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Chapter 113: Batman Holmes
Four hundred meters from the Queens Police Department, inside an apartment room, Batman's identity shifted once again. The relative "Harvey Brock" transformed into a private detective dressed in Victorian-era fashion.
A bowler hat, handlebar mustache, tweed three-piece suit, gloves, and a pipe—he looked like a gentleman straight out of the nineteenth century.
When the apartment building's manager questioned him, Batman's explanation was simple: "Every private detective aspires to be Sherlock Holmes."
Batman needed to track the sniper who had shot Eddie Brock and gather information in this apartment building. But it was daytime, and the "Batman" identity wasn't suitable for appearing here in broad daylight.
A "private detective," however, had no such concerns.
Using this cover, Batman smoothly entered the building and made his way to the specific room whose window he had already identified from the Queens Police Department.
The shooter had left no shell casings. The air contained almost no body odor. Even using 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, even the calculated position where the sniper rifle's bipod should have been placed showed no evidence of pressure or wear.
"To kill a single reporter, they deployed such a professional assassin..."
Batman retrieved an air sampling device from the bat-belt hidden beneath his tweed coat, simultaneously forcing his mind to rapidly switch between two different perspectives: General Ross and a Hydra commander.
"If I were them, I would never make such a big move for an ordinary reporter or hire an external killer."
"That would introduce unnecessary variables and risks. The most logical approach would be to send an absolutely loyal top-tier agent to execute the task."
"To further reduce risk, they might arrange for a peripheral member to carry out the assassination under ordinary pretenses like robbery or revenge."
"But the scene before me—the professional sniper position selection, the meticulous scene cleanup, especially the use of Stark Industries' non-standard high-end weapons—all of this points to a well-trained internal operations team with deep resources. This is definitely not the work of a peripheral member."
After sweeping nearly every corner of the apartment with his UV light, Batman stood in the center of the room, his mind racing.
Sorting through his thoughts piece by piece, Batman finally reached a conclusion that, while inconsistent with the logic of General Ross and Hydra, had an extremely high probability:
"Therefore, the executor must be a top-tier agent."
But reaching this conclusion brought a new question: Why deploy such high-level resources?
Without the Arkham suit, without the Oracle AI's analytical support, Batman could rely only on himself. His thinking moved even faster than the Oracle AI would have, connecting this to the data stream he'd discovered yesterday evening when he infiltrated the SHIELD base—the one sent from the internal network to the base's monitoring room.
"The answer isn't about Eddie Brock himself, but about timing and efficiency. A Hydra top-tier agent is a strategic asset who wouldn't be activated lightly for a single target."
"Unless this task was just something he could complete in passing while carrying out a more important operation that required someone of his caliber."
Batman was now switching his thinking between four different identities: Detective Batman, General Ross, a Hydra commander, and a Hydra agent.
Meanwhile, he maintained his private detective persona for cover, sighing audibly on the surface as if he'd found no clues, while actually beginning to examine the footprints in the apartment hallway, relying on Peter Parker's eyes that could discern every minute detail.
The agent could eliminate all traces inside the apartment, but he couldn't erase every footprint from the room to his exit while retreating—that would take too much time and wasn't really necessary.
People came and went through the apartment hallway every day. His footprints would be covered by others and disappear.
But only one night had passed. The traces hadn't been completely obscured yet.
Batman carefully searched with his eyes and found the agent's footprints without much difficulty.
The tread depth and spacing indicated the wearer had remarkable weight and steady, disciplined steps—evidence of long-term military training.
Batman had seen these footprints before. At the Ravencroft Institute in the northern suburbs of New York, among the four people who had taken Norman Osborn, one of them was the same person who had sniped Eddie Brock.
Even though the shoe tread patterns from both occasions were different, Batman's calculations based on stride length, foot angle, and footprint size all confirmed his judgment was correct.
"The sniper weighs slightly more than he did at Ravencroft Institute—because this time he was carrying the sniper rifle's additional weight."
"Given that the same person participated in both operations, is the data stream anomaly inside the SHIELD base yesterday evening also connected to him?"
"I need to thoroughly investigate that produce delivery truck."
The biological lure that Dr. Banner had created—based on the data from when Venom possessed Batman—which he'd left in the Adirondack Mountains, still hadn't triggered any response. The white symbiote creature that Eddie Brock had become still hadn't appeared.
Batman placed the search for Eddie lower on his priority list, after investigating Stark Industries weapons and the Hydra agent.
City Hall subway station. Batman, dressed in his Victorian outfit, returned here.
The moment Venom heard movement, it raised its head and looked up like a small dog waiting for its master to come home.
It froze when it saw Batman in his gentleman's attire, then the symbiote mass cautiously squirmed into a corner of the containment box.
"Has he finally lost it? What is this guy doing..." Venom tried not to make a sound, afraid of drawing Batman's attention.
Fortunately, Batman only came to the containment box for his routine observation before throwing himself into his work.
He tossed the air sample bottle he'd collected at the apartment to the Oracle AI to analyze the air composition using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.
Batman himself began hacking into the New York Police Department, reviewing the surveillance network along the produce truck's transport route that he'd tracked earlier.
New York's surveillance network showed signs of deletion, but that posed no challenge to Batman.
Finding the produce truck in the surveillance footage, then locating footage of the driver before he got into the vehicle from the massive video files, Batman spent two hours tracking the driver's movements captured by cameras.
