The Gamma Base's surveillance system had first been breached by Batman's electronic virus, then thoroughly crippled by the electromagnetic pulse bombs mounted on the Batcycle.
The Leader knew nothing of what was happening inside his own facility.
Since Batman was now striding unharmed into the underground plaza, it could only mean that Gargoyle and Abomination had already fallen to him.
Even so, the Leader felt not the slightest trace of worry. He trusted his intellect, his analysis. He knew Batman could not touch him.
Watching Batman advance without pause, the Leader sighed. Words and threats were useless now; other measures were required.
Clang, clang, clang!
Without any visible movement from the Leader, row upon row of glass pods lining both sides of the plaza suddenly slid open. Pale-green nutrient fluid gushed out in torrents.
At the same moment, the test subjects inside those pods snapped their eyes open, tore free of the tubes and cables still attached to their bodies, and leapt to the floor.
Whatever humanity they might once have possessed was long gone—or perhaps they had never been human to begin with.
Some were animals that had undergone gamma experimentation: once-docile rabbits and white lab mice now stood alongside ferocious hyenas and crocodiles. Others were impossible to classify, their overdeveloped muscles heaped into grotesque deformities, bones twisted and protruding through ruptured skin.
A few had only half a torso left. Some had their brains surgically removed and now moved on pure instinct.
But whatever they had once been, nearly all of them were now instruments of terror. The instant they cleared the pods, they charged straight at Batman in a howling swarm.
"Aaagh!"
Forty-nine of General Ross's soldiers stumbled backward in panic. Those who were too slow had their shoulders clamped in monstrous jaws and were torn clean in half.
As blood sprayed through the air, the Leader turned away once more.
Batman saw it clearly this time: the Leader reached for a ring-shaped device resting beside the massive gamma apparatus and slipped it over his oversized cranium.
Click.
Leading the charge was a creature that could barely be recognized as a former coyote. It lunged and sank its fangs into the armor plating on Batman's leg.
Teeth met alloy with a teeth-grinding screech. The coyote's fangs shattered instantly, and it staggered back with a pained yelp.
In the space of a heartbeat, the broken teeth regrew, and the beast hurled itself forward again.
This time a dozen more mutated predators attacked alongside it.
Behind them, nearly a hundred gamma-spawned horrors that had leapt from their pods bared their teeth and roared at Batman.
"I can't risk shattering Norman Osborn's pod blindly; there's no telling what releasing him right now would do. I need that pod intact until the fight is over."
Batman's gaze flicked rapidly across the colossal gamma device, Norman Osborn's suspension pod, the Leader, and General Ross.
"No visible command from the Leader, yet both sides of the plaza opened simultaneously. Either he possesses telekinesis… or he predicted the vibrations from my earlier fight with Abomination and prepared this trap in advance."
Batman took several deep breaths, slowly clenching his gauntleted fists.
His battle with Abomination had involved almost no direct clashes; after the Bat-pod's descent, he had relied almost entirely on control tactics and his own agility.
Now, however, he was completely surrounded by gamma-spawned monstrosities. A different combat doctrine was required.
With that thought, Batman bent his knees, lowered his center of gravity, and drove both armored fists straight down into the concrete floor of the plaza.
BOOM!
A thunderous shockwave exploded outward, the echo reverberating endlessly. When Batman raised his fists again, a deep crater remained in the floor—and at its center, the flattened head of an enormous python.
The skull, jaws, and brain matter had been pulped into a single smeared paste beneath the impact. Only a strip of intact snakeskin still clung to Batman's gauntlet.
Though decapitated, the python's body continued to writhe. Half a second later Batman snatched the still-thrashing corpse, swung it like a flail, and swatted a gamma-mutated vulture out of the air in an explosion of feathers.
There had been one hundred and twenty gamma creatures in total. Excluding the ones that were little more than leaping brain tissue, exactly one hundred and fourteen possessed genuine combat capability.
Clad in the heavy "Battering Ram" Batsuit and carrying no external weapons, Batman himself was the weapon—master of 127 martial arts and trained in combat forms from Krypton and beyond.
These were not humans. Batman showed them no mercy.
Fists, feet, knees, elbows, even his helmeted head—every ounce of muscle in his body became a weapon capable of delivering dozens of tons of force.
From the moment he crushed the python's skull, Batman never stopped attacking.
The plaza shook with ceaseless, rolling detonations—first spaced apart, then merging into one continuous roar, as though the underground chamber had become the storm-shrouded domain of a thunder god.
Boom after boom after boom, never allowing the previous echo to fade before the next two or three overlapped it.
The Battering Ram suit had been designed to fight threats on the level of Hulk. Individually, the gamma horde swarming him now was far weaker than Hulk, despite their overwhelming numbers.
Every one of Batman's strikes sent at least one creature flying. Most were already coming apart in mid-air; by the time they hit the ground they could do nothing but twitch.
Some possessed a degree of regeneration and began knitting their wounds closed the moment they landed.
Batman simply hit them harder.
Gradually the explosive impacts faded, replaced by the dull, wet thuds of fists meeting flesh.
Each thud announced another gamma creature bursting into a puddle of biological slurry beneath his gauntlets. Inevitably, their blood soaked the Dark Knight from head to toe.
Though mutated by gamma radiation, most still bled red; only a minority bled green. Together they painted the silver-gray Battering Ram suit a glistening scarlet.
In one corner of the plaza, forty-eight of Ross's soldiers huddled together, shaking uncontrollably. Their uniforms were drenched in the blood Batman's battle had flung across the chamber; chunks of viscera and severed limbs clung to some of them.
None of them cared. They simply cowered like frightened chicks, staring in despairing horror at the towering figure standing amid a sea of blood and ruin.
Because of the viscous blood, patches of skin, scales, and organs had adhered to Batman's armor. Under the relentless impacts they were plastered there permanently, turning the Dark Knight into something nightmarish—a demon freshly clawed its way up from hell itself.
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