Arkham Yum

The latest Arkham administration was Travis Brown. He was nervous and he had a right to be. His three immediate predecessors had ended their reigns in death, despair, or degeneracy. But to Bruce’s mind, that didn’t excuse the weakness manifest in Brown. 

Flop sweat danced around his receding hairline and he spoke in a high, quavering voice—every sentence floated through the air like he was workshopping it instead of committing to say it. Bruce had had enough ‘children’ at this point to be intimately familiar with the character of Piglet. He wouldn’t have put him in charge of an insane asylum either.

“We’ve put so much of the funds you’ve donated to us to good use? The new wing will be state of the art, just start of the art? We’re entirely grateful you’ve been so generous!” Compliments got an exclamation point so the listener could be sure the brownnosing was intentional.

“Have to throw a lot of money around when the taxman is looking,” Bruce said lightly. “And hopefully they assume that’s all of it.” He tapped the side of his nose.

“Yes, yes, quite! But please, let me show you the new security system?”

The relative tranquility of Arkham Asylum—the gloomy, oppressive atmosphere, with its too-still quietness broken only by the drip-drip-drip of something leaking—was replaced with more visceral dread. A klaxon rang, alarm lights sprayed everything with red, and Brown appeared to have a conniption. 

“Oh dear, oh dear—riot! Breakout! Fire!”

Before Bruce could ask if they really had an alarm for all of those things at once, the guard escorting them stepped in. “This way!” he said, taking his baton from its holster and leading the way through the twisting layout of the asylum to the relative security of the administration building. 

There, the guards were already setting up for a siege. Every door but the one they came through was locked and barricaded. Bruce had to give them credit—as flimsy as the security at Arkham often was, he couldn’t fault the staff for self-preservation.

“What’s going on?” their escort growled to a passing counselor as they moved through the administration building.

“Riot in the women’s wing!”

“How many of the usual suspects do we have in there?”

“All of them! Catwoman, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy—even Red Claw!”

“Shit.”

They came to the control room, the thick door like a slab of coffin stone as it was pulled out of the way. Brown was quick to hustle through.

“Bruce, may I call you Bruce, you’re of course welcome to stay as long as you like in our security zone until we’ve managed the crisis?”

Bruce went through the door with a little more dignity, now that it was fully open. His donations had bought the asylum a control room that wouldn’t have been out of place at the NSA, with numerous workstations surrounding a central screen. The wall of a monitor showed a CCTV view of the lounge in the women’s wing. The would-be therapeutic space, with its art supplies, jungle gym, and ball-pit, had metastasized into the usual violence. Small fires burned, inmates settled grudges in fights to the death, and a line of guards knelt in the ball-pit. 

Red Claw paced behind them. She’d stripped off the top of her inmate jumpsuit, leaving her in the tanktop underneath. It clung tightly to her curvy breasts, while showing off the sculpted muscles in her arms, the scars that marred her chest and shoulders. Long dark tresses ran down her back, similarly scarred by a stripe of white hair.

“We have them contained in the women’s wing,” a functionary said, holding a hand over the mouthpiece of the hotline to the GCPD. “But they have hostages.”

“Yes, yes, we can see that!” Brown quailed. “Is that Gordon? Tell him to send negotiators. We’ll let them handle this. And a SWAT team. They’ll go in, gas the place, and we’ll all get hazard pay.” He whirled on Bruce as if suddenly remembering the billionaire was there. “We are working on a knockout gas system of our own—no lobbing grenades in through the windows—but we’d need pipes to deliver them and the broad of trustees is concerned that the pipes we already have are rusty… think it would send a good message if we got those into perfect working order before we started building new ones…”

The view on the main screen cut to a close-up of Red Claw, riddled with static though it was. One of the inmates with a knack for technology rerouting the feed. Bruce’s jaw worked as he stared into her beautiful, deadly face—her pale blue eyes seeming to hiss with madness just looking through the screen. This close, he could see the tattoo of her namesake that emblazoned the thick bicep on her right arm.

