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Gotham City looked like the sort of place that had been warned about sunlight and taken the threat personally.
Alex Rider arrived just after midnight on a coach from New York, carrying one backpack, two passports, three burner phones, and a knife taped flat beneath the lining of his left shoe. The driver barely glanced at him when he stepped down onto the pavement outside the station. That was good. People who looked too closely tended to ask questions, and Alex had discovered over the past year that questions were rarely harmless. They were hooks. A good question could pull a name out of you, then an address, then a history, then everything you had spent months trying to bury.
He had not planned on Gotham.
That, by itself, was almost enough to make him suspicious.
The job had been simple in the way dangerous jobs were always described as simple by people who expected someone else to bleed over the complicated parts. A courier route. A package moving through New York under diplomatic cover. A private buyer who did not want official intelligence agencies involved and had been willing to pay cash for someone young enough to be ignored and experienced enough not to die. Alex had taken it because the money was clean after three washes through accounts that Smithers had once pretended not to teach him how to build, and because the name attached to the buyer had brushed against Scorpia in a way that had made his skin prickle.
Then the courier had changed direction, the package had vanished into a freight transfer at Newark, and two men with Gotham accents and expensive guns had tried to kill Alex in the service corridor of a bus terminal.
That had been annoying.
Now he was in Gotham with no package, no client contact, no safe exit, and the unpleasant sense that he had walked into the middle of someone else’s game without seeing the board first.
The station smelled of wet concrete, old coffee, and fear. Alex kept his shoulders loose as he crossed the tiled concourse, letting his eyes drift without seeming to search. There were cameras in the corners: two obvious, one badly disguised as a cracked advertisement for a mayoral campaign, and one positioned well enough that he only caught it because of the reflection in the blackened glass of a closed ticket booth. There were three exits. The main entrance opened onto a row of taxis and a street washed silver by rain. A side door led to a narrow alley with a delivery gate. The third was marked staff-only, which, in Alex’s experience, usually meant either locked, alarmed, or the best way out.
A man in a grey coat had been watching him since the platform.
Alex saw him in the reflection of a vending machine and kept walking.
He looked like muscle, though not the best kind. Too neat. Too aware of his own threat. There were men who became dangerous because they understood violence as a craft, and then there were men who became dangerous because other people had been afraid of them for long enough that they started believing it was a natural law. The grey coat belonged to the second category. He followed with his right hand tucked near his ribs, probably close to a shoulder holster. His shoes were polished but wrong for the weather, slipping slightly on the damp floor.
Alex turned toward the staff door.
The man followed.
The lock took seven seconds. Alex slipped through, let the door close behind him, and moved down a service corridor lit by long fluorescent tubes that hummed like insects. Pipes ran along one wall. The floor sloped slightly toward a drain. Somewhere behind him, the door opened again.
“Kid,” the man called. “Wrong way.”
Alex did not answer. He adjusted his pace, just enough to make himself look uncertain.
The man took the bait.
He came faster, his footsteps heavy, his coat shifting as his hand slipped inside it. Alex waited until the shadow stretched ahead of him on the wall. Then he turned, stepped inside the man’s reach, and slammed the heel of his hand into the wrist before the gun cleared the holster. The man grunted. Alex caught the sleeve, pivoted, and drove him shoulder-first into the pipes. Metal rang through the corridor. The gun clattered across the floor.
The man recovered better than Alex had expected. He swung with his left, a short, brutal punch aimed at Alex’s temple. Alex ducked under it, kicked the back of his knee, and used the moment of imbalance to smash his elbow into the man’s throat. Not hard enough to kill. Hard enough to make him reconsider breathing as a hobby.
He went down on one knee, choking.
Alex took the gun, ejected the magazine, cleared the chamber, and tossed the pieces in opposite directions. Then he crouched in front of the man and removed the wallet from his coat.
“Who sent you?” he asked.
The man wheezed. His eyes were watering. He still tried to glare.
Alex sighed. “I’m tired. I’ve been shot at twice today, I haven’t eaten since Philadelphia, and I’m in a city that looks like it was designed by someone with a serious grudge against seeing the sun. So I’m going to ask once more before I start being less polite. Who sent you?”
The man spat blood onto the floor.
Alex moved before he could think too hard about it. He caught the man’s injured wrist and pressed his thumb into the joint he had already damaged. The man made a thin, strangled sound and folded forward.
