“Don’t worry about it, Wayne,” came Draccon’s stern reply. “Be grateful that this isn’t your business.”
Several voices came from one of the cells near the end of the hall. As they approached it, James nodded toward the cell door. “That’s one of the new transfers I was talking about,” she said. “Trickiest Nightwalker we’ve ever gotten.”
Through the window, Bruce caught a glimpse of the scene. Three men—one dressed like a detective, the other two in police uniforms—were crowded around someone, interrogating the inmate. The frustrated voices were coming from the police.
“You think this is funny, don’t you?” Bruce heard one officer snap. “Cutting an old man’s throat, watching him bleed out? How did you get into his accounts? What’s your team doing with all those millions? No answer, huh? You better wipe that smirk off your little face.”
“Before we do it for you,” the other officer added.
“Who else was with you?” the first growled. He said it as if he’d asked the question repeatedly.
Bruce tried to see who the inmate was, but then they passed the window, and his chance was gone. The shouts turned muffled and faded away.
James shook her head. “She still hasn’t talked.”
“I ordered that one transferred myself,” Draccon said, glancing coolly at Bruce. “Don’t worry. They always crack.”
As they left the hall, the angry questions continued to drift after them. Bruce found himself dwelling on what the police were trying to get out of the inmate. He would be down here often—he’d probably see this same scene play over and over again. Maybe by the time he came through once more, the police would have gotten the inmate to talk.
And maybe Bruce would catch a glimpse of who the inmate was. Who she was.
“What’s the matter, handsome? Never dirtied those clean hands before?”
Arkham, day one. Inmates leered at Bruce through the bars as he cleaned, their grins fixated on him and their taunts echoing down the halls. Boots and toothbrushes clanked against cell bars.
His appearance today was a stark contrast from the way he’d shown up at the benefit on his birthday, clad in his tailored suit and standing beside his custom Aston Martin. Now he wore a blue worker’s uniform from head to toe, his hands hidden underneath a pair of yellow cleaning gloves.
Ignore them. Just concentrate, Bruce reminded himself as he made his way steadily along the corridor. They wanted to see his expression change, get a rise out of him.
“Girls, we got a billionaire mopping up our mess.” Another catcall.
“Damn! Guess money don’t buy what it used to.”
“He’s cute, though, isn’t he?”
“I’d go to jail just for a piece of that. Come on, Bruce Wayne. Give us a smile.”
“Tell you what—we’ll stop giving you such a hard time if you take your shirt off and use it to scrub the floor.”
Snickers rippled down the hall.
They continued throughout the day, one hall after another, until they all melded together into a single train of sound. Bruce kept his head down. James checked on him three times—and even though she never gave Bruce so much as a sidelong glance and a sniff, he still found himself looking forward to her presence. The inmates quieted whenever she appeared, and stayed taunt-free for a good few minutes after she left, giving him moments of reprieve.
Finally, at the end of the day, James came up to him. “Get out of here, Wayne.” She nodded for him to follow her down the hall. “You’re so tired that you’re just smearing dirt around on the floors.”
It wasn’t exactly pity, but Bruce decided it was close enough. He barely remembered signing out. He couldn’t even recall climbing into Alfred’s car. All he could register was being grateful to sink onto the cool leather seats, and waking up the following morning in his own bed.
—
“How is it so far?” Dianne asked him the next day as they headed to their English class together.
Bruce tried to tune out the whispers and glances from classmates passing them in the hall. He could hear his name on their breath, along with snatches of rumors about why he’d crashed his car. Drunk. Cocky. Temper problems. The light coming in from the academy’s windows stretched everyone’s shadows out into long stripes down the hall, encasing the school behind bars. Bruce sighed, forcing himself to stare straight ahead. Yesterday had seemed to go on forever—and he would have to go back to that real prison over and over again for weeks.
“Could’ve been worse,” he replied, then launched into the details as they reached their English room and settled into their seats.
Dianne gave him a pitying shake of her head. “Ugh. Sounds awful. Five more weeks of that?”
“It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for all the catcalls.” Bruce texted a few of the more memorable taunts he’d gotten to her, so he wouldn’t have to say them out loud.
She grimaced. “Yeah, well, I know what that’s like. And it’s not right.”
Bruce shook his head. “I’m sorry, Di. I hate that you’ve had to deal with that.”
Dianne put a reassuring hand on his arm. “You’ll make it. We’re all getting out of here in a few weeks, and—” She cut off as the bell rang, then went on in a lower voice. “And your time at Arkham will be over before you know it.”
Her words brought some small measure of comfort. Bruce took a deep breath and tried to take them to heart. “Before I know it,” he echoed.
—
After all the jeers yesterday, the intensive-treatment basement of Arkham Asylum seemed eerily quiet by contrast when Bruce arrived after school.
The silence raised the hairs on the back of his neck. If he didn’t know better, he could swear that this was a hall straight out of a horror film—the pale green cast of light, the bare walls, the faint echo of his boots. If ghosts were real, they would live here, whispering in the air.
As he started down the hall, he listened for the voices of detectives coming from the last cell. Maybe they were interrogating the prisoner again today.
Bruce had just made his way toward the first cell window when a loud slam echoed from it. Instantly, he jumped back a step—and saw an inmate staring at him through the window. “Well, well, well,” the man said. “It’s the new boy. You look good enough to carve.”
He practically spat out the words, and as he did, he stirred the rest of the hall to life, until other shouts echoed along the corridor. Bruce looked away and concentrated on the floor before him instead.
“What’s the matter, boy?” the inmate said. “What got you into this slum in the first place, eh, cleaning up our sh—hey, hey! Where the hell you think you’re going?” He rapped madly on the glass when Bruce took a step away. “You know what I did to get into this place? I carve. I carve real good.” He made a cutting gesture along his neck and down his arms.