The tunnel smelled of solder and wet iron, but the deadcars beyond the platform hummed with a new kind of life: low electric buzz from space heaters, a chorus of soft voices, the clink of metal as people made beds and set kettles. He let Naima take the lead watched her move through the yard the way a general reads terrain.
She fanned her squads outward with economy and speed. Two women took the nearest platform and seeded lookouts in the doorways of the first broken coach; they tucked their rifles under blankets like something shameful and then sat, smiling with fake ease at anyone who passed. Another pair threaded through the maintenance walkways and checked bolts, places where a loose rail or a cut cable might be used against them. Naima's hand signs were small and sharp; her voice over the mic was minimal but critical to the moral and mental stability of her unit.
Marcy's ten moved like a second shadow oh you could feel the angst inside them. They set trip lines at choke points beneath the overhead spaces; an old tin can and a length of wire, nothing dramatic, but tuned so anything heavier than a rat would set it off. They pulled the jamming unit into a small crate, hid it behind an overturned locker, and ran a lead into the relay with the care of men who'd learned to love what little worked. A veteran with a white scar across her knuckle wired a mirror feed into the main line so any outsider sniffing the node would be watching a harmless loop of idle screens while the real signals scrolled elsewhere.
Naima herself did the small, brutal business: assigning shifts, choosing who watched what, who moved the non combatants into the coach closest to the platform where the heaters were strongest. She barked at one of the runners who'd arrive with a rusted thermos full of soup and sent two fighters to reverse-run the alleyways to test for loose eyes. "Check the docks routes," she said low. "If Odessa smells this, we'll know first." Her hands never stopped; she stamped maps into the heads of her people with a few clipped gestures.
Vey walked the perimeter as they consolidated. He crouched and checked the jammer's, listening to the faint static through headphones until the humming felt right to his bones. He tested one of the trip-lines himself—saw how a boot would snag, how a heavier man would bob the can and send a metallic chime then altered the tension, made it quieter for small animals and a crueler bite for a human.
A child came out of a coach with a blanket too small for his shoulders and watched Vey with an unblinking stare. Vey crouched, thumbed the child's chin back, and handed him a tin cup. The kid's toothless smile was a small currency in a world of ruin; Vey let the smile sit in his chest for a breath and then folded it away. There were faces he could not let be softened by charity if he wanted them kept alive.
There weren't many children in the rails but the ones that were understood the harshness of Gotham.
'We need to do something about that.' Nolan said his voice was soft as a whisper, 'We have the means,'
'Agreed.' They all chimed inside his head
Around him, whispers of the city filtered through the vents the distant siren cadence, a dog barking like a bad omen, a loose radio somewhere spitting static. Naima moved like a knife through all those sounds, placing people where gaps might show up. She clipped a small book into a lieutenant's belt, old ledger pages with names and routes to be memorized. "If they come, they find us ready," she muttered.
When the heaters were humming in the coaches and the first shift of lookouts had settled into a bored cadence, Vey felt the knot in his chest unknot just a fraction. He walked the last stretch down the platform, slow, scanning the dark water for movement, hand on the small knife at his hip. Naima was on the third coach, speaking softly to a battered woman who'd offered up a blanket and a name for a missing kid. They both looked up when Vey stepped into the light.
"You good?" Naima asked, voice low.
"As good as it gets," he answered. He tapped the jammer once with a knuckle, the sound thudding against his palm then disappearing into the hum.
She met his eyes barely, respectful and direct. "If Odessa comes, we burn their trucks and smear their routes. If Triad probes, we let them bruise and then choke them for it. This one's ours tonight." Her hand went to her rifle in a nest of motion that made no show of ceremony; it was simply readiness.
He nodded, and for a long beat neither of them spoke. Around them people moved to the rhythm they'd set: a kettle, a whispered joke, a soldier counting rounds under his breath. The node was held; the lines between the deadcars and their new keepers were sealed with simple mechanics and grim kindness.
