The Leader's worldview and life philosophy—those two towering edifices he had spent years constructing—were suddenly struck by a passenger jet.
He couldn't comprehend why, after diving into Batman's mind and trying to seize control while rifling through his memories, he had failed so completely. He also couldn't comprehend why this man, even inside his own psyche, still identified himself—irrefutably, unshakably—as "Batman."
BOOM!!
A cataclysmic impact shook the underground plaza as the moment the Red Hulk and Batman collided.
The entire chamber shuddered violently. The floor cracked into massive slabs, and the reinforced concrete ceiling rained down dust and jagged debris.
The bodies of gamma-mutated monstrosities—some already dead, others still twitching as they tried to knit their wounds shut—were hurled through the air like rootless duckweed, flung in every direction before splattering wetly against the walls with a sickening splat.
Beyond the deafening roar and the shockwave that rattled teeth, a blast of superheated wind rolled through the cavern, turning the underground plaza into an oven in the span of a heartbeat.
In that furnace heat, the half-dried blood of the gamma creatures evaporated instantly, filling the air with a nauseating stench.
General Ross's forty-eight hand-picked soldiers had been huddling in the corners the entire time. They had nowhere to run. They could only endure everything the clash between Batman and the Red Hulk threw at them.
Amid the reek, one soldier tried to vomit—only to realize a moment later that he could no longer smell anything at all.
The searing heat radiating from the Red Hulk kept burning the surrounding air. Wave after wave of thermal distortion lashed outward, scorching the soldiers' eyes and nasal passages until the pain became unbearable.
Some of the luckier ones were instantly killed when debris—or corpses—hurled by the Red Hulk's fists and feet slammed into them.
The rest desperately tried to use their fallen comrades as shields while crawling toward the glass pod where Norman Osborn was held.
They never made it.
The instant they moved, the Leader unleashed a psychic pulse, seizing their minds and forcing them to stumble toward Batman instead.
"Don't get in my way," the Leader said calmly.
He now knew he had misidentified Batman. The man wasn't Bruce Banner, wasn't even necessarily S.H.I.E.L.D. That realization didn't frighten the Leader. Quite the opposite—it electrified him. A beam of blinding truth had just pierced the cathedral of his supposedly flawless intellect, and he felt an almost sexual thrill at the discovery.
Win or lose against the Red Hulk, the Leader had no intention of lingering here a second longer than necessary. He refused to be injured—not because he couldn't take it (his physique was impressive, and he possessed a degree of regeneration), but because he refused to waste weeks recovering in a hospital bed.
So he decided to leave now.
"Batman, you're too cautious," the Leader said with a wide grin, watching the Dark Knight deliberately avoid closing in on Norman's pod even while trading blows with the Red Hulk. "If you'd just charged straight over and shattered that tank, you might already be halfway back to New York with Norman Osborn in tow."
He had seen through Batman's hesitation from the beginning: the man was afraid of what might happen to Osborn if the pod were damaged while his condition was unknown. That was why the Leader had remained so relaxed.
With those words, the Leader stepped backward, planted one foot on a section of floor, and twisted hard.
The already-cracked ground gave way—not randomly this time, but in a perfect circle.
With a series of metallic clanks, a sleek silver-gray device shaped like a miniature upright space shuttle rose slowly from the circular shaft. It was less than five meters tall; with the plaza's ceiling only three and a half meters high, half the craft remained hidden below.
Whoosh!
A volley of batarangs streaked toward the rising vehicle.
But the Red Hulk's strength, speed, and surface temperature far exceeded the green Hulk's. Batman barely had time to throw them mid-fight; the Leader simply raised a hand and caught every single one.
Clang-clang-clang.
He opened his palm. The batarangs clattered harmlessly to the floor.
"Sometimes too much caution only creates more problems for yourself. Wouldn't you agree… Batman?"
The Leader smirked as he spoke, knowing Batman was fully occupied just trying to survive the Red Hulk's onslaught. The Breachbuster armor Batman currently wore had already begun glowing red from the intense heat; large sections were peeling away. He was in no position to stop anyone from leaving.
If he didn't do something soon, the Red Hulk's fists would finish him.
"You probably can't handle this alone," the Leader said, shaking his head with mock sympathy. "Here, let me help."
He casually kicked a chunk of broken concrete. It hurtled through the air and smashed into Norman Osborn's glass pod.
