The Death Knell

"Thank you to the reporters at the front."

The host in the studio stared at the camera with a serious face and spoke slowly and slowly.

"Dear viewers, as you have just seen, the crazy criminal hijacked 78 police officers, including Chief Gordon, and hundreds of people in the police station. He placed bombs and booby traps in all directions of the police station. And made a crazy request during the live broadcast, I don’t know what the experts on the Internet think of this matter.”

The camera switched and split into two to show an online video connection. Then an old man sitting upright appeared on one side of the screen. He wore round glasses, and the subtitles on the side showed that he was a psychiatrist from Black Gate Prison. Dr. Hugo.

I don’t know how the TV station contacted the experts in such a short time after the incident, but the views of such an authoritative figure are often easy to attract the approval of the masses.

The old man adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and leaned closer to the microphone. He seemed not very good at using computers, and the background of the room over there looked like a prison cell.

"I think this young man is a complete lunatic. He has committed serial murders, serial bombings, and then kidnapped government employees. This is a serious mental problem."

The host listened to the reminder and nodded slightly: "So Dr. Hugo, what do you think of the other party's request to obtain the moon within an hour?"

The wrinkled old face was squeezed into a ball, and he looked more like a monster under the inferior camera. Dr. Hugo didn't know what he looked like now, so he moved closer to the camera and microphone.

"This is absolutely crazy talk. Who can take off the moon and give it to him in one hour? No one can do it. We must ask the National Guard to prepare for a storm."

The host nodded in agreement and turned his attention to the camera: "Then we would like to ask the chief physician of Arkham Sanatorium, Dr. Harleen Quinzel, to express her opinion."

The screen split into another section, and a cold-eyed woman with blond hair and frosty face appeared in it. Her emotions seemed to have been frozen, and she said in a calm voice:

"There is no doubt that the suspect is a psychopath, and asking to take off the moon is a manifestation of psychological trauma. We can find from his past experience that he is an entertainment paparazzi who is good at following victims at night. If the moon is eliminated, he will I feel safer in the dark.”

Dr. Quinzel's serious analysis showed a very high level of knowledge.

In this case, the host has nothing to say. He only needs to support the experts. The host nods like a chicken eating rice: "So Dr. Quinzel, do you think it is possible to cure this criminal's mental illness?"

"The other party has paranoia of persecution, and a strong attack will only cause the other party to detonate the bomb in advance. Of course, if I can talk to him in person in a few months, I am sure to cure his mental problem."

The female doctor raised her chin like a proud white swan, so noble and elegant.

Dr. Hugo seemed unwilling to be robbed of his limelight. He grabbed the microphone and took the initiative to interject: "Talk therapy is a cult! The treatment should be surgery! Frontal lobotomy combined with electric shock is the way to go!"

Dr. Quinzel snorted and turned her head away, not looking at Hugo's face at all. She haughtily folded her arms and leaned on the back of the chair. She seemed to have said something else after she was far away from the microphone, but she could only force it through her mouth. Identify it as a word starting with F.

Hugo's eyes suddenly turned red. He grabbed the microphone with a ferocious look on his face, and said a word starting with the B word. He was quickly silenced by the program crew, but he still kept chattering to show off his street English skills.

His scene quickly disappeared. The host adjusted his mood, maintained his professional attitude, and gave up Hugo according to the director's instructions.

"So Dr. Quinzel, do you think the young man is serious about threatening to detonate a bomb and take all the police officers with him if he doesn't give him the moon within an hour?"

When Harleen saw Hugo disappear from the screen, her mood obviously improved a lot, and her tone became gentler.

"From my professional point of view, I advise everyone not to doubt the threats made by mentally ill patients during their illness. They have no ability to recognize, but they have other abilities to put the threats into practice. We have witnessed three bombings today, haven't we? "

"So, Kui..."

As the image on the TV turned into a white line and disappeared instantly to reveal a black screen, the woman in the living room fell into silence.

She lay back weakly, leaving herself on the sofa, and her jade arms like lotus roots blocked her eyes, as if she didn't believe what she had seen before.

But the fact is that his father, Commissioner Gordon, was kidnapped by a complete madman, and his lives were threatened at the same time as that of dozens of innocent police officers.

Watching the previous live news broadcast, in which her father was forced to laugh with a twisted and stiff smile along with the criminal, she felt her lumbar spine begin to hurt again.

It obviously shouldn't be like this.

Why did the clown still appear after she overwrote the world?

Yes, she is very familiar with such tricks. Maybe the experts on TV don't understand, but she understands very well that the Joker is luring Batman out to play games by proposing such seemingly impossible conditions.

She had never seen the true face of the clown. It was said that the man's face was completely burned by chemical raw materials. After that, she painted it pale white with oil paint and added big red lips.

That was the nightmare Gotham once was.

Now, the nightmare is back, but Batman is not there...

Although she has gone through a lot, she can never avoid the fact that she is just a second-tier hero. As a member of the Bat-family, she has been captured alive by the Joker dozens of times, and almost every time she has to rely on Batman to rescue her.

Although the current clown does not have the iconic facial makeup, he has been forcing others to laugh. Even his speaking style is the same, so crazy and unpredictable.

She was the only superhero left in the world, and she originally planned to hide her identity and live a stable life.

But even with her eyes covered, the smiling face and eyes were still floating back and forth in the black background, becoming more and more numerous, and getting bigger and bigger, as if they were going to completely crush her.

She opened her eyes suddenly and sat up. No, she couldn't go on like this, otherwise she would be overwhelmed by her own fear before the madman detonated the bomb.

Without Batman and her Batgirl, she must solve this crisis and save her father and police officers from the crazy Joker.

Ordinary troops pose no threat to the clown, and may even be incited to defect, or controlled by laughing gas. The more people there are, the happier he will be.

In this new world, he is the only one who knows the Joker best and is the only one who can defeat him.

Barbara took a few deep breaths, walked to her room, and fiddled with the shoe boxes stacked in the closet a few times. A secret door popped open, and a light came on at the bottom of the cabinet.

With the sound of mechanical transmission, a glass display case rose from the ground. Inside stood a set of dark blue armor with a yellow bat pattern on the chest.