Bruce’s words hung in the air around him as Carrie ushered
him back to the car. Something about
Arkham set off all her alarms and she was personally done with the place. Leading the car out she glanced back at
Bruce. “Is everything alright, Mr.
Wayne?”
“Yes, Carrie.” He said distantly “Everything is fine. What time is it?”
“Barley 9:40. You
should make your meeting with time to spare.” Bruce nodded absently.
The board meeting was exactly what Bruce had expected,
thankfully detailed enough to warrant his full and undivided attention. The conference room was wide and large, with
heavily reinforced windows, a byproduct of an attack. Briefly Bruce thought about it. Garfield Lynns, under the name of Firefly,
had torched the original conference room during a board meeting. The attack killed two board members, and he,
with the aid of Killer Moth, carted off another. As it turned out that particular board
member, Rupert Thorn, had been heavily involved in organized crime and had run
afoul of rival gang leader Carmine Falcone.
Falcone had sent the pair, but hadn’t counted on the fact that they were
homicidally insane. It took Batman the
better part of three days to track down Thorn and stop the deadly duo. But that was ancient history, after the Joker
but before Penguin and Catwoman had their team up.
“Mr. Wayne, do you have anything you wish to add?” It was
Fox. Sometimes, Bruce convinced himself,
Fox would call on him just to make sure he was paying attention. During his days as the Batman, this challenge
would have been met with a tired quip or an offhanded remark. Now, if you asked Bruce, this was merely an
attempt to keep him grounded so his mind didn’t wander off into darker pursuits.
“How is the reactive armor coming for our military
contracts?”
Trevor Menner, the head of research and development looked
up. He had not expected that question
today. “Fffine, sir, just fine.”
“What is “fine”, exactly?” Bruce pressed on. Something stirred in Bruce. Ordinarily the Bruce Wayne the board saw was
somewhat relaxed, present in his company’s affairs but not militant, not a
micro manager. The voice creeping out of
Bruce now was not that Bruce Wayne. This
was something different, something more severe, something darker.
“W…well, sir, the reactive armor is performing to
specs. We have eight units already
built, however the issue is keeping cost down.
Right now they sell for about one hundred thousand dollars apiece and
the armed forces are questioning whether or not the product is worth the cost.”
“Maybe you could bundle the armor with that vehicle they
won’t buy…” quipped Julia Prophen, board member in charge of accounting. “We tried selling them at cost and they still
came in shy of two million a pop.
Apparently the army doesn’t have a burning need for something crossed
between a tank and a Lamborghini.”
Bruce tapped his fingers “We’ll table it for now. I’m interested in keeping product costs down,
but not at the sacrifice of quality.
Don’t feel too bad, Mr. Menner, Wayne Tech R&D has had notoriously
bad luck with selling its higher quality pieces.”
Prophen pipped up “Well we did lose that one buyer. What was it, about ten years ago, I’d get an
email every so often asking about anything high grade that we couldn’t
sell…then this company, Incorporato Pipistrello would come in and buy a lot of it up.”
Bruce
thought to himself that perhaps he could “reach out” to that compnay once
again. He dismissed the thought, along
with the meeting and excused himself. As
everyone filtered into the elevators, Bruce turned to the stairwell. Given the conference room was on the 30th
floor, nobody dared challenging the stairs, but Lucius caught him by the
shoulder. “Bruce...” he said softly
“Tell me I did not see something very foolish in your eyes.”
“I
don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I
think you do. I saw that familiar glint
in your eye when they talked about the equipment. Tell me you are not looking for an excuse to
go back.”
Bruce gave him a steely stare. “No. I’m
not looking for an excuse.”
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