“Falcone,” he gasped. “Falcone wanted eyes on the station. That’s all. Jesus, that’s all.”
Falcone. Alex filed the name away. In Gotham, old crime families had the same weight as old aristocratic names in London. People said them differently. With caution. With history.
“Why me?”
“New face. Alone. Brown hair, brown eyes, British. Someone said to flag you if you came in.”
That was worse.
Alex stood, slipping the wallet into his pocket for later. “Tell Falcone he needs better hiring standards.”
He left the man in the corridor, took the stairs up to the alley, and moved the flat knife from his shoe to the inside of his sleeve before stepping into the rain. Gotham already knew he was here; concealment mattered less than reach.
Gotham rain fell harder than London rain. London had rain that crept into your clothes and stayed there with quiet persistence. Gotham rain came down like an accusation. It battered the fire escapes, hissed through the gutters, and turned the alley lights into blurred yellow wounds. Alex pulled up his hood and moved quickly, keeping close to the walls.
He made it two blocks before he realized he was being followed again.
This one was better.
There were no footsteps behind him, no reflection sliding through windows, no clumsy shadow in the mouth of an alley. It was a feeling more than evidence, a pressure between his shoulder blades, the old animal certainty that had kept him alive long before government agencies or terrorist organizations had deemed it useful. Alex crossed the street without warning, ducked through the revolving door of a twenty-four-hour pharmacy, and walked straight to the back aisle where mirrors angled down from the ceiling.
There.
Black shape. Rooftop across the street. Gone almost as soon as he saw it.
Alex stared at the shelves of cold medicine and, for a moment, considered simply walking back out of the city.
But the package had come here. Someone had known he would follow. Someone had sent Falcone’s man to watch for him. Leaving now would mean surrendering the only thread he had, and Alex had learned the hard way that if you left loose threads alone, they eventually tightened around your throat.
He bought a bottle of water, a packet of aspirin, and the cheapest sandwich in the refrigerator case. The cashier did not look up from her phone. Gotham, Alex was beginning to understand, had a talent for ignoring things that looked dangerous as long as they did not become immediately fatal.
Outside, the black shape was waiting on the roof of the building opposite.
Alex looked up.
The shape looked back.
A cape moved in the rain.
“Oh, brilliant,” Alex muttered. “Of course.”
He walked away.
The shape followed.
By the time Alex reached the Narrows, he had counted more watchers. One on a water tower. One moving along the opposite rooftops with the easy confidence of someone who had never needed stairs. Another in the mouth of an alley who was there for half a second and then gone, a flicker of pale fabric and controlled stillness. There was also a voice somewhere, because the spacing was too clean and the movement too coordinated to be a coincidence. They were herding him, though gently. Leaving routes open while closing others. Testing where he looked first. Testing how fast he noticed.
Alex hated tests.
He turned into an alley, climbed a fire escape slick with rain, and cut across the roof before dropping through a broken window into an abandoned apartment block. The room inside smelled of mildew and old smoke. Wallpaper peeled from the walls in long strips. He crossed silently, stepping only where the floorboards met the joists, and crouched behind a half-collapsed kitchen counter.
A figure landed outside the broken window a moment later.
This one was young, though not as young as Alex had first expected. He wore red and black with a cape that cut sharply around him as he crouched on the sill. He paused there, rain beading on his mask, and Alex had the immediate impression of someone who had already studied the room before entering it. He did not read as careless or theatrical for the sake of it. He read as careful, analytical, the kind of person who noticed details because details were the difference between walking away and being carried.
“You know,” the masked figure said, “most tourists start with the museum.”
Alex stayed still.
The figure sighed. “I know you’re behind the counter.”
“That makes one of us,” Alex said.
The masked figure turned toward him. “British. Alone. Armed. Entered Gotham tonight. Took down one of Falcone’s men in a station corridor and disassembled his gun. You’re either having a very bad evening or a very interesting one.”
Alex rose slowly, keeping his hands visible and empty in the way that made people forget hands were not the only weapon a person had. “Are those my only options?”
“In Gotham? Usually.” The figure stepped inside. “Red Robin.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“No, but you were about to assign me a name in your head, and I’d rather skip whatever insulting thing you came up with.”
Alex looked him over. “Traffic light with teeth, then.”
Red Robin went silent for half a second.
A faint crackle came from his comm. Someone laughed.
Red Robin’s jaw tightened slightly. “Spoiler.”
“What?” a girl’s voice said, full of innocence and absolutely no remorse. “He got you.”
