The Labyrinth
“November 3rd,
Three people have gone missing over the last two weeks, now a fourth person has been reported missing. A banker named Albert Walsh. One witness says they saw him running down the street like a mad man and going on how ‘they’ were chasing him. The witness said they only saw Albert, no one chasing him. If you’re not careful this city will do that to you.
I went down the alley Albert ran down before he vanished. At first it was just another ordinary, trash filled alley. But that’s when something caught my eye. There was a passage way leading down under the street. The passage led to a long hallway of repeating brick walls. Winding, turning, repeating, never ending. A popular internet theory tells of never ending rooms and corridors like this, but this didn’t feel like an internet production. It became all too real too fast.
Lying in the middle of the floor down a passage, was one of Jokers cards. Was this his doing? Is he behind the disappearances? Is he still actually in Arkham or did he somehow escape? Further in the labyrinth was a shrine like area, full of things from MY life, my career. Two wedding rings with roses left on the ground. A newspaper article from when Superman and I foiled one of Luther’s plots. A wanted poster of Joker. Waylon’s case file from his rampage. And a comic book made to tell the adventures of my first year as the Batman. Who left this behind? How do they know this much about the Batman?
I’ve been up for four days straight. Going from board meetings to the gutters of Gotham, back to the top with more meetings and fundraisers just to have it washed in dirt and blood once the sun goes down. Bruce is tired and wants to sleep, but the city needs me. Despite being tired, I hear whispers around the corners but the halls are empty. I’m being watched but there are no eyes around. Whoever is watching knows I know they’re there.
Whoever they are, they know who Bruce Wayne is, who the Batman is. At the end of final, dead end hallway, hanging on the wall was something very dear to me. But they used it as a weapon of fear. A fear I’ve not felt since that fateful night. Hanging on the wall was a picture of my mother and father….”