“Whose orders?” he demanded. “Bane’s?”

The trooper didn’t budge.

“Police department’s,” he said stubbornly.

“Haven’t you heard the shooting?” Blake replied. “The Batman’s battling it out with Bane—’’

“The Batman’s dead,” the trooper said. “Look, officer—’’

“It’s detective.”

“Well, detective, you take one more step, we have to shoot you. Two more steps, we have to blow the bridge.”

At that moment all Blake wanted to do was throttle the man. He heard the boys whimpering in fear behind him. Some of them were crying already. They didn’t need to hear this.

He turned toward them.

“Wait for me back at the bus.” The terror in their faces tore at his heart. They’d suffered enough in their short lives. They didn’t deserve to have their futures cut short by a mushroom cloud.

If only he could get this stupid trooper to listen!

The tumblers caught up with the convoy on Fifth Street.

Talia let out a sigh of relief as they surrounded the truck that was carrying the bomb. Time was on her side. As long as the core remained undisturbed, no power on Earth could stop it from detonating in just a matter of minutes.

Gotham’s time was almost up.

With that thought, she made a decision. She gestured to the driver, who pulled her tumbler up alongside the cab of the truck, matching its speed. The roof-access canopy retracted and she climbed out on to the angled hood of the tumbler. A biting wind blew against her face, threatening to dislodge her, but she had braved fiercer storms in her time.

She would ride with the bomb until Gotham met its doom.

Talia rose cautiously to her feet atop the hood and gestured. The truck’s passenger-side door swung open. Only a narrow gap separated the vehicles. The jump wasn’t without risk, but it was nothing compared to that final leap from the pit, so many years ago. This was child’s play by comparison.

Without hesitation, she jumped.

Batman and Catwoman had City Hall to themselves. Bane’s smoldering corpse lay crumpled in a corner, but Batman knew that the greatest threats still remained. The bomb…and Talia.

“I need you on the ground, me in the air,” he said. “We have to force that convoy east to the entrance to the reactor.”

She nodded. There was no time for banter now, only action. She spun the Bat-Pod around and went racing down the front steps of City Hall.

Batman hurried after her.

Gordon squeezed through the hatch and into the trailer. He wasn’t sure if the tumblers in the convoy had spotted him yet, but the sooner he got out of the open, the better. He held on tightly to the blinking jammer.

I’m not getting off this truck, he thought. Not while I still have a job to do.

A harsh white glow lit the interior of the trailer. The sudden heat came as a shock after the frigid cold outside. Gordon swallowed hard as he spotted the source of both the light and heat. The core. He recognized the large metal sphere from TV footage of Bane’s grisly invasion at the football stadium, but he didn’t remember it glowing this brightly before. Whatever chain reaction was going on inside the device, it was obviously ramping up in a big way.