Fall of Justice

Task Force X

            Bruce could tell just from looking at the correctional officers exiting Blackgate, which were the ones working in gen-pop, and which worked on death-row. Men who had been in confrontations all day came out with their shoulders up, confident from the power they wield in the prison. But the men he was searching for walked with a slouch, their eyes kept to the ground, their arms hung low. This was the toll of death on the living.

            Of course he had already read all their files and seen their pictures but from this much of a distance, he had mostly his instinct to go on. Only one of the death-row guards worked here when Lawton was supposed to have been executed. Bruce watched the one with the slowest gait as he bypassed his car, B-lining straight for the pub across the street. Bruce fixed his hat and walked with limp, making his way to the bar.

#

"He's afraid," Bruce spoke into the payphone on the street. "He didn't tell me much, but he thinks he's being watched," he told Clark. A knocking sounded on the glass beside him caught his attention, he looked up. Lawton stood with a pistol trained at Bruce's head.

"And he'd be right," Lawton said. "Hang up." Bruce did as he was told, and knowing Clark's inability to work the batcomputer, with which he could easily trace the call, Bruce figured he was on his own until Kara worked it out.

"Now you gotta tell me the story 'cause I'm just too damn curious... why's some old man I've never met asking questions about me?" Lawton asked.

Men in dark suits had already surrounded him. There was a time where this kind of thing would never have happened to him. Maybe Lawton wasn't referring to the mask when he called him an old man. 

"You're not the only I'm looking for," Bruce said, leaning harder on his cane. He made himself look as frail as possible. The men around him drew closer. Against an elderly man with a limp, they grew confident, dominant. He could see two, a third he could hear, including Lawton, that made four. He could deal with four.

"Oh, well then, I guess don't care," Lawton said, raising his gun.

"You would kill an unarmed old man?" Bruce asked.

"I'm supposed to be dead. My kid's depending on me to keep the world believing it. Sorry, between her and you, I choose her."

Bruce launched the cane straight ahead-- it bounced off Lawton's nose with a loud crack, sending him stumbling back. He snatched the gun from Lawton's hand. Before the other men could reach for their weapons, Bruce fired three shots, each man taking a bullet to the shoulder.

A kick from behind rocked his ribs and sent him falling to the ground, he rolled and spun around, aiming the gun back at Lawton who now had a second pistol aimed at Bruce.

"I told you, I'm not here for you," Bruce said.

"What then?"

"You worked for something called Task Force X..."

"We had a different name for it," Lawton said.

Bruce could hear the men behind him moaning in pain and anger. They would be reaching for their weapons in seconds. Bruce knew Lawton wouldn't let him escape and he knew he couldn't stay where he was. Changing locations was his only option for success. Bruce jerked the gun right and fired two shots into a parked car's gas tank.

Lawton recoiled against the sudden fireball. Bruce ran into the alley ahead. He knew there was a fire-escape that would lead him to the roof where he would have the advantage. He Looked up. The fire-escape was gone, collapsed and never rebuilt. A gun cocked behind him. Bruce turned. Lawton fired.