Chapter Text
The bowels of the defunct Cadmus satellite lab smelled of oxidized metal and old electricity—like a thunderstorm captured in concrete. Somewhere above, Gotham’s twilight dissolved into night, but down here there was no difference between dusk and dawn. The only rhythm Tim Drake lived by now came from the low, cyclical hum of refrigeration units and the throb of his own pulse echoing in his ears.
“Seventy-eight beats per minute,” he muttered, checking the biometric cuff cinched around his wrist. “Steady.”
Talking to himself had started as a grounding exercise. Now it was the only voice he heard.
He slid along a corridor lined with cryogenic canisters. Frost ghost-kissed the glass cylinders, each one empty—except the last. Inside, a single vial floated, pinned in suspension by magnetic clamps: 1 ml of Kon-El’s blood, harvested during a routine checkup at Titans Tower almost four years ago. Tim had kept it locked inside Wayne Manor’s sub-basement, labeled “Forensic Sample—DO NOT DISCARD.” He never thought he’d need it. He never thought Kon would die in his arms, chest caved in from a blast meant for someone else. He never thought grief could make a person this cold or this reckless.
Yet here he was, a Robin without a Batman, a friend without a tether, willing to cross lines even Ra’s al Ghul usually tip-toed around.
Tim entered the main lab: a sunken amphitheater of consoles encircling a single cylindrical gestation chamber. Holo-screens hovered like ghosts above the control dais, strings of genetic code scrolling in vertical waterfalls—green for Kryptonian alleles, blue for human, red for unstable. Earlier tonight the red columns had been everywhere, glaring at him like judgmental eyes. Now only two thin scarlet bars remained, pulsing between genes that regulated cellular bonding. A solvable problem, if he didn’t blink.
A half-empty mug of cold espresso perched on the console’s edge. Tim took a mouthful, winced, and swallowed anyway. Caffeine, glucose, cortisol. Keep moving. He flexed his left hand; a thin slice across his thumb stung—an accident from an hour ago when a scalpel rolled off the tray. He’d rinsed it quickly, wrapped it in a sterile patch, refused to pause.
Focus, Drake. He keyed a command. Holo-windows rearranged, overlaying Kryptonian resilience factors atop human growth regulators. Kon’s genome had always been a knife-edge compromise. Human enough to survive under a yellow sun, Kryptonian enough to bend rebar bare-handed. But perfect balance was fragile—and Kon had been an unrepeatable miracle made by Lex Luthor’s billions. Re-creating him from one milliliter of blood ought to be impossible.
Tim intended to prove “impossible” was just a word.
He palmed a data card, slid it into the main port, and opened his notebook: eleven hundred pages of simulations, each line annotated with the same initials—TD/K-E. Tim Drake/Kon-El. The slash between the names hurt to look at, but he left it; it was honest. He’d designed his algorithm to filter out human contamination, to rebuild Kryptonian telomeres, to splice the unstable gaps with CRISPR precision. He’d triple-checked every step.
Except one.
A flashing glyph appeared: INSERT NUTRIENT MATRIX.
Tim rolled over a trolley stacked with canisters. He cracked the lid on a vat of synthetic amniotic fluid, its surface shimmering like mercury laced with sunrise. He poured until the chamber read 64% capacity, then loaded micronutrient cartridges—iron, calcium, trace gold for energy channeling. The chamber lights glowed warmer, like a heart starting to beat.
UPLOAD GAMETE FUSION SAMPLE.
His hands trembled as he removed the vial from cryo-stasis. The blood sparkled with microscopic motes of blue—Kryptonian solar receptors preserved even in stasis. He locked the vial into the injector, exhaled, and pressed ENTER.
A thin crimson thread spiraled into the nutrient womb, dissolving like ink in water. Holo-screens flared: recombinant sequencing initiated. Billions of base pairs danced, knit, re-arranged. Tim watched a globe of raw possibility swirl in zero-gravity suspension—and for one impossible moment he expected Kon to step out fully grown, grinning, calling him “bro.”
Instead, the algorithm hit a snag. Genetic variance exceeded tolerance: 0.12%. The red bars thickened.
“Why?” Tim whispered. The answer materialized in chemical notation: Extraneous human alleles detected. Thirty-two markers identical to donor Timothy Jackson Drake.
The cut on his thumb throbbed. Ice sluiced through his veins. No… He reached for the emergency purge key—then froze. He could flush and start over—waste half the sample, maybe ruin the rest—or he could… adjust.
His training screamed protocol, contamination, abort. His heart whispered chance, miracle, family.
Tim disabled the purge. Instead he rerouted the algorithm, told it to harmonize the two human sources rather than delete one. The Kryptonian side would splice as designed; the human side would be… half Kon, half Tim.
