No, another work week begins.

The week began slightly worse than usual. No luck with my carpool bait and Harley was still in solitary, I swapped out the books and got no reward. But I did get news. Alyce wanted to see me about my movie days proposal. But not until after lunch.

Before my shift, I stopped by Rapetoy’s office and asked her about this meeting. She didn’t know anything about it. But her advice was to just agree with whatever Alyce wanted, unless it was crazy. After all, I was still one demerit from a suspension…which wouldn’t be so bad, but would limit my access to the targets I most needed to get in line. I was still incredibly short on muscle.

Riddler spent his time in the library tormenting everyone with riddles. Though mine was by far the easiest:

“I’m a jester with a penchant for chaos, with a heart that’s as twisted as my past. I’m often seen with a clown, but my madness is my own. Who am I?”

I gave him a flat look. “Harley Quinn is still locked up in solitary, so you aren’t her.”

“It’s part of the format!” Riddler said, with an annoyed stamp of his feet, then slid forward, whispering, “Of course, she’s only there because she helped you out with Zsasz, doesn’t that make you feel guilty?”

“Everyone makes their own choices. I choose to try to make this place more pleasant for everyone. Zsasz chose to try to stab me in the face. But if you’re saying you prefer we go back to how things were before, I’m happy to remove your check-out privileges.”

Riddler smirked. “I knew the Chiefs weren’t really making those decisions. Thanks for confirming it,” he said, before swaggering off.

Fuck.

I knew I wasn’t the smartest guy in the world, but the Riddler made me feel like a fucking idiot. Still, that story had been…sort of true at the time, so I could show the final delegations if anyone challenged me on it. I didn’t want that responsibility, but I could always surrender it if people were dicks to me about it.

During my break, I stopped by medical, and talked with Penelope, she was busy, but some shameless begging for help from her ‘brilliant mind’ was enough to get her to agree to give me some advice. And to get me a mighty +1 SP (Penelope: +1)

Her advice was two-fold. First, Alyce generally wore seven ribbons, but if she was distracted, or angry on a particular day, she might forget, so if she had fewer than seven ribbons, you needed to be really, really careful. Second, she was an administrator, not a doctor and most interested in arguments about how a proposal would make her life easier, or make Arkham easier/cheaper to run, she didn’t care much about rehabilitation, or escapes for that matter.

Everyone expected the former to fail and the latter to occur, she was worried about unexpected failures, or successes, but far more about avoiding the former than achieving the latter.

“Sounds like changes may be a hard sell, but she was okay with the library and check-out policy.” And none of my little traps had found her selling the old books…

“Indeed. But your check-out policy is already showing some utility. We’ve had fewer incidents than usual since it started.”

“We have?” I thought about everything that had happened.

“Yeah, Chief Boles has a chart, even if I had to do the math. The time period’s too short for any conclusions., not statistically significant yet. But it might help.”

I blinked at that. “She didn’t tell me that.”

“Of course not,” Penelope said, condescendingly, “Chief Boles does care a lot about security and the reduced breaches coming from softer treatment doesn’t fit her worldview. She wouldn’t even have run the numbers if I hadn’t asked for rolling numbers as part of my review for the movie proposal.”

“Wow, thanks, doc!” I paused and decided to push, acting like I’d just realized something. “Oh, hey, I never asked if it was okay if I called you doc? After all, we’re friends, right?”

“We’re colleagues, Mr. Cain.”

“Come on, it’s just a nickname between colleagues. Besides, you’ve seen me naked and slapped me, which practically makes you one of my girlfriends,” I teased her. The reminder of her previous outburst made her flush. “Oh, hey, did you get things worked out?”

“Yes. Yes, everything’s fine. I will retain my professionalism, but no one expects much from you thugs,”

“Does that mean yes, doc?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, now run along and try not to screw up this project.” +4 SP (Penelope: +5).

I held off on her checkpoint for the moment, until I could meet up with Asa and discuss, then had lunch. Tried my random crapshoot…and landed one. Up to 20/21 targets, I’d need to spend more credits to expand my target list soon.

Natalia “Nocturna” Mitternacht: -5 SP

Nocturna is imprisoned in a constantly lit cell, though she is allowed clothing to protect her sensitive skin from the light which she can no longer tolerate. This mockery of her prior skintight catsuit and exhibitionistic outfits and attempts to hide, leave her in a constant state of arousal., about which she can do nothing. For, to expose herself to pleasure herself would result in burns.

That was a name I knew, a thief and black widow. Vampire themed, but not a vampire, I guess, if she was getting food trays. Right? I didn’t actually know how vampires worked.

Regardless, I grabbed the data from Rapetoy, along with everything else she had that might help…which wasn’t anything. Her report on Alyce came in as…nothing that I didn’t already know. The woman kept her secrets well. Or didn’t have any. But she said she was waiting on one more person, and would have the news I wanted on Peyton by tomorrow. I arranged to meet her in her office in the morning to go over it (and **** her to get her working on the next target).

Regardless, I headed up to see Alyce.

AN: Thanks to ChatGPT for the riddle, as I despise writing riddles. FYI, I'll be going on hiatus for the month of December, as that will get us to Chapter 175 of the daily release schedule. That will resume in January.