Alex glanced toward the comm. “Spoiler?”
“One of ours,” Red Robin said.
“That seems to be happening a lot.”
Alex did not look away from Red Robin. “How long have you been following me?”
“Long enough to know you noticed us faster than most adults with training.”
“Us.”
Red Robin’s expression did not change, but the pause before his answer was informative. “You counted more than one.”
“I counted at least four.”
“Five,” said the girl on comms.
“Spoiler,” Red Robin said again.
“What? He was close.”
Alex’s eyes moved once, quickly, toward the corners of the room. “And now you want what?”
“Answers. Ideally, before Falcone sends someone with fewer teeth and better aim.”
“Not my favorite kind of trade.”
“No?”
“I prefer the kind where both sides bring something useful.”
Red Robin looked him over. There was no obvious threat in it, no attempt to intimidate through size or silence. That almost made it worse. Alex knew how to handle people who wanted him afraid. Red Robin looked like he wanted to understand.
“Your false passport says Jonathon Philbin,” Red Robin said. “The card you used at the pharmacy belongs to a dead man from Leeds. The station cameras caught your face twice, but facial recognition gives me nothing useful. That means either you’re very lucky, very protected, or very erased.”
Alex’s expression did not change.
Red Robin noticed that, too.
Before he could speak again, something moved behind Alex.
He spun, knife sliding from his sleeve into his hand, and stopped with the blade inches from black armor.
Batman stood there as if the shadows had built him. Tall, broad, silent in a way that made the room feel smaller around him. Rain beaded on the edges of his cowl and cape. His eyes were white lenses, unreadable and fixed on Alex’s hand.
Alex had met soldiers, assassins, and men who thought fear was the same thing as authority. Some smiled. Some shouted. Some looked bored with the whole business. Batman did none of that. He simply existed in the space, and the space seemed to accept him as the most dangerous thing in it.
“Put the knife away,” Batman said.
Alex did not move. “I was here first.”
Red Robin made a small sound that might have been amusement if he had less self-control.
Batman’s gaze did not shift. “Falcone is tracking you.”
“I noticed.”
“You’re also being tracked by someone else.”
“I noticed that too.”
“Then you understand you’re in danger.”
Alex gave him a thin smile. “I’m starting to think danger is in danger.”
Red Robin looked as if he wanted to say something and had decided, for once, to let the silence do the work.
Batman took one step forward. Alex adjusted his weight. It was small, barely anything, but Batman saw it. Of course he saw it. His head tilted slightly, and Alex realized with irritation that the man was reading him the way Alex read exits.
“You favor your left side,” Batman said. “Old shoulder injury. Recent bruising on the ribs. Knife training, but not from a standard military curriculum. Your footwork is mixed. Boxing, judo, street adaptations, and something closer to special forces work. You’re too young to have learned that legally.”
Alex’s hand tightened around the knife.
Red Robin went very still.
Batman’s voice lowered. “Who trained you?”
Alex thought of Ian in the garden, correcting his stance with a patience that had felt like affection because Alex had not known enough then to recognize preparation. He thought of K-Unit shouting at him in the mud. He thought of Malagosto, where Scorpia had stripped murder down to lessons, drills, and polite correction, as if the right manners could make a child’s hands any cleaner. He thought of Yassen Gregorovich, who had never trained him at all and had still taught him something terrible by existing: that a boy could be shaped into a weapon and still speak softly. He thought of MI6 looking at all of it and calling him uniquely suited, as if they had discovered a rare mineral rather than a child with nowhere else to go.
“Lots of people,” Alex said. “Most of them are dead.”
Batman stared at him for a long moment.
Then another figure appeared in the broken window.
This one was younger than Red Robin, probably close to Alex’s age, dressed in red, green, black, and yellow with a cape that should have looked ridiculous and somehow didn’t. He landed without hesitation, one hand already near his sword, and the room changed around him in a different way. Batman was a wall. Red Robin was a net. This boy was a blade that had learned to look like a person.
His gaze swept across Alex, the knife, Batman, Red Robin, the exits, and back to Alex. The assessment was fast enough to be insulting and good enough to be worrying.
“Robin,” Red Robin said, with the air of someone naming a problem.
Robin ignored him. His attention had settled on Alex’s stance. “He holds the knife like someone taught him to use it in close quarters, but his grip changes when cornered.”
Alex looked at him. “Hello to you too.”
