Batman 4 - Batman & Robin Read online

  Freeze stood, pulsing with power again. Removing a spare cryo-rifle from a pedestal nearby, he tucked it into the crook of his shoulder and pointed it at the helpless police.

  “All right, coppers.” He smiled humorlessly. “Freeze.”

  Then he fired, just in case.

  Rising to his feet and keeping one eye on Bane, Batman watched Ivy back Robin up against a giant vat.

  “Stop living in the shadow of the big, bad Bat,” she told him. “You don’t need him.” She blew more of her dust in his face. “You deserve your own legend, don’t you?”

  “My own . . . ?” he muttered.

  “Your own bright, shining signal in the cloud-streaked sky. Let me guide you, brave heart. Let me . . .” She touched his face with her fingertips. “. . . touch you. Kiss you . . .”

  It didn’t seem Robin could resist her anymore. He was at her mercy—until Batman hurled a tiny Batarang with pinpoint accuracy, hitting his protégé in the cheek.

  Fortunately, Bane was still woozy. He was hanging back, gathering his prodigious strength.

  “Remember the victim at the airport,” the Dark Knight shouted, his voice echoing in the confines of the factory’s basement. “Toxins introduced through the mouth.”

  Robin looked up at him. “What are you talking about?”

  As Bane lunged at him, Batman ducked and swung down to Robin’s level. “Why is she so desperate to kiss us?” he wondered out loud. “I’m betting her lips carry some kind of poison.”

  The boy’s eyes narrowed with skepticism. “A poison kiss? You have some real issues with women, you know that?”

  Robin advanced on his mentor, clearly still under Ivy’s influence. “You just couldn’t stand that she was about to kiss me.”

  He shoved Batman.

  “Couldn’t stand that something might be mine and not yours. Could you?”

  Robin shoved him harder still.

  Suddenly, Batman was overcome with fury. After all, he’d been pounded enough. Without thinking, he delivered a roundhouse blow, sending Robin smashing into a wall.

  Instantly, he was sorry for what he’d done. Heartachingly sorry. Going to Robin’s side, he tried to help him up. But the younger man shrugged him off and stood up on his own.

  “Ivy’s right,” he snapped. “I don’t need you. I should go solo. I should have my own signal in the sky.”

  Batman shook his head. “That’s ridiculous. You’re not ready for something like that.”

  Robin glared at him. “I’m ready when I say I’m ready. And if you don’t like it, you can—”

  Suddenly, Batman remembered the reason they’d come there in the first place. To get a lead on the villains. He looked around.

  But Ivy and Bane were already gone.

  Robin regarded him accusingly, as if it were Batman’s fault. And maybe it was, the Dark Knight reflected.

  Maybe it was.

  That’s when Commissioner Gordon rushed into the room. “What happened?” he asked. “How’d they get away?”

  Unfortunately, Batman didn’t have an answer for him. At least, not a good one.

  Ivy entered Freeze’s vault through the snaking passage he had described to her. And just as he had said she would, she discovered the sarcophagus containing Freeze’s wife.

  The woman was beautiful, no doubt about it. And her beauty wasn’t tarnished by her frozen state. If anything, it was enhanced.

  For a moment, Ivy considered what to do with the woman. Clearly, she was important to Freeze. But that was the problem, wasn’t it?

  Looking around, Ivy located the main power switch. Then she turned back to the frozen specimen that had once been a living, breathing person.

  “So sorry, Ms. Frigidaire. I’m just not very good with competition,” she explained reasonably.

  Then she pulled the switch. All over the chamber, status lights flashed red for danger.

  Too bad for Freeze’s wife there was no one there to see them. No one there to lift a finger to help as her high-tech chrysalis stopped working . . . as she died the death she had been meant to die.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  At the Turkish bathhouse on Blossom Street, which Ivy had converted into her personal headquarters, dawn’s light streamed through the broken ceiling. The ground, once a floor, was now a rich, thick garden.

  Tomato plants and exotic grapevines grew beside and over and through a jungle of cedar saplings and broad-leafed hostas and Japanese maples. There were hundreds of varieties of tree and shrub and ground cover, all coexisting in harmony, all content to be a part of the great intermingling.

