Chapter 6

"Tanya, Mr. Wayne, you really didn't need to drive me home," I said as I sat in the car next to him, Bruce driving at a rather good pace down the streets of Gotham. It was an understandable situation considering well, Gotham was not a very nice city to park your car anywhere, so driving quickly made sense.

"Nonsense, nonsense, Tanya," he said with a shake of his head before adding, "You've been through a lot today. Giving you a drive there is always the least I can do as a good employer should."

I smiled before nodding and saying, "You're right; the boss is always right," with a chuckle, before adding, "But could you not have just asked my uncle to drive me back?"

"That is correct; I am the boss, so yes, I am always right. As for getting Alfred to drive you back, I thought it would be best to do it myself; Alfred's got another thing he's got to do right now," Bruce explained.

The reason I brought that up? What could he have to do right now? But then again, he was the boss, so I would let it pass. Perhaps he's giving him a job that I didn't know about.

It's not like I was in control of this situation; I was simply an employee trying to climb the corporate ladder by any means necessary to secure my eventual retirement. It may take time, but it was possible. Granted, there was another possibility that popped to the back of my brain once in a while, but I tried to keep that one under wraps.

Shaking my head, I coughed into my hand, feeling a bit queasy.

"You alright?" Bruce asked, and I shrugged, saying, "Just maybe got a little bit of allergies or something in the air," as we made a turn, getting closer to my apartment.

"What are we going to do about the whole Man-Bat situation?" I asked, to which Bruce shrugged.

"No idea yet. I've already sent a message to the police about the situation. I assume they will take care of it, but I am concerned about the reputation this could give Wayne Industries if we don't do something proactively. I will try and use whatever political pull I can to get more financing to the officers to hunt this situation down, but, well, this is really not something that I can do much about. A man went mad and injected himself with a DNA-altering virus and is now on the run—or on the fly," Bruce shook his head at that.

"Most likely, there's going to be a problem, but how exactly of a problem they are, we don't know. I've got some scientists at the lab doing their best to look into what's going on, what exactly he was working on, and if we can reverse it," Bruce explained.

I nodded, saying, "That makes sense," scratching the side of my neck—it was very itchy all of a sudden.

Wayne looked at me before looking back at the road, saying, "Are you sure you're okay? You seem a little bit out of sorts."

"I'm fine," I replied matter-of-factly. After all, a good employee doesn't let a small cold distract them from their work. I meant to leave it at that, putting my hand back down to prevent him from noticing my agitation.

He made a concerned noise before focusing back on the road, saying, "More likely or not, the Batman will have to deal with him. That seems to be the Batman's style, after all—dealing with the crazed kooks of the world."

"Yeah, that does seem to be his style," I said with a nod, adding, "After all, someone has to, and apparently, if the police can't deal with them, it falls to a vigilante."

"Hmm, what are your thoughts on vigilantism? Everyone seems to have their own take on the Batman. I mean, the whole reason that apparently Man-Bat is a thing is that apparently he thought that that was a way to the future," Bruce mused.

"Man-Bat is insane, as a matter of fact. Leave him," I replied, before focusing more on the whole Batman situation. Taking a breath, I centered myself before commenting, "Personally, I think the fact that the Batman exists is a bad thing. He fills a deficit in the police situation of the society, a failing that has created a proportional backlash. We, though, appear to have gotten lucky, as the proportional backlash, in this case, is a vigilante who has a moral code—at some point in his life, one that he keeps to. That's why there are no reported deaths from his counterattacks against gang and Mafia groups across the city."

"So, the Batman shouldn't exist, but he does exist because the police are failing at their job, and because the Bat-Man is doing an okay job, you're fine with him?" Bruce asked to confirm.

I nodded in agreement, saying, "Pretty much. We shouldn't have to rely on a vigilante to do the job of the police, but if the police have a failing and there's only one option, then rely on the vigilante. Until, inevitably, the vigilante is no longer needed and he can retire. Hopefully, the police clean up their act and start doing their jobs properly. But if they don't, well, the vigilante will persist. I doubt he'll remain the only vigilante, too; I could see him taking in a few other vigilante individuals into his posse."

"Posse? That's a bit of a stretch," Mr. Wayne said with a chuckle as his car came to a stop in front of my house. He turned to look at me, and then I saw whatever smile he had on his face melt away as he said, "Are you sure you're okay? You're looking a little bit pale."

