FOLLOW ME
Chapter 7 - Revelations
Barbara opened her eyes and turned around. She was lying on something wooden. She couldn’t figure out where she was and was trying to remember what had happened last. She got up and stepped down and the floor was very cold and felt like rock. She could hardly see anything because her vision was blurred. She sat back on the wooden thing she had been lying down on. She had no clue where she was. And the last thing she remembered was getting into the Bat-mobile with Batman and Robin.
“Dick!” she thought, “Dick was Robin!”
She wondered if she was in the bat cave. She thought it was very much a possibility. But why would Batman and Robin drug her? Maybe they wanted to keep the bat cave’s location a secret. They could have just blindfolded her.
“A young boy, once upon a time...” came a voice, it was Dick, “found his way back to the cave, using the sounds and smells he had picked up when he was blindfolded.”
“And I don’t need any more sidekicks.” Said the gruff voice of Batman and she heard something being broken in front of her face. Something like a chalk-piece. And smelling that, she burst into life. She felt rejuvenated.
“So, Ms. Gordon...” said Robin.
“It was never you, was it?” she asked.
Now, she had a clear picture of everything that had happened. The Batman she had met the other night wasn’t Batman himself. It was a clone; must have been another one of HARDAC’s clones.
“But how did you know?” she asked.
“I bugged your room this morning. Batman here had a suspicion that something was going on. And we had discussed about the tape and The Riddler’s strong fingerprint in it. And the error in TV18’s broadcast. Criminals have an addiction for pattern.” said Robin.
”So, I was playing right into Riddler's hands by talking on the bat-phone?” she thought out aloud.
“Playing?” questioned Batman.
And so, she explained all that had been going on; the letters, the twins, HARDAC, her theories. Both Batman and Robin listened carefully. And by the end of the narration, she felt hungry. She hadn’t eaten for a long time and she wondered what time it was.
“What time is it?” she asked Robin.
“Quarter past eight in the evening.” He said, “we should have our dinner! I can see you are hungry, you never got out of office today.”
He pressed a button on his wrist band and “ALFRED!!” he said. Both Batman and Barbara looked at each other at that very moment. And she could see it in the Batman’s eyes. Everything fit; the jaw, the nose’s tip, his teeth. She then related to the Batman’s retirement. The Batman’s first ever appearance, when she was a small kid. The Batman’s night vigil routine. Everything fit, she had joined all the dots and now, she just had to see the picture,
“Bruce Wayne?” she asked, with a tone of surprise.
Robin looked bewildered. He would have had no idea that calling Alfred would expose the Batman’s identity. In a single day, they had compromised both their identities to Barbara. But how was he supposed to know that Bruce had mentioned Alfred to Barbara? Batman turned to Robin with a furious look on his face. It was a silly mistake to make though. He knew Alfred was in England. To escape Batman’s fury, Robin walked out of the cave and came back with food. Barbara and Batman had not exchanged a single word of conversation till then.
Barbara decided to break the silence. “So, why do you think The Riddler has been silent for so long? If he still has it in him, why did he take a break?” she asked.
Batman went over to the big computer and typed some codes and then a file came up. It was Batman’s personal file of Edward Nygma. Barbara was awed. When the police knew very little about Nygma, the Batman knew a lot more. And the first thing that caught her eye was one of the pictures. It looked like a young version of the Gough twins. So, Batman knew who Nygma was. Batman knew where to find him. But he hadn’t handed him over to the police. Maybe Batman wasn’t walking the tight rope too well either. She continued to read the file.
Nygma had a troubled childhood both at home and at school. When he was a small kid, he was enthralled by puzzles and could solve them better than anybody else but he never excelled in his grades. As a result of his failure to perform well academically, he took to alternative methods of proving his intellectual superiority over his peers. There were numerous complaints from his school both about his academics and the way he treated his class mates.
On receiving these complaints, his step dad had forced him to study well and had treated him quite badly. After school, Nygma moved out of Gotham for college and when he returned to Gotham with a degree, he found himself a job with Gamecorp. And then the middle bit of it was as in the police file, but for one thing, according to Batman’s file, he never actually stole or involved himself in crimes that monetarily benefited him. But the police file had accused him of having made a fortune by being behind stock market crashes.
