DC: All for One Chapter 22 — Task Force K (Patreon)

Downtown at Gotham general one of the doctors who worked there stood in front of Ethan Kane with a look that bordered on disbelief. He held the chart in both hands and shook his head slowly as he looked at Ethan sitting upright in the hospital bed. 

"I'm going to be honest with you, Mister Kane," he said. "In thirty years of trauma surgery I have never seen a recovery like this. The wound you sustained should have killed you. The depth of the laceration, the damage to the surrounding tissue, the volume of blood loss reported at the scene, any one of those factors on their own would have been enough to lose most patients before they reached the operating table. The fact that you are sitting here talking to me, with your vocal cords functioning and your airway intact, is something I genuinely cannot explain."

Ethan smiled at him from the bed. "I think that's a testament to you and your team more than anything else, Doctor," he said, his voice carrying a slight rasp. "Whatever you did in that operating room clearly worked, and I won't forget it."

The doctor was visibly charmed by that and he tucked the chart under his arm and placed one hand briefly on the bedrail. "You're very kind to say so, but I want you to understand that injuries like this can be unpredictable in their recovery. You may feel fine now but there's a real possibility of complications in the coming weeks, scar tissue affecting your vocal range, difficulty swallowing, sensitivity around the wound site. If anything changes, anything at all, I want you to come back in immediately. Don't push through it. Don't assume it will pass on its own. Call us."

"I will," Ethan said. "Thank you, Doctor. Truly."

The doctor nodded and smiled once more before he turned and left the room, pulling the door shut behind him with a click.

The smile melted off Ethan's face before the latch had finished settling.

He sat in the hospital bed in the silence of the private room and let his expression return to what it actually was. The warm gratitude, the slight vulnerability and the carefully calibrated rasp in his voice all dropped away like a coat being shrugged, and what remained was nothing. 

He was close now. 

He could feel it the way you feel the edge of a cliff before you see it, a change in the air, a shift in the ground beneath your feet that tells you the next step is the last one before you fall though in this case falling was good. The families were gone. The territory would soon be his. The product was starting to circulate in every neighbourhood in Gotham and the compound inside it was sitting dormant in the bloodstreams of hundreds of thousands of users who had no idea what they were carrying.

He was so close to it now that he could almost see the shape of what came after, the city scrubbed clean of the rot that had been feeding on it for generations, the criminals, the dealers, the gang leaders and the corrupt politicians and every parasitic organism that had made its home in the body of Gotham swept away, and what would be left in the morning would be something new and ready to be built into the world he had been designing since the day he first understood what his gifts were for.

A utopia.

His utopia.

He would lead it. That was obvious. There was no one else who could, no one else who had the vision or the capability or the willingness to do what needed to be done to maintain it. He would be the architect, the guardian and the sovereign of a new world, and the people who lived in it would be free in ways they had never been free before, as the systems that had been designed to keep them small would no longer exist.

Yes... that would be his new world... his promise. 

But beneath the certainty, in a place he did not like to acknowledge, there was something else. A small cold thing that had been sitting in the back of his mind for longer than he wanted to admit.

What happened after?

What happened when the plan was complete and the world was remade and there was nothing left to build toward? What happened when the purpose that had been driving him forward since the beginning was fulfilled and the engine that powered everything he was had nothing left to burn?

He knew what he had been before the gift.

He remembered the emptiness, the grey featureless landscape of a life that had no direction, no meaning and no reason to continue except that continuing was what bodies did. He remembered what it felt like to wake up every morning and have nothing ahead of him, to move through the hours like furniture being rearranged in an empty room.

Would he go back to that? After everything? After he had won?

No. 

He wouldn't. 

He couldn't. 

That wasn't possible. 

The new world would need him, would always need him, and the work of maintaining it would be enough to keep the emptiness at bay. It had to be. There was no alternative he was willing to consider.

He pushed the thought down and held it there until it stopped moving.

