Obsessed with Harley

Chapter 06: Endangered Species

A loud gunshot filled Scott's ears, and he was startled when the clown aiming at him staggered forward. The weapon the killer held went sideways, firing wildly and missing Scott altogether. Because the goon had stumbled forward, he was out in the open, and Penguin's men fired, killing the thug instantly.

Harley stood behind where the thug had been. Kneeling down, she picked up a large cork from the floor and plugged it back into the smoking barrel of the gun she carried. Waving the gun to Scott in salute, Harley let him know she'd just saved his life.

Scott hated the horrid look of the clown mask worn by the man who'd tried to kill him, but it gave him an idea. Diving across the floor, he snatched the mask off the dead man's head before rolling to a stop behind a pillar holding up the second floor balcony. Scott put on the mask, hoping the other clowns in Joker's employ wouldn't recognize him and attempt to murder him like the last one had tried to do. He couldn't expect Harley to save him every time.

Leaning out from behind the pillar, Scott got a brief look at where the remaining number of opponents were located. He had to duck back as bullets impacted the pillar he was hiding behind.

Leaving his covered position, Scott zig-zagged back and forth across the Lounge, taking temporary shelter behind overturned tables and the giant iceberg in the middle of the room. Bullets stitched across the floor, seeking him with murderous intent. Glasses shattered when struck by the hailstorm of bullets, and fragments of dinner plates from the tables were kicked into the air like porcelain confetti.

With Penguin's goons completely focused on Scott, Joker's men were free to engage. The artificial thunder of the gunfire intensified as Joker's men laid waste to the distracted Penguin thugs. As the men on the upper level were felled by Joker's goons, it allowed Scott to move faster toward the stairs leading up to the balcony. He met little to no resistance as most of Penguin's people in the vicinity were dead.

With the Lounge secured, Scott led the charge toward the attached museum where Penguin kept all his hardware on display. Before he reached the door at the end of a long connecting hallway, he noticed movement in the light coming out from under the door.

"Hold it!" Scott commanded to the Joker goons following him. He motioned to one of them, and the man handed over the grenade he held. Everyone backed away as Scott pulled the pin and rolled the grenade over to stop at the foot of the door. Running the moment the explosive was out of his hand, Scott barely made it back to the end of the hallway and turned the corner before the grenade detonated. The door and the Penguin goons on the other side vanished at the same instant as an orange fireball consumed the immediate area.

Wanting to make headway into the next part of the building before any of Penguin's men who were not killed by the blast recovered, Scott sprinted down the hall, firing at anything that moved.

The corridor stopped and a ladder led down to a narrow walkway composed of a metal grating. The walkway was suspended over a deep pool of water that filled the room from one end to the other. Scott suspected if the water were only a little higher, the walkway would be completely submerged and make the entire room appear to be an indoor lake.

The room itself was a large plus shape with a door at each of its four points. A replica of a giant octopus was suspended from the ceiling as if the room were the ocean where it lived. When Scott looked straight across the open space, he noticed a man with a rifle crouched in the doorway at the far end of the room, exactly opposite from Scott's position.

"Hug the wall!" Scott ordered sharply, grabbing the nearest Joker goon and pushing him up against the side of the hallway just as a bullet screamed past them and impacted against the doorway into the Lounge.