Bruce didn’t return to the asylum until the following week, needing some time off after the brief jailbreak was mentioned in the news and reporters swarmed the front gates.
James seemed subdued when she saw him again, and her usual sarcasm was replaced with concern. She even informed him that she would put in a word with Draccon and the court to shorten his remaining hours, due to what had happened. His duties cleaning the intensive-treatment level were done away with altogether.
Except Bruce didn’t want to shorten his time at Arkham, or stop visiting the lowest floor. He had too many questions, too much about Madeleine still to figure out. He went to go find Draccon at the precinct and see what she could tell him.
“I’m glad you were unharmed,” Draccon said to Bruce as she flipped through folders of court documents in her office. Bruce watched her work from his chair across her desk. “I’ll put in a word with the court. I’ve never heard of a malfunction before at Arkham Asylum, but the storm had apparently initiated a perfect chain reaction of faults in the security system. It shouldn’t happen again.”
“Madeleine never even tried to escape, you know,” Bruce replied, frowning. “Why would she just stay put like that, when she had a chance to run for it?”
“I have no idea. Did she say anything about the underground discovery?”
Maybe I’m telling you to be careful. Or maybe I just like you.
Bruce pushed her words out of his head. “She didn’t say anything else, but she didn’t seem surprised when I told her about it, either,” he said. “Anything else useful that she might have said, I’ve already mentioned to you.” Bruce studied the detective. Madeleine had asked him not to, but he wondered if he should bring up the issue of the bruises he’d seen on her, to ask about her medications. But if he sounded like he was criticizing the police’s handling of her, it might also start to sound like he felt pity for her, even affection.
The thought of not talking to Madeleine again brought up a strange, unpleasant feeling in his chest. Why had he protected her?
Don’t tell Draccon, Madeleine had whispered.
Maybe it would be better, Bruce thought, if he went off on his own again. There had to be something out there about Madeleine’s mother and her time in prison. He would figure it out himself. His eyes settled on the neat stack of folders sitting on the edge of Draccon’s desk, all of Madeleine’s documentation to date.
“And the rest of the conversation?” Draccon asked over her shoulder as she grabbed a thick black binder from her top shelf and pulled out a form.
Bruce opened his mouth, still torn about how to tell Draccon about Madeleine’s recounting of her mother’s arrest—but what came out instead was “She asked me about my parents. So I told her.”
“Then I’m glad we’re no longer sending you down there,” Draccon said, shaking her head. “It isn’t worth endangering you to risk getting some potential information out of her.” She sighed, then knelt to pull a container of folders from her bottom shelf. “Ah, here are your court papers.” For a moment, she disappeared from sight.
Bruce thanked Detective Draccon for her concern, but a rumble of doubt lingered in the back of his mind.
What if Madeleine was confiding in him?
And as Draccon searched for his paperwork, Bruce reached for the document showing Madeleine’s profile. He quietly rolled it up and tucked it into the inner pocket of his jacket. He needed to get to the bottom of this girl’s mysteries; he needed to get all the information he could. And he needed to do it without the police looking over his shoulder.
The next day, when Alfred dropped Bruce off at the entrance circle of WayneTech’s new labs, Bruce felt exhausted. His dreams had been a mess—prison halls bathed in bloody light, stairs that led down into darkness, a girl curled up tight in her inmate uniform, a menacing figure looming over him. He had dreamed of his hand against the glass, of Madeleine’s hand pressed against the opposite side, and of her telling him to be careful.
“You seem tired,” Lucius said as he greeted him by the entrance. He was dressed all in white today, the color a striking contrast against his black skin.
Bruce gave his mentor a smile as he fell into step with him. “Thanks. You look great, too,” he replied.
Lucius let out a chuckle. “Glad your time at Arkham’s coming to an end soon.”
Had Bruce already been at Arkham for so long? The dirty buckets of water and the menial labor would soon be far behind him, but so would the strange, secretive, brilliant girl locked away in the basement level, the seeming holder of information on the Nightwalkers.
“We’ve been hard at work perfecting the smallest details,” Lucius was saying as they cut through the main lobby. The mention of Bruce’s name snapped him out of his reprieve. He looked at Lucius as the man pressed a hand against the monitor at one end of a set of sliding glass doors, then waited as Bruce did the same. Two researchers offered them each a white coat and a pair of goggles. “If Gotham City is to use our technology as a part of their security and justice system, we’ll need to make sure everything feels foolproof. The citizens need to have full faith in us, as does the city council.” He looked at Bruce. “As do you.”
Heading down one of the lab’s corridors, Bruce felt a sense of déjà vu. He had walked these halls with his father back when Lucius was still an intern; now it felt oddly natural that Lucius would do the same with Bruce to help him learn the ropes. Thomas Wayne’s work could be seen everywhere in Wayne Industries—and especially here, in the experimental labs, Bruce could tell that the sleek lines of the halls and architecture were directly influenced by the discerning eye of his father.
At last, they stopped before a set of metal double doors stretching from the floor right up to the ceiling. Bruce straightened in anticipation. He had been to other parts of the building dozens of times—but these doors led into the prototype factory. The last time he was in here, he was a child, and his father was still alive.
Lucius grinned over his shoulder at Bruce while one of the other researchers typed a code into a panel beside the doorway. The panel beeped, turning green, and they walked inside.
The room looked even larger than Bruce remembered. A metal lattice of beams crisscrossed the ceiling, the space lit up by hundreds—thousands—of lights. Around them loomed objects of all shapes and sizes: several remodeled and fully customized Humvees, encased with dark metal plates and shielded tires; sheets of razor-thin metal erected one after another in a grid; an entire row of metal racks, each one holding what looked like arm cannons that belonged in science fiction. While one of the researchers asked Lucius a question, Bruce browsed the racks, picking up a few items and inspecting them.