A moment later the door opened and Artemis stepped inside carrying two paper cups from the coffee place on the ground floor of the hospital, the smile she gave him when she saw him sitting up was genuine in a way that very few smiles directed at ethan ever were. She crossed the room and handed him one of the cups and sat down in the chair beside the bed with her legs crossed and her own cup balanced on her knee.

"They only had that weird oat milk you like," she said. "So you're welcome."

"Thank you," Ethan said, taking the cup and drinking from it before setting it on the bedside table.

He looked at her. She was smiling but the smile wasn't reaching the rest of her, her shoulders were tight and her free hand was gripping the armrest of the chair harder than it needed to and her eyes kept moving to the bandages on his throat and then away again as if she was trying not to look at them but couldn't quite manage it.

"What's wrong," he said.

"Nothing," Artemis replied quickly. "Nothing, I'm fine. I'm glad you're okay. You look good. The doctor said the recovery was—"

"Artemis."

She stopped talking. She looked at the cup on her knee and then at the window and then at the floor, and she breathed in and let it out slowly. "I'm worried about you," she said.

"I'm recovering well. Everything went to plan. The families are gone, the territory is secured, and we've made more progress in the last month than—"

"You could've died, Ethan."

The words came out harder than she meant them to and she caught herself and pulled them back, but they were already in the room.

"It was reckless," she continued more quietly.

"It was necessary," Ethan said. "If the doppelgänger had taken the wound instead of me the damage would have likely destroyed it before it ever reached the hospital. So the injury needed to be real. The blood needed to be real and slade needed to be covered in it  otherwise there was a much higher chance he would escape."

"You did your job well Artemis, you took out the members of the family as was expected, everything went well, I don't understand why it upsets you so much."

Artemis breathed out heavily and stood up from the chair and walked to the window. She stood there for a moment looking out at the parking lot below and the grey Gotham skyline beyond it.

"Are you having doubts about the plan," Ethan asked. His fists tightened beneath the blanket where she couldn't see them.

Artemis turned to face him, the look on her face was complicated in a way that he had not seen from her before, something caught between exhaustion and a fear. "No," she said. "It's not that. It's just... when you came to me and asked if I wanted to help you build a better world, I said yes because I believed you. I still believe you. But I didn't think there would be so much death, Ethan. I didn't think it would look like this."

He let his fists loosen and he pushed the blanket aside, swung his legs off the bed and walked to where she was standing by the window. He placed his hands gently on her arms and looked at her. "I wish there didn't need to be," he said. "If I could build the world I want to without removing the people who profit from keeping it broken, I would. But they won't step aside. They won't change. They won't stop feeding on the people beneath them because feeding is what they do. The only way to save the body is to cut out the disease, and cutting hurts. It always hurts. But the alternative is letting the disease win, and I won't do that."

"I know," Artemis said, her voice cracked slightly on the second word despite her efforts to keep calm. "I can make peace with those people dying. I can. They deserve it, most of them. But I don't know if I can handle it happening to you."

She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face against his chest.

Ethan put his arms around her and rubbed circles across her back. His face over the top of her head was as flat and expressionless as it had been before she walked in. "I'm not going anywhere, Artemis. I promise you that. You are not going to lose me. Not to Deathstroke, not to the families, not to anyone. I have too much left to do. Alright?"

She nodded against his chest without pulling away.

"Alright," she said quietly.

He let the embrace hold for another few seconds before he drew back and looked at her face and the redness around her eyes. "Wipe your eyes," he said. "The press will be here within the hour and I need you to go downstairs and call Maya. Tell her I'm ready to make a statement. Tell her I want cameras on the front steps by noon."

Artemis wiped her face with the back of her hand, straightened her shoulders and nodded. She picked up her coffee from the chair where she had left it and gave him one more look before she turned and walked out of the room.

...

A few hours later Ethan stepped through the front doors of Gotham General Hospital at twelve minutes past noon in a dark suit with the collar of his shirt open enough to show the edge of the bandages beneath it, the wall of noise that hit him when he emerged onto the steps was dense enough to feel physical.

The press had assembled in force. 