“Personnel of Arkham Asylum,” she said, her thick Hungarian accent crashing through her words. “We will not wait for you to draw your plans against us. Starting in five minutes, we will begin executing hostages. Release the locks and allow us our freedom, or your people die.”

Brown was aghast. He grabbed the shoulder of one of the technicians, giving it a shake. “Can you—can you call Commission Gordon? Tell him to get here faster?”

Bruce could see that leaving the authorities to their response was not an option. Neither was any activity on the part of the Batman. His cape and cowl never would’ve made it through security; he would have to drive for miles to get to the Batcave, meaning his response time was even lower than Gordon’s.

Security measures he had paid for, at that. Just when you thought Gotham couldn’t get any worse, it developed a sense of irony.

“Is there a bathroom around here?” he asked a nearby guard. “All this tension is terrible on my stomach.”

***

In two minutes he’d made his way to the bridge leading to the towering women’s wing. This far off the approved track, he could hear the mad laughter, screams, and sobs that were more characteristic of Arkham Asylum. Faded bloodstains were on the stark concrete walls; not part of any tour.

Already, he had planned ahead to explain his actions. A three-martini lunch and an unfortunate opiate addiction stemming from his last skiing accident. Bruce Wayne, playboy, would have to do some time at the Betty Ford Clinic, or at least be seen to do so for a few weeks. But that was assuming he survived the suicidal act he would need a substance abuse problem to explain away in the first place.

Although it was called a wing, the rioting section of Arkham Asylum was more like a medieval tower, connected to the main building by entrances on the ground and a sky bridge allowing for rapid transit of guards and medics. While the guards’ response now focused on holding the female inmates in at the ground level, a natural chokepoint, he was free to go to the sky bridge.

It was another example of Arkham’s gaping holes in security, but there was a little reasoning behind it. The bridge was secured with sally ports at both ends and in the middle. If needed, guards could be dispatched to the bridge and turn its narrow confines into the Battle of Thermopylae. 

If they were overwhelmed, supports in the bridge could be released and it would come crashing down under its own weight, cutting off access entirely. Besides which, the entire sally port system was automated. It was hard-wired to let people in, but not let them out. And it could only be operated by a guard’s keycard. Such as the one Bruce had borrowed.

He let himself through the first set of doors, the second set of doors, like going through an airlock as the entrance closed before the exit opened. Finally, he came to the entryway into the women’s wing. 

The inmates trying fruitlessly to break through the sally port with a cafeteria table as battering ram stopped, dropping the fractured wood and flinging themselves against the bars. Shaking them, pounding on them, biting them. Bruce didn’t consider himself a model of mental health per se, but seeing them there, it was hard not to consider himself an eye of sanity within a storm of madness.

The howling brought Red Claw, who drove aside the throng with her voice like a whip. “Move! Stand aside! I would see what’s going on!” The jumpsuits parted like the Red Sea, allowing her through. She looked at Bruce with a glimmer of recognition that soon turned into open amusement—no doubt remembering him from one of his tabloid exploits.

“Well! Bruce Wayne. Are you all they could send to negotiate?”

“No… not, exactly… well, you shouldn’t listen to me, I’ve been having the most terrible headaches and I took something for them, but it has me feeling a bit loopy, and… anyway, I’m sure you know what you’re doing, I don’t want to tell you your business, but… well… I was really worried you were going to capture me, since I’d make such a good hostage, instead of a bunch of random guards who clearly no one cares about much if they’re working at Arkham. But no, no, I’m talking out my ass, who cares what I think?”

Red Claw’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying… that you want to be our hostage?”

Bruce shrugged, lips quirking. “Held hostage in an all-girl prison? Sounds fun.”

Red Claw snorted, almost amused in her disdain at the playboy’s usual clowning. “Pig. I should’ve expected as much. But you might prove useful. Come—let yourself in. I’m sure it will prove a highly memorable experience.”

