Batman Arkham Knight Read Free Page A

the real crime, you ask me.”
    Gordon felt his stomach tighten. “So how do we make it better?”
    “Okay, you asked. This is me, remember, but I think we need at least a hundred more Bats. And we tell them to pull out all the stops.” His voice became louder with each word. Then he took a deep breath, and added, “Like I says, just my opinion.”
    “Batman’s good,” Gordon agreed. “Maybe even vital. I know that, Bill. But no matter how valuable his contributions have been, you know as well as I do that we can’t survive forever under vigilante justice. Ultimately we need law—rules and order. The people look to us to protect them, and they have to believe that we can do the job, and that we don’t need outside help.”
    “Agreed, sir,” McKean said. “But until that day, he gets the job done.”
    “Trouble is, he raises the stakes. And the bad guys keep matching him.”
    “I know, sir. But if you’re so much against him, why do you let him do what he does?”
    “It’s what you said, Bill. He gets the job done. And it’s not Batman I worry about. He’s a good man, maybe the best I’ve ever known. But it’s those who follow him. The copycats. They might not have his unwavering sense of justice. They’re the ones who frighten me. Yes, it’s working for now, but I still keep praying that one day my officers will be all Gotham City needs.”
    “Your lips to God’s ears, sir.” McKean pulled the car to a stop. “Oh, we’re here. Ground zero.”
    Where it began.
    Across from Gordon’s car stood the shattered remains of Pauli’s Diner, its windows broken, its door pulled from its hinges, its tables and chairs overturned, its stovetops and ovens smashed beyond repair. Seventy years of history, gone in less than four hours.
    “Bill, you know, just yesterday there were six point three million people living and working here in Gotham City.” Gordon got out of the car and stepped over the debris, avoiding the carpet of glass shards, and entered the empty diner. He looked around staring at what were now only bloodstained memories.
    “Today, not so many.”
    He picked up a child’s stuffed bear lying under an overturned booth, straightened its overalls and cap, and carefully placed it on a countertop, hoping it would eventually find its way home. He would probably never know what happened to the child who owned it, whether it was a boy or girl, or if he or she had managed to get safely out of Gotham City. Some questions would never be answered, and for a man who lived for answers, that deeply bothered him.
    He stared out of the diner, past the cracked pavement badly in need of repair, to the vast emptiness—and thought for a moment he saw a black blur swing past.
    “Yeah,” he said aloud but to himself, “he gets the job done. And God do we need him now.”

3
    He was perched on a cracked masonry gargoyle two hundred twenty-seven feet above the sidewalk, scanning the horde of running figures. Thousands of men and women, dragging their crying children with them, panic distorting their faces, all hoping without any real hope that they’d be able to get out of the city before the deadline came.
    Living in Gotham City always meant living with fear. And soon, unless something was done, there would be nothing else left
but
fear.
    Unless something is done
, he thought as he saw a policeman here and there break from crowd control and join the fleeing mob.
Unless I do something.
    Batman fired a grapple line across the wide street to the Groiler building and leaped off the stone grotesque, his cape spreading as he glided over the panic below and landed on the golden building’s eighth-floor balcony.
    Smoke and the glow of flames could be seen a scant dozen blocks away. Fire engines tried to make their way through the crowd, sirens blaring, but they were stuck in the stampede, unable to move.
    Batman leaped, once again letting his cape spread wide, encouraging the air to rush under it and push him up,