#8: Half A Life (HoM / Tupper)

Gotham City glows in the moonlight. An unnatural sight to say the least, bit if you knew the reasons behind that unearthly green horizon you’d be wary. Radioactivity is in the air, cell destroying, body dissolving radiation. How is the city now destroyed, it’s inhabitants not bleached skeletons in their apartments, the flesh melted off their bones? The radiation that floats above Gotham has a mind of its own. A sentience of sorts. It drifts, with an aim, but one that we cannot discern at this moment in time. But whether this be in Metropolis or be it in Keystone… It does not bode well for Gotham…

The air is cold in the sky, a bitter chill bites through his layered uniform, and a numbness he didn’t know he could feel in his home city. There is the feeling in his soul that is always there, but… But this is strange. He shakes his head; the winter weather must be getting to him. It has snowed the day before, and only tonight has it subsided. A quiet calm reaching over the city like the blankets of snow before it. Batman doesn’t know if this strange weather had something to do with the strange radiation that flitters above the clouds… Was this unearthly chill some kind of reaction to the bizarre energy? Batman throws the line and drifts over the void, just as a snowflake lands on his hand. Most criminals lay low when the temperatures drop so crime rates drop slightly… But, there is one criminal who returns. A criminal who thrives in the cold. Mr. Freeze, a man who doesn’t deserve the curse of villainy on his soul…

Arkham Asylum.

There is always a special cell reserved for this patient. It has to be fitted with cold generators; the stale warmth of the Asylum provides an atmosphere in which this inmate could not survive. He sits on his bed, his feet atop a thin layer of snow, created by the coolers on the walls. The coolers had to be fitted with reinforced grills after his fourth stay, after he had plunged a chair leg into the workings to shut them down, to end his own life. The city could imprison a genius in the madhouse for life, but didn’t want his sub zero blood on their hands. Victor Fries lays on his bed, trying to remember the touch of his wife, the feeling of her skin underneath his fingertips. He weeps a silent tear, feels it freeze on his cheek and then pushes it off his face. He had forgotten his wife’s touch. Nora’s touch. He run his hand over his baldhead, and shakes it.

It was winter, a white winter. Nora always loved the snow. She used to run out in the morning, and roll around in the fresh layers it that had fallen in the evening before. The cold never really bothered her. He always equated that with her passion, but… She didn’t feel pain. When she had pneumonia, and she had the hottest fever, she didn’t tell Victor. She didn’t know. When she died in his arms he didn’t know why. When he stood in the morgue with her, he didn’t know why. They called him a bad husband, a terrible man, but the reasons for her death were not his doing… She hadn’t told him. Hadn’t shared the truth…

It was then he threw himself into his work. He had been developing the cryonic chamber with his wife before her death, but now he had a new goal: to bring the dead back to life. He experimented with chemicals that only worked at sub zero temperatures, he used them on small animals, and they worked. He starved them of oxygen, killed them, and then injected them with the serum he had created… The heartbeat began anew, blood rushed through the body, and the brain awoke, revived by a steady oxygen flow and a cocktail of chemicals… Dead tissue slowly healed and the subject lived again… Then cold overcame them, their veins froze and their bodies shut down. He knew how he could overcome this. And he made his attempt.

Weeks later, after exhaustive, thorough practice trials on bigger mammals, one night, he dug up his wife’s body, still in perfect condition, and he secretly carried her back to his lab. He removed the embalming fluid, gave her a blood transfusion to clean out her veins, and then he gave her a high dose of the formula. Her brain began to heal, the autopsy scars vanished, scar tissue peeled off her chest, and when she took her first breath… He placed her in an experimental freezing chamber, and preserved her before the formula could wear off.