A fresh stream of code rewove the genome. The red bars shrank, flickered yellow, then turned green.
EMBRYO STATUS: VIABLE.
He sagged against the console, breath heaving. Too late for second thoughts. He initiated accelerated gestation.
Hours blurred. Tim calibrated hormone feeds, modulated UV-A radiation to mimic solar incubation, fine-tuned ion buffering. He spoke aloud—half lullaby, half confession.
“You’ll never feel alone,” he promised the tiny cluster of cells dividing behind reinforced glass. “Not the way I did. I’ll explain the Titans, and Alfred’s breakfasts, and why Wayne Manor’s attic creaks in winter. I’ll tell you Conner’s jokes—well, the ones fit for minors.”
The embryo grew from pinpoint to marble to plum, each phase logged in terabytes of data. Time dilated; grief receded; purpose surged.
At T + 06:14:22, the chamber signaled: SECOND TRIMESTER EQUIVALENT COMPLETE. A fetal silhouette curled in golden amniotic light, its heartbeat amplified through speakers—thub-thum, thub-thum—steady, sure. Tim stared, hand splayed on the glass, syncing his pulse to the rhythm. Two hearts, same tempo.
Midway through the seventh hour, exhaustion hit like gravity. Tim downed glucose gel, ran a systems sweep. All green. He allowed himself to sit, back against a pillar, eyes half-lidded, listening to the baby’s heartbeat weave through the machinery’s susurrus.
Memories seeped in—Kon laughing under a Kansas sun, Kon ruffling Tim’s hair after a training match, Kon saying “Relax, Drake, you’ve done enough saving for one night.” Tim’s throat closed. Not enough, he thought. Never enough.
Alarms chimed—soft but insistent. He lurched upright. FINAL GESTATION PHASE INITIATED. Inside the chamber, the fluid level lowered, exposing a small form naked to the waist, vernix glistening on soft skin. Dark hair, damp eyelashes, tiny fists flexing.
Tim’s knees went weak. He fumbled for a towel, sanitizer, a warming blanket—anything. The chamber walls irised open with a sigh of hydraulics. Warm, sterile air spilled out; the lights dimmed.
His son floated weightless on a cradle of antigrav beams. The baby opened his eyes—ice-blue right, hazel left—and made a startled O with his lips. No cry, just breath.
“Hey,” Tim whispered, voice cracking on one syllable.
He slid his arms under the infant. The baby’s heat soaked into his palms, impossibly alive. The towel wrapped around delicate shoulders felt absurdly thin against the enormity of the moment. Tim pressed the child to his chest. A faint flutter brushed his collarbone—feather-light breaths. The baby rooted instinctively; Tim laughed—half-sob, half-wonder—and adjusted the blanket.
Close up, the resemblance was uncanny. Kon’s cheekbones. Tim’s nose. A curious crease between the brows like neither of them—a brand-new map of possibility. The heterochromia made Tim’s heart lurch; he’d read about spontaneous chromatophore variance in hybrid embryos but never thought he’d see it.
“Hello,” he breathed, rocking instinctively. “Do you know you just terrified me into existence?”
The baby blinked, yawned, and—like flipping a switch—drifted asleep. Tiny fingers curled around the edge of Tim’s torn glove but didn’t let go.
Tim shuffled to a diagnostics chair, collapsed gingerly. Warm weight settled against his sternum, heartbeat syncing again—thub-thum, thub-thum. Everything else—Batman’s missions, Gotham’s crimes, the gaping Kon-shaped hole—stilled in that rhythm.
Minutes, maybe hours passed. The lab lights dimmed to a night-cycle glow, cool blues tracing the outlines of consoles. Tim’s eyes burned, but he couldn’t stop staring—at the soft rise and fall of the baby’s back, at the fuzz of dark hair tickling his jawline, at the universe of responsibility settling on his shoulders like dawn.
“I don’t even know your name,” he whispered. The baby slept on, trusting implicitly in the arms of a man who no longer trusted himself.
Tim’s voice trembled. “I promise… to keep you safe. To teach you everything I can. To make sure you never doubt you’re loved.” Tears slipped free, warm trails down chilled cheeks. He didn’t wipe them. They felt like proof he was still human.
Somewhere aboveground, Gotham’s clocktower struck midnight—May 18, 2025—but down here a brand-new timeline began, measured in breaths and heartbeats and the quiet weight of a newborn hybrid sleeping on his father’s chest.
Tim Drake tightened his arms, lowered his cheek to downy hair, and watched his son’s eyelids flutter in dreams, awe anchoring him more firmly than gravity ever could.