The cursor blinked on the screen. Steady. Unmoving. A quiet pulse in the otherwise still room.
Nolan sat at the desk, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. His eyes flicked across the interface, noting the color-coded pins on his digital map, burner numbers lined up in the tracker, and relocation logs scrolling in neat order. Everything was running like it should.
But he wasn't.
He moved the mouse. Opened a new log. Typed in a name. Deleted it. Tried again. Deleted it again.
He wasn't thinking—just acting. Filling the void with half-finished tasks and small rituals: check the relay network, ping the safehouses, confirm inventory with the East End runners. He poured himself a glass of water. Sat back down. Logged three entries. Sat back again.
He hadn't slept.
Not really.
There were moments when his eyes had closed. But behind them was a hallway of mirrors—Quentin's smirk in one, Kieran's smooth confidence in another, and then that final one. Cracked. Splintered. A face he barely recognized. Bruised knuckles. Shouting. Tears. Blood on glass.
A quiet buzzing broke the silence. His burner lit up on the desk. A number with no label—only three digits: #002.
Nolan blinked at it for a second. Then he answered.
"Yeah?"
A soft voice came through, rough around the edges like old gravel. "It's Sherry."
His mind took a moment to catch up, yeah Sherry she treated him well.
Nolan straightened instinctively. "Sherry? You good?"
She chuckled, the sound dry and slow, like creaking porch wood. "Oh, I'm too old to ever be 'good' again, honey. I just wanted to call and give you a little heads-up, so you don't trip over any of your own shoelaces."
Nolan glanced at the screen again. "Go ahead."
"I've put someone in the Bleeker safehouse. Didn't clear it with you—figured you might get tangled up with the scheduling later."
He paused. "…Why?"
A quiet breath on the other end. Then: "She's my granddaughter. It's… complicated."
That snapped something awake in him.
"What happened?" he asked, the stillness in his voice replaced with something more alert.
Sherry didn't answer right away. Then, slowly: "She awakened a few days ago. Somethin'—somethin' burst out of her, light or fire or—I don't even know what. Scared the hell outta her. She's just a girl, you understand? A kid. And now someone's been trailing her. Suits, cars. The kind that don't knock on doors, they just kick 'em in."
Nolan pushed his chair back and stood up. The floor creaked beneath him. "You're saying someone's hunting her?"
"I don't know what they want. She said she saw one of 'em flash a badge, said she heard something about a company called Cadmus."
He turned toward the small cabinet across the room, opened it, and pulled out a tablet. The Bleeker safehouse blinked into focus. A single dot registered inside.
"Is she safe right now?" he asked.
"For now. She's sleepin'. I left her with some food. She hasn't stopped shaking since she got here."
He shut his eyes.
Sylvia had been one of the first to ever speak to him like he was a person. Not a runaway. Not a freak. She'd brought him coffee when he slept under a stairwell. Told him where the good soup lines were. Called him "sugar" and never asked why he never gave a real name.
"You did the right thing calling me," he said softly.
"I'm not askin' for a war," she said. "I just needed someone to know where she was in case I—I don't know. In case somethin' happens."
"No," he said, eyes opening. "You did the right thing. I'll keep the house off all the systems. She'll be safe. If anyone gets close, I'll know."
A pause. Then her voice cracked a little. "Thank you, baby."
He nodded, even though she couldn't see it. "You need anything, you call me. Doesn't matter the hour."
He hung up.
The silence returned—but it felt different now. Not heavy. Not distant. Just waiting.
He moved back to the desk, fingers tapping into the firewall protocols, quietly scrubbing the Bleeker house from the network's visible logs. Then he updated the burner distribution map, rotating numbers across three boroughs, shifting two runners' schedules to account for potential surveillance.
His mind ticked back into motion—not just out of reflex, but purpose.
This mattered. This was why he'd built all this in the first place.
He slipped on his hoodie and stepped outside, letting the sunlight hit his face. It was cold but clear, the kind of Gotham morning where the wind smelled faintly of smoke and coffee. His boots hit the pavement with more certainty than they had the day before.
He didn't have a plan yet.
But someone needed him.
And that was enough—for now.
