Pausing briefly on the rooftop of one building, he presses a finger to his ear—not to the ten-centimeter ear sculpted on the side of his mask, but to where his actual ear would be.
Batman: "Comms check, one-two-three."
Alfred Pennyworth: "Mr. Fox's toys never cease to amaze."
Batman: "My main concern is being able to play with them together, even forty miles apart."
Alfred Pennyworth: "Remarkable that at your age, you're still playing with children's toys."
Batman: "You're just jealous you didn't have any like this as a kid. To the point: I may know where the Gotham branch of the trafficking ring is. I'll let you know if I need your help. And now, since I'm not giving you a choice in the matter, I'm signing off."
With those words, he continues his path toward Central Island, using his grapple and gliding cape.
Batman: "All the abductions happen on West Island; victims were last seen there, they live and work there. Stupid to hide the lair on West Island and hope not to be found. East Island has police headquarters. Arrogant to think you can hide right under their noses, especially given the irrationality of a long commute route. Central Island is the transit point between the police station to the east and the main search area to the west. Plus, Central Island has the lowest crime rate; police won't be looking here, time considerations aside. Now to pinpoint their lair on Central Island. The downtown area is out—too many corporate offices there—leaving north and south. Police almost always run one circular patrol route: south from East to West Island, north from West to East. Cops travel west-to-east more often, since not only is the police station there, but many of them live there too. So their lair is somewhere in the south. When cops go east-to-west, their attention is on the western part of Central Island; the eastern side is barely visible, since almost no one takes the southern bridge west-to-east. Their lair is in the southwest of Central Island. Now to find which building. There are 127 residential buildings in southwest Central Island; the area hasn't been heavily developed for residents due to its industrial past. Of these, 98 have basements. Necessary for holding a large number of people, but I know the original blueprints for buildings in that area, and none of those basements are large enough. It would need to be deeper—so no one hears the screams. 74 of those buildings have basements directly above the sewer system. They'd need a quick escape route in case they're found, so the sewer access needs to be near a drain outlet; that narrows it to 43 buildings. In Gotham, you can file for a property expansion permit; the government benefits from the extra tax revenue. Theoretically, one of those buildings could have artificially expanded its basement, and trafficking money is more than enough to avoid specifying the reason for the expansion without hiding its existence. Their lair is one of those 43 buildings, with a basement modified to provide a shortcut to the sewers, where they keep the victims."
After this, he again raises his finger to his ear.
Batman: "Alfred, time to put our database to work. Find me every building in southwest Central Island that's recently expanded its property—search the last month."
Alfred Pennyworth: "You have no idea how long I've waited to test this out. Let's see… here's one, 8 56th Street. 26 days ago, a property expansion request was approved there, reportedly a home addition."
Batman: "I know that area. That house is the traffickers' lair. I'm heading there. Thanks, Alfred."
Alfred Pennyworth: "How grateful I am to receive praise from the Bat-Man himself."
Batman: "Plenty of time to be proud later. I'm off."
Disconnecting, Batman descends to street level and slips into the sewer through a manhole cover near the target district.
Batman: "The holding area can't be too close to the drain outlet—someone outside might hear screams through it. But not too far, either—they need a quick escape route during a raid, either through the outlet or through the house. Somewhere between the house and the outlet, probably in adjacent tunnels to throw off pursuit. They don't expect to be found via the sewers; they're expecting a raid from the house or the drain side. That's my angle."
At that moment, in the sewer tunnel closer to the drain outlet, in an adjacent tunnel where the victims were being held in a cage, one of the trafficking ring members receives a phone call. The instant he picks up the receiver, he takes a powerful electric shock—someone had run a bare wire directly into the phone's earpiece. Not enough to kill, but more than sufficient to knock him out cold for a good while. This action was enough to draw the attention of the other traffickers, who rushed to see what happened to their man.
Approaching the cage with the victims, Batman hears rapid footsteps—almost running—of three men, carrying the weight of automatic rifles. Entering the tunnel where they believe Batman should be, they find nothing, yet remain on high alert. As if anticipating that these three would open fire on anything that moved, they do exactly that, unloading on something moving very fast—but only when it falls to the ground do they realize it was just three Batarangs, meant purely as a distraction.
Not three seconds pass before these three, now ready to move toward the cage to secure it, lose all vision of what's happening in front of them. Too bad they didn't notice the tiny flash-bang devices attached to their bodies from those Batarangs, completely scrambling their coordination. The next thing they feel is a single powerful kick squarely to the jaw. Though the flash-bang effect also hit Batman—there's nowhere to hide from that in a sewer—the fact he was completely deprived of sight and hearing for five seconds didn't stop him from putting all three on the ground with one kick.
Now standing before the double doors leading to the chamber between tunnels where the abducted women were being held, Batman takes the left door, which is closed, by its handle, cracks it open slightly, then immediately slams it shut with full force. A second later, one of the thugs who'd been hiding behind the closed door, counting on the element of surprise, crumples to the floor in front of him—a tactic that might have worked if your opponent weren't… him.
Seeing the large cage with fourteen abducted women inside, Batman takes his grapple, attaches the lock to the line, then fires the grapple in the opposite direction, letting it fly the full length of the sewer pipe. Since the pipe was very long and the cable strong enough, when the grapple reached the far wall, the line went taut from the excessive distance and ripped the lock clean off the cage.
Meanwhile, not even one cigarette's worth of time had passed while Gordon waited for Batman's return. Just as he decided to leave the rooftop and get himself something to drink, already at the stairwell entrance, he was stopped by a now all-too-familiar voice, coming from above him.
Batman: "8 56th Street."
James Gordon, unsure what to expect next: "Should I go report it, or…?"
Batman: "Tell them there are now five traffickers down and all the abducted women are free."
James Gordon: "It's good to know someone like you is on our side."
Batman: "I'm on the side of whoever's ready to do whatever it takes to wipe out crime in Gotham. Don't forget, I was against you when Loeb was in charge."
James Gordon: "That too, I guess. Thanks again—" Gordon looks up, but his conversation partner has vanished into thin air once more. Just asking himself, "How the hell does he *do* that?", Gordon finally descends from the rooftop into the main part of the building.