In a room in an apartment four hundred meters from the Queens precinct, Batman's identity once again shifted from the relative "Harvey Bullock" to that of a Victorian-styled private detective.
A bowler hat, a handlebar mustache, a tweed three-piece suit, gloves, a pipe… just like a medieval gentleman.
When questioned by the apartment manager, Batman's explanation was:
"Every private detective dreams of being Sherlock Holmes."
Batman needed to track and gather information on the sniper who had targeted Eddie Brock inside this building. It was daytime now, and the "Batman" identity wasn't suited for appearing openly here.
But a "private detective" had no such concerns.
Using this guise, Batman smoothly entered the apartment and arrived at the exact room whose window he had already pinpointed back at the Queens precinct.
The killer had left no shell casings. There was almost no scent of body odor in the air. Even with a UV light, Batman found no fingerprints, fibers, or footprints—only the faintest traces of gunpowder and gun oil.
This sniper was extremely professional. Beyond that, there wasn't even any sign of stress marks at the tripod placement for the sniper rifle that Batman had calculated.
"To kill a single journalist, they deploy a killer this professional…"
Batman pulled an air sampling vial from the bat-belt hidden beneath his tweed jacket, while his mind rapidly switched between the perspectives of General Ross and a Hydra commander.
"If I were them, I would never go to such lengths for an ordinary journalist, hiring an outside assassin.
"That introduces unnecessary variables and risks. The most reasonable approach would be to dispatch a top agent of absolute loyalty."
"To further reduce risk, they might arrange for a peripheral member to carry out the assassination under the guise of a robbery or personal grudge."
"But the scene before me—the professional sniper nest selection, the meticulous cleanup of the site, and especially the use of non-standard high-end weaponry from Stark Industries… all of this points to a trained, well-resourced internal operations team. This is no peripheral member's work."
Sweeping nearly every corner of the apartment with the UV light, Batman stood in the center of the room, his mind racing.
Piecing his thoughts together bit by bit, Batman arrived at a conclusion that, while not aligning with General Ross or Hydra's usual logic, was highly probable:
"Therefore, the executor must be a top-tier agent."
But with that conclusion came a new question.
Why deploy such top-level resources?
Without the Arkham suit or Oracle's AI analysis support, Batman relied solely on himself, his associative thinking leaping one step ahead of even Oracle's processing to recall the data stream sent from the internal SHIELD intranet to the base's monitoring room during his infiltration yesterday evening.
"The answer isn't in Eddie Brock himself, but in timing and efficiency. A Hydra top agent is a strategic asset—they wouldn't activate one lightly for a single target.
"Unless this task was merely a side job, something he could handle effortlessly as part of a larger, more critical operation that required his level of resources."
Batman was now juggling four mental personas: Detective Batman, General Ross, Hydra Commander, and Hydra Agent.
At the same time, he maintained his private detective cover, sighing dramatically on the surface as if he had found no clues, while actually beginning to scan the apartment hallway floor with eyes as sharp as Peter Parker's, distinguishing footprints.
The agent could erase all traces inside the apartment, but he couldn't wipe every footprint from the moment he left the room while retreating—that would take too much time and wasn't strictly necessary.
The hallway saw foot traffic daily; his prints would blend with others and vanish.
But only one night had passed, and the traces hadn't been fully obscured yet.
Relying on his keen gaze, Batman located the agent's footprints with minimal effort.
The tread depth and spacing indicated the wearer was astonishingly heavy, with steady strides honed by long-term military training.
Batman had seen these footprints before—at the Ravencroft Institute in northern New York suburbs. One of the four people who took Norman Osborn away was the very man who sniped Eddie Brock.
Even though the sole patterns differed between the two incidents, Batman's calculations of stride length, foot angle, and print size confirmed his judgment was correct.
"The sniper's weight is slightly more than at Ravencroft—due to carrying the sniper rifle this time."
"Knowing the same person was involved in both operations, was the anomalous data stream inside the SHIELD base yesterday evening also connected to him?"
"I need to thoroughly investigate that vegetable transport truck."
The bio-information decoy that Dr. Banner had created—based on data from when Venom bonded with him, which Batman had left in the Adirondack Mountains—still showed no response. The white symbiote monster that Eddie Brock had become remained absent.
Batman prioritized finding it below investigating Stark Industries weaponry and the Hydra agent.
Back at City Hall subway station, Batman returned in his Victorian attire.
The moment Venom heard the noise, it perked up its head and looked around, like a puppy waiting for its owner to come home.
Seeing Batman in this gentlemanly getup, it froze for a second, then carefully retracted its symbiote mass into the corner of the ecological tank.
"Has he finally lost it? What the hell is this guy doing…"
Venom tried not to make a sound, terrified that Batman would notice it.
Fortunately, Batman merely performed his routine observation in front of the Venom tank for a moment before diving into his work.
He handed the air sampling vial collected from the apartment to Oracle, who would analyze the air composition using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.
