Who: Job, Max, the Bat and a crazy NPC named Marcus What: Taking Job hostage Where: The Seattle Times When: Let's fuzzy this and say now-ish and recently? Warnings: None
All Marcus wanted was to kill the Bat.
Marcus’ brother was dead now, gone to his grave in the thick of battle, a respectful death, a glorious death, but he was still here. And while he was breathing, he could not falter in his goal, even if he could not achieve it.
But Marcus couldn’t break out of the hospital on his own. So when a kindly benefactor offered assistance in the way of speedy transportation and a key to his handcuffs, he took it with enthusiasm.
Half an hour later, a man was locked in the hospital bed in Marcus’ place, not to be found by the officer standing guard for another hour yet. Marcus, for his part, freshly outfitted with a gun and a new, unrecognizable set of clothes, wandered into the Times as if he was just another employee, moving toward the elevators along with a small throng of workers.
It was the middle of the day at the Times. Security was light and personnel was plentiful. The news desk was just beyond the front doors, and advertising offices were further beyond that. It was lunch, and the girl that worked the front desk was outside smoking a cigarette with the cute guard (because who would think of doing anything at the newspaper in the middle of the day?). It was well known, now, that Thomas Brandon was not the Bat, but the perceptive existed that the Times was still on the Bat’s list of “protected places.” Sure, Job Arakkis had fingered the wrong man, but the fact that the Bat was still at large and (now) unidentified made him scarier to the citizens of Seattle somehow. Hurting Arakkis or his desk partner, Max Main, seemed like bad karma; no one would risk it.
The Times was a large building - 25 floors, all filled with employees. The staff writers were on the fifth floor in offices with glass walls that surrounded a larger space for the beat writers. It was busy that day, and the Chief had been barking orders since morning. News had been quiet, and quiet days were bad for business.
Job himself had been preoccupying himself with internet poker at the beat desks for the past hour; the latest article sat on his desktop, still unfinished, but if he wasn’t feeling it he wasn’t feeling it. Poker was what he was feeling. Poker, with its colored chips and strategy and, above all, trash talk. Made easier and worlds less personal with the invention of the chat bar. Currently he was engaged in an intense bash-session with what he only presumed was an elderly man in Croatia despite his insistence that he was a twenty-something party girl from New York. They were never twenty-something party girls from New York.
The Chief passed, glowering and snarling like some kind of hellbeast, but Job, uncowed, just glared back. Eventually he was left alone and back to his own devices, free to click and beep to his heart’s content, the rest of the office temporarily forgotten.
Max was at the news desk, and though she glanced up when the front door opened, she didn’t worry about the man who had just walked inside. She glanced for a press pass, but she didn’t find one on the man, but that didn’t mean anything. He could be on his way to advertising, which didn’t require anything but ad dollars to spend. Still, there was something familiar about him, something that reminded her of someone, and the fine hairs on the back of her neck prickled. A soft hum, and she slid off the desk she was sitting on (she was looking for more information on Audrey’s new boy, Rome, and the desker was helping her), and she walked toward advertising. The man wasn’t there, and she turned and looked toward the elevators. The doors were closing as she looked, and the man was inside. Okay, now she was worried.
It only took a few short minutes before Marcus was on the fifth floor, walking calmly out of the elevator. No one had searched him. No one had even looked at him twice. It took thirty seconds for him to spot Job, recognize him, and close the distance between them.
Marcus had two weapons - one for Job, one for the rest of the office. He put the gun in his right hand to the back of Job's neck, and lifted the other from inside his coat, pointing it around the rest of the room. He fired a shot into the ceiling, then swept the arm across, keeping an eye on the people in the room as they started to scatter, scream and run for cover.
"Listen!" Marcus shouted. "I am here for Mr. Arakkis, and I have a gun to his head. He and I are going to step into one of these offices, and we are going to wait for the Bat to arrive to rescue him. Call for help all you like - I want the Bat to hear about this. I want everyone to hear about this. Do not approach me. If you comply, no one need die today except the Bat. Do not think to exchange your life for his, because I will kill you. Up," he said, this directed at Job. "Into the office. I am not afraid to kill you, either, Mr. Arakkis, so I suggest you comply."
