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“Crane,” Batman growled, emerging from the shadows of the room. The door had not opened, Jonathan noted, which either meant that Batman did not need to open doors or that he had already been in here. He wasn’t sure which one was scarier, and made a mental note to test the reaction of unknown and unnoticed versus unknown metas next time he broke out. “I need to know what you added to your new fear gas.”
“Curious,” Jonathan replied, cocking his head behind the straw mask. “You seem to think I’ll tell you.”
“You surrendered pretty quickly.”
He laughed at that, a small, cold thing, dying seconds after leaving his lips. “Oh, Batman. I’m no fool. I’m a professor, a scientist. If I hadn’t held my hands out you’d have broken every bone in my body. There were no other exits to escape through.”
“And you understand that you have the same ultimatum now, Dr. Crane.”
Adding the title in now they were bargaining, no more fear. “I do. I got a hold of a sample of the last antidote and synthesised it to see how it worked. I then added the green chemical Joker uses in his Joker Putty to prevent the antidote from binding to the fear gas and neutralising it.”
Batman hissed out a breath of air through his teeth, visibly calculating how to counteract that. Jonathan supposed that his fear gas was more lethal than normal—mixing it with Joker Gas made poison, so taking a chemical from Joker Putty probably worked similarly.
“Is that all?”
“Yes. Thank you, Dr. Crane. You will be transferred back to Arkham soon.” He turned on his heel and left, the door thudding shut behind him, deadbolts pulled across.
Jonathan was still no clearer on whether Batman was human, meta, or monster, but at least he was alone with empty shadows.
Probably empty shadows.
He could feel his heartbeat pick up as he peered into the darkness, uncertain.