Chapter 415: Jailbreak Destination
Batman had known about the Hell's Kitchen explosion the moment it happened. The legal team at Metropolitan General was his doing -- he'd contacted Parker Industries CEO Alice within minutes and had her dispatch Ellington and the others before the ambulance had even arrived.
He hadn't gone himself. His identity was part of it. But the larger reason was that he had recognized the explosion for what it was almost immediately: a distraction.
At almost the exact moment Luke Cage was at the center of that blast, Boomerang broke out of the Raft. Tony had put him there personally.
And it wasn't just Boomerang. Ryker's Island emptied out at the same hour. Scorpion, Mac Gargan. The Vulture, Adrian Toomes. The Shocker, Herman Schultz. The Crimson Dynamo, Yuri Petrovich. And a nine-man crew who called themselves the Serpent Squad.
The only notable absences were Hammerhead and Obadiah Stane -- one had developed neurological complications severe enough to require transfer to Ravencroft Institute, and the other was being held at a different facility. Every other named criminal in the system walked out.
This breakout was nothing like Kingpin's. That one had left traces. Kingpin's escape had practically left a paper trail by comparison, and Batman had followed it with little difficulty. This time, Batman couldn't find evidence of so much as a damaged wall on Ryker's Island. Whatever had been done to the building, the evidence of it was simply gone.
Clean. Blunt. And completely trackless.
He'd had surveillance in place at Ryker's. Listening devices. A virus running in their network infrastructure. None of it had caught a single frame of whoever had orchestrated the breakout.
But a dead end in one direction didn't mean a dead end everywhere.
Batman looked at the pattern. Every criminal who had walked out tonight had one thing in common: technology. All of them had used tech-based methods, tech-based weapons, or had backgrounds rooted in engineering and applied science. Even the Serpent Squad -- nine men with criminal records -- had started out as an engineering firm before they ended up on the wrong side of everything.
Batman ran through his own network. Dr. Otto was on North Brother Island. Norman Osborn was at the manor. Neither location had been approached. Those contacts were secure for now.
But there was one name that kept circling back. Someone still out in the open, still moving through Manhattan, still the kind of figure who drew attention and had the profile these people would gravitate toward. Someone who had once built his own technological arsenal from the ground up.
Norman Osborn.
"Norman Osborn." Batman's voice was flat and unhurried, no trace of alarm despite everything that had just walked out of two different prisons simultaneously. "Stay in your bedroom. Don't move. I'm coming to you now."
It was late. The ankle monitor confirmed Norman was at Osborn Manor, exactly where he was supposed to be. When Batman's encrypted signal reached him, Norman didn't ask questions.
"Understood."
Batman didn't take the car. He dropped from the Batwing directly, hit the grounds of Osborn Manor hard, and was through the door in seconds.
Norman spoke first.
"Someone came to find me tonight. In a way you wouldn't expect."
"What way?"
"A projection." Norman was sitting on the living room sofa in a dark teal robe, entirely calm. "Appearing out of thin air."
"What did it show you?"
Norman's ankle monitor was a sophisticated piece of equipment. It tracked his position, captured audio, and relayed data from any connected device he touched back to North Brother Island. What it could not do was show Batman what Norman had seen with his own eyes.
"I can't describe what it looked like exactly," Norman said. "But I understood what it was trying to tell me. They want me to provide a super-soldier serum."
Batman's expression didn't shift.
"Unless they plan to put me in a centrifuge and liquefy me, I don't have one to give them." Norman spread his hands. "And beyond that -- Harry is still under your watch. I don't have anywhere else to go. The path you put me on is the only path I'm walking."
He meant the gubernatorial candidacy. Running as an independent. The role Batman had designed for him.
"You've done well," Batman said, with a small nod.
He'd known since the charity auction last month that Norman's memories had been quietly returning. He'd said nothing. He'd watched instead, monitoring every move without adding pressure. So far, whatever the reason behind it, Norman Osborn had not disappointed him.
"You said you can't describe the projection's content. Can you describe the size and position of it?"
Norman stood and led Batman back to the bedroom. He thought for a moment, then gestured with both hands to indicate the scale and placement of what he'd seen.
Not a technology-based projection, Batman concluded silently. Something closer to a compressed version of what the Enchantress had done when she pulled him into her illusion. A smaller working of the same technique.
"Did they say anything else? Ask for anything else?"
"No. That was all." Norman paused. "Is something happening? I can help from the political side if you need it."
"Not yet. When your position is strong enough, don't forget the people you killed. The ones living on the street."
"I won't," Norman said quietly, with a small, grim smile directed at the floor.
When he looked up, the room was empty.
Batman was already gone.
Back on Bat Island, he pulled up the SHIELD satellite network for the first time in weeks and began working through the orbital coverage.
The escaped criminals had vanished. Completely. Not even Batman could find them in the aftermath. He turned over the possibility that something outside conventional technology had been involved -- the Enchantress, or something like her.
The satellite footage told him almost nothing. In the seconds following the breakout, the figures had simply ceased to exist in the visual record. Almost nothing -- except a single artifact, barely distinguishable from atmospheric interference: a narrow band of displaced air. A heat shimmer in a shape that suggested displacement rather than combustion. Like something very large and very fast had occupied that space and then left it.
Like an invisible aircraft.
Batman cross-referenced the departure signature against LaGuardia's flight logs. Nothing missing. He checked international aviation channels. No aircraft unaccounted for.
He reached for a Kimoyo Bead.
"T'Challa. This is Batman."
Wakanda was in the middle of the afternoon. T'Challa's voice came back instantly.
"I'm here."
"After the Wakanda operation -- check whether any aircraft went missing from your inventory. Quickly."
"One moment. Shuri--"
A few minutes passed.
"Yes," T'Challa said. "One fighter went missing. The pilot is safe and uninjured."
"Ask the pilot what they remember from the moment the aircraft disappeared."
"Of course."
Another wait.
"They remember nothing at all." T'Challa's voice carried a note of unease.
"Understood," Batman said. His voice dropped slightly. "Stay alert. I think what happened in Wakanda was a test run. A prelude to something larger."
"I'll be ready."
Batman closed the bead and sat with the silence.
A Wakandan fighter, stolen without leaving a physical trace, its pilot's memory of the event entirely erased. That aircraft had presumably appeared over Ryker's Island and the Raft at just the right moment, and then left with a full passenger manifest of escaped criminals and no evidence of its own existence.
He pulled up the satellite map and began moving the coordinates. His eyes traveled east. Then southeast. Then settled.
The small Eastern European nation locked into the center of the frame. His hand stayed still.
Latveria.
"Batman." Tony Stark's voice cut through the encrypted channel. It was clipped and urgent -- a register Batman hadn't heard from him in a while. "Adirondack Mountains. Coordinates -- intercept me, now. Fast!"
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