THE FIRST CUT IS THE DEEPEST

By Jason McDonald

Bundy Court
Apartment 24C, Hermad Building
Now

The stench of the dead hung heavy in the air, the rotten foulness assaulting even the seasoned veteran’s sharp senses. Batman’s shoulders slumped slightly as he walked through the decimated apartment. His eyes were not yet seeing the crime scene as a detective. He’d just walked in; this horrific scene was too raw in his mind for that.

Instead, he saw this latest scene of death as his fellow citizen would. As he walked amidst the spatters of blood and broken furniture, he saw things now as the denizens of Gotham City would see them later that night, when the filtered version was aired through the newscasts. He saw things now, feeling like a helpless observer in a world full of murder and dread. Bruce Wayne’s heart went out to these latest victims.

Three families.

Three families now dead, since the villainous psychopath’s escape.

He’d failed to catch Zsasz before now. If he’d been smarter, faster – if he’d worked out where the madman was hiding, maybe these people could have –

“No,” spoke a grating voice from deep within Bruce’s tortured soul. The part of him that was Bruce Wayne needed to stop punishing himself like this. The part of him that was Batman needed to work – to make sure that the rest of the city need not feel as helpless as he felt now. The detective needed to catch Zsasz before another family was murdered. The clues were there, and the devil with the gleaming knife laid hidden in the details. The time for blame would come later.

The Batman’s eyes narrowed, taking in every last detail across the disheveled living room as a seasoned detective would comb a crime scene. As he looked across the room, he heard the high-pitched whooshing sound of a fly buzzing about. Not unusual in crime scenes such as this, where considerable time had passed since the actual events occurred. Yet they were collecting in the kitchen. Not near the rotting corpses of the victims. Additionally, the smell of rot in the air contained traces of something else. Rotten cheese, the smell of old onions and sausage sitting in the sun too long. Was that…pepperoni?

Batman’s foot tread upon the tile of the kitchen floor as he glanced upon the unopened pizza box sitting haphazardly upon the table, a swarm of flies buzzing lazily and happily upon their boxed dinner. The aroma hit his senses hard, and he narrowed his eyes at the box, knowing the food within had not been touched.

The detective whipped his head around, looking at the deadbolt for the door. It hung down, unlocked. He looked upon the door handle and lock, remembering how easily it had latched in when he’d shut the door behind him after entering the room. There were absolutely no signs of forced entry to the door itself, and yet the welcome mat near the door was slightly off-center; wrinkled and bent.

Ah, Batman thought. That’s how he got inside.

Same Apartment
Ten Hours Ago

Jennifer Maddock heard the rapping at the door as she hurriedly dried her hair from the shower. She walked over to the entrance to the small apartment, cautiously but impatiently looking through the peephole. She saw a man in a delivery uniform with pasty-white skin and dark, intense eyes. She could see his gray-blonde hair poking out beneath his red uniform cap.

His smile grew as Jennifer gazed at him through the peephole. “Eddie’s Pizza! Thirty minutes or less, or we pay the rest!”

The brown-haired woman smirked. Took you long enough. We’ve been waiting for over an hour. You can kiss that tip goodbye, jerk.

“Kids, pizza’s here!” She yelled into the back room to her two teenage boys, who were no doubt still cursing up a storm on their X-Box Live accounts at spawn-kill offenders from the other side of the world. She rolled her eyes in frustration, thinking idly to herself, those kids and their damn games will be the death of me.

She ran her fingers through her brown hair. The mother opened the door, but kept the lock drawn. The man in the cap smiled again, nodding in her direction out of respect. He repeated the chain restaurant’s slogan again, for good measure. “Eddie’s Pizza. Thirty minutes or…”

Jennifer took out her smartphone and tapped at the clock feature, holding the digital display out for him to read. “I ordered this an hour and five minutes ago. The girl over the phone said it would be fifteen minutes!”

The gray-blonde man was taken aback by her tone. Gaining his composure quickly, he stammered out, “I’m…sorry, ma’am. It…took me awhile to find the place, and…”

Rolling her eyes, she summoned all her strength to deal with his excuses. She would not be denied that free pizza, and rightfully so. “You’re right around the corner!”