"I'm fine," I said, moving my hand up to wipe the sweat from my forehead as I opened the door, saying, "Thank you, Mr. Wayne,

for the ride."

I took one step out of the car, and my legs gave out. I tumbled forward onto the ground and smacked my head against the cement hard. Everything else faded after that.

Bruce Wayne

"The hell," I said, opening the door on my side of the car and quickly coming around to check on Tanya as she fell to the ground. I held my phone out and was about to call 911 as I got on my knee to roll her over and check on her.

That's when I noticed something that was definitely not right. On the side facing away from me in the car, on the side of the neck that she had been scratching, there was a patch of hair, the same color as her own but somewhat darker, growing out of her neck right where she had been scratching.

Carefully, with a suspicion growing, I pushed up her jacket and shirt to get a better look at where she had been scratched earlier. I found long red lines leading away from the scratch, implying what I feared the most.

Picking her up, I quickly laid her carefully in the back of the car and closed the doors, jumping back in and speeding at a relatively safe rate towards an emergency tunnel I had here in Gotham, one that led directly from the city to my cave network beneath Wayne Manor.

This was not good. This was very not good, as I could put together what had happened rather easily.

The man had said that he wanted to spread his little condition to the rest of Gotham. Apparently, that meant it was like werewolfism—a scratch could spread a virus that would transform anyone who was scratched into a monster.

And Tanya had obviously been infected with that when she didn't stretch during the fighting. I probably should give a call to the rest of the team back at Wayne Corp and have them quarantined as soon as possible. They could also be facing similar situations, and some of them had come in close contact with Man-Bat.

Turning, I came to an empty alleyway with a dead end—for anyone who didn't have a button that pressed to activate a lever that lowered the brick wall at the end of the alleyway, allowing me to drive straight down into the tunnels.

Now in the safety of the tunnels, where I didn't have to worry about unfriendly eyes, I sped up and pressed a call button, and a few minutes later Alfred picked up.

"Good evening, Mr. Wayne. I've been going over the files you sent. A lot of interesting things Mr. langstrom has been working on. It'll take a while to dig through everything here."

"We don't have a while. We need to figure out what this is and how to reverse it quickly. Tanya has been exposed and is already in a somewhat transformational state," I explained urgently.

There was a pause before the old British man got right down to work. "Right then, I understand the situation. Looking through the files, it does say here that the virus does not like cold. In particular, it states that lower temperatures slow its progress. He was experimenting with rats to bats."

"Alright then, I can't just pop her in the freezer. What do we have in the lab that we can use, Alfred, to slow her transformation?"

"Hmmm, we may have something a lot more low-tech than that. It's not great, but it could work. I'll get it ready for when you arrive, Mr. Wayne."

"Alright, see you there, Alfred," I replied before focusing on my driving. It didn't take very long to travel from the city to my manor through the underground passageways. Man, if people knew the money I spent to build these things—well, really expand them— a lot of these tunnels preexisted: abandoned railways, abandoned mineshafts, tunnels that had been used to mine guano for various farms and nitrogen production, so on and so forth. All I had really done, in a lot of cases, was just connect them and build a better, cleaner road to drive on so it was safe to move the vehicles down here.

My plan actually was not to keep these things forever; as Tanya said, there should be a point where the government and the police uncorrupt themselves, and I can go back to just a normal civilian life. I don't know if it's actually possible, but I would like to think so. In fact, that she thought so kind of actually made me happy; there's someone else out there who is a bit of an optimist about the state of Gotham. Another reason why I had to make sure that she survived whatever the hell Man-Bat had done to her, and a reason why I would have to be careful when dealing with him. I didn't want to get too emotional and hurt him too badly.

My car pulled smoothly into the Batcave, a large underground complex with various vehicles and well, items I had acquired over the last few years of fighting crime, mainly strange oddities that I thought better to keep around. Although Alfred had made a joke that it was my trophy room, I tried not to think of it that way. "Trophy room" implied that it was a conquest, and I wasn't here to conquer anything. I was here to fix the system that was broken, and I kept these items simply because in a few cases it was better for everyone if they were kept off the streets.

Turning sharply, I pulled into a parking space and stepped out of the car, quickly opening the back door and grabbing Tanya, carefully fireman carrying her up a set of stairs to where Alfred was already preparing a bath. I didn't question it; I simply moved towards him and lowered Tanya into the bathtub, seeing that it was actually full of ice water.

