Rain lashed the fractured skyline of Gotham's remains—no, not Gotham—this was a new hell, stitched together by wires, surveillance, and tyranny. Black Hollow loomed like a living scar across the city's spine, and tonight, something was about to break.
Draven stood on the rooftop of the Forsythe building, his cape soaked and clinging to him like a second skin. Evelyn was by his side, silent, her eyes scanning the streets below. Their breath fogged the air between them.
"They've tripled patrols," she whispered. "And Fracture's drones are circling closer to District V every hour."
Draven didn't reply. His attention was on the flickering feed in his hand—a hacked frequency intercepted from Fracture's mainframe. The face that appeared wasn't familiar.
A man—early thirties, gaunt features, long scar running from his jaw to ear. "Codename: Specter," Evelyn read. "He's not on any known files."
"He is now," Draven muttered. "Look at this."
The transmission shifted. Specter was speaking to a group—masked figures in the basement of what looked like an old opera house. But one phrase stopped both Draven and Evelyn cold:
"Tonight, Fracture fractures."
A rogue faction? Inside the tyrannical organization itself?
Draven's mind raced. "We're not the only ones trying to burn them down."
Evelyn turned to him. "You trust a ghost?"
"No," he said. "But I'll use one."
They moved quickly through the undercity tunnels, Evelyn guiding with practiced ease. Draven had grown quieter in recent days—not distant, but focused. She noticed the way his hand lingered a bit longer when he helped her across broken beams. The way his eyes softened, if only for a second, when their shoulders brushed in the dark.
But tonight wasn't for confessions.
As they reached the opera house—now nothing more than a gutted, concrete skeleton—they heard it.
Gunfire. Short, suppressed bursts. Then silence.
Inside, bodies lay slumped against pews and pillars. The rogue faction was being hunted. One figure was left—Specter, bleeding, crawling toward a shattered stage.
Draven moved in fast, leaping from the shadows. He disarmed the two attackers with swift, brutal efficiency—one strike to the throat, a sweep to disarm the other. Evelyn's rifle covered the angles as Specter gasped, blood leaking from his side.
"You came…" Specter wheezed. "You're real…"
Draven crouched. "Why betray Fracture?"
"Because they betrayed us first," Specter said, eyes glassy. "We weren't soldiers. We were experiments. Tools. And now they've built something worse."
"Project Halcyon?" Evelyn asked.
Specter nodded. "It's alive. Not data. A man. A monster."
Draven's blood ran cold. He had feared it. Rumors of a living weapon had surfaced, but never confirmed.
Before Specter could say more, a high-pitched whine sliced the air. A drone zipped in—needle-point fast. Draven spun, grabbed Evelyn, and dove behind the crumbling pillar. The drone exploded—concussive force slamming stone into their backs.
When the dust settled, Specter was gone. Nothing remained but blood and smoke.
"They're erasing him," Evelyn said, coughing.
"No," Draven growled. "They're erasing witnesses."
Later that night, in the hideout beneath the Narrows, Evelyn stitched Draven's side, silent tension thick between them. He winced once—more from her closeness than the wound.
"You've changed," she said quietly.
Draven didn't meet her eyes. "The city changed me."
"No," she said. "You're becoming something else. Not just a symbol. A protector."
Draven looked at her finally. The bruises beneath her eyes. The strength she carried. And something inside him cracked.
He reached for her hand. Not as a vigilante. Not as a leader. But as a man trying to find something pure in the ruin.
"You keep me from becoming the very thing I fight," he said softly.
Evelyn's fingers curled around his.
For a brief second, in the drowning silence of a broken world, hope bloomed.
Elsewhere, in a tower stitched together by black tech and greed...
A man watched the footage. Joker, still unseen by the world, leaned back with a grin that could split gods.
"Fracture thinks they're in control," he said to no one. "Let them burn themselves down."
He turned the screen—footage of Draven and Evelyn escaping the opera house.
"Soon, it'll all fall into place."
A chessboard sat on his desk.
All the pawns were bleeding.