The city was quieter than usual. The kind of quiet that came before storms. Nate stood before the large screen in his underground base, the soft blue light washing over his face. His reflection stared back, fractured between windows of data.
He had spent three nights tracing a name that refused to exist. Midland Circle Financial.
A company too clean, too perfect.
Yet every traceable pattern, every hidden transaction he uncovered, led back to it.
He leaned forward slightly, hands braced on the console. Numbers ran down one column, each linked to unregistered warehouses, dummy trade routes, and encrypted fund movements. The amount of precision involved was surgical. Too refined for common criminals.
He focused, eyes narrowing. His breathing slowed. Chakra pulsed faintly through his veins, guiding concentration. The flow calmed the static in his mind. He could see data not as noise, but as rhythm. Every inconsistency is like an offbeat note.
Two accounts are repeated across different shells. Same timestamps. Same origin delay. Hidden behind layered proxies. One mistake repeated twice. That was no coincidence. That was human error.
He decrypted one of them. A single transaction.
Payment routed to an unlisted courier operating near the Hudson docks.
He sat back. The city map reconfigured on the main screen, a red pulse lighting up near Pier 47.
It was time.
...
Hours later, rain covered the night in silver streaks. Batman moved across the rooftops with silent precision. The armor flexed smoothly with each motion, the reinforced cape catching the air like a whisper. His eyes glowed faintly white under the mask, scanning the ground below.
The docks stretched out in darkness, illuminated only by dim security lights. A van idled near a warehouse door. Four men stood around it, one smoking, another pacing, the other two loading sealed crates.
Batman crouched on a container's edge, his senses stretching beyond sight. Chakra flowed through his body, enhancing hearing, scent, and focus. He could hear faint radio chatter. Static followed by a voice.
"…shipment leaves in fifteen… don't linger."
The voice was distant, transmitted from somewhere inland. Whoever gave orders did not want to be seen.
He descended quietly, landing on the roof above the van. The sound was softer than rainfall. From his belt, he withdrew a small circular device and pressed it against the vent. The miniature acoustic sensor activated with a faint hum, triangulating sound through the warehouse walls.
Inside, more voices. Six. Maybe seven. One near a crate stacked against the far corner. One typing. One pacing. The rest guarding exits.
Batman's hand moved to his belt again. He activated the EMP disruptor. A pulse spread across the dock. The lights flickered, then died. The hum of the van sputtered out. Confusion rippled immediately.
"What the hell happened to power?"
"Check the generator!"
"Someone outside? Move it!"
Their voices bounced in the dark, disoriented.
Batman was already moving.
He dropped silently behind the first man, wrapped an arm around his neck, and drove two quick strikes into his ribs. The man gasped once before collapsing. Batman caught him mid-fall, lowering him quietly.
The second spun, pistol raised.
Batman's hand snapped forward. The Batarang struck the weapon cleanly, splitting its barrel.
He lunged, sweeping low. His knee hit the man's thigh, buckling it, and a gauntleted fist crushed his jaw before he hit the floor.
Another guard opened the van door. A flash grenade rolled under his feet.
White light flared, followed by silence. When his vision returned, Batman was standing in front of him. The man barely had time to breathe before a gauntlet struck his solar plexus. The hit was precise, chakra-reinforced, and enough to knock him out cold without permanent damage.
...
Inside the warehouse, voices rose in panic. A flashlight beam swept across the darkness. Batman watched from above, crouched along the rafters. The faint hum of chakra steadied his balance as he measured the distance between beams. Every movement was controlled, every breath precise.
Below, three men were gathered around a crate marked with a black fingerprint symbol. Finger's mark.
The first man shifted uneasily, flashlight trembling as he examined the crates. Batman dropped soundlessly behind him. A sharp strike to the neck cut his words short, the body collapsing without a sound.
The second turned at the thud, eyes widening. Before he could shout, a Batarang struck his wrist, sending the gun spinning away. Batman landed a split second later, his knee driving into the man's ribs. A second blow to the temple ended it.
The third man froze, flashlight still in hand. He tried to run for the rear exit, but a grappling line shot past his shoulder, coiling around his torso. In one swift pull, Batman dragged him backward, slamming him against the wall. The flashlight shattered on impact, scattering shards across the floor.
Batman lifted him slightly, pressing two fingers to his carotid artery. The man gasped, eyes darting up into the pale glow of the cowl. The silence that followed was heavy, and every instinct in the thug's body screamed that speaking was the only way to survive.
"What's inside the crates?"
The man spat blood. "Deliveries. Just deliveries. We don't ask what's in them."
A faint chakra pulse flowed from Batman's fingertips, syncing with the man's heartbeat. Every lie caused a flicker, an instinctive tell.
"You're lying."