Saying Job was caught by surprise was an understatement. His initial reaction was to jerk away, dig an elbow in somewhere along with a knee for good measure and hope for the best, but the cool metal pressed against the back of his neck pointed out that it might not be the best course of action. Hands raised from the desk, more because every hostage movie he’d ever seen had conditioned him into the action rather than because he actually thought it would help things; actual configuration notwithstanding, the asshole kind of had his balls in a vice at the moment, there wasn’t much he could do if he wanted to keep his head. Literally.
“WHOA. Whoa. C’mon, don’t you think you’re over-reacting just a little? I’m a JOURNALIST, for fuck’s sake. I get tapped and they’ll show footage on the news about how terrible it is for three days and that’s it. Why the hell do you think the Bat gives a flying fuck aside from the part where I’m a civilian? I’m seriously your first thought? Flattered, but. Not your best thinking.” His mouth ran away from his brain, as it tended to do in these situations, probably only digging himself in further, but he stood carefully and cautiously inched along to do as he was told, body knowing the best thing to do right now was follow instructions even if his mind hadn’t quite caught up yet.
The elevator doors opened just as Marcus began to drag Job toward his office, and Max’s attention went to the other people in the area. He hadn’t heard what Marcus had said, but if this man - she stopped, recognition flooding her. The man from the hospital, the shooter. He looked different with his face not mangled like it had been then, but it was him, she knew it. And if it was him, and he hadn’t shot Job yet, then he was trying to finish what he’d started. Fuck.
The beat writers were screaming, running for the elevator and mashing the button, and Max tried to keep them quiet and moving, and then she tried to think. She had been good at this, once, thinking. Job was alive, and the shooter wouldn’t take him out, he was the collateral and he wouldn’t get the package unless Job was alive. She turned her back to the office, and she started moving as many writers as she could - elevator, stairs.
She knew this would hit the airwaves in minutes - less than minutes. There wasn’t much time.
People were swarming toward the elevators, which Marcus did not like one bit. “Stay away from the elevators!” he shouted. “If anyone else gets on, I will kill them. The concept is simple. Stand where I can see you, and do not move toward the elevators, and none of you need die.” His gaze swept over Max, who had been moving people onto the elevators, and hovered there for a moment before sweeping over the floor again.
"You wrote the article," Marcus said, to Job now, unflappably calm, pushing the gun a little tighter against the back of his neck. He wasn’t worried about the people running to the elevators. It didn’t matter. He stayed within sight of the rest of the office, but between the windows - he would not be killed by a sniper like his brother, not without achieving his goal. "You're the reason I'm here. You gave my brother and I direction. I admire you for that. But I'm not enough of a fool to think you don't have some kind of connection to the Bat. You will get his attention." Marcus smiled. "To be honest, I'm mostly curious to see if he comes to your aid. I have put my faith in him. If he truly is as much a hero as I have always dreamed, he will even come to save you, who tried to expose him, and that will make him all the more deserving of a hero's death executed by me."
Max heard the threat, and she believed it. She stopped the woman who was about to get on the elevator - an older woman near retirement - and she tried to quietly usher them all to the spot in the room that offered the most cover if he decided to open gunfire. She joined them, and she glanced toward the phones on the desks that surrounded them (she’d gotten them as close to the center of the room as she could).