Robin’s eyes narrowed behind the mask. “You are favoring your left side.”
“Already covered,” Alex said.
“Not adequately.”
Red Robin sighed. “Try not to start an international incident.”
“I have not stabbed him.”
“Yet,” Spoiler added cheerfully over comms.
Robin’s mouth thinned. “Your commentary is unnecessary.”
“My commentary is delightful.”
A new voice entered the comms, female, older than Spoiler, calm in a way that carried authority without needing to raise her voice. “Focus. Falcone’s men are moving in a five-block radius. Penguin’s people are watching the docks. No one has eyes on the package yet.”
Alex shifted his attention toward Red Robin’s comm. “And that one is?”
“Oracle,” Red Robin said.
“Of course it is,” Alex said. “Does anyone in this city use normal names?”
“Normal names are how people find you,” Oracle replied.
Alex disliked how reasonable that sounded.
“That sounds like something people in this city say right before they do something deranged.”
“That describes Gotham,” Spoiler said.
Another figure appeared through the broken window before Alex could decide whether Gotham had a maximum occupancy for masked vigilantes or if they simply kept manifesting through structural damage.
This one wore red and black, with a hood pulled up against the rain and a helmet that turned his face into a blank metallic warning. He carried himself differently from Batman and Robin. Less controlled in the way a blade was controlled by its edge, and more like someone who had already decided the fight was over and was waiting for everyone else to catch up.
“Wow,” the newcomer said. His voice came through the helmet, distorted but unmistakably dry. “You do know how to pick them.”
Batman did not look away from Alex. “Red Hood.”
“That’s me. Here to provide emotional support and heavily armed supervision.”
Alex glanced at the guns.
Red Hood followed the look and seemed to brighten. “Relax. Rubber rounds unless someone annoys me.”
Alex stared at him. “Those can still kill people.”
“That your professional opinion?”
“That’s physics.”
Red Hood was quiet for half a second, then gave a low, amused hum. “You’re going to fit in terribly.”
A soft sound came from the far side of the room.
Alex turned again, slower this time.
A girl stood near the door. He had no idea how long she had been there. That alone was enough to make the small hairs on the back of his neck lift. She wore black, her face covered by a mask, her posture relaxed in a way that did not invite underestimation. She did not look at his knife. She looked at his shoulders, his feet, the tension in his spine, and Alex had the unpleasant sensation of being understood without having said anything at all.
“Orphan,” Red Robin said.
Orphan tipped her head slightly.
Alex looked at her for a second longer than he meant to.
She lifted one hand and signed something.
Robin’s mouth flattened. “She says you’re scared.”
Alex’s expression cooled. “She’s wrong.”
Orphan signed again.
Red Hood laughed. “She says you’re lying.”
“I’m starting to dislike all of you.”
“That’s fair,” Spoiler said through the comms. “We’re a lot.”
Batman finally moved back half a step. The room loosened, though not enough for Alex to mistake it for safety.
“We can protect you,” Batman said.
Alex almost laughed. It would have been a sharp, ugly sound, and he swallowed it because he did not like giving strangers that much of himself. “That’s what people usually say before they start using me.”
The words landed in the room like a dropped weapon.
Red Hood’s helmet tilted. Orphan went still. Robin’s expression sharpened with something that might have been recognition if Alex had wanted to think about it, which he didn’t. Red Robin’s mouth tightened, the first real break in his controlled expression. Batman said nothing, and somehow that made the silence worse.
Alex put the knife away, not because he trusted them, but because he wanted his hands free. “Falcone’s looking for me because someone told him I’d be here. Someone else took a package through Gotham under a private diplomatic cover. I don’t know what’s in it, but two men tried to kill me for following it, and your city seems to have noticed me faster than I’d like. That’s all you get for free.”
“Who hired you?” Batman asked.
Alex smiled again. “That wasn’t free.”
Red Hood made an approving sound. “I like him.”
“You would,” Red Robin said.
Another shape swung in through the broken window, landing lightly beside Red Hood. Blue and black, easy grin, rain in his dark hair. He was older than Red Robin, younger than Batman, and wearing the kind of expression Alex associated with people who either had very good backup or very poor survival instincts.
“Nightwing,” Robin said, sounding annoyed. “You were supposed to stay on the roof.”
“I was on the roof. Then I came through the window. That’s how movement works.”
Alex looked between them. “Is everyone in this city named like a stage magician?”
Spoiler laughed so loudly that Robin winced.
