Chapter Text
"…make not my Father's house a house of merchandise."
-John 2:16
PART I
Chapter 1: Good Drink
GOTHAM CITY - NOW
The sun rose on the American East Coast at seven-twenty AM on a bitterly cold day in early January. The first inches of Gotham City bathed in the sun's pitilessly frigid mid-winter glow were those of the Dixon Docks, and upon the stevedores who had been unloading freighters from Taiwan since four. The sharp light crawled across westward across the city, shining on bums, hookers, junkies, substitute teachers, waitresses, stock traders, anyone from the filthy alleys to the penthouse terraces, all made equal by the sun's unflattering gloss.
Daylight has never flattered this city's gothic splendor. The gargoyles and grotesques look more hungover than menacing. Your factories, your indie diners, your slums, they seemed to not have caught the snow that had fallen intermittently over the past few days as much as they seemed to be hiding underneath it, trying to escape notice.
The sun, whether in this cold January, or a sweltering June, or a brisk October, seemed to glorify the gaudy glass monstrosities of the Financial District over on Founders Island.
That's not the case today, though. Hasn't been for the last couple of weeks.
A few days before Christmas, almost every superhero on Earth (and even some from far beyond) descended upon Founders Island to halt the murderous advance of the Army of Nemesis. This battle cost the lives of three-hundred-seventy-seven civilians and forty-eight costumed Mystery Men and Women. Each member of the Army of Nemesis, a regenerating stone legion, reformed itself from the environment around it upon death to begin its rampage anew, leaving most of the buildings on Founders Island pitted, save for the Queen Consolidated building, which was destroyed entirely.
The sunlight found the mainland eventually. The valuable waterfront held a number of high-end boutiques and eateries, one of which was Scotty and Nicky's: an Italian restaurant whose affordable prices almost bewilderingly contradicted the high quality of their food.
Scotty and Nicky's doesn't open this early. In fact, it doesn't open till noon.
There are exceptions, though, for private dining. The fellow being carried in the limo that just pulled up to the curb? He's one of them.
The host had the kind of face one found in collections of old mugshots of Al Capone henchmen; thick and wide with noses like swollen igneous rock, simultaneously built for putting two in the back of someone's head and laughing themselves stupid at Rich Little impressions. This one had a grin so expansive that his cheeks threatened to shut his tiny brown eyes completely.
"Mister Wayne," the host said, his hands straightening the front of his midnight blue suit in a last-ditch attempt at tidiness. "So good of you to dine with us."
Bruce Wayne unwrapped the black scarf from his neck. "Thank you for having us."
"A pleasure, sir, a pleasure," the host said with a well-rehearsed lack of accent. "I do hope you'll forgive the fact that we don't have a coat check."
"Not a problem," Bruce said. "Is…"
"Yes, your wife arrived fifteen minutes ago."
Bruce looked over the host's shoulder and saw Selina Wayne standing next to the table nearest the window. She had one one of her pairs of black Louboutin heels. Black stockings beneath a black pencil skirt. A crisp white dress shirt beneath form-fitting black blazer. She affixed him with her green eyes, and Bruce noticed that she had the listing smirk that she broke out when she wanted to put out a vibe of confidence. This smirk, more than any glower or cross word at her disposal, seemed to intimidate the people (mostly men) upon whom it was deployed. It was the look of someone ready to dutifully catalogue every stupid thing they saw for future use.
That look intimidated everyone except Bruce Wayne, who regarded it with the same warmth that his fellow adrenaline junkies spared for tall mountains and race cars.
Bruce and the host walked over to Selina. "We'll give you a couple of minutes with the menu," the host said, "and your server will be out to take your order."
"Excellent," said Bruce.
"Peachy," said Selina.
The host walked off. Bruce took both of Selina's hands in his.
"Selina."
"Sailor."
He kissed her chastely on each cheek.
"Is he gone?" Bruce asked.
"Uh-huh."
Bruce moved in. He brushed his teeth along her jawline and grabbed a handful of her ass before he sat down at their table, leaving Selina standing there with a look of flustered surprise, like the wind blew over her lemonade stand.
He had the urge to laugh, but he stifled it. Selina treated making him laugh like an achievement, and that'd go away if he parted with his crack-ups too liberally.
Anything to make her happy.