Batman himself began hacking into the NYPD network, reviewing surveillance along the vegetable truck's pre-mapped transport route.
The New York surveillance network showed signs of deletion, but that was no obstacle for Batman.
He located the vegetable truck in the footage, then sifted through massive video files to find recordings of the driver before boarding. It took two hours to track the driver's movements under surveillance.
Ultimately, he lost the driver's trail on a remote road less than ten kilometers from a Stark Industries military factory.
Batman didn't rush to switch cameras; he waited patiently for the driver to reappear.
Ten minutes later, the driver returned to the frame.
Compared to when he left, he now carried a guitar case.
The timing was approximately one and a half hours before Eddie Brock was sniped inside the precinct.
Beep.
While Batman was still reviewing the footage, the gas chromatography-mass spectrometer finished analyzing the air sample.
The resulting electronic spectrum was compared to previous Stark Industries gun oil spectra, confirming one gun oil matched the sniper rifle exactly.
Among Stark-produced weapons, few models used that specific gun oil. Batman quickly identified the rifle: the "SRS07" model.
"This Hydra agent's face is disguised and highly similar to the previous vegetable truck driver; no specific identity can be queried."
Batman closed the NYPD surveillance.
Having confirmed that the same person abducted Norman Osborn, sniped Eddie Brock, and served as external relay for the SHIELD base data stream, Batman no longer needed to track this Hydra agent.
During his infiltration of the SHIELD base yesterday evening, he had instinctively implanted a tracking virus into the data stream.
The Hydra agents inside and outside SHIELD had gone to great lengths to transmit that data—it couldn't just be for show.
The moment the receiving terminal activated, Batman's virus would locate it, even read and alter the data.
"The Adirondack SHIELD base is the execution site for 'Project Pegasus.' It houses Cosmic Cube research and extraterrestrial life data."
"The Cube was originally discovered and studied by Hydra in Norway. Compared to alien life, the stolen data is more likely related to the Cube."
"They want to know how far SHIELD's Cube research has progressed—and may even be planning to steal it."
Musing on Hydra and the Cosmic Cube, Batman's hands queried the SRS07 sniper rifle and investigated the military factory.
Results showed no registration, sales, or transfer records for the rifle. Someone able to access unregistered Stark weapons so smoothly must hold extremely high authority within Stark.
"If Hydra's plan is to steal the Cube and weaponize it like in World War II, another catastrophe is foreseeable. I need to prepare in advance."
Batman accessed the factory's internal surveillance. Yesterday's footage had been deleted, but he restored it effortlessly and saw a bald, bearded figure.
He was one of Stark Industries' veterans, a shareholder, and aside from Tony himself, the only executive with real power: Obadiah Stane.
Without hesitation, Batman queried Obadiah's information and hacked his encrypted private email backup.
Obadiah's emails were fragmented and tedious. Even in the encrypted backup, the bald, bearded man layered security meticulously—but it was useless against Batman.
Batman found the keyword "Aegis Security." Obadiah was the mastermind behind this private military company.
Aegis Security, per Batman's prior investigation, was a secondary SHIELD contractor handling local security and logistics.
But now it appeared this obscure yet massively funded PMC served another purpose.
"Obadiah Stane has established a secret channel providing custom weaponry to specific elites—that's Aegis Security's true background."
"Using this channel, Obadiah resells Stark weapons handled by Level 8 agent Garrett… profiting from both ends?"
Batman organized all the clues:
"Hydra agent, dispatched by General Ross, first transfers Norman Osborn, then attempts to snipe Eddie, and later relays Cosmic Cube data from inside the SHIELD base."
"Stark's Obadiah provides the sniper rifle—this doesn't fit his role as head of a cash-rich PMC like Aegis. A single weapon sale wouldn't involve him unless there's more to it."
"Only profit—sufficient profit—would drive him to this."
Batman considered a possibility and swiftly searched Obadiah's encrypted email backup for communication records.
This time, nothing turned up.
Aegis Security required frequent fund transfers and weapon shipments, so it appeared in Obadiah's encrypted emails—but nothing about Tony Stark did.
"I need to go to Stark Industries and check Obadiah's other records for any intent to harm Tony Stark."
"And regardless of whether that intent exists, I must find a way to warn Tony and urge him to stay vigilant on this trip."
On the private jet to the Middle East, disco lights flashed like a nightclub.
Amid music blaring at maximum volume, Tony Stark had his arm around Colonel Rhodes, shouting words into a cup that the other couldn't possibly hear.
Four flight attendants had removed their uniform jackets, tied their shirt tails to reveal toned midriffs, and swayed to the beat.
Batman had no phone, but he could contact Tony via the Arkham suit's integrated comms.
As the message sent, Tony pulled out his vibrating phone, glanced at the unknown number, powered it off, and tossed it aside, continuing to drink with Rhodes.
The call didn't connect. Batman sent several texts, but the phone was off. Tony's eyes lingered on a beautiful attendant's black-stockinged legs as he clinked glasses with Rhodes.
One hour until arrival in the Middle East.