She marveled at all the firepower it placed at her command. Machine guns, missile launchers, grappling hooks and cables—what more could a girl want?

“To start it, you—” Before he could finish, she hit the throttle, firing up the engines inside the wheels. The Bat-Pod growled beneath her, like a panther ready to spring. She liked the feeling.

“I got it,” she said.

He took her word for it.

“We’ve got forty-five minutes to save this city.”

“No,” she corrected him. “I’ve got forty-five minutes to get clear of the blast radius…because you don’t stand a chance against these guys.”

“With your help I might,” he suggested.

She shook her head. He was fooling himself if he thought she was the sort to sign up for a suicide mission.

“I’ll open the tunnel,” she promised, “then I’m gone.”

His dark eyes regarded her from behind his mask.

“There’s more to you than that,” he insisted.

She stared back at him, wondering what exactly he thought he saw in her. Was he deluded, or desperate, or what? A flicker of regret ran through her.

“Sorry to keep letting you down,” she said. And she meant it.

He just stood there silently, as if waiting for her to change her mind. She found herself wishing that their paths had crossed under different circumstances. But perhaps it wasn’t too late…

“Come with me,” she implored. “Save yourself. You don’t owe these people any more. You’ve given them everything.”

“Not everything,” he said. “Not yet.”

Giving up on her at last, he turned and vanished into the night. She gazed after him for a moment, then settled back down onto the Bat-Pod. Her shoulders nestled into the steering shields.

She gunned the engines.

The Bat-Pod sped out of the alley and onto the city streets. She raced across town, trying to outrun the doubts Batman had planted in her brain. The icy wind rushing past her face, and the speed and power with which the cycle handled, did little to soothe her turbulent thoughts. The roar of the engines failed to drown out the voices arguing at the back of her mind.

How dare he put her on the spot like that? Who did he think he was?

Who did he think she was?

Zooming through the icy avenues at breakneck speed, she reached the midtown tunnel in no time at all. Dozens of junked cars, including taxis, ambulances, and police cruisers, were piled in the entrance, blocking her way. The cars were heaped on top of one another, at least four layers high and who knew how deep. The barricade looked like an auto junkyard.

No way was anyone getting past it, unless…

Where exactly were those cannons again?

Dawn rose on Gotham City. A heavy snow fell from the sky as an army of cops, over a thousand strong, marched on City Hall, ready to take back their city or die trying. They stomped through the snow, past abandoned store windows and newsstands. SWAT teams in black helmets and combat armor marched shoulder to shoulder with beat cops and detectives. They weren’t trapped or hiding any longer.