Free Batman 4 - Batman & Robin by Michael Jan Friedman

concern.
    “Sleep well, sir,” he said.
    Bruce nodded. “You too, Alfred.”
    The butler repaired to his room for the night. Bruce stood there at the entrance to the study until he saw Alfred’s door close. Then he turned away and looked down the hall . . .
    . . . and saw himself come racing around the corner.
    Not as an adult, but as a boy of no more than ten. As he watched, the youngster tripped and tumbled to the wooden floor. Immediately, another figure stepped past the corner to pick him up.
    It was Alfred. A significantly younger Alfred. Kneeling beside the boy, he brushed off his knees and gave him comfort. He made it seem as if it didn’t hurt at all.
    Bruce blinked away the memory. Funny, he thought, that he should remember that just now. Then, undeniably fatigued from his escapades, he made his way down the empty hallway, its echoes loud in his ears as he sought the comfort of his bed.

    Alfred closed the door of his bedroom and crossed the carpeted floor to his workstation. But as soon as he sat down, he felt the pain come back.
    In waves. In pangs as sharp as kitchen knives. It was even worse than it had been in the costume vault, and that had been so bad he’d barely kept from crying out.
    But as before, Alfred gritted his teeth and clenched his fists and endured what he had to endure. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the misery passed. He was drenched with perspiration.
    However, Masters Bruce and Dick weren’t the only ones with a modicum of determination in this household. Activating his computer, Alfred watched its screen light up. Then he lifted a compact disc from its holder, slipped it into his disc drive, and began to type.
    An advisory came up on the screen in bright green letters. “Override engaged. Copying protected files.”
    Alfred lifted a microrecording unit and spoke into it. “Still unable to reach you,” he said. “Have vital information you must see . . .”
    One by one, the screen displayed the files he was copying. Batmobile schematics. Batsuit designs. Blueprints of the devices stored in Batman’s Utility Belt.
    All of Batman’s secrets, kept since the night he took to the rooftops above Gotham. All of them essential to the continued effectiveness of Gotham’s Dark Knight.
    And all of them downloading to the compact disc.

    Through a canopy of ivy, past the open flap of her tent, Pamela Isley could see a slice of sky. And the full moon that had risen over the roof of the Prison Morte complex.
    But it didn’t look the same as she remembered it—neither the sky nor the moon, nor Prison Morte itself. Everything was different. Everything had a certain glamour about it. A certain glow.
    And she was different as well. She could feel it in her every cell. She was something she had never been before, something that in all likelihood had never existed before.
    Hearing a voice, Pamela turned toward it. Focused on it.
    It was Woodrue. He was hovering over her battery-powered laptop in the next tent, talking on his portable phone as he rifled through her research files.
    “Yes, sir,” he was saying, “I’m so pleased you won the bidding, your supreme . . . er, ruthlessness.”
    In the distance, someone screamed. Pamela remembered that he had a name now: Bane. As in the bane of humanity.
    “We’re making the final modifications on him right now,” Woodrue was telling his high bidder. “We’ll have a thousand super-soldiers out to you tomorrow by overnight mail . . .”
    Ridiculous, she thought. The man is insane.
    But even in the grip of his insanity, the scientist had accomplished his goal. Just as she would accomplish hers.
    As Woodrue hung up, she began to move. To shrug off the ivy that enveloped her, concealed her. Noticing the disturbance, he turned to look at her.
    She stood, casting off the jungle vines. As before, her reflection was cast back at her in one of her chemical beakers. But this time, it showed an altogether different personage.
    Her hair was