"There we go," Alfred said, quickly checking her temperature and her heart rate. "That should buy us a few hours. If we keep a constant eye on her and do everything we can to keep her temperature just right, we should be able to push this at most for 12 hours. Past that, we probably will have to take her out."

I nodded, looking to him. "Any idea if there's a cure in that information?"

Alfred shook his head. "From what I can tell, he wasn't interested in making a cure; he was interested in making a bat city. It seems like his plan was to create a retrovirus that would pass from the bats to the rats to the people and back again, possibly jumping all the species and converting everything into bat-like monstrosities."

"Jesus," I said, putting my hand on my forehead to brush my hair back at the thought of the amount of insanity.

"With the amount of biological information he would have to have accounted for, he could probably have cured cancer," Alfred added.

"Yes, Mr. Wayne, I agree, but some men just want to see the world burn, some men just want to see a world full of bats. I don't think there's much of a grand plan in play here, only that they seem to think if they turn humanity and everything else into bat-like monstrosities, the world would be a better place."

Shaking my head, I started to move towards the Bat-computer. "Alright, that's not great, that's not great at all. Well, we have his research notes; he didn't destroy those before he turned himself into a monster. Maybe we can find a way to cure by looking at what virus he used as the pathway to spread it."

Alfred nodded his head in agreement. "I believe that might be an option, though there appear to be two separate viruses right now. One

that he was using as a human-to-human variant—the one he infected himself with—and one that he was working on that would be the human-to-bat-to-everything else variant. We don't know which one he used from the information I see here, in the end."

"Hmm," I scratched my chin, not sure what to do at first before finally saying, "Alright, we'll have to attack both options at the same time. There are plenty of doctors in this city, scientists who could look at this. They might be able to help us with this situation. We need to just give them the information we have and make it as noticeable as possible that this is a problem that needs to be solved quickly."

Alfred nodded his head in agreement before saying, "Perhaps split it up, take the human-to-human virus to one doctor and the human-to-animal virus and back again to another. Keep them focused on their problems."

"Right," I nodded before Alfred rubbed his chin and said, "But how do we determine which one Tanya has been infected with?"

"Well, that one's easy," I said, "we just need to get a sample of her blood and, in fact, the rat. If it turns into a bat, we know it's the human-to-animal one and back again. If it doesn't, we know it's just the human-to-human one."

"Right, that makes sense. Well, we just have to hope that he has not infected himself with both, and in the vein of hope, that either one would work."

"Good point. We'll have to take some blood samples just to test and see if both strains are in her blood or not."

I turned to look at her before saying, "We're also going to need to tie her down and blindfold her."

Alfred chuckled before saying, "Mr. Wayne, you can't be talking that way about my niece; you're not even dating her."

Internally cringing, I looked at Alfred saying, "Very funny."

"I believe so," Alfred said, opening a drawer I kept by the supercomputer full of rope and tape in case, well, situations like this came about.

"I'll get changed into my suit. If she wakes up, I'm trying to change your voice."

"Of course, sir. I'll put on the best Boston accent you've ever heard."

I laughed at that before walking into a side chamber full of suits, quickly pulling on one of the more usable ones that did not need to be repaired from one side or another.

Once I had my cowl on, I walked back out and saw that Alfred was talking in a Boston accent to Tanya, saying that he was a friend of the Batman and was trying to calm her down.

"Call me down, call me down. I can't see and I'm in a bathtub full of ice water. Are you trying to organ harvest me?" she said, sounding rather frightened, which I would admit was a good point. She was in a standard situation where a person wakes up missing a kidney.

I walked over and noticed something that was concerning, to say the least. Her blindfold wasn't on, and her eyes were a milky gray. When she said she can't see, it wasn't because she was blindfolded; it was because the virus had already taken her sight. It wouldn't take long, I assumed, for her hearing to improve then.

"Miss Pennyworth," I said, taking a knee next to the tub, which seemed to immediately make her stop thrashing about.

"Okay, I know that voice. That's the Batman. So maybe you're telling the truth, but I'm still not calm about being in a ice-cold tub," she said, clearly anxious.

