The Long Easter (II)

Another rainy night. Headlights flashed across the waterlogged road as Gordon, wearing rain boots, hurried down the stairs and shook hands with Schiller, who was coming up. In an exaggerated tone, he said, "Thank God, Professor, you came at just the right time!"

"Let’s go inside and talk."

Gordon pushed open the station door. Before he could lead Schiller into his office, a young officer came over and said, "Chief, all the interrogation rooms on the second floor are full. That drunk got into a fight with Scarface; it took three people to pull them apart. And that Black guy with the band tattoo is acting like a lunatic. We don’t have enough people to watch this many criminals…"

Gordon sighed. "If we catch anyone else later, don’t interrogate them. Just lock them up first."

Gordon led Schiller upstairs, walking quickly ahead of him without looking back. "That whole bunch has gone crazy lately. Gotham’s crime rate was twelve times higher today. The interrogation rooms and cells can’t hold everyone."

"I have no idea what’s going on. Everyone’s temper is through the roof." Once Gordon reached the corridor, he pointed toward the end of it. "The two people in that interrogation room got into a huge fight over a pack of cigarettes. And the couple in the room on the left—an argument between lovers turned into knives and guns…"

"I thought that was just a normal day in Gotham." Schiller hurried up the stairs as well and stopped behind Gordon.

"It used to be, but after the logistics system got running, there were fewer idle people like this. I didn’t expect it to happen again."

He sighed. "Still, it isn’t surprising. The flooding on the city roads is too severe, so logistics have basically come to a standstill. Everyone’s stuck at home with nothing to do."

"But you still think something is wrong, don’t you? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have called me."

"Exactly. Even when Gotham was rotten to the core, this many mentally ill people shouldn’t have appeared overnight."

"Right now, there are two people convulsing in the third-floor office, one foaming at the mouth, and another already rambling nonsense."

"Our officers tested them for alcohol and drugs, but nothing showed up. They just suddenly had an episode."

Standing at the office door with his hands on his hips, Gordon said to Schiller, "If it weren’t for that kid named Cobblepot having an episode last time, I wouldn’t have recognized it. But their symptoms are very similar, so I had to call you over. What the hell is going on?"

Schiller frowned and pushed open the office door. Several people were curled up in the corner, just like Cobblepot had been, soaked through and trembling nonstop while muttering to themselves.

Schiller shook his head. "I expected this. It’s a side effect of getting caught in the rain."

Gordon did not catch what he had said. Just as he was about to ask again, Schiller interrupted him. "Don’t worry about that for now. Transfer them to Arkham. Just as you suspected, this isn’t normal. I need to conduct further examinations."

By the time Schiller arrived at his office in Arkham Asylum, it was raining heavily again outside. Less than four hours had passed since the previous rainstorm.

Schiller walked to the window and watched raindrops strike the railing beyond the glass, reflecting a faint sheen. He silently calculated that the thunderstorms were becoming more frequent. What had once been every other day two weeks ago had turned into once a day, and today alone, there had already been three heavy downpours.

He left his office and knocked on the door of the neighboring ward. Batman’s voice came from inside. "Come in."

Schiller entered to find Batman and Cobblepot standing on opposite sides of a table, with a map of Gotham City spread across it. As soon as he walked in, Schiller said, "Looks like that plan disgusted them badly enough."

Cobblepot gave a sinister chuckle. Batman’s mouth twitched as he said, "You’ve given me a new understanding of just how despicable human tactical plans can be."

"If we didn’t use that method, then even if you caught their trail, they would only hide deeper instead of coming out on their own."

Batman sighed, his thoughts returning to several days earlier.

Evans, Batman, and Cobblepot had deduced how the Court of Owls monitored Living Hell: through the wells. But it was still only a hypothesis and needed further verification.

Batman had planned to infiltrate Living Hell himself, but Cobblepot refused. He considered Living Hell his territory and felt Batman had no need to interfere.

True to his usual suspicious nature, Batman did not trust Cobblepot and still intended to act on his own.

The two remained deadlocked. In the end, with Evans acting as mediator, they split up. Cobblepot investigated the North District while Batman investigated the South Side. Each did his own thing without interfering with the other.

During Living Hell’s reform, all six wells in the North District and South Side had been filled in. However, they had not been sealed from the bottom up. To avoid damaging the groundwater structure, supports had only been erected about three meters below the surface before concrete was poured over them, turning the top into solid ground. Everything below three meters remained part of the wells.

Batman methodically located an entrance to the sewers and planned to carve out an underground passage leading to the bottom of one of the wells.

But Cobblepot, an untrained outsider, had a broader way of thinking. He gathered Tire, Red Truck, Rocket Launcher, and the others into a team, intending to investigate by unconventional means.

