Chapter 65: Here he Comes
The ninety minutes passed in a brittle quiet. Logan moved through the penthouse dressing in dark, practical layers, the fabric feeling foreign against his skin, which still hummed with a residual alertness. Every minor sound—the zip of his jacket, the tap of his boot heel on concrete—seemed amplified. He found the gas mask where Roman had left it on the entryway table, a sleek, modern apparatus unlike the bulky military surplus he’d expected. He picked it up. The rubberized straps felt cold and alien in his hands.
Roman emerged from the bedroom. He was not wearing a suit. He wore tactical black, tailored and silent, and in his hand he carried the black wooden mask. He didn’t speak as he crossed the room, his movements economical and precise. He stopped before Logan, his eyes scanning him from head to toe, assessing not his appearance but his stability. He reached out and adjusted the collar of Logan’s jacket, a strangely domestic gesture. “The mask stays around your neck until we breach. Then it goes on. No heroics. No improvisation.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Logan said, his voice thankfully steady. He looped the mask’s straps over his head, letting the contraption hang against his chest like a grotesque pendant. Its weight was a constant, uncomfortable reminder.
Viktor and four other men were waiting with two black SUVs idling in the private garage below. The men were silent ghosts in the low light, their own masks already secured to equipment belts. No one spoke. Roman gave a single, sharp nod, and they slid into the vehicles. Logan sat in the back of the lead SUV with Roman, the dark wooden mask now resting on Roman’s lap. He traced its carved grooves with a gloved finger, a casual, chilling caress. The city bled past the tinted windows, its bright chaos thinning as they climbed into the wooded, wealthy hills of North Crest.
The Selvig estate was a dark silhouette against a starless sky. The main house was dark, but the greenhouse, a sprawling jewel box of glass and steel, glowed with a faint, eerie vegetative light from within. The SUVs killed their lights and rolled to a stop a quarter mile away, hidden by tree cover. Viktor’s men melted into the shadows, approaching the structure with a disciplined silence that spoke of brutal practice. Roman watched, motionless. He lifted the black mask to his face. The moment it settled, his bearing shifted. The man beside Logan vanished, replaced by something rigid and predatory. He handed Logan a compact, black pistol.
“Safety is off. Do not point it at me.”
“Noted.” Logan’s palm was already sweating. He tucked the weapon into his waistband. The cold metal against his skin was another anchor.
They watched as two of Viktor’s men disabled the exterior cameras with practiced clips of wire. Another pair approached a side service door. There was a soft, hydraulic hiss—a lock gun—and the door swung inward. A green-tinged mist, subtle as morning fog, curled out into the night air. Viktor raised a fist, then pointed two fingers forward.
Go.
Roman was out of the car instantly, a shadow flowing toward the breach. Logan followed, his heart hammering a frantic beat against the gas mask on his chest. The air outside was cold and pine-scented, but as they reached the open door, the smell hit him. It was that same cloying, rotten sweetness from the museum, intensified, mixed with the loamy reek of wet soil and fertilizer. His stomach turned. He saw Roman, ahead of him, step through the threshold without hesitation.
Logan fumbled with the mask, his fingers suddenly clumsy. He got it over his nose and mouth, the world narrowing to the hiss of his own filtered breath and the muted, tinny sounds of the greenhouse. He stepped inside.
The world was a fever dream of unnatural growth. Plants with bulbous, veined leaves shuddered in climate-controlled breezes. Vines with thorns like surgical needles climbed steel supports. And everywhere, in dedicated raised beds, were the nightshade and baneberry, their deceptively delicate flowers and berries glowing faintly under specialized lamps. In the center of this botanical arsenal, a bald, slender man in a tweed vest jolted up from a workbench, his glasses reflecting the green light. Elias Selvig.
Viktor’s men had him flanked, their weapons held low but unequivocal. Roman stopped a few feet from him. The black wooden mask was expressionless, but the voice that came from it was Roman’s low, silken snarl, distorted just enough to sound inhuman. “You’ve been cultivating for a new client.”
Selvig stammered, his eyes wide behind his lenses, darting from the masked figure to the armed men. “I—I don’t know what you mean. This is all for botanical research. Academic—”
“The conservatory. The museum.” Roman took a step closer. A glass beaker on the workbench rattled. “The signature is yours. You will tell me who paid for it.”
“I have confidentiality agreements!” Selvig squeaked, backing into his bench.
Logan moved then, stepping slightly to the side, drawing Selvig’s panicked gaze. He lifted his own mask just enough to speak clearly, his voice calm, almost conversational amidst the tension. “Elias. Look at me. The guy in the wood mask isn’t here for your confidentiality agreement. He’s here to turn this place into a blender with you inside it.” He gestured loosely at the lush, toxic flora. “This is incredible work. Seriously. The alkaloid balance to bypass standard air filters? That’s not just gardening. That’s artistry.”
