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Nick returned to the Iceberg Lounge well before the two-hour mark. He slipped through the back entrance into the service hallway where Specs was waiting, impeccably dressed and checking the time on a thin gold watch. The microprocessors, secured in their crates, were already being wheeled away by silent, uniformed men.
Specs looked at the clock, then at Nick's suit, which was remarkably clean despite the dust and oil of the auto-body shop.
"Seventy-four minutes," Specs noted, without preamble. "Mr. Cobblepot allocated a hundred and twenty. The guards?"
"Incapacitated," Nick confirmed, his voice rough with exhaustion. "No physical damage. No police involvement. No traces."
Specs tilted his head, a gesture of grudging respect. "You live up to the advance reports, Nick. The weapons?"
"Secured on the ceiling with magnetic adhesion," Nick answered, his gaze daring Specs to comment on the impossibility.
Specs merely smiled a thin, professional smile. "A theatrical touch. Mr. Cobblepot appreciates efficiency with flair. Come. He is waiting."
The meeting with Oswald Cobblepot took place in his private office, an opulent, circular chamber directly above the penguin tank. The lighting was low and green, filtered through the icy water, making the room feel like an expensive submarine. The only sound was the low gurgle of the filtration system.
Cobblepot was seated behind a massive mahogany desk, sipping from a teacup balanced delicately on his umbrella's handle. He looked up as Nick entered, flanked by two of Cobblepot's most formidable-looking bodyguards.
"Nick," Cobblepot greeted, setting his cup down. "The chips are secured. Tell me what happened to the men."
"They were neutralized without lasting injury," Nick reported, standing rigidly before the desk. "I disarmed them using their own panic and the environment. No lasting trace of the operation will be found."
Cobblepot observed him with unnerving intensity, his spectacles catching the green light. "And the guards' weapons, stuck to the ceiling, Nick? Did you use some kind of adhesive foam? Or perhaps a pulley system you set up in advance?"
Nick looked Cobblepot directly in the eye, offering no explanation, no apology, just the cold, defiant truth of his existence. "I retrieved your property. I adhered to your parameters. The means of execution are irrelevant to the success of the mission."
Cobblepot let out a short, high-pitched, wheezing laugh. It was a sound of absolute delight.
"Irrelevant! That's excellent! I love a man who refuses to explain his genius to the peasantry," Cobblepot chuckled, lifting his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Forget the magnets, Nick. I don't care about the physics. I only care about the results. And the results were flawless."
Cobblepot leaned forward, his demeanor shifting instantly from amusement to intense business.
"Now, the price of admission. You did well. You are an asset. I promised you security, and I am a man of my word. Specs."
Specs produced a thick envelope and a small electronic device.
"Inside the envelope is thirty thousand dollars in untraceable cash," Cobblepot stated. "Your first week's salary. Excessive, perhaps, but I pay for exclusivity. The device is a key to a private apartment I own in the Tri-Corners district. Clean, discreet, with its own dedicated power line—and a reinforced steel room I think you'll find... useful."
Nick's control wavered for a fraction of a second. A secure, clean apartment. A private space to explore the impossible power surging within him. This was everything he had been fighting for.
"And finally," Cobblepot continued, pulling a document from his desk. "Your identity."
He slid the official-looking folder across the desk. The cover bore the seal of a small, legitimate-looking but entirely fictitious holding company.
"Your name is now, officially, Nolan Kross," Cobblepot announced. "You have a clean background, a social security number, a driver's license, and a credit history that suggests you recently relocated from Metropolis. This gives you cover, allows you to move freely, and removes the liability of being a nameless, memory-deficient phantom."
Nick picked up the folder. The weight of the papers felt immense, a physical manifestation of his new, fabricated life. Nolan Kross. A name that was nothing, but represented everything: a blank slate he could control.
He looked at Cobblepot. "This is not simply a name," Nick observed. "It is the start of an investigation. A way to find out who I was."
"Precisely," Cobblepot said, smiling darkly. "And that is the second phase of our arrangement. You work for me. You are loyal to me. And in exchange, I provide you with a means to investigate your past."
Cobblepot lowered his voice, his eyes intense. "Gotham is a city of shadows and secrets, Nick. My operation touches every dark corner. If you were someone important—a soldier, a scientist, a government asset—I can peel back the layers and find out who wiped your memory and why. No one is better at finding missing information than a man who specializes in finding missing goods."
Cobbetpot leaned back, satisfied. "I give you the means to find your past, Nick. You give me your competence in the present. Is the price acceptable?"
Nick secured the folder and the envelope. He had traded his temporary freedom for permanent dependency, but he had gained the ultimate prize: a base of operations and the key to his own history.
"The price is acceptable," Nick said, his voice firm. "I am Nolan Kross. I am your surgical blade."