With the reflection he’d seen in the monitor, coupled with the voice, Job already had a pretty good idea of who was behind it even before the situation was clarified. Only a matter of time before something like this happened, he supposed, but it was still bullshit. It was hard to think clearly, but his mind was racing already; he’d get to rational purely by accident sooner or later. “No, you and your fuckwit brother are certifiably batshit insane, the fact that you slapped the Bat’s name next to it was just convenient. You probably would have pulled the exact same kind of stunt regardless, you just wanted an excuse and my article was convenient. And if he’s smart, he’ll keep his fucking nose clean.” He looked towards where he knew Main was, hoping she’d at least heard, not that he thought it would do any good. The Bat would come, in one form or another, because it was what he did, regardless of what anyone else had to say about it. Not that Job wanted to die, or wanted this ass-clown to pop anybody else in the process, but he knew there were greater things in life. Things much bigger than an idiot plan to play off the whole vigilante line for a chance at fifteen minutes in the spotlight. “So what’re you gonna do? Video feed? Phone call? Ransom note? I hear ‘Time’ is pretty good for that last one. Lots of fonts.” Maybe intentionally trying to piss off the man holding him at gunpoint wasn’t the best plan he’d ever had, but it was at least a plan. He’d figure out the next step once he came up with a better one.
Marcus was unruffled. "You!" he shouted, to the people gathered in the middle of the room. "I want you to call everyone. Call the police, call the other news stations, call your friends and family, and you tell them that you are locked in a room with a man with a gun because the Bat has yet to arrive. You tell them you will not be safe until he comes."
Marcus finished his yelling and no one moved. Everyone looked at one another, deers caught in headlights and fear of the madman behind the glass wall. Everyone at the Times knew what Job had written, and everyone knew what had happened with Thomas Brandon being debunked. They knew, too, about the shootings, and they knew this was no idle threat. They whispered to one another, everyone too afraid to be the first to reach for a phone, and then someone did. Max followed, waiting for the first call to go out, then a second, then a third. When there was enough noise, she dialed Thomas’ cellphone. She wasn’t calling the Bat, no, she was just calling Thomas. The phone rang in her ear, and she waited.
Thomas, like everyone else in the city, was in a suit and a tie and avoiding the frigid weather by working behind glass windows. He was in a room with other people speaking in small voices about large numbers, but he sounded as if he was in a good mood. As far as Thomas’ good moods went, which tended to sound very close to his bad ones. “Hello?”
There was the buzz of voices on the line before Max spoke, men and women and the sounds of whispered fear, and she waited a moment for him to register the sound for what it was. In the distance, someone could be heard yelling, but it was a muffled sound. “I know you’re at work,” she said, not bothering with a greeting and very careful about what she was saying, as she was surrounded by civilians. “This man just came into the paper, and he took one of the writers hostage. Job Arakkis, the one that wrote that story about the Bat. He asked us all to call and let our loved ones know,” she said, voice almost a monotone calm. “We’re on the fifth floor, and there are at least thirty people here at this time of day.” Pause, as if she was listening to something. “Yeah, everyone is alright, but scared.”
Pause. In a breath, Thomas had managed to vacate whatever room he was in, tell off someone else who got in his way, and achieve total silence aside from his voice coolly responding to hers. “No injuries?”
“No, but he’s not letting us leave.” Somewhere near Max a woman cried and the man beside her hung up his phone and made a sign of the cross over his chest. “If anything happens, give Manda my love.” Because everyone knew she’d had a child recently, and it would sound suspicious otherwise. Another pause. “The offices are glass, so he can see us if we move.” And he can see anyone coming to get him.
“One man?” Thomas waited for confirmation before asking another question; he was moving very quickly, from the sound of his steps, which were on marble. “Is there any way you can give me an approximate location without drawing suspicion?”
“I interviewed him in the hospital with Arakkis,” Max said, voice going a little softer. “Yeah, he was the crazy guy who shot the man at Monarch Industries. I don’t know how I’m ever going to go into my office again. It’s really close to the elevator, just down that hall, so it was probably the closest fucking place to take Arakkis,” she said, remembering to swear. “They’re in there now, the two of them.”
A quiet sound of satisfaction. “That’s good. Do you have a comm you can have on without putting yourself in danger?”
“No. I left it on your nightstand with my melodramatic note, remember?” Max said, fondness in the statement and some worry slipping through, the words slightly unguarded. She knew what he wanted, though, which was to hear what was happening. “I’ll call you after,” she said, already reaching for the cellphone on the desk. The phone would have to stay in her pocket, but at least he could hear what was happening.
