Detective Comics #857

Issue Details

Synopsis

ELEGY PART 4 - RUBATO! With the Colonel by her side, Alice is able to traipse right into Fort Richards Military base where her followers have infiltrated the ranks and allow her full access to Siglain Air Field. There awaits several barrels of a toxin known as Cyanogen Chloride marked for disposal. Able to be absorbed into the blood stream either through direct contact with the skin or inhalation, Cyanogen Cholride is quickly broken down once inside the body, becoming cyanide. Alice plans on blanketing almost all of Gotham in a thick cloud of the poison via a specially rigged airplane at the field. And Kate has only moments to stop her.  Luckily for her, Kyle Abbot is not only an andromorphic wolf-person, but a well connected andromorphic wolf-person, and is able to commandeer a second air craft at the field. Piloted by the ever-capable snake-woman Claire, the craft climbs to an altitude just above that of the other craft at which point Kate sky-dives from one plane to the other. There, Kate decommissions the pump connected to the barrels of poison on the plane's wings and then sets her sights on Alice.   While the Colonel rights the plane's trajectory, the two women engage in combat. Naturally the fight spills outside the cabin and onto the wing of the plane itself. But as always, the 'Batman rule' (as Kate's father puts it) is in effect, meaning that no matter how evil Alice may be, Kate is determined not to let the fight end in a fatality. As a gust of wind catches Alice off guard and threatens to toss her into the unforgiving bay below, Kate reaches out and grabs the mad woman by her pale white hand.   But then a strange emotion seems to wash over Alice's face. Those two cold and distant blue eyes lost amidst a sea of charcoal eyeshadow seem to fix themselves directly on Kate, focused with a sense of coherence and rationality for perhaps the first time in ages. From her mouth comes not the ominous and twisted tones of the monster Alice, but that of a stranger. It is the human lost and trapped inside that looks up and says simply, "You have our fathers eyes."   Kate gasps and clutches Alice's hand tighter, but it's too late. Reaching upward, Alice plunges her dagger into Kate's arm, forcing her to release her. Kate watches helplessly as the figure in white flutters through the air toward the water below. And in that moment, time seems to stop for both of them. All the complexities of the world seem to disappear. Her world of color becomes nothing but shades of gray. PIPELINE: CHAPTER 1 PART 4 Thank's to Tot's technological wizardry, Renée is able to use the gunman's phone to locate the Hollywood Hills home of Gordon Chandless himself.   Sneaking in under the cover of darkness, Renée makes her way to Chandless's study, where she makes the shocking discovery that whatever nefarious plot Louisa Soliz unwittingly became a victim of might be bigger than she expected. She's holding in her hand a rather important looking manifest file tagged "Indigo Star" when the lights to the study suddenly turn on!   She finds herself face-to-face with Mr. Gordon Chandless and his two armed guards. Moving quickly, she's able to grab Chandless in a headlock in order to negotiate her safe release. But there's a problem. Someone else is watching the proceedings. Someone even more powerful than Chandless. And they aren't too concerned with a minute pawn such as he.   Working under orders from this mysterious observer, the two guards instead put two rounds in Chandless's chest before turning their attention on Renée. With her hostage dead, Renée is forced to make a run for it. But will she make it out alive?