Selvig’s eyes locked onto his, desperate for a sane anchor. “It… it is. It’s a precise science. They wanted a terror that felt… ancient. Organic. Not a crude chemical.”
“They,” Logan repeated, nodding as if they were colleagues. “The people who appreciate your artistry. Who are they?”
Selvig’s mouth opened, then closed. He glanced at Roman, who had picked up a potted Atropa belladonna, examining it like a curator with a dubious artifact.
“I can’t,” Selvig whispered.
Roman dropped the pot. It shattered on the concrete floor, black soil spilling like a grave. In the same fluid motion, he grabbed Selvig’s left hand where it gripped the workbench, pinning it flat. “You can.”
“Wait—” Logan started, but Roman was already applying pressure. There was a dry, unmistakable snap of the metacarpal. Selvig shrieked, a high, wet sound that echoed in the glass chamber.
Logan fought down a wave of nausea, pushing his mask back into place. The filtered air tasted stale. He leaned in closer to Selvig’s sobbing face. “He’ll break the other one. Then your elbow. He’ll reduce you to a bag of painful noise and you’ll still tell him. Save yourself the symphony. Tell me about the art. Tell me who commissioned it.”
Tears streaked the man’s face. He cradled his broken hand. “A young man… fervent. A chemist. He works for the district courthouse. For… for Dent.” The name landed heavily in the humid air. “He’s obsessed with the Scarecrow’s early work. Wanted to refine it, make it more… elegant. More personal. He provided the base formulas. I… I provided the botanical intensifiers.”
“His name,” Roman demanded, his grip shifting to Selvig’s forearm.
“Peter! Peter Dyson!” Selvig wept. “He picks up the batches himself! He was here yesterday! He’s… he’s planning another demonstration. Soon. He said it was time to show the city its true face.”
Roman released him. Selvig crumpled to the floor, cradling his hand. Roman turned toward Viktor, giving a short nod. The information was acquired. The mission was shifting to exfiltration. Logan felt a tense relief unknot his shoulders. They had a name. A thread to pull.
Then the exterior lights of the greenhouse blazed on, flooding the glass walls with blinding white. Tires crunched on gravel outside. Doors slammed.
Viktor was at the window instantly. “Three cars. Armed silhouettes. They’re not ours.”
Roman’s masked head tilted. “Dent’s cleanup crew. Efficient.”
A hissing sound began, emanating from the climate control vents along the ceiling. Not the gentle mist of before, but a pressurized, green-yellow cloud billowing out in thick waves. It was denser. It had a sharper, more acidic stench that immediately bit at Logan’s eyes even through his mask.
“Go! Now!” Viktor barked, motioning his men toward the service door.
Logan yanked his mask fully sealed, his world narrowing to the hiss of the filter. He saw one of Viktor’s men clutch at his throat, his own mask proving useless against this concentrated strain. The man fell to his knees, clawing at an invisible horror on his own skin. Then another. Half the team was down in seconds, writhing on the damp floor among the shattered pottery and toxic plants.
Roman grabbed Logan’s arm, shoving him toward the door. “Move!”
Logan burst out into the cold night air first, tearing the mask off to clear his vision. He raised his pistol. Figures were advancing from the parked cars—men with the mismatched, flamboyant tailoring that screamed Two-Face’s faction. Logan fired. The shot was wild but it made the lead man duck behind a car door. Providing cover. Viktor and two surviving men spilled out behind him, returning fire, dragging one of their stumbling, gas-affected comrades.
Roman emerged last. He seemed to hesitate for a second on the threshold, his head giving a slight, animalistic shake. The stronger gas had penetrated his mask’s filter. Not a full dose, but a taste. A trigger.
Then he moved.
It wasn’t the controlled violence of before. It was a eruption. He tore into the nearest of Dent’s men not with strategic disables, but with pure, furious demolition. He wrenched a man’s arm until the shoulder popped from its socket with a wet tear, then used the screaming man as a bludgeon against his companion. The black mask was a pitiless blank slate above the carnage. He wasn’t interrogating. He was dismantling.
“Roman! Car!” Logan shouted, firing another round to keep a gunman pinned.
Roman didn’t seem to hear. He had a man on the ground now, and his fists were coming down on the man’s face with a rhythmic, pulping sound. The fury was total, unthinking, a feedback loop of terror-induced rage.
Logan swore. He sprinted across the open, deadly space, ignoring the zing of a bullet past his ear. He reached Roman and grabbed the back of his jacket. “He’s dead! Roman, stop! We have to go!”
