"He's lucky," she said softly afterward, wiping her hands. "Another thirty minutes and you'd have been carrying a corpse."
Back at the safe house, the others waited—tense, jittery. But the call came in just before dawn. The wounded man would live. And so, so would the deal.
Quentin's voice cut clean through the static of the burner phone.
"He's fine. Your debt stands."
And they paid.
No games. No betrayal. The cash was dropped in a trash bin under the Trigate overpass, as instructed. A runner picked it up fifteen minutes later. Quentin didn't even have to check it himself—he already knew it was there.
From that point on, word spread.
At first, it was nothing. A desperate pickpocket being hunted by a gang he stole from. A teenager who lifted the wrong wallet and found out it belonged to a crooked GCPD detective. A guy who skipped out on a deal with the Maronis and needed to disappear for a few nights.
Calls came to the burner phones—slowly at first, then more consistently. The people calling weren't crime lords or assassins. They were the small-time scum of Gotham. The bottom-feeders. But they had money, or at least access to it. And more importantly, they were scared.
And scared people paid.
The network started to take shape without anyone really intending it to. The homeless who helped Quentin and Kieran early on now passed on tips, locations, even new hideouts. Tunnels. Old buildings with boarded-up windows. Forgotten corners of Gotham that even Batman overlooked.
One man, after being relocated, left behind a small box of canned food and clean socks as a thank you. Another paid in cash. Another handed over a map of old utility lines he'd memorized during a short stint in construction.
It was small.
It was quiet.
But it was working.
And one night, sitting under a broken streetlamp behind an old diner, Nolan sat with a can of cold beans in his hand, staring into the flickering city skyline.
He hadn't truly planned for this to work so well.
But it was happening.
And deep inside, where his other selves murmured and shifted, one voice came clearer than the rest.
"Told you we'd make something outta this mess."
**
The suit still fit, surprisingly well. A little wrinkled from being stuffed in a duffel bag and slept on for three nights straight, but it made Nolan look clean — put-together. Respectable. That was the point. He wasn't just another lost face in Gotham anymore. He was building something. He had to look the part.
Silas Bronsfield was the alias he gave at the front counter. Some sketchy little internet café on the south edge of Midtown — run by a woman who didn't ask questions and always kept the curtains drawn. He paid in cash. Always cash. And he didn't linger.
Inside, with the soft hum of outdated cooling fans around him, Nolan worked.
One fake ID after another. Doctoral credentials, driver's licenses, maintenance passes — whatever was needed. The software was ancient, but it still got the job done. Printer ink cost more than gold, but he found a workaround at a university campus down the street. Another favor owed.
Back in his newly rented apartment — a small one-room flat above an old pawn shop that stank of old wood and grease — Nolan plugged in the last of the laptops and began syncing burner numbers to his secure server.
Every call.
Every text.
Every panicked voicemail from some thug running from the GCPD.
All of it now streamed into an encrypted log Nolan built himself. No fancy gear. Just a stitched-together mess of cables, old tech, and two backup generators. It wasn't flashy. But it worked.
He mapped every relocation—timestamped it, tagged it, and cross-checked it with reports from police scanners and known vigilante sightings. He kept notes on every client: what they paid, who they hurt, where they were last seen.
Not to control them.
To stay ahead.
To protect the system.
He didn't speak much while working. He didn't need to. Quentin gave the logistical advice. Kieran handled charm and contact. Nolan built the spine.
He scribbled notes into a ragged notebook with torn pages:
East End tunnel blocked, reroute.
Billings Ave squatters friendly, offered cover.
NEED MORE BURNERS — Kieran?
Another ping hit his laptop. A tip. Some low-level car thief fleeing the Iceberg Lounge — bloodied lip, busted knuckles, wanted a place to lay low for the night. Nolan flagged the location, checked his notes, and typed out instructions for the runners.
The network was still small. Still in it's infancy.
But it was working.
And as Nolan leaned back in his chair, suit wrinkled, fingers stained with printer ink and exhaustion clinging to his spine like a second skin, he let out a quiet breath.
This wasn't the life he ever imagined.
But it was finally one that made sense.
The hum of the city was faint up here. Nolan sat on the rooftop of the pawn shop, cross-legged, the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up. His blazer rested beside him, folded like a blanket he didn't need. The cool night air bit gently at his skin. Far below, the life of Gotham churned on. Sirens in the distance. Drunks yelling. A dog barking. But up here, it was almost peaceful.
He stared out over the rooftops not at anything in particular. Just letting his mind wander as he applied some ointment to his bruises and wrapped his cuts in bandages. It was funny, he almost forgot about them.
Nolan was almost so used to being in pain that he forgot how tired his body truly was.
It was hilariously sad.
Then they spoke.
Quentin's voice broke the silence first, low and clear, like some devil on his shoulder.
"You're getting good at this."
Nolan didn't reply right away.
Kieran chimed in, his tone less cocky than usual. "The suit helps. Still think it's ugly, though."
Nolan let a dry chuckle escape. "I'm not doing this for fashion points."
"Yeah, we noticed," Kieran muttered, but there was no bite in it.
Another long pause.
Then Nolan finally asked, "Did I do this to myself?"
The question hung there. Heavy. Unguarded. And for a moment, no one spoke.
Quentin was the one who answered.
"No."
A beat.
"Not entirely."
Kieran stayed quiet.
Nolan stared down at his hands. He could still see the old scars faintly beneath the cuff. Some from fights. Some from darker nights. "Then who did?"
"People who were supposed to protect you."
Quentin's voice had an edge now. Not anger. Not quite. But memory.
"You were just a kid," Kieran said gently. "You weren't supposed to carry that much."
Nolan looked out across the rooftops again, but now his hands were shaking. He balled them into fists.
"I don't even remember the worst of it. Just flashes. Just screaming. A hospital room. A basement. I… I don't know what's real."
"We do."
Quentin's voice was firm. Anchoring.
"You gave us the pieces. We held on to them for you."
There was silence again. But not the uncomfortable kind. A thoughtful, heavy one.
Kieran finally spoke again, softer than Nolan had ever heard him.
"You broke into pieces, yeah. But you didn't stay broken. You adapted. We helped you survive."
"You're not real," Nolan whispered.
"We are to you," Quentin said.
"And we always have been," Kieran added.
Nolan closed his eyes. The wind picked up, brushing past him like a hand across his shoulder. He wasn't crying. Not exactly. But something cracked a little inside. A tiny fracture in the wall he'd spent years building.
He didn't reply.
He didn't need to.
They just sat there with him.
In the silence.
In the memory.
In the moment.
Together.