Nightwing’s grin widened. “He definitely meets the criteria.”
Batman turned his head slowly.
Alex narrowed his eyes. “Criteria for what?”
“Nothing,” Nightwing said far too quickly.
“That was convincing,” Red Hood said. “Really sold it.”
Oracle’s voice came in, dry as paper. “Orphaned, traumatized, highly intelligent, suspiciously competent, terrible self-preservation instincts, allergic to adult supervision, and capable of insulting Red Robin within ten seconds of first contact.”
“That last one is not part of the pattern,” Red Robin said.
“It should be,” Spoiler replied.
“I am not allergic to adult supervision,” Alex said.
Every masked person in the room looked at him.
Alex reconsidered. “I’m selectively resistant.”
Spoiler made a delighted sound. “Oh, he’s good.”
“He has brown hair and brown eyes,” Robin said, as though presenting evidence in court.
Nightwing looked at him. “That has never been an official disqualifier.”
“Historically, there has been a pattern.”
Red Hood snorted. “A creepy pattern.”
“It is not creepy,” Robin said.
“It’s a little creepy,” Spoiler said.
Orphan signed something.
Red Robin glanced at her and frowned. “She says patterns are useful until people mistake them for rules.”
There was a short pause.
Nightwing said, “That was either very insightful or a personal attack.”
Batman’s voice cut through them, quiet and firm. “Enough.”
Alex stared at all of them. He understood the words, but he did not understand the shape of the joke behind them. There was something there, some private family mythology built out of capes, masks, and apparently a recurring tendency to collect damaged children from rooftops and crime scenes. He did not know why Batman was the center of it. He only knew that the others did, and that they had noticed Batman noticing him.
That was not comforting.
“I’m not available,” Alex said.
“For what?” Nightwing asked, far too innocently.
“For whatever this is.”
Red Hood leaned against the wall. “That’s what they all say.”
Robin studied him. “That implies you have been available before.”
Alex’s humor faded.
The room noticed.
Before anyone could answer, Batman turned slightly, putting himself between Alex and the broken window as a faint sound rose from outside. Engines. Three vehicles, moving fast. Alex crossed to the wall and looked through a crack in the boarded window. Black cars slid into the street below, lights off, men getting out with weapons held low.
Falcone had sent better people this time.
“Your fault?” Nightwing asked.
“Probably,” Alex said.
“Honest. Refreshing.”
Batman’s cape shifted. “Red Robin, west stairwell. Robin, upper floor, no blades unless necessary. Nightwing, roof access. Orphan, east flank. Spoiler, exterior interference. Red Hood, contain the south entrance.”
“I love being invited places,” Red Hood said, already moving.
Robin’s eyes narrowed. “No blades unless necessary?”
Batman looked at him.
Robin clicked his tongue and moved toward the door. “Fine.”
“And him?” Red Robin asked.
“I’m standing right here,” Alex said.
Batman looked at him. “You stay behind me.”
Alex stared at him. “Do you honestly think that ever works?”
Red Hood barked a laugh from the hall. “Oh, he’s absolutely adoption material.”
Batman did not dignify that with a response.
The next four minutes were loud.
Alex did not stay behind Batman. He also did not get himself killed, which he felt was the more relevant point. Falcone’s men entered through the lower floors in pairs, disciplined enough to be dangerous but not disciplined enough to understand what they had walked into.
Batman hit them as if the building had decided to reject them, while Nightwing moved above and around them, all speed and angles, his escrima sticks cracking against wrists and knees with an almost elegant rhythm.
Red Robin fought like someone who had already solved half the room before the first punch was thrown. He did not waste movement. He used angles, distance, and timing with the calm precision of someone who had learned to survive stronger opponents by making sure they were never in the right place to use their strength properly. A man came up the west stairwell with a shotgun raised, and Red Robin struck the weapon aside, drove his staff into the man’s knee, and pivoted him into the path of his partner without ever looking away from the next threat.
Robin was different.
Robin moved like a knife that had been told to stop cutting and was still deciding whether the instruction was worth obeying. He was fast, almost viciously so, but it was controlled violence, the kind that made Alex think of people who had been taught anatomy before algebra. He struck tendons, joints, and pressure points. When one of Falcone’s men lunged too close, Robin slipped under the attack and had the man on the floor with a blade against his sleeve before Batman’s voice snapped across the comms.
“Robin.”
Robin paused for half a second, then reversed the grip and used the hilt instead.
