The machines kept their rhythm.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Maria stood motionless beside the bed, her husband's labored breathing syncing with the rise and fall of the monitor. The bruising along his jaw had deepened to an ugly purple. One arm lay immobilized. Bandages wrapped his head like a crown he hadn't asked to wear.
In her right hand, the photographs trembled once—just once—before she steadied them.
Her left hand slowly curled inward.
Not shaking.
Not weak.
Tight.
Paper crinkled softly as her grip hardened, knuckles whitening, anger compressing into something controlled and lethal. No tears fell. No breath hitched. Grief could wait.
She could not show weakness.
The door opened behind her.
She didn't turn.
The man who entered wasn't hospital staff. No badge. No scrubs. Dark suit, broad shoulders, posture alert but disciplined.
"Ma'am," he said quietly.
Maria's eyes never left her husband. "I want security doubled."
A beat.
"No," she corrected herself. "Tripled. Rotations every six hours. No one enters this floor without clearance from me personally. Not even physicians."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And I want background checks rerun on every nurse, every orderly, every technician who has stepped foot in this room."
"Understood."
Only then did she move.
She set the photos down carefully on the bedside table, smoothing them as though they were harmless. As though they hadn't just rewritten the rules of her world.
She turned toward the door.
Her phone rang.
The sound cut through the sterile quiet like a blade.
Maria stopped mid-step.
For a fraction of a second, something ancient and instinctive whispered that this was not coincidence.
She looked down at the screen.
Jacob Kane.
Her eyes narrowed.
Then—effortlessly—her expression shifted. The anger disappeared. The tension dissolved. By the time she lifted the phone to her ear, her face was composed, pleasant, almost warm.
"Jacob," she answered smoothly. "What a surprise."
Her gaze drifted back toward the bed, toward the photos, toward the confirmation she didn't need but now possessed.
More sure than ever.
This was Kane's doing.
And if he thought she would fold, he didn't know her at all.
***
Nolan sat at a metal table in one of the lower rooms, far removed from the comfort of his usual office. He had chosen it deliberately. The chair was stiff. The surface cold beneath his forearms. The overhead light hummed faintly. It kept him awake in a way polished wood and dim lamps never could.
He needed the discomfort.
There was something strangely difficult about this kind of work. Not the violent kind. Not the strategic maneuvering. Just… maintenance. Administration. The scaffolding that kept everything from collapsing.
A tablet glowed in front of him. Three thick folders sat open beside it, pages marked with tabs and handwritten notes. Numbers. Names. Routes. Inventory counts.
He tapped through a spreadsheet first, cross-referencing what had come in from the docks two nights ago. Ammunition totals. Weapon conditions. Crates redistributed to Narrows and South Tracks. He adjusted figures when they didn't match Terrell's latest report, making a quiet note to ask about a missing shipment that was off by three units. Not enough to panic over. Enough to notice.
One of the folders held vehicle logs. Two vans needed suspension work after being overloaded. A third had been flagged because its plates had appeared twice on traffic cameras too close together. He marked it for stripping. No risk tolerance for laziness.
He moved methodically, entering corrections, verifying allocations. Dre's teams had requested upgraded optics for rooftop overwatch. Reasonable—but he limited the quantity. Scarcity encouraged care. Naima's fallback routes required reinforcement after a police sweep clipped one of her runners. He reassigned manpower, shifting two underused crews into her sector.
It wasn't glamorous.
It was survival.
He turned to the alliance file.
Jade Leopards. Dockyard Dogs.
The calendar notification blinked quietly in the corner of the tablet: joint meeting—three nights.
Nolan opened a blank page and began structuring the conversation in his head, fingers moving across the screen as he shaped it into something controlled.
He would let the Dockyard Dogs speak first—give them the illusion of dominance. The Leopards would observe. They always observed. He would clarify dock boundaries before either group could contest them publicly. Reinforce shared supply corridors. Float the idea of limited intelligence exchange without revealing anything real.
He adjusted seating in his mind. Who faced whom. Who felt cornered. Who felt respected.