She sat down across from him and looked at him from beneath upraised eyebrows. Even through her foundation, she was blushing.
"In public," Selina said. "You're a pervert."
"And you're a bad influence."
Selina smiled like she got away with something and picked up her glass of water. As she took a sip, Bruce noticed the folded newspaper that had been sitting there next to it.
"No coat check," Bruce said.
"This place isn't bougie," Selina said. "And given the crap we have in our coat pockets on a given day, do you want strangers handling them?"
"I suppose not."
"This place has great food," Selina said. "Cass and I were here a couple of days ago, had to resort to violence just to get a table."
"Really?"
"No, not really."
"How was your evening?"
Selina cast a glance out into the empty dining room to make sure they were alone before she spoke. "Harper and I patrolled Bleake Island. Incredibly boring. How was yours?"
"That," Bruce said, "is a loaded question."
"How loaded?"
Bruce closed his eyes and took a deep breath. What he had to say required preamble. He thought to himself that he really should have sorted all of this out on the ride over.
"I'm going to give you a list of names," Bruce said, "and I want to you to tell me how you know them."
Selina folded her hands on the table in front of her, and looked at him with intent. "I can't even get you to play Trivial Pursuit with the kids, and we're playing guessing games at dinner? Or, y'know, I guess it's breakfast now."
"Jordan Cross," Bruce said.
"Lead singer of The Class," said Selina. "Uh… Died of an allergic reaction to his birthday cake at a hotel in Thailand, right?"
Bruce knew damn well that Jordan Cross did not die of an allergic reaction. He was poisoned. But he nodded anyway.
"Craig Black."
Selina blinked a couple of times. "The guy who writes those shitty YA witch books that Steph likes? He didn't finish that series 'cause, he, uh… He died too, didn't he?"
"In an explosion at a book signing in Italy," Bruce said. "Heath Byron."
The very mention of the name caused Selina to roll her eyes. "A drunk, fuckhead nepo baby. I had to fly out to Seattle to talk to him about investing in Kyle Security a couple of years ago, and the only reason he didn't try to grab my tits is because I kept giving him death glares all throughout the meeting. With some guys, you can just tell. His chandelier fell on him and it couldn't happened to a nicer guy or a worse pile of shit."
Bruce nodded.
"Why are you giving me the names of rich dead people?" Selina asked.
"Two more."
"Okay."
Bruce took a deep breath… then another… and said:
"Agent 47."
Selina sat stock skill for a moment, before her face split into an untamed smile. She let out the kind of loud, braying, unguarded laugh common to school children and victims of the lingering symptoms of head trauma.
"Get… Get the fuck out of here!"
"What?"
"Agent 47?" Selina asked, still smiling. "He's an urban myth!"
Bruce just blinked a couple of times. "We have speedsters and Kryptonians. How is a hitman an urban myth?"
"Exactly," Selina said. "We have speedsters and Kryptonians. Hitmen have to have powers or they get caught quick by said speedsters and Kryptonians. That why you asked me who those other three were?Are you trying to tell me that some master-of-disguise killer roams the halls of power, bumping off rich assholes and makes it look like an accident every time? And he's never been seen or caught? And he's just a normal dude?"
"I'm normal."
"You have more money than the Church of Scientology fifty times over, Sailor. You are not a normal dude."
Bruce just stared at her as the smile slid off of her face.
"He's… Fuck, he's real, isn't he?"
Bruce nodded.
"Okay," Selina said, visibly reckoning with the broadening of her world view. "If, uh… If that's the second-to-last name you have, then the last one must be a doozy."
Bruce nodded a second time, and said:
"The Human Target."
Selina perked up in her seat with stars in her eyes. "He's real too?"
"Yes."
"The shape-shifter bodyguard who assumes the forms of his clients and stops their assassins before they can kill them?"
"He's not a shape-shifter," Bruce said, "but yes, he is very real."
"How do you know?"
"Because," Bruce said, "I paid him thirty-million dollars to save the life of a man named Delman Podacter."
Selina squinted and tilted her head. "Oh… uh… well…"
She picked up the copy of the newspaper that had been sitting on the table and handed it to him. He unfolded it to see that it was a copy of that day's Daily Planet (read and trusted in the Wayne Household over the local broadsheets, as both the Gentleman and Lady of the Manor knew several staff members at Metropolis' biggest and best newspaper).