Alex noticed. Robin noticed him noticing.
Neither of them said anything.
Orphan was the strangest to watch. She seemed to know where people would move before they moved there. A man raised his gun, and she was already inside his reach, turning the weapon aside, striking once, and letting him fold. There was no wasted motion in her. No anger either, at least none that Alex could read. She moved like someone listening to music no one else could hear.
Spoiler appeared twice in the fight, once through a side window and once from behind a man who had been so focused on Batman that he missed the purple blur until she swept his legs out and slammed him face-first into the floor.
“Hi,” she told him brightly, before zip-tying his hands. “Bad night to make career choices.”
Red Hood took the south entrance and made it sound like a small war. Alex heard the thump of rubber rounds, the crack of a helmet against bone, and a cheerful, “Stay down if you’ve discovered common sense.”
Alex took the ones who slipped through.
He used the dark, the broken furniture, and the fact that none of them wanted to believe the non-vigilante teenager would be a problem. One man came through a doorway with his gun raised, scanning too high. Alex hit him from the side, drove him into the wall, and stripped the weapon before the man understood he had lost it. Another grabbed him by the hood and received a knife hilt to the inside of his elbow, followed by a knee to the stomach and a hard shove down half a flight of stairs. A third managed to catch Alex across the ribs with the butt of a pistol, which hurt enough to turn the edges of his vision white. Alex responded by slamming the man’s hand in a door until the gun dropped.
By the time the last engine fled the street, the building was full of groaning men and broken guns.
Alex stood in the hallway, breathing carefully through the pain in his ribs, when Batman appeared at the far end.
“You don’t follow instructions,” Batman said.
Alex leaned against the wall. “That has been mentioned.”
“You could have been shot.”
“I’ve been shot before.”
Batman went still.
It had been the wrong thing to say. Alex knew it as soon as the words left his mouth. The hallway seemed to quiet around them, though somewhere below, Nightwing was making cheerful comments about the structural integrity of old radiators while tying someone to one. Spoiler stopped mid-sentence. Robin’s gaze flicked to Alex’s side, then to his face. Red Hood, who was halfway through checking a downed man for weapons, became very quiet.
Batman’s voice was lower when he spoke again. “How old were you?”
Alex pushed away from the wall. “No.”
“That was not an answer,” Red Robin said.
“It was the only one you’re getting.”
Batman raised a hand, and Red Robin stopped.
Oracle’s voice came through the comm again, softer now. “I found the transfer route. The package was moved to the east docks. Shell company under Cobblepot’s umbrella, but the receiving account pings through Falcone’s people. Whatever this is, more than one family wants it.”
Alex looked at Batman. “Cobblepot?”
“Penguin,” Robin said.
Alex closed his eyes briefly. “Of course it is.”
Nightwing appeared at the top of the stairs. “For what it’s worth, that reaction never really goes away.”
Batman was still watching Alex. “You’re injured.”
“I’m functional.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“It usually has to be.”
The words landed harder than Alex intended. He hated that too. He hated Gotham, hated the rain, hated the ache in his ribs, hated the way Batman looked at him as if he could see every adult who had ever decided Alex was useful before he was breakable.
Orphan stepped closer. She signed something, slower this time.
Robin translated, though his voice had lost some of its edge. “She says you are expecting the offer to become a trap.”
Alex looked at Orphan.
She looked back.
That was the trouble with people who watched too well. They made silence feel like confession.
Red Hood’s voice came through from somewhere on the floor below. “I know a safehouse three blocks away. Stocked, secure, and currently not full of criminals with terrible aim.”
“That one of yours?” Nightwing asked.
“Depends who’s asking.”
“Me.”
“Then no.”
“Liar.”
“Proudly.”
Batman ignored them both. “No police. Medical supplies, food, and a place without Falcone’s men crawling through the windows.”
Alex looked toward the boarded window.
Batman said, “Your choice.”
That was new enough to be suspicious.
Alex studied him. “People say that when they want credit for offering one option.”
Batman’s mouth was a hard line beneath the cowl. “Then I’ll give you several. You can leave Gotham tonight, but Falcone and Penguin will keep looking, and whoever flagged you may still know your route. You can keep chasing the package alone and increase your odds of being killed. Or you can use the safehouse, tell us what you know, and decide what you want to do after that.”
Alex waited for the catch.
Batman did not add one.