Camera crews from every network in the city and several from outside it were packed along the hospital's front steps in a semicircle three rows deep, and behind them a crowd of onlookers had gathered along the sidewalk and spilled out into the street despite the efforts of the GCPD officers who had been assigned to manage the perimeter. 

Maya stood to his right in a navy blazer with her tablet held against her chest and her expression locked into the composed professional mask she wore at public events. Artemis stood to his left in civilian clothes, jeans and a dark jacket, her hair down around her shoulders, looking like nothing more than a concerned friend who had come to support someone she cared about.

The questions started before he reached the microphone stand that had been set up at the top of the steps.

"Mister Kane, who do you believe was responsible for the attack at the Crowne-Berkshire?"

"Ethan, do you have any comment on the reports that the assassins were contracted by organised crime?"

"Mister Kane, the GCPD has declined to name suspects, do you have information that you've shared with the police that hasn't been made public?"

"Ethan, are you afraid for your life?"

Ethan raised one hand and there was silence.

"I only have one thing to say," he said.

He paused and looked across the assembled press and the crowd beyond them. "My enemies tried to silence me," he said. "They sent armed killers into a room full of innocent people to put me in the ground because they are afraid of what I represent. They are afraid because the work I am doing threatens their grip on this city. They are afraid because every food bank we open and every medical centre we staff is a reminder that the world they built it coming to an en. They wanted to take away Gotham's chance to rise above its staton. They wanted the people in the East End and the Narrows and every forgotten corner of this city to wake up and see my body on the news and think that fighting for something better gets you killed."

He gripped the edges of the podium.

"They tried to intimidate me," he said, louder now. "BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!!!"

The crowd behind the press line erupted into cheering and clapping with many people shouting his name.

"I am a citizen of Gotham," Ethan continued over the shouting. "I was born here. I was raised here. I have bled for this city, and I will die for the people who live in it if that is what it takes. I will not stop until there is not a single hungry person in this city. I will not stop until everyone has a roof over their head. I will not stop until every man and woman and child in Gotham can walk down their street at night without being afraid. I cannot be bought. I cannot be intimidated. I cannot be reasoned with."

He looked directly into the nearest camera.

"And to the people at the top, to the billionaires and the executives and the board members who sit in their towers and look down at this city, I want you to know something. The day is coming when you will lose everything you have hoarded. Every dollar you squeezed out of someone who couldn't afford to lose it. Every contract you signed that put profit over people. Every decision you made that kept someone else in the dirt. That day is coming. And when it arrives, you should be glad, because I will still be here. And I will take care of you the same way I take care of everyone else. Because that is what I do."

The crowd was roaring now.

A reporter pushed forward. "Mister Kane, does this mean you'll be postponing the phone launch? There have been security concerns raised by—"

"No," Ethan said. "I will not be postponing anything. The launch goes ahead as scheduled. And not only will it go ahead, I am announcing today that the retail price of every Future Foundation device will be reduced by fifty percent effective immediately. Everyone in this city deserves to have access to information regardless of who they are or where they come from, and I am not going to let the people who tried to kill me be the reason that doesn't happen."

He reached into his jacket and pulled out one of the Foundation phones and held it up so the cameras could see the screen.

"This is a new app we're releasing alongside the launch," he said. "It's called Horizon Connect. It's a free employment platform that matches people who are struggling to find work with businesses and organisations that are hiring, with no fees, no middlemen, no algorithms designed to sell your data to advertisers. You put in your skills, your location, your availability, and the system connects you directly with opportunities in your area. We built it because finding a job in this city shouldn't require a degree in computer science and a subscription to three different services that charge you money you don't have."

He lowered the phone.

"This is a new age for Gotham," he said. "And no one gets left behind. Thank you."

He stepped away from the podium and walked down the steps toward the waiting car with Maya on one side and Artemis on the other, the reporters surged forward with a dozen more questions that he did not acknowledge or answer. 

