The first thing to drop from the Batwing alongside Batman was the Batcycle, tucked away in the aircraft's belly.
A second or two later, as the Batwing streaked almost directly over the Gamma Bomb Research Facility, dozens of Bat-Drones detached and rained down, reaching the base a step ahead of Batman himself.
Because the Arkham battlesuit Batman currently wore had shed most of its electronic components, the drones would scan the facility's thermal imaging from the air, relay the data back to the Batwing, and then the onboard Oracle AI would feed the information directly to Batman through the wireless receiver hidden in the ears of his cowl.
As for Batman himself, he could free-fall from 5,500 meters without a parachute even before he had Venom. Now? Child's play.
At nearly ten thousand meters the air was thin, but Batman's expression didn't change. If anything, the Venom inside him was practically giddy from the weightlessness of free fall.
Altitude plummeted: seven thousand meters, five thousand, two thousand…
When he reached roughly seven hundred meters, Batman spoke.
"Robin!"
"On it!"
The black symbiote rippled and surged, instantly coating the battlesuit. His ears lengthened into wicked points, his eyes turned a malevolent white and stretched sideways, and a massive, monstrous white bat emblem replaced the sharp, angled bat symbol that had been there moments before.
It didn't stop there. Venom continued to spread, assimilating the broad cape along with the rest of him.
The once-pristine cape immediately tattered under the symbiote's influence, shifting to a deep blood-red. Thick, bony spines extended from Batman's spine, anchoring themselves to the cape.
Rip!
Those fleshy wings unfurled once more, demonic and terrible.
Venom couldn't fly; even with wings spread, it couldn't generate enough lift to truly take flight.
But keeping those dark-red membranes stretched between obsidian-black bone frames open still served to slow his descent and allow gliding.
Batman's plummeting body jerked to a sudden halt in mid-air. His breathing remained perfectly even. He extended both arms toward the Batcycle, which was also in free fall some distance away.
He hadn't bothered with a parachute for the motorcycle. Too slow.
Every second counted in New Mexico. A slow-opening parachute large enough to support something far heavier than a human body would only increase the chances of detection.
From everything Batman had learned about the Gamma Bomb Research Facility, it was a SHIELD-level installation: self-sufficient power and water, completely physically isolated from the internet.
He couldn't be certain how tight security was, but he never minded preparing for the worst.
Thwip!
What shot from Batman's hands wasn't web-fluid; it was living symbiote biomass.
The instant it touched the Batcycle it enveloped the vehicle almost entirely. Then, with a flex of both arms against gravity itself, Batman yanked the motorcycle toward him.
Seven hundred meters vanished in a heartbeat. The moment his fall slowed to a safe velocity, the Batcycle was already in his grasp. He seized the handlebars and swung astride it in one fluid motion.
…Safe velocity for the Batcycle, that is. Not for Batman. Without Venom's wings he'd have simply smashed straight into the ground and walked it off.
In that instant, wings still spread wide, Batman descended from the sky astride the Batcycle like a demon on horseback.
The next second the throttle twisted, tires spun into a blur, and the wings snapped shut, collapsing back into a tattered black cape that flared dramatically behind him as he roared toward the facility.
"Bruce, thermal imaging from the Bat-Drones is as follows…"
By the time Batman touched down from ten thousand meters and seamlessly transitioned into tearing across the desert on the Batcycle toward the Gamma Bomb Research Facility, the Oracle AI aboard the Batwing was already delivering its report.
Thanks to the facility blueprints and layout Batman had acquired in advance, a complete thermal map unfolded in his mind as Oracle spoke.
"Begin secondary X-ray sweep and report again. Then redirect all drones to the southernmost point of the facility. Detach drone rotors, send them into the waste pipes, and construct a full internal structural map with personnel distribution."
"Understood, Bruce. Executing now," Oracle replied instantly.
Fifty kilometers away, above the research facility, the Bat-Drones immediately began their second scan under Oracle's control, then streaked toward the southern edge.
Click. Clack.
With a series of soft metallic sounds, each drone's rotor assembly detached and fell to the ground, shattering into sixteen separate fragments.
For several seconds the pieces lay still. Then tiny mechanical claws emerged from each fragment.
One moment they were Bat-Drones; the next, every drone had become sixteen spider-like robots that skittered forward on needle-thin legs and vanished into the facility's wastewater pipes.
"Thermal imaging shows clusters of heat sources inside the base. The largest concentration is toward the left side of the central area; give me a detailed report on that zone."
"Barbara, divide the entire Gamma Bomb Research Facility into sixty-four sectors. Assign spider-bots to independently scout each sector."
"Forty-eight kilometers to target. When I'm within ten kilometers, attempt deployment of the suit's electronic virus."
"Keep the Bat-Pod on standby for immediate drop, lock drop coordinates three meters ahead of my current position." (The pod from Chapter 183)
"Arm Batwing self-destruct sequence; three-hour countdown."
"Remote-link to Parker Industries; initiate heavy-industry acquisition protocol."
"Keep the compound-wave spectrum device hot. Same for the EMP warheads."
"Activate 'Battering Ram Protocol.'"
"Activate…"
Order after order rolled from Batman's lips, executed instantly by Oracle.
Just as he had prepared countless contingency plans to stop the Hulk and Professor Lizard at Oscorp, Batman had come to New Mexico with no fewer than forty-one master contingency plans for this mission.
Each master plan contained over a hundred sub-plans.
Every single one accounted for different states of Norman Osborn and General Ross: whether the two were cooperating smoothly, whether Norman was imprisoned, whether one of them had gone rogue…
The absolute worst-case scenario; the one Batman called "Alpha Protocol"; was reserved for the possibility that every preceding plan failed, the base was overrun with monsters, and Batman himself was on the brink of death.
The thermal scans showed no large creatures yet, but Batman treated that data as reference only.
After all, Dr. Banner and Professor Connors looked perfectly harmless in human form. Transformed? One was bigger and more destructive than the other.
Batman trusted nothing until he saw it with his own eyes.
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