The thought flashed through his head, here and gone in an instant. He blinked, embarrassed. She was a criminal, the type of person this drone was designed to arrest in the first place. Why would he care if she could understand enough about this technology to find it interesting?
“Ada can fold itself into several different sizes,” Lucius went on, nodding to the bot and tapping a few more buttons on his app. As they looked on, the bot’s metal legs elongated until it stood nearly twice as tall as it originally did—and then it furled itself back down, farther and farther, limbs contracting until it stood at almost exactly the same height as Bruce. “This allows it to have a stunning degree of mobility as it goes about its protective duties.”
“When will this roll out as a beta?” Bruce asked.
“During the gala,” Lucius replied, folding his hands behind his back. “We’ll have it there in place of a human security detail, to impress our guests.”
“Nice,” Bruce replied, but his thoughts were already returning to the Nightwalkers. He still didn’t know why they were stockpiling so many weapons, nor when they might strike next. His hand brushed against the frequency device he had stashed in his pocket. If he needed to talk to Madeleine again, he would need that, and if he had another confrontation like the one at the Bellingham building, he would desperately need the protection offered by the tech in this room.
He turned to Lucius. “Can you add me into the system so that I can come in here on my own? We won’t get a chance to meet like this very often for the next few months.” He cleared his throat and gave Lucius as earnest a look as he could. “I would love to study the drones a little more.”
“Of course.” Lucius bowed his head respectfully, a gesture he used to make to Bruce’s father. “This is your corporation, after all.”
That night, Bruce found himself lost in another nightmare. He was wandering the dark halls of his home again. The mansion seemed to stretch endlessly in all directions, halls turning into study rooms turning into balconies overlooking nothing but shadows. Alfred was nowhere to be seen. Bruce stopped in the dining room. Someone was lounging on the couch.
The storm raged—in Bruce’s dream, one of the large windows in the parlor shattered, scattering glass everywhere. A cold wind blew in, putting out the fire in a puff of smoke. Bruce cringed, throwing up an arm instinctively to shield his face—but when he looked again at the darkened parlor, the mysterious silhouette was no longer there. A hint of fear hummed underneath his skin, and he felt a sudden urge to run.
A hand touched his arm. He whirled around.
It was Madeleine.
She looked ghostly pale in the night, an apparition, beautiful. Her dark hair hung straight and shining over her shoulders, glinting blue underneath the slivers of light slicing the floors and walls. She smiled at him as if she had been expecting him, and Bruce felt himself smile back even as his skin prickled where her hand had rested. She wasn’t supposed to be here, was she? Had he forgotten something? She was a criminal, sitting behind a thick glass barrier at Arkham Asylum. So what was she doing here? It was difficult to understand things when he was around her, as if everything that would have seemed logical only a moment ago had now turned upside down, inside out.
“Don’t you remember?” she murmured, drawing close to him. “You got me out and brought me here.” Her voice was very quiet, raw with pain, and Bruce felt a tug on his heart at the sound. Her hands were small and cold against his chest.
Bruce leaned toward her until they were both against the wall. It took him a moment to realize that there was blood on her hands, and it left dark streaks on his skin.
“Do you think my brother deserved to suffer like he did?” she asked.
No. Of course not. Bruce winced as her words brought up the familiar feelings of his parents’ absence, and as he looked away, Madeleine’s arms came up to wrap around his neck. She touched his chin, gently guiding his face back toward her.
“Tell me the truth,” she murmured. Her eyes were so dark, the pupils black and indistinguishable from the irises. “You can’t stop thinking about me.”
I can’t.
She smiled. “And what exactly do you think of me, Bruce?”
Your lips. Your eyes. The twist of your smile. The blood on your hands. I want you. I’m afraid of you.
Bruce started to shake his head and step away—he knew she shouldn’t be here, that every fiber of his being told him that he was in grave danger—but she pulled him back toward her, tugging him down until his lips hovered over hers. Then he was kissing her, and her soft body was against his, and this—this—was everything he ever wanted. Why did he want to leave? She returned his kiss desperately. He felt light-headed—every muscle in his body had tensed in desire and in terror. He had never been with someone like her before, never been in the arms of a girl who genuinely scared him. It felt wrong, sickening…and yet, it was the greatest feeling in the world. He couldn’t pull away. He could only continue kissing her lips, then the line of her jaw, then her neck. He wanted to hear her sharp intake of breath, her whispering his name over and over. She wanted to be here, in his arms.
Run, Bruce. She is here to kill you.
Somewhere behind him came the unmistakable click of a gun barrel. Bruce flinched away from Madeleine and swung around. He was staring at a dark, blank wall. He whirled back—but Madeleine had vanished. The halls seemed to warp around him, closing in and then stretching out, and he shook his head, still dizzy from the heat of her lips on his. A sudden, bone-deep fear crept into his stomach. They were not alone here.
Nightwalkers. They’re going to seal me in. He had to get out of the house.
Bruce turned and ran. His steps seemed to drag through the air. He reached the front door and yanked it open, but instead of leading him outside, it only opened back into the same hall he’d just escaped from. Impossible. The broken window in the foyer was now intact. What little light there had been streaming through the windows now darkened, encasing Bruce in shadows. Somewhere in the darkness, he saw a silhouette run by. More footsteps. Whispers. The sound of a sharp object against metal.
“Madeleine!” he called out.
“I’m right here,” she replied behind him.
Bruce bolted out of his dream with a rasping gasp. A roll of thunder echoed from outside, and tree branches were slapping hard against the glass of his windowpane. He sat upright in bed for a few seconds, breathing heavily, his eyes still wide and darting around his room.
Had it really been a dream? Were the Nightwalkers here, in his home, sealing him in like Madeleine’s former victims, and hunting him down? He could still feel the burn of Madeleine’s lips, the warmth of her arms around his neck. His chest was slick with a sheen of cold sweat. Bruce stayed where he was until his breathing finally calmed down and the memory of his dream had started to fade, taking his terror with it. The storm continued to rage.