The sun hadn't climbed far when Nolan slung the backpack over his shoulder and rolled a cooler behind him. Inside were a few pre-made meals , protein bars, a small first-aid kit, and some fresh socks, heavy coats, and a whole lot of water bottles. . It wasn't much, but it was enough to make someone's day easier.
He tucked his hood up, pulling it low. Not because anyone was looking for him not today, anyway but because the anonymity helped him think. No calls came through. The network was quiet this morning. Everything was running smoothly.
He walked the edge of Burnside, where the streets were cracked and uneven. Familiar corners, familiar faces. A small camp had been set up just behind an old laundromat. Tattered tents, cardboard insulation, little fires burning in tin cans. Nolan ducked through a gap in the fence, greeted with nods and tired smiles.
He handed off the backpack to a lanky man with missing teeth and a voice like gravel. "Distribute it evenly," Nolan said. "And tell Sherry I'll bring another one by tomorrow."
"Will do, boss," the man said with a wink, and Nolan shook his head. He hated being called that, but he let it slide.
When Nolan left the homeless man disassembled the cooler and backpack and began to take out the carefully hidden burner phones to replace the old and broken ones.
As he stepped back out onto the sidewalk, a low purr of an engine caught his ear. Across the street, a sleek black car foreign, expensive, the kind of luxury only the top 1% could afford rolled to a stop in front of an aging hotel. The sign read The Arden, letters flickering.
A man in a cream suit stepped out. Tall. Clean-cut. Wealth radiated off him like perfume.
Two guards followed him out, thick-necked and dressed like they were auditioning for a gangster movie. The man sniffed the air, nose wrinkling as he looked at the homeless nearby.
"I don't want them anywhere near this property," he said loudly, waving a hand toward the alley where a woman sat wrapped in a blanket. "Tell the city to sweep the block again. They're making this whole street look like a damn gutter."
Nolan stood still, halfway in shadow, halfway in light. His jaw clenched.
The man went inside. The guards made a show of looming toward the alley, one of them muttering something cruel under his breath. The woman shrank back.
Nolan didn't move. Didn't speak. Just watched.
Then, slowly, he turned and walked away.
The gym was mostly empty that time of day, just a few office workers on their lunch breaks, an old guy grunting through bench reps, and Nolan. He hit the treadmill for twenty minutes, letting his thoughts go quiet. Then weights. Nothing heavy. His ribs still ached from the fight with Batman, but the bruises were yellowing now healing.
The repetition helped.
Afterward, he hit a small diner nearby. Bacon sandwich. Coffee. The guy at the counter knew him by sight now and asked no questions.
It was dusk by the time he got home.
The apartment welcomed him with silence. He locked the door, kicked off his shoes, and dropped into the chair at his desk. He opened the network feeds, watched some safehouse footage, checked on the latest drop routes.
Everything was smooth.
Too smooth.
He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. His body was tired, but something was buzzing under his skin. A thought he couldn't quite reach, like a name on the tip of his tongue.
Then… it hit him.
That hotel.
That man.
The way he barked about the homeless like they were rats.
The way his guards moved to chase them off.
Nolan sat up slowly, a grin spreading across his face.
"This might be the craziest thing I've ever said," he muttered, then glanced toward the mirror above his dresser. His reflection smirked at him, half-shadowed.
"And I've said a lot of crazy things."
He stood up and walked toward the mirror, resting a hand on the dresser beside it.
"Kieran," he said. "You awake in there?"
A long pause. Then, a voice answered from deep inside his mind smooth, amused.
"Always."
Nolan chuckled under his breath. "How would you like to finally do what you were always meant to be doing?"
"That's a dangerous question."
"Yeah," Nolan said. "It is."
He turned from the mirror, already reaching for his tablet. His fingers moved fast, searching the property registry. It took less than two minutes to find it.
The Arden Hotel.
Not too big. Not too small. Three floors, twenty rooms, aging utilities. Barely turning a profit.
He stared at the screen, heart starting to race.
Not just a base. Not just a hideout.
A home.
Centralized. Defensible. Expandable. A place where people could check in, recover, move on. Somewhere his network could breathe.
And more importantly a place they couldn't be chased away from.
Nolan leaned back, breath catching in his throat. The grin on his face was sharp now.
"Let's buy a hotel."
***
Nolan's fingers flew across the screen as the search engine spat out results in waves. He sat cross-legged on the floor now, his tablet propped against a stack of notebooks, a cold cup of coffee forgotten at his side. The lights were dim, only the glow of the screen reflecting off his face.
He started with the basics.
Owner of The Arden Hotel, Gotham.
It didn't take long. The public-facing name popped up quick: Leonard Harrow. CEO of Harrow Realty & Leisure, a mid-tier real estate development firm. Not one of the major players, but clearly someone with ambition. He'd bought The Arden five years ago for dirt cheap, sunk just enough money into the lobby to make it look fancy from the outside, then let the rest rot.
Nolan scanned through articles, blog posts, business registries.
Harrow was a frequent donor to certain Gotham city council members just enough to grease wheels. His social media accounts were filled with humblebrag posts about "revitalizing the city" and "cleaning up our neighborhoods," usually with smiling photos of himself in a hardhat he probably never wore for more than thirty seconds.
Nolan clicked on one of the photos. In the background, a bulldozer was parked behind a chain-link fence. People stood just outside the fence with signs.
STOP GENTRIFICATION
WHERE WILL WE GO?
DON'T TAKE OUR HOMES
Leonard Harrow stood in front of them, smiling wide, pointing at the camera.
Nolan stared at the photo for a long time. Then clicked away.
"Piece of work," he muttered.
Kieran's voice echoed in his head, smooth as always. "He's a parasite. This is what you were made for, Nolan."
"Don't start with the 'made for' stuff," Nolan said under his breath.
He kept going.
Campaign donations. Business partners. A side business managing "emergency housing" for city contracts, overpriced deals with the city to provide temporary housing for displaced families, most of which had terrible reviews and lawsuits attached to them.
One thread led to another. Reddit posts. A Yelp review from a woman who claimed her son got bedbugs at one of his properties. A zoning board meeting where Harrow pushed to expand his holdings by "relocating" the unsheltered population around his buildings.
It was one in the morning before Nolan leaned back, rubbing his eyes.
Harrow was small-time in the grand scheme of things but the kind of small-time that could still ruin lives.
"Perfect size," Nolan murmured. "Petty, greedy, not enough security to draw heat."
Quentin's voice rose up, calm and methodical. "The hotel's utilities are overdue. Two staff recently quit. The elevator's still out of order, and the fire inspection hasn't been passed in eight months. If we push the right buttons…"
Nolan smirked. "He'll be too busy putting out fires to notice someone pulling the rug out from under him."
He stood, stretched his back, and grabbed a pen.
On a clean sheet of paper, he wrote three words in the center:
THE ARDEN PROJECT.
Then, below that:
Step 1: Get rid of Harrow.
He set the pen down, staring at the page
"Now, how the hell do I buy a hotel while still being an active fugitive?"
—
A/N: I would say this chapter highlights the biggest personality flaw Nolan has and that is his tendacy to jump from a small thought to a large idea, he doesn't see himself as ambitious yet he will do anything to become something more