Chapter 52: Interrogation
The first sensation was cold. A deep, pervasive wet chill that seeped through his clothes and into his bones. The second was the drumming, a steady, metallic patter on a surface close to his head. Rain.
Reese opened his eyes. A charcoal-gray sky swirled above him, shot through with the sickly orange glow of Gotham’s light pollution. Droplets hit his face, beading on his eyelashes. He was lying on his back on a roof. Not just any roof—a flat, tar-papered expanse with a low parapet, the edges overlooking a dizzying drop into a rain-slicked alley far below.
He pushed himself up on his elbows. Every muscle protested, a symphony of ache centered around a deep, electric throb in his side where Batman’s gauntlet had made contact. The world tilted for a second, then righted itself. He was alone. And then he wasn’t.
A shadow detached itself from the bulkhead housing the roof access door. It didn’t move so much as unfold, becoming a shape that seemed to drink the dim light. The cape lifted slightly in the wet wind.
“Comfy?” Reese’s voice was rough, scratched from the shock and the fall. He sat all the way up, wincing. “A little warning next time. I’d have brought a blanket.”
Batman stepped into the diffuse light. Rain streaked the dark armor, gleaming on the cowl’s ears. The white lenses were fixed on him, unblinking. “The Falcone hit. Who gave the order?”
Reese let out a short, pained laugh. He gestured around the empty roof. “This the new interrogation room? Bit drafty. Lacks ambiance. No two-way mirror, just… a whole city that doesn’t give a shit.”
“The order.” The voice was that modulated growl, flat and devoid of weather, of time, of any human variable.
“Mine,” Reese said, brushing wet grit from his hands. “Saw a vacancy sign. Thought I’d redecorate. You like what I did with the place?” He nodded toward the distant, invisible Falcone house.
Batman took a single, silent step closer. The space between them crackled with the tension of the recent fight. “You’re a tool. A favored one, maybe. Sharp. Useful.” Another step. “But Sionis collects tools. And he breaks them when they’re dull, or when they attract the wrong kind of attention.”
“You giving me career advice?” Reese tilted his head, a smirk playing on his lips despite the throbbing in his skull. “Kinda sweet. Worried about me?”
“I’m showing you the edge you’re standing on.” Batman was close enough now that Reese could see the fine seam where the cowl met the neck, the individual droplets caught on the grainy texture of the kevlar. “Marco Falcone was in protective custody. You walking in there tipped our hand. Sionis knew. He used you to flush them out.”
The words landed, cold and precise. Reese kept the smirk plastered on his face. “So I’m a decoy. Still a step up from being your punching bag. The pay’s better.”
“Is it?” Batman’s head inclined slightly. “What’s your life worth to him, Reese? The cost of a bullet? The time it takes to replace you with someone just as hungry, just as angry?”
Reese pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly. He met the white lenses from his full height, which still left him looking up. “You’re trying real hard to get me to doubt my boyfriend. It’s cute. Jealous?”
A gauntleted hand shot out, faster than the rain falling, and closed around the front of Reese’s jacket. He was yanked forward, off balance, until he was inches from the expressionless mask. The grip was immense, crushing the breath from his lungs.
“He left you,” Batman growled, the mechanized voice low and final. “We were on you the moment you entered that neighborhood. He knew. He had to. And he let you walk in alone.”
Reese’s heart hammered against his ribs. The grip was suffocating. He could feel the cold of the armor through his soaked clothes. Instead of struggling, he relaxed into it, his eyes half-lidding. “Getting a little handsy now, aren’t we? Buy me a drink first.”
The hand shoved him back, releasing him so abruptly he stumbled. Reese caught himself against the parapet, the wet stone cold under his palms. He coughed, drawing in a ragged breath.
“You’re a liability now,” Batman continued, relentless. “You’ve been seen with me. Twice. Your face is in my files. For a man who values control, that’s contamination. He’ll cut you out.”
Rain plastered Reese’s hair to his forehead. He pushed it back, the gesture defiant. “You don’t know him.”
“I know his pattern. He elevates, he tests, he discards. You’ve reached the test. The Falcone house was it. And you failed.” Batman’s voice didn’t rise. It was a statement of fact, cold and hard as the rooftop. “He wanted them dead. You didn’t deliver. What do you think happens to tools that fail their purpose?”
Reese leaned against the parapet, looking out at the sprawling, rain-blurred city. The place Roman was methodically claiming, block by bloody block. He thought of the warehouse, of Roman’s hand on his neck in the car afterwards. My definitive instrument. The pride in that, the ownership.
