“I know, I know.” Bruce grimaced, picked up Harvey’s coin, and inspected it. “I’m just being difficult about it. I was really looking forward to spending most of our last summer together.”
Dianne nudged Bruce once with her elbow. “Well, you were going to work on security projects with Lucius at WayneTech this summer, weren’t you? Maybe seeing the inside of Arkham will give you some ideas.”
Some ideas. Bruce lingered on her words for a moment. She had a point. He’d obsessed over criminal cases since he was young—but reading mystery novels and listening to a police scanner in the middle of the night would be nothing like seeing the inside of a prison with his own eyes. Maybe his time at Arkham could be his own personal study on how justice worked, a close look at how the asylum’s prisoners behaved and at the prison’s security system. It was a better way of thinking about his sentence.
“I’ll try to get on Draccon’s good side,” he said. “Maybe the whole thing won’t be too bad.”
“Well, at least you can say you’ve crossed paths with the most dangerous criminals in the city,” Dianne added as she bit into her burger. “I mean, when will you get to do that again?”
—
Bruce had once watched a documentary about the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum when he was still a freshman in high school. It was a sixty-minute exposé about the prison system in the entire country, and Arkham, on the outskirts of Gotham City and fully overseen by the city government, had been singled out as a particularly controversial penitentiary. If it were truly a prison, critics said, it should be called one, and if it were truly a hospital, it should be restructured as a ward, a mental health facility, or a rehabilitation center. Asylums were relics of a darker time and should be left in the past. Bruce knew of several petitions that had circulated recently in an attempt to change Arkham’s name and upgrade the facility to the modern era.
But as Alfred drove Bruce along the bleak road curving out of the city and into a stretch of forest, then up a hill of yellowing grass and sheer rock, Bruce didn’t think Arkham’s grounds looked like a place that could change. Or that had ever changed. The long road approaching the asylum’s gates was lined with skeletal trees that were bare even now, in early summer. Aging signs warned against picking up any hitchhikers. In the distance was an old tower, also a part of the penitentiary, that had in the past shone its lights upon escaping inmates who had been lucky—or unlucky—enough to get past the prison’s walls.
What a way to spend a Saturday, Bruce thought glumly. He wondered what this area must have looked like when the asylum was still new. He couldn’t picture the place with flowering trees or green lawns. Maybe it had always been dying.
Arkham loomed at the top of the hill. The prison’s outer gates looked like an antique from a bygone era, tall and menacing and gothic, with the name ARKHAM ASYLUM spelled out in rusted iron across its spiked bars. On either side of the gates, twin statues leered down at them, their bodies bony underneath their carved hoods, their brows serious and their cheeks sunken. One of them held a balance scale in its frozen grasp. Bruce couldn’t tell if the figures were supposed to represent justice or death. Perhaps here, there was no differentiating between the two.
Arkham Asylum was shaped like a giant U, a monstrosity of stone and spires, with some floors lacking windows altogether. Four tall watchtowers overlooked the complex, along with a main building rising high in the center of the grounds, its roof coming to a sharp point. More towers lined the perimeter of both the outer and inner gates, and even from inside the car, Bruce could see the guards in the posts with their rifles drawn, the narrow gun barrels stark against a gray sky.
As they drove through the concrete field, Bruce spotted Draccon—looking as polished as ever, her black braids tied up into the familiar neat bun—already waiting for them near the enormous front doors, with two guards and a short, round woman in a plain black shirt.
Bruce took a deep breath. He shouldn’t be this nervous, but when he looked down at his hands folded in his lap, he noticed they were shaking. He squeezed them together. Passing through the gates of Arkham reminded him of how impenetrable this place must be and gave him the unpleasant feeling that he was now a prisoner who had been sentenced here. How inmates had ever escaped in the past, he had no idea.
You won’t be here long. Five weeks will fly by, he tried to tell himself.
“Good luck today, Master Wayne,” Alfred said as they stopped at the steps leading up to the front doors.
Bruce looked away from the windows to the rearview mirror, where he could see Alfred’s familiar eyes. With a sigh, he nodded at his guardian, then pushed open the car door and stepped out to meet the people waiting for him.
As he approached, the woman in the black shirt uncrossed her arms and stretched one hand out toward him. She was shorter than Bruce, but Bruce still winced at the strength of her handshake. Her skin was light brown, her hazel eyes as hard as marbles. Bruce noticed that the guards on either side of her wore bulletproof vests with bold white SECURITY inscriptions.
“You’re early,” the woman grunted. She peered over his shoulder at Alfred’s car, which had turned around to leave. “Glad you hired a babysitter who knows how to tell time.”
“His name is Alfred,” Bruce said. “He’s my guardian.”
The woman just grinned at him. “Yeah, and I’m sure he doesn’t ever think of you as a baby he has to sit for.”
“Bruce, this is Dr. Zoe James,” Draccon said with a sigh as she adjusted her glasses. “The head warden of Arkham. You’ll report directly to her.”
“The detective thinks I’m difficult.” Dr. James winked once at Bruce. “But we’ll make this visit of yours fun, won’t we, Wayne?”
“You are difficult,” Draccon replied, rolling her eyes. “Don’t make me regret this, James.”
“I’ve never been anything but the sweetest.” And before Draccon could reply, James whistled a cheery jingle and waved for them to follow her. She glanced over her shoulder at Bruce. “You’ll need to sign in at the front desk every time you’re here, and then get my signature, or your hours will count as invalid. So play nice, or we can make this game real hard for you.”
They stood before the front doors. Only now did Bruce see that the doors were solid metal, a modern design that stood out from the gothic architecture. James placed her hand against a palm pad on one side of the doors, then punched in a long code. The doors gave a loud clank, gradually pulling to either side to reveal a dimly lit lobby.
Bruce followed Dr. James and Draccon to a small counter protected by a wall of thick glass. Behind them, the front doors slid shut with a bang, sealing them in.