Nick left the Iceberg Lounge a free man—or at least, a highly paid prisoner.
He found the apartment: a sterile, modern space in a high-rise, far cleaner and safer than anything he had imagined. It was impersonal, yet utterly secure. The reinforced steel room was in the back, small and windowless, with heavy-duty locks.
His first act was not to sleep, but to begin his investigation.
He changed out of the suit and into the fresh clothes he had purchased. He spread the cash and the Nolan Kross documentation out on the coffee table. He felt a profound sense of duality: the practical security provided by the crime boss, and the deep, ideological unease it provoked.
He then went into the steel room.
He secured the door and stood in the center of the cramped chamber. He placed the heavy steel pipe he still carried onto the floor. He needed to understand the mechanics of his power, to move beyond instinct and into conscious command.
He began the exercise he had practiced in the storage unit, but this time, the steel walls of the room amplified the connection.
He focused on the paperclip he had picked up in Chapter 4, placing it on a small metal stool.
Lift.
He strained, pouring the entire force of his will into the command. The blood vessels in his temples pulsed. He felt the cold, familiar pull—a vast, unseen gravity centered in his chest.
The paperclip did not lift. Instead, the small metal stool began to vibrate violently, emitting a low, powerful harmonic whine that hurt his teeth.
Too much power, too little focus, he realized instantly. His control was all or nothing. He was trying to smash the atom with a sledgehammer.
He stopped, breathing hard, the vibration instantly ceasing.
He tried again, this time with a different approach. He didn't command the paperclip; he commanded the space between himself and the clip. He gently willed the magnetic field to ripple, not to lift.
This time, the paperclip twitched. It moved a millimeter, then two, floating up and then down in a tiny, perfect, controlled arc.
A surge of exhilaration shot through him. He was a creature of physics, a master of a fundamental force.
He spent the next two hours in a fierce, silent communion with the metal. He graduated from the paperclip to a small bolt, then to a heavy wrench. He wasn't lifting with his hands; he was using his mind, feeling the immense, crushing weight of the earth's magnetic field being redirected by his sheer, staggering will.
He discovered that the power was tied not only to his will, but to his emotion. When he thought of the cold hatred from his dream of the barbed wire, the power was raw, violent, and explosive. When he focused on the desperate need for survival and control, the power was focused, precise, and surgical.
He exited the steel room, exhausted but triumphant. He had confirmed the extent of his power. He was not merely a metahuman; he was a force of nature.
With his life secured, Nick initiated the investigation into Nolan Kross.
He used the credentials Cobblepot provided—an untraceable laptop and burner phone—to access the deep web. He didn't search for Erik Lehnsherr or Magneto; those names were not yet in his conscious mind. He searched for the clues from his dreams: concentration camps, post-war Europe, Polish and German archives.
His skill in navigating the arcane world of encrypted servers and forgotten government records was as flawless as his combat technique. Another fragment of his former life asserting itself: he had been a man of intelligence, a seeker of hidden truths.
He spent the rest of the night sifting through obscure historical records, looking for anything that matched the profound suffering etched into his soul. He found countless images of the Holocaust, of ghettos, of war-torn cities. The sheer weight of the tragedy should have been abstract, but to him, it was a mirror. The faces in the old black-and-white photos were familiar.
He paused on one specific, haunting image: a photograph of a young boy, perhaps his age in the dream, clutching a small piece of metal, his eyes wide with a terror that transcended the decades. The boy's face was too blurred to confirm, but the gaze—the fierce, unyielding refusal to surrender—was his own.
The caption beneath the photograph was a generic academic citation, listing the photo as "Warsaw Ghetto, 1943. Subject unknown."
Nick leaned back, rubbing his temples, the enormity of the implication crashing down on him. His ghosts were not metaphors. They were history. The man he had been was born of the deepest human suffering.
He was interrupted by the chime of the burner phone. It was Specs.
"Mr. Cobblepot has a new assignment for you, Nolan," Specs said, the new name rolling smoothly off his tongue. "A retrieval job, high risk. But first, he requests your presence at the Iceberg Lounge. He wants you to meet his advisors."
"Advisors?" Nick questioned.
"Experts in their field," Specs replied, a hint of genuine excitement in his voice. "One specializes in corporate acquisitions, the other in... mythology."
Nick closed the laptop, the unsettling image of the boy in the Warsaw Ghetto burned into his mind. He was now Nolan Kross, an employee of The Penguin, and he had access to both vast wealth and the secrets of the criminal underworld.
He stood up, walking to the steel room. He picked up his pipe, now more than just a weapon—it was a scepter. He was secured. He was armed. And he had a lead.
The cost of his survival was his temporary allegiance to evil. The payment would be the truth of his origins.
He was ready for the next phase.