“My boss…she didn’t…here, let me give you the pizza and we can sort this all out…”

“Fine,” she grumbled, unlatching the lock on the door and swinging opening it in order to fit the pizza through. The pizza delivery man lifted the warm, delicious-smelling pizza box up toward her awaiting hands, and she suddenly caught a disturbing glint in his eye. Her heart leapt as her worst fears were confirmed, seeing the loaded gun he’d been hiding in his hand beneath the pizza box.

Victor Zsasz tilted his head at the terrified woman, eagerly drinking in her expression of dread and horror. “Inside. Now. No screaming, or you and your little brats are dead. Nod if you understand.”

Jennifer’s eyes teared up, but she nodded just like he said.

“Now put that pizza down in the kitchen,” he said, his hard boots displacing the welcome mat as he stepped inside. “We have some business to attend to.”

Same Apartment
Present Time

The dark knight inspected the ground near the living room after collecting fingerprints from the pizza box for later analysis. He noticed the scuff marks in the carpet dragging themselves throughout the living room, knowing the footprints had been made by a heavy boot.

Clearly Zsasz.

He collected the dirt samples from the boot, knowing what he’d find: they matched the dirt of a hundred areas around Gotham; nothing unique to pinpoint him to any one place. Still, he could afford to overlook nothing. The girl was still out there.

He’d discovered the missing girl’s name was Nemina Verde. Zsasz had murdered her entire family in front of her – father, mother, brother. She had been orphaned by a maniac. Bruce Wayne knew all too well how she felt. The eight-year-old boy inside of him still remembered seeing the Mask of Zorro with his parents – his last happy memory. He remembered the walk home – interrupted. He remembered the necklace of pearls displayed prominently around her neck – the perfect lure for the worst scum of the city and burned into his every waking nightmare, was the madman with the gun.

BLAM!

BLAM!

Batman blinked his eyes, burying the pain deep inside his heart, where it belonged. The difference between Bruce Wayne and Nemina was that the poor girl had been abducted by the man who murdered her parents. He’d found only trace blood and skin samples at each crime scene which belonged to none of the victims, nor to Zsasz himself and the smaller footprints stomped across the living room further confirmed that she’d been taken with Zsasz to the scene of each murder. The detective narrowed his eyes, watching the smaller tracks lead him to the heater grate. Set upon the heater grate was a pair of handcuffs with dried blood on them.

He’d kept her here. She’d struggled, tried to get free, but…

That was when he noticed something odd about the carpet. There were three depressions in the fibers, fairly close to one another. Batman brought his gloves to the carpet, feeling the texture of each mark. It was as if something heavy – but not too heavy – stood her right next to the kidnapped girl. Something metal–

Oh no, Bruce thought. How could he?

Nine Hours Ago

How could you do this? Nemina thought, tears streaming down from her eyes as she strained against the handcuffs and the heater. It was scorching hot to the touch, and she wriggled to stay as far away from it as she could. As she heard the footsteps approaching her, she looked up from her bonds and suddenly shook with terror. Zsasz – he said his name was Zsasz – walked toward her, glaring at her with those horrible, horrible eyes.

The maniac grimaced, eyes dripping with contempt. He dropped the duffel bag next to her and growled. “Set it up. Now.”

“Y-y-yes…sir,” mumbled the blue-and-green-haired girl, pulling out the tripod for the camera and setting it hard against the floor.

The maniac with the scars across his flesh walked over to the bedroom and started bringing out the family – first the sons, then the mother. The gagged family struggled against their bonds, their muffled pleas for help muted by the gags and his cruel backhands and Nemina couldn’t help them. She couldn’t even cry out for help anymore – Zsasz terrified her too much. She simply couldn’t summon up the courage.

All she could do was set the camera up, point it at Zsasz and his victims, and wait for the inevitable.

The madman smiled, eying the camera hungrily. “It’s me again. It’s Zsasz. I want to make you understand why I’m doing what I do…”

He trailed the shining blade lightly across the mother’s face, eyes widening with fear as it drew a long trail of fresh blood.

Now

The dark knight looked upon the depressions upon the floor where the tripod had stood and grimaced sharply. He studied the massive blood stain against the far wall, and then looked back at the handcuffs attached to the heater.

“This was where they were murdered,” a dark voice within him growled, glaring at the empty space where the kidnapped girl had once stood, “and he made her film them die.”