The car door opened and he ducked inside and the door closed behind him. Ethan Kane settled into the back seat of the sedan and looked straight ahead and said nothing as the car pulled away from the curb and merged into the Gotham traffic.

_____________________________________

The bullpen of the GCPD's central precinct was half empty at this time of day which had become normal over the last year as the department bled officers faster than it could replace them.

The ones who remained were gathered around the television mounted on the wall watching Ethan Kane stand on the steps of Gotham General Hospital with the entire city hanging on every word that came out of his mouth.

"I cannot be bought. I cannot be intimidated. I cannot be reasoned with."

"What a load of shit," muttered Detective Alvarez from his desk where he was leaning back in his chair. "This kid gets his throat cut at a party full of billionaires and suddenly he's Martin Luther King. Give me a break."

"Should've let him bleed out in the ambulance," said Officer Pruitt from the back of the room where he was standing with his shoulder against the doorframe. "Would've saved us all a lot of paperwork."

"Hey," said Officer Delgado from the desk nearest to the television, turning in her chair to look at Pruitt with an expression that made it clear she wasn't joking. "You don't get to say that. None of us get to say that. We're cops. We don't decide who lives and who dies based on whether we like them."

"I'm not saying we decide anything, I'm saying the world would be a simpler place if—"

"If what? If we let suspects die because of how we feel about them? That's the road you want to go down, Pruitt?"

"All I'm saying is—"

"Shut up," Renee said. "All of you."

Renee was sitting at her desk near the window with her back to the television and her eyes on the surface in front of her which was buried under a mountain of folders and loose paper and sticky notes and three empty coffee cups that she hadn't gotten around to throwing away. She didn't turn around to look at any of them and she didn't raise her voice beyond the volume needed to stop the argument.

"If Ethan Kane goes down," she said, "he goes down the right way. Through evidence. Through due process. Through the system we all signed up to protect when we put the badge on. Now get back to work, all of you, before I start assigning the overflow from my desk to anyone who's still standing around watching television."

The group dispersed as the people who knew Montoya knew well enough to understand that the suggestion was not a suggestion, and within thirty seconds the bullpen had returned to something resembling a workplace. 

Renee turned back to her desk and looked at the mess on it and felt the stress and frustration of the last month settle back onto her shoulders.

The paperwork alone was enough to drown in. She had discharged her firearm at a public event attended by over a hundred civilians, which meant an internal affairs review that was still ongoing and that required her to document every round she had fired and the justification for each one in a report that was now on its third draft because IA kept sending it back with requests for additional detail. 

Her encounter with Deathstroke itself had generated a separate investigation that she was both a witness in and a subject of, which meant she couldn't discuss it with half her colleagues and couldn't access half the files she needed to do her other work. The collapse of the Crowne-Berkshire had killed one officer and had injured eleven others badly enough to require hospital stays.

It was a disaster from top to bottom and the paperwork was the least of it.

They had gone to the gala with a purpose. Renee and a dozen other officers had been there in plainclothes on Jim's orders, spread across the event in positions that gave them eyes on Ethan Kane from every angle, hoping to observe who he talked to, what connections he made, what enemies he had, anything that might give them a thread to pull on that the DA couldn't wave away. They had watched him work the room for hours and they had come away with nothing. He had been charming and completely unremarkable in every interaction they had been close enough to overhear.

But Renee wasn't stupid.

She pulled a file from the stack on her desk and opened it and looked at the timeline she had been building on her own time over the last three weeks, a handwritten chart that mapped the events of the gala night against everything else that had happened in Gotham during the same window.

The same night Deathstroke had come through the skylight, every head of the five families had died, and all of them just so happened to have been at the gala. 

All of them in one night. 

And Ethan Kane had come out the other side of it smelling like roses. The victim. The survivor. The brave young philanthropist who nearly died at a charity event and came back swinging. It didn't help that Ethan had publicly made himself an enemy of the rich and corrupt so people naturally assumed that the hey had hired Deathstroke to kill Ethan. 

Her fists tightened on the edge of the file until the paper crumpled slightly beneath her fingers.