“Ah,” Thomas said, at first chagrined and then grateful for whatever intel she could offer from inside. “Good. Do that. Don’t do anything foolish, Max,” he warned, already turning his attention to the transportation he was going to need to get from point A to B. He was going to have to call in some serious favors for this.
Max grabbed the cellphone, which was not hers and would likely never find its owner again, and she dialed Thomas’ cell and locked the phone, so that it would not hang up. She tucked it into her skirt pocket, and then she hung up the desk phone and walked as close as she could to the office Arakkis was in without drawing attention.
"His nose clean?" Marcus said, finally addressing Job's rant once he had spurred the hostages into motion. "His hands will be covered in blood unless he comes here, and he is too much a hero not to do so. I hardly care what you think of me, Mr. Arakkis, I just thought you should know that you were the catalyst. You made him real. You made the messiah into a man - a great man, though, a great man, that is without a doubt."
“Well bully for me,” he muttered with a snort. “You can be sure to tell the city I should get a fucking placard when this is all over. Maybe even my own book in the Bible, right between Mark and Luke.” How had things gone so wrong? He’d known there would be crackpots rising to the surface to latch on to what he’d said, to twist the words and the meaning behind them to suit their own purposes, but hadn’t anticipated that it would go this far. Most were afraid to act regardless of what they thought, and he’d counted at least in part on that. And on the police to be able to handle the ones who thought they could act. So much for that; he’d make a point to give credit accordingly next time.
Out of the corner of his eye Job could see Max inching closer to the office, and if he’d thought he would be able to get away with it he might have said something. But attracting attention to her would only get her into trouble, and while he made a point to throw a certain amount of it her way, this was worlds of different. As long as she went overlooked there was a chance this thing might not turn into a complete bloodbath. “Better a little blood on his hands than to walk into a fucking trap,” he spat, this time loud enough to be heard beyond the glass walls. “You think it’ll stop there even if he does and you get what you want? Although, let’s think about this rationally. He shows up...you’re only one guy. You really think you can take him on one-on-one and expect to make it out on top? Because if you do, then you’re an even bigger idiot than you look. Unless you’ve got some kind of fancy plan to get around that..?”
Max knew she was close enough that what Job said would be heard in the cellphone she carried in her pocket and, subsequently, be heard by the Bat. She gave him a small nod, as much as she could manage without drawing Marcus’ attention, and she leaned back against the desk there, not moving any further forward, but within ear shot if either man raised their voices. The people behind her were making more noises, outrage and tears, and she knew it was only a matter of time until someone did something stupid.
"I just want to kill him," Marcus said, turning his gaze down to the man beside him long enough to miss Max moving closer before looking up again. "I don't care what happens after that. Once he is dead, I can be dead as well. I can go to my grave in peace, knowing I will be interred with a great man, and they will always say my name with his." He paused. "Listen. Do you hear it?" Outside, sirens were growing closer and closer to the building, but Marcus treated them like a symphony, playing his praises.
“Sounds like you’re going to get your wish after all,” Job commented snidely, risking pulling away far enough to glare at Marcus out of the corner of his eye. “I’d ask if you’re proud of yourself, but that’s pretty fucking obvious.” The cavalry. About time, but he wasn’t entirely sure about the outcome, it was too soon to tell for sure.
The trip five floors up the elevator shaft hadn’t been as difficult as it sounded; the Bat trained for that kind of thing, and hauling himself plus sixty pounds of armor up a grapple line wasn’t so bad. The crawl space between the fifth and sixth floors was another matter, however, and the Bat discovered after he sawed through the floor behind a copier that the crawl space was about three feet high. Hot, close, and smelling of sawdust and insulation, the trip into that was much less pleasant, and required more discipline and concentration, because the support beam was about five inches wide, so there was a circus-worthy balance act going on as the Bat tried to calculate how close he was to the elevator.