  Satisfied with the results, Ivy strolled through them into a small anteroom, where Freeze was poring over some kind of freezing engine. Apparently, he had found what he needed to power up his suit again.

  And having zapped the walls and the ceiling with his cryo-weapon, he had created a world of ice for himself while he waited for her. Waited, that is, to see her carry out her end of the plan.

  Ivy’s mouth twitched. All that ice covered what had hours ago been young, thriving plants. She didn’t like that, not at all.

  But then, she’d killed what Freeze had loved. She could hardly stand on principle now, could she?

  “Make yourself right at home,” she said sarcastically.

  Freeze turned and regarded her. “Where is my wife?” he demanded.

  Ivy shrugged. “There was nothing I could do,” she lied. “The Bat deactivated her. She’s dead.”

  He was on his feet instantly, eyes blazing with cold fire. “You lie!” he roared, his voice full of pain and fury.

  She had never seen him like this. It excited her.

  Not hearing the reply he wanted, Freeze lunged for Ivy—but Bane was suddenly there between them, right on schedule. In his rage, Freeze shoved the giant across the room—no easy task.

  Bane came back at him with an eye to retaliation, but Ivy stilled him with a gesture. Then she turned to Freeze.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, lying again. “Really I am. I wish I could have helped her, but I was too late.”

  Then she reached into her bodice and held out the snowflake necklace she’d taken from his wife’s corpse. Freeze stopped as if mesmerized by it. Slowly, he took the chain in his trembling hand.

  His face twisted with savage intent. “Their bones will turn to ice,” he promised, his voice a scouring wind out of the north. “Their blood will freeze in my hands.”

  “Kill them,” Ivy agreed. “Of course. But why stop there?” She paused for effect. “Why should only Batman and Robin die while the society that created them goes unpunished?”

  Crossing to an ice-covered table, she picked up the frozen bauble of a tiny Gotham City that he’d handed to her at the Flower Ball. Turning it over in her hands, she showed him the blizzard that resulted.

  She could feel the intensity of Freeze’s glare. The muscles working in his jaw and temples.

  “Yes,” he hissed, his lips pulling back like a wolf’s. “Batman and Robin are just the tip of the iceberg. I will repay the world for sentencing me to a life without the warmth of human comfort. I will blanket the city in endless winter. First Gotham . . . and then the world.”

  Ivy looked at him. “Just what I had in mind. Everything dead on earth except us. A chance for Mother Nature to start again with a clean slate.” She picked up a frozen blossom. “Plants and flowers are the oldest species on the planet, yet they’re defenseless against man.” She spoke directly to the flower. “Sorry, hon. This is for science.”

  Grimacing with sympathy, she crushed the poor thing in her hand. “Behold the dawn of a new age.”

  Crossing to a canister labeled Project Gilgamesh, Ivy removed a savage, otherworldly plant with hissing fangs. Her favorite, actually.

  “What is that?” asked Freeze.

  She smiled. “I’ve created a race of plants with the strength of the deadliest animals. Once you have frozen humankind, my mutant lovelies will overrun the globe. The earth w
ill become a brave, new world of flora without fauna. And we will rule them, you and I. For we will be the only two people left in the world.”

  Freeze granted. “Adam and Evil.”

  So he wasn’t entirely enchanted with the prospect. Ivy could accept that. In time, she was certain, he would change his mind.

  As she watched, Freeze lifted the bauble, held it in the palm of his hand. His gauntlet glowed blue—and the tiny spires of Gotham froze over. Then he closed his fingers on it and crushed it into frozen pieces.

  “You will distract the Bat and the Bird,” he told her, “while I prepare to freeze Gotham.”

  Ivy thought for a moment. “Can’t we just ice them along with the rest of the citizenry?”

  Freeze shook his head. “No. That is far too merciful. Batman will watch his beloved Gotham perish—just as my beloved perished. Then I will kill him with my own hands.”

