Matthew sat on the windowsill of his bedroom, legs crossed beneath him, listening to Gotham breathe. Three months had passed since the accident, and each night brought new revelations about his adopted city. Gotham wasn't just a place—it was a living entity with rhythms and patterns all its own.
Tonight, a summer storm had cleansed the air, leaving behind that distinctive scent of rain on concrete and asphalt. Perfect conditions for sound to travel. Matthew closed his eyes behind his dark glasses and extended his senses outward, layer by layer, like ripples in a pond.
First came the immediate surroundings: Barbara in her room down the hall, humming along to a cassette tape while completing homework; his father in the study downstairs, shuffling through case files with occasional sighs of frustration; Mrs. Kravitz next door watching a late-night talk show, volume too loud for her aging ears.
Then the neighborhood: a couple arguing three houses down about credit card bills; teenagers sneaking out two blocks away, hushed laughter and the clink of bottles; a stray cat stalking a mouse along the garden fence.
Matthew pushed further, filtering through the urban symphony to focus on specific elements. This had become his nightly ritual—mapping Gotham's criminal underbelly one whisper at a time.
East End: dealers establishing new territory after last week's GCPD raid. The Bowery: protection payments being collected from reluctant restaurant owners. The Narrows: someone planning a jewelry store heist for next Tuesday, 2 AM.
He mentally catalogued each criminal operation, noting key players, locations, and timing. In the three months since he'd started, patterns had emerged. Crime in Gotham wasn't random—it ebbed and flowed like tides, influenced by police presence, territorial disputes, and even weather patterns.
Matthew had started keeping a journal, written in braille that only he could read. Each night's intelligence gathering added to his mental map of Gotham's criminal ecosystem. Street-level dealers connected to mid-level distributors who answered to higher powers—Falcone, Maroni, Black Mask. A web of corruption that extended into city hall, the courts, even the GCPD itself.
His father was fighting a war with only half the intelligence he needed. The thought made Matthew's stomach tighten.
A distant sound caught his attention—the distinctive thud of a body hitting pavement, followed by the swish of something cutting through air. Matthew focused, filtering out everything else to isolate this new sound.
Irregular heartbeats—four men, elevated from exertion or fear. The controlled breathing of a fifth individual, calm amid chaos. Combat sounds: the crack of breaking bone, a grunt of pain, the metallic clank of something striking body armor.
"Batman," Matthew whispered, leaning forward.
He was engaging a group of armed men nearly fifteen blocks away, near the docks. Matthew listened intently, analyzing the sounds of the confrontation. Batman's fighting style was efficient, brutal, and precise—a blend of multiple martial arts forms with an emphasis on ending confrontations quickly.
Three of the four attackers were already down. The fourth fired a weapon—the distinctive report of a 9mm—but Batman had already moved, the bullet striking a metal shipping container instead. Then came the sound of the gun clattering to the ground, a sharp crack as the man's wrist broke, and a final thud as he joined his compatriots in unconsciousness.
Police sirens approached in the distance. Batman's grapnel fired, the cable tensing as he ascended to a rooftop and disappeared into the night.
Matthew continued listening long after the police arrived and processed the scene. So this was the legendary Batman—Gotham's Dark Knight. Impressive.
The vigilante his father officially condemned while privately acknowledging the city's need for him.
Matthew slid from the windowsill and moved to his desk, retrieving his journal from its hidden compartment. His fingers danced across the page as he added tonight's observations. Batman's combat methodology: Eight distinct martial arts detected. Favors right side slightly. Relies on intimidation and misdirection. Employs specialized equipment including grapnel gun, body armor, and throwing weapons.
This world had its protectors already. Metahumans, aliens, vigilantes—a pantheon of heroes that made his former exploits as Daredevil seem modest by comparison. Where did that leave him? What role could a blind child with enhanced senses play in a world of Supermen and Dark Knights?
The answer had been forming over these past months. Not as a front-line combatant—at least not yet—but as something equally valuable: an intelligence broker.
Matthew moved to his closet and felt along the baseboards until he found the loose one. Behind it lay his growing collection of tools: a voice modulator purchased with saved allowance money, a prepaid phone bought through a complex series of intermediaries, and a small shortwave radio modified to pick up police bands.
He'd established a system. Information gathered through his nightly listening sessions was analyzed and categorized by urgency and credibility. High-priority intelligence—immediate threats to public safety—went directly to the GCPD via anonymous calls from public phones, his voice disguised by the modulator.
Lower-priority intelligence became part of his pattern analysis, feeding into larger tips about criminal operations. These went to specific detectives through cleverly "discovered" evidence. A note dropped in a patrol car. Information "overheard" and relayed through third parties. Carefully orchestrated "coincidences" that pointed police in the right direction without revealing their source.
It had been working better than he'd expected. Last month, his intelligence had led to the takedown of a human trafficking operation. Three weeks ago, a major drug shipment had been intercepted based on his anonymous tip. Just last week, a planned assassination of a witness had been thwarted when the would-be killer was arrested for an "unrelated" parole violation.
His father had even mentioned it at dinner a few days ago—the recent string of anonymous tips that had proven remarkably accurate. The GCPD had started calling the unknown informant "The Ghost" and had established protocols for prioritizing information from this reliable source.
Matthew smiled at the memory. The Ghost. Not as dramatic as Daredevil, but it suited his current approach.
Yet with each success came the nagging question: was it enough? Every night, he heard crimes he couldn't prevent. People suffering while he sat safely in his bedroom, passing notes like some cosmic suggestion box. The moral calculus weighed on him.
He pulled out the phone, considering tonight's intelligence. The jewelry heist planned for next Tuesday. He could call it in right now, set things in motion to prevent it entirely. But that wasn't his only option.
Matthew had been experimenting with more creative approaches. Last month, he'd "accidentally" bumped into one of his father's detectives at a community event, mentioning how he'd heard some older kids talking about cars being broken into on Fleet Street—information he'd actually gathered during his nightly listening sessions. The resulting police presence had disrupted a chop shop operation without anyone questioning how a blind child had come by such specific intelligence.
He was learning to leverage his unique position as the commissioner's son. People underestimated him because of his blindness and age. Not so different from his past life.
They spoke freely around him, never imagining he could be the source of leaks. Even his father's colleagues had begun to see him as a good luck charm of sorts—the commissioner's son who occasionally made innocent observations that turned out to be surprisingly useful.
To be clear, I didn't overdo it. Too many "coincidences" would eventually raise suspicions. But carefully spaced insights, attributed to childlike intuition or second-hand information, created a secondary channel for his intelligence gathering that complemented The Ghost's more direct approach.
Matthew replaced the phone in its hiding place and returned to the window, extending his senses once more toward the city.
Not for the first time, Matthew wondered if Batman had a similar system. The vigilante couldn't be everywhere at once. Did he also sit somewhere, listening to the city, deciding which battles to fight directly and which to handle through other means?
A siren wailed in the distance—not police, but an ambulance. Matthew tracked its progress through the streets, piecing together the situation from fragments of radio chatter and the vehicle's route. A stabbing in Park Row. Victim in critical condition. Suspect fled on foot.
Too late to prevent, but perhaps not too late for justice. Matthew committed the details to memory, planning to include them in tomorrow's anonymous tip about the drug deal happening six blocks from the stabbing location. The responding officers would be conveniently close to where witnesses had seen the stabbing suspect hiding.
For now, though, it was time to rest. He had a math test in the morning, after all.