The headline read:
PREACHER PODACTER FEARED DEAD IN GOTHAM
It was over a picture of what appeared, at first glance, to be a nasty construction accident.
"If I were you," Selina said, "I'd strongly suggest getting a refund."
Bruce looked at Selina for a moment before he looked back at the story in the paper. He saw that the article was by Ron Troupe, with…
"'Photo by Jimmy Olsen,'" Bruce said. "I had no idea he was in town."
FORT LAUDERDALE - SEVEN WEEKS AGO
Contrary to the assumptions of northerners, Florida did in fact feel the gloom of autumn. The normally bustling and vivid Seabreeze Boulevard was now near-abandoned and slate gray under a sky that threatened to start pissing rain. And Fort Lauderdale's famous marina, Bahia Mar, was half empty.
In slip F-18, there was docked an ancient diesel houseboat about fifty-two feet long. Both the slip and the boat had been purchased at auction from a local legend who decided to pick up stakes and vanish into the nation's interior some fifteen years ago. The sums for each were tidy.
But Christopher Chance could afford it.
He lay on his couch in black dock shorts and a dark green polo shirt, holding a scotch on the rocks up to a graying temple. His record player was pounding out the Springsteen live album from MSG back in '01. As Murder Incorporated turned to Badlands, 1:59 PM turned to two.
Chance took a sip of his scotch, and let the burn saunter down his throat. He lived in Los Angeles, trading a west coast beach city for an east coast locale whenever he wanted to go on vacation, which he tried to do twice a year. His day job was as much a mental and physical strain as it was a closely guarded secret. His neighbors here at the marina thought he was a sports agent.
As he was about to kill his scotch, Chance heard a knock on the door. He rolled his eyes behind closed lids.
He yelled out "Incommunicado!"
Another knock.
"Fuck off!"
From the other side of the door, he heard "Procede et proximum tuum protege."
Chance's eyes snapped open.
It was Latin for "Step forward and protect your fellow man." A pass phrase known only to a select few on this earth. It was a promise of a hefty payday.
And a cry for help.
He got up and set his scotch on the coffee table. He turned The Boss off, walked a few feet to the door, and opened it.
What he saw was six feet of a man seemingly crafted by hand to fuck peoples' girlfriends. Mid-twenties, a little over half Chance's age. Square jaw, blue eyes that had a gold medal in fencing for all the piercing they did. A velvety field of shiny black hair atop his head, and a mouth that seemed frustrated it wasn't smiling at that very moment. Broad shoulders in an impeccably tailored black suit. He was holding a briefcase.
Fifteen, twenty years ago, Christopher Chance was this guy.
"You're a hard man to find," the man said.
"I'm on vacation," Chance said, before he stepped away to let the man in. He sized the man up as he made his way through.
"Sorry I don't have a place for you to sit down," Chance said as he shut the door. "This is, as you see, not an office."
"I'm sorry to disturb you on your vacation," the man said. "But time is of the essence. I know someone in a line of work as… delicate… as yours needs as much prep time as they can get their hands on."
"Can I get you something to drink, Mister…?"
"Grayson," the man said.
"Mister Grayson?"
"No thank you," Grayson said. "I don't drink."
Grayson turned to take in the living room of the houseboat, and Chance took this opportunity to give the universal grimace that all near-alcoholics have for teetotalers. He picked up his scotch as Grayson turned back around to face him.
Chance took a sip and said "The story is always the same. Someone's after you. Someone that doesn't mean well. Someone that has a plan and wants to take a shot. It's my job to come up with a plan too. So when the shot comes, you are nowhere near the line of fire. I will be. I will look like you, sound like you, move like you. And I will stop the man who means you ill."
"Do you have that memorized?"
"Sure I do. I'm a businessman."
Grayson smiled his panty-remover smile, and said "The story isn't always the same."
"It isn't?"
"I'm here on someone else's behalf."
"That's… unusual."
"And the person for whom I speak has never met me, and does not know he's in danger."
"That's unheard of," Chance said. "So unheard of that I'm going to have to apologize for disappointing you, and humbly request that you leave."
"My employer is willing to pay a great deal for your help," Grayson said.
