"So what do you have hiding down there?" asked Bullock, motioning towards the hatch on the floor. "Another bunker? All you rich folk going to hunker down there while the rest of us up here get obliterated by whatever you have planned?"
"My my, someone's inquisitive," commented Strange in amusement. "And pretty on the nose as well. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that Detective Gordon and yourself have that much figured out by now. But it shouldn't matter, since D-Day will happen very very soon." He looked at Harvey and grinned, "Would you like to participate in it, or spectate it?"
"You sicko! How can I even choose either one?"
Strange laughed. "Well, let it be said that I gave you a choice the others won't enjoy."
"So what will it be huh? Bombs? Chemical gas? How exactly do you plan on exterminating the masses?"
"Aww... don't be a disappointment Detective Bullock. You're so close, and you're giving up already? Tsk tsk... No, I'm not going to make it easy for you."
Harvey leaned forward. "Let me go and we'll see who makes it easy for whom?"
"Hmmm," said Strange, juggling a thought. "Actually you could be useful after all..." He turned to the two men and spoke to them, "Take him to the hangar. When the lunatics are ready to go, strap him to the blimp."
"Blimp? What blimp?" cried Harvey, but a clobbering to the back of the head took him right out.
Jervis Tetch, now dressed in proper men's attire and a top hat, entered Crane's new lab with a man in a coat standing obediently by his side. The man had a faraway look in his eyes, often the effect of Tetch's hypnosis. "A businessman have I found, shall I have him tied down?"
Crane, who was bent over a microscope, looked up and nodded. "We don't know the effects of the chemical on a man yet, but I've tested with rats, and fascinatingly, they've chewed each other up." He pointed to a bloodied glass cage in a corner of the room.
"I wonder what our hosts intended. Perhaps they, like us, are as demented," said Tetch, ushering the man onto an empty stretcher, and securing him with the straps that hung down the sides. The man lay listlessly on the stretcher, not making any attempt to leave.
Holding a needle filled with the crimson substance, and inserting it into the man's flesh, he went ahead to inject the liquid into his veins. Together, the two inmates watched their test subject's veins suddenly protrude all over his face. The man screamed involuntarily as his retinas shrunk in his eyes and turned a fair shade of blue - and then his scream faded momentarily to silence. During this silence, his tongue hung out, and saliva began to dribble off the corner of his lip. Then without warning, his teeth snapped together like a hungry alligator, and he flung himself against his straps with his teeth bared, in the hopes of taking a bite out of Tetch and Crane. Instinctively, they moved back, watching the man foam up at the mouth, staring eagerly at them as though they were to be served on a platter. "So we can safely say that the effect on a man is similar to that of the rats," deduced Johnathan.
"Something else to note, as the effects fare," observed Tetch with slight disdain. "I'm certain Alice's blood is mixed in there..."
"You think someone weaponized your sister's blood?"
"I suppose it was to happen sooner or later," said Tetch with some resignation. "Those people at the top have only wanted to use her."
Crane replied with a sympathetic nod. "This might be our chance to get back at them. All of them. If I were to develop an antidote, the whole of Gotham will be infected save for the three of us. Everyone who's ever wanted to use us, slap a label and lock us up will in turn be set against each other. And when Gotham is burning, we'll be its new masters!"
Tetch tapped his chin thoughtfully. "That doesn't sound like a bad idea, but Mr Valeska should be allowed a hear."
After agreeing to Tetch's proposal, Crane went back to vaporizing the substance provided to them by parties unknown, and creating his antidote in the process. "I'll have it all ready when the clown says yes."
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