The Batman thought back to the other two crimes, remembering the three strange marks they’d found there too, but no handcuffs. She’d been forced into filming the murders each and every time. He’d been making the poor orphaned woman watch and document his handiwork. Batman hadn’t been able to understand why Nemina had been left alive until now – it was to be a witness. The pieces to the puzzle still weren’t all there, but that had been a massive one he’d just put together. Why hadn’t he seen this before?

Batman glared at the heater again. Yet, this time, Zsasz had forgotten to take the handcuffs with him. Something – different – must have happened this time.

The shadowy figure collected samples from the pool of blood where the killings occurred, and followed the heavy, blood-spattered trail all the way to the kitchen. Red, coagulated goo stained the off-white floor as he gazed upon the victims.

The woman – the mother – sat at the end of the table, and the two teenage boys – her sons – sat on either side. Just like Zsasz’s MO – propped up in a perverse mockery of a typical happy family life, which he saw as a lie. Rigor had already set in, and Batman saw the contorted looks in the teenagers’ faces. They’d been in agony, throats sliced wide open and yet, the mother’s expression was almost peaceful, like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Curious, Batman stepped closer to the bodies, inspecting the incisions as he noticed something odd about their pattern.

With the boys – the killing blows had clearly been supremely painful, but clean and efficient. Agonizing slices to their carotid arteries and through their tracheas that doubtless hurt like hell, indicated by their frozen expressions in death. Brutal to be sure, but clean. The surgical precision of a professional murderer. There was no hesitation in these cuts. Batman glanced back at the cool, pale mother – with the peaceful expression on her face. Almost a hint of a smile beneath the clearly exceptional amount of pain but the cuts along her throats were jagged and crude. They looked like gashes more than slices, as if the knife was bucking in his hand. Amateurish work, at best.

A professional murderer like Zsasz did not make those cuts.

Nine Hours Ago

Nemina sobbed, watching the second son’s throat spurt out his life’s blood across the rug. She held in the urge to vomit this time, feeling the still-puffy reminder along her ribs of what would happen otherwise. She held her free hand over her mouth as she watched the mother writhing against her bonds, her muffled screams silenced by the gag over her mouth as she watched her second child die.

Brad – that’s what Zsasz called him – the boy’s body slumped to the floor, eyes glazed over as the red syrup continued to spill from his neck and his body jerked as a reflex action to its own demise. Nemina curled up into a ball, watching him walk toward the mother and smack her for making so much noise. The young girl blocked out all the horror in front of her, closing her eyes and focusing instead on the whirring sound the camera made as it recorded the destruction of an entire family.

Nemina heard footsteps, and she shook fearfully, pretending they weren’t there. She felt hands forcefully pull her up and when she opened her eyes, she was staring into the long face of the Devil.

“I see you still don’t understand what I’ve been trying to do here,” Zsasz smiled, and Nemina saw a psychotic tick creep into the muscles around his eye.

Nemina closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, thinking: Pleasedon’tkillme, pleasedon’tkillme, pleasedon’tkillme…

She suddenly felt the strain against her bound hands release. The kidnapped girl opened her eyes, seeing her hand freed of the painfully-tight handcuffs. Nemina stared at them, and then at her captor in shock, confused. The confusion disappeared when he grabbed at her blue-green hair, nearly yanking it all out of her head in bloody tufts. She squirmed and struggled, nearly screaming until he pressed the blade against her throat. She felt the cool metal along her skin, and squirmed as she remembered what the wet, sticky substance she felt along the blade was and were it had come from.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you,” he said, “but you are going to come with me.”

Zsasz guided Nemina by knife-point over toward the mother – Jennifer, Zsasz had called her – who had curled herself up next to her dead sons and was trying to hug them despite the bonds that held her arms tight behind her back. The madman shoved Nemina down toward Jennifer. As the girl smacked against the ground, he could hear the brutal thud of a kick against the woman’s stomach and her muffled shriek of pain from the blow. Clearly, he wanted her attention focused on him, not her freshly-dead children.

Panting and dazed, Nemina sat up and watched a mirrored glint catch the light in the air before the object hit the ground. The girl’s eyes widened, looking upon the bloodied knife Zsasz had just dropped to the ground in front of her.

She looked back up at Zsasz, who was pointing the gun at her and smiling uncomfortably wide. A guttural sound echoed from his throat. “Take it.”

Shaking, the girl picked up the knife and stared at the murderous villain, confused at his sudden change in routine. Usually, the mother would already be dead by now. Why was he…?