The tightness at his temples from the oncoming headache was always they first sign that he was losing his patience. He looked Grayson up and down.
"Junior," he said, "how did you think this was going to play out? If you didn't tell this guy, I can only assume you don't plan on telling him at all. Which means I'm going to have to kidnap this motherfucker to save his life. And if you're finding me on vacation in your first communion suit, looking to pay me X number of dollars to do this, another reasonable assumption is that this guy has a security detail. So labor-wise? Heat-wise? Committing-a-capital-crime-wise? How much money do you think you can throw at me to do this?"
"Fifteen million dollars," Grayson said.
The pain around his eyes told Chance he had forgotten to blink. He went for another sip of his scotch, and saw it was just ice.
"Ask a stupid question," Chance said, and walked past Grayson to the bottle next to the record player to get his refill.
"So this fifteen million dollar employer of yours?"
"Not at liberty to say," Grayson said.
He walked back over to Grayson with a full drink. "And my client?"
"Have you ever heard of Delman Podacter?"
"Can't say that I have."
"Televangelist," Grayson said. "One of the bigger ones."
Grayson held up his expensive-looking briefcase and said "I've taken the liberty of preparing you a dossier."
"Just put it on the table," Chance said. "So you didn't tell him because, what, you think he might turn it into a sermon?"
"It is a distinct possibility," said Grayson after he put the briefcase on the coffee table.
"How much time do I have?"
"Seven weeks."
"That helps," Chance said. "Location?"
"Gotham City."
"This isn't something the local Bat population can't take care of?"
Grayson shook his head. "We don't want the assailant to spook. As paramount as the safety of Reverend Podacter is, what's just as important is the non-lethal apprehension of the assailant."
"Who is this hitter?" Chance asked. "Because I can't fathom someone who's fifteen million dollars worth of scary."
"Have you ever heard of Agent 47?" Grayson asked.
Had Chance scotch in his mouth, he'd have choked on it. He tried to blink, but only the left eyelid came down all the way.
"I've heard of the urban legend of Agent 47."
"And I've heard of the urban legend of the Man from Krypton," Grayson said. "And lo and behold."
Chance took a drink to calm himself, looked Grayson in the eyes, and said:
"Thirty million…"
GOTHAM CITY - NOW
Selina ordered the Buffalo Milk Caramelle. Bruce ordered the Grilled Pork Shoulder. He also ordered a side of Japanese sweet potatoes, and they opted to split an order of Stuffed Garlic Flatbread as an appetizer. Bruce didn't drink, and only rarely drank soda, and Selina thought it too early for either. They both stuck to iced tea.
"In half an hour," Bruce said, "may I have the Shell Steak al Limon delivered along with an extra chair, please?"
The waitress, she of the frizzy red hair and youthful green eyes, said "You sure can."
"We didn't wake you up too early, did we?" Selina asked.
The waitress said "I'm getting paid triple time to be here. You could have woken me up and two, and I'd have thanked you."
"That's good."
The waitress took their menus and said "I'll be back out with the flat bread," before she walked away.
"Triple time," Selina said. "Best triple the tip."
"Do you have cash? Because I—"
"Yeah, I have it."
Bruce nodded. Selina sipped her tea, leaving red lipstick on the plastic straw.
"I have a question," Selina said.
"Go right ahead."
"You paid the Human Target a ton of money to save this televangelist from Agent 47."
"I did."
"A ton of money even for us."
It wasn't, but Bruce nodded anyway.
"Don't we know a certain someone?" Selina asked. "A certain Martian someone? Whose job is hunting men? Who can shapeshift, and read minds, and would have performed this service for the low, low price of fuck-all?"
"We had to assume," Bruce said, "that the kind of sniff-test Agent 47 would have applied would have seen through that. J'onn's brilliant against someone who's not looking for him, but for someone who is, we needed a proven commodity. We needed the Human Target."
He didn't tell her the real reason: that Reverend Delman Podacter was vociferously anti-superhero, as was common in this latest era of American Evangelical. This close to the Battle of Founders Island meant the the superheroic casualties would have made their way into any sermon Podacter delivered… including the name of Miss Martian, cousin of J'onn J'onzz the Martian Manhunter, who perished in an explosion. Bruce considered simply asking J'onn to don the guise of a man who hated him, and who would have delighted in the death of the only family he had left in the universe, to be the height of cruelty.