“Oh, okay, cool,” Bruce said blearily. “What about the other hostages? Are you keeping them? Because I wouldn’t feel very valued if you had me as a hostage and also a whole bunch of other guys. That’s like… I don’t know… kidnapping the President and also some people from the parks and recreation department. Who does that?”

Red Claw’s face flushed crimson, making it seem like her eyes were the cool blue at the base of a flame. “Very well! Surrender yourself to us and I’ll release the other hostages.”

“Oh!” Bruce cried in surprise. “I didn’t think you’d go for that. Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

He carded his way through the first gate in the sally port. It slid open. He stepped through, and on his way in he tripped. A pratfall that would’ve done Clark Kent proud. The card flew from his hands, slipping across the floor back across the bridge. Red Claw yowled and banged her fists on the bars.

“No! You fool! Get it! Get it now!”

Bruce sat up, holding his knee and hissing in breaths as the sally port closed again. “Aw, geez, my knee! I think I really skinned it. Oh man, I might’ve sprained it… dang. Hey, there’s another sky bridge that goes to the medical building. Why don’t you put the hostages in there, and we can have the guys in the control room let them out while they let me in? That sounds fair.”

Red Claw clenched her teeth, hands white-knuckled on the iron bars. There was enough space inside the sally port that she couldn’t reach through them and get Bruce, not when he was practically leaning against the other end of it. And she wouldn’t expend the dignity to try. She simply tightened her fingers on the bars as if strangling them.

“Splicer!” she hissed—the name of a technopath Nightwing had apprehended last month. “Fix the system so they can’t let the hostages out without letting him in. Is that too much to ask?”

The mousy brunette she’d been talking to—evidently unable to do more to hack the Asylum systems then the little trick she had pulled with the cameras—was thirtyish, short, and plump. She had a deep dimple in each cheek, with chunky legs and big matronly breasts that bounced with each step.

“It’s an old system, Claw, I can’t just talk to it, it’s like trying to tell a five-year-old how to do calculus…”

Red Claw fixed her with a stare.

“Yeah, I should be able to manage an if-then kinda thing…”

“Alright then.” Red Claw turned her mad, icy eyes on Bruce. “Welcome to the riot, Mr. Wayne.”

***

As soon as the trade was made, Bruce was led through the women’s wing by Red Claw and an apparent praetorian guard of inmates loyal to her. As one of the few villainesses he knew to have led a criminal organization, it made sense she would’ve cultivated another gang in service to her. 

And as generals, she had the toughest women in Arkham: Selina, Harley, Ivy. They crowded around Bruce while he was frog-marched, pulling at his clothes, stripping him to undershirt and boxers to make sure he had no concealed weaponry or other goodies—so they said.

“Wayne changes things,” Red Claw said at the tip of the spear, spewing the usual monologue as she led the procession. “They won’t risk an assault while Gotham’s favorite son is in the crosshairs.”

“Not to mention its most eligible bachelor,” Selina said, holding onto Bruce’s tie and pulling at it like a leash. For a woman who wore head-to-toe black leather, she could be understated when she wanted to be. “I’d love to play with his billfold a while…”

“We’ll make them sweat a while,” Red Claw continued. “Let his lawyers and his loyal vassals bloody the police for us. In time, they’ll be begging to negotiate.”

“No flower on your lapel?” Ivy asked, yanking the pocket square from his suit jacket. “And no roses for an old flame? I thought you were a class act, Brucie.”

“We’ll name our price for him, and our freedom. The Wayne family is Gotham City. Gordon lets him die, he might as well take a wrecking ball to the stock exchange personally. No. He’ll make a deal.”

“Hey Selina, you want this?” Harley asked, yanking out his belt. “It’s no whip, but I bet you could have a fun time with it…”

“Who knows? Stockholm Syndrome is a wonderful thing. Perhaps he could end up as our silent partner in the rarefied air of Gotham.”