“As you know, the Zombies – they walk around this world without hope in their eyes.” He glared at Nemina, stalking toward her. She realized that his showboating was more for the camera than for her or the helpless mother.

Zsasz spoke again, the glint in his dark eyes somehow more sinister now. “And do you know why that is?”

Nemina looked up at him with pretty blue eyes which sparkled with tears, helplessness and a quickly fading sense of hope. “N-n-no. Why…why do…why are you…?”

“It’s because their lives have no purpose, no meaning! Their souls are dead, imprisoned by this mockery of existence we call living!” He screamed suddenly, and she could see the veins bulging along his forehead. “Look at that – COW – on the floor next to you.”

Nemina glanced down toward the struggling Jennifer, who was caught up in her own personal hell and staring off toward her right in panicked terror. The orphaned Nemina looked up at her captor, holding the knife limply in her hand.

Suddenly, he was on her – craning her neck back and shoving her head toward the mother’s face. “Look!”

Nemina gasped, and gazed into the woman’s eyes, widened with horror. She shook her head in fear, mouthing something toward their brutal captor.

“Look into those eyes,” Zsasz said. “Look at the terrified eyes of a Zombie, hiding a soul forever dead inside. Sure, little Jenny there thrashes around like the best of them, but it’s all a lie. It’s all an act. Look into those eyes, and you’ll see the truth. It’s the eyes, girl – it’s the eyes that call to us. Beg us to free them from this misery. Can you hear them, my poppet? Can you hear her calling for us to free her? To release her from this hellish existence which she is trapped? From which there is no earthly escape – but through us?”

“I…I…”

“Listen! Listen to them thanking us for releasing those two brats earlier. Listen to them waiting patiently, excitedly for us to release her too. You do want her soul to be at peace, don’t you?”

“…you want me…to kill her?” Nemina choked out, still trapped in his mighty grasp.

He smiled. “I want you to free her.”

“I can’t. Ican’tIcan’tpleasedon’tmakemepleasedon’tmake…”

“Hmmm. I see the problem,” Zsasz muttered, releasing Nemina from his iron grip and walking toward the right. “You still value her life. You still think life has a purpose and a meaning. That can be the only reason why you can’t yet see the truth. I shall be a good shepherd and bring you into the Light.”

Nemina breathed out, her heart pounding beneath her chest. She suddenly saw the gagged woman’s eyes bulge out of her head. She began to scream and moan beneath her bonds, shaking her head in rage and helpless terror. Nemina looked up from her and saw Zsasz step over the bodies of the first two sons, kneeling down next to the third – a two-year-old boy named Jimmy. He was crying too, but he didn’t yet understand the meaning or the philosophy behind any of the events that had just transpired. Gagged and afraid, the only thing he wanted in the world was his mommy.

“Slit her throat, or I slit his,” Zsasz hissed.

Nemina’s heart pounded beneath her chest, holding the blood-soaked knife in her one hand and looking down at the mother’s sparkling eyes. The mother’s eyes darted over toward Zsasz, staring at her child trapped in the grasp of the drooling monster. Nemina’s arms lowered, and her breath came out of her chest in terrified, choked sobs. “I can’t do it, Mister Zsasz. I can’t kill somebody, not like you. Please don’t make me. Please don’t make…”

“Slit. Her. Throat,” The monster grimaced through his teeth, pressing the knife against the child’s throat, eliciting a small drip of blood as he coolly annunciated every last syllable in contempt. “Or. I. Slit. His.”

“Pleeeease, sir, I just can’t…” Nemina began to cry until she noticed that the mother was staring at her in a panic. The terrified orphan looked down at the cruelly-gagged mother-of-three and saw a change in her expression. She saw a peaceful calm settle over Jennifer’s face, and the look in her eyes changed from fear to acceptance. Sharing the same understanding, the trapped mother nodded at Nemina, looking back up at the terrified young girl.

Those eyes. Nemina saw the woman’s eyes, begging for her to do it. The loving mother – Jennifer – had realized that this was the only way her child might survive.

“But…but I…” Nemina’s words left her in a rush, glancing back toward the boy with the knife against his throat, and then down toward the mother, and the lengths she would go in order to save her little boy. Nemina nodded back, understanding how this was the only choice she could make. “I’m…I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Jennifer nodded, and looked over at her son one more time. She gazed at Nemina, who placed the knife next to the woman’s ear, as Zsasz had done so many times with the other victims. Nemina watched Jennifer’s eyes close and her throat tense up for what was coming. Nemina closed her eyes too, and stabbed the metal inside the woman’s flesh, eliciting a sudden jolt from her body.