Not having to do that to his friend was worth thirty million dollars.
"What about Deadman?" Selina asked. "He can just flit from body to body until he found the right guy."
"I am not loosing Boston Brand on an entire megachurch full of people."
"It'd be funny."
"We need more than funny."
Selina sighed, and visibly racked her brain some more, until she finally said "Raven."
There were times when Bruce Wayne's intellect failed him. That his connection to his wife suffered a slight brown-out. There were times, simply stated, that he did not know when she was fucking with him or not.
"Raven," he said in a flat tone that was not a question.
"She can, like, read emotions can't she?"
"Rachel Roth," Bruce said, "is a young woman with a certain aesthetic who just so happens to be the daughter of the demon Trigon. Putting her in church clothes and setting her among Bible-thumpers who would delight in her demise is the very height of tastelessness."
Not to mention that Raven was in a similar boat as the Martian Manhunter. He had to bury his cousin. Raven had to bury Garfield "Beast Boy" Logan, who was the man she loved. Again, information best left unsaid.
Selina stared at him for a moment before her smile finally broke in. "Again, funny."
Bruce didn't say anything. Just took a sip of his iced tea.
"When did this come across your desk, anyway?" Selina asked.
"It didn't," said Bruce. "It came across Barbara's."
"Really?" Selina asked. The word was elongated in intrigue.
"Dick Grayson didn't go down to Florida on Batman's say-so," Bruce said. "He went on Oracle's. I just provided the money."
THE MOSCOW, ARKANSAS OUTSKIRTS - FIVE WEEKS AGO
The briefcase that Mister Grayson had been holding had not been full of thirty million dollars (as no one was stupid enough to take more than ten grand on a plane), but a dossier on Reverend Delman Podacter. A dossier that Chance had forwarded to an associate of his, one Tom McFadden.
Yesterday, McFadden summoned Chance to Moscow, Arkansas. Chance hopped a flight from Miami International to Little Rock International, rented a silver Ford Mustang, and drove the sixty miles to Bum-Fuck, Nowhere.
The United States is studded with fallout shelters from the Cold War that now served as supervillain storage and hideouts. Over the phone, Tom told Chance that the bunker he'd found in this unincorporated Arkansas township was extraordinarily valuable precisely because it was located in the remote part of a state that no one lived in or traveled to of their own free will. You want to get up to the dickens, the best place to do it was flatland in a flyover state. Who would notice or look for you? The price from the anonymous broker as high, and Chance said he'd cover it for Tom later.
Chance pulled his car up next to a nondescript white van that was parked next to a small concrete dugout near a football field that had appeared to be abandoned since Ford was in office. He got out, buttoned his gray suit jacket, and took a pink ladies compact out of his right jacket pocket. One would have to define "ex" and "give" to determine whether or not an ex gave it to him. All he could remember was that a beautiful woman with whom he had gotten into a mutual and enthusiastic state of undress left it on the dresser in the bedroom of his Los Angeles apartment.
The dugout was lined in concrete and terminated in a rusty metal door. Chance squinted some of the late autumn sun out of his eyes. He walked down, went in, shut the door behind him, and was greeted by about five concrete steps. As he descended, he saw various brown smears and dots of what he could only surmise was blood on the bare cement floor that had been faded with what must have been a good ten years of age. On the far side of this large, bare concrete room stood a man in his mid-thirties with brown hair. He was wearing jeans and a brown leather jacket over a red t-shirt. He was thumbing through his phone, leaning against the wall next to yet another metal door.
The man looked up as he put his phone in his jacket pocket. "The things I do for you, motherfucker."
"Tom."
"Christopher," Tom McFadden said. He was the only living human being Chance would let address him with his first name.
The Human Target was not a one-man enterprise. There were associates and acquaintances scattered across the globe, none more trusted than Tom McFadden, who Chance had recruited seven years ago as a protege and hopefully successor. That last part didn't pan out, as Tom thought mercenary work was less stressful than Chance's job.
Chance walked up to him. "He give you any trouble?"
"This whole thing is trouble," Tom said. "Here I am kidnapping someone across state lines. You owe me."
"I know."
"Big."
"I'm pulling down thirty mill for this."