He turned back to the dark silhouette. “You’re right about one thing.” He let his smile return, wider this time, more dangerous. “I am a tool. But I’m not a shovel. I’m a scalpel. You don’t throw a scalpel away after one cut. You sterilize it. You keep it sharp.” He took a step toward Batman, closing the distance again, his voice dropping to a mock-conspiratorial whisper. “And you only use it for the most delicate work.”
Batman didn’t move. “Delicate. Like assassinating a mayor’s allies?”
So he knew about Hemming. Of course he did. Reese’s grin didn’t falter. “See? You get it. You’ve been paying such close attention to me. It’s almost like you care.”
“The mayor is compromised. You and Sionis own him. That ends tonight.”
“Ooh, a ultimatum.” Reese put a hand to his chest, feigning awe. “So dramatic. All this rain, the gloomy music in your head… you really set the scene, Bats.” He dropped the act, his eyes hardening. “But here’s the thing. You could drag me down to whatever cave you’re fond of. You could shine a light in my face for a week. You won’t get a name. You won’t get a number. You’ll just get a lot of really charming commentary about your brooding aesthetic.”
He took another step forward, until the rain running off Batman’s cape spattered his own battered jacket. “Roman doesn’t find me dispensable. He finds me irreplaceable. Because I look at you… and I don’t see a monster. I see a guy in a tactical suit having a real bad night. And I laugh.”
For the first time, there was a beat of silence, filled only by the rain. Reese pressed the advantage, his voice a low, flirty taunt. “That bothers you, doesn’t it? That you don’t scare me. That all your growling and your gadgets just make me want to ruffle your little bat-ears. What’s the matter? Can’t handle someone who doesn’t play the scared little victim?”
Batman’s hand moved again, but not to grab him. It went to his utility belt. He produced a small, clear evidence bag. Inside was a micro-drive, sleek and black. “We pulled this from the Falcone house security system. Partial overwrite. Good tech. Not yours.” He held it up. “Sionis’s people scrubbed it remotely thirty seconds after I neutralized you. They saw you go down. They cut the feed. They left you.”
The words were meant to be a hammer blow. Reese felt them, a cold spike in his gut. He forced a shrug, a fluid roll of his shoulders. “Standard op-sec. You think I wanted my good side on camera? I look terrible from the left.”
“They left you,” Batman repeated, emphasizing each word, “with me.”
“And yet here I am, on a roof, not in a cage.” Reese spread his arms, the gesture encompassing the empty, rainy expanse. “Maybe he trusts I can handle myself. Maybe he knows you’re all talk and a cool cape.”
Batman stared at him. Reese could feel the analysis behind those lenses, the cold calculation weighing his defiance, his humor, his absolute refusal to bend. He was a locked box, and every attempt to pry him open just seemed to make the lock click tighter.
The vigilante finally spoke, his tone shifting from interrogation to a cold, final prophecy. “He’ll use you until he can’t. And when he can’t, he’ll break you. To prove he can. To prove no one is an exception.”
Reese met the lifeless gaze, the rain mixing with the blood still trickling from a cut on his temple. He let every ounce of the loyalty, the twisted pride, the sheer fucking audacity he felt show on his face, unguarded and fierce.
“You keep telling yourself that,” he said softly, almost kindly. “It’ll make it so much more fun when I’m the one who breaks you for him.”
For a long moment, they stood there in the downpour, locked in a stalemate made of will and contradictory certainties. Then, without another word, Batman turned. He walked to the edge of the roof, a shape dissolving into the greater darkness, and was gone.
Reese didn’t move. He listened to the rain, to the distant wail of a siren. The cold was settling deep into his joints. He touched his side where the shock had hit him, then his face where the cut stung.
He fished his phone from his pocket. It was damp, but it worked. No calls. No messages.
He thumbed a single key, a direct line. It rang twice.
“The package was delivered,” Roman’s voice came through, calm, clear, unaffected by weather or doubt. “A little scuffed, but intact.”
Reese looked out at the city, at the kingdom they were building from its ashes. A slow smile spread across his face, genuine this time.
“Told you I could handle myself,” he said.
Roman’s reply was a soft, quiet sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. It was approval. It was ownership.
“Come home,” Roman said, and the line went dead.
Reese slid the phone back into his pocket. He stayed at the parapet a minute longer, watching the rain erase the shadow that had been there. Then he turned and walked toward the roof door, each step a promise, each ache a trophy.
The tool was sharp. And it was headed back to its master.
And it was headed back to its master.