**
The plastic bags clinked softly as Nolan shuffled down the cracked alley behind the safehouse. One bag was filled with food — mostly shelf-stable stuff like peanut butter, crackers, canned soup, and a few juice boxes. The other held odds and ends: a toothbrush, a pair of socks, a dusty fleece blanket, and a bright blue handheld game console he'd picked up from a secondhand shop. He didn't know the girl's age, not exactly. But the toy felt like a safe bet. Everyone needed a distraction sometimes.
The safehouse door creaked open just as he reached it.
Sherry stood in the frame, her frizzy gray hair tied back with a rubber band and her cardigan worn thin at the elbows. Her eyes were tired, but warm. She stepped aside wordlessly, and he entered.
"You didn't have to come all the way down here," she said, quietly shutting the door behind him.
"I know," Nolan replied, placing the bags gently on the kitchen table. "But you called. That means something."
He glanced toward the back hallway where the granddaughter must've been holed up. The door at the end was shut, a thin sliver of light glowing beneath it.
"She okay?" he asked.
"She's scared," Sherry said, walking to the table and beginning to unpack. "But she's tough. She hasn't said much about what she saw. Just that name again—Cadmus. Over and over."
Nolan leaned against the kitchen counter, folding his arms. "It's not a name you say lightly. If it's really them…"
Sherry gave him a knowing look. "You're already looking into it, aren't you?"
He didn't answer. Just nodded slightly.
She chuckled softly. "Of course you are."
There was a long pause. The two of them worked in silence for a few minutes. Nolan wiped off the old counter with a rag. Sherry organized the groceries into the pantry. She held up the game console and gave him a dry smile.
"Bit of a gamble, isn't it?"
"I wasn't sure how old she was. Or what she liked." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I figured… everyone needs something to distract themselves from the world."
"She'll love it," Sherry said.
He nodded, then let the silence linger a moment longer before finally asking the question that had been chewing at him all week.
"Why are you helping me, Sherry?"
She turned, blinked. "You mean today?"
"No. I mean all of this." He gestured vaguely toward the wall, as if it could somehow capture the scale of the network he'd built — safehouses, burners, routes, hiding places. "The business. The system. I keep thinking about it. I mean, I know I've helped people disappear, and we've done good, but… I don't understand why everyone agreed so easily. All the people on the street. They're not getting paid. They're getting clothes, food, warm beds, yeah, but… is that really enough? You're risking your lives. For what, for me to make money?"
Sherry leaned against the table, her hands resting flat on the surface, fingers splayed.
"We don't want money," she said simply.
Nolan frowned. "Then what?"
She looked up at him. "Do you know how long we've been living invisible lives, Nolan? Monotonous days of walking in circles, begging for change, trying not to freeze, or get jumped, or die of something no one even bothers naming? Days blend into weeks. You start to wonder if you even exist anymore."
She exhaled through her nose, not angry, just tired. Thoughtful.
"And then one day… someone like you shows up," she continued. "And you don't just offer us handouts. You offer us purpose. Tasks. Roles. You looked us in the eye and gave us something to do. Something real."
Nolan swallowed hard.
"We're not pawns to you," she said. "We're part of something. People that used to spit at our feet now come crawling, needing help. And we help them. Because for once in a very long time… we aren't nothing anymore."
He stared at her. The room felt still.
"…I didn't mean to give you that," he said quietly.
Sherry smiled gently. "I know. That's why it's real."
A door creaked in the hallway. A small figure peeked out — a girl, no older than twelve, her brown eyes wide and wary. Nolan caught a flash of a bandaged arm and a bruise on her temple. She ducked back in the room as quickly as she'd appeared.
"I should go," he murmured.
Sherry nodded. "She'll warm up. Might take a while."
He turned toward the door. His hand was on the knob when she spoke again.
"You're carrying too much weight, Nolan."
He didn't turn around. "Feels like the only thing I'm good at."
"That doesn't mean you have to do it alone."
He left the safehouse in silence, walking back into the cold gray morning with his hood up and his hands in his pockets. But the weight on his chest, just for a moment, felt a little lighter.
—
A/N: yes I know Cadmus wouldn't hunt down some random girl, trust the process. Also, this world is set kind of in young justice? I would say it's mainly Young justice but with Au elements. I just like the young justice team a lot.