It took some coordination, but between Oracle’s plans and Arrow’s eye, the Bat used a laser rangefinder to measure the distance from the elevator shaft, positioning himself just above Marcus. He couldn’t afford to cut a hole in the ceiling, because the man would notice powder and sound, so he had to wait to punch through and trust that he was in the right office. It was nerve-wracking, but the Bat was used to nerve-wracking.
The silence, along with the sirens, made people cocky, and Max heard them moving, rather than saw them. She didn’t turn, opting to watch Marcus for some sign that he noticed, and she tapped the side of her skirt, where the cell was still connected to Thomas’ comm.
The gun Marcus was holding had sagged a bit, but now it lifted to attention. "Be still!" he shouted. When the crowd of hostages obeyed, he turned his attention back to Job. "There is no fouling a plan where the man in charge doesn't care if he lives or dies, Mr. Arakkis."
The shout got all of the Bat’s attention, and he decided he couldn’t afford to wait. Arching out of his spider’s stance over the ceiling tiles, he hit the one he wanted with a heel. Bits of plaster and the insulation he’d cut through preceded two-hundred-fifty pounds of man and black kevlar into the center of Max’s office. He landed after only a few feet onto Max’s desk, sending computer printouts everywhere, and caught his balance even as his controlled drop was cut unexpectedly short.
The crash inside the office, the one caused by kevlar and two hundred pounds of muscle landing on a desk, drew varying reactions from the crowd. Some people, true to their nature as reporters, grabbed pen and pencil and voice recorder and moved forward, closer to the office and the fight. The vast majority, however, did just the opposite. Yelling and running filled the large space, and Max turned off the cell in her pocket and spared one glance for the men in the office, before turning her back to them and trying to get as many people out before Marcus started shooting as possible. She directed them to different stairs and the elevator, knowing the man couldn’t shoot everywhere at once, and hoping they’d heed her warning to stay down.
The Bat didn’t have time to do more than locate the gun in the room through the dust and disorientation, and he slid sideways in a rough semicircle, catching Max’s desk lamp with one heel and sending it flying toward Marcus and the gun as the Bat continued his momentum in a leap to take Job to the floor.
The lamp caught Marcus high on the shoulder and he cried out, falling back, struggling to regain his balance. His right arm wasn't working quite the way it should, so he fired with the gun in his left hand instead, ignoring Job entirely.
Job hit the ground with a huff, throwing out an elbow against his ‘attacker’ on instinct before realizing it was the Bat. It was too late to check it, but he figured the kevlar would cushion most of it anyway. “Welcome to the sideshow,” he muttered before scuttling away the moment he had enough clearance, scrambling for either cover or the door, whichever was easiest and had the least chance of getting him immediately shot.
Marcus had lost his hostage, and the people outside were swiftly clearing out, so he had no real options left. He fired at the Bat, lunging forward in hopes of grabbing Job while the man was distracted and taking his advantage back.
The Bat kept rolling, because he knew Marcus was armed and a moving target was harder to hit. A bullet cracked overhead and split a rainbow into the glass behind the desk. Another missed the Bat by inches, spitting into the carpet as the Bat made his roll into a crouch and came up hard under the desk to try to turn it on its end. He had a fleeting hope that the Times didn’t nail its desks to the ground.
The journalist didn’t realize he wasn’t quite in the clear until he was pulled up short, far too focused on seeking cover before he ended up as riddled with holes as everything else in the office. He twisted in Marcus’ grip, foot flying out in an attempt to make contact with something, but it was poorly timed, narrowly missing any kind of decent target. He cursed loudly and tried again, with results that likely weren’t much better, but in all honesty he wasn’t really thinking in terms of aim so much as volume, like a cat scrabbling at the walls of of a wet bathtub in hopes that claws would catch eventually.
It had only taken seconds to get all the other hostages onto the elevator or the stairs. A few grizzled reporters remained, but they were smart enough to find good, thick cover and stay clear of anything resembling heroics. Max turned in time to see Job kicking, and she almost stormed into the office. It was a one second decision, maybe two, but she remembered the conversation she’d had with Thomas about trust, and she forced herself to stay her ground for the time being.