  Sounds like a plan, Ivy thought. “As a team, the duncely duo protect each other. But Robin is young. Impetuous. If I could get him alone—”

  “One kiss,” said Freeze, “and you could lift the mask from his lifeless face. Their secret identities would be revealed.”

  “Yes,” she conceded. “That might be a step in the right direction.”

  “But how best to bait a bird?” Freeze wondered.

  “No problem there,” Ivy assured him. “The way to a boy’s heart is through his ego. What strapping, young hero could resist his very own . . . signal?”

  Her ally nodded coldly. “Inspired, Ms. Ivy.”

  “You know,” she said, placing her hands together, “I’m hungry all of a sudden. I think I’ll have some . . . poultry.”

  Dick stood in the hallway outside Alfred’s room alongside Barbara. Dr. Simpson was frowning, deepening the seams in his ruddy, weathered face.

  “It’s stage one of McGregor’s Syndrome,” the doctor said soberly. “I’m sorry. All we can do is make him comfortable.”

  Dick felt numb. Unreal.

  He looked past the door to Alfred’s room, which was partially open. Bruce was inside, sitting beside Alfred’s bed in his black tuxedo. And Alfred was stretched out, looking weaker than the boy had ever seen him.

  Dick hadn’t known Alfred as long as Bruce had. But that didn’t mean he didn’t feel the same way about him.

  Barbara couldn’t speak. For all her courage, all her spunk, she was as floored by the news as Dick was.

  Dick bit his lip. “There’s got to be something we can do to make him better. Something . . .”

  Simpson frowned. “Only if you know of a cure, son. To my knowledge, there isn’t any.”

  Dick’s eyes lit up as he remembered something.

  There is a cure, he told himself. There is.

  “I can’t do this,” said Bruce. “They’ll have to find someone else to keynote the dedication.”

  Alfred looked up at him from his bed. “Nonsense, sir. You can do it and you will. My being ill doesn’t herald the end of the world. There are still duties that must be discharged—both by Bruce Wayne and by his alter ego.”

  Bruce sighed. Alfred was right, of course. He was always right, always a source of wisdom. The younger man shook his head.

  “I’ve spent my whole life trying to beat back death. I’ve worked hard at it. But everything I’ve done, everything I’m capable of doing . . . what’s it all for if I can’t save you?”

  Alfred’s voice softened. “Everyone dies, Master Bruce. There is no shame in that, no defeat. Victory comes in fighting for what we know is right while we still live.”

  Bruce looked past Alfred to another time and place. He imagined a younger Alfred reading to him as a boy. He could see the boy’s eyes lighting up, fascinated with some adventure, filled with a hopefulness he might never have otherwise known.

  Finishing his story, the younger Alfred bade him good night and turned out the light. And the boy bade him good night in turn.

  Bruce swallowed and turned to his friend again, tears standing out in his eyes. “I love you, old man. I love you with all my heart.”

  Alfred sighed. “I know that,” he said. “I know also that I am very proud of you . . . very, very proud. And I love you too . . . son.”

  They embraced.

  It was Alfred who withdrew first. “It’s time for you to go,” he said. “I’d be a poor manservant indeed if I failed to remind you of that.”

  Bruce took a tremulous breath, let it out. “You’re certain you’ll be all right?” he asked.

  The butler nodded. “Positive. Nor do I expect you to return immediately after the dedication. After all, that is merely one of the functions you will wish to perform this night.”

  Bruce smiled. “You know me that well, do you?”

  “Better than you know yourself,” Alfred told him. Nor was it anything but the truth.

  Reluctantly, the younger man left the room. He took his coat from the post at the bottom of the stairs and started for the door.

  As he was donning the coat, he saw Dick standing in the foyer. Waiting there for him.

  “McGregor’s Syndrome,” said the boy. “That was what Freeze’s wife had.”

  “Yes,” said Bruce, seeing where he was going with this. “Though Alfred’s condition is less severe. And yes, Freeze’s research says he cured a case like Alfred’s. But it doesn’t say how.”

  “I checked the medical database,” Dick informed him. “No one else is even close to a cure.”

