I sit behind bars in a damp dungeon—like a young eagle raised in captivity, wings denied the sky.
Aside from the little "shock therapy session," everything has gone far better than I could have hoped. To be completely honest, I can't even say it was that painful. Unpleasant? Certainly. Unbearable? Not quite. What truly stung was not the current burning through my veins, but the overt displays of arrogance: the disdain with which these people treated me, the swaggering insolence with which they strutted. All of it left in me a heavy, bitter grudge against the League of Shadows, and against Ra's al Ghul most of all.
I had once thought mercy might be an option. That perhaps I'd grant leniency, a kind of clemency, if they surrendered their madness. Not anymore. Now there will be no mercy. Not even a whisper of it. They will pay me back—with full interest.
And Lady Shiva… well, she will have her lesson too. She needs to be reminded she chose the wrong side. She should be brought back to her senses. Later, perhaps, I'll take the time to decide which approach suits her better: the carrot or the stick. Though the humor of it hasn't escaped me—Sandra Wu-San, Grandmaster of the League, reduced to another problem requiring management.
Truthfully, I might have let everything else slide: the crack on the head, the forced cell, the buckets of ice water. But the collar. That damned collar.
Am I a slave to them? A pet hound chained and prodded with lightning when I disobey? No. Unacceptable. The moment they clasped that device around my neck, the scales tipped. That was the final straw for my patience.
Still, I can't help enjoying the simple fact: I played my role to perfection. I gave Bordeaux an emotional farewell, feigned weakness, faked unconsciousness, acted convincingly enough as just another man. The girl's blow to the head had been hard—Sandra doesn't hold back—but without my enhancements, it might have left me out cold. It didn't. The collar and its oh-so-clever water torture were worse, but even that proved manageable. They thought it might break me. Instead, it only served to remind me just how far I've come.
Steve Rogers, frozen in the Arctic ice for seventy straight years, survived intact. So why would a shallow pool of icy water stop me? If Captain America can make it, then so can I—with far more ease, given my endurance far exceeds even his. That's the privilege of being more than an experiment. That's the edge of perfection.
And so, yes—I am almost delighted I fell into the League's clutches after the serum. Because if it had been before, I would've had no leverage, no strength. Now? Now they've overplayed their hand.
Three hours I've been chained down here in this cell. Three long, silent hours. My intuition kept quiet the whole time—until now. That internal compass has woken again, signaling it's time to transition into Part Two. The game is ready to shift.
It is time to send the invitation. Time to bring the others into the party.
How funny it has been, watching their desperate attempts to deny me access to my Inventory—their precious collar against mutants, their magical wards like talismans nailed into rock. Ingenious, yes. Prepared, sure. But effective? Not against me. Not against the one who holds command of space itself. They've dragged the most dangerous storage locker in the world right into their fortress. That decision will haunt them.
Stupidity or arrogance—it doesn't matter which. Shall we call it greed, perhaps? They couldn't have suspected I was neither mutant nor sorcerer, that I wasn't what their paranoia believed me to be. Instead, I'm armed with a tool beyond their comprehension: a system. Wretched, yes. Primitive even. But mine. And because it is mine, no spell nor shackle nor collar will lock me away from its depths.
In fact, all of this was the outcome I had been aiming for from the start. To be brought here, to the very heart of the League, where their hold on me is apparently strongest—and yet where they are most vulnerable.
So yes, my reckless little idea succeeded. Perhaps now is no time to explain the brilliance of it in detail. Better to put it to practice. Better to send my signal, an old-fashioned "SOS," and let my allies hear the cue. New ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄhapters are published on n͟o͟v͟e͟l͟f͟i͟r͟e͟.net
On my lips curled a grin, sharp and malicious, not dulled even by hours of ice water and chains. On my eyes rested dark glasses, sleek, reflecting more than they revealed. A fitting crown.
Somewhere in the deepest hole of the League of Shadows fortress, isolated, blind, chained without connection to the outer world—here stood I. To any sane enemy, it might have seemed hopeless. No phone signal, no trace of contact; the devices in my possession had already refused me cooperation. But I am hardly "sane." I had long ago prepared for this inevitability.
My latest invention—hologram glasses—held a power beyond the League's guesses. They possessed a carefully-laced contingency I had engineered myself: forced communication. A function tethered directly to Batman's hidden network—a network ten times stronger than even state technology. Untouchable. Unhackable. Inescapable.
And so all that remains is to press the switch and let technology bridge the void. To reap the fruits of foresight.
***********************
✓Gotham City – Babylon Lab, 4:00 AM]
Bright monitors buzzed faintly against the silence. Inside the wide laboratory, equipment and test machinery crowded every table and wall. Against it all paced a girl, tension in the curve of her shoulders, bright orange hair flickering in the overhead light as she stalked back and forth.
"It's been eight hours," Barbara Gordon muttered, agitation biting into her tone. "Eight hours, still nothing. Not a scrap of news from him." Her voice trembled. "We never should have agreed to his crazy scheme. Not knowing where he is, what state he's—"
"Barbara, calm yourself," Sasha Bordeaux broke in, the words urging patience.
"Don't you say a word!" Barbara spun, snapping sharp and loud. "You left him—left him there—to be torn apart by killers!"
"That's enough." A firm, commanding male voice cut across hers—the kind that could not be ignored. "Alex chose this," Bruce Wayne said, tone unyielding. "And all of you—each of us—agreed. Blaming Sasha will solve nothing. Remember– Sasha suffers enough without being the target of guilt."
His words hit their mark. Barbara's anger crumbled into shame. Head lowered, she murmured, "I'm sorry, Sasha. I didn't mean—"
"It's nothing," Bordeaux interjected softly, raising a hand. "We're all tense. We're all waiting. Don't carry blame that isn't yours. We can only hope. That's all."
The women nodded mutely. Their shared glances revealed the same silent weight pressing on them. Alex Reath—his presence bound them, knitted them into fragile unity. He was the magnet holding together people who otherwise might never have sat under one roof. Without him, they'd have remained scattered, strangers with little cause to meet.
They breathed as one and waited as one.
"You needn't worry this much," Bruce Wayne spoke once more. Calm, carved from stone, his voice rang steady. "Alex values his life more than any of us. He would never risk without certainty—never walk into danger blind."
He sat at ease near the capsule that once transformed Alex into something greater, his powerful frame half at rest. In that large white hall, lined with steel, he was the only man among them. Bruce was unbothered by the fact that his torso bore no shirt, only the scars of a vigilant life carved into muscle. His presence carried weight; no one dared rebut the truth in his words.
Yes. Alex valued his life. He said it often enough. But oddly, for one who treasured survival, he had an uncanny knack for stumbling into peril. Sometimes trouble found him by coincidence; other times, he lit the spark himself. Either way, disaster followed.
So when Bruce spoke, though no one contested him, their worry didn't fade. If anything, it grew heavier.
At that exact moment, movement sparked at the center table. A tiny structure rested there, unnoticed until now—a small pyramid-shaped beacon, dark until this moment.
Now it thrummed with light. Pulses rippled outward, increasing in intensity until the glow filled every crevice of the sterile lab. Brilliant, undeniable.
Hope unfurled in the hearts of everyone watching.
The signal had found its way through.
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