Tom just blinked at that. "You, uh… you need me to do anything else?"
Chance opted to breeze past that one. "Guy has four houses, which one did you take him from?"
"The one in Little Rock."
"He lives here?"
"Yeah."
"On purpose?"
"Televangelists like our boy here can't live in the fun places," Tom said. "You just have to make for Little Rock, squint your eyes a little, and pretend it's somewhere else."
"Not even Atlanta."
"Atlanta's booked up," said Tom.
"Who's looking for him?" Chance asked.
"No one," said Tom. "Light security detail, landscaping, in-house service. That's all I spotted during a four day stakeout. Lifting him was easy. I don't think this guy knew anyone was after him. Nevertheless, we have seventeen hours left before he officially becomes a missing person, so…"
"I thought he was married."
"His wife lives in a different house near Fort Worth. A big one, with three separate pools and three separate pool boys, two of which she's banging. He breaks her out of mothballs for the big events or interviews. So he doesn't appear gay or insane, both of which are bad looks for his line of work."
"I'm assuming boyfriend?"
Tom shook his head. "You'd think, but I'm not sure human contact does it for him."
The conversation lulled. They both looked at their feet.
"When's the hit going down?" Tom asked.
"Five weeks," said Chance. "At the Church of the Jade Miracle in Slaughter Swamp. It's a big megachurch."
"That's in Gotham City."
Chance nodded. "Outskirts."
"I didn't know Gotham fielded that many evangelicals."
"It doesn't, but they have it there for the big events where they bring in the bigger preachers from all over the country. Think of it as Woodstock for Holy Rollers."
"Of all the places to hold a big service, they pick Bat Country?"
"The further up the Atlantic Coast you go," Chance said, "the more legitimate you look, provided you stop at Boston or Fawcett. You do this in Little Rock, or Chattanooga, or Birmingham, you're just preaching to the choir."
The both of them let the pun hang in the air.
Chance put his hand on the door. "I go in there Christopher Chance, I come out Delman Kenneth Podacter. I go to his house, live his life, eat his food, deliver his sermons. You sit on this guy for the five weeks it takes until the job is done, and when the job's done, you cut him loose. And for the love of God—"
"Don't tell you where I cut him loose to," said Tom, finishing the sentence.
Chance nodded. He'd never had a job go so bad he'd been tortured for information, but should the worst come to pass, he did not want information on a client that could be extracted with a pair of pliers and a blow torch.
He took his hand off the door, and opened the pink ladies compact he'd been holding in the other.
With urban legends like The Human Target, theory craft abounds.
The most common was that he was genuinely a shape-shifter, who could assume the forms of his clients and lead them out of the valley of darkness. Needless to say, this was incorrect.
The next most common was that The Human Target was a failed Hollywood makeup artist who bullshitted his way through jobs with latex and nose putty. This was also clear of the mark.
Twenty years ago, Christopher Chance was in Special Forces, and he was tip of the spear on a black op through Bialya on the concerns of the CIA that there was a training ground for assassins opposed to US interests.
Chance's team did not find an assassin school.
What they did find was a tech lab where all the researchers and scientists on site had been shot in the head by assailant-or-assailants unknown. The tech they had been developing enabled the user to alter their faces and voices to take the forms and voices of whomever they wished, provided they fed enough data to an ancillary program to create a perfect match. The drove which held the program, along with all proprietary hardware, was small enough to fit into a briefcase. And it was this briefcase that the team decided to take with them.
On the helicopter ride back to the FOB, the chopper succumbed to engine failure, resulting in the crash the killed the pilot, and three of the four man team. The lone survivor, miraculously unharmed, was Christopher Chance. Also miraculously unharmed was the briefcase full of shape-shifting mystery tech.
In the time between when Chance radioed for extraction and the time the rescue chopper arrived, Chance stared at the briefcase, and tried to divine his future.
He saw an uphill fight in the private sector after he left the military, trying to get jobs without telling his employees what he'd done for those years in the desert, given the need for secrecy. Would he be a cop? Work private security? Desk job? A soul-crushing future of employment that made rich people richer and helped no one?
Or… he could do what he ultimately did.
He hid the drive and the hardware beneath his Kevlar, and told his superiors it had been destroyed in the crash.
