Batman returns to Dr. Langstrum for an update.

It was the dead of night.

Driving silently through the city streets in the batmobile alone, Batman made sure not to be spotted by the police as he drove to his destination. Power girl had done as she was instructed and gathered everyone she suspected of being infected with lycanthropy, either intentionally or by proxy. There were over thirty in total, men and women who had been gathered one by one with the speed of a fighter jet and placed in the center of the Batcave. By the time he and Aloe Vera had inspected all the werewolves Power Girl was able to find, and much to their dismay it was determined only four of the thirty-two people were salvageable. Everyone else Bruce could already tell by their vacant stare and shambling stance were already dead inside; the inner wolf having won against the human self within. That was unacceptable, he HATED how he was forced to write off people he managed to rescue.

Which is why he was arriving at the destination he hoped would change that. Parking the batmobile in an alley and setting the security system on, he opened the overhead canopy and fired a grappling hook upwards to latch onto a roof top and ascend to the top of the building. Gathering the grappling cable in his arms and sneaking silently to the fire escape door on the roof, Batman cleanly undid the lock and snuck inside the lab complex. Moving without a sound and keeping out of sight of the many doctors still doing late work, Batman made his way towards the lab labelled ‘Dr. Langstrum’ and silently entered the room, locking the door behind him.

Slowly and silently, Batman made his way through the dark lab, finding Dr. Langstrum typing away in front of a key board and scribbling notes, just like the last time he sought him out for help. But unlike last time, Bruce was surprised when the man raised a finger as if to gesture Bruce over. “I heard you enter from across the hall, come, come, I have to show you this.” Surprised he could be noticed so quickly by the man, Bruce stood up straight and joined him at the computer desk. There Bruce found that Dr. Langstrum seemed anxious, his hands shaking in between typing out results of previous work. A shaggy five o clock shadow had formed on the man’s face and it seemed that he hadn’t been keeping care of himself, his face looking flush and his hair unkempt. “What have you found Doctor?”

Getting up from his seat, the doctor waved the Dark Knight over to a work table where there was a microscope prepped. “With the samples you gave me, it was very difficult to find anything out of the ordinary, here you can see a drop of the blood sample you gave me to study, notice anything unusual?” Humouring the doctor, Batman peered into the scope, his stoic frown never leaving his face. “Apart from an increase in white blood cells, nothing.”

“Exactly! I’ve run it through a gene sequence scanner and found that apart from the excess cells, its human blood… Then I discovered something else.” Taking a nearby lamp off the table and setting it close to the microscope, Dr. Langstrum continued. “For a time, I thought I hit a dead end until I accidentally discovered THIS when I left the window blinds open at night, I’m setting this LED lamp to a specific frequency, NOW, watch what happens to the sample.” Turning on the lamp, the table was bathed in a blue white light, one Bruce found familiar as his muscles tensed. Looking back at the sample he was surprised to find the white cells slowly dividing as if they were still alive. When Langstrum turned off the lamp, so did the cell activity. “Interesting…”

“That was my thought exactly, I made further tests over the following days, my first experiment was injecting a sample into a lab mouse.” Moving to another table, the two men stood in front of a metal cage where a single lab mouse sat in front of a food dish nibbling on a corn seed. Taking the same lamp used on the microscope, Kirk Langstrum shone the light over the mouse. In just under a minute the mouse dropped the corn nut and began to change and grow; its fur becoming shaggy whiles its paws and teeth grew more pronounced. After its changes, the now rabbit sized creature tried to break itself free from the cage until the lamp was turned off. Without the light source, the vicious creature calmed down and reverted to a little white mouse.

“You created a were-rat?”

“Fascinating I know!” placing the lamp down, Kirk waved over to a small group of other animals in cages nearby. “I’ve done the same to other animals to see if the effect was constant, rabbits, cats, bats, they all exhibit a wild transformation and growth when exposed to moonlight, but the transformation doesn’t appear to be permanent.”

“Have you managed a cure?”

Turning around to look the Dark Knight almost harshly, Dr. Langstrum gathered himself and slowly shook his head. “N-no, but I have found some interesting results to my research.”

Moving towards another room after Langstrum opened the door to the experiments section, Bruce was taken back at the four enclosed cells that made up the room itself. Almost like a minimum-security prison, the four cells had a full plexi-glass wall where the two could see into each cell where a patient sat, occupying their time. “During animal tests I found that when exposed to moonlight, not only was there a profound transformation but fascinating side effects that went with it, all the animal subjects showed signs of rapid regeneration and cell renewal.” Moving to one room, the two looked over at a woman in her late twenties looking herself over in front of a mirror. Curious, Batman found a chart by her cell and went over the findings. “Alexa Tarvish, war veteran with two purple hearts…” Looking over to the photo in the report, Bruce looked at the woman brushing her teeth while fidgeting her foot over the other and back at the photo of a woman in a wheel chair missing her legs and left arm up to her elbow.

“Out of curiosity I injected arachnid DNA into the white cells of one sample and injected it into petty officer Tarvish, her arm and legs grew back in the span of a night!” Glaring back at the doctor, Kirk ignored the Batman’s anger as he waved him over to another cell. “And here, this is a woman named Gina Phines, she suffered 3rd degree burns over sixty percent of her body due to a gas explosion near her apartment, using the same process I used king snake DNA… Her burnt skin peeled off to reveal a new layer after treatment!” By now the man was manic exposing his work with the blood sample. Batman checked over the chart to see the photo of a thin woman with her lower face and chest brown with burn scares, yet the woman sitting on her bed reading a paper looked completely unscarred and unblemished. “Here I gave a blind gentleman owl DNA to heal his eyes and THIS gentleman I gave…”

“Doctor, these experiments are over!” Stern and barely containing his fury, Batman glared at the timid man as his voice attracted the attention of those in their cells. “Destroy your research and turn these people over to me.”

“WHAT?!!! Why?”

“I brought you these samples to find a cure, instead you’ve made the situation worse by making new strands of lycanthropy… It was a mistake to bring this to you.”

“NO! I can come up with a cure, but the possibilities are FAR to great to ignore, with this you can cure disease, ANY disease, ANY injury! I won’t let you take it away from me!” Grabbing Batman be the scruff of his chest, Bruce was surprised to find Langstrum strong enough to lift Batman off his feet. “Looking down at the frantic man, Bruce finally noticed how the man’s facial hair became thicker and webbing formed between his fingers. He also noticed a tiny pair of nicks on the man’s hand that looked very similar to a bat bite.

“Been sampling your own research Doctor Langstrum?”