Unlike Batman, who could throw money around as he pleased, these people lacked sturdy equipment. They did not even have Night Vision Goggles. It was unrealistic to expect them to map out Living Hell’s original layout through the complicated sewers, but unconventional people had unconventional methods.

That began with the old drug dealer who had provided them with the map.

Gotham never lacked talented people who had gone down the wrong path, and among the best of them were these drug dealers, who burrowed around like gophers.

In Gotham, the police would not really stop you from selling contraband, but the greatest danger came from your peers.

Those goods had to be stored and transported. Once other gangs discovered your storage site or transport route, you could only wait for your valuable merchandise to vanish without a trace.

To avoid that, most drug dealers operating in Living Hell had their own transport routes.

The old drug dealer was no exception. He had joined forces with several other major dealers and controlled most of the underground passages within Living Hell.

They did not use the surface at all. They moved their goods directly through underground passages, avoiding Living Hell’s gangs and reducing their chances of being robbed.

When Living Hell underwent reform, most of those underground passages had been destroyed by the foundation supports, but several remained usable. Cobblepot obtained the information and discovered the secret at the bottom of the wells faster than Batman did.

Their deduction had been correct. Of the five wells in the North District, three connected at the bottom to secret rooms. Those rooms were interconnected and led to a larger conference room.

After Cobblepot found this, he did not enter recklessly. Instead, he notified Batman.

Batman, who was more skilled at infiltration, made his way to the outskirts of those rooms. After investigating, he discovered that unlike the enormous conference room they had found earlier, this place showed signs of recent activity.

Batman thought that they had been right after all. If the owls had truly operated here for decades, they could not possibly abandon their territory in Gotham completely. Even if they had evacuated in a hurry because of some accident, they would certainly have left guards at their other bases.

After several days of surveillance, Batman discovered that Living Hell’s underground had apparently become a new base for members of the Court of Owls.

Following the principle that members of Gotham’s secret society shared intelligence, Batman briefly told Schiller about the situation. But as if he had prepared for it long ago, Schiller produced a plan that was incredibly exasperating, yet potentially highly effective.

As Schiller put it, catching the Court of Owls’ trail was not difficult. Even attacking their base was not difficult. But if they failed to succeed in one go, the Court would certainly flee and hide even deeper. That game of cat and mouse would never end.

So they needed a plan to force them out, make them expose a larger weakness, and create an opportunity to succeed in one strike.

The specific plan went like this: Schiller inferred that even if the Court of Owls was hiding underground, they still needed energy for lighting and communications.

So where did that energy come from?

It was not impossible that they had independent energy facilities of their own, but based on Schiller’s understanding of the Court of Owls, they were like tumors growing on a healthy body. The more likely possibility was that they had planted their own people among the workers during Living Hell’s reconstruction, then tapped into Living Hell’s energy system to supply themselves.

So Schiller had Gordon bring in Little Rascal, then had Cobblepot take Little Rascal around Living Hell twice.

Sure enough, Little Rascal quickly noticed that one power line was running in the wrong direction. Following it, Cobblepot found the energy pipeline leading to the Court of Owls’ base.

Besides the power line, there were other pipelines as well. Their aboveground sections were carefully concealed and left unguarded.

And Schiller’s final plan was to dump shit into them.

By connecting Living Hell’s sewage treatment pipes to the Court of Owls’ energy pipelines, Living Hell’s entire sewer system would be linked to the Court’s pipes.

The result went without saying. Nowhere in Gotham had a higher population density than Living Hell, so naturally, its shit-producing capacity was second to none.

"Their excrement flooded the base and turned it into one enormous methane pit."

Even Batman’s tone was beginning to crack. "And judging from the scene, some people didn’t manage to escape in time when it started pouring in…"

Batman fell silent for a moment, seemingly suppressing the nausea brought on by his imagination. Then he said with considerable fairness, "Disgusting, but effective."

"You said before that they trained quite a few Assassins. If I barged in alone, I couldn’t be sure I could defeat all of them."

"Even if I could, once they held me back and released the Assassins, Living Hell’s residents would suffer."

"Living Hell is the most densely populated place in Gotham. No matter what the Court of Owls did there, it would cause massive casualties. So we had to force them out. It was underhanded, but when they were running for their lives, they definitely wouldn’t have time to kill anyone."

Schiller looked at Batman. The corners of Batman’s mouth still turned downward, making him appear solemn and serious.

Schiller thought that perhaps this was what made Batman stand apart from other superheroes. Though he still could not entirely avoid individual heroism, he was willing to make concessions himself in exchange for tactical victory, rather than recklessly chasing glory just to display his strength.

When faced with a despicable tactic, Batman did not stand on the moral high ground and condemn it. Instead, he analyzed and judged it rationally. Perhaps that was precisely the basic quality of a Tactical master.