Finally, less than ten kilometers from a Stark Industries military factory, he lost sight of the driver on surveillance from a remote road.
Batman didn't rush to switch to other camera angles. He waited quietly for the driver to reappear.
More than ten minutes later, the driver's figure appeared in the surveillance footage again. Compared to when he'd left, he now carried a guitar case.
The timestamp showed this was approximately an hour and a half before Eddie Brock was sniped inside the police station.
Beep.
While Batman was still reviewing the surveillance footage, the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis of the air sample completed.
Batman compared the resulting electronic spectrum with the gun oil spectrums from Stark Industries, confirming that one of the gun oils matched exactly with what the sniper rifle used.
That particular gun oil was compatible with only a few weapon models produced by Stark Industries. Batman quickly identified the specific model: the SRS-07.
"This Hydra agent's face has been disguised to look highly similar to the previous produce truck driver. I can't query his specific information."
Batman closed the New York Police Department surveillance.
Having confirmed that the same person had taken Norman Osborn, sniped Eddie Brock, and served as the external contact for the data stream at the SHIELD facility, Batman no longer needed to track this Hydra agent.
When he'd been inside the SHIELD base yesterday evening, he'd instinctively inserted a tracking virus into that data stream.
The Hydra agents inside and outside SHIELD had gone to great lengths to transmit that data. They certainly wouldn't have done so just to keep it as a decorative art piece.
Once the receiving terminal for that data stream was activated, Batman's tracking virus would immediately locate it and even read and replicate the data.
"The SHIELD base in the Adirondack Mountains is the execution site for Project Pegasus. They have research on the Tesseract and information about extraterrestrial life."
"The Tesseract was originally discovered and researched by Hydra in Norway. Compared to extraterrestrial life, there's a higher probability that the information Hydra stole relates to the Tesseract."
"They want to know how far SHIELD's research on the Tesseract has progressed, and they may even be planning to steal the Cube."
While thinking about Hydra and the Tesseract, Batman's hands were busy investigating the SRS-07 sniper rifle and researching that military factory.
The investigation revealed that this sniper rifle had no registration, sales, or transfer records. Anyone who could so smoothly access unregistered Stark Industries weapons must hold extremely high authority within the company.
"If Hydra's plan is to steal the Tesseract and use it to manufacture weapons like they did during World War II, that would spell another disaster. I need to prepare for this in advance."
Batman accessed the military factory's internal surveillance. Yesterday's footage showed it had been deleted. Batman casually restored it and saw the figure of a bald man with a beard.
He was one of Stark Industries' founding members, one of its shareholders, and aside from Tony himself, the only person who could truly be called a power player in the company: Obadiah Stane.
Without hesitation, Batman immediately searched Obadiah's information and hacked into his encrypted private email backup.
Obadiah's emails were fragmented and complicated. Even in the encrypted backup, the bald, bearded man had prudently layered multiple encryptions, but that didn't pose much difficulty for Batman.
Batman found the keyword "Ajax Security" in the emails. Obadiah was the behind-the-scenes controller of this private military company.
According to Batman's previous investigation, Ajax Security was a secondary contractor for SHIELD, responsible for local security and logistical support.
But from the current evidence, this obscure private military company with surprisingly massive cash flow might serve another purpose entirely.
"Obadiah Stane has established a secret channel providing custom military hardware services to specific elites. That's Ajax Security's true background."
"And through this channel, Obadiah resells the Stark weapons that Level 8 Agent Garrett handles... profiting from both sides?"
Batman organized all the threads:
"The Hydra agent was sent by General Ross to first transfer Norman Osborn, then attempted to snipe Eddie, and afterward coordinated with Hydra operatives inside the SHIELD base regarding Tesseract information."
"Stark Industries' Obadiah provided weapons for the sniper operation. This doesn't fit someone who controls a private military company with the massive cash flow of Ajax Security. Sales of individual weapons wouldn't normally involve him, unless there's something else at play."
"Only profit—substantial profit—would motivate him to do this."
Batman thought of one possibility and quickly searched the communication records in Obadiah's encrypted private email backup.
But this time, he found nothing.
Because Ajax Security frequently required capital movement and weapon transport, it had records in Obadiah's encrypted emails. But there were no records concerning Tony Stark in the emails.
"I need to go to Stark Industries and search Obadiah's other files to determine whether he intends harm toward Tony Stark."
"And regardless of whether that possibility exists, I need to find a way to warn Tony and make him raise his guard on this trip."
On the private jet heading to the Middle East, disco lights flashed, transforming the cabin into a nightclub.
Over music blaring at maximum volume, Tony Stark had his arm around Colonel Rhodes' shoulders, holding a drink and shouting words the other man couldn't possibly hear.
Four flight attendants had removed their uniform jackets, tied up their shirt hems to reveal their abs, and danced to the music.
Batman didn't have a phone, but he could use the Arkham suit's integrated communication function to contact Tony.
But when the call went through, Tony Stark merely pulled out his vibrating phone, glanced at it, saw an unfamiliar number, and tossed it aside to continue drinking.
The call didn't connect. Batman sent several text messages in succession, but the phone had been turned off. Tony's attention remained fixed on the flight attendants' legs in black stockings as he laughed and drank with Colonel Rhodes.
One hour until arrival in the Middle East.
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