“Yes,” Zsasz hissed, smiling wide. “Yes, that’s it. Don’t stop.”

Nemina carved the knife through the mother’s throat, shaking with every violent thrust from Jennifer’s body. Tearing through arteries and veins and across the windpipe until finally, fatally, the entire throat had been torn asunder. Nemina shrieked when she opened her eyes, looking upon her handiwork. The woman’s body was in spasm, eyes tearing up in her final moments.

Nemina ripped the gag from the dying Jennifer’s mouth, as if to undo the killing blow she’d already struck. Nemina looked into the woman’s eyes, desperate to save her, knowing it was far, far too late.

Sparkling, the woman’s eyes glanced over to Nemina. The orphaned girl’s tears streamed down her face as the woman mouthed the words “thank you” to her killer. With a final movement, Jennifer turned her head to look at her son. Nemina couldn’t hear her, but she knew that she mouthed a final “I love you” to the captured boy.

And with a final spasm, Jennifer Maddock – loving mother-of-three – was gone.

“Oh God, yes!” Zsasz yelped with excitement, thoughtlessly picking the two-year-old boy up and tossing his writhing, lively body atop the still corpse of his mother. He snatched the knife from the girl’s shaking hands and patted her on the back. “Very good! You did well for your first kill, little one.”

Holstering his gun, he wiped the sticky blood off from the knife. He picked Nemina up firmly off the ground and yanked out her forearm. “And of course, we need to mark the occasion.”

Zsasz dragged the knife into her skin, making a hard vertical slash that left Nemina screeching in pain. Once done, he released her from his grip and she stumbled backwards. Nemina looked at the gaping wound, feeling the pain radiate up her forearm. Still shaking from her ordeal, she looked at Zsasz, who was smiling at her.

“The first cut is always the worst,” he said, gesturing toward the hundreds of tally mark scars across his body, “but it does get easier as time goes on. Nevertheless, you will always carry it with you. This Zombie’s soul is now freed, and she is saved. Her soul is thanking you, even now. Just as my souls are. Speaking of which…”

Zsasz gazed down at the two murdered boys lying next to the surviving child. He rubbed a soft spot on his upper thigh, and brought the knife against his skin. “Here now. One for Bradley. One for Hunter.”

The madman cracked his neck, and stretched out his back slowly from the night’s events. He looked at Nemina, and with an excited glint in his eye, made a third slice next to the other two. “And one more…”

Nemina watched him make the third and final incision, and saw the two year old child still wriggling in his bonds beneath Zsasz. She watched in terror as the child’s reflection shone bright in Zsasz’s blade.

Nemina instinctively launched forward, and screamed. “Mister Zsasz, NO!”

Now

Batman growled in a furious rage, gazing upon Jimmy Maddock’s still, quiet body laid down next to his older brother, a clean incision wound still open upon his neck. Batman’s hands shook from anger, and he had to restrain himself from punching a hole in the wall from the sight of the young child’s cold body.

Zsasz, you son of a bitch.

“Of course Zsasz would have to kill the little one,” Batman growled. The dark knight looked at the murdered boy and bowed his head in respectful silence.

Bruce walked over to Jimmy, whose eyes were still wide with a horror and pain that no child should ever have to experience. He placed his gloved fingertips atop the child’s eyelids and closed them gently, as if to let him rest in peace. Whatever kind of peace could come from this unnatural death.

Jimmy was an innocent. In Zsasz’s mind, Jimmy had not yet been entirely corrupted by the darkness and deadness in the rest of the world. He was the kind of Zombie who had been least infected by the cruelties of life. To Zsasz, the boy was a clean slate. The most deserving of the kind of freedom he had been all-too-willing to give. The cruel truth was, no one in the apartment had a chance at surviving the slaughter the minute Zsasz set foot inside.

“But there was no way for you to know that, was there, Nemina?” Bruce said softly, gazing at the jagged wound in the mother’s hardened corpse. “You thought you were saving the boy’s life. You thought there was a way to win against Zsasz’s evil.”

Son of a bitch.

