Chapter 1: Arkham Records

Batman's POV

I had seen the Batsignal over the GCPD, so I went there in the Batwing. I glided out of the Batwing and dropped in front of Gordon.

"What's the emergency?" I asked.

"Harley Quinn is on the loose again." Gordon said.

"Just Harley?" I questioned. "Not Joker? Or Poison Ivy?"

"Oddly, no." Gordon confirmed. "Poison Ivy is in her cell, and the Joker is in the middle of one of his therapy sessions. Why would she leave Arkham without the Joker or Poison Ivy?"

"Has anyone been hurt? Like guards or doctors?" I was curious.

"No. No one even knew she was gone until they saw that she wasn't in her cell. They checked the security footage, and it looks like she picked the lock on her cell before she narrowly avoided the guards and climbed over the gate." Gordon explained.

"Have you checked her records? Maybe one of her recent therapy sessions will show some changes in her behavior. You have access to that now, don't you?" I checked.

"Yes. Arkham sent the records over after they realized how common the breakouts were becoming." Gordon confirmed. "Maybe we should go check."

So I followed Gordon into the GCPD as he headed for his computer. He opened a file on the computer labeled Arkham Records. There were even more files within, mostly to do with supervillains, although there were some common criminals. Gordon opened the file on Harley Quinn. There was a slew of information. For not being considered high profile, she sure did have a lot of information. There were patient interview tapes from when she was still an intern at Arkham, as well as the ones from when she became a criminal herself. There were also scans of patient records and her personal journal entries.

"This is a lot of information." Gordon commented.

"Maybe they just wanted to know how a reliable psychiatric intern turned into a mentally ill criminal. And they just couldn't find a logical explanation." I suggested.

"There's always an explanation, logical or no. So they obviously haven't looked hard enough." Gordon shrugged.

"Hey Gordon! We got Quinn!" Branden yelled.

We went out to see Harley being detained by two officers as well as Branden.

"How did you catch her? Where was she?" Gordon questioned.

"She was heading for the hospital. One of the guys tased her." Branden smirked.

Harley was holding her leg in pain.

"Where did you tase her?" I asked.

"Her upper back." One of the officers answered.

"Why are you holding your leg?" I interrogated.

"Because Mistuh J stabbed my leg a couple of hours before I escaped. But the guards won't believe me because he was supposed to be in isolation at the time. So they think I did it to myself, and wanted to punish me by making me heal it naturally. I just wanted to get treated, so I escaped to go to the hospital." Harley winced.

"Show me the cut." I said.

She pulled the leg of her orange jump suit up as far as she could. A couple of inches above her knee was a creepy smiley face. The cuts looked pretty deep, and Harley doesn't have a tolerance for pain, aside from when the Joker gives her comparitively mild abuse. She wouldn't stab herself that way.

"Get her medical treatment. Then she goes back to prison." I stated.

"At least send me to Blackgate. I'd rather go there than Arkham." Harley muttered

The cops hauled her off to get medical treatment.

"That's a cruel form of punishment. They had no right to do that. She should've been treated." I said.

"We've got evidence, so maybe we'll have to take it up with whoever's above the idiots that made that decision." Gordon agreed. "I still want to look at Harley's files though. I'm interested in how she changed that much."

"Can you give me access to the files so I can review them? It would be helpful when I'm going after the high profile criminals." I asked.

"Sure. But how exactly?" Gordon questioned.

I pulled out a thumb drive. He shrugged and led me to his computer. I downloaded all the files into the thumb drive.

"I'm going to review the first tape." Gordon said.

I stuck around as Gordon played the tape labeled First Day.

Harley's POV (First Day)

"Harleen Quinzel Personal Tape 1. It's 8:45p.m., and I just got home from my first day at Arkham Asylum. The other doctors were pretty nice, especially for people who spend their days with criminals. I met the administrator, Jeremiah Arkham. He seems a little strange, but you'd have to be strange to want to run an Asylum where your uncle went insane. I also met our political representative, Quincy Sharp. He seems powerhungry, but it probably wouldn't be best to judge a book by it's cover. It was also strange to meet Aaron Cash, a security guard who has a hook for a hand. One of the other guards, Zach Franklin, mentioned that Killer Croc ate Cash's hand. Then there was William North, who almost seemed OCD with the way he constantly looked around like something bad would happen. I guess you can't blame him, since he's head of security. Alyce Sinner was the weird one. I don't know what it is about her. I just know she's Mr. Arkham's right hand woman. And Frank Boles was a jerk. You had to be there. Dr. Young seemed pretty focused on her research, so I didn't get to know her. Dr. Leland let me sit in on her interview with Two-Face. It was weird to see him argue with himself, but it was interesting to hear the way he portrayed his crimes. It was lie he thought they had an element of glamour. All in all, it was a good first day. I finally dropped the Bensonhurst accent, I got an interesting new job, and I'm mildly respected. End of tape."