Sophia paused, her head turning toward the sound. More screams followed, dozens of people, hundreds, a rising chorus of terror that wasn't normal even for Gotham. Through the alley opening, Roman could see people running, fleeing from something, their faces showing absolute panic.
Other people weren't running. They were attacking each other, tearing into friends and family with animalistic fury, or desperately trying to harm themselves, clawing at their own faces, trying to bash their heads against walls, doing anything to escape something that only they could see.
"What the hell—" Butch started.
The pyrokinetic and healer mobsters moved toward the street to investigate. They made it maybe ten feet into the street before the pyrokinetic started screaming, raw, primal terror despite nothing visible threatening him. His hands burst into flames involuntarily, his Quirk responding to panic by producing fire that he couldn't control.
He looked at the healer mobster standing nearby, saw something that wasn't there, and unleashed a torrent of fire directly at his colleague.
The healer's screams were brief, cut off as superheated flames consumed him completely. Then the pyrokinetic kept running, fleeing into the street and the chaos beyond, leaving only ash and the smell of burned flesh.
"We're leaving NOW!" Butch grabbed Sophia's arm, physically pulling her toward the car. "Whatever the fuck is happening out there, we're not staying to find out!"
They ran, Sophia stumbling in her expensive shoes before yanking them off and sprinting barefoot. The car engine roared to life, tires squealing as they abandoned the alley and Roman with it.
Roman sat alone, bound to the chair, the mask fused to his face, consciousness fading in and out from the trauma of the procedure. His Predator Sense was useless, overwhelmed by too many threats, unable to distinguish real danger from hallucination in the chaos surrounding him.
He saw a figure through blurred vision, tall, wearing a mask and dark clothing, moving through the street calm and unbothered while people died around him in dozens of ways.
Black.
Consciousness faded.
When his vision returned, the masked figure was closer, entering the alley, stepping over debris with careful precision.
Black.
The figure was standing directly in front of him now, looking down at Roman with a tilted head. with empty eyes that revealed nothing human.
Black.
When Roman's consciousness returned again, the figure was crouched right in front of him, those empty eyes staring directly into Roman's.
The figure studied Roman's fused mask for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was distorted but calm, completely at odds with the screaming horror happening just beyond the alley.
"Nice mask."
the figure said, his distorted voice carrying something that might have been genuine appreciation.
Black.
When Roman's vision returned, the scene had changed impossibly. The alley was gone. He was somewhere else, somewhere that couldn't exist anymore because it had burned years ago.
The Sionis Manor.
Roman's childhood home stood before him in all its grotesque grandeur, three stories of Gothic architecture that spoke of old money and established power, the kind of wealth that came from generations of partnership with Wayne Industries. The Sionis family had been integral to Gotham's industrial development for centuries, their name as respected as Wayne or Kane or Elliott.
Young Roman stood in the grand foyer, watching his family move through their evening routines with the casual confidence of people who'd never known real hardship.
His father, Marcus Sionis, sat in the piano room, playing with technical perfection but no soul. He was a cold man, demanding excellence from his children while providing nothing but criticism and disappointment. His mother, Constance, moved through the halls with practiced elegance, Roman's older brothers, Marcus Jr. and Vincent, eighteen and sixteen, occupied the basement game room, arguing about something trivial. They'd always looked down on Roman, viewed him as the disappointing middle child whose Quirk was "useless" for anything except paranoid anxiety. His younger sisters, Catherine and Elena, nine and seven, played upstairs in their shared room, their laughter carrying through the manor's expensive acoustics, the only genuine happiness in a house otherwise filled with cold ambition and hollow achievement.
Roman had loved them despite everything. His family was terrible in many ways, but they were his family.
Then came the fire.
Roman's Quirk had screamed warnings before anyone else noticed. Smoke rising from the basement, heat building in the walls, danger spreading faster than natural fire should move. His Quirk showed him exactly how bad it would get before the entire structure became an inferno.
"FIRE!" Roman had screamed, running through the halls, trying to alert everyone. "THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE! WE NEED TO GET OUT!"
His mother appeared from her room, saw the smoke beginning to fill the hallway, and actually moved, rare urgency breaking through her usual detached elegance. She began to run toward the sisters' room upstairs, calling their names.
"EVERYONE GET OUT!" Roman screamed again, his twelve-year-old voice breaking with panic and terror. His Quirk made it worse by showing him exactly how each person could die if they didn't move now.
The brothers' voices came from the basement, screaming, pounding on the blocked door, begging for help that couldn't reach them. Roman heard Marcus Jr.'s voice crack from confident arrogance to pure animal terror as he realized he was trapped. Heard Vincent's screams take on a quality that would haunt Roman forever, the sound of someone burning alive.
Roman ran toward the stairs up, thinking maybe he could reach his mother and sisters, get them out somehow. Then the ceiling collapsed.
His mother's burning body fell through the weakened floor, crashed down in front of Roman on the landing, still burning so hot her skin looked as if it was melting off the bones, her expensive dress turned to ash, her skin charring and cracking. Roman stood frozen, twelve years old, watching his mother die a few feet away while his Quirk screamed that he needed to move, needed to run, needed to escape now or he'd burn too.
