When Shiller arrived at the lab in the Florence ADX Supermax Prison, what greeted him was this scene—
Bruce Wayne lay on the operating table, bare-chested, his face down. A massive wound, stretching from the base of his neck to his spine, was laid open in an incredibly precise fashion. The muscles and skin above his skeletal spine looked as though they had been swathed in a veil of fresh blood.
Bruce had his head turned to the side, facing the experiment table on the other side of the operating table. His half-length dark hair that clung to the side of his face, due to the sweat from the pain, completely covering his already closed eyes. Judging by the rapid rise and fall of his chest, he had already fainted.
And standing beside the table was Bane, holding a scalpel.
Shiller didn't need to rake through his memory to recall Bane's exploits from the comics. This notorious reconstructed mercenary was one of the few antagonists in the comics who had inflicted severe physical damage on Batman.
In the comics, Bane breaks Batman's spine—Shiller knew this hadn't happened in this cosmos, but it was a symbolic iteration of his evil doings, and enough to serve as evidence for conviction.
The Bruce lying on the operating table with his eyes closed heard a voice that was both familiar and strange. Familiar because it was Shiller's voice and strange because he had never heard such a cold tone from Shiller before.
"Sir, may I ask, what have you done to my student?"
With a step forward of his leather shoes, through the reflection on the floor, Bruce could clearly see Bane floating up suddenly. Countless gray mists surrounded him, lifting him into mid-air.
Then, the seemingly non-substantial mist began to compress inward, like an enormous irresistible hand clutching Bane in its palm.
He wanted to pulverize him right there—clamp down on the skin, crush the bones, until the internal organs could no longer withstand the pressure and gush out through the wound. Then shrivel up, like an overripe peach squeezed dry of its juice.
Bruce had never seen such a violent and bloody side of Shiller before.
Shiller was a madman, but he had his unique set of standards for dealing with the world, even a moral code of sorts. His madness never contained anything that contradicts civilization and certainly didn't include filth, disorder, violence, or savagery.
Shiller was a person who highly respected civilization, not merely fussy or prissy, but with meticulous appearance and always maintained manners, expressing an ever composed and elegant demeanor, like a perfect human mask.
And now, a part of what was beneath this human mask was exposed, perhaps the sharpest fangs. Bruce, simply by a glance, was entirely justified and had the right to label him a criminal.
Bane's body began to contort. His bones had already been broken in all four limbs. His moans of pain spilled from his mouth. The poison hastened the injection speed, Bane's entire skin turned a deep red, and in the swelling of the muscles, he was still struggling in vain.
Shiller stood beside the operating table, standing between Bruce and Bane. He turned his back to Bruce, propped Bane against the wall on the other side, and was silently crushing him.
"Don't kill him."
Shiller suddenly turned around, as Bruce's tone was distinctly unlike his usual, sounding more like a cold command, but before his reason could catch up, Shiller, following instinct, released his grip.
The moment Bane hit the ground, Shiller heard a feeble chuckle coming from the operating table. It wasn't Bruce Wayne who was laughing, it was Batman, laughing genuinely.
Shiller turned around without paying any more attention to the half-dead Bane and, as he bowed his head, met Bruce's blue eyes. Half of them were soaked in the blood flowing out from the wound on his face, a wicked and twisted intertwining of red and blue.
"... Are you manipulating me?"
Shiller, recovered from the intensity of his emotions, asked as if he was at a loss.
"Yes." Lying on the operating table, Bruce blinked at him, "Because I know how you're manipulating me."
"..."
The muscles in Bruce's arms and shoulders strained as if he wanted to change his position, but he failed and fell back onto the operating table. So, he had to remain there, lying in his blood, speaking.
"Had we not been that close, had I not cared so much about you, what you say and do would have no impact on me."
"And if you didn't care about me enough, you wouldn't have come, wouldn't have been angry about my injury."
"I spent a few years trying to solve the puzzle, but there's really no puzzle at all. It's not trickery or special abilities controlling me. It's my own emotions."
"Just like now, your affectionate rage is manipulating you."
Shiller was silent for a while, then, after a few minutes, he walked over and sat on the experimental table that Bruce was facing. Shiller had rarely been so uncouth as to sit on a table, seeming as if he wanted to take an urgent rest.
"Do you know when I was first shocked by you?" Shiller asked.
Bruce quickly sifted through his illusions to find shards of his memories. The shocked look that he had seen on Shiller's face was a distant memory, hence blurry and distorted, but he still remembered.
"The Morson district disappearance case. I thought you were the killer, but you weren't. So, I apologized. I remember clearly how surprised you were then. That's the last time I saw you surprised by me."