Vey had stayed on purpose. He wanted to see the first hour where the plan didn't fall apart—where exhaustion or a lucky enemy bullet didn't undo the work. He watched Naima thread her people like beads along the tracks, watched the way she folded a frightened man into the group until he looked like he belonged.
When the first faint sign of dawn brushed the tunnel's mouth and the city's edge warmed from ink to iron, Vey stepped back to the maintenance hatch. The relief teams were in place: watch rotations logged into a notebook, med teams waving to indicate readiness, Marcy's ten already walking the boundaries with that casual, dangerous air of veterans. No one left exposed. No one greedily flaunting the prize.
He put his hand on the hatch rim, feeling the cold metal, feeling the small pulse of power through the relay next door. The vials had left him a residue, an aftertaste of panic and clarity both—and he felt that residue like a knot, useful and ugly.
Quietly, without a fuss, he slipped through the hatch and drew it shut behind him. The tunnel swallowed his footsteps. For a moment he stood in the dark maintenance crawl, listening to the yaw of the powered deadcars, to Naima's low orders drifting down the line like a tide. Then he moved away slow, deliberate because leaders who stayed at the front too long were easy marks and because there were other things that needed to be done.
A child's face flashed in his mind, yes plenty of other things.
***
The penthouse was silent but for the scratch of pen on paper. Nolan sat at the wide desk near the window, city lights twinkling in the glass as if Gotham itself were watching him work. He wrote slow, deliberate, his letters neat enough to look mechanical notes that weren't just for record, but for thought itself.
Entry:
High emotional state appears necessary for activation.
Trigger: heightened stress, anger, or desperation produces colored auras around subjects. Current methodology is the usage of fear gas.
Manipulation: deepening the aura alters the subject's mental stability. Results inconsistent. Hypothesis: aura color corresponds to emotional resonance.
He paused, tapped the pen against the margin. The memory of the node came back—the stench of sweat, the flicker of broken lamps, the terrified eyes of men he'd pulled deeper into the well of their own instability.
Unclear: does manipulation create madness outright, or does it heighten what already exists? In Gotham, baseline mental state is compromised. Cannot separate cause from enhancement with current sample size.
His pen carved the next line harder than he intended.
Tested primarily with darker shades. Result: increased aggression, violence. Possible correlation: darker spectrum = destructive outcomes. Unknown if lighter shades induce stability or alternate states.
He leaned back, staring at the words. The neatness of the page belied the chaos it described.
"Am I missing anything?" he asked softly into the room.
The answer came from inside, not outside.
"Not that we know of," Kieran murmured.
"We've only run this once on purpose," Quentin added, pragmatic, clipped, "A first trial. First real test. We need more data."
Nolan nodded, pen still in hand. "I agree. We need structure. More trials. Controlled subjects. Different colors, different temperaments. Only then…" He let the thought trail into silence, the scratching pen filling in the pause.
When the page was full, he slid the notebook aside. A different set of papers lay waiting. Blueprints, glossy real estate listings, architectural notes clipped together in precise order. The cold methodical lines gave way to something warmer in his chest.
A smile—unpracticed, genuine creased his mouth as he turned one sheet to the light. The image showed a building just two blocks down from the Continental, a tired, neglected mid-rise waiting to be claimed. He traced the outlines with his fingertip like a man stroking the page of a family album.
"What do you think?" he whispered.
His friends weighed the question, " I like it. But liquidating now? Risky. The market's watching. Too much attention, too soon. Our enemies might think it is a storage and raid it."
Another softer, "It's beautiful. But dangerous." Vey spoke
Nolan's smile deepened, tugging his mouth into something almost boyish. "I'm sure we can figure out something. It's for the kids, after all."
He set the blueprint flat, smoothing its edges with care. Beyond the glass, Gotham's skyline gleamed like teeth in the dark, and Nolan sat still, his pen resting on the desk, his eyes full of plans that had nothing to do with money.
Ok maybe a little bit.