But time was the one thing they didn’t have. He hurried toward the Bat. Gordon kept pace beside him.

“So this is the part where you vanish,” Gordon said, “only this time you don’t come back.” It wasn’t a question.

Batman opened the canopy.

“Come on! On the bus!”

Blake hustled the boys through the door. He grabbed one of the smaller kids and shoved him through, then reached for another.

“What are you doing?” Father Reilly asked.

Blake kept it up.

“Protection from the blast.”

“It’s an atom bomb—!”

Blake glared at the priest.

“You think they need to hear that, in their last seconds? You think I’m going to let them die without hope?” Not a chance, he thought to himself.

Gordon placed a hand on Batman’s arm.

“I never cared who you were—’’

“And you were right,” Batman said.

“But shouldn’t the people know the hero who saved them?” the cop asked.

“A hero can be anyone,” Batman replied. “That was always the point.” He got into the cockpit, and gripped the controls. “Anyone. A man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a little boy’s shoulder to let him know the world hadn’t ended.…”

The canopy closed.

Gordon stepped back as the Bat fired up. A distant memory surfaced from the past.

The boy sat alone at the police station, pale-faced and trembling. A botched hold-up in a filthy alley had just taken his parents from him.

Jim Gordon, an ordinary uniformed cop, knelt to comfort him. He wrapped a rumpled overcoat around the small figure, wishing there was more he could do. The boy looked up at him. Gordon tried his best to be reassuring, even though he knew the boy’s life would never be the same…

Gordon stared in wonder at the cockpit, at the Dark Knight fighting one last time to save Gotham.

“Bruce Wayne?”

The downdraft dusted him and drove him back as the Bat rose. The cable—attached to the core— snapped taut, and Gordon dived out of the way as the white-hot mechanism was yanked from the back of the trailer and into the sky. It trailed behind the Bat like a captured sun.

Tilting his head back, Gordon watched anxiously as the Bat ascended with its volatile cargo. Swirling fumes issued from the core. The exotic aircraft struggled with the weight.

Then a towering skyscraper blocked its path. The Bat’s engines roared, searching for the power to clear the building. Gordon imagined Batman in the cockpit, fighting the controls, trying to overcome the drag.

It’s too heavy, Gordon realized. He’s not going to make it.

The boys were all loaded into the bus. Frightened faces peered out the grimy windows.

“Heads down!” Blake shouted, leaning in from outside. “Heads down, now!” Father Reilly tried to restrain him.

“Blake, they need to make their peace.”

“They’re children,” Blake snapped. “They have no peace to make—’’

A titanic explosion cut off his outburst. It sounded as if it came from downtown. Startled, Blake glanced back at the city. He caught a glimpse of flames and smoke. Turning back toward the bus, he hollered at the kids.