“And the stock market crashes?” she asked.
“They were faked- Intended to leave the police on the trail of the wrong guy.” said Batman.
“But the police records say you helped them figure that out.” she said, “you faked them?!”
And the Batman didn’t reply. He turned his head towards the display screen. So, she continued reading. The police didn’t have any record of the man after this point. She expected not to find much in the Batman’s records either, but what she saw in it startled her.
The Riddler had stopped his theatrics, not because he felt the price on his head was too high and his wanted-level was increasing with the Gotham police. He was actually traced down by Batman and offered an alternate life. A life which promised him enough excitement, but wouldn’t risk people’s lives. Batman had negotiated with The Riddler and promised him a life away from Arkham or Black Gate. A life of knowledge. Together, Batman and the Riddler had misled the police. The Batman arranged for psychotherapy sessions for Nygma to bring his mind under control. After his sessions, Nygma occupied himself with his work at the university under a false identity that Batman had created for him. Whenever his compulsion for answers popped up, he would put Batman on a series of clues, testing him, seeing him fail. Nygma had the compulsion to know. He had an obsession for knowledge. And for years, he had been Batman’s best ally for precisely these reasons. He helped Batman track down many a criminal. He helped him bring down the Joker.
But once Batman retired, he became cranky because his loss of activity. He didn’t have enough puzzles in life and at one point of time, a few years ago, the Batman had completely lost touch with him and had ever since been trying to trace him down. When he met Dr. Gough at the university, he knew that he wasn’t Nygma. He had tried to find the source of the clone but when he went to Cybertron, he found HARDAC dysfunctional. He checked on the twin from the Gotham database, but the twin seemed to be a clone too. And there was no other spotting of Nygma. He was left at the end of a cold trail. The bird in the cage had disappeared from the Dark Knight's sight!
“Until he heard the tape and a voice just like his from my purse.” thought Barbara, "he was always smarter than Batman. But he got unfortunate."
She could see what Nygma might have been busy with. He would have been planning his comeback to the scene. He would have been busy tailing her and figuring out ways to riddle her.
But then, he had even been tailing criminals too. He was trying to continue his job as a vigilante. And maybe he was just trying to be the sidekick for a different person now. Or maybe he wanted to be a new kind of vigilante and wanted only the commissioner to know.
“How could you hide him from the police?” she asked.
“He never did any damage. He was mentally affected and needed treatment. Which is exactly what I gave him.” He said.
She just then noticed the bat-phone on the table she was lying down on. She was sick of playing games and decided that she had had enough. Before the Batman could stop her, she took the Bat-phone and unlocked it and said, “Nygma! Midnight... Gotham University Xavier’s Park!” just as she finished saying those words, the Batman covered her mouth and over-powered her into submission. He then released her only after she dropped the phone and he kicked it away, towards Robin.
“We might as well go there.” She said.
The Batman had no reason not to go with her plan. He agreed.
“Dick, come with me!” she said. Robin went inside to get changed into civilian attire.
“Why did you retire, anyway?” she asked Batman. He never replied.
And so, once Dick was back, he and Barbara went to Xavier’s Park inside the university. They were ahead of time. And as they stood in the western gate of the park, they saw a man running across the street, being chased by three others. They decided to find out what it was and they flanked left and right, taking cover behind the statues every now and then. As they tailed them, Dick tripped on something and fell with a thud. Suddenly, the people chasing stopped and turned around. Two of them were guards with guns and armoured suits. And one of them was a tall, bulky man with a scar underneath his eye which was highlighted by the street lamp’s light falling directly on his face. Barbara took out her gun and was waiting in hiding. She took a quick look but couldn’t register any faces. And then she heard the two quick gun shots. First one was on Dick's stomach and the next one on his chest. She jumped out of cover and started shooting at the three of them viciously, but it was in vain. They had run far away by then.
She went near Dick who was bleeding heavily and found it difficult to breathe.
“It’s an occupational hazard.” came a voice from behind her. She turned around to see who it was. It was an old man, looking frail, wearing a dark green suit; it was Edward Nygma.
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