The man froze, panic breaking through his composure. "I don't know who runs it. They pay through dead accounts. We move boxes, that's all."
"What's inside?"
"I... I swear, I didn't look."
Batman tightened his grip, tilting the man's head slightly until vertebrae popped. "Then start remembering."
"Chemicals," the man stammered finally. "Refined ones. High-grade. The kind used in labs. That's all I know."
Batman released him, letting the body slump unconscious. He moved to the crates, pulling one open with the Batclaw. Inside were glass canisters lined with foam. Liquid shimmered faintly under the dim emergency light. He held one up. The viscosity and the hue were familiar.
Experimental compounds. The kind designed for weapon enhancement or biological modification.
Finger was not selling drugs. He was building something.
Batman photographed the canisters, running a chemical scan through his wrist computer. The display flickered. Unknown compound. Possibly synthesized from neuro-reactive bases. No match in existing databases.
He stored the data and turned toward the central desk. Papers, invoices, and coded ledgers were scattered across it.
He skimmed the top sheet. All blank shipping manifests. Each marked with the same signature: M.C.F.
Midland Circle Financial.
He activated a micro-scanner, letting the light sweep across the paper. Faint heat patterns emerged where ink had been erased. Coordinates. He memorized them. Upstate.
The moment the coordinates registered, his sensors detected movement.
A faint hiss from behind. Air displacement.
He pivoted sharply. A blade sliced through the air where he had stood.
The attacker landed silently, face hidden behind a black cloth mask. Movements are efficient, trained. Not a common thug.
Batman caught the next strike on his gauntlet, sparks scattering. The assassin twisted, blade reversing for a low cut. Batman shifted, caught the wrist, and slammed an elbow into the ribs. The impact made the man grunt, but not break.
The assassin countered fast, drawing a smaller blade with his free hand. Batman deflected it with his forearm, the edge sliding against the reinforced weave of his armor. He could feel the force. Measured, precise.
Another trained killer. Another ghost from Finger's circle.
Chakra surged through Batman's arms as he redirected the next blow. His grip locked around the assassin's wrist. With a twist and downward push, he dislocated the shoulder. The blade clattered away.
Batman pressed the man's back to the wall. "Finger. Where is he?"
The assassin did not answer. His eyes flickered once, then rolled back slightly. A faint foam gathered at his lips. Cyanide.
Batman pulled him away from the wall and checked his pulse. Too late. The body went limp in his arms.
He laid the corpse down carefully, expression unreadable. His gaze dropped to the assassin's gloves. One corner of the fabric bore a faint embroidered mark. A symbol resembling a spiral with a line through it.
He took a photo. Another pattern for the database.
Batman turned back toward the desk. The flicker of light from his gauntlet illuminated the melted remnants of a small metallic cylinder near the floor. A booby trap. He had triggered it earlier without realizing. It had failed to detonate.
He crouched and inspected it, chakra focusing through his fingertips. The heat residue still radiated faintly.
Too stable for standard explosives. More like a signal device.
He activated a micro-analyzer. The cylinder pulsed once, faintly, before the internal circuits burned out completely. The last reading before failure displayed one word: transmit.
Finger's men were not guarding the cargo. They were guarding information. Someone knew this warehouse was compromised the moment Batman stepped inside.
He looked up at the security camera in the far corner. It had no power, no light, no feed. Still, he stared at it a long time. The instinct said otherwise.
...
When the police finally arrived, they found nothing but tied men and sealed evidence. The crates were intact, the van abandoned. No sign of who had done it.
Batman was already gone.
Back in the base, Nate pulled off the cowl, setting it down beside the console. Sweat traced down his jawline as he replayed the footage captured from his cowl's internal recorder. Each movement, each sound analyzed. Every kill switch, every reaction speed catalogued for next time.
He switched to the chemical sample data. No match anywhere, not even in military-grade archives.
He leaned back, brow furrowed. Whatever Finger was building, it was not for profit. It was for precision.
He focused chakra again, letting the pulse slow his thoughts. When his breathing aligned with the subtle rhythm of the energy, the static of exhaustion faded. Ideas sharpened.
He mapped out the coordinates from the erased manifest onto a new grid overlay. The point appeared somewhere north of the city, near an abandoned textile facility. The same location that his previous informant had mentioned.
He stared at it, jaw tightening. The pattern was too deliberate. Every clue was leading him to the same place. That meant it was either the center of the operation or a trap.
A low chime broke the silence.
An incoming message from one of his encrypted surveillance lines. The trace originated near Queens. Unusual network traffic. A high-level signal burst from a source near the upcoming Stark Expo construction site.
He frowned slightly. Two separate trails. Finger's coordinates upstate, and a new signal emerging from Queens.
He rubbed a hand across his jaw, eyes flicking between the two maps.
If the first was a trap, the second might be bait. But which was meant for him?