The rain carved silent rivers through the alleys of Gotham, washing blood and soot down into its gutters. Somewhere beneath the city, war drums were beating—soft, distant, but growing louder with every second.
Draven moved through the drenched street with Evelyn beside him, each breath clouding in the cold night air. He favored his right side—Pulse had cracked something in his ribs, but adrenaline had carried him this far.
They ducked into an abandoned subway terminal, one of Draven's fallback safe houses. The flickering light bulbs cast dancing shadows over the rusted tiles. Evelyn grabbed a medkit and wordlessly began tending to the bruises on his torso, her hands steady, her eyes hard.
"Pulse is something else," she murmured, taping gauze over the bruises. "That armor wasn't just reinforced—it absorbed kinetic energy."
Draven winced. "He's not just muscle. He's engineered. Someone built him for one thing: control."
"Fracture," she said. "They're not a gang. They're a movement. A machine."
"Which means we need someone who knows how machines think," Draven said quietly.
Evelyn raised an eyebrow. "You have someone in mind?"
Draven didn't respond at first. He reached into a concealed compartment under a loose tile and pulled out a battered holodrive. When he plugged it into the old console, the screen buzzed with static. A single name appeared:
KIRA VALE.
Evelyn's breath caught. "You can't be serious."
"She was one of the original minds behind ArkTech's AI defense protocols," Draven said. "She disappeared five years ago after exposing illegal surveillance ops tied to Blackgate. They labeled her unstable. A threat."
"She vanished because she knew too much," Evelyn murmured. "You think she's still alive?"
"I don't think," Draven replied. "I know where she is."
Two Hours Later – Below the Old City Archives
The deeper they went, the more the city seemed to hum with forgotten energy. Evelyn followed Draven through the twisting, lightless catacombs beneath Gotham's original archive buildings—structures buried and sealed off when the new skyline was built.
"This is where she's been hiding?" Evelyn whispered. "It's like a ghost town."
"Not hiding," Draven said. "Watching."
They passed motion-triggered sensors embedded into walls, silent drones blinking as they recognized Draven's retinal ID. He had been here before. A long time ago. Before the mask. Before he became the city's answer to violence.
A steel door hissed open.
Inside sat a woman wrapped in a faded grey coat, her hair chopped short, streaked with silver. Her eyes were like shards of ice—calculated, always watching.
"Kira," Draven said.
She didn't look up from her workbench. "Draven Cain. Or should I say, Gotham's favorite shade of black."
"You still know who I am," he said.
"I know who everyone is," Kira replied. "Including the ones no one else does."
Evelyn stepped forward, cautiously. "We need your help. Fracture is—"
"Real," Kira interrupted. "Dangerous. And worse than you think."
She stood and activated a holo-projector. Images flickered: blueprints, maps, and terrifying footage. Cities burning. Governments collapsing.
"Fracture isn't just based in Gotham. It's global," Kira said. "But Gotham… Gotham is where they were born. A prototype city for their new world order."
She looked at Draven. "And Pulse? Just the beginning."
Draven clenched his fists. "Then help us stop them."
Kira hesitated. "You realize what you're asking. Once I step out of these shadows, there's no going back."
He nodded. "We've already gone too far."
Kira's eyes narrowed. "Then welcome to the endgame."
Meanwhile — Elsewhere in Gotham
In the shattered remains of an old opera house, Pulse knelt before a shadowed figure perched atop a throne made of scrap iron and broken dreams. Flickering neon painted twisted images along the cracked walls.
"The Knight survived," Pulse growled. "And he's not alone."
The figure leaned forward, and though his face was still shrouded in darkness, his teeth gleamed beneath a painted red grin.
"Oh, I'm counting on it," the figure whispered. "Because chaos… chaos doesn't bloom without resistance."
He tossed a playing card into the fire beside him. It curled in the flames. A Joker.
Back Below the Archives
Kira moved through her underground lair with the precision of a soldier and the mind of a strategist. As she pulled up data feeds, she spoke in fast, clipped phrases.
"Fracture's main operation is split across three nodes in Gotham: ArkTech, the Meritech facility you just hit, and an unknown command hub—something deeply buried. Off-grid. No comms, no surveillance. I call it The Spine."
Draven leaned over the monitors. "You've seen it?"
"No," Kira said. "But I've felt it. They route every encrypted signal through dead air—signals bouncing off static. It's almost… ghost-coded."
"Which means they're hiding something inside the digital infrastructure," Evelyn said.
"Exactly." Kira's eyes gleamed. "Fracture isn't just dismantling the city physically. They're rewriting its foundation. They want to collapse the old systems—government, justice, communication—and replace it all with control rooted in fear."
"And Pulse?" Draven asked.
"An executioner. But not the mind behind it. He's controlled too. Augmented and monitored."
Draven stood straight. "Then we find The Spine, shut down the signal, and end this."
Kira smiled darkly. "Easier said than done. But… I may have a way in."
She stepped aside, revealing a locked containment unit. Inside it was a mask—a fractured digital helm pulsing with light.
"What is it?" Evelyn asked.
"A key," Kira said. "Or a curse. It was taken from one of Fracture's early operatives. It links the mind to their network. Dangerous… but with the right protection, someone could ride that signal back to its origin."
She looked at Draven. "You want to be the Knight? Then ride into hell."