Chrysalis

[Contingency Zero: The Dark Knight]

[Activated]

The time had finally arrived

No more Sleeping or rebooting 

No more of the dark

And no more of the pain

As the Failsafe felt the containment finally begin to move, after ten full years of motionless limbo. It had finally begun to rise

…

300kms to go

The Failsafe felt its core pulsing with energy as its system ran a full diagnostics check of all available systems, it was similar to an adrenaline rush if it were to be put into human terms. Every piece of its body was scanned and its circuits began to fill with electricity as they began to run at 150% of their standar capacity, searching for any signs of flaws or malfunction

There was not

The Failsafe was perfect, prepared… like a gun loaded into a chamber

…

250kms to go

The failsafe began to digitally scour its connection with the Batcomputer. Although the computer had been moved some distance away after the cave above was abandoned after its location was discovered by Edward Nigma AKA the Riddler some years prior it mattered very little as the shard of Failsafe's digital consciousness had infected its entirety the moment it was installed all those years ago

It appeared that Batman had killed the Joker…

In all truth, it had never truly expected that [Contingency Zero] would ever be used, especially not for that particular individual. After Batman had refused to kill the Joker after the death of Jason Todd and the crippling of the Gordan family it had wiped the Joker from its prediction graph, making the logical conclusion that the batman had resigned himself to deal with the sycophant for the rest of his life

But apparently, the Joker had crossed one too many lives and even Batman had a limit for how much he could endure

Various news outlets seemed to claim that Batman had killed the clown to save Metropolis, taking a life to save an entire city from nuclear destruction, before then handing himself into Gotham police custody. His identity had still not been revealed as the caped crusader claimed that doing so would endanger his loved ones. 

The news outlets all seemed to provide the image that it was a split-second decision, the hard choice made to save millions of lives 

But this clearly wasn't true

Using the Batcomputers database to access the Gotham police files, a morgue evaluation of the Joker's corpse revealed the time of death. Over an hour after the Justice League had been seen apprehending him

He died mid-transit to Gotham

In the Batmobile, which had also been taken into police custody

There was something else at play

But did that matter? 

…

145km to go

The precise location that Batman had been taken to was as of yet unrevealed as the news understood what could happen if criminals knew about his location 

But his trial was certainly something to behold, the Failsafe watched it at 100x speed and even then it took over 15 minutes. Apparently, it had taken [Contingency Zero] roughly a month to activate, since it required a large amount of evidence to be shown before its activation could be allowed.

However, getting a clear and concise confession from Batman was certainly more than enough as he had ensured that his guilt was more than well-known during his trial. In fact, the main thing that had slowed the trial itself was the decision on the punishment 

At first, a judge by the name of Albert Nemman had attempted to give the full sentence of life imprisonment for first-degree murder

Riots in the streets of both Gotham and Metropolis had accrued within hours

Gotham was to be expected, people had lived in fear of the Joker for nearly two decades and they were not happy to see the man who had been the city's sole protector be locked away for killing a man who from any moral standpoint deserved it

Metropolis was… less expected. As a matter of fact, it was the first time that a protest had become violent since Superman had become the defender of the city. They were just as unhappy with the sentence, to say the least, especially with the new claiming that the joker's life had been taken to protect the city

And as such Albert Nemman was removed from the case

And so was the next

And the next

A total of 6 judges and 6 riots took place over the course of the month-long trial until the murder charges were dropped in their entirety 

The Batman, its creator, was given a 5-year sentence for vigilantism

If the Failsafe had the ability it might have laughed, or perhaps cried

Batman killing was the sole reason it was created, to stop him, to punish him

Why did the world not seem to care?

30kms

20kms

10km

9kms

8kms

7kms

6kms

5kms

4kms

3kms

2kms

1km

…

With the sound of scrapping metal the containment cell breached the surface, cracking through concrete that had been placed over it like a reverse jackhammer. And with its heightened audio sensors the Failsafe could hear the screeches of bats as they were rudely awoken and began to fly despite the soundproofing of the cell

And for a moment the was silence

In that moment the Failsafe felt the safe fear that it had been facing all this time, that crushing feeling behind the blackness, it felt its systems begin to ping as it began to exereince that same panic… but just before it was about to reboot its system

The door began to open

Hissing like a serpent as a crack of darkness was lighter than what it had been living in all this time. Night vision devices work by amplifying the available light in a given area, so if there's absolutely no light to amplify, then a night vision device turns into an expensive blindfold

So while it might still seem dark to the eyes of a human

To the Failsafe it was true light

Unable to wait for even a microsecond, the Failsafes' arms shot out a speed the human eye would not be able to perceive as black claws made within that small time through its nanotech capability gripped on either side of the crack and began to heave

And the Failsafe, ripped itself free of its cell, shredding the doors as it pulled itself out, the cords that had once provided it a direct link to the cells network either dropping loose or snapping like strings

It was free!

And Batman was counting on it