Before the Batman: an Original Movie Novel (The Batman) Read online

  Copyright © 2022 DC Comics and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. THE BATMAN and all related characters and elements © & ™ DC Comics and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. WB SHIELD: © & ™ WBEI. (s22)

  Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019, and in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  ISBN 9780593310434 (trade) — ebook ISBN 9780593310441

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  ep_prh_6.0_139196631_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One

  Prologue: The Boy in the Choir

  Chapter One: Summer Plans

  Chapter Two: A Secret Project

  Chapter Three: Edward

  Chapter Four: The Bruce Wayne

  Chapter Five: I Know You

  Chapter Six: Dex and Paul

  Chapter Seven: Thrills

  Chapter Eight: You’re In

  Chapter Nine: The Race

  Chapter Ten: Bye, Paul

  Chapter Eleven: Running

  Part Two

  Chapter Twelve: An Appointment

  Chapter Thirteen: Changes

  Chapter Fourteen: A Suit

  Chapter Fifteen: The Point

  Chapter Sixteen: Robbery

  Chapter Seventeen: Smear It on, Blow It Up

  Chapter Eighteen: Under the Mask

  Chapter Nineteen: A Visit to Smitty

  Chapter Twenty: For My Lawn Mower

  Chapter Twenty-one: Nice Kick

  Chapter Twenty-two: Busted

  Chapter Twenty-three: Resolutions

  Epilogue

  Photo Insert

  Poster

  Part One

  Bruce felt strange being back in the old house.

  He and his parents had lived in the mansion, Wayne Manor, until he was six years old. Then they’d donated their sprawling home to Gotham City to serve as an orphanage and moved into their current residence, Wayne Tower.

  Now he was ten years old, and his father, Thomas Wayne, was running for mayor. His dad had decided to announce his candidacy at the orphanage. So Bruce and his parents had returned to their former home for a visit.

  As they climbed the grand staircase to the second floor, Bruce remembered playing on the stairs. He saw the door to a closet and recalled crouching behind the hanging coats for a game of hide-and-seek, waiting for his mother to find him, laughing. It was a big house, full of great places to hide. Even though he liked their new home in Wayne Tower, Bruce realized he missed the old house. He’d been happy there. Seeing it again, he felt a kind of ache.

  Upstairs, in what had once been a ballroom, the orphanage’s choir stood on risers, singing a medley of patriotic songs. The Waynes had called the long hall “the party room,” only using it when they entertained large numbers of guests. But when it was empty, Bruce had played in the big room, rolling toy race cars across the gleaming wooden floor all by himself. The floor didn’t seem as shiny now as it had then, when it reflected the light from the sparkling chandeliers hanging overhead. Bruce glanced up. The chandeliers had been replaced with sturdier, more practical light fixtures. They were a little dusty.

  TV cameras were set up to capture his father’s announcement for the evening news. Reporters from newspapers and magazines waited with recorders and notepads. Photographers snapped pictures. Thomas Wayne’s campaign manager handed out copies of his remarks. Orphanage staff members looked around nervously, hoping everything would go smoothly. The residents had been warned repeatedly to be on their very best behavior.

  The medley came to an end. The woman conducting the choir turned toward the cameras and smiled. There was scattered applause from the small group gathered for the candidate’s announcement. The reporters weren’t sure how to react to the music. They’d come for a news event, not a concert.

  Now that the orphans had stopped watching their conductor, Bruce felt as though they were all staring at him. There’s the rich kid who used to live here, they were probably all thinking. The billionaire’s son. Bruce wanted to look away, stare at the floor. But he knew his parents were counting on him to make a good impression, so he looked back at the kids in the choir. They’re weren’t all looking at him, too excited by the TV cameras and photographers to care that much about a ten-year-old kid in an expensive suit.

  Except for one boy.

  He was scrawny, with aviator-style wire-rimmed glasses. His clothes seemed a little too big. They were hand-me-downs he hadn’t grown into yet. And he was looking straight at Bruce. Why is he staring at me? Bruce thought. Do I look weird or something? He wished the kid would look away. But then he felt sorry for the guy, living in an orphanage without any parents. Even though he didn’t really feel like smiling, Bruce forced himself to give the kid a friendly smile.

  The kid continued to stare. He didn’t smile back.

  Seven years later, Bruce Wayne climbed out of the back seat of a long black limousine parked in front of Wayne Tower. The driver popped the trunk and hurried to fetch Bruce’s luggage, but the seventeen-year-old beat him to it. “I got it,” Bruce said, lifting the leather bags out of the trunk.

  “Are you sure, sir?” the driver asked.

  “Yeah,” Bruce said. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” the driver said. “It must feel good to be home.”

  Bruce grunted. Did it feel good to be home? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t love the private boarding school he attended, but he didn’t exactly love his life in Wayne Tower, either. Shouldering the bags, he headed up the stairs to the front entrance.