Roman whirled, a bloodied fist raised. For a heart-stopping instant, Logan saw himself reflected in the blank eyeholes of the mask, saw the furious, unrecognizing violence there. Then Roman blinked. He shuddered. The rage fractured, revealing the raw, chemical fear beneath—the fear that had curdled into this berserk violence.
Logan didn’t let go. “Car. Now.” He pulled, and this time Roman staggered with him. Viktor had the SUV’s door open, engine roaring. They tumbled into the back seat as the vehicle lurched forward, gravel spraying. Gunfire peppered the rear door.
Inside the fleeing car, the silence was explosive. Roman ripped the wooden mask from his face and threw it onto the floorboard. He was breathing in ragged, tearing gulps, his hands—smeared red and trembling—clenching and unclenching. The toxin was working on him now, not with hallucinatory visions, but by amplifying the darkest fuel in his psyche: the fear of loss, of weakness, of chaos. It had transmuted that fear into a killing frenzy, and now the frenzy was gone, leaving the raw fear bare and multiplying.
“They touched it,” Roman rasped, staring at his bloody hands as if they belonged to someone else. His voice was stripped, ragged. “They touched what’s mine. They put their hands on the air and they…”
He began to shake. Not like Logan’s twitches. This was a systemic tremor, a rage so profound it had nowhere to go but inward. He slammed a fist into the car door panel, denting the metal. “They will drown in it. I will pump it into the foundations of every building they sleep in. I will find this Dyson and I will feed him his own lungs.”
“Hey. Look at me.” Logan reached for him, grabbing his wrist. Roman flinched, a wild, trapped animal motion. “Roman. Breathe. It’s the gas. It’s twisting you up. Just breathe.”
“Don’t tell me to breathe!” Roman snarled, yanking his arm back, his gray eyes wide and unmoored. The fear in them was terrifying. It wasn’t of something external. It was of the uncontrolled thing he had just become, and the boundless, violent things he now wanted to do. “They saw. They saw you there. In that place. They aimed their poison at you again.”
“And we’re out. We have the name.” Logan kept his voice low, steady, a counterpoint to the hurricane beside him. He didn’t try to touch him again. He just held his gaze, a fixed point in the careening vehicle. “Peter Dyson. Working for Dent. We have the thread. You don’t burn the city for a thread. You pull it.”
Roman’s breathing was still too fast. He looked from Logan to his own stained hands, then out the window at the fleeing night. The violent promises kept spilling out, but quieter now, crumbling into a hoarse whisper. “I felt it… the anger… it was so clean. It wanted to scrape the world clean with them.” He closed his eyes, his head thumping back against the seat. A confession. “It felt better than the fear.”
Logan understood then. The fear toxin hadn’t shown Roman a monster. It had unlocked the one he kept caged, and let it run. And part of him had reveled in it.
Logan slowly, carefully, reached over and placed his own clean hand over Roman’s bloody, trembling fist. “The fear’s a liar,” he said, his voice barely audible over the engine. “And the anger’s its favorite weapon. Don’t let it win. Just look at me.”
Roman turned his head. In the intermittent flash of passing streetlights, his eyes were shattered glass. He was still falling, deep into the well of his own poisoned psyche, and Logan was the only frayed rope in sight. He didn’t speak. His fingers unclenched, just enough to twist and grab onto Logan’s wrist, holding on with a desperate, bone-white grip.
His fingers unclenched, just enough to twist and grab onto Logan’s wrist, holding on with a desperate, bone-white grip. He didn’t let go for the rest of the ride.
The SUV finally slid into the penthouse garage’s sterile silence. Viktor killed the engine and turned, his face a mask of professional assessment. “The men who were exposed require medical attention beyond our facilities. I recommend—”
“Take them to the clinic on Fourth,” Logan cut in, his voice startlingly firm even as Roman’s vise-like grip threatened the circulation in his arm. “Use the contingency fund. Get them stabilized. Then I need you to find Peter Dyson. He works at the courthouse. I want to know what he had for breakfast, who he calls, and where he plans to host his next art exhibition.”
Viktor’s eyes flicked to Roman, seeking confirmation. Roman said nothing. He was staring straight ahead, his breath still sawing in and out, a man clinging to the last shred of his control by his fingernails.
“Do it,” Logan said, the command leaving no room for debate.
That was all the time he got. Roman moved, shoving the car door open and hauling Logan out with him, their hands still locked together. He stalked toward the private elevator, pulling Logan in his wake like a storm dragging debris. The elevator doors closed, sealing them in polished brass and quiet music.
The containment lasted three seconds.
A raw, guttural sound tore from Roman’s throat. He slammed his fist into the wall beside the control panel. The metal dented with a sharp, final groan. He hit it again. And again. The violence was directionless, terrifying in its simplicity. Each impact was a thunderclap in the tiny space. Logan pressed himself against the opposite wall, saying nothing, just watching the knuckles split open, the blood smearing the brass.