"The best thing we could do under short circumstances," I said as I leaned over the top to make sure that she was secure before adding, "You've been infected with a retrovirus by Man-Bat. The ice is slowing its progress and will keep you for longer. We are working on a countermeasure to undo its damage. We need you to remain calm; the more active you are, the faster the virus will probably spread as you burn calories in your struggle and warm up."

Tonya took a deep breath before leaning herself deeper in the ice water, saying, "Why does this crazy stuff always happen to me?"

I raised an eyebrow at that. Was this just a reference to the Penny Pincher Games situation, or was there something else going on that I didn't know? Oh well, I'd let that pass for now as I simply said, "We live in interesting times, Miss Pennyworth. Anyway, I'm going to be going now to try and find scientists to help put together a vaccine for this. My associate here, Mr. Boston, will keep an eye on you and make sure your temperature stays in the zone. They will keep you alive and not turning into a Man-Bat."

"Sugar had in mumbled something low. All I really heard was 'X' before she started saying, 'I'll be good, I'll keep my hands here. The last decides not permanent, right?'"

I looked to Alfred, who shrugged as I said, "I would think not. If this retrovirus can be undone, whatever DNA changes it's forcing on you should be undone as well, and your sight should return."

Alfred, in a Boston accent, said, "Well, you may need glasses in the future. Hard to say with this; some bats actually can see, just have bad eyesight."

"Ah, why is this city so insane?" Tanya moaned, and I smiled, patting her on the shoulder and saying, "It's hard to say, Miss Pennyworth. I've been asking that question myself for many years. Just try and stay calm."

"Will do, will do," she said, settling in the tub as I stood back up and nodded to Alfred, heading down to one of the Bat-cars and getting inside.

I knew a couple of doctors who could do the job. I figured most of them worked at Wayne Tech, of course, and after all, one of the reasons that Wayne Tech existed was to find cures for stuff like this, though there were a few others in a couple of other companies I could contact.

The first thing I needed to do was place a call to Wayne Tech. As the car drove, the phone rang, and after a few moments, someone picked up.

"Hello, who is this?" Security chief frank Taller answered.

" frank Taller," I said in my Batman voice.

"Yeah, yeah, how do you know my name?"

"I got it from Miss Tanya. She was involved in an altercation with a creature. I believe you were as well. She is falling ill with some sort of mysterious disease, possibly related to said creature. I would recommend getting you and anyone else who was involved in that fight to the nearest hospital. Advise them to use ice baths to cool you down to slow the spread of the disease. More information will be delivered personally to their hospital units when I get the chance."

"Alright, thank you, Batman?" he asked questioningly.

"Correct. You're good at your job, Mr. Taller."

"Yes, sir. I will get the boys who were involved in the fight to the nearest hospital to have them checked out. You probably got a little bit more time until the

infection takes hold if any of us were, in fact, infected. A lot of us are, you know, big guys. It takes a while for things to move through our systems. She was like a slip of a thing, really."

"You are correct in that. I was trying to get an antivirus to the medical wing of Gotham Hospital. They can distribute it to you and anyone else that gets infected from this creature. Talk to you later, Mr. Taller," I said, hanging up on him.

"Alright, all known infected cases were dealt with. Now I needed to get this information to the doctors who could whip up some sort of antivirus, as well as locate any more victims. And while I'm at it, bring down the Man-Bat before anyone else had been infected."

Batman

"Of course, it was never simple. I brought the samples and information to doctors I thought I could trust and let them at it, and unfortunately, they all pretty much came up to one conclusion, one simple conclusion: the best way to stop this virus from spreading out of control and get a all-around cure was to bring in a Man-Bat so he could serve as a test subject for the antiviruses to see if it could be undone, what would have been done to them.

An annoying prospect of chasing down a flying bat scientist I was now facing, but at least I was prepared. I long since suspected I would run into flying victims ever since I'd run into that one fire starter; we've managed to avoid jail time by escaping.

So here I was with an unstable backpack that allowed me to fly, powering my movements through the sky looking for the flying bat with no luck so far.

I needed to find that mad scientist faster. It had been 4 hours, which meant at most Tanya had eight before we had to pull her out of that ice bath, and at that point, well, things got difficult. Things were probably difficult right now back there; she was probably in some form of hypothermia by this point.

Keeping my head steady, I tried to dispel those thoughts, watching the skies for any motion that could be the mad scientist, hoping that he would just appear and make it easy for me.