  When Bruce exited the elevator into the private residence, Alfred Pennyworth got up from his desk to greet him. The desk was covered in papers. Though his official title was butler, Alfred did much more than that, overseeing the household, guiding Bruce’s education, and handling communications from Wayne Industries with the skill and confidence of a former British Intelligence officer, which he was. And for the last seven years, since Thomas and Martha Wayne had been killed in a dark alley, he’d been the closest thing to a parent Bruce had known.

  “Bruce!” he called to the teenager enthusiastically. “Welcome home! How was your spring semester?”

  Shrugging, Bruce said, “Okay, I guess.”

  “Grades good?” Alfred asked, looking innocent.

  “Think so,” Bruce said, setting down his bags. “I didn’t check.”

  Alfred smiled and held up a notebook computer. “I did. Straight A’s. You made the Dean’s List again.”

  “Yeah,” Bruce mumbled, not seeming the least bit excited by this news. He always aced all his subjects with ease. Even if he didn’t love boarding school, he enjoyed his classes and didn’t mind working hard. In fact, he preferred burying himself in books and homework. It was easier to avoid socializing with his classmates that way. “Well, maybe I’ll, um, put this stuff in my room….” He started to pick up the bags he’d just set down.

  “So,” Alfred asked casually, “what are your plans for the summer?”

  “Plans?” Bruce said, pushing a strand of dark hair off his fore
head.

  “Yes,” Alfred said. “You’re seventeen and you’ve got the summer free. What are you going to do? Travel? Join a sports team? Get a job? If you like, I’m sure I could arrange something at Wayne Industries.”

  Bruce looked out a window at the city below, uncomfortable with Alfred’s questions. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. Secretly, he craved action. Excitement. Even a little danger. But he wasn’t about to admit that to Alfred or anyone else. One thing was certain, though: he didn’t want to spend the summer working for his father’s company. Or playing polo, or sailing, or any of the other things Gotham’s young elites spent their time doing.

  “I, uh, haven’t really thought about it,” he said. “But I will.” He picked up the bags and headed down the hall to his room. “Definitely.”

  The next morning, Bruce woke up late. It felt good to sleep in. At boarding school, his days started early.

  He looked around his room. Though Wayne Industries could easily afford to give him a big, fancy bedroom with all the luxurious touches a teenager could possibly want—giant TV, latest gaming console, even an indoor swimming pool with a slide and artificial waves—he’d chosen a small bedroom and kept everything simple. He liked to be able to find things quickly and easily, without searching through lots of drawers and closets.

  Bruce pulled on workout clothes and took the elevator to Wayne Tower’s well-equipped gym. His father had liked to keep in good physical shape. The room was filled with old-school dumbbells, punching bags, an ancient rowing machine, and even a heavy medicine ball. Only a few modern updates had been made since his death—an few elliptical machines and a treadmill. The gym smelled faintly of floor cleaner, metal polish, and sweat. Following a routine of his own design, Bruce made the rounds of all the weights and machines, lifting and pulling, working his muscles—not for bulk, but for lean strength and speed. As he did his sets of repetitions, he thought about Alfred’s question. What are your plans for the summer? He figured he’d work out every day, but that wouldn’t fill the whole summer.

  “Good morning!” Alfred called, entering the gym. He, too, was dressed in workout clothes. “Thought you might like a session.”

  “Sure,” Bruce agreed, setting down a barbell and heading toward a corner of the gym covered in mats.

  “A session” meant practicing martial arts one on one. During his time in British Intelligence, Alfred had received extensive training in several fighting techniques, from karate to judo to tae kwon do. Over the years, he’d combined different skills into his own unique method of self-defense, and now he was passing it along to Bruce. Alfred liked to joke that he was teaching him “Brucejitsu.” The term never failed to get a groan out of Bruce.

  “Have you been keeping up your skills while you’re at school?” Alfred asked as they squared off on the mats. “Found a practice partner?”

  “Not really,” Bruce admitted. “I’m pretty rusty. You’re probably going to kick my butt.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Alfred replied with a sly smile. “Just remember, these skills are about inner strength and discipline, not kicking someone’s butt, as you so eloquently put it.”

  But secretly, Bruce felt confident. Though he hadn’t found anyone to spar with at school (or even tried to find anyone), he’d hit the gym pretty regularly and was getting stronger all the time. Besides, Alfred was in his forties. He’d better go easy on him. Bruce didn’t want to accidentally hurt the old—

  WHUMP! Bruce found himself lying on the mat, the wind knocked out of him.

  “You’re right,” Alfred said, pulling him to his feet. “You are pretty rusty.”

  Later that day, feeling restless and at loose ends (and a little sore from the session), Bruce took an elevator all the way down to the basement of Wayne Tower. He switched on the lights and made his way past crates and boxes of papers and objects put into storage. In the far corner, behind an old furnace (long since made obsolete by a modern unit), was a plain door, barely visible in the shadows.

  Bruce took out a key, unlocked the door, and opened it. Groping along the wall, he found the light switch and flipped it. Stone stairs led down to a cavernous space deep below the building. He turned and locked the door behind him. There was basically zero chance that anyone would follow him down here—but he liked to be sure.

  Years earlier, Wayne Tower had been served by its own railway stop. The Wayne family had been able to ride their private train car right under the building, hop out, and climb the wide stairs into their home. The stop hadn’t been used for decades, but Bruce had discovered it when he was thirteen, exploring every corner of Wayne Tower. There hadn’t been much more down there than a set of rusty train tracks, a grand staircase, and four old-fashioned burned-out streetlights flanking the two sets of stairs, but he’d added work lights and made it his own space.

  Without telling anyone.

  To start, he had set up a small lab so he could run chemistry experiments without stinking up the building’s living quarters. At first he’d pretty much randomly mixed chemicals to see what would happen. Nothing blew up. After reading about potentially deadly gases rising from ill-advised mixtures, Bruce had started carefully reproducing chemical experiments described in textbooks. Even as a hobbyist, Bruce had already become a relatively advanced chemist. He was even starting to successfully push the boundaries of what was in the books. Of course, his fortune and access to the equipment available at Wayne Industries gave him an advantage even as a hobbyist.

  Eventually he had found that the experiments he enjoyed most were forensic—related to identifying substances found at crime scenes. He liked solving the mystery of what some gunk or goo really was. Though he didn’t have access to crime scenes, now and then he’d scrape material off a bench or a sidewalk with a knife, seal it in a plastic bag from his pocket, and bring it back to his lab for analysis. Just for fun. (About nine times out of ten, the mysterious substance turned out to be chewing gum.)

  But last summer, after he’d gotten his driver’s license, he stored a different kind of project under the stairs of the old train stop. Maybe now he’d get back to it. Switching on his work lights, Bruce went straight to a long object and pulled off the dusty tarp he’d covered it with before heading to school in the fall. He smiled at what he saw.

  A vintage sports car, the kind called a muscle car in the 1960s and ’70s.

  It wasn’t in perfect shape. In fact, it looked pretty rough. But that was part of what Bruce liked about it. He saw its potential. He could make it his own.

  Popping the hood, he got right to work, replacing parts, lubricating, tightening, adjusting—working with tools to turn the old car into something faster, sleeker, better. In his lab, he experimented with lubricants and fuels, seeing if he could improve them.

  He couldn’t explain it, even to himself, but for some reason Bruce felt an almost overwhelming need for speed. He didn’t know where he wanted to go, but he knew he wanted to get there fast when the time came.

  Maybe someday soon this car could take him there.

  At the orphanage, the boy in the choir who’d stared at Bruce Wayne was now attending high school. In seven years he’d grown, of course, but he was still scrawny, and still wore the same style of wire-rimmed aviator glasses he’d worn back then. He didn’t sing in the choir anymore. The year his voice changed, he stopped singing. Music didn’t really interest him anyway. Neither did school. He’d just finished another year at Gotham City High School, and he’d advanced to the next grade—barely.

  The boy’s name was Edward Nashton. The only things that did interest him were puzzles. He always carried a book of crosswords or other puzzles, working on them with a stubby pencil whenever he got the chance. He’d even started trying to make his own puzzles, writing them down in cheap notebooks he hid under his narrow bed in the dorm.

  He walked down the hallway of the orphanage to the main office. Younger kids r
an by, chasing each other, thrilled to be free of school for the summer. A bigger guy, a year older than Edward, passed by, roughly bumping into his shoulder on purpose. “Watch where you’re going, Ed-weird,” he warned. His friends laughed. Ignoring them, Edward trudged down the hallway. He was used to the other orphans bullying him. He didn’t care. He hated most of them anyway. Maybe all of them.

  In the office, Edward signed out, letting the staff know he was leaving the building. As an older resident, he was free to leave as long as he said where he was going and went straight to a destination that had been approved. “This isn’t a prison,” the chief administrator always told them. “It’s your home. And we’re your family.” Edward didn’t believe a word of it. He had no family.

  As he signed the sheet, a friendly woman named Bev behind the counter said, “Glad school’s over for the summer, Edward?”

  He looked up, not sure how to answer. You weren’t supposed to say you hated school. But you were supposed to think summer was fun. “Maybe,” he answered.

  Bev smiled. “Where are you off to today? The park? The beach?”

  To Edward, this seemed like an odd question. He had to write his destination on the sign-out sheet, so why was she asking him where he was going? All she had to do was look at the sheet. Was she trying to trick him? Catch him in a lie?

  “I wrote it down,” he said, pointing to the sheet. “Right here.” He turned the sheet around so she could read it.

  She peered down at the “Destination” column on the sign-out sheet. “ ‘Job,’ ” she read. “Good for you, Edward! Where are you working?”