The gym was empty this late, a cathedral of silence after the storm. The usual thump of gloves on bags, the grunts of effort, the sharp commands were absent, leaving only the hum of refrigeration units and the faint drip of a leaky faucet somewhere in the shadows. The polished floor reflected the harsh fluorescent lights in long, stark columns. Reese pushed through the heavy door, the warmth hitting his cold, damp skin like a physical wall.
He tried to walk normal, to keep his breathing even, but every step sent a jolt from his side where Batman’s gauntlet had lit up his nervous system. His right knuckles were split and swollen from connecting with that armored jaw. A headache, a deep, persistent throb, had set up shop behind his eyes. He moved toward the lockers, aiming for the solace of a cold compress and a bottle of aspirin.
“Stop.”
Roman’s voice cut through the empty space. It wasn’t loud. It was a scalpel. Reese froze, his back to the ring where the sound had come from. He slowly turned.
Roman sat on the edge of the apron, legs dangling, dressed in simple black sweats. The ebony mask was off, resting on the canvas beside him. His face was all stark planes and shadows under the light, the scar a pale slash. His eyes, however, were completely alive, tracking Reese’s every micro-movement from across the room.
“You’re walking stiff,” Roman said. It wasn’t a question. “Left side. Favoring it.”
Reese forced a shrug, a roll of his shoulders that pulled at the bruised muscles. “Rain’s a bitch. Makes the old joints ache.” He tried a grin. “Getting old, I guess.”
Roman didn’t smile. He hopped down from the apron, the movement fluid and silent. He crossed the space between them with a predatory leisure, his gaze never leaving Reese’s body. He stopped just inches away, the scent of his cologne—spice and something chemical-clean—cutting through the gym’s sweat-and-leather smell.
“Let me see,” Roman said, his voice low.
“It’s nothing. Batman just—”
“I said,” Roman interrupted, his hand coming up, not to strike, but to hover near Reese’s jaw, “let me see.”
Reese held still. Roman’s fingers, cool and precise, touched his chin, tilting his head to examine the cut on his temple from the flying glass. His thumb brushed over it, a clinical assessment. Reese didn’t flinch.
The fingers drifted down, tracing the line of Reese’s throat, over his collar bone. They pressed lightly against his shoulder joint, then his ribs. When they found the epicenter of the shock-burn on his side, Reese couldn’t suppress a sharp intake of breath.
Roman’s eyes flicked up to his. “He used the taser function.”
“Got my attention,” Reese managed, his teeth slightly clenched.
Roman’s probing continued, mapping the damage. His touch was neither gentle nor cruel; it was analytical, an inventory of assets and liabilities. He took Reese’s right hand, examining the swollen knuckles. “You hit him.”
“Had to say hello.”
“And he talked back.” Roman finally released him, taking a half-step back to assess the whole picture. The man before him was a catalogue of small, meaningful damages. “What did he say?”
Reese exhaled, the act of standing straight becoming a conscious effort. “The usual. That I’m your tool. That you’ll break me when I’m dull.” He met Roman’s piercing blue stare. “Said you left me there. That you knew about the cops and let me walk in anyway.”
A faint, almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of Roman’s scarred mouth. “And you said?”
“I told him he doesn’t scare me. That his whole brooding vigilante act just makes me wanna fuck with him.” Reese’s grin returned, genuine this time, edged with pain. “He didn’t like that.”
Roman was silent for a moment, his gaze dissecting. “He’s fixated on you.”
“Seems that way.”
“Not on me. Not directly. On you.” Roman turned and walked a few paces toward his office, his mind clearly already clicking through implications. “He could have taken you in. He didn’t. He could have pressed harder on the rooftop. He let you go.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “He’s profiling you. Trying to find a lever.”
Reese followed him, the stiffness in his side a persistent, burning echo. “He won’t find one.”
“Everyone has a lever.” Roman stopped at the door to his office, holding it open. “The point is he’s looking for yours instead of focusing on the board. He’s distracted.” He entered the dim room, going straight to a heavy decanter of amber liquid. He poured two glasses. “A distracted enemy is a vulnerable enemy.”
Reese accepted the glass, the crystal cool in his hand. He took a sip, the whiskey burning a clean path down his throat. “You think we can use it.”
Roman leaned against his desk, swirling his own drink. His eyes were alive with a cold, tactical light. “He sees a tool he thinks he can pry loose. He sees defiance he thinks he can twist into doubt.” He took a drink, his gaze never leaving Reese. “So we show him a tool. We show him defiance. We let him get close.”
Reese understood immediately. A slow, dark smile spread across his face, softening the ache in his muscles. “Make him think he’s turning me.”