Then something hit me in the back, and I was tumbling down towards the streets below. Only my fast reactions allowed me to regain propellant and head back up, avoiding a near-fatal crash with the cement below.

I landed on one of the buildings and interned, drawing a batarang and looking back at what it caused my situation, quickly spotting the mad scientist flying low there, letting out a screech and looking more and more like a massive bat and less and less like a man-bat.

"Dr. langstrom, I presume," I said, wondering if he was even still in there or if he had been reduced to wild animal instincts.

The proceeding screech in charge at me informed me that it was probably the latter. I dove out of the way as the creature smashed into the rooftop, cracking through the material that separated the roof from the rooms below and screeching down at something, sounding like kids screaming back in fear, which was not something I was going to let stand. Quickly, I was back up and threw a batarang, the flying device managing to hit the creature in the side of the head.

Not lethal, of course, but it did draw its attention towards me. It screamed and started charging at me on all fours, and I used the jetpack to launch myself over it, landing behind it and throwing another batarang into its back, causing it to turn and whip about. But its momentum was still carrying it forward, so it was turned and whipped about and then flew off the edge of the building.

I quickly ran to the edge, hoping that he had gained some control. I'd rather him not die, and I was not surprised to see him holding onto the side of the building as well, a bat would completely all right. It screeched and used to take a location to quickly locate me, turning its head to look directly at where I was looking over the side and then began clawing its way up the side of the building.

Reaching into my satchel, I pulled out what could best be described as a batarang with a stun function. I waited until it was close enough, then tossed it down. It embedded itself in the creature's shoulder and didn't activate. I didn't want to hit it while it was still climbing, after all, and it would cause it to fall to its death. The creature screeched but continued its up charging at me as I fell back, quickly moving across the roof to the other side and preparing the next weapon for defense.

The monster ripped its up over the side of the building and screeched again, quickly locating my location and charging at me. And I just started throwing things: batarangs, of course, but also devices that should wrap around limbs and hold it in place.

With a sigh of relief, I saw the creature quickly get tied up in the mini whip chords. It was fighting, though, of course, with some ferocity, but it was not getting free easily.

The creature screeched, and then I activated the taser, tasing it until it stopped raging. Quickly, I got down and checked its vitals before getting to work on the next step of dealing with that.

Now that it was out, I needed samples, and I needed them quickly. I pulled out a syringe and started taking blood while at the same time dialing a number on my internal phone.

"Yes, who is this?" came a German voice.

"Victor Freeze," I asked, knowing it was him.

"Yes, that is me. This is an odd hour to be calling, sir. Who is this?"

"I'm the Batman. I have acquired Dr. langstrom; we're on top of a tower about three blocks from City center to the north. Mr. Wayne contacted me and said you may have a technology that could keep this Dr. langstrom on ice until we can get him sorted out and return to a human form."

"Oh, oh, I don't know about that, sir. That technology is very experimental. I'm still trying to get the Wayne company to agree to human trials."

"Mr. Wayne told me this much. He also told me that in this one case, he's willing to accept your use of the technology till we can reverse what Mr. langstrom has done to himself."

There was a pause before Victor spoke up, saying, "I'll be right there. How many floors up is it? Is there an elevator?"

I looked over the side I was standing next to before saying, "Six, seven floors. I would imagine there's an elevator. I'll be contacting Mr. Wayne's security to have an escort sent to help you bring him in."

"Wonderful," Victor said before adding, "Thank you, Mr. Batman. I'll be over there soon."

Sighing, I shook my head before leaning against the wall. If I could give this operation an hour, I would wait for Victor Freeze and keep Dr. langstrom company, make sure he didn't escape. But the fact of the matter was, every hour I wasted on Dr. langstrom was an hour that his infection could harm Tanya even more. She's already lost her sight; who knows if the anti-virus would return that or not. Who knows what other ailments she might gather from this infection. I wanted to believe that it would good reset for her, that everything would be fine, but the world was rarely one to give people a happy ending, I could say that with some certainty.

Shaking my head, I moved to the side of the building and activated the jetpack, heading off towards the Gotham hospital at the fastest speed I could go. I couldn't risk someone's life on that doctors; he would be fine, even if he escaped. This sample was more important.

And if somehow he did escape, I would track him down and deal with it later. This sample was needed to heal Tanya and anyone else that had been infected, and I was going to make sure it made it to the hospital."