“Where am I?” he asked.

“Home,” Bane replied. “Where I learned the truth about despair. As will you.”

Bruce forced himself to look around, turning his head as little as possible. Through the rusty iron bars of his cell, he glimpsed what appeared to be an enormous underground complex carved into the sides of a gigantic pit. Metal stairs and catwalks connected rows of terraces that led into deep, cavernous cell blocks. The entire structure resembled a huge inverted pyramid or ziggurat that was almost Escheresque in appearance.

Wretched figures clad in frayed peasant garb populated the place, trudging wearily about their labors. There appeared to be no guards—only prisoners. Angry shouts and screams came from the other cells. The early morning sunlight filtered down from a vast circular shaft rising hundreds of feet above the bottom of the pit. Higher up, crumbling ledges and outcroppings jutted from the weathered stone sides.

It was like being at the bottom of a colossal well.

Bane rose from Bruce’s bedside and crossed the cell to the bars.

“There is a reason that this prison is the worst hell on earth.” He lifted his masked countenance toward the distant sunlight. “Hope. Every man who has rotted here over the centuries has looked up to the light, and imagined climbing to freedom. So simple, so easy. And, like shipwrecked men turning to seawater from uncontrollable thirst, many have died trying.

“I learned here that there can be no true despair without hope.” He looked away from the light, fixing his pitiless gaze on Bruce.

“So as I terrorize Gotham, I will feed its people hope to poison their souls. I will let them believe they can survive, so that you can watch them clamber over each other to stay in the sun.” He pointed to an ancient-looking television set up just outside the bars of Bruce’s cell. A cable ran from the television into the crude, rough-hewn masonry.

“You will watch,” Bane continued, “as I torture an entire city to bring you pain you thought you could never truly feel again. Then, when you have truly understood the depths of your failure, we will fulfill Rā’s al Ghūl’s destiny. We will destroy Gotham. And when it is done—when Gotham is ashes—then you have my permission to die.”

Bane turned to depart, leaving Bruce alone in the dismal cell. A barred door swung shut, its rusty hinges squeaking in protest. He wanted to shout at Bane, say something defiant, but it would have been nothing but an empty gesture. He couldn’t even move without agony.

The pain overwhelmed him again and the darkness swept over him. His eyes drooped and fell shut.

He could still hear the screams, even in his sleep.

Blackgate Prison was a maximum-security penitentiary located on one of the smaller islands in Gotham Harbor. Now that the Dent Act had made it all but possible for the city’s criminals to cop an insanity plea, it had replaced Arkham Asylum as the preferred location for imprisoning both convicted and suspected felons. The worst of the worst were sent here, except for the Joker, who, rumor had it, was locked away as Arkham’s sole remaining inmate.