The Dark Knight Rises: The Official Novelization by Cox Greg

Author:Cox, Greg [Cox, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781781161074
Publisher: Random House Inc Clients
Published: 2012-08-20T17:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Feverish images dragged him up from the dark. Screams, sobs, and maniacal laughter surrounded him. Broken bodies crashed to earth. He was falling down a long dark shaft. A black, skull-like visage gazed down on him, coming closer and closer…

Bruce opened his eyes, drifting back to consciousness.

Disoriented, he found himself lying on his back on a rough wooden cot. He stared upward at a sooty stone roof that looked as though it had been carved from solid rock. He glimpsed prison bars out of the corner of his eye. His Batsuit was gone, replaced by coarse, filthy rags. His head throbbed and his throat was parched.

Whiskers carpeted his pale, clammy face. He tried to sit up, only to experience an excruciating jolt of pain. He sank back onto the cot, gasping in agony.

It all came back to him.

Bane. Wayne Tower. His back bent backwards until…

Someone stirred to his right, and he realized that he wasn’t alone in the cell. He tried to roll over to see who it was, but even the attempt was torture.

Heavy footsteps approached the cot. A massive figure squatted beside him. Densely muscled shoulders curved upward into a thick neck supporting a familiar masked face. The dark skull from his fever dreams seemed to gaze down on him.

Bane.

“Why didn’t you just kill me?” Bruce rasped, his throat sore from disuse.

“You don’t fear death,” Bane answered. “You welcome it.” He shook his head. “Your punishment is to be more severe.”

Bruce understood now. He glared furiously at his captor.

“You’re a torturer…”

“Yes,” Bane agreed. “But not of your body. Of your soul.”

Bruce tried to hold onto his anger, but the pain was too great. He let out a sharp gasp. Bane blurred before his eyes as he felt the darkness encroaching on his vision. He fought to stay conscious.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“Home,” Bane replied. “Where I learned the truth about despair. As will you.”

Bruce forced himself to look around, turning his head as little as possible. Through the rusty iron bars of his cell, he glimpsed what appeared to be an enormous underground complex carved into the sides of a gigantic pit. Metal stairs and catwalks connected rows of terraces that led into deep, cavernous cell blocks. The entire structure resembled a huge inverted pyramid or ziggurat that was almost Escheresque in appearance.

Wretched figures clad in frayed peasant garb populated the place, trudging wearily about their labors. There appeared to be no guards—only prisoners. Angry shouts and screams came from the other cells. The early morning sunlight filtered down from a vast circular shaft rising hundreds of feet above the bottom of the pit. Higher up, crumbling ledges and outcroppings jutted from the weathered stone sides.

It was like being at the bottom of a colossal well.

Bane rose from Bruce’s bedside and crossed the cell to the bars.

“There is a reason that this prison is the worst hell on earth.” He lifted his masked countenance toward the distant sunlight. “Hope. Every man who has rotted here over the centuries has looked up to the light, and imagined climbing to freedom.

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