“Leather shoes!” Magpie cried, pulling at them. Bruce would’ve tripped if it weren’t for the women holding him up. “Shiny! Shiny! Shiny!” 

“I want his socks!” someone Bruce didn’t know yelled. “Smelly, smelly socks…”

Given the number of crazies in Arkham, he supposed it was inevitable one would have a foot fetish. Bruce pulled his feet away from the grabbing hands. “My socks, really? I’ll catch a chill.” He directed his next words at the back of Red Claw’s head. “Are you taking me somewhere with a carpet?”

“Enough!” Red Claw roared. “We need him alive and unharmed. That means no one gets to play with him—not until we’ve negotiated our release, anyway. Harley!”

“Yes Ms. Claw?” Harley asked. Evidently, her submissive personality was now enthralled to a new boss. 

“Guard him. Don’t let any of these bitches lay a finger on him.” Red Claw ran a finger along Harley’s chin, the clown simpering as she felt her mistress’s touch. “You got that?”

“Oh, yessirree, Ms. Claw! I won’t let anyone near him! Social distancing, all the way!”

“Good girl,” Red Claw cooed, making Harley trill. “The rest of you, you have jobs to do. Get to it! And leave his socks alone!”

And so Bruce was left alone, locked in an isolation chamber, straitjacketed, stripped, not even any shoes. But they had left him his socks. Woven into the welts of each dress sock was a strip of modified LSD microdots. Given that none of the women here were Big Barda, all he had to do was slip them each one of the microdots—get it into the mucous membrane of any part of their body—and they’d be out for the duration.

Easier said than done. He couldn’t even get out of the straitjacket they’d put on him without Harley Quinn attacking him. In lieu of any of her usual fashion faux pas, she’d put on a doctor’s coat over her white bra and panties. She’d also found enough make-up to cover her face in starch white, with some spilling down over her cleavage like flour on an apron. Red surgical tape formed crosses over the cups of her bra and the crotch of her panties. If it weren’t for the sick mind behind the pretty face, Bruce might not’ve minded playing doctor with her.

“Well,” Bruce said, in the idle tone of a man making small talk, “I guess now we know who wears the pants in the relationship.”

“What relationship?” Harley asked, automatically a little enthused at the prospect of gossip.

“You and Ivy. You’re an item, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

Bruce nodded a little. “She’s off doing something important for Red Claw, you’re on guard duty. Says a little something about who’s the low man on the totem pole.”

Harley stuck her hands on her hips. “This is an important job!”

“Guarding someone who’s tied to a chair?” Bruce insisted. “Not exactly white-collar work, is it? I thought you were a nurse or something.”

Harley slapped her chest. The jiggle was appealing—she was cute when she was angry, despite the homicidal urges that went with it. “I have a PhD, motherfucker! I used to work here! I was a doctah!”

“No wonder Arkham has such a sterling reputation.”

Harley frowned. “Are you being a wise guy?”

“Me? No, I’m the idle rich. All I did was get born into the right family.”

“That’s right!” Harley cried.

“You’re the one with the MD.”

“PhD!” Harley stressed.

Bruce nodded. “That’s right. You’re a smart girl.”

“I am! Are you condec—condensat—talkin’ down to me?”

Bruce made an expression of disgust, like the idea was abhorrent to him. “Harley, I’m on your side in all this. This job is a waste of your intellect. Does Selina have a college degree?”

Harley sniffed. “Nope!”

“And does Ivy know the capital of New Jersey?”

“Trenton!” Harley said proudly.

Bruce nodded as if impressed. Since Harley was from Jersey, he really wasn’t. 

He threw her another softball. “What continent is South Africa a part of?”

“Africa!” Harley folded her arms smugly. “Easy.”

“Very good. Now how big am I?”

“Six foot two!” Harley answered, swiveling her head around. “Yeah, I’m the literate type. It was in your profile in Cosmo, Vogue, Seventeen…”

Bruce tutted. “No, Harley. How big am I?”