CRASH!
The pod shattered instantly. Pale green fluid gushed out, soaking the floor before rapidly evaporating into steam under the Red Hulk's heat.
"See? I wasn't lying. All you had to do was break the tank yourself and you could have taken Norman Osborn with you."
The Leader laughed loudly, then—without further delay—leaped into the cockpit of the rising craft.
At that exact moment, Batman finally spoke.
"Barbara—deploy the third Bat-Pod. Now!"
BOOM!
Ten thousand meters above, the third and final Bat-Pod—until now held in reserve—dropped from the sky. Accelerated by gravity and its own thrusters, it streaked toward the gamma base at terrifying speed.
"Oh? So you did have one last card to play," the Leader said, genuinely surprised, though the corners of his mouth curled upward. "Perfect. So do I."
Inside the shattered pod, as the last of the pale green fluid drained away, Norman Osborn's eyes snapped open.
He wasn't wearing his old Green Goblin armor, yet in the blink of an eye his muscles ballooned, bones tore through skin, and a guttural roar escaped his throat.
Even if Harry Osborn had been standing there, he would not have recognized the monstrous creature his father had become.
Norman's body was now grotesquely muscled and hunched, ears pointed skyward like blades, nose hooked beak of a nose, claws for hands and feet, and overlapping green scales covering every inch of exposed skin.
"Behold my masterpiece," the Leader said, licking his lips as he presented the creature to Batman. "The Gamma Goblin."
Batman had no attention to spare for taunts. The Red Hulk's relentless barrage had him on the ropes; huge sections of the Breachbuster armor were being torn away. He could only hang on until the third Bat-Pod arrived.
CRASH!
The pod finally punched through the base's roof, plummeting down the elevator shaft and slamming into the underground plaza.
At the same instant, Batman ejected from the ruined Breachbuster armor and launched himself toward the newly arrived pod.
"So this was your final trump card?" the Leader sneered. He sent a single psychic command to the Gamma Goblin's mind.
In the fraction of a second Batman hung in mid-air, the still-sealed Bat-Pod suddenly exploded into a cloud of shrapnel.
One heartbeat earlier, Norman Osborn had been standing amid the ruins of his tank. The next, he was simply gone—moving faster than Batman, appearing beside the falling pod and unleashing hundreds of blows in an instant, literally tearing the vehicle apart before it could even open.
The Leader wasn't just controlling the Red Hulk. He was controlling the Gamma Goblin too—and he had just destroyed Batman's last ride home.
Mid-air, Batman fired a grapnel line to halt his momentum, but he landed trapped directly between the Red Hulk and the Gamma Goblin, with the Leader watching hungrily from his cockpit.
Just when all seemed lost, the corner of Batman's mouth twitched upward—the rarest hint of a smile.
"Who said that was my last card?"
He had seen through every move the Leader would make, including the potential mutation of Norman Osborn.
Batman prepared contingency plans for every bone in his body breaking individually. Did anyone really think he hadn't prepared for the possibility that the third Bat-Pod might fail?
Now that the Leader had played every card in his hand, it was Batman's turn.
In the split second the Leader's heart skipped a beat, massive sheets of writhing black symbiote surged across Batman's base Arkham combat suit. The sharp silver bat emblem on his chest was replaced by a huge, jagged white one. His eye lenses stretched upward into inhuman slits.
Contingency Plan Alpha for absolute desperation: Activate Venom.
At the same moment, a second object came screaming down from the heavens and crashed into the gamma base. It was the Batwing—the original one that should have been flying escort high above.
Its fuel tanks were nearly empty, and it had already completed its task of deploying the third Bat-Pod (even though that pod had achieved nothing).
But Contingency Plan Beta required this very Batwing—now a disposable projectile. Even if it was destroyed on impact, that was fine.
In the final few seconds before the Batwing's onboard Oracle AI went offline forever, Batman issued one last command:
"Launch Batwing Two."
Contingency Plan Gamma had been set in motion the moment Batman left for New Mexico. Using shell companies, he had quietly purchased a string of heavy-industrial factories, then remotely directed the Oracle AI back in the Batcave to oversee assembly. (Chapter 186)
Now, a thousand miles away in New York, at Batman's spoken command, a brand-new Batwing—its silhouette unlike any aircraft this world had ever seen—roared into the sky.
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