  Bruce sighed. “I’m late for the dedication at the observatory. Then I go after Freeze and Ivy. Alone.”

  His ward’s eyes narrowed. “Like hell you do.”

  Bruce could feel the anger rising in him again. How was it Dick Grayson could press his buttons like no one else in the world?

  “Don’t push me now,” he said.

  “Or what?” asked the boy. “No one can capture Ivy but the big, bad Bat? That’s crap, and you know it. You just want her for yourself, don’t you? Answer me!”

  “Yes!” Bruce blurted. “Yes, I want her so badly I can taste it. That’s the whole point. Look at us, Dick. Orphans. Isolated. Obsessed to the exclusion of life, love, family. We’re perfect targets for someone like Ivy.” He came to a realization even as he said it. “She’s done something to us, got us fighting over her somehow.”

  After Robin’s outburst at Freeze’s headquarters, the boy seemed to have simmered down. Bruce had believed Dick was in command of his senses again—that he’d managed to overcome Ivy’s love dust.

  Apparently, he’d been wrong. And it wasn’t only Dick who was still laboring under Ivy’s influence. Bruce had to admit it was him as well.

  “She understands me,” Dick said. “For godsakes, she was going to surrender to me.”

  “She was toying with you,” Bruce insisted.

  The younger man threw his arms up. “Hail the all-knowing Bruce Wayne! I may not know as much as you, but I know this—she loves me, not you, and it’s driving you crazy. It’s why you stopped us from kissing. Because if you can’t have her, nobody can.”

  Bruce shook his head. “That’s crazy, Dick. She’s clouded your mind. You’re not thinking straight.”

  “Oh,” said his ward, “but I am. For the first time in a long time, everything’s crystal clear. I’m through living in your shadow, Bruce. All that subservient stuff ends here and now.”

  Having said that, Dick brushed past him, headed for the back door. Bruce stared after him, wondering what to do, what to say. But all he could see when he tried to think was Ivy.

  As he attempted to clear his head, the doorbell rang. Abruptly, he realized it wasn’t the first time.

  He went to answer it. But before he could pull it open, it swung of its own accord. Or at least it appeared that way until Julie walked in, flushed with anger. There was a limo waiting behind her.

  “I’ve been ringing forever,” she huffed. “Where’s Alfred?”

  Bruce didn’t answer. He had to get to Dick, he told himself. He had to re
ason with the boy before he did something stupid.

  But before he could go after him, he heard the roar of a motorbike as it peeled out of the garage. And by that sign, he knew it was too late.

  Barbara entered Alfred’s room as soon as she saw Bruce depart. But already, the old man in the bed seemed to be slumbering.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I was too late.”

  “Too late for what, dear child?” Alfred asked without opening his eyes.

  Barbara looked at him askance. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “Nonetheless,” he said, “you said you were too late. I would like to know of what you were speaking.”

  She sighed. “I just wanted to take you away from this place. I wanted you to have a chance to live your own life. A man like you doesn’t deserve to be a slave, Uncle.”

  Alfred’s eyes opened. They seemed to sparkle, despite his condition. “A slave? Oh no, child.”

  “Come,” she insisted. “You’ve been a servant, doing things for others you might have done for yourself.”

  He shook his head. “No. I have been part of something special here—the greatest adventure ever known. I have found purpose in this house, and the family I could never have.”

  Suddenly, he was hit with a wave of pain. She reached for him, sat on the bed beside him, and held him until it passed.

  “You must do something for me,” he said, his voice a little weaker than before. Taking her hand, he put an envelope in it. “Find my brother Wilfred, child. Give him this. I have duties he must fulfill in my stead.” He thrust his chin out, “Only family can be trusted.”

  Barbara looked at the envelope. There was something harder and heavier than a letter in it. “What is it?” she asked.

  “It is the sacred trust of two good men, whom I have had the honor of calling son. Take it, child. But I implore you, never open it yourself.” Alfred touched her cheek and seemed to look right through her. “You know,” he said, “you look so like your mother.”

  With that, his eyes closed.

  She leaned closer to him, consumed with worry. “Uncle Alfred?”