He sat in the white interrogation room, staring blankly at the one way glass. His wrist was bundled up with white plaster, hanging from a sling on his chest. It might have been the same room from before, when he was wearing Lom Shishani's name and history. They now knew that identity was fake, but they had nothing to replace it with. Three separate cops had tried to talk to him, to dangle treats and bandy threats to make him give up his employer. After the first two days of fruitless interrogation, they had lowered their goals to make him say anything at all. He had not spoken a single word since he as arrested.

It was his last shred of professional pride, to not talk, to not give the opposition the satisfaction of knowing who he was. Torture could break anyone, given enough time, but these policemen did not have the stomach. He would remain an enigma out of spite.

No matter how much agony radiated from his wrist, the pain of failure was worse. Grovenor had never realized how much of his identity he had invested in his profession. Losing a game that had been stacked in his favor was more than shameful and humiliating, it was disorienting.

Grovenor didn't know who he was anymore. He was just an old, broken guy who could... what? His expertise now seemed pitifully quaint and outdated. The world didn't need him the way he thought it did. As far back as his days in East Berlin he had always felt needed.

On the other side of the glass, the police where making some headway. Stones that their subject had thought long buried were being turned.

A certain costumed vigilante had lent his help to the investigation.

Facts appeared. It was believed that the mercenary was the same one spotted by the FBI agents watching Benedikt Brezhnev. The FBI had not suspected Brezhnev of any specific scheme, but the Organized Crime section had the budget to keep the big players under surveillance. Tracking the gangster's guest backwards to his hotel and flight info led to an alias. That alias was tagged as a deactivated Soviet identity from before 1990.

This connected Grovenor to his old job. Tapping CIA archives provided more intelligence.

The CIA had information on him from his East Berlin, Leningrad, and Afghanistan exploits. The CIA chief for Southwest Asia had codenamed him "The Beast" in recognition of his ruthlessness. But it was limited on personal details. The last update on his file was in 1991 when the Soviet Union felll; it was practically copied and pasted directly from the Kremlin's declassified records.

He was born Anatoli Knyazev, in Athens, Greece. Greek mother, Russian father. Both were passionate communists with dreams of world liberation from the bourgeoisie. Anatoli's parents had run Soviet agents in and out of Greece just before the Nazis stormed the country in the Second World War. Espionage was the family business.

His father was executed by the Fascists. His mother died of lung cancer after the war, just after Anatoli got in contact with the KGB recruiter.

His psychological profile was interesting material. He had an almost pathological distaste for people, and yet an equal yearning to fit in to a group dynamic. His training was altered to indoctrinate him into identifying with the Motherland in general and his fellow agents in particular. The result was an agent that could never be seduced or intimidated by outside influences. He had the personality to take the poison to avoid capture, solely to frustrate his enemy. In Knyazev, they had forged a weapon that would never question why someone outside the tribe needed to die, would never hesitate to alter his own personality to fit his role, and who would never, ever give in to someone he perceived as an enemy.

Armed now with his past, the Gotham PD connected him with some of the more shadowed Russian mob schemes in the last few years.

Their invasion into Grovenor's history had actually cowed them. Gordon, for one, did not believe they had the tools to break him. They could lay out everything they had learned in an effort to shock him into speaking, but Gordon doubted it would worked. Knyazev would just glance down at the file they had created, lift his gaze again, and maintain his silence.

In one sense, it didn't matter if he talked or not. They had other, less stubborn prisoners to work on, and they only needed one to rat on Brezhnev. Knyazev could rot in prison for all they cared. Secretly, Gordon was glad that it wouldn't be Knyazev who got the plea deal. The world was safer with that freak behind bars.

Grovenor was unaware of how much his enemies had learned about him. He remained focused on one thing.

The Bat.

How had he miscalculated so badly? Was there truly just one man in body armor terrorizing the criminals of Gotham? The more he reviewed that night, the more convinced he became. There had been enough time between losing visual contact with him on the roof of the garage and the assault on the house for him to have taken out the sniper team. And there had only been one man who attacked the gunmen at the house.

But, Jesus Christ, how? One man without weapons couldn't take on a squad of Spetsnaz!

But he had. Grovenor would never have believed it if he hadn't been there to see it. To feel the blows land on him.

There really was just one guy in a Bat suit. It was utterly, intolerably, inconceivably ridiculous. And it was the only possible explanation.

There was only one option left. He had received some training on escaping captivity, though he'd never put it to the test. He had contacts everywhere. Blackgate prison couldn't hold him.

He'd hunt the Bat again. But this time the advantage would be his. This time he knew his enemy. This time he'd prove to the world that he was still the best in the game.

Fuck Brezhnev. And fuck Gotham. He would kill the Bat for himself.

He knew he was violating one of his rules. He was making it personal. He was bringing emotion into it. He didn't care. He could no more drop the matter and walk away than he could choose to stop breathing.

The Bat would die so that Grovenor could survive living with himself. It was as simple as that.