Red Robin watched him with open curiosity now, though there was something guarded beneath it. Robin stood nearer the stairwell, arms folded, his expression sharp and unreadable in a way that made Alex think he understood more of the answer than he liked. Nightwing looked as if he wanted to make another joke and had wisely decided against it. Red Hood had gone still in a way that felt more watchful than threatening. Orphan’s attention had not left Alex’s face. Somewhere in the comms, Oracle was gathering information faster than Alex could see, and Spoiler was probably picking a lock while pretending she was not emotionally invested.
Alex had survived by not trusting rescue when it came dressed as authority. MI6 had called it duty. Scorpia had called it potential. Every adult with a file and a locked room had found a different word for the same basic shape.
But Batman had not asked him to hand over his weapons. He had not called the police. He had not said Alex was too young to understand what was happening, which was good, because Alex had heard that lie from people who had understood far less than he did.
And the package was at the east docks.
Alex exhaled slowly. “I’ll use the safehouse. I’ll tell you enough to keep us from tripping over each other. I’m not going to a police station, a hospital, a holding cell, or any agency whose name is made up of three letters.”
Nightwing blinked. “That is a very specific list.”
“I’ve had experience.”
Red Hood pointed at him. “That one, I believe.”
Red Robin looked toward Batman. “He negotiates better than several people we know.”
Oracle’s voice came through the comm. “Several boardrooms we know.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Batman said.
Alex pulled his hood up again. “And I’m not being adopted.”
The silence that followed was far too active.
Then Spoiler said, “Nobody said adopted.”
“Your collective pause did.”
Nightwing put a hand over his mouth.
Red Hood laughed outright. “Kid’s got us there.”
Robin folded his arms. “For the record, not everyone involved in this conversation has been adopted.”
“Thank you,” Spoiler said.
“Some are merely affiliated through repeated exposure to poor decisions,” Red Robin added.
“Also thank you,” Spoiler said, brighter this time.
Orphan signed something.
Robin glanced at her, then at Alex. “She says formal paperwork is not the point.”
“That sounds worse,” Alex said.
“It usually is,” Red Hood told him.
Batman turned toward the exit. “Move.”
Outside, Gotham was still raining. The city stretched around them in black towers and yellow windows, every street slick with reflected light, every rooftop crowded with shadows that might or might not be watching back. It was a city of masks and names, of criminals who dressed like brands and vigilantes who moved like myths. Alex had thought, when he first stepped off the coach, that Gotham was a place where identities went to rot.
Now he was less sure.
Maybe Gotham was a place where identities were weapons. Maybe masks were not only for hiding. Maybe some people built them because the world had taken their faces first, and they had decided to choose what looked back.
He did not trust Batman. He did not trust Red Robin, Spoiler, Oracle, Red Hood, Orphan, Robin, or the safehouse waiting three blocks away. Trust was too large a thing to hand over just because someone had offered medical supplies and dry socks.
But when Batman moved ahead into the alley, silent and watchful, Alex noticed that he kept himself between Alex and the street. Robin dropped back without being asked, covering the rear with the casual precision of someone who had been trained to notice every shadow before it moved. Nightwing took the rooftops and signaled twice when the way was clear. Orphan vanished into the dark and reappeared only when Alex looked hard enough to find her. Red Hood walked on the exposed side of the pavement with his hands near his guns, daring the city to try something. Oracle’s voice hummed over the comms, directing them around patrol cars, damaged streetlights, and one very confused gang lookout who apparently decided survival was more important than curiosity. Red Robin fell into step on Alex’s other side, close enough to intervene, far enough not to crowd him, his attention flicking between the rooftops and the boy Gotham had decided to swallow.
They were not trapping him. They were escorting him.
For now, Alex decided, that was enough.
Above them, somewhere in the rain and static, Spoiler said, “For what it’s worth, he already has the dramatic exit posture.”
“I can hear you,” Alex said.
“I know.”
Nightwing laughed from somewhere along the roofline. Robin looked insufferably pleased. Red Hood muttered something about Gotham having a type. Spoiler asked if they were allowed to put “international mystery child” on the shared bingo card. Orphan made no sound at all, but Alex caught the slight tilt of her head and suspected she was amused.
Batman said nothing.
Somehow, that made the whole thing worse.
Alex tucked his hands into his pockets and followed them deeper into Gotham, carrying his knives, his false names, and the uneasy knowledge that he had just become interesting to the most dangerous family in the city.
It was not the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
That was probably the problem.