The alien pod no longer glowed.
Its surface, once pulsing with strange color, had cooled to a dull grey. No sound came from it. No movement. Just a scorched shell that had fallen from the stars and landed silently in the arms of fate.
Thomas Wayne didn't trust it, but he didn't fear it either. The pod had brought them a boy — not a weapon, not a monster, but a child. That made it sacred, in a strange way. Yet, still, it had to be hidden. The world was not ready to ask questions it couldn't answer.
He had it dismantled and secured without drawing attention. Pieces were discreetly transported back to Gotham, concealed within Wayne Foundation supply crates. Only Thomas, Martha, and Alfred knew where it ended up — buried deep beneath Wayne Manor, inside an old stone vault untouched since the colonial era. It was a place not even Lucius Fox had clearance to see.
The vault was sealed tight with biometric locks. Martha draped a plain cloth over the strange vessel before they closed it away. It was no longer a machine. It was a memory — one they weren't ready to face again.
Ojaga never asked about the pod. He didn't look for it, didn't crawl toward the cellar doors, and never showed any desire to see what had brought him to this world. It was as if something inside him had made peace with that chapter the moment it closed. He was present now. And that was all he accepted.
He grew fast — not unnaturally, but steadily. Strong bones, sharp awareness, and quiet eyes that watched more than they interacted. He was still crawling, though faster than any child Thomas had seen. He pulled himself up with ease, balanced on furniture, and sometimes leapt short distances as if his body already understood how gravity should bend. But he never walked outright, not yet. His development remained within human pace — just at the edge of it.
What caught their attention most was his speech. He didn't cry, didn't shout. Instead, he murmured words that felt half-formed, pieces of language that didn't belong to any tongue spoken on Earth. The syllables he used were melodic but wrong, familiar in rhythm but foreign in meaning. Sometimes, his voice drifted like chanting. At other times, he'd sit in silence for long minutes, then suddenly say a word — usually near a fire, or in dim light, or in the presence of stone.
One evening, while Martha was warming a bottle beside the fireplace, Ojaga crawled up behind her and pointed at the flame. He whispered something with weight behind it. The word itself was unclear, but its meaning wasn't. He wasn't mimicking. He was naming.
Even without walking or speaking in full sentences, there was a sense of thought behind his actions. He observed everything — Bruce's breathing, Alfred's footsteps, the way shadows moved across the hallway. He wasn't reacting. He was absorbing.
Three months after Ojaga arrived in their lives, Bruce Wayne was born.
It was a cold, rainy morning when Martha went into labor. At Gotham General, Thomas stood at her side through every moment. When Bruce finally entered the world, pink and crying, Martha held him close with tears in her eyes. Ojaga was there, not quite two years old, but quiet and alert as always. When he looked at the newborn, there was no curiosity. Only calm.
He stepped close, placed a hand on Bruce's forehead, and stared for a moment longer than expected. The crying stopped.
Ojaga returned to his corner and sat down with his tail curled around his waist, saying nothing.
The Manor changed after that. Two cribs now filled the nursery. One for a boy destined to inherit Gotham. One for a boy with no past, only a pod buried in silence.
Ojaga's needs were different. He ate more — much more — and rarely seemed satisfied. He preferred grilled meat over soft food. He ignored sweets completely, but gnawed on cooked bones with slow focus. Alfred, while disturbed at first, learned to keep plates stocked with roasted lamb or beef ribs. It kept the boy calm.
Unlike Bruce, Ojaga rarely made noise. But he hummed — low, reverberating tones that almost felt like a pulse. These hums happened near warmth, especially fireplaces or the old stone walls in the east wing. It wasn't music. It was like remembering a sound from another world.
One afternoon, Thomas left a smooth glass sphere on the study table — a child's reflex toy. Bruce was asleep nearby. Ojaga crawled over to it, placed his palm on it, and pushed it slightly. The sphere rolled toward the table's edge, just about to fall, when his hand snapped forward and caught it. No hesitation. No wasted motion. Just pure instinct.
He placed the sphere back in its exact spot, then turned and crawled away.
That night, Thomas wrote a private journal entry. He noted that Ojaga was not displaying signs of advanced aging, but something else. He was learning through silence. He moved like someone who had already moved before. A warrior with no battlefield.
Weeks passed. Spring gave way to early summer. Bruce continued to grow into a playful, curious infant. Ojaga remained still, rarely smiling, but often found by windows watching the sunrise. He liked the light, but not the brightness. He sat near the glass, letting it fall across his skin, while his tail flicked slowly like a flame adjusting to wind.
Martha began to see a bond forming between the brothers. Ojaga wasn't loud, or playful like most toddlers. But he watched Bruce, and stayed near him. When Bruce cried in the night, Ojaga would sometimes reach through the bars of his crib and grip Bruce's fingers, calming him without a sound.
One evening, Martha walked in to find the two holding hands across their cribs. Ojaga whispered something she couldn't understand. The syllables were soft, but deliberate. Then he looked at her and smiled. Just a small one. But it lingered.
That was the first time she saw joy in him. Not wonder, not survival — but joy. It was a beginning.
And deep beneath the Manor, behind stone and lock, the pod remained in silence — waiting.