If he had had the chance he would have continued to perfect the formula, revive her once more and then have her be at her side, with the fame and glory that would come from resurrecting the dead… He didn’t care for the recognition; all he wanted was his wife. But grave robbing doesn’t go unnoticed…

Cemetery staff called the police, and his lab was raided during the night where he nearly made a breakthrough with the formula… And a stray bullet from the weapon of Sarah Essen shattered a secondary cryogenic chamber… And doused Victor Fries in chemicals that stopped his heart, turned the blood in his veins to turn to ice, and causing him to drop to the floor, his skin blue, his heart beating no longer.

Death didn’t last long for him. He awoke in the morgue chiller, his skin still blue from exposure. He couldn’t feel anything. He was completely numb…

And he still is. Victor Fries blinks in his cell, and shakes his head as he stands up. His brittle bones crack with every movement, like broken ice on a road. He stands and looks out of his small barred window. It was snowing. Nora loved the snow.

He smiles, if you could call it that. The radiation above the city was his own, deadly, glowing power that, if it were to come into contact with human flesh, would destroy. Such an act that would have been a mercy for Sartorius. Instead, he became the inhuman, skeletal monstrosity known as DR PHOSPHOROUS! Dr Phosphorous vowed revenge on Gotham City for condemning his dream to the ocean, condemning him to a life of misery and eternal pain… And what better way to bring death to a hated foe than by disguising the object of murder as something that is loved by all?

The snow will fall again, and this time, when it rains down on the unsuspecting city… So shall death!

The Geiger counter in his belt clicks madly. Batman looks up and sees the first snowfall of the night. As a flake touches his exposed jaw, he feels a burning! He doubles over in mid air, somersaulting over rooftops as his uniform is riddled by droplets of liquefied pain and agony, and his skin feels like it was falling off in chunks… He shakes his head, and takes cover underneath an air duct, not knowing what had happened. This isn’t Fries’ MO… this is something new. The snow that now falls from the sky… Is death!

The skull appears on TV screens in the morning, a pirate transmission hijacking every television screen. Dr Phosphorous is in every home, talking to every man and woman, and he had a smile on his lips. His gaunt green eyes beam out of his skull and his glowing skeleton visible.

“People of Gotham… You caused me to become what I am right now… And I can understand why. I’m not mad at you, why would I be? You stood by your convictions, you stood up for your rights, and my dream was scuttled, sent out to sea to crash and burn. You caused me to loose my life, caused me to become this monster… And now it’s time for payback.”

“Canceling all your appointments today, Master Bruce? How very unlike you.” Alfred smirks as he walks down the steps leading to the cave. Then he takes a good look at his employer. Bruce’s body is bandaged, his skin is red and blistered, and there is a look of pain in his eyes. “Good Lord! What happened Bruce?”

Bruce looks at his manservant and grimaces. “Nuclear winter, Alfred…” He presses a button on the computer he is sitting at and shakes his head. “Someone contaminated the snow. Him.” A photo flashes onto the screen of a thin man, with greased black hair and a small moustache above his top lip.

“He doesn’t look so menacing, Master Bruce… Let me help you…”

Bruce shakes his head as Alfred brings out more bandages. "Not as menacing as he looks now let me promise you…" Dr Phosphorous flashes onto the screen, glowing radioactive green, his eyes glimmering alongside an image of his former appearance. "Could you get me more antiseptic? I’ve been in the decontamination chamber for most of the morning and I want to make sure these cuts don’t get infected." He shakes his head, his skin raw.

“I heard something over the radio, young Sir…” Alfred returns to his employer’s side with a bottle of antiseptic, and removes a layer of bandages, gasping at the damage done. “Victor Fries has escaped Arkham.”

Bruce pulls up another file, containing information on the tragic villain. “Albeit without a cold suit… Meaning he’s either overcome his crippling curse of not being able to survive outside of sub zero temperatures, or he’s got a death wish.”

“He’s a man who’s lost everything… What’s to say he hasn’t?”

Alfred applies the stinging chemical to Bruce’s skin, causing the vigilante to flinch in pain. “The more you squirm the longer it shall take, Sir."