What was inside of the compact was a small dot about the size of a number button on a cheap television remote control, along with a thin latex strip on paper, like a band-aid.
It wasn't the original hardware from Bialya twenty years ago, as that was hopelessly out of date. But Chance had made enough money in his years as The Human Target to to get upgrades from laid-off LexCorp and Stagg Industry coders and engineers working just a bit outside the law. The program, which pored through hours of video footage and audio files to complete the ruse that the hardware was meantt o implement was, however, still in its original incarnation.
Why mess with perfection?
With his free hand, he unbuttoned the top button of his white dress shirt, and handed the compact to Tom. He took out the strip, peeled it off the paper, and applied it to his throat.
Chance sighed, and heard a voice that wasn't his.
Then he took the dot out, and pressed it onto the skin just above his collar bone, just hard enough to activate. The effect produced no sound or physical sensation, but seeing Tom awkwardly shift on his feet told him that the effect had taken hold.
"Still freaks me out whenever I see that," said Tom, and he held out the compact.
Chance looked in the mirror…
…and Reverend Delman Kenneth Podacter stared back.
Not with his eyes, though. Chance's eyes were blue while Podacter's were brown, but he had contacts for that. The rest was there, though. The thin lips, the pale skin, the bulbous nose, the washed out freckles, even the rapidly thinning brown hair of as man spitting on fifty years of age were all present.
The dot was a holographic emitter that placed a facsimile of the client's face over Chance's. It reacted to sunlight and shadow, but was sadly iffy around rain and sweat. But a hat could somewhat neutralize both.
Tom snapped the compact shut, and handed it to Chance, who put in in the pocket of his suit jacket. He re-buttoned his shirt (another wonky effect what that the dot created a sharp dividing line between Podacter's pasty skin, and Chance's all-over tan). He gave jazz hands, and said with Podacter's voice provided by the strip across his throat:
"It's showtime, folks."
Tom smiled.
Chance opened the door next to him, and walked through.
There was a metal table in the middle of the small room beneath one bare bulb. On either side were metal chairs. On the side opposite of Chance sat a man in navy blue pajamas with a burlap bag over his head, handcuffed to a notch in the middle of the table. Chance didn't need to bend down to see that this man's legs were also shackled to the legs of the metal chair in which he sat.
Upon hearing the noise of Chance entering, the man jerked in his chair and let out a strangled, watery roar.
"You're dead," said the man through the burlap bag. "You hear me, cocksucker? Disco ain't gonna be as dead as you'll be!"
The man had said it in a thick Mississippi Delta dialect that would ultimately be easy for Chance to replicate, as the strip across this throat could provide a voice, but not an accent.
Chance reached across the table and yanked the bag off the man's head.
He beheld the stunned visage of Reverend Delman Podacter.
Podacter blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light, and as he saw…himself… standing across the table from him, all the fight went out of him.
"Holy shit," Podacter said softly, after which he was content to let his mouth hang open.
As Chance sat down, he took a further measure of Podacter. He was the right, within in inch, even if that. Chance wouldn't have to stoop or wear lifts in his shoes. The hands were also within range. Chance had, on occasion, needed further dots beneath the cuffs of shirts to replicated hairy knuckles or liver spots, but that wouldn't be necessary this time.
He folded his arms and stared at the stunned Podacter.
"You have no idea how much danger you're in," Chance said with Podacter's voice.
"What's your deal?" Podacter asked, getting some of his fight back. "Is it money you want?"
"All day every day," said Chance. "But not yours. Someone else paid me to protect you, so I speak with their authority. And given how much money it was, it's a shitload of authority."
"Protect me?"
"Here's what's going to happen," Chance said. "I'm going to be you for the next five weeks. That's sermon you're giving in Gotham City? It's going to be me giving it…"
"Fuck you."
"…because a very dangerous man is out to get you when you get there. It will be my job to stop this very dangerous man…
"Fuck your mamma in the asshole."
"…and when I'm done, I will give your life back to you in factory condition. In order for this to work, in order for me to impersonate you, I am going to need to be privy to information. Passwords, combinations, pet names, whatever I can think of, whatever I need in the moment. And when I need those things, I will call the man outside. He will ask you, you will tell him, and he will tell me."
"I ain't givin' you shit!"