Behind him, upstairs, he heard his sisters screaming. They were trapped in their room, the hallway collapse preventing any escape route. Catherine's voice—"ROMAN! ROMAN PLEASE HELP US!"—cut through the roar of flames like a knife.
And Roman ran away.
Not toward them, away. Because his Quirk told him with absolute certainty that going toward his sisters meant dying with them, that there was no way to save them, that the only choice was to flee or burn.
He ran through the ground floor, past the piano room where his father still sat, still playing mechanically like the house wasn't burning around him. Marcus Sr. had broken somewhere inside, his mind unable to process the catastrophe, retreating into music while flames consumed everything he'd built.
"Dad!" Roman screamed. "DAD, WE HAVE TO GO!"
His father didn't look up, didn't acknowledge him, just kept playing as fire reached the piano room's entrance. Roman's Quirk showed him exactly when the flames would reach his father, showing him the man had maybe ten seconds before burning alive.
Roman grabbed his father's arm, tried to pull him away from the piano. Marcus Sr. finally looked at him—not with fear or urgency, but with the same cold disappointment he'd always shown Roman.
Then Marcus Sr. returned to playing as flames entered the room.
Roman's Predator Sense overrode everything else—DANGER DANGER DANGER RUN RUN RUN—and he obeyed, fleeing through the mansion's kitchen toward the back exit. Behind him, he heard his father's playing stop mid-phrase, replaced by screaming that lasted exactly four seconds before cutting off.
The kitchen's back door led to a balcony overlooking the cliffs and ocean below with gothams many islands in the distance.
He jumped.
The fall into the freezing Gotham harbor waters below was twenty-five feet, he hit the water, went under, fought his way back to the surface, and swam toward the rocks. Behind him, the Sionis Manor burned like a funeral pyre, silhouetted against the night sky, consuming everything he'd ever known.
Roman pulled himself onto the rocky shore and collapsed, twelve years old, soaking wet, listening to the distant sounds of his family dying by fire. His brothers' screams had stopped. His sisters' voices were gone. His mother was definitely dead, he'd seen her body. His father hadn't run.
And Roman had survived by abandoning them all.
Present - The Alley
All of this crashed back into Roman's consciousness with the force of psychotic break. His family materialized around him in the alley, their bodies burning, melting, charring into skeletal forms that still moved and spoke.
Marcus Jr. and Vincent emerged from the shadows, their flesh blackened and peeling, their eyes melted from the sockets. "You left us to burn," they said in unison, their voices distorted by destroyed throats. "You heard us screaming and you ran away."
Catherine and Elena appeared next, their small bodies wrapped in flames that never consumed them completely, keeping them in perpetual agony. "You promised you'd protect us," Catherine said, her child's voice somehow making the accusation worse. "You said you'd always keep us safe. You lied."
His mother crawled toward him, her burning body leaving trails of ash and and melting skin, her face mostly gone. "I loved you," Constance's corpse whispered.
His father stood behind all of them, still seated at an impossible piano that had appeared in the alley, playing the piano with hands that were nothing but bone. "Useless," Marcus Sr. said, the word echoing. "You only saved yourself."
And in the center of this nightmare, standing completely still and untouched by the hallucinated flames, was the masked man. Emotionless, and observing, Roman's complete psychological destruction.
His family's corpses closed in, their accusations building into a chorus of condemnation that Roman had been running from for years.
You let us die.
You saved yourself.
You were always useless.
We died screaming your name.
You abandoned us.
Roman's consciousness tried to fracture, tried to break completely to escape the guilt and horror. His mind attempted to shut down, to retreat into catatonia or madness like every other person in this neighborhood did.
But his Predator Sense wouldn't let him.
His Quirk kept him aware, kept him conscious, forced him to experience every second of the nightmare because that's what it did, kept him alert to threats even when unconsciousness would be mercy.
The nightmare continued for almost an hour.
His family tortured him, and the flames never stopped burning.
The masked man never moved, just watched Roman suffer through the worst night of his life replayed and amplified a thousand times.
He couldn't escape into madness because his Quirk wouldn't allow it.
He could only suffer.
And suffer.
And suffer.
Until finally, mercifully, his consciousness gave out from total mental exhaustian.
Crane's Wings Underground Facility - Medical Bay - 7:42 AM
William stood over the unconscious man with the fused black mask, his surgical tools ready, examining the bonding work with professional interest. The mask had been integrated remarkably well, whoever had done this knew what they were doing, using fire and healing Quirks in precise coordination to make removal essentially impossible without killing the patient.
"Why did you even bring him here?" William asked, glancing at Suguro who stood nearby reviewing data on his tablet. "He's not one of ours. He's just some criminal who got caught in your field test."
Silver stood by the door, her skull-patterned face showing curiosity. She'd been present when Crane's team had retrieved the man from the alley, and had helped load him into their transport. "The boss doesn't usually waste resources on random people. So why this one?"
Suguro looked up from his tablet, his expression showing something that might have been clinical fascination.
"Because this man lasted longer under maximum exposure to Strain Epsilon than anyone I've ever tested. The concentration in that deployment zone was enough to drive normal subjects catatonic or completely insane within seconds. This man endured for over an hour and didn't go insane."