Bane disappeared into the storm drains three blocks south of Burnley.
Lex didn't follow.
The sewer entrances were half-collapsed, iron grates bent upward like pried teeth. Rotting water pooled along the edges, and the smell rising from below was a cocktail of mold, rust, and death.
On the surface, the city was chaos—mutant packs roaming in daylight, opportunistic scavengers with rifles on rooftops, plant overgrowth strangling entire intersections.
Below ground was different.
Filthy, yes.
But controlled.
Predictable.
Fewer variables.
In a world overrun by infected, the sewers were paradoxically safer than the streets. The biggest threat down there wasn't hordes.
It was the rats.
Small. Fast. Nearly impossible to track in the dark.
When infected, they became nightmares with teeth.
Bane, though, had grown up in a hole far worse than Gotham's underbelly. Darkness was home. Tight tunnels were comfort. He didn't need night vision.
He was night vision.
Lex stood near the manhole for another minute, listening to the fading echo of heavy footsteps below.
Then he extended a hand.
Thin green tendrils slithered from beneath a nearby cracked sidewalk—Poison Ivy's vines, dormant but responsive. Lex had learned how to stimulate specific growth clusters through chemical triggers embedded in the soil.
He guided the vines toward the sewer opening.
"Go," he murmured.
The vines obeyed, slipping between metal bars and vanishing into the black.
They would observe.
Record.
Transmit through biofeedback.
If Bane's physiology shifted—if the antitoxin failed, mutated, or enhanced him further—Lex would know.
Satisfied, he turned back to the street.
His sedan was beyond salvage. Axle snapped. Engine crushed.
He needed transport.
Two blocks over, he found a delivery van with minimal damage. A quick hotwire and it rumbled to life.
In the alley behind a collapsed pharmacy lay the corpse of a standard infected he'd neutralized earlier—the control case for the antitoxin. That subject had died within seconds of injection.
Good baseline.
Lex dragged the body to the van and loaded it into the back, sealing the doors tight.
As he drove north, the city skyline loomed like broken teeth under a smoke-stained sky.
Halfway to the cave's access point, headlights flared behind him.
The Batmobile.
Sleek. Black. Predatory.
Alfred must have been monitoring his tracker.
The armored vehicle pulled alongside, and Lex guided the van into an underground maintenance tunnel. Hydraulic doors sealed behind them.
The corpse was transferred to the Batmobile's containment compartment.
Minutes later, they descended into the cavern beneath Wayne Manor.
The Batcave hummed with generator power and blue-lit monitors.
Alfred Pennyworth stood waiting beside the autopsy station.
Impeccably dressed, as always.
Even at the end of the world.
"You're certain it's deceased?" Alfred asked calmly.
"Yes," Lex replied.
Alfred raised a handgun and shot the corpse directly through the forehead.
The sound cracked through the cave.
"Standard procedure," Alfred said.
"Understandable."
Together they moved the body onto the stainless-steel examination table. Alfred began prepping instruments with clinical precision.
Lex removed his gloves.
"You won't be joining?" Alfred asked.
"I have another matter to attend to."
Alfred nodded once.
Lex headed toward the reinforced detention wing.
The cell had been designed by Bruce Wayne specifically for one individual.
Even without knowing Bruce had been Batman, the paranoia made sense.
Multiple steel layers. Electromagnetic locks. Sedative gas vents. Independent power grid.
Inside, restrained to a metal slab bolted into concrete, lay the Joker.
His white-painted grin remained intact.
But something was wrong.
Melancholy clung to him like a fog.
The emotional toxin exposure had done more than weaken him—it had suppressed the manic edge that defined him.
When Lex stepped inside—now wearing a streamlined bat-suit variation for psychological leverage—the Joker didn't scream.
He didn't cackle.
He looked… tired.
"Who are you?" the Joker asked softly. "And what did that redheaded witch put in me?"
Lex stood at the foot of the bed.
Silent.
Two seconds.
Then—
"Let's make a deal."
The Joker tilted his head slightly.
"You tell me your real objective in attacking Wayne Manor. I'll tell you why you're still breathing."
A pause.
"If you agree, we start something productive."
The Joker answered almost immediately.
"I wanted the supplies. The manpower. Control."
His eyes sharpened.
"And Bruce Wayne."
Lex said nothing.
"I've secured Wayne Tower," the Joker continued. "Took over the upper floors. But beneath it—there's a sealed weapons vault. Wayne-level encryption. I couldn't crack it."
A thin frustration edged his voice.
"Rumor says it holds enough hardware to erase Gotham from the map. Only Wayne can open it."
He smiled faintly.
"So I decided to collect him."
Lex studied his expression carefully.
No deception.
Calculated honesty.
The Joker didn't know Bruce had been Batman.
And now Bruce was infected.
Which meant the vault might remain sealed forever.
Probably for the best.
Anything capable of leveling Gotham shouldn't be in circulation—not with warlords and enhanced mutants crawling over the city.
"Your turn," the Joker said.
Lex stepped closer.
"I didn't kill you because you possess something rare."
The Joker's eyes narrowed.
"The Dionysian Compound."
He watched for micro-reactions.
There.
A flicker.
"It's a regenerative catalyst," Lex continued. "Metallic-green in its pure form. Grants extreme cellular repair. Potential longevity beyond a millennium."
He let the implications hang.
"In certain underground reservoirs beneath Gotham, it flows naturally."
The Joker gave a faint, humorless chuckle.
"Is that supposed to impress me?"
"It's inside you."
Silence.
"Interesting fairy tale."
"We can test it."
Before the Joker could respond, Lex seized his right arm and twisted.
Bone snapped cleanly.
The Joker's brow tightened.
No scream.
Lex drew a blade and drove it half an inch right of the heart, burying it to the hilt.
Then he withdrew it.
Blood spilled.
The Joker's body jerked slightly with the force.
Still no sound.
Lex stepped back and watched.
Within seconds, bleeding slowed.
Within thirty seconds, the wound began closing.
Muscle fibers knitting.
Skin sealing.
The broken arm shifted unnaturally—bones aligning beneath flesh.
Repair speed: accelerated.
Lex's pulse quickened.
Confirmation.
The legends were real.
The Joker coughed twice, breath shaky.
He tried to laugh.
The sound came out thin.
"I'm more curious about you now," he murmured. "How do you know about something that doesn't officially exist?"
Lex leaned closer.
"It's undetectable under normal testing. Blood panels show nothing. Genetic scans show nothing."
He lowered his voice.
"But under trauma, it activates."
The Joker stared at him.
Wide-eyed.
For the first time since their encounters began—
He looked unsettled.
....
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