Wayne Gambit

Once upon a time, long before Edward Nygma ever sewed a single question mark onto a suit, he was just a young man looking for a job.

He applied to work at Wayne Enterprises, one of the biggest companies in all of Gotham City, and he was determined to prove himself. The interview was full of tricky tests and complicated puzzles, and Edward solved every single one, faster than anyone the hiring team had ever seen. For a moment, it seemed like everything was finally going to go his way.

But then Edward did something he thought would impress everyone even more. He pointed out flaws in the company's own security software, right there in front of the very engineers who had built it. He meant it kindly, in his own way — he simply couldn't help sharing what his clever mind had noticed. But the engineers didn't feel impressed. They felt embarrassed.

Wayne Enterprises thanked Edward politely for his time and never called him back.

Edward never forgot it. Not the rejection. Not the silence. Not the feeling of being so close to something good, only to have the door quietly close in his face.

Years passed, and Edward became someone else entirely — the Riddler, dressed head to toe in green and question marks, carrying a cane carved like a giant curling symbol of everything he loved most. And late one autumn night, he decided it was finally time to settle an old score.

He hacked into the towers of Wayne Enterprises from a rented office across the street, rerouting every elevator, every security camera, and every locked door through one enormous looping puzzle. A message appeared on the lobby's main screen, glowing green in the dark: "You called my mind unworthy once. Prove your own is better, or this tower stays frozen until morning."

Employees working late found themselves stuck between floors, elevator doors refusing to budge. Word reached Bruce Wayne almost immediately, and he called Commissioner Gordon without a moment's hesitation.

Batman arrived within minutes, moving quietly through the darkened lobby, while Robin slipped in through the building's back stairwell. As Batman crossed the marble floor, the lobby screen flickered and a new riddle appeared before him: "I have a face but no eyes, hands but no arms, and I tell you something every time you look at me."

Batman didn't need even a second to think. "A clock," he said, already crossing toward the enormous decorative clock standing tall in the atrium. Sure enough, hidden behind its glass face, a tangle of wires pulsed with the very same code that had frozen the entire tower.

Batman worked carefully, tracing each wire with steady hands, until at last he found the right one and disabled the device completely. One by one, the elevator doors slid open. The cameras flickered back to life. And the trapped employees stepped out into the hallways, relieved, thanking each other, eager to finally head home.

Across the street, watching it all fall apart through a pair of binoculars, the Riddler let out a long, frustrated sigh. "Wayne Enterprises," he muttered, "beats me twice now."

Police officers caught up with him before dawn broke over the city, cane and all. As they gently loaded him into a car bound for Arkham Asylum, Edward glanced back one last time at the glowing tower behind him. "They'll remember my name eventually," he said quietly, more to himself than to anyone else.

Nearby, unnoticed in the crowd of relieved onlookers, someone simply nodded to himself and turned to walk home, quietly certain that Gotham City was safe again — at least for tonight.

By the next morning, the atrium clock at Wayne Enterprises ticked away exactly as it always had, its hands sweeping smoothly past twelve, and employees returning to their desks barely mentioned the strange night at all. But in his office at the Gotham City Police Department, Commissioner Gordon wrote one careful line in his report: the Riddler's grudges ran deeper than most people realized. And deep grudges, he knew from long experience, had a way of resurfacing when you least expected them.

Far away, in a quiet cell at Arkham Asylum, Edward Nygma lay on his cot with his hands behind his head, turning the whole night over and over in his mind — not the failure, never quite the failure, but the puzzle itself, and all the puzzles still waiting to be built.

There was always, always another one waiting. And with that thought, Edward finally closed his eyes and slept.