Chance reached across the table, and slapped Podacter across the face. Then he stood up and grabbed a handful of Podacter's walnut hair. The Good Reverend squirmed, and let out a short, pained groan.
" I will torture you until you shit blood to get what I need," Chance said through gritted teeth. "But when I'm done, you'll still be alive. You walk out that door now, you have a five week countdown timer until a man more dangerous than you can fathom punches your worthless fucking ticket."
Chance let go of Podacter's hair, and sat back down.
"Do you believe in God?" Chance asked.
Podacter grimaced, and asked "That a trick fuckin' question?"
"Anyone who walked the walk," Chance said, "wouldn't do what you do how you do it. But if there's any part of you that still believes in the man upstairs, I know that's he's looking out for you. And I know this because I'm the only angel you got left."
GOTHAM CITY - NOW
The waitress had brought the Shell Steak al Limon and the extra chair to the table at about the time Bruce and Selina hit the midway point of their meal. Now all they had to do was wait.
"Has Agent 47 done a job in Gotham before?" Selina asked.
Bruce swallowed a bit of food. "Given the nature of the beast, how most of his kills are purported to look like accidents, there's no way of knowing. But my instinct tells me that no, he hasn't. He's the worst kind of criminal."
"Which is?"
"A smart one."
Selina took a sip of her tea refill, and said "Define smart."
"A criminal who knows," said Bruce, "that if he's in Gotham, and he can't see Batman, then Batman is right behind him."
Selina smiled.
"So in order for Agent 47 to strike," Bruce said, "then Batman had to be elsewhere. Thus… subterfuge was in order."
"What do you mean 'subterfuge?'"
"There are certain times when I… feed information to various supercriminals anonymously. To get them where I need them in case I or someone else needs cover elsewhere. It's a diversionary tactic in order to deal with a greater threat elsewhere. They're always the least dangerous among the people I've faced, so there's a reasonably small chance anyone gets hurt. They pull heists based on the information I feed them, and they're contained relatively easily thereafter."
Selina had a forkful of food halfway to her mouth, before her brow furrowed,and she set the fork back down.
"Bruce?"
She never used his first name unless something heavy was coming. He paid her the courtesy of looking her in the eye. "Yes?"
"Was I one of the harmless ones you used as a diversion?"
Bruce was about to set to the horrific task of deflating his wife's ego by telling her, well, yeah, when he heard the main entrance of Scotty and Nicky's open. They both looked to the doorway to see the reedy and be-suited form of Alfred Pennyworth saunter in, all business. He stopped at the table.
"I received your text," Alfred said. "Is there something you wish of me?"
Bruce pointed at the extra meal and spare chair and said "Yes, there is."
Alfred's thin eyebrows lifted in surprise. "I couldn't possibly."
"We have a ton of funerals to go to," Selina said. "And you worked all through Christmas. The grown-ups of the house should have a meal together every once in a while."
"And I know for a fact that you haven't eaten," said Bruce.
Alfred opened his mouth to protest, before he apparently caught a whiff of what was waiting for him.
"Thank you very much," Alfred said as he sat down.
"Don't mention it," said Bruce.
"So who was the diversion you used last night?"
Alfred answered. "Bookworm."
A smile of derisive delight spread across spread across Selina's face. "Bookworm?"
"He doesn't have any bodies on him," Bruce said. "And he's just plain fun. All his plots are literature-themed, and criminal though he may be, he has good taste in books. Speaking of which, there's a bookshop a couple blocks down, so…"
"Still, though. Bookworm?"
"Tim's never faced him," Bruce said. "I wanted that for him before he retired."
"He's my favorite," Alfred said.
"Tim?" Selina asked.
"No," Alfred said. "Bookworm."
"You two have favorite supervillains?"
"Of course we do," said Bruce. "Mine switched sides, though."
Selina said "You're goddamn right she did."
Bruce and Selina watched as Alfred finally dug in. "Delicious," he said after he swallowed.
With that, Selina raised her glass of tea.
"Well," she said, "to the late Delman Podacter."
Neither Bruce nor Alfred raised theirs.
Selina put hers back down and asked "What?"
"It's just that Barbara was running the Human Target mission," Bruce said. "If anyone actually died, she would have contacted me."
Selina's eyes grew to anime width. "She didn't?"
"No," Bruce said. "No, she didn't."