Batman puts on his thermal uniform over the layers of bandages and looks at his English butler. “I contacted Gordon as soon as the snow touched me. He’s keeping the people off the streets and he spoke to Mayor Krol, got him to issue a statement. All shops are closed, and hopefully, no one will be leaving their homes before the next snow storm.”

“The weather report states that there may be a massive cold front on its way. Enough to make it snow for the next week or so.”

“Then I’ll have to get down to it. But first… Nora Fries was kidnapped from County General. Masked hoods absconded with her cryogenic tube. She was still inside…”

Alfred looks at the detective in front of him, and smiles. “And that means?”

“I’m no fool, Alfred…”

“I never said you were, Master Bruce.”

Bruce smiles as he pulls his cowl over his face. “I’m no fool,@ He repeats. @the last time the tube was stolen I attached a tracking device to the base of it. I know where Freeze is. Phosphorous… I have no leads on… I’ll need for you to work from here. Cross-reference anything you can, discover where he might be hiding…”

Alfred sits at the computer and begins to type. “I’ll get right to it, Master Bruce.”

“Keep in touch.” Bruce leaps into the bat mobile and streaks out of sight, leaving the ex-British military intelligence officer to his work.

Batman drives as fast as he can to the tracking device’s location, no knowing that, from the rooftops above, a man is following him. He makes a hard left, and suddenly a blast of green light hits the hood of his car and sends it spinning. It flips over and crashes, sliding further down the street. Dr Phosphorous leaps down from the rooftops and lands, smiling.

“I knew you’d be foolish enough to try and find me Batman! But I’m ready for you!”

Batman crawls from the wreckage and grimaces. Damn. When he wanted to find these people he can’t get a clue, but when he’s looking for someone else… They usually destroy his car. He’s close now, close to the harbor base that Mr. Freeze must be in. for now though, he had Phosphorous to contend with.

The green man barges into him, sending him flying into a warehouse wall, his uniform glowing an unearthly green. Hell. This guy is off the scale… He needs to keep his distance, attack from afar, and drop him before he can get any good punches in… And tear the flesh from his bones. His earlier wounds don’t bother him, what matters are these moments, living in the now, the present, thinking and plotting on how to take down his adversary before he can rain hell down on the city he calls home. Phosphorous smiles from afar.

“I know what you’re thinking, Dark Knight. You’re thinking you’ve got to stay away from me. Because, if you stay out of range of the man, the monster, he can’t touch you… Can’t kill you with radiation…” His smile widens, and Batman’s eyes do the same. The man’s hands are glowing impossibly bright, and before Batman can even think to react, he’s blasted back into the wall, and sent crashing down into the secret lab below!

“BATMAN?!” Mr. Freeze grabs his cold gun and fires off a burst of ice before Batman can get his bearings and within moments the Dark Knight is frozen in a column of ice above the lab floor. Mr. Freeze looks up at the massive hole in his warehouse hideout and he curses beneath his breath. Phosphorous!

“Didn’t expect that, did you Bats?” He looks over to the armored villain below and smiles, surprised. “Hey, you’re Mr. Freeze! Oh, I’ve heard about you…” The radioactive fiend leaps down from his perch and lands next to the tube containing Nora Fries and smiles. “Is this your wife? She is one hot--”

Mr. Freeze screams in rage, and unleashes a blast from his cold gun, sending the burning man flying across the lab floor. “I am going to KILL you!”

“What did I… Fine! If you want to play it that way!” Dr Phosphorous cracks his knuckles. Freeze pounces on him with inhuman speed, pummeling the radioactive man with impossible rage. “Hrph—Ah… HNT!” Phosphorous struggles for breathe, his bones visibly breaking, until he blasts the sub zero villain in the face. The faceplate cracks under the strain of the radiation. “I’ve done nothing to you!” Phosphorous gets up, and shakes his head, walking past the frozen Batman, not realizing that his flames are causing the ice to melt! “And then you go and do that! Why I ask? Why?”