He wrote until the outline stopped feeling loose and started feeling inevitable.
His phone buzzed against the table.
He didn't look up immediately. He finished the line he was typing, then reached for it.
"Go."
Marcy's voice was calm on the other end. "Private hospital wing just locked down. Maria ordered triple security. Full clearance protocols. Even the attending staff are being re-vetted."
Nolan leaned back slowly in the rigid chair.
"Triple?" he asked.
"Yes."
A brief silence.
Then he exhaled through his nose.
"Thanks for the update."
He ended the call and set the phone down gently.
For a moment he stared at nothing.
She had seen them.
The photographs hadn't been intercepted. They hadn't been dismissed. They had landed exactly where they were meant to.
He pictured her beside that hospital bed—angry, controlled, calculating. Not grieving. Not breaking.
Good.
Fear made people defensive.
Anger made them reckless.
Nolan allowed himself a small smile, the kind that never reached his eyes.
He didn't think it would work so seamlessly but, he needed her to doubt Kane and now she was.
He returned to the tablet and added a quiet note to his alliance outline—prepare for instability among old families. Watch for movement.
Then he went back to the numbers, the cold metal grounding him as he continued the unglamorous work that made everything else possible.
***
Rain misted lightly over Gotham General's private wing, turning the rooftop ledge into a sheet of black glass.
Batman didn't move.
The cape hung still against the windbreakers and ventilation units, barely stirring as he stood at the edge, eyes fixed on the building across the narrow gap. The hospital windows glowed sterile white against the night.
On his wrist, a compact screen flickered through feeds he had already looped three times.
The crash replayed in silence.
Frame by frame.
The truck appeared from the side street too cleanly. No hesitation. No brake flare before impact. The horn blaring wasn't panic—it was commitment. The reinforced sedan took the hit and rolled exactly as physics demanded, metal folding inward as it spun.
Batman slowed the footage further.
The truck driver's door creaked open.
The man stumbled out.
He hunched slightly, movements loose, almost sloppy. One hand braced against the side mirror before he pushed off and began hobbling away from the wreck as if dazed. As if drunk.
Batman zoomed in.
The man's face lifted just enough.
He froze the frame.
Ran it through facial recognition.
Nothing.
No DMV hit. No prior arrests. No scraped social media. No hospital records. A ghost in a city that documented everything.
Batman's eyes narrowed beneath the cowl.
The footage shifted.
Now the hospital interior.
Private wing corridor. Restricted access. He had piggybacked onto the internal security network minutes after the lockdown went into effect.
Mr. Powers lay unconscious in the bed, machines keeping rhythm.
The feed glitched.
A flicker.
Static bled across the screen for less than a second.
When the image stabilized, there were photographs on the bedside table.
Face down.
They hadn't been there before.
Batman rewound.
Paused.
Advanced frame by frame.
Nothing. No one entering. No shadow crossing the lens. Just a brief blackout and then—evidence.
Minutes later, Maria Powers entered the room.
He watched her posture first.
Controlled. Rigid.
She stood over her husband, then noticed the photographs. Picked them up.
Even from the muted feed, he could see the moment she froze.
Batman zoomed in, isolating the stack as she lifted them. The angle wasn't clean enough to read, but he could make out silhouettes.
Two figures at a lounge entrance.
He enhanced contrast. Cropped the frame. Saved the segment for deeper processing later.
Kieran Everleigh.
The name surfaced automatically in his thoughts.
Batman lowered his wrist slightly, gaze shifting from the screen to the hospital window beyond. Behind that glass was a man tied—whether he liked it or not—to Gotham's oldest secret.
The Court had moved.
Or someone wanted it to look that way.
The truck driver had no identity. The hospital footage had a surgical glitch. The photographs appeared out of nowhere in a secure wing.
Whoever did this was sending a message that even the powers family still touchable.
For now, he would wait.
Mr. Powers would wake up.
And when he did, Batman would be there to ask him about the Court of Owls.
One way or another.