The doors opened to the penthouse. Roman surged out into the vast living space, finally releasing Logan’s wrist. The freedom was brief.
The rage had a target now. It was everything.
He backhanded a vase of orchids off a pedestal. It exploded against the floor in a shower of ceramic and water. He seized the edge of a marble-topped console and flipped it. The crash was monumental. He picked up a chair and hurled it through the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city. The safety glass webbed into a million fractures but held, a distorted mosaic of Gotham’s lights.
Logan stood by the elevator, his heart a trapped bird in his ribs. He let it happen. The furious energy had to go somewhere. He tracked Roman’s path of destruction, his own body remembering the tremor, the helpless terror. This was that same toxin, metabolized into a different form.
Roman ripped a large, gilt-framed mirror from the wall. He threw it down. It didn’t just break; it imploded. Shards skittered across the laminate like jagged ice. He stood amidst the wreckage, his chest heaving, his bloody hands hanging at his sides.
He didn’t see the long, spear-like fragment of glass near his hand. He took another furious step and gripped the mirror, his weight coming down on it. It sliced deep into the meat of his palm, below the split knuckles.
Roman didn’t flinch. He didn’t look down. He drew his foot back for another kick at the overturned table, the glass still protruding from his hand.
“Enough.”
Logan was in front of him then. He didn’t shout. The word was flat, final. He grabbed Roman’s wrists, not to fight, but to stop. He forced his gaze down to the wound. “Look at that. You’re bleeding all over your two-thousand-dollar floor.”
Roman tried to wrench free, his strength monstrous. “Get out of my way.”
“No.” Logan held on, his fingers tight over Roman’s thundering pulse. “You’ve made your point. The apartment is scared of you. Congratulations.” He put his body between Roman and the next thing to destroy. “Now stop.”
Roman’s eyes focused on him, the gray irises swimming with chaotic fury. The rage, homeless and searching, now had a focal point. Logan. The defiance. The calm. With a snarl, Roman reversed their positions, shoving Logan hard against the only intact wall. The impact drove the air from Logan’s lungs. Roman’s hands came up, one gripping the front of Logan’s jacket, the other clamping onto his shoulder, pinning him.
“You think this is a performance?” Roman’s voice was shredded tinfoil, his breath hot against Logan’s face. “You think you can stand there and judge the volume? They put you in a glass box! They aimed that filth at you while you stood there in a cheap mask!” His grip tightened, threatening to tear fabric and bruise bone. “I should burn that courthouse to the ground. I should peel Dyson’s skin off in strips and send it to Dent in a bouquet!”
Logan didn’t struggle. The pressure on his shoulders was immense, promising bruises, but he kept his body loose, his gaze level. He was more concerned with the glass still embedded in Roman’s other hand, with the way fresh blood dripped onto his own shirt. “You’re hurting yourself. That’s stupid. Even for you.”
“It’s nothing!”
“It’s a fucking infection waiting to happen!” Logan snapped, the first crack in his own calm. He let Roman rant, let the vitriol and the violent promises wash over him, let the crushing grip hold him captive. He waited for the storm to spend its last, screaming wattage.
When Roman’s words began to fray, dissolving into choked, furious repetitions, Logan moved. With the arm not pinned, he slowly raised his hand. He didn’t try to push Roman away. He brought his fingertips to Roman’s jaw, slick with sweat and someone else’s blood. The touch was startlingly gentle.
“Okay,” Logan said, his voice dropping to a murmur. “You’re done now. Come on.”
He applied the slightest pressure, guiding Roman’s head away from the destroyed room. He stepped sideways, leading them both, a slow and awkward shuffle, toward the primary bathroom. Roman followed, a study in rigid, resistant tension, but he followed. His hand never left Logan’s shoulder, the grip unrelenting.
Logan shouldered the bathroom door open. He didn’t turn on the heat lamps. He guided Roman past the sinks, into the large glass shower enclosure. They were both still fully dressed, smelling of blood, greenhouse soil, and fear.
With his free hand, Logan reached in and turned the shower on all the way. He twisted the dial to cold.
The water hit them like a physical blow. Icy needles sprayed from the overhead rainfall fixture, drenching them instantly. Roman gasped, a harsh, involuntary intake of breath. His body locked up, the rage fighting the shocking chill. Logan stood there with him, getting soaked, his teeth starting to chatter.
He watched the tremors change. The fine, violent vibrations of unspent fury deepened, turning into full-bodied shivers. The animal glare in Roman’s eyes fractured, blurred by the water, replaced by a raw, exhausted confusion. The cold was a system shock, a brutal reset.
They stood under the spray until Logan’s fingers were numb and Roman’s punishing grip on his shoulder finally, slowly, began to loosen.