Cross Fire: An Original Companion Novel (Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice) by Michael Kogge

Author:Michael Kogge [Kogge, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2016-02-16T08:00:00+00:00

Batman deactivated the building’s alarms and gave himself a few minutes before he went outside. The dirt bike he’d previously seen in the weeds was gone. The boy had gotten away.

Good. Everything had gone as planned.

Batman returned to his vehicle and radioed Alfred. “Is the tracer set?”

“It deployed from your Batarang onto the boy’s shirt beautifully,” Alfred responded. He had remained behind in the Batcave to monitor the situation. “Sending tracking data now to the Batmobile. Tracer location will be red.”

The dashboard screen displayed a top-down map of the Gotham City–Metropolis bridge. A red marker blinked in the blue area that represented the surrounding waterway.

Batman gritted his teeth. “Don’t even tell me he’s swimming.”

“Not that deep,” Alfred said. “He must have found the beacon and hurled it into the bay. Our little thief’s smarter than we thought.”

Indeed he was—or whoever was behind him.

“You have any idea as to his motivation?” Batman asked. That was the real question behind all of this. What twelve-year-old kid would break into a high-security laboratory and steal an advanced artificial intelligence processor? It didn’t make sense. Someone must be using the boy as a tool. And that someone was the person Batman wanted to catch.

“None at the moment,” Alfred said. “But did I hear the boy use the name Rory?”

“That’s what he told the AI, yes,” Batman said. “Do a search query on both his name and WayneTech. Maybe he’s related to one of the employees.”

“Commencing database search now,” Alfred said. Photos of numerous employees flashed by on the dashboard screen. “This is interesting.”

The screen showed the profile of one Amelia Greeley. She was a midlevel engineer at WayneTech specializing in robotics. Over her couple of years with the company, she had earned stellar performance reviews. But there was a flag on her file.

Batman grimaced. Alfred’s sigh was audible over the radio.

Amelia Greeley was among those still missing after Wayne Tower collapsed.

After a deep breath, Batman proceeded to click through her records. She had noted on her insurance information that she had one son, named Rory.

Still, none of this added up as to why the kid would do what he did. Retaliation for a past grievance? Revenge?

“Birth records reveal another interesting family connection,” Alfred said.

A second set of records appeared on the screen. Her maiden name, before her marriage, had been Aesop.

Just seeing the name incensed Batman. “I hope she’s not related to him.”

“I’m afraid she’s the mad doctor’s sister,” Alfred said.

Batman started the engine. Things were beginning to fall into place. The kid’s uncle was none other than the former chief scientist of WayneTech, Doctor Babrius Aesop, who had been committed to Arkham Asylum for threats against humanity.

“I think we have a suspect,” Batman said.

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