The commissioner, young enough he still had some of his brown hair, waited anxiously for the Batman to arrive. He'd sent up the signal and could do little beyond pace.
He hadn't shaved properly around his moustache. His eyes were slightly bloodshot and the dark bags underneath them were really showing. His eyes were watering with deprivation. He looked like he could collapse at any moment. And yet... he was hesitant to come up here, to the signal, to ask for the Batman's help on this case. When the Batman surfaced on the rooftop, Gordon couldn't face him.
"I need to be straight with you, Batman." The Commissioner began. "Even if we paid you, this would be ridiculous to ask."
"Money isn't a concern. Justice is."
"All I mean is, even for Gotham, this one's wild. we kept a lot of information from the press."
"Let me fill you in before you decide."
Walking down the sterile gray hallway to the morgue, Gordon couldn't hear Batman's footsteps behind him. That was normal for the Dark Knight, but all the same, Jim risked the occasional moment's glance to see if Batman still followed.
"We found a lot of corpses the past few months, hung in warehouses. All of them missing organs. Some died from the removal of organs, others were lynched before the organs were removed, and the rest from neither of those things. When we examine their brains, they're not solid. It's like they melted inside of their skull."
"Any leads?" Batman responded, without a hint of fear in his voice.
"That's the thing. We got DNA from the fingernails, but it can't be right, even if it's been the same between all of the victims we were able to get it from."
Gordon opened the doors to the morgue, and gestured to the morgue worker. "He did the autopsy himself."
"Either somebody's using pieces of him to freak us all out, or somebody's going around wearing this guy's skin as a suit. Considering what I found, it could be either of those."
"Melting peoples brains, hanging them in warehouses, and tearing their organs out is something, but is that really sick enough to put a skinsuit on the table?" Batman asked.
The morgue worker pressed a case file to Batman's chest. Batman grasped it, opened it, and began reading as the morgue worker kept talking.
"The solid brains we examined were drenched in a compound of fear inducing hormones and powerful hallucinogens. These people were tortured before they died. Tortured until their minds were gone. In some cases, the compound of things physically destroyed the mind."
"I see." Batman had flipped to a page showing pictures of skull drill holes, rope burns around the torso, and bruising around the wrists and ankles.
"Then there's the organs. Here's what really makes me wonder, because even the dental record is consistent with a man I know to be dead. Even on bites done during a struggle."
"Their skin wasn't torn into with a weapon, Batman. It was eaten."