“Make him invest,” Roman corrected, nodding. “Time, attention, focus. While he’s busy trying to win you over, he’s not looking at the mayor. He’s not watching the docks. He’s playing a psychological game with a single piece while the rest of the board moves against him.” He set his glass down with a soft click. “You became a liability the moment he let you walk off that roof. Now we turn that liability back into an asset.”
Reese finished his whiskey, the warmth spreading through his chest. “He wants a projection. Someone angry at the world, ripe for recruitment.” He looked at Roman, the plan solidifying between them without another word being said. “I can be that.”
“You are that,” Roman said, pushing off the desk. He closed the distance again, but this time his hand came up to cup the back of Reese’s neck, his thumb stroking the shorn hair at his nape. It was a claim, not a comfort. “You just work for me.” His eyes searched Reese’s face, the injuries, the defiance simmering beneath the pain. “Can you do it? Let him think he’s getting through? Let him believe he’s the one you really want to please?”
Reese leaned into the touch, the possessiveness of it a better analgesic than any whiskey. He thought of Batman’s cold, modulated voice on the rainy roof, the absolute certainty in his warnings. He thought of Roman’s hands on him now, cataloging what was his.
“Yeah,” Reese said, his voice low and sure. “I can make him believe anything. As long as you’re the one who owns the truth.”
A week later, Reese stood in the fluorescent glare of a longshoreman’s office at the South Docks. The air smelled of stale coffee, old fish, and the sharp tang of fear. Two of Roman’s newer guys—Leo’s replacements—were dragging a shipping foreman by his arms. The man’s pleas were a high, thin whine against the hum of the industrial cooler.
“The manifest,” Reese said, his voice flat. He leaned against a dented metal desk, flipping a gravity knife open and closed. Click. Click. Click.
“I don’t have it! The Falcone guys, they took it last week, I swear—”
Click. Reese stopped the blade mid-flick. “See, that’s a problem. Mr. Sionis paid for that manifest. He doesn’t like buying the same thing twice.” He nodded to the guys. “Help him remember.”
They did. It wasn’t pretty, but it was efficient. Five minutes later, Reese had a blood-smeared digital pad in his hand, scrolling through lists of crate numbers and customs codes. He tossed it to one of the men. “Match these to the containers on Lot C. Anything with a red stripe gets loaded onto our trucks. Anything else…” He shrugged. “Let the harbor rats have it.”
He led from the front now. Not just enforcer, but field commander. The Falcone house had been a test, Roman had said. He’d passed. So Roman gave him more: the docks, a protection racket squeezing trendy restaurants in the Coventry, the hostile takeover of a nitrous oxide distribution network from the Maroni stragglers. Reese moved through these operations with a detached, sardonic efficiency. He issued orders in a tone that brooked no debate, joked with the crew about the messiness of the work, and spent the drives back to the gym in silence, watching the city bleed past his window.
He made sure he was visible. He used the same black muscle car, parked it in the open. He held meetings in back rooms with windows. He was a flashing beacon for any winged surveillance.
Batman didn’t come.
Not during the restaurant collections. Not when they intercepted the nitrous shipment in a graffiti-splashed underpass, the transaction lit by headlights and punctuated by the sound of crunching metal and breaking bones. Reese found himself listening for the rustle of a cape in the wind, watching the shadows above the construction girders for a silhouette that never appeared. The absence was a presence in itself, a constant, itching pressure between his shoulder blades.
The team noticed. A guy named Kovacs, built like a brick wall and about as smart, muttered about “bad luck” after a clean operation yielded less cash than projected. “Feel like we’re being watched,” he’d grumbled, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands.
Reese had just smiled, clapping him on the shoulder. “Maybe you are. Ever think maybe I like an audience?”
They hit a drug lab three nights later, a ramshackle apartment in the Bowery pretending to be a yoga studio. The smell of ammonia and synthetic sweat was overwhelming. Reese was in the main room, overseeing the destruction of the equipment—sledgehammers on cheap glassware, a beautiful, destructive cacophony—when the lights died.
Not a blackout. A precise, localized cut.
One second, the room was a flickering hellscape of torchlight and flying glass. The next, it was plunged into a silence so profound Reese could hear the drip of a broken pipe in the kitchen. His men froze, silhouetted against the streetlight bleeding through the windows.
Then the screaming started from the hallway.
It was a short, guttural sound, cut off with a wet choke. Reese spun, his gun already in his hand. He saw motion—a shadow moving through his men. It wasn’t a fight; it was a system failure. A shape would materialize, there would be a crunch, a gasp, and the thud of a body hitting the floor. No shots. Just efficient, brutal physics.
