed mentholated salve beneath his nostrils before leaving the car. It was a practice he had learned watching coroners and forensics investigators working over cadavers. The darkness was nearly total, but his footing was sure, despite the occasional patches of slime and offal on the wet concrete. The wafer-thin white gallium arsenide plates that hid his eyes were Generation Five light amplifiers, developed, as was so much of his personal arsenal, by the R&D staff of Wayne Technologies. Their primary clients were the armed forces and private security firms. Their customer satisfaction quotient was high, largely because he field-tested most of the prototypes himself. There were occasional cryptic combinations of numbers and letters stenciled on the curving walls, or at intersections; often these were nearly obliterated by decades of water and mold. They spoke, to those who could read them, of drainage levels, basin and sub-basin locations, outlet control junctions, and the like. They also gave directions. Following these, he turned left at a T-intersection, left again at a branching conduit. Eventually he was stopped by a rust-weakened iron grid, which one thrust of his booted heel easily reduced to chunky powder. He was now in what the city infrastructure plans called the North Corridor Project. This had been originally intended as a linking commuter line, but had been abandoned in the late 1960s, when it was decided to put the Diamond Express Line in at a deeper level. The corridor now served as an emergency runoff drain during severe storms. It would also, in this case, serve as an emergency access to the runaway train. A small heads-up display blinked on just above his left eye plate, summoned by a subvocalized command. Along with a compass, temperature gauge, and air toxicity sampler, it gave him a digital time readout. He had less than thirty seconds. From one of his belt compartments he took a small quantity of plastic explosive and quickly molded it in a three-foot-wide circle in the center of the corridor's floor. The material was another WayneTech developmentit had a TNT equivalence 20 percent higher than C4, and a brisance factor of thirty thousand feet per second. He moved back ten feet, shielded himself with his cloak, and triggered the built-in soft-circuit detonator. The flash was dazzling, even with the Gen-5 polarizers. The audiReaves, Michael is the author of 'Batman Fear Itself', published 2007 under ISBN 9780345479433 and ISBN 0345479432.