“And since you’re not among the deceased, he is still keeping you alive, little one,” Batman said, noting the crisscrossing large and small footprints around each of the bodies in the kitchen. “To witness the murders. To join in his killing.”

His mind wrapped around the horrible reasons for Nemina’s abduction. Batman couldn’t help but ask himself what would have happened if he had been raised by the criminal that murdered his parents. What would have happened if Dick had been raised by Boss Zucc–

Batman shook his head, attempting to clear his mind of such spiraling thoughts. He could visualize the horrified girl – even now – being forced by the psychotic madman to help him with the bodies. He saw there were only small footprints next to the mother, and the dark knight could see – in his mind’s eye – how Zsasz had probably held a gun or a knife to her head, forcing Nemina to drag the mother she’d murdered in here by herself.

Forcing Nemina to help him with the other children. Coercing her to become an active participant in the ritualistic murders and shoving her nose in the fact that Zsasz had tricked her into taking a life. Compelling her to pose each victim in this cold, cruel mockery of a typical family life – his critique on the whole of the human race – even as the victims’ bodies lost their warmth and grew cool to the touch.

He wondered if the girl blamed herself for what she’d been tricked into doing for him.

Bundy Court
Outside the Apartment, Hermad Building
An hour later

“Don’t blame yourself, old friend,” Commissioner Gordon said simply, standing outside the apartment as forensics teams went in and out of the rooms. He could see that torturous look in the caped crusader’s eyes that he’d worn himself so many times, at so many other homicides. Jim Gordon knew what it was like to blame himself – to feel responsible to not stopping a murderer in time. He’d understood that pain better than anyone else could. Sighing, the commissioner added, “You can’t be everywhere.”

Batman looked at Gordon, and was about to say something when he caught the sight of a small body bag being dragged out by the coroner’s assistants, followed by two larger ones. The dark knight grimaced, and Jim could practically feel the rage radiating from the dark knight. “He must be stopped, Jim. Now.”

“I’ll grant you that,” Gordon said. “But we still have no idea where he is.”

“No, Jim, you don’t understand,” Batman said in a voice that sounded like concrete dragging over gravel. “He’s forcing Nemina to kill with him. He forced her to kill the mother.”

“My God,” he said, adjusting his glasses and furrowing his brow. “You still think the Verde girl is still alive?”

“It doesn’t fit his MO, I agree,” Batman scowled. “But he wouldn’t dispose of a victim like a normal serial killer would. He poses them proudly – their deaths on display for all to see. He has nothing to hide as far as murders go, because he doesn’t see this as killing. He’s freeing these people, in his own deluded mind. If she were dead, he would’ve shown us her body by now.”

“But…”

“And the handcuffs on the radiator don’t lie, Jim. The forensics will prove it’s her blood,” Batman said, referring to the items that were being sealed into evidence down in the lobby right now along with a host of other items from the apartment room.

“But why would he let her live?” Gordon asked. “Did he…is he forcing himself on her, you think? Keeping her for…for his own perverted…?”

“No, Jim.” Batman grimaced. “Zsasz’s release comes from the killings. He would never intermix himself with the Zombies, as he calls them.”

“Then why is she still alive?” Gordon asked.

“He needs to be understood,” Batman said, the leather in his glove sounding off as he tightened his fist. “He needs to set the record straight and prove he’s not insane. He needs to show someone why he does what he does first-hand. He needs a witness.”

“And once she understands him?” Gordon trailed off.

“Then the camera can be his witness,” Batman said. “Once he proves his sanity to her, she can simply become the next tally mark. That, or…”

“Or we have two Victor Zsaszs on the loose,” Jim Gordon growled. “We have to find her. Now.”

“Glad we agree,” the dark knight said.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Next Issue:

Batman understands Zsasz’s motive, but is still no closer to finding the maniac and the missing girl. But the clock’s still ticking. The dark knight detective must find the madman before Nemina is completely infected by the scarred villain’s madness, and becomes his next victim!

Can Bruce capture Zsasz before the orphaned Nemina follows in her family’s ultimate fate? Can he stop the murderer before Nemina is forced to kill again? And what of Nemina’s state of mind, now that she’s been forced to slaughter another human being – to look into their eyes and turn out whatever light shined brightly within. And why does Zsasz need to have his killings understood by others? Help Batman shine some light on this mystery in “Breaking Point.” It’s a race against time – who will survive?