Marcus pulled back, cursing aloud when one of Job’s kicks connected and firing again toward the back. The desk toppled over faster than he could fully move out of its way, and he found his grip on Job slipping, his next shot going well wide of its intended target.
The Bat only paused in the shelter of the desk for a split second, using it and the flood of weeks of paperwork to confuse his direction before he reappeared again at the same side he’d come from, moving through the dust like grim, implacable death. He darted toward Job, drawing fire that he did his best to avoid, and at the last second turned and went straight at Marcus’ face. The gun was still hot after only four shots fired, and even the heat resistant gloves gave off a miasma of burnt rubber as the Bat took the top of the gun in a firm grip at the chamber and rolled Marcus’ wrist in, forcing him to relinquish the trigger.
Marcus shouted, something incoherent about the Bat, and his finger fell away from the trigger. His other arm was still not responding as it should be after the hit from the lamp, and he struggled to lift it, trying to get it high enough to get a shot off.
With the Bat in the way, Job moved to get out of it himself, taking advantage of the scuffle to get to cover. He would have done something to help if there had been anything for him to do, but there wasn’t; he was unarmed, and the most experience he had with fighting was barfights. He’d only get in the way, and the Bat looked like he was handling it pretty well on his own anyway. The door was within reach, and so that’s what he headed for, ducking down to avoid whatever fire came and scooting to the side almost as soon as he was through the doorway.
Grip still firm on the gun as he twisted it up and away, the Bat continued to turn and slammed an elbow into Marcus’ temple right above the ear, holding on to his hand in the momentum and locking it against his wrist to force him to go down or enjoy his wrist snapping like a twig. The shouting and the sound of the gun going off (into the ceiling) again only made the Bat’s head jerk slightly to the side under the assault of the sound and powder sting.
The elbow connected with Marcus’s temple with force enough that he was unconscious by the time he hit the ground, falling bonelessly to the floor, weapons sliding out of his grip. There hadn’t even been time to get another shot off, nor to dodge at such close quarters. He hit the ground, and it was done.
When Marcus fell, Max moved forward (along with the remaining reporters). She stopped in the doorway to the nearly-destroyed office, and she resisted the urge to rush forward and make sure Thomas was alright, but only barely, choosing to move to Job instead, very deliberately.
In the office, amid the clearing gunsmoke, ceiling dust, and scattered paper, the Bat looked down at Marcus without expression. There wasn’t anything but death that would make a man like this stop, nothing that would render him harmless, not even the disappearance of the Bat. The Bat wasn’t even sure it would stop if he himself died, and it was a frightening thought not at all abstract.
It was hard not to remove the threat, just as he would fix a faulty brake line or remove an impediment from a road. The anger was distant under all the adrenaline, but it would return. Another pause, and a crackle of static indicated the approach of the police on the stair. The Bat took the gun to pieces as he moved out of the office, dropping the last piece nearest the farthest elevator as he looked around for any injured. He didn’t see any. He glanced back at Max and made eye contact before he pried open the doors Oracle had deactivated, then dropped down out of sight.
Max crouched in front of Job, even as one of the reporters snapped pictures of the Bat disappearing. “Should have worn the fucking vest,” she told him, and then the police and paramedics were rushing in, and she moved away and let them do whatever they had to do.
“Fuck you; it chafes,” came the reply, deliberately cavalier, shark-like smirk back in place as if he hadn’t just been thrown into the middle of a warzone. “Have you tried wearing the damn thing twenty four hours a day? Fucking buzzkill.” Not to mention it wasn’t overly effective against headshots, but he didn’t feel like throwing that in. And then the medical team was in the middle of everything, and the cops, asking questions he didn’t feel like answering or even co-operating with. He wanted a smoke. And a drink. And....something else that was on the tip of his tongue but that he was pretty sure he’d get in a minute. So he brushed them off as much as he could until they finally stopped prying, promised he’d call if anything came up and that he’d be sure to stop by to talk later (which he wouldn’t. Probably.) and made his own exit.