He was responsible for it all. She couldn't prove it yet, she didn't have a single piece of evidence that would hold up in front of a judge but she knew it in her gut. Ethan Kane had orchestrated the deaths of every major crime boss in Gotham and used his own attempted murder as the cover story, the sheer audacity of it, the scale and the timing and the precision of the whole thing, made her want to put her fist through the desk.

"Montoya."

She looked up and saw Officer Chen was standing at the end of her desk with his hands in his pockets. "Commissioner wants to see you in his office."

"Now?"

"Now."

She closed the file and stood up and made her way through the bullpen and to  where Jim Gordon's office occupied the corner . The door was open but she knocked on the frame anyway, he waved her in without looking up from the papers on his desk.

"Close the door," he said.

She closed it and sat down in the chair across from him and waited while he finished writing something. After a moment he set his pen down, took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"How's the arm," he asked.

"Fine."

"And the ribs?"

"Bruised. Not broken. I'm fine, Jim."

"The IA review?"

"Third draft. They want more detail on the second and third shots for whatever stupid reason. I'm working on it."

Jim nodded slowly, put his glasses back on and looked at her across the desk with an expression she had learned to read over the years, the one that meant the small talk was over and the real conversation was about to begin.

"The DA called this morning," he said.

Renee's jaw tightened.

"He has effectively shut down any and all active investigations involving Ethan Kane," Jim continued. "The reasoning, as it was explained to me, is that Kane is currently classified as a victim of a violent crime and that any investigative activity directed toward him at this time could be construed as harassment of a victim by law enforcement, which would expose the department to civil liability. The DA's office has requested that all files related to Kane be returned to their office for review and that no new investigative actions be initiated without prior written approval from the DA personally."

The room was very quiet for a moment.

"You're kidding," Renee said.

"Unfortunately not."

"Jim, that's insane. The DA is shutting us down because he got his throat cut at a party? That's the reason? That's what they're going with?"

"That is what they're going with."

"Then the DA is bought. He's been bought, Jim. Someone got to him and—"

"I agree with you," Jim said quietly.

Renee stopped.

"I agree with everything you just said, Renee. Every word of it, but it doesn't matter because it's out of my hands now. The DA has the authority to direct investigative priorities and he has exercised that authority and there is nothing I can do about it through official channels without putting this entire department at risk."

He held her gaze for a moment, then reached across his desk and picked up a small notepad and pen. He wrote something on the top sheet, tore it off, folded it once, and slid it across the desk to her.

"If you want to do what's right," he said, "come to that address tonight at seven. Don't tell anyone. Don't write it down anywhere else. Burn it once you've memorised it."

Renee looked at the folded paper on the desk between them and then looked at Jim's face. She picked up the paper and put it in her jacket pocket without reading it.

"Seven o'clock," she said.

Jim nodded.

She stood up, walked to the door and opened it and stepped out into the hallway and closed it behind her and headed back toward the bullpen.

She didn't see Officer Pruitt.

He was standing in the alcove beside the water cooler six feet from the commissioner's door, his back pressed against the wall and his head tilted slightly in the direction of the office she had just left. He waited until her footsteps had faded down the stairwell before he straightened up and pulled his phone from his pocket and typed out a short message, then hit send before he slipped the phone back into his pocket and walked away down the corridor in the opposite direction with his hands in his pockets and his face carefully blank.

...

Renee pulled up to the curb in her car, killed the engine and sat there for a moment looking at the building through the windshield. The address Jim had given her belonged to a bar called the Tin Roof Club, a narrow two-storey joint wedged between a laundromat and a pawn shop on the kind of street that Gotham had plenty, which meant it was a bit of a shithole. The sign above the door was an old neon one that would probably have looked great if this was 1973.

She wondered if this was the right address, that maybe she'd misread it. No. She knew for sure she'd memorised the address right before she burned it. This was no doubt the place. 

She got out of the car and walked up to the front entrance where a large man was sitting on the steps with his back against the railing and a handheld gaming device held up in front of his face. He was broad enough across the shoulders that sitting down he still took up most of the stairway, he didn't look up from the game when she approached. "Montoya?" he said without moving his eyes from the screen.

"Yeah."

"Go round the back."

Renee stood there for a second waiting for more information but it became clear that the man had said everything he intended to say, so she stepped off the front stoop and walked down the narrow alley that ran along the side of the building toward the rear entrance. The alley was dark and smelled like old trash, over to the left was a dumpster she had to push to the side to get access to what she assumed was the door. 

She pushed through it and stepped inside.

The bar was closed, or at least it looked that way. The lights were mostly off and the chairs were up on most of the tables.

"Well well well."

The voice came from behind the bar where a woman was leaning against the counter with one elbow resting on the wood. She was tall and dark-haired and dressed in a tight tank top and leather pants that seemed to creak when she moved. She smiled at Renee the way a cat smiles at a mouse right before its about to eat it. 

"You must be the detective," she said. "Selina Kyle. Pleasure."

"Renee Montoya," Renee said, not entirely sure what she had walked into.

"Drink?" Selina asked, already reaching for a bottle behind the bar.

"No. Thanks."

"Suit yourself," Selina said as she poured herself something brown and generous and took a sip of it without breaking eye contact. "More for me. So what brings you to my little clubhouse, Detective? I don't remember inviting you."

Renee looked around the empty bar and back at the woman behind the counter and seriously considered the possibility that Jim Gordon had sent her to the wrong address as some kind of retirement-age practical joke when another voice cut in from the doorway behind her.

"Selina, put the glass down. You're supposed to be making a good impression." 

Renee turned and saw Batgirl standing in the doorway that connected the bar to the back room, her red hair visible beneath the cowl and her arms folded across the chest of her suit.

"Oh please," Selina said, taking another sip. "I'm making an excellent impression."

"Then stop playing around and making her think she's in the wrong place," Batgirl said with an annoyed look on her face. 

"Oooh it looks like kitty does have claws," she said with a wink at Batgirl. 

Batgirl shook her head slightly and turned to Renee. "Detective Montoya. I'm Batgirl though I'm sure you know."

"Renee Montoya," Renee said again, though by this point she wasn't sure the introduction was necessary given that everyone in the building seemed to already know who she was.

"Ignore her," Batgirl said with a slight tilt of her head toward Selina. "She enjoys getting a rise out of people."

Renee looked between the two of them. "What is this," she said. "What am I doing here."

"Follow me," Batgirl said, and she turned and walked back through the doorway into the room beyond.

Renee followed her with Selina trailing behind them carrying her drink, they passed through a short corridor and down a set of stairs into a basement room that was larger than the bar above it and considerably better equipped. 

Robin was standing in front of the far wall.

Though that wasn't the surprising part.

The surprising part was the wall itself. It was covered, floor to ceiling, in photographs, printouts, handwritten notes, maps, newspaper clippings and red string connecting them in a web that spread across the entire surface, and at the centre of all of it, pinned in place with a single thumbtack, was a photograph of Ethan Kane and next to him was a photo of All for One. 

"What the hell is this," Renee said.

Batgirl stepped up beside her. "Welcome to Task Force K," she said.

"Task Force K," Renee repeated.

"It stands for Kane," Batgirl said, and there was a slight colour in her cheeks that suggested she was aware the name could have been better.

"Task Force K," Selina repeated from behind them as she settled into one of the folding chairs and crossed her legs. "Really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it. Very intimidating. I'm sure the criminal mastermind will tremble when he hears of us."

Robin looked at Renee and she looked back at him and for a moment neither of them said anything. The last time they had been in the same room was the night Ethan had dumped them and let him go, a bad memory for both of them. 

"Montoya," Robin said.

"Robin," Renee said.

"It's good to see you."

"Same."

Renee looked at the wall again and then back at the three of them. "So someone tell me what this actually is."

"This is a group dedicated to bringing Ethan Kane to justice," Robin said. "Everything we have on him, everything we've gathered, everything we suspect, it's all here."

"Why all the secrecy," Renee asked. "You've got Batgirl, you've got Robin, you've got the commissioner's blessing. Why aren't you doing this through official channels or through the League?"

Batgirl answered that one. "The Mayor and the DA have both been brought over to his side. You already know about the DA shutting down the investigation, but it goes further than that. The Mayor's office has made it quietly clear that any vigilante activity directed at Ethan Kane or the Future Foundation will be treated as a criminal matter and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If we move against him in costume they'll issue warrants for our arrest, and if we push harder than that they'll use it as justification to outlaw vigilante activity in Gotham entirely. The justice league are also no use because we are the only ones that actually believe Ethan and All for One are the same person."

Renee felt her jaw tighten. "So we're on our own."

"Basically," Selina said from her chair, swirling her drink. "For what it's worth I don't particularly care whether he's All for One or the Easter Bunny. He shot Batman. That I'm not happy about."

Renee looked at her for a moment then turned back to Robin. "Where's Jim? Why isn't he here?"

"Jim supports us and he'll help where he can," Robin said, "but he can't afford to know the details of what we're doing here. If he gets caught running a shadow operation against someone the DA has placed under protection he'll be fired on the spot, and whoever they replace him with will be worse. He's more useful to us where he is."

Renee nodded slowly. She understood the math of it even if she didn't like it. She walked up to the wall and looked at the web of photographs and notes and string, her eyes moving across the timeline that had been constructed along the top edge and the clusters of evidence that hung beneath each date, and after a minute of reading she stepped back.

"Is this everything you have on him," she asked.

Robin and Batgirl both looked at each other with the same expression, the one that said they already knew the answer and weren't happy about it.

"Yes," they both said at the same time.

It wasn't much.

Robin gestured toward a stack of cardboard boxes against the wall beneath the board. "I got copies of every police file, every crime report, every suspicious incident from the moment Ethan killed Creedence onward. It's all in those boxes. Hundreds of files. Somewhere in there, there has to be something we've missed that'll help us bring him down. A witness, a timestamp, a piece of physical evidence, something. We just haven't found it yet."

Renee looked at the boxes and then back at the board and then at the three people standing in the basement of a closed bar preparing to take on the most dangerous man in Gotham.

"What are we waiting for then," she said.

Robin held up one hand. "There's one more person joining us tonight. A week ago I found a list of emergency contacts on the Batcomputer that Bruce had compiled, people he trusted for situations that were beyond what the normal network could handle. I only found it recently, it was buried in an encrypted file that took me months to crack. One of the names on the list was someone I'd never heard of, but Bruce had flagged them as one of the best detectives in the world."

Renee opened her mouth to ask who it was but before she could get the words out there was a knock on the door at the top of the stairs.

Batgirl went up to answer it and there was a brief murmur of conversation that Renee couldn't make out from the basement, and then the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs, two sets, one of them considerably lighter than the other.

Batgirl came back into the room first with an expression on her face that Renee couldn't quite read.

And then the second figure rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs and Renee's brain stopped working for approximately three seconds.

A chimpanzee walked into the basement. 

He was wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and a deerstalker cap that sat at an angle on his head, he was carrying a pipe in one hand. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked around the room and took in the detective board on the wall and the boxes of files and the four people staring at him with varying degrees of shock, and then he looked directly at Renee and tipped his hat.

"Detective Montoya," he said. "Bobo T. Chimpanzee. You can call me Detective Chimp. I've heard a lot about you and the various cases you've worked over the years. You're a good detective."

He tucked the pipe into the breast pocket of his jacket and looked at the board on the wall again.

"Now then," he said. "Who wants to catch a supervillain."

(AN: Detective Chimp is likely on the same level as Batman when it comes to deduction, but he's not a main character and is just a side character which is why Batman gets the glaze. He has actually helped Bruce with a few cases that he hasn't managed to crack on his own. Anyway task force K has been set up and Detective Chimp is now going to match his wits against Ethan.)