Kovacs was the last one standing between Reese and the door. He raised his shotgun, yelling a wordless challenge into the dark. A batarang glinted in the low light, slicing through the air. It didn’t hit Kovacs. It severed the strap of the shotgun. The weapon fell. A black glove grabbed the barrel, yanking Kovacs forward off-balance, and a kick to his chest sent him flying backwards into a shelving unit. He slid down, out cold.
Silence rushed back in, heavier than before.
Reese lowered his gun. He couldn’t shoot what he couldn’t see, and firing blind was a good way to kill his own guy. He took a slow breath, the chemical air burning his lungs. “Took you long enough,” he said, his voice loud in the ruined room. “I was starting to think you’d stood me up.”
From the deeper darkness near the door, the shadow coalesced. Batman stepped into a slant of pallid moonlight from the window. He was just… there. A statue of vengeance and judgment, powdered drywall dust settling on his shoulders like snow.
“This is beneath you,” the modulated voice stated. It wasn’t an opinion. It was a verdict.
“What, interior decorating?” Reese gestured at the shattered beakers, the spilled powders. “I think it’s an improvement. More open concept.”
Batman moved. Not the explosive violence from the Falcone library, but a slow, deliberate walk across the littered floor. He stepped over an unconscious man without looking down. “Sionis is expanding your duties. Sending you to do the work of common thugs.” He stopped a few feet away. “He’s diluting your value.”
Reese holstered his gun, a casual, deliberate act of vulnerability. He tilted his head. “You’ve been reading my performance reviews. I’m touched, really. Got any notes? ‘Does not play well with others’?” He took a step closer, closing the distance. He could see the fine scratches on the chest emblem, the way the cape hung perfectly still. “Or is your note just ‘obsessed’?”
“You’re a stalking horse,” Batman said, ignoring the taunt. “He puts you out front to draw fire. To see what I do. You’re expendable reconnaissance.”
“A stalking horse.” Reese laughed, a real, bright sound in the dark room. “I like that. Sexy. Mysterious.” He took another step, now within arm’s reach. He could smell the night air on him, the unique scent of kevlar and Gotham grime. “If I’m the horse, what does that make you? The hungry wolf? All alone, following me from one shitty neighborhood to the next?” He reached out, his movement slow and deliberate, and brushed a trace of the white dust from Batman’s shoulder. The material was unexpectedly hard, unyielding. “Lonely way to spend an evening, Bats.”
Batman didn’t flinch. The white lenses stared, unblinking. “You enjoy this.”
“The company’s grown on me.” Reese left his hand there for a moment longer than necessary, a confident, intimate pressure on the armored pauldron, then let it drop. “It’s more fun than listening to Kovacs here complain about his bunions.”
“He’s using you until you break.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.” Reese’s smile turned razor-sharp. “Maybe I’m the one using him. Ever think of that? His resources. His intelligence. His protection.” He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Maybe I’m just where I want to be.”
For a long moment, Batman said nothing. The only sound was the dripping pipe and the low moan of one of the men on the floor. The vigilante’s head turned slightly, surveying the wrecked lab, the incapacitated crew. The message was clear: with barely any effort, he had dismantled everything Reese had built here.
“You can’t protect them,” Batman stated, his gaze returning to Reese. “You can’t protect his empire. And he can’t protect you.”
“Who says I want protection?” Reese said, stepping back and spreading his arms, a target in the moonlight. “I want a front-row seat. And buddy, the show you’re putting on?” He shook his head, a mock-admiring sigh. “It’s to die for.”
He expected another retort, another ominous warning. Instead, Batman turned and melted back into the darkness of the hallway, as silent as he’d arrived. The darkness didn’t feel empty, though. It felt charged, like the air after a lightning strike.
Reese stood amidst the ruin of the lab and his team. The chemical stench clawed at his throat. He looked at Kovacs, out cold by the shelves. He looked at the others, groaning on the floor. A clean operation, now a complete loss.
He pulled out his phone, his fingers steady. He texted Roman two words: He came.
The response was almost immediate: And?
Reese took a picture of the unconscious men, the shattered equipment, the empty doorway. He sent it.
A moment later, his phone buzzed. Roman’s message glowed on the screen: Good.
Reese slid the phone back into his pocket. He walked over to Kovacs, nudged him with his boot. The man groaned. “Alright, naptime’s over,” Reese said, his voice ringing with a lightness he didn’t feel. “Let’s go. The night’s still young, and I’m dying for a drink.”
He helped haul the men to their feet, his mind already blocks away, already in the quiet of the gym, replaying the touch on Batman’s shoulder, the absolute stillness it had been met with, and the dangerous, glittering game that was only just beginning.