“What you did to me…” Freeze clambers up, and grabs his cold gun, only to see it melted by Phosphorous’ power. “Is worse than any hell. Any imprisonment…” The two villains clash like titans, the frost giant and the fire god, pounding against radioactive skin and reinforced metal. “YOU GAVE ME BACK MY HEART!”

Batman’s hand spasms beneath the ice, his uniform beginning to heat up as a device beneath the Kevlar and the nomex activates. He flexes his hand and the ice falls away. He’s free but exhausted, and now, he is caught between two of the deadliest men on the planet. Indecision freezes his mind for scant moments before he concocts a plan. He can throw a batarang against Freeze’s glass-domed head. If he does it properly, it will ricochet towards that coolant reserve above their heads, causing it to tip and fall, incapacitating the radioactive man. But before he can act on his plan, Batman hears something, and spins around, to see Nora Fries alive, panicking in her tube!

Desperation floods over him. He can’t let her die… Not after Victor Fries has defied every rule of science and logic to get her here… “FRIES!” He spins around to Victor, who still battles the villain. “What—What can I do?”

Victor glances towards the caped crusader, and grimaces, the radioactive fists pounding onto the glass in front of his face, staggering him. “Gettt herrr outttt!” Fries slams his foot onto Phosphorous’, breaking bone. The glowing villain screams in agony. In pure animal rage, Phosphorus unleashes a blast of his radioactive power onto Fries’ chest plate; burning through the reinforced mechanics and life support systems and hitting him square in the chest. As the radioactivity spreads through his body, Victor screams “Battmaan…. Teeeell herrrr I looooveee herrrr.” Victor lurches forward, grabbing his enemy by the arms. With slow deliberations, he crushes the bones in his enemy’s shoulders. The villain screams, and once more releases his radioactive blasts, burning through the metal floor and into the harbor floor below, sending the two foes tumbling into the ocean. Fries sinks faster because of his armor. His cellular degeneration is now spreading so rapidly that he can’t even feel the life leave him, and Dr Phosphorous sinks beneath the heavy weight of the armor, screaming what little amount of oxygen he had left in his lungs out.

Batman frees Nora Fries from her tube and smiles reassuringly to her. “What… What happened…? W-Who are you?”

He nods as she speaks. "I’m the Batman… And… And Victor saved you, Nora. He gave everything to save you.” Nora’s eyes widen in confusion, not fully understanding his words.

“He… He’s… He’s dead?”

Batman nods slowly. “He died protecting you. Saving the city and making sure you live to see the snowfall of another winter. He loved you.”

“Oh… Victor…” She falls into Batman’s hands, sobbing and weeping into his arms.

2:

The sky is clear at night once more, no more menacing clouds of radiation float overhead, threatening those below with a lingering, painful death. Batman swings over the city, a grim determination over his face. He has had enough f the snow, and yet it falls again, the blanket of whiteness makes his home beam with a deceiving innocence, one lost years ago. He leaps over buildings, and then lands beside a gargoyle. He sits, lost in thought:

I find myself asking the question. What if? What if? What if I missed something? I recovered copies of Fries’ research. I was able to… Acquire… Nora Fries’ blood work and medical results. But… What if? What if Dr Phosphorous drowned? What if he swam away, leaving Victor to sink to the bottom of Gotham harbor to die alone? What if the amount of radiation Victor was exposed to reversed the cellular decay bought about by the first exposure to phosphorous ‘nuclear winter’? What if Victor Fries has escaped once more into the cold? A whole man once more…? I have no proof. No evidence to support these theories. But for once… I pray… That he lives. I pray Victor Fries’ life was saved, and that he is now recovering from the fight, ready to return to the side of